Worried Friends
€8.00
Browse our Catalog
Search results for “pic”
The Three Worlds - Allegory of Vanity
€12.50
The Three Worlds - Forget Heaven
€12.50
The Three Worlds - Vanity of Allegory
€12.50
The Hunters in the Snow
€14.00
Entropic Society / Neurology 2
€10.00
Ted K (Original Motion Picture Score)
€22.50
Restive. Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
€10.00
Precipice
€33.50
Pictures from Sand: Boiling Line
€9.00
Inauspicious
€22.50
Olympic Mess
€27.00
Mandy (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
€16.00
The Mercy (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
€13.00
Piccolo racconto crudele sulla notte appena trascorsa
€9.00
Towers of Silence
€13.00
Towers of Silence
€17.50
Abomination of Desolation
€12.00
Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden
€13.00
Resting in Aspic
€13.00
CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE, THE GOLDEN SOUND
€23.00
We are none of us
€29.00
Fool, Redeemer
€15.00
Thunder Perfect Mind (special ed.)
€88.00
Proceed with Inquiry
€13.00
Abbiamo tutti i suoi problemi
€14.00
From here to anywhere
€5.50
Mouthless
€15.00
Fading Pictures
€13.00
Tropical Amnesia Two & Three
€15.00
Our Anthems
€14.00
Strategies Obliques II
€23.00
Epicurean Escapism I
€20.00
Epicurean Escapism III
€22.00
TIME ENDS - A Tribute to J.G. Ballard's Tetralogy of Transformation (special ed.)
€36.00
Tropico
€12.00
Salero (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
€25.00
| Artist | Album | Format | Label & Cat. Number | Year | Price (incl. 19% VAT) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMBARCHI, OREN / LASSE MARHAUG | Worried Friends | 7 | Pica Disk PICA002 | 2007 | €8.00 |
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| ANEMONE TUBE | The Three Worlds - Allegory of Vanity | CD | The Epicurean cure.17 / La Esencia LER018/2017 | 2017 | €12.50 |
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| The Three Worlds - Forget Heaven | CD | The Epicurean cure.18 / La Esencia LER019/2017 | 2017 | €12.50 |
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| The Three Worlds - Vanity of Allegory | CD | The Epicurean cure.19 / La Esencia LER020/2017 | 2017 | €12.50 |
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| ANEMONE TUBE / JARL & MONOCUBE | The Hunters in the Snow | CD | The Epicurean CURE.21 / Auf Abwegen AATP65 | 2019 | €14.00 |
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| BARRIKAD / DEATH SQUAD & HYDRA | Entropic Society / Neurology 2 | 10 | Segerhuva seger 7 | 2003 | €10.00 |
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| BLANCK MASS | Ted K (Original Motion Picture Score) | LP | Sacred Bones Records SBR-286 | 2022 | €22.50 |
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| BOYSEN, BEN LUKAS | Restive. Original Motion Picture Soundtrack | CD | Hymen Y 803 | 2012 | €10.00 |
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| DÄLEK {DALEK] | Precipice | do-LP | Ipecac Recordings IPC240LP | 2022 | €33.50 |
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| FIVE ELEMENTS MUSIC | Pictures from Sand: Boiling Line | CD-R | Still*Sleep ss18 | 2008 | €9.00 |
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| HAYNES, JIM | Inauspicious | LP | Helen Scarsdale Agency HMS 073 | 2023 | €22.50 |
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| HELM | Olympic Mess | do-LP | PAN PAN63LP | 2015 | €27.00 |
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| JOHANNSSON, JOHANN | Mandy (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) | CD | Lakeshore Records / Invada LSINV203CD | 2018 | €16.00 |
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| The Mercy (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) | CD | Deutsche Grammophon 479 8303 | 2018 | €13.00 |
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| KAR | Piccolo racconto crudele sulla notte appena trascorsa | CD-R | S'Agita Recordings 022 | 2003 | €9.00 |
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| LAST DOMINION LOST | Towers of Silence | CD | The Epicurean cure5. / Silken Tofu stx.32 | 2014 | €13.00 |
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| Towers of Silence | LP | The Epicurean cure5. / Silken Tofu stx.32 | 2014 | €17.50 |
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| Abomination of Desolation | CD | The Epicurean cure.15 / La Esencia LER017 | 2017 | €12.00 |
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| Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden | CD | The Epicurean cure.8 | 2017 | €13.00 |
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| LISTENING MIRROR | Resting in Aspic | CD | Hibernate Records HB39 | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| MAREGIANO, ANNE | CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE, THE GOLDEN SOUND | DVD | RE:VOIR / Atopic | 2013 | €23.00 |
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| MEIRINO, FRANCISCO & DAVE PHILLIPS | We are none of us | do-LP | Misanthropic Agenda MAR035 | 2012 | €29.00 |
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| NADJA / PICASTRO | Fool, Redeemer | LP | Broken Spine Productions BSP05 | 2011 | €15.00 |
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| NURSE WITH WOUND | Thunder Perfect Mind (special ed.) | 3 x pic-LP | Infinite Fog Productions IF-119LPPIC | 2024 | €88.00 |
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| PHILLIPS, DAVE | Proceed with Inquiry | DVD | Silken Tofu STX.54 / The Epicurean cure.14 | 2017 | €13.00 |
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| PICCHIO DAL POZZO | Abbiamo tutti i suoi problemi | CD | ReR Megacorp ReR PdP | 2006 | €14.00 |
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| PICK-UP | From here to anywhere | mCD-R | My Own Little Label MOLL 020 | 2008 | €5.50 |
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| Mouthless | LP | Important Records IMPREC 243LP | 2009 | €15.00 |
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| RLW |
 Fading Pictures
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CD | Black Rose Recordings - BRCD 23-1023 | 2025 | €13.00 |
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| SHOEMAKER, MATT | Tropical Amnesia Two & Three | do-CD | Ferns Recordings stem_06 | 2019 | €15.00 |
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| THE PICKLE FACTORY | Our Anthems | LP | Twisted Knister knack 003 | 2011 | €14.00 |
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| TOY BIZARRE # INGEOS / COPPICE | Strategies Obliques II | LP | Ferns Recordings - frond_14 | 2024 | €23.00 |
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| V.A. (VARIOUS ARTISTS) (COMPILATIONS) | Epicurean Escapism I | CD & DVD | Silken Tofu stx.23 / The Epicurean cure 1 | 2013 | €20.00 |
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| Epicurean Escapism III | CD & DVD + book | Silken Tofu stx.48 / The Epicurean cure.3 | 2016 | €22.00 |
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| TIME ENDS - A Tribute to J.G. Ballard's Tetralogy of Transformation (special ed.) | do-LP / CD | The Epicurean - cure 24 / Auf Abwegen AATP85 | 2022 | €36.00 |
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| VIPCANCRO | Tropico | CD | Lisca Records LISCA 007 | 2010 | €12.00 |
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| WILTZIE, ADAM BRYANBAUM | Salero (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) | LP | Erased Tapes Records ERATP091LE | 2016 | €25.00 |
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“pic” entries in album descriptions
Field of View
the latest album by the dutch "experimental drone" project comes as a surprise, incorporating female singing & spoken voice & slow minimal rhythmic elements with the typical atmospheric drones...
€13.50
Moune
back in stock the first proper CD-release (after numerous CDRs) by the musical side of HELGE SIEHLs project (once a member of MAEROR TRI) who is also active as painter and multi-media artist; three long tracks of mysterious & deeply floating ambience inspired by the "moon"-topic; lim. 500
€13.00
Die kosmische Zygote / Hináphapi
two Drone Rec. 7" artists in a surrealistic marriage: first re-issue by the fine taalem mCDR from 2006 (23 min, re-mastered 2023), plus lots of unrelased stuff: a new epic collaboration piece called "Hináphapi" was created in 2023 (36 + min!), and two mysterious "intermissions" ("Pausenmusik") fill the gaps and sublime black holes (another 30 min)...lots of unidentifiable drone objects surrounding your ether synapses.. C-90, handpainted cover
€9.50
Itinera
this is the first AF URSIN album created entirely on analogue synths - and if you know AF URSIN it should be clear these are not the typical "minimal synth" or "cosmic" sounds, but more mysterious surroundings: like stranding on an alien planet, finding strange hieroglyphs from an archaic past, listening to space winds, waving sinus tones and choirs of unknown beings, at the same time melancholic and full of nostalgy.. lim. 250 copies on clear vinyl
€19.00
Wattle
the series of picture discs on Elevator Bath (with visual artwork by the artists themselves) finally continues with a release by MASAMI AKITA aka MERZBOW, who re-worked photogrraphs of a Turkey; on the vinyl two tracks of "unidentifiable metallic clanging, crushing feedback, jagged white noise, and various effects...There are no drums, no guitars, no vocals; just scorching electronic mayhem of the highest quality..." lim. 270 copies
€20.00
Standing in a Place
music for crossing a magic forest, filled with strange mushrooms and creatures... two new long tracks (69+ min. playtime) based on warm zither-sounds, female vocals in the backgorund, field recordings from nature & addtional electronics of LORENZO MONTANA => most peaceful Ambience filled with transcendency and tenderness that seems to completely stand still, experiencing endless moments of existence... lim. 300 with georgous cover pics by LINDA SERRA
€15.00
Imaginal Symmetry
four long tracks (77 min.) including the epic title-track, creating an extremely full and wide aural space (never sounded STEFANO MUSSO's zither so symphonic), often reaching a choral like beauty and sublimeness... feat. LINGUA FUNGI and AGLAIA (kantele, organ, electronics, effects), recorded in Oulu (Finland) and Tuscany 2011-2015; lim. 300
€15.00
Vayu Rouah
their second collaboration CD, back in stock, contains one epic one-tracker, broad + spacious dream-muzak that transcends time, endless washes of soundclouds + layers.... very minimal & very complex at the same time, on a micro-level.... perfect nightshade music... lovely album, 67 minutes
€15.00
To Found
third Italian collaboration by ALTIERI (aka UNCODIFIED), and G. FAVARON who created again eight highly dynamic tracks from pulses, short sequences and object samples, with 'microscopic' view on tiniest details and lots of energy transmitted.. think of PAN SONIC or some DEISON works; excellent stuff, absolutely to discover ! Lim.200
€12.00
A Mimesis of Nothingness
already the fourth album on H.G. for this high-class "exp.-drone" artist from Tehran, transfering the photographs from NOOSHIN SHAFIEE into six stunning sound pictures.."..führt sein Publikum in ein Teheran, durch dessen Häuserschluchten und Alleen, über dessen weite Plätze, Parks, Fabrikgelände und Ruinen ein eisiger Wind weht, ein Wind, der Hagelklötze und Staub und Erinnerungen transportiert und all dies sprunghaft in die unterschiedlichsten Richtungen weht" [African Paper] + 8p booklet, on white vinyl
€22.00
Caravan
last copies of this lovely 4 x cassette box by the long standing project by A.M.KING who ran one of the best tape labels around, BANNED Production => "Caravan" consists of four C-10 tapes and is based on found sounds from unknown sources, probably records, radio, processed field and object recordings, typical for AMK it has a repetetive and bizarre flair, think of BIG CITY ORCHESTRA, etc.. - U.S. import !!
€22.00
Vagrancies
debut CD for this sound artist from Austin, TX, who ceates superb \'transcension drone\' muzak, completely ghostly and cryptic..- \" Mangled tapes, unidentifiable instruments, electronic wizardry, and wide-ranging found sounds / field recordings join forces here to create a kind of audio journal of paranormal phenomena... This album offers a sonic depiction of those barely perceptible footprints left by unseen specters.. \" - lim. 150 copies, 6 panel digipack, spot gloss printing
€13.00
The Three Worlds - Allegory of Vanity
first part of a trilogy collecting rare cassette-only material from 1997-2013, summarising this under the existentialist worldview of the Theravada Buddhism of the 14th century, containing the three levels of existence of all beings; the 5 older tracks on this CD are "a perfect representation of Anemone Tube’s early old-school industrial / power-electronics phase, and yet proof that both the musical approach and the topical background were already fully developed at that stage." lim. 300, excellent artwork
€12.50
The Three Worlds - Forget Heaven
second part of a trilogy collecting rare cassette-only material from 1997-2013 (plus unreleased tracks), summarising this under the existentialist worldview of the Theravada Buddhism of the 14th century, containing the three levels of existence of all beings; "Forget Heaven" presents very raw and bleak noise ambient tracks, most coming from the MC with same name (1997), plus rare compilation and other materal from about the same period that forms an authentic picture.. lim. 300
€12.50
Musique Barbare
"my paint-tube is a rocket!" Re-issue of this rare musique concrete LP from 1963 by radical Dutch painter and sculptor KAREL APPEL, who created three tracks for this LP at the Instituut Voor Sonologie by violating electric organ, kettle drum and other percussion instruments, and using his voice&screams, processed through extensive use of tape manipulation techniques ... it still sounds absolutely great after so many years! Comes in gatefold-cover with lots of pictures, liner notes, etc.
€16.00
Alone Vimalakirti Blinks
"Message is: do not bother dreaming about promised land, work thee not in a silly factory making somebody else rich, have a nice picnic, include a vintage bike if you like" - comes with special cover (full colour)
€12.00
II:Ruined
known from the NADJA split albums, "epic suicidal sludge doom metal".. lim. 500 gatefold cover
€16.00
{Mass}
epic double album by the versatile Swiss composer (also member of BU.D.D.A.) => 6 long tracks, developing an exceptional, captivating exp. ambient style (with guitars, vocals..) - *fieldrecording phrases, drone structures to guitar, almost post-rock quasi songs... - it is a soft and tender twilight harbouring secrets and mysteries- and the potential of light. The hopefulness of a vessel traversing the nigh-on infinite seas of blackness towards some distant star" - 300 copies
€17.00
Storage Disk 1
Great collection of older, rare material in the typical BAD SECTOR-style the Italian project got known for, also the B-side of the Drone EP (DR-18) is included ... raw and archaic sounding electronic synths, otherworlds of pulses and harmonics, at the same time melancholic and cold... 10 tracks, almost 55 minutes. Comes again in a very special cover-sleeve on the prolific labe from Moscow; - lim. 500 special cover & booklet
€13.00
Dolmen Factory
re-issue of this long deleted album (Membrum Debile Propaganda, 2000), new artwork (the typical Faria-styled oversized cardboard cover) and one bonus-track (rec. 1999, remixed 2008), edition of 500
€12.50
Kosmodrom
re-issue of deleted 2005 release (Waystyx) dedicated to Russian space missions + cosmonautic topics, using sounds from original Soviet synths like the ANS & radio signal recordings... comes with the rare bous mini CDR and 5 more bonus-tracks in box with 12page booklet => ground-breaking work of electro-acoustic drones on the border of science & sound ! BACK IN STOCK
€18.00
Rebis / Periferiche
surely one of the most unusual BAD SECTOR-projects, this comes with a full A5 book of Italian "cyber poetry" by TOMMASO LISA, whose texts also appear on the 12 track CD combined with sharp & experimental rhythms & cuts, as computerized / alienated male & female voices... the digitalized futuristic sounds merge with typical B.S. dark ambience, and the words.. still pretty unique, BACK IN STOCK!
€14.00
The Pool
BANKS BAILEY captured the magic and aural mystery of a certain place in the Madrona Canyon in the Rincon Mountains of Arizona; these 5 pieces were constructed from field recordings made between 2009-2015; there are subtle 'near silence' drones and rumbles and extremely microscopic object sounds from nature (stones, sand, insects, animals).... "A very quiet CD but it captures a lot of beauty." lim. 200 art-cover
€14.00
Mountains and Waters
recordings from different quiet, untouched places in National Parks in the USA, with the focus of exploring the "Holocene epoch" (11700 years ago before the Anthropocene began), BANKS BAILEY managed to find beautiful 'droning' nature sounds (often it's not really clear what it is) along with the more typical environmental noises you can capture.. filed under: nature immersion sounds
€14.00
La Production Interdite
highly interesting work by this researcher and writer who often cares about the 'threshold states' of consciousness, this is about the phenomenon of "Autoscopy" (i.e. the visualization of phantom doubles / Doppelgängers)... "Split into a purely instrumental half-hour side and a vocally-enhanced side in which TBWB narrates accounts of autoscopic events, this new album oscillates between moments of narcotic consolation and moments of sharp poignancy... " C-60, lim. 50
€10.00
Smudging
two long epic droney percussive tracks by AIDAN BAKER with drummer RICHARD BAKER, not so far from the ARC project... elegant.. subtle.. flowing.. lim. 400 (+45 art ed. handpinated)
€15.00
Watermusic II
back in stock, originally a CDR from 2003, with a long (66 minutes) one-tracker...- "Some pieces don't necessarily have to 'go' anywhere in particular, their existence is simple enough in that it presents a mood, a moment, a place and encapsulates it. Think of still-images for the ears as opposed to moving-pictures for the eyes... " - comes in translucent shell case
€16.00
Variations: a Movement in Chrome Primitive
re-issue of epic album from 2004, using fragile piano figures in endless repetition, evoking a feeling of timelessness and slow decay..
€24.50
Electrucs !
lost tapes/unpublished material by the GRM master composer (and designer of the 'Acousmonium') with the main pieces "ELECTRUCS" from 1974 (10 tracks) and "Cinq Dessins en Rosace" (1973, consisting of 5 movements)), plus two shorter pieces from 1973 & 1995; some astonishing electronic and treated acoustic sounds and arrangements from 45 years ago! printed innersleeve with exclusive liner notes and pictures
€24.50
Svältens Tid
the Swedish project feat. PER AHLUND (DISKREPANT, SOPHIA) with a refined new album, their third one...- *an intense journey through the depths of the human experience. The album's lyrics paint a vivid picture of struggle and introspection. Each track is meticulously crafted to convey a sense of urgency and raw emotion, making this album a standout in Beckahesten's discography. "The wolf has woken up" – these words encapsulate the essence of the album, a stirring metaphor for awakening and transformation.* - CD version lim. 300 copies
€14.00
Svältens Tid
the Swedish project feat. PER AHLUND with third album, black vinyl lim. 200 - *an intense journey through the depths of the human experience. The album's lyrics paint a vivid picture of struggle and introspection. Each track is meticulously crafted to convey a sense of urgency and raw emotion, making this album a standout in Beckahesten's discography. "The wolf has woken up" - these words encapsulate the essence of the album, a stirring metaphor for awakening and transformation.*
€22.50
Sonambulo
MICHAEL BEGG (FOVEA HEX, HUMAN GREED) is back with a more experimental and conceptual solo album with a surrealistic touch that was created & performed in Mexico end of 2018 during a residency, a kind of melancholic aural picturing 'dreamscape' of British painter LEONARA CARRINGTON (who lived in Mexico after WWII)... ed. of 150 copies only
€13.00
Verfall
album based entirely on floating piano-tunes; sounds at times more like a wild ROBERT HAIGH than typical M.B. - 8 different tracks, all with german titles; rare CD-R on this label from Hongkong
€10.00
Dear and Unfamiliar
second album for the "dark poetique" singer/songwriter from New Zealand, collaborating with LEONARDO ROSADO; vinyl-version lim. 300 in the typical DENOVALI deluxe style !
€19.50
Altered States
the Italian composer is back after a long release break, on ALTERED STATES twelve epic guitar drone pieces ("live in the studio") are presented, effected and multi-layered , reminding us on works of "N" or AIDAN BAKER, though BORGA can become quite noisy and furious at times... "The cumulative effect is volcanic, droning, sputtering worlds being formed, others being pulverized down to cellular level, ancient in gut feel, ablating all other thoughts." [S. Fruitman] lim. 100 only
€12.00
Wander till spring
large fold-out cover in the typical NEFRYT design ! side-project of ONE INCH OF SHADOW and first fabric-pressed (non-CDR) Nefryt-release !
€13.00
same
collaboration by these two artists known from EFTERKLANG and YELLOW SWANS - basic source material recorded together was later shaped into 5 pieces:' Broderick’s side brings together elements of modern compostion, electronic music, dub and vocal-oriented songwriting, while Saloman’s side is an epic 18-minute journey that builds into a gorgeous crescendo before gliding away on plaintive cries of a violin'; lim. 350 copies on black vinyl
€19.50
Anastomose
this release collects the legendary pic-10" for Ant-Zen from 1996, a very unknown 7" EP called "Charlemagne" from 1997 (Membrum Debile Prop.), and as a bonus the recent "Seven Trumpets" album (MC only, deleted, 2012); lim. 444 copies, oversized art cover! A great chance to re-discover some deleted BRUME-works!
€12.00
Landed
long new BRUME piece (22+ min.) that shifts for the most part in subtle & droney regions (with surrealistic strangeness), but also has BRUME's typical breaks and cuts... awesome electro-acoustic / "intelligent" drone... lim. 100 only, comes in a plexi glass / glass frame cover
€10.00
The Beekeeper's Dream (subscribers edition)
we got few sets of the lim. pic-LP-set edition, usually only available if you subscribed to the whole RANFB-set !! LP and bonus pic-LP entitled "TIPPPOO's TIGER", with signed insert !
€30.00
Antarctica / Antarktika
"ANTARKTIKA: Wilde weiße Schönheit - Für alle Ewigkeit - Hast du dich zugedeckt - Mit einem Schleier aus Kristall"- nicely designed split picture-LP with 6 songs from BUNKER CITY (Oldenburg, Germany) on one side, and one long track by Germanys most incorrigible harsh noiser CARSTEN VOLLMER, inspired by the 'Antarktika' theme: feedbackin' white noise in different high frequency shapes, and melodic power punk-pop on the flipside - what a combination! Lim.100, with inlay
€18.00
€15.00
Anello. Naga. Sunyata
epic release by this singer, actor & music professor from Belgium, constructed 'geometrically' due to a mathematical scheme based on the symbolism of numbers, all pieces can be played seperately or together to build a complete 'Sonic Architecture'; => very dense meditative music using electronic sound drops, mysterious overtune drones, whispers, percussion, instruments (strings, flute, gongs), field & object recordings (water.. ). very otherworldy, captivating, somehow esoteric! MASTERPIECE!!!
€25.00
Ghosts of Nakhodka
a different album than the "Ghost of Nakhodka" CD on Siren Records (2010/2011), these 13 miniatures are based on synths and field recordings, use backwards sounds and form nice varified drone pieces, interwoven in the typical CHALKian way... ed. of 300 copies, inlay
€19.50
The Eccentric Press
PERSISTENCE OF SOUND is a new interesting British label for experimental musique concrete (so far 4 LPs out): IAN CHAMBERS presents two radio pieces, "The Eccentric Press" uses industrial machine noises and typical working sounds from bells, etc.. recorded at the LWL-Industriemuseum in Dortmund, commissioned by WDR; "Maudslay Engine" is composed with various airplane, steam engine and machine-sounds... two very nice sound art pieces to discover, comes with DL code
€23.50
Asabjaris
nine cryptic titles with names like Z7000GATE0007Z or Z7000MOON0007Z are to be found on CHAOTALIONs second CD, a trip into old school analogue "ambient industrial" soundscapes reminding on TELEPHERIQUE or AUBE, with a more surrealistic and dark touch... "The collage-like soundscapes of Chaotalion are always arranged with great detail; with an enormous archive of field recordings, his typical analogue sound and unique references to the occult.."
€12.00
Characters at the Water Margin
finally a new release by LOREN CHASSE (who was once active with ID BATTERY, COELACANTH, and in THUJA) who assembled field recordings from the Olympic Rainforest in Washington, USA, near the Pacific Ocean; you can hear his activites and interactions merging with the pure sounds from air, ocean, wind, stones, wood, etc. etc... very pure "exploring sounds" in this series of MYSTERY SEA, dealing with "spirits of specific places", lim. 200, full-colour cardboard-sleeve, inlay
€14.00
Les 120 Jours
back in stock this most intense / dramatic and epic Musique Concrete work ("monster")- composed 1997/98: 'Ausufernde Electro-Akustik und Musique Concrete der drei französischen Komponisten, wo sich Kriegs/Kampf-geräusche, orientale Gesänge, Stimmen und found sounds und massenhaft konkrete Geräusche aller Art zu einem dynamischen, intensiven Ganzen vermengen.. ein wahrhaft monumentales Werk!' [Drone Rec]
€15.00
Postscriptum
the Polish cult label OBUH released cassettes of this project in the 90's, in the typical style for that time - instrumental ambience, sometimes weird and with psychedelic / avant rock influences, with spoken words or more expressiveness... - here are now 5 new dark tracks, plus material from two long deleted more wild OBUH cassettes - "This is a great slab of weird electronic drone that should find favour with fans of creepy atmospheric horror drones as well as fans of avant garde rock." [Musique Machine]
€16.00
Exotika (violet vinyl)
re-issue of album from 1987; futuristic danceable electronica in the typical CTI style; re-mastered by CHRIS CARTER, this limited re-press is available on transparent VIOLET vinyl and comes with insert
€23.00
The New Backwards (special edition)
collector's edition! 3 x pic LPs, lim. 555 copies, hotfoil embossing, handnumbered, looks great! -> the sister album to "Ape of Naples" from 2008, with diverse unreleased bonus tracks ('rough working stages and surprising remixes') from DANNY HYDE's archive.. *These songs are as diverse and wild as the places they originated from, partly infamously spawned in Sharon Tate's former home in the Hollywood Hills, the Nine Inch Nails home base in New Orleans and London's Swanyard*
€79.00
The Ape of Naples (special ed.)
collector's edition! 3 x pic LPs, lim. 555 copies, hotfoil embossing in GOLD, handnumbered, looks great! - 'This version is the third Coil record receiving the fully remastered and enhanced 3LP/2CD treatment supervised by Danny Hyde. Includes 9 additional rare or unreleased tracks.* + insert and slipmat
€76.50
Crystalline Tragedies
strong split LP with side-long pieces by dutch MARTIJN COMES (very minimal drones and pulses based on synths & guitar sounds), and G. ALDINUCCI, who created a stunning ambient collage in his typical choral / spheric way, using field recordings from a Christian procession in "rural Tuscanny"... ed. of 300 copies, comes with DL code
€16.50
A Wound of Body
lim. vinyl version of this album by the US American "esoteric black ambient" project who mix ritualistic soundscapes, dark ambient/drone, folk and black metal elements to a very minimalistic melange beyond all typical genres...- "a beautifully stark soundscape, dolorously dense, suffocatingly oppressive and utterly claustrophobic. An immersive black hole of bleak, cavernous drone music and disquieting, desolate ambience, each track a hushed and harrowing ritual..." - 300 copies, printed innersleeve
€25.00
Teredo Navalis
with "Teredo Navalis" you can dive into the underwater and aquatic sonics of the Venetian lagune, captured in a special way via "electromagnetic sensors, binaural microphones, hydrophones, contact and condenser microphones", building not a typical 'sound-postcard' with lots of water-sounds, but more the normally unheard effects of ships, plants, animals, and water movements inside this elemental medium... very interesting album by this recommdended Italian composer, ed. of 300 copies
€13.00
Continuum Recyclings Volume One (expanded re-issue)
this expanded re-issue of the first CONTINUUM RECYCLINGS release contains as a bonus the so far unreleased BASS COMMUNION remix "Construct III - Immersion mix" (a remix from one of the pieces of the first CONTINUUM album on Soleilmoon) - a full 60 min. CD !! On the vinyl: four "recyclings" of the CONTINUUM album done by VIDNA OBMANA / DIRK SERRIES, 180 gr. black vinyl and gatefold picture sleeves
€32.00
The Illusion of Power
re-issue of the rare lathe-cut 10" (released for the OEC festival in Italy in 2019) plus unreleased material, inspired by the BREXIT topic - "A sonic soundtrack to an apocalyptic world that is hypnotic, yet still full of dynamic sounds and shifts...- somewhere inside the dark ritual ambience of the electronic avant-garde shot through with a vein of experimental noise and sarcophetic vocals strewn amongst industrial surrealism." - ed. of 300 copies
€13.00
Split
Japan (death) noise split picture LP with 6 new C.D. tracks entitled "Devil's Sacrifice" and 2 long MAYUKO HINO tracks on the B-Side... - "Maso's is an uncompromising emotion of slabs of screams and drone, whereas Mayuko's achieves the same emotional frenzy by other means. Both achieve the apocalyptic annihilation of sound.." [Vital Weekly] - 400 copies pressed
€26.00
Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes
audio explorations and experiments that lead to the creation of the soundtrack to the film about DELIA DERBYSHIRE (who died 2001) from CAROLINE CATZ... COSEY FANNI TUTTI had full access to DERBYSHIRE's audio archive and her compositional notes..15 tracks & surrealistic miniatures, merging COSEYs and DELIAs sound in a great way...- "the album is a journey through both Delia and Cosey's practise -- to create an audio world for Catz's depiction of the artist to inhabit." - CLEAR vinyl
€30.00
Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes
audio explorations and experiments that lead to the creation of the soundtrack to the film about DELIA DERBYSHIRE (who died 2001) from CAROLINE CATZ... COSEY FANNI TUTTI had full access to DERBYSHIRE's audio archive and her compositional notes..15 tracks & surrealistic miniatures, merging COSEYs and DELIAs sound in a great way...- "the album is a journey through both Delia and Cosey's practise -- to create an audio world for Catz's depiction of the artist to inhabit." - digisleeve CD version
€15.00
(THE) L.K.A. SONAR KIT
Sold outthe first pic-7" on Drone Records, 2nd ed. 11/2000, by the legendary post-industrial / ambient band from Germany
Island of the Hungry Ghost (OST)
wonderful Motion Picture Soundtrack for the documentary of same name = a film 'moving between the natural, human and spiritual worlds' of the "Christmas Island", located near Indonesia, with millions of red crabs moving from the jungle towards the ocean...- the score consists of many field recordings (ocean, insects, fire, Buddhist prayers) and drones created on a selfmade long-string instruments, for an ongoing powerful immersion... - incl. large 8 page booklet and postcard with link to watch the film!!
€24.00
In Menstrual Night
re-issue of the nightshade-like LP from 1986, for the first time in it's original pic-LP format, performers were: DAVID TIBET, DIANA ROGERSON, HÖH; JOHN BALANCE, ROSE McDOWALL and others, thematically focused on the menstruation / moon cycle..- "Die Soundkollagen als eine Art Archiv geträumter (und gestorbener) Träume zu sehen, ist eine durchaus naheliegende Assoziation, die Tibets Ideen zu dem Album entspricht.." - comes with signed postcard
€32.00
The Long Shadow Falls
epic conceptual release that reminds on THE CARETAKER, using vocal loops from vintage sources, dissolving into hiss and drone.. spread on seven CDs are 41 very similar, unpublished, "redreamt" remixes of the rare 12" lathe cut with the same name, plus hte material from the "Why can't we all just walk away?" 12", a bonus 7" and a 40 page booklet with ghost photos from DAVID TIBET, and booklet in a sturdy box
€75.00
Nature Unveiled
lim. pic LP re-issue (beautiful die-cut print) of the very first full C93 album, feat. ANNIE ANXIETY, STEVEN STAPLETON, JOHN MURPHY, etc.., carefully restored and remastered - "described to myself in a vision as an album which hoped, wished, and made bad trips sound like good trips....I had decided to make a pop album that dealt with my (then-as now!) primary fascinations: Christian apocalyptic and eschatological Christian texts." [DAVID TIBET]
€35.50
Lucifer over London
the 3 track mini-album from 1994 (about 28 min. lenght) in the deluxe pic-12" re-issue series (die-cut sleeve, 1000 copies) - "I was obsessed, am obsessed, by The Groundhogs, so gave C93 a chance to cover their perfect "Sad-Go-Round" from their perfect Solid album. I also loved Black Sabbath, but had listened to them so much that I never wanted to hear them again. So Michael Cashmore's Perfect Playing of their intro to "Paranoid" was Perfect Way To Wave GoodBye to them... "
€35.00
Favourite Berlin Sounds
an audio book of city-sounds from Berlin with 31 recordings, ranging from city traffic (U-Bahn & S-Bahn stations) over nightly party people crowds to courtyards & animal sounds typical for Berlin, characterizing its aural atmosphere very well... feat. booklet with detailed descriptions of every recording; very nice & cafefully put together
€14.00
Respect to the Authors
a six track mini-LP by the atmospheric hip-hop experiMENTALists, still unique in their genre, vinyl-only release lim. 500 copies; "...being Hip Hop for those who don’t pigeon-hole themselves as typical Hip Hop diehards, attracting those who keep listening outside the box. Subversive. Paradigm-changing. Mindblowing." - no download code, no digital version at all available !!
€17.50
Chant de dune
fascinating field recordings from SAND-dunes in the desert, the flowing and rickling of particles that sound almost like water, but also more drone-like phenomena caused by heavy winds and avalanches.. "...unexplained, these singings from the desert are despicted like roarings, voices from surnatural beings or the rumbling of the thunder." [Yannick Dauby] - DAUBY appeared as ENTRELACS with MICHAEL NORTHAM on Drone Records, this early mCDR release is still a highlight in his catalogue;
new none jewel-case edition !
€5.00
Sounds of HORSE. Music for Dance by Yannick Dauby
pieces taken from six soundtracks for a Taiwanese contemporary dance company named HORSE; excellent field recording based tracks using animal voices, urban soundscapes, electronic processions; comes in a full-colour / glossy book-like fold-out sleeve with pictures of the performances & additional texts
€16.00
咾咕厝 ló-kó͘-chhù (Penghu Experimental Sound Studio Vol.2 )
Vol. 2 in YANNICK DAUBY's studies of the sounds and sights on the PENGHU Archipelago in Taiwan - this contains interviews, field recordings, found objects and subtle electronic manipulations, a "sound picture" of a beautiful island is created, a more subtle and earplay like release with a fascinating atmosphere -
LAST COPY!
€20.00
Village, Vestiges
small full colour art-book, 144pages, & CD; pictures from villages & abandoned houses in France & Taiwan, texts in French & Chinese Mandarin. Very beautiful & poetic
€20.50
Broken Landscapes
after the first successful collaboration "Atsusaku" (2016) here's the follower, with GARETH DAVIS (OISEAUX TEMPETE) on bass clarinet and electronics, using lots of field recordings and focused on the theme "mechanisation of the environment" => "Broken Landscapes is built on impenetrably thick walls of manipulated field recordings while the bass clarinet saturates the midrange, the massive swirling mesh of analogue and digital material painting pictures of the magnified terrain that surrounds us." - lim.300
€18.00
Visual Noise
the german drone/ambient project asked via internet to send art-photographs to create music to it; "VISUAL NOISE" shows the result, 7 tracks for 7 photos, somewhere between BAD SECTOR & dark TANGERINE DREAM maybe, comes in DVD-digipack & 16p. full-colour booklet with texts to the pics; nice idea / project, recommended if you like electronic ambience; lim. 100
€18.00
Magnetic Debris Vol. 1 & 2
old "magnetic" tape sounds and loops form the basis for this mesmerizing and epic doCD : * These processed debris explores drone territories as a concrete atmospheric soundtrack full of tension with a sense of mystery and a melancholic beauty... recorded in various locations using prepared tapes, metals, strings, wires, electronics and various audio generators." - only 200 copies pressed
€16.00
Cayendo
strong electro-instrumental collaboration of DEISON with Spanish Cello player SARA GALAN, at times harmonic, at times granular-microscopic, ambient symphonic, experimental... 8 well arranged tracks beyond typical genres.... the basic improvisations were inspired by the sentence "Earth swallow me (Tierra tragame)" - "And then the concept leads to internal sounds, sound from stomach, sounds from the throat. Visceral sounds also connected with earth, sand, mud and desert."
€10.00
Nearly Invisible
first ever collaboration by these two Italian experimentalists: G. FAVARON has specialized to work in an electro-acoustic way with daily sounds, C. DEISON uses field recordings & electronics for his noise-ambient scapes => on "Nearly Invisible" they created 9 pieces that almost defy categorization, merging ambient industrial influences, electronics and musique concrete to surprising pieces, highly interesting! comes with oversized 16page full-colour book with pics by STEFANO GENTILE, lim. 230
€12.00
Alcohology
first new DN album in 5 years, pretty unique slow pounding old school industrial with LINA BABY DOLL's typical voice / lyrics, inspired by an obvious theme.... "a praise to the misery of a meaningless life only decorated with boredom, violence and a lot of alcohol"
€13.00
Klinik der Reinen Vernunft
amazing release in the FLUXUS +/- series by PSYCH.KG: three rare tracks by DEUTSCH NEPAL, plus one-side long track by MAMA BÄR coming from an ultra rare SHMF LP (2005); hand-clinched full-colour sleeve, numbered and signed, some have handmade (porn-pics) elements / lim. 100 / LAST COPIES!!
€40.00
Lung Cleaner
mind-overflooding microscopic ambience, the mergence of electronic & acoustic sounds, hyper-concrete and flowing at the same time! back in stock!
€13.00
Birthdays
new recordings (four pieces) created 2007-2010 by the now 85 years old French composer; one sided white vinyl picture disc, with backside screen-printed, lim. 300 only
€18.00
Mystical
mid range noise consisting of the typical D.T. morphing digital particles that seem to move up and down in endless configurations, like crackling rain showers, but not outside, INSIDE your brain... lim. 20 copies only, DVD sized case, full colour cover
€15.00
Pierdrie
a very nice installation film (18 min) that runs automatically in a loop, filmed at the harbour of Rotterdam showing lots of fascinating moving water-surface patterns using also field recordings for the collaged sounds... a collaboration of MACHINEFABRIEK with MARCO DOUMA (images) and ROEL MEELKOP (sounds), comes with option for stereo & stereo surround sound; this brings the typical, contemplating harbour atmosphere into your rooms...
€13.00
Babel
epic work from 1999 by the prolific Irish composer with the tracks / CDs symbolizing architectural spaces and rooms within a fictitious city, along with music from a radio station of the tower of Babel... => strange electronic music with various interconnections and relations, a thoughtful play with music and cultural myths, a very broad musical approach from strange pop music to cut up sounds and musique concrete pieces, challenging and complex!! Comes with 12p. booklet
€35.00
Vitriol
excellent 'alchemical' experimental drone with post industrial touch from this Italian artist on his second full length album, based on analogue sources, self made instruments and gadgets from metallic elements plus digital synthesis, at times with a more electronic / technoid substrate...dark & vivid stuff, "drawing distopic landscapes in the sky"; 10 tracks, almost 74 min. playtime, strongly recommended to be checked out ! ed. of 500 copies
€10.00
Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light II
limited picture disc edition of their 2012-album, 45 rpm
€30.00
Alms of Morpheus
pure psychedelism for the 2010's, comes in the typical lovely oversized mini gatefold-sleeve the label is known for! Lim. 600
€14.00
Terre Haute
collaborative project of legendary German underground figures F.M.EINHEIT (EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN), EN ESCH (KMFDM) and MONA MUR, resurging the typical West-Berlin 80's industrial / new wave / minimal sound with heavy sequencer synths, samples, noises and strong female/male vocals; they call it "German Angst Ridden Art Core"; feat. one cover of a BRECHT / WEILL song ! lim. 299 copies on red vinyl
€22.00
Phase IV : the box set (Alles in Allem)
back in stock few copies!!! => lim. box edition of the "Alles in Allem" album, with additional CD + LP feat. bonus material and outtakes, a DVD with pictures and audio material from the studio process, and a 164p. book
€90.00
Alles in Allem
the first new regular studio-album after 12 years forms a very lyrical and song-oriented, critical and nostalgic "homage" to their hometown Berlin, and sounds (again) like none of the albums before.. "Alles in Allem is a more pleasant listen than one would typically associate with the Neubauten brand. Within that refined accessibility, however, they remain playful and manically experimental." [The Quietus] - vinyl version with 4 page 12" booklet
€22.50
Clarte Deserte (special edition)
eft-over copies of the special edition with handmade sleeve designed by ANDREW CHALK in the typical FARAWAY PRESS - style; comes with beautiful 12" x 12 " insert on dark blue art paper, with four postcards sticked to it, and on CLEAR vinyl... please note: the insert is SIGNED by both members, but NOT numbered! Only very few of this extra edition exist !! (UK import, directly from Andrew Chalk)
€38.00
Etats-Limites ou les cris de Petra
"Borderline or Petra's shouts" - new composition (epic 79+ min. long) combining concrete & synthetic electro-acoustic drones with female vocals sounds & noises (rustles, whispers, breathing, laughter, erotic sighs, shouts), based on older recordings of a special "Borderline" person named Petra, and his huge collection of cow-bells - an absolutely fantastic & intense piece, our highest recommendation!! 28p. full colour booklet with interesting interview about his fascination for the Borderline phenomena..
€16.00
YO-IN
first publication of this epic piece composed 1980 - "sound theater for an imaginary ritual" - for electronic and concrete sounds, using about two hundred (!) different percussion instruments; this version was recorded during a public concert at the Warsaw Autumn Festival (Sept. 1994) and post-produced at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht.:.- comes with 20p booklet (this version is without the additional book!!)
€30.00
Contrition
two long tracks using bass & e-guitar sources to create the typical bleak EMERGE sound, here more reduced & focused & with more attention to harmonic elements; dark electro-acoustic drone-muzak ! comes in mini DVD-box
€6.50
Acker und Seche
a very special collaboration by three German underground experiMENTALists: highly ambitious material between earplay, collage, and soundscaping, every second, every little noise, counts = the whole atmosphere is secretful and mysterious, often silent and intimate... - six shorter tracks come from T. SOLTAU and EMERGE (field recordings, instrumental sounds), the one central epic piece "Vor dem Hitzschlag" was end-remixed by RLW - 200 copies
€13.00
Shadow of the Monolith
first collaboration by these two sound-artists from Australia & Austria, working on "atmospheric, hydrophonic and ionospheric" source materials, resulting in mesmerizing microsound ambience..."a record that drifts from dense microscopic cracks to vibrant shifting frequencies, from sections of profound white stillness to storms of intense activity, from intense light to improbable dark and from immersive macro-spaces to non-spaces" ; lim. 300 on a new Greek label
€17.50
Directions
only few releases exist of this highly interesting Swedish composer, known for his stunning LP on Fylkingen, this CD contains the older works: "Directions" (1979), "Tjidtjag Och Tjidtjaggaise" (1986), and the epic " Slutförbannelser/Final Curses" (1981) in eight parts; challenging, lyrical electro-acoustic at its best !
€16.50
No Signal
NEW material from the long active (though only few releases exist) French bruitism noise duo (who ones had their first release as MC on Cthulhu Records in 1989), using all kinds of self-built noise instruments, as "The Shriller", "Rikrokoid", "Kritz & Kratz", "Sturmophon", etc... this is radical, loud, crazy!! Comes in nicely designed 2 colour printed metal box with 16 p. colour booklet with pics of the noise-tools, numbered ed. 200 copies !!
€13.00
Transfall
collection of six works by the highly idiosyncratic french musique concrete composer, incl. the epic AUSTRAL; very challenging & demanding compositions, dense & suspenseful, using ensemble/instrumental sounds & field recordings
€13.00
40 Anos Nos Iluminan
40 decades, 23 albums, now 16 new tracks by the Spanish industrial legends!! - "compositions full of details, sometimes subtle, opening a new path of exploration that goes beyond the typical current industrial music, loaded with clichés. Here, E.G. experiment with noise, recorded voices, striking collages, and their trademark hypnotic rhythms of industrial trance" - numb. ed. 500 copies
€35.00
Surfaces
collector's item, lim. 86 only - second release in the 'Private Sounds' - series (one sided, coloured vinyl) => G. FAVARON created digital processed, repetitive, quasi-rhythmic microsound-patterns derived from smallest particles of object-sounds (paper, scissors, stones, daily kitchen things), inspired by a series of polaroid pictures... a very conceptual release with often surprising result !! LAST COPY!
€18.00
It comes to us All
first new FINAL album since 2015 (JUSTIN K.BROADRICKs solo project for experimental / ambient tunes), orchestral / epic drone noise with great harmonic undertones, melancholic and emotional...- "Rather than channelling the angst of early power-electronics, the noise here rumbles along blissfully through 8 untitled tracks, sombre in tone and at times beautiful... an exploration of the decay of all living things that we face collectively, day after day.." - reminds on TIM HECKER, TROUM, etc.. - lim. 400
€28.50
It comes to us all
first new FINAL album since 2015 (JUSTIN K.BROADRICKs solo project for experimental / ambient tunes), orchestral / epic drone noise with great harmonic undertones, melancholic and emotional...- "Rather than channelling the angst of early power-electronics, the noise here rumbles along blissfully through 8 untitled tracks, sombre in tone and at times beautiful... an exploration of the decay of all living things that we face collectively, day after day.." - reminds on TIM HECKER, TROUM, etc. - lim. 200
€16.00
Rishikesh
the favoured Russian project presents field recordings from two highly interesting places in India (Ganges river, Himalaya, and the ancient city of Vrindavan), all recorded in the middle of the night - very special atmosphere; fabric-pressed CD, numbered ed. 200 copies, in the typical artwork-style (beautiful patterns from nature & natural objects) of Daniel Crokaert
€14.00
EXHIBITION OF A DREAM
Dream interpretations of 12 artists who tell their dream "fiction" lead by their Unconscious, with accompanying sounds of FM EINHEIT and "band": GENESIS P.ORRIDGE (longest track), LEE RANALDO (SONIC YOUTH), film-maker APICHATPONG WEERESETHAKUL, SUSAN STENGER, etc. - very nice concept / idea with surprising results [ the whole is a re-issue of a rare 3 LP " L'exposition D'un Rêve" from 2018 ]
€16.00
An Opening of the Earth : recovered
re-worked recordings (that appeared originally 1991/1993 on CD / MC - on the legendary SOUNDS FOR CONSCIOUSNESS RAPE-label!) by the TUU-member M. FRANKLIN and the Drone Records-artist NORTHAM; lim. 500 in the typical Faria-design (full colour cardboard cover with postcards)
€13.00
One Butoh
"BUTOH - The dance of the obscure Body" - impressive ritualistic music by this Japanese vocalist, 4 scenes dedicated to the unique BUTOH dance style... - *FUJI-YUKI is a Japanese vocalist who uses her voice like an instrument. With special vocal techniques, glossolalia and electronic pedals, she creates a wide variety of sounds. Inspired by the spirits of Buddhism and Shintoism... * - lim. ed. with 28 page A5 b/w booklet showing beautiful dance pictures
€27.50
The Mirror reversed
extremely bleak & haunting sounds for your personal nightmare, this is not the typical dark ambient....one long track (47+ min.) inspired by the 'Tree of Death' (Kabbala) , the counterpart to the divine forces of the Sephiroth; filed under: spooky ghost drones & silences...
€13.00
Higgs Boson
incredible collaboration by MARHAUG with vocalist RUNHILD GAMMELSAETER, once singer for THORR'S HAMMER and KHLYST (with JIM PLOTKIN), a dark and haunting, almost occult sounding album, inspired by a large array of topics, i.e.: Japanese cinema, Futuristic comic books, landscape photography, Glass Bead Game by HESSE, the discovery of the HIGGS BOSON and work of quantum physicians like SCHRÖDINGER.. black vinyl ed.
€24.00
Higgs Boson
incredible collaboration by MARHAUG with vocalist RUNHILD GAMMELSAETER, once singer for THORR'S HAMMER and KHLYST (with JIM PLOTKIN), a dark and haunting, almost occult sounding album, inspired by a large array of topics, i.e.: Japanese cinema, Futuristic comic books, landscape photography, Glass Bead Game by HESSE, the discovery of the HIGGS BOSON and work of quantum physicians like SCHRÖDINGER.... CD version, 6 panel cardsleeve with OBI
€15.00
All is Suffering
this CD collects five rare 7"es released between 2017 and 2023 in their "Religious Extremism" series, portraying religious leaders + organisations in the typical G.O. way... => "Kahane Chai" (2017), "Movement" (2019), "Juhayman Al-Utaybi" (2020), "Khalsa" (2021), and "You're going to be fine" (2023), 10 timeless industrial tracks against religious insanity, packaging: 4-panel matte laminated digipak with spot varnished picture, debossed lettering and embossed band logo
€15.00
Passage Through Selk'nam Hain Ceremony
epic double LP album by the West Coast duo who established their very own style, percussive, hypnotic, full of unusual sounds and arrangements..- *The prolific group once again explores the freaked out fringes of the electronic world where blown out beat experiments stand beside buried guitar twangs, synth drones, and rigged textures, conjuring images of barren landscapes from forgotten far away lands. This is an album that you need to sink your mind deep into.* - comes with fold out poster!
€32.00
Vision scorched
comes as professionally bound 72 page picture book of sun related imagery with hand printed covers. lim / numb. 200. The psych-drone trio of ANTONY MILTON, BEN SPIERS, SIMON O'RORKE
€16.00
Asunder, Sweet and other Distress
"We love you so much our Country is fucked" - already another studio album by Montreal's anti-Major legends, four new heavy rocking & experimental droning tracks..."This new Godspeed You! Black Emperor, stripped of the sidebars, has become the high-volume anarchist epic rock band they've always been in their deepest core" [The Quietus]; gatefold cover, printed inner sleeve, poster
€22.00
Asunder, Sweet and other Distress
"We love you so much our Country is fucked" - already another studio album by Montreal's anti-Major legends, four new heavy rocking & experimental droning tracks..."This new Godspeed You! Black Emperor, stripped of the sidebars, has become the high-volume anarchist epic rock band they've always been in their deepest core" [The Quietus]
€15.00
G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END!
"The God's have returned to rain ash upon our graves." - four epic new pieces spread on 12" and 10" vinyls, with wonderful artwork again + DL code... - "Poignant atmospherics, noisedrenched orchestration, drone, hypnotic swingtime crescendos, inexorably-layered towers of distorted clarion sound: STATE'S END encapsulates every beloved facet of the band"
€27.50
G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END!
"The God's have returned to rain ash upon our graves." - four epic new pieces - "Poignant atmospherics, noisedrenched orchestration, drone, hypnotic swingtime crescendos, inexorably-layered towers of distorted clarion sound: STATE'S END encapsulates every beloved facet of the band" / CD version in gatefold digisleeve
€14.50
Alpes
the 4-member "dada-quartett" GOL on "Electric Mandoline, Jew’s Harps, Percussions, Janotron, Flutes, Electric Guitar, Bass Guitar, Electronic Garage and Voice" with G. TAZARTES; recorded on two days in Paris Feb. 2013: "a 'bal musette' (dance event) for mentally disabled. Reaching at some points the sides of rock that doesn’t roll, this sonic attack jumps from topic to topic as a ritualistic anthology of unknown 'ritournelles'.. " ed. of 400, last copies !
€20.00
Knot Invariants
third album by the British digital-drone composer, using here solely sounds from two Cello-players; refined microsound journeys into unknown areas.. comes again in the typical (printed) anti-static bag
€13.00
Alchemystery
a special GRASSOW work, this "Alchemy Suite" in two parts (4 movements), with the impressive epic (43+ min.) IN A TEMPLE OF LONGING using holy chants & percussive elements! Comes with 16p booklet, feat. a poem by JOACHIM SCHOEPE... the sublimeness of nature experiences leads to inner self-communion and transcendence...
€20.00
Iles
the label from Rennes (FR), active since 1989 with the slogan "unusual, unexpected music, off the beaten track, far removed from commercial interests" with the 2nd album by these two veterans of French underground music (VIDEO AVENTURES, CAMIZOLE..) on the topic ISLANDS - "Au final, douze morceaux correspondant à douze îles réelles ou fictives, avec douze contours et douze destins tour à tour cabossé, rouillé, déchiqueté, déroutant, extravagant, accidenté, bousculé, tourmenté, cocasse..."
€18.00
Spiritual Eugenics
the Finnish (harsh) noise & industrial project (active since 1993) with a new epic work, spreading on two LPs (80 min.) with 'pure filth & anger', the tracks are short attacks gouging into your brain, and have a nice 'mechanical' and trashy old school touch, analolgue throbbing pulses and cut up distortions, screams and pushed vocals, establishing quite a wide spectrum of noises and sounds in these 20 tracks; - gatefold-cover w. 2 inlays, black vinyl
€26.00
Gyropedie
ANNE GUTHRIE 'paints' impressionic / hermetic sound pictures (derived from field recordings and French Horn) that are much more than simple environmental recordings, as touching and intimate thoughtful materialisations of moments'.. - "Gyropedie is an album that demands some patience and attentive listening to reveal its full beauty, but its fragile and tender fantasia of memory fragments is well served by that steadily deepening immersion." [Brainwashed] - 300 copies
€18.50
Flammable Materials from Foreign Lands
a full LP composed from material recorded at a residency in Estonia, taken from abandoned post Soviet-Era buildings and strange radio shortwave transmissions, leading to crackles, mechanical drones, rusty noise and cryptic speech with the typical flair of decay JIM HAYNES is known for... kind of sister-album to the 'Throttle & Calibration' tape.. "somewhat sparser than his other works, but no less fascinating, and with an additional menacing edge" [Brainwashed] lim. 300 clear vinyl
€22.50
Words of Paradise
the prolific British tuba player (who also plays in CHORA(S)SAN TIME-COURT MIRAGE) with a microtonal album feat. his ensemble ZINC & COPPER => tuba, horn- & trombone tones / drones, slowly interacting for focused and contemplative attention... the picture disc itself replicated the multicoloured circular scores of the piece, with liner notes on the back-cover, explaining the inspiration and concept (through Brabantic language from the Renaissance) behind it; ed. of 300 copies
€25.00
Het Zweet
this dutch project released a great tribal industrial LP in 1987, using self-built percussion instruments like shopping trolleys amplified with pickups, or blown cardboard tubes, along with shouted viocals, somewhere between TEST DPT. and Z'EV... this is now re-issued with seven bonus tracks, all previously unreleased (studio + live) - "Unique in the percussive instrumentation that departs from the crude experimental electronic sounds of those days" [Runzio Immorale]
€15.00
Emergency Stairway to Heaven
new studio material on the pic-LP (4 pieces with around 50 min.), plus a full CD with recordings from two live shows 2014; the Japanese harsh noise legends still going strong after more than 35 years !! Lim. 750
€25.00
Universum
the posthumously released second album by this member of ORDO CATHARSIS TEMPLI, who died only few days atter finalizing this album in April 2003 => on nine long tracks micro-pulsative, hermetic drone ambience is wandering through the rooms and spaces of inner and outer reality... comes as bonus with a version of the HOEDH remix from the O.C.T. pic 12" "Variations Ov Templum Comparatio I"
€8.00
Thunder Arrow
4 track EP with 44 min. length, presenting so far unreleased, older recordings of the beloved project from the Moscow region - "Polyvox synthesizer, radio, damaged tapes - this EP sounds quite harsh and raw, but even in these rough electic loops one can feel this totally hypnotizing effect so typical for Hum." hand-assembled red envelope cover edition, lim. 44 copies
€10.00
Shikisokuzekuu-Kuusokuzeshiki (色即是空空即是色)
two tape pieces by the Japanese grand master of experimental music, the title piece (1964, 33+ min.), and "Extented Voices" (1967, 11+ min.) => when this was produced it belonged surely to the most experimental and inaccessible stuff you could find, a mixture of feedbacks, crackles of all kinds, clashing field / object recordings and weird electronic morphing sounds, reaching out to microscopic realms... lim. 500, gatefold cover, liner notes in English & Japanese
€21.50
MMXX-10: Untitled
10th release in the new series that presents 20 artists from the experimental sound-art scene with very nice design / concept => dedicated to the year 2020 there will be 20 x 20 min. compositions on one-sided clear vinyl, with laser engraved artwork by the artist on the B-Side, lim. to 500 copies => Italy's prolific composer GIUSEPPE IEALASI formed a piece with many microscopic / delicate sounds and noises (of probably instrumental sources), building weird and beautiful patterns and moments...
€23.00
New Rules, Same Game, Less Instruction
second release in the new CD series "SYM" from Drone Records, sounds from realms of Symbolization & Symmetrization! => these are new recordings from Chicago's (post) industrial legend: microscopic audio events, loops, heavily processed material of all kinds form seven multi-layered collages that seem to be full of electro-magnetic static, morphing and transforming like a hallucinogenic object... lim. 250 copies, 6 panel digipak, mastering THOMAS DIMUZIO
€13.00
Virgin Mind
IRMs so far only double-CD appeared in 2005 on Cold Meat Industry, the project features MARTIN BLADH and ERIK JARL (aka JARL) and is known for their cathartic performances and exceptional scary, insistent sound and lyrics; "The album marked a radical change in the band’s direction, leaving the power electronics opera of ‘Oedipus Dethroned’ for an even more ritualistic, experimental and epic sound." - ed. of 300 copies of this re-issue with new artwork by MARTIN BLADH
€16.00
Are all Things Equivalent?
Sold outtwo new tracks by the master of surrealistic, mysterious sound (and visual) worlds, whose collages and titles often reveal a cryptic and thought-provoking nature => micro- and macroscopic dimensions intermingle and oscillate, multi-layered drone expansions and deep humming drones evoke a strange organic feeling, complex noises and drones that seem to be in a circling state of endless metamorphosis.. lim. 300, clear wax, artwork by MATT WALDRON himself
€15.00
Hymns To The Extrusiarch
OUT NOW! a surrealistic piece in 5 passages about a 'creator' who is less of an entity and more of a phenomenon, between a thing and a process, a consciousness and an event... - lim. 250 copies - 6 panel digisleeve with four stunning artwork-pics by MATT WALDRON
new IRR.APP.(ext) album to be released spring 2026!
€13.00
Symptoms Variation / Sensory Deprivation
epic new JARL work spread on 3 CDs ( "Repitition" - "Darkness" - "Conclusion" ) with 8 movements - immediately you are immersed int these complex multi-layered and quickly moving bell/metal-like and synth-shimmer pulse drones, oscillating and waving in endless loopy cascades, meditative and hypnotic.. lim. 200 copies, 6 panel digipak
€20.00
Inner Domain
the two deleted cassettes "Hypnagogic Domain" and "Hypnopompic Domain" (Autarkeia, 2016) re-issued with long (15 min.) bonus-track!! - "especially dedicated to hypnagogic states of being half awake - half asleep, also called "threshold consciousness" or "pre-dream condition": rattling analogue electronic drones merge with metallic reverberations and echoes, this is the true and raw ambient industrial trance!" [Drone Rec.] - A Must !
€16.00
Phonophobia
only shortly after the first release in our new SYM-serie we can offer the next JARL opus: "Phonophobia" is a ghostly drone expanse that shimmers in wide spectrums and circles, with strange psychic effects, inspired by the psychiatric syndrome of "Phonophobia" (=the fear of loud daily noises)... the album contains three long "Scales" with growing intensity, in the typical JARL style.. lim. 300 copies
€13.00
Synapse Variation Report
third in a trilogy of works, together with the two previous albums this forms a microscopic phantasy of being surround by neuron-signals and cell receptor-energies... - "There is a strong cosmic undercurrent in the music, which is also very psychedelic, with Jarl connecting all the dots, creating some drone-heavy music, but the kind of drones are in constant motion.." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Farol
a 'sound portrait' of the monumental '25 ABRIL bridge' (a huge metallic sculpture) in Lisbon, Portugal => known from his great " Eskifjörður" on KAON (Iceland recordings), this French sound artist manages it to form a very structured 'tonal sculpture' ouf of the original source sounds, powerful and eerie... absolutely stunning!! - "It's like listening to a KUBRICK movie. I love it." [Andrewmglaser] - lim. 200 cpoies, numbered, in the typical Unfathomless design (gatefold sleeve and artcard)
€14.00
Music for a Distance
kind of farewell-release from this German sound-art & installation artist well known for his microcospic minimal ambience compositions, who died January 2011
€13.00
Awake in the Wuthering Heights
newcomer from Japan with minimal ambient & dronescapes, based on guitar-picking & feedbacks, creating sublime, at times more noisy & radical overtunes... recorded live in UK & Japan 2011 & 2012; 41+ min., lim. 100, to discover
€10.00
Infinites Reflexions
first solo album for this French ambient experimentalist (aka TRESORS; and also part of EDDIE135 and LE REVEIL DES TROPIQUES bands), who creates a very 'handplayed' & bit obscure ambience with layers of old synths, percussion, guitar... "a kaleidoscopic sonorous dream, a psychedelic hypnotic and sensorial film score on the boundaries of ambient cosmic music, drone, post-rock and experimental music." - lim. ed. multi-colour silk screen cover with postcard
€15.00
Nerve Cell_0
minimal & epic power-drone composition for cello & computer, distorted cello-sounds are treated & shaped into a flowing & fuzzing aural sculpture... immersive stuff, play it loud !
€13.00
The Ortho-Project
UNRELEASED work from the archives, epic & unfathomless! "The mystery, the grace, the boundless invention -- KAYN's machine music is a vast catalogue of very human wonder." [The Guardian] - *No notes accompany any of this music - no word of explanation or expression of intent. Only the works and their titles remain, the latter often simply deepening the mystery* - comes in sturdy gold stamped box, probably rare soon !!
€125.00
Noise Generation
curious collector's item which uses a "never seen before" format (ca. 300 gr. vinyl!): a picture 12" sticked on an old (German Schlager or whatever) LP, the old LP cover is combined with a cut-out cover, the pic-LP is fully playable on one side & has a loop from the recycled LP on Side B!! Understandable? No? doesn't matter!! => The fierce & furious noise attacks come from the solo project of "Junge" (the EA80 singer) and endless noise worker CARSTEN VOLLMER; lim. 100
€20.00
Gestaltsystem 01: Possible Forms
early sound art release by GIANLUCA BECUZZI, part of an installation: two CDs that sound completely different (one with digital structures and forms, the other with very intimate, 'concrete' and microscopic noises) with exact the same length, containing both eight pieces with exact 5:20 min. playtime => both CDs but also single tracks should be played simultaneously, but especially the 2nd CD sound also great alone... BACK IN STOCK for special price now !
€8.50
WONDERSOUND. Discovering weird, wild and wonderful music
a collection of heart-warming and humorous writings (reviews, articles, liner notes) from the dutch musician (BRUNNEN, BEEQUEEN), incl. many cover-picks, feat for example ZOVIET FRANCE, SPK, LA MONTE YOUNG, GEROGERIGEGEGE, VAGINA DENTATA ORGAN, DEREK JARMAN, BRAINTICKET, etc. etc..- with foreword from EDWARD KA-SPEL - 288 pages, hardcover, this is the cheaper standard version with b/w pics !! A must for any collector of obscure music!!!
€20.00
Peripheries : Sound Portrait Belgrade 2014-2016
a soundpicture composition of Belgrade, recorded during a residency in 2014, where KATHARINA KLEMENT recorded sounds and noises of the city and did interviews with inhabitants about the special soundscape of their town; this resulted in an 8 channel composition, based on 8 concentric circles drawn around her apartment;"It takes a rare mind that is able to reach and understand the heart of a place as thoroughly and as sympathetically as Klement has done with this work." [Sound Projector]
€13.00
Broken Music
first ever re-issue of this LP from 1979 by Fluxus artist MILAN KNIZAK, who was a true pioneer in recycling & looping music from damaged and prepared LPs (by scratching them, burning them, putting tape and paint onto them, cutting & re-shape them, etc..), combining loopy fragments of the original content with the new 'broken vinyl' noises, often until the needles of his players got destroyed... nice gatefold cover with many pics from his objects..
€16.00
Stadt (Land Fluss) - A Radio Play
"Town-Countryside-River" is work about the sounds of the city, the permanent transformation, construction noises and increasing interconnection of all of its parts: which social dimensions open up? how does the town sound, how could it sound? who has the right to shape it? This radio play was created on the basis of a musictheatre piece of the same name, and uses electro magnetic sounds of CHRSTINA KUBISCH and others, along with quotes / texts about these topics... - oversized package and 16 p. booklet
€14.00
Hörtexte / Radiotexts
six radiotexts (created 1969 - 1983) and six so called great looking "viewtexts" reproduced on 3 picture-LPs, comes in box with 12"-booklet, edition of 1000 copies
€58.00
Hörtexte 2
second release with truly experimental 'radiotext' collages by this sound artist from Düsseldorf, Germany: contains his first work for Radio from 1961/62, "Offen", "Hörtext 1" (1963) and a newer work from 2012 "Rotoradio", comes on two beautifully designed picture discs on Berlins finest label for contemporary music, Edition RZ
€36.00
Mosaique Mosaic
a "sound diary" recorded during a workshop & sound-installation stay of both in CAMEROON (summer 2010), discovering the most unusual places with help of local people.... recordings like 'sunday church service', 'street market' or 'abandoned hotel at night' from a nice aural picture of the environment...
€13.00
The Twinkling Star
fully re-mastered re-issue of this extraordinary LP from 1961 - UMM KULTHUM was a legendary female singer, songwriter and actress from Egypt ("Egypt's fourth pyramid"), and this her most well known release => popular 'oriental' music with many strings and the typical harmonic phrases from that time, combined with a pretty low fi recording quality and UMM KULTHUMS vocalizing, for "western" ears this sounds like music from another planet...
€18.50
Ways of the Voice
four challenging compositions (created 1984-1998) by the Belgian componist, using the female voice (of Brazilian singer ANNA MARIA KIEFFER) as the only sound-source, along with 'tropical' field recordings... Beautiful, suspenseful, exhausting music.. very unique and stunning stuff !! Finally back in stock!! - comes with 28 page booklet
€14.00
L'Imparfait multiple de Dieu
7th full length album, with a great epic and very melodic opening piece ("Un Dieu est un Passage dernier"), this French "unclassifiable" band continues to surprise with their mix of Avantgarde-Rock, Jazz, Prog, Ambient... they have been compared to (but nothing really matches): PTOSE, RESIDENTS, THIS HEAT, THE WORK, FAUST, PERE UBU, etc... powerful & expressive stuff, with many many changes, breaks, beautiful moments, crazy vocals..
€13.00
Les Explositionnistes
the second album by the unique 'surrealist attacks' performance group from Rennes (FR) was released in 1995, unavailable for long - all tracks are inspired by paintings(MAX ERNST, PICASSO, LYONEL FEININGER, etc..) - musically it's an almost unclassifiable experience between TAZARTES, DDAA and prog rock, like visiting a strange circus, but it's also very musical and greatly arranged... sometimes sad, sometimes mad, sometimes violent: RASEREI &ZÄRTLICHKEIT!
€13.00
Les Explositionnistes
the second album by the unique 'surrealist attacks' performance group from Rennes (FR) was released in 1995, unavailable for long - all tracks are inspired by paintings(MAX ERNST, PICASSO, LYONEL FEININGER, etc..) - musically it's an almost unclassifiable experience between TAZARTES, DDAA and prog rock, like visiting a strange circus, but it's also very musical and greatly arranged... sometimes sad, sometimes mad, sometimes violent; vinyl ed. lim. 379 copies w. insert
€17.50
Romanciel
the legendary Italian label ADN (very active in the cassette scene of the 80's / 90's) is back with a new studio album by the true "Avant" Rock band from Rennes, France, who often deal with dreams and neologisms in their lyrics, the surreal and the absurd...- "this music is beautiful, imaginative and free just like a successful picture or like the flight of the birds that paint the sky with their wonderful parade."- four epic + incredible expressive new studio tracks, + 8 page booklet
€13.00
L'Oeil au Centre de L'Oeil
"Ich bleibe dabei, die beste Band, die ich kenne." [Rigobert Dittmann / Bad Alchemy] - five new epic tracks by the "dreaming" Avant-Prog band from Rennes, between rage and beauty there is a wide field of sensations..
€13.00
Concert
SoundArt: Strange whispering concrete sounds, as a result of LABELLE’s ideas of 'Social Music'... recordings from various installations & physical interactions of visitors happening there, with lots of basic information & pictures in the booklet...
€6.00
Monumento Fiume
a kind of sound study using the sounds of the "anthropic landscape" of Cotignola (Ravenna, Italy), as result of an artist residency, the 'memory' and character of a certain region is transfered and condensed into electronic sounding structures, atmosperic hissing and animal sounds are present, it's a magic dimension of human and more than human sounds, a meeting point of the "hyper-real" and "sur-real".. - lim. 300 ORANGE vinyl
€18.00
Drawing in Sound
after the great 'bell drone' LP this shows ANDREAS USENBENZ in a live collaboration with painter / illustrator CHRISTOPHER LAMMERS - recorded at Städtische Galerie Rosenheim in spring 2018 - about the topic of meadow; by using charcoal, ink, brushes and his bare hands, LAMMERS painted a 7 by 4 metre canvas during the evolving drone-scaping performance of USENBENZ; later a part of the painting has been used to be screen printed on Side B of this clear vinyl; lim. 100, one-sided
€25.00
Spülfeld
an epic drone-journey into the otherworld, with mysterious sounds & drones that shift, transform & mutate all the time... minimal but never static.. lim. 223 copies, comes in DVD slimcase with printed covers & inlay, numbered... already the fourth collab release by this dutch project with M.B. (and this time with help of PHARMAKUSTIK)
€13.00
The petrified Forest
"Brian Lavelle recently surprised us 'Supernaturalist', and the two pieces here were recorded just before that and show the best side of his: manipulating field recordings and very much altering them into microscopic detailed pieces of ambient drones. Slowly changing patterns of what seems to be rain fall, deep bass sounds in 'The Wood Turned Dark And Silent' and more synthetic in 'This Twisting Glade', which sounds like a church organ being dissected. Very nice." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€5.00
The Seismic Bleats of Quantum Sheep
remastered, expanded and for the first time on CD, this personally much favoured / experimental album from 2016 (LP on Abstrakce), lim. 399 copies - "the 'secret" sister album to "Five Days", recorded in Spring 2015 - extremely Kaleidoscopic and as far out as the Dots may have gone in their history" [Edward Ka-Spel] - comes with third bonus track not on the LP !!
€18.50
Close your Eyes, you can be a Space Captain. The Legendary Pink Dots in the 1980s
FREEK KINKELAAR who knows the DOTS well since a very long time, wrote this book about their first 10 years (1980-1989), doing interviews with all important members to write the bands story year by year.... also featured: many unique images, covers of early cassettes and releases, composition sketches, concert posters, live pics, full dotsography... 148 pages hardcover book, with CD feat. early favourites of LPD plus two unreleased tracks; 17 x 24 cm in size; a must for any true LPD fan !!
€28.50
As if Punk Rock never happened / Pretty vague cunt
THE CENSORED DISC ! Released for the "International Record Store Day 2011" and as a 'commemorative" item for the Royal wedding on April 29; one side of this picture disc showed originally distorted pictures of CHARLES & DIANA and has been censored by the manufacturer! You can see the uncensored (& great) artwork at the Dirter-webpage.
€11.50
Akasha_for Record
new release in the nice "graphic / sound" interaction picture-disc series; lim. 216 copies; first release from DALE LLOYD in three years
€17.50
same
'LM likes drone doom with spicy sauce' - project of LA STPO member(s), obscure drone-soundscapes with guitar, distorted bass, bubbling analog synths, percussion & bizare (Spanish) vocals & unidentified instruments..somehow improvised & energetic, highly original & idiosyncratic stuff, no easy listening! Comes with download code, lim. 250
€14.00
Untitled (2011)
a collection of (un)typical LOPEZian field recordings made around the world (Amazon, Australia & New Zealand, Japan, Spain, South Africa, Costa Rica, Morocco, etc..), rather short acoustic 'snapshots' or processed collages of incredible sounding phenomena from birds-insects- animals, unknown objects, found sounds or mysterious sub-drones and overwhelming weather noises...not one boring moment!!! - 8 tracks 43+ min. playtime, comes in massive, oversized fold out cover, BACK IN STOCK!!
€13.00
VirtuAural Electro-Mechanics
subtitled 'Machinic Pieces 1995-2018' this is the third USB-stick collection with over 8 hours of material (16 pieces)=> "developed from a myriad of original sound recordings of mechanical machines, electro-mechanical systems and industrial environments gathered over the past 25 years all over the world; from food factories to 'white rooms', from 18th-century automata to computers, from wood and wires to magnetism, from the microscopic to the monumental." - printed Memory Stick, 300 copies, signed
€33.00
Sonic Fields Vlieland
six compositions made out of field recordings from VLIELAND, one of the West Frisian Islands (North Sea) of Nord-Holland , no cars are allowed... a map shows where these recordings have been made (forest, dune crater, beach, polders..), a truly captivating "new virtual sonic reality" of the Island with so many natural sounds of wind, sand, water, rain, animals, arranged in a new, typical LOPEZian way ("transfigured and dramatically evolved..").. - lim. 300. 3 hour playtime(!), printed USB card, signed
€33.00
Tuntury
six pictures of the world of "thundra-yoga" - *Mit Tuntury betritt man verschiedene Bereiche einer ANDERNWELT, die einen staunen lässt und verzaubert! Zunächst klingt es wie in einer futuristischen Wartehalle einer fremden Dimension, dann wiegt man sich berauscht in allerschönsten Backwards-Harmonien wie im Mutterleib (das wunderschöne "YASNITSA"), bevor verfremdete Gesangstimmen zur rituell-schamanistischen Zeremonie rufen... in der zweiten Hälfte überwiegen dann die eher ruhig-dronigen Passagen. Wir meinen: Ein Meisterwerk des rituell-experimentellen Drone-Ambients, mit grosser surrealistischer, halluzinogener Kraft!* [Drone Rec.]
€13.00
Khara-Khoto
finally a new LADO studio album, inspired by a name of a Tangut / Buddhist city in the middle ages in today's China... psychedelic - kaleidoscopic drone ambience at its best ! => ' multilayered ambiental sketches with flowing chains of samples, voice loops and acoustic instruments; rhythmic percussive tracks with vigorous pulsating energy; abstract collages made of analogue electronics..' lim./numb. 300
€13.00
Snovidenie
lim. 323 copies in totally handmade covers (oversized maps in different colours with different pictures sticked on & symbol-paintings), truly beautiful !!
€13.00
Bacillusmetrial Entopathogen
the old master of otherworldly ambience shows his timeless significance for the "industrial ambient" realm on three new tracks with analogue ghost ambience as coming from another century.. or dimension! - M. B. : infectronics, muconoises, microbdrones, epithelpictures. - *ambient loops overlap and circulate, pumping sound into the listener's ear like a heart pumps blood into organs..* - lim. 200 numbered copies, 7" sleeve
€13.00
Vergezichten
two track 10" with dense rhythmic material in the typical refined MACHINEFABRIEK-droneway, based on saxophon, voice & drumcomputer-sounds that are highly stretched & processed..
€10.00
The Measures Taken
a score for a dance choreography by ALEXANDER WHITLEY (with the same name) based on the theme "Men versus Machine", apart from the typical delicate MACHINEFABREIK ambience this goes at times into very abstract / electro-acoustic / challenging areas, with lots of concrete noises, crackles and cut-ups, a surprising and intense work for the dutch sound artist!
lim. 300
€13.00
Archaic States
first ever CD re-issue of this cassette from 1993 (M.T. ninth full-length tape), originally released on AUBE's labels G.R.O.S.S. in 1993; it contains with "Blowing Sounds from a Dome" an epic early track from 1989, using raw material from RUNZELSTIRN & GURGELSTOCK; +. one bonus-track not on the original tape; lim. 350 copies, all-remastered and with new cover design
€13.00
Forazeihan / Broken Books & Wings
right in time to the relase of the JOE COLLEY (aka CRAWL UNIT) 3 LP-box we got some NEW copies back in of this split picture-disc with two dark noise tracks, feat. the almost last studio-material ever recorded by MAEROR TRI in 1996 !! Lim. 500
€8.00
LoopKlängeNoise
the result of a very special collaboration project concept, inspired by the theories of W. KANDINSKY about the contamination between visual art and music (every track has a second title relating to a Kandinsky picture): 13 tracks with lots of guest musicians involved, lim. 300 / incl. 16 page DVD sized booklet with info & photos of industrial mining areas in Sardinia, + quotes relating to JOHN CAGE, WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS, KLAUS SCHULZE, JEAN BAUDRILLARD, LUIGI RUSSOLO, etc..
€12.00
Vrachnas
this is the very first solo album for MASSIMO MAGRINI aka BAD SECTOR, who impressively steps into new directions here, without loosing the typical B.S. sound completely... "inspired by hypnagogic hallucinations and presents one long track full of drones, noises, distant voices, surrealistic soundscapes, fragmented sounds..., for a real journey into the obscure side of mind." digipak edition of 400 copies
€13.00
Mue (la demeure brillante)
back in stock one of the remarkable releases in the nice Metamkine "Cinema pour l'oreille" mini-CD series; this 21 min long electro-acoustic piece in 7 parts uses extreme poetry/vocals (with texts by french writer WILLIAM PELLIER)and eruptive cut-up/fragmented/processed instrumental and electronic sounds, forming something bewildering beyond all typical genres... special priced now !
€5.00
Invisible(s) Archipelago(s) #1 - Serendib Rhythms
a collection of field recordings from Sri Lanka, showing a great variety of obscurest sounds from whatever environment and whatever source, all material seems to be unprocessed and pure, but you often don't know what happened; a crazy concerto grosso of dogs, microsound cracking, strange rhythmic knocking and slapping, materials squeaking and hums coming from nowhere... definitely NOT the typical field recording album, this holds lots of wondrous sounds to discover.. lim. 200
€14.00
Damaged Future
Italian experimental & dark ambient artist MARK SCHAUB (aka MAATH) created this album as a kind of soundtrack to J.G.BALLARD's dystopic stories with 9 different "scenes" / tracks, showing a wide spectrum of cinematic styles, from strange "electro-Jazz" over electronica-minimalism to melancholic drone fields for deserted landscapes.. an unusual but worthwile BALLARD-tribute; lim.100 copies only
€13.00
Elogia de la Sombra
mini-album (two long 15+ min. tracks) in the typical LATITUDES design (special cardboard fold out cover with embossing & metallic colour print), numb. ed. 1000
€11.50
Elogia de la Sombra
mini-album (two long 15+ min. tracks) with their mixture of trance-inducing drone-orientalism and minimal NEU!-Krautrock-psychedelia (lyrics are taken from a traditional Tibetan Buddhist Mantra and JORGE LUIS BORGES!); comes in the typical LATITUDES design, edition of 1000 copies
€14.00
Land of Waves
French composer with a pretty obscure/unique/exotic sound spreading in various directions, absolutely to discover! - "BÉRANGÈRE MAXIMIN explores the idea of a kaleidoscopic world - a sonic aggregation of living creatures, plants, minerals, nature and buildings, using various sound objects, small percussions, synths, electric guitar, voice and electronics." - ed. of 300 copies, DL code
€25.00
Wings on Fire
lim. 555 cardboard cover; two epic tracks of energetic Ur-drones, flickering like an acoustic Dream-Machine!
*In MENCHE’s Musik scheinen archaische Urkräfte entfesselt zu werden, die eine sehr direkte Wirkung auf den Körper haben, denn immer hat die Musik etwas extrem physisches, fast unausweichliches.. * (Drone Rec.)
€13.00
€29.00
Hyakki Echo
startling release on "hybrid" format which has a playable vinyl side on 5" (33 rpm), and a full playing CD side!! And the sounds are very unusual and experimental for MERZBOW, improvised object noises in muliple layers and configurations, no typical harsh noise at all, great one !!! Comes in die cut gatefold sleeve, lim. 500
€20.00
Stridulations
non-ordinary noises based on: 1) recordings of insects, birds and bats made in different countries; 2) electromagnetic field sounds of prepared fluorescent tubes sonified with pick-up coils.. => obscure mixture of electronic and organic drones, lumbering mechanics, sizzling atmospherics.... very special stuff dedicated only for the advanced connaisseur of sound art !!
€18.00
Ambiorix
the 'Eco-Anarchists' from Belgium are back with a concept album telling the story (based on CAESAR's writing "De Bello Gallico") of the Belgian king AMBIORIX who resisted against the Roman troops; the typical MILITIA sound (martial-percussive industrial) is set against texts sung in different languages, including Latin and Gaul... comes in special eco-leather bags with 4 different logos printed on the cover (12 versions of the artwork exist) + 3 folded insert; 500 copies made
€16.00
The Face of God
"God is a Dictator!" - re-issue of the deleted box-set (2015), a strong concept album with pugnacious industrial fighting against western religion, absorbing some elements of christianity (church bells, choirs) into these hypnotic noise-scapes filled with the typical MILITIA sounds of self-played percussion, vocal attacks, distorted drones, war samples, electronics... the fight is always on, resistance is always needed! Lim. 300 nice 6 panel digipack
€14.00
Impossibly Distant, Impossibly Close
second release on IRISARRI's own label, two side-long epic tracks based on their live performance in Madrid 2023... - COLOUR vinyl lim. 250 (two different colours, please ask) => "If you believe in the transcendent nature and spiritual power of music, with a marriage of the divine and the human, you will be seduced by this album...for fans of Alessandro Cortini, Tape Loop Orchestra, and TROUM (at their most soothing moments). Essential." [IGLOO mag]
€30.50
The Distant Past Resound
epic ambient one-tracker (74+ min., three movements) with beautiful harp, piano and double bass harmony parts from guests ISABEL F., KRIS KULDKEPP and HARA ALONSO.. - *outlined in a very expressive way so as to release a whole palette of colors, moods and emotions from the sound matter, allowing you to lose yourself even deeper with each subsequent listening...* - lim. 300, 6 panel digipak
€13.00
The Distant Past Resound
rare cassette version (30 copies) of this epic ambient composition (74+ min., three movements) with beautiful harp, piano and double bass harmony parts from guests ISABEL F., KRIS KULDKEPP and HARA ALONSO.. - *outlined in a very expressive way so as to release a whole palette of colors, moods and emotions from the sound matter, allowing you to lose yourself even deeper with each subsequent listening...* - prof. cover, printed cassette, sealed case
€10.00
With the Passing of Time
the yearly "Homework" online compilation of TAALEM became an institution for online-listeners (always released at the end of the year), collecting new material by all artists that have ever appeared on the label, for a voluntary donation price! - This epic double CD collection holds material from 2016-2024 ( 9 tracks) and comprises everything adorable M.P. got known for, hypnotic, rich, dense multi-layers of breezy, pulsing, bubbling drones and "fields"... lim. 250 copies, 4 page booklet
€16.00
Contemplator Caeli
the first vinyl release on Transgredient is a 4 track collaboration between Ukraine's experimental guitar drone project and TROUM, working with each other's basic material on the topic of the ancient 'Nightsky-Immersion'; second pressing on black vinyl, numbered ed. of 100 copies with inlay + phantastic artwork by sukkeret.og.pepper studio - "This has got to be one of the more densely atmospheric works to come along in years"[Toneshift] LAST COPIES !!
€20.00
Live at MOCA
rare 7inch with a collaboration live recording made at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles => THURSTON MOORE (SONIC YOUTH). guitar feedback in the typical S.Y. style; JOHN WIESE: Live electronics; two great eruptive piercing noise moments banned on black plastic!! US-import !
€12.00
Chordis Et Machina
meeting of two experienced musicians/composers (IKUE MORI was drummer for DNA, inside DEATH AMBIENT with FRED FRITH, etc..) at EMS in Stockholm, for these 5 stimulating 'microscopic otherworlds" improvisations... "Endless probing that hooks into your neurons, this album leaves sonic organisms floating around you. Even if that's merely an illusion, the alchemy of Mori and Rønn’s hyperactive stew is very real." [Marc Masters]
€23.00
Kommunique Zero
a very special release is this first one from a new project of MARC RICHTER / BLACK TO COMM => a one-sided pic-12" (one side black and playable, other side picture, unplayable) = a "hybryd" format we haven't seen before, with strong 'constructed' music, different from BTC... "Influences are ranging from (French) classical and opera to the anecdotical compositions of Luc Ferrari, Chinese opera, sacred music, collage, and free improvisation" ; ed. of 165 copies only
€16.50
Basisrealität/Armutsgewöhnungszuschlag/Wolkenkuckucksheim
MULTER from Dortmund (see Drone Records DR-50) are back and what an epic and special release it is! => their first studio material in 10 years, spread on 3 albums with their own titles: minimal electronic structures, very personal spoken words, smooth / meditative feedbacking guitar drones, field recordings, object noises, deep philosophical / existential insights into the own strange reality, dreams, perceptions, addiction, depression... - lim. 100 copies only, incl. inlay with lyrics in german/english
€46.50
Khan Younis
stunning collection of rare compilation material 1989-1996 (from Direction Music, Extreme, Gonzo Circus, etc.) - this is the lim. picture disc with die-cut cover, amazingly designed! Lim. 500 - "Unique tribal dub-trance music influenced by arabic culture with a touch of post-industrial.... Hypnotic rhythms mixed with with eastern vibes."
€29.50
Lo-Fi India Abuse
very nice re-issue of praised album from 1999 (BSI Records), very percussive and loopy... lim. 500 picture disc with die cut sleeve - "Nearly all of the tracks have hand percussion in varying tempos and intensities and at least 1/2 make use of electronic noise surges. The sound is very crisp and clean, extremely well produced, recorded and nicely varied throughout the length of the disc.." [Brainwashed]
€29.00
I - Kamermuziek
re-issue of the much sought after cassette-only release from 1982 by this band from Leiden, Netherlands, active in the 80's, creating hazy ambience by combining melodic guitar picks, synths, bass tones... : "The first album, 'I' (aka Kamermuziek), is a self-healing calm unified by hushed-toned electric guitars and faint synths, while the second album is a more experimental and pop minimalist/electronic sound, similar to Kubus Kassettes' work.." - 4 long tracks, digisleeve
€12.00
EP's 1988-1991
collection of EPs by the unique British dream/drone/noise pop pioneers, who co-establised a new style that was called 'shoegazer': "You made me realise", "Feed my with your Kiss", "Glider", "Tremolo", and some rare extras plus two previously unpublished tracks ! Comes in oversized 8-panel oversized cover, with booklet, new pics & liner notes
€15.00
Solar Anarchy / As Wolf
MCIAA side recorded live in Cologne 14.12.2006; PESTREPELLER is a project from UK with SAVAGE PENCIL (who also did the artwork for their side of the pic LP)
€15.00
theBelt
second collaboration by the Spanish Drone Rec. artist TZESNE with German epic droner HELLMUT NEIDHARDT (from MULTER) aka N => four absolute stunning pieces of rough & super contemplative transcension drones, combining location recordings and guitar surge waves in a great way; we love this album!! - "Expect something more dark, more heavy but also very alluring... Making you enter the old dark plant, even if you should know better... "- BACK IN STOCK last copies, lim. 100 copies !!
€28.00
Bodycage
re-issue of this early and much requested NADJA-album with three epic tracks from 2005; nice letter-press cover
€12.00
Mistelteinn
re arrangement of the first EP from 2005 - all songs have been re-recorded and newly treated => this is very emotional German 'nature-mysticism'-folk with a guitarish & almost 'wavey' character; using lyrics by BAUDELAIRE & NIETZSCHE... "The delicacy of the picked guitars, the mournful melancholy of the cello, and the warm sonority of the matured voice": our favourite German neo-folk band! lim. 300 copies, white vinyl
€20.00
NICO, 1988 (Movie)
intense Biopic and Roadmovie about NICOs last year(s) before her death (July 1988) when she was, fully Heroine addicted, touring in Italy and East Europe (!), between complete despair and aggressive ecstasy... NICO is played by Danish acteur TRINE DYRHOLM, who sings all pieces on her own.. English with German subtitles, 93 min.
€10.00
Ray Collector
lim. vinyl release with pure static noise recordings from magnetic tapes and films used for his exhibition "Strahlen" in Modena, send around to unknown persons ("Mr. NEMO") with special return result (capturing the electromagnetic waves and radiations through transport); - a most conceptual sound art release presented on a lovely x-ray picture disc, w. gatefold cover and full-colour booklet in book-bound style.. amazing release !!
€32.50
Dark Sound
impressive / political / unique art-book release by this Basque sound artist about the oil industry, presenting 34 field recordings (as one long track) from the Equadorian rainforest and environment, with sounds of industrial machines slowly destroying it => the completely BLACK book contains 176 pages with essays, documents, pictures, printed with BLACK ink on BLACK pages; the price of the book is not fixed, but depending on the crude oil Brent price (please ask)
€44.00
Working Ecstasy
epic work from the French cold ambient Industrial project.. -"Two albums full of analogue sounds, droning noises, rumours as building collapsing while bombing, sensations like driving in an endless tunnel, far alarms, electricity, S/M & B/T/K feelings, cold and freezing voids mutating into hot layers of concrete, far sampled voices. and much more."
€15.00
Satanismo Di Basilica Concattedrale Di San Marino
epic release (240 min.!) spread on 4 cassettes with recordings of Satanistic rituals (often based on viciously processed and alienated religious chants) by the mysterious CHRISTINE NOGOCIELLA from Italy; lim. 50 and only available from Drone Records !! Comes with 21 x 21cm colour cover & small 'ritual object' made out of metal !!
€18.00
Extreme Sleepwalking
two Italian projects in a doomy, rhythmic, vocalized, apocalyptic noise collaboration, behind NOISE CLUSTER we find DER BEKANNTE POSTINDUSTRIELLE TROMPETER with XXENA, STIGMATA delivers the piercing analog electronics... - black C-40 tape in hand dyed, blue cotton bag with cover art by Fabian Blobel and a card with more pictures inside. Lim. to 50 copies
€9.50
Stochastic Embroidery
as big fans of MICHAEL NORTHAMs works in the past we are very happy there's a new CD available now, on Belgiums TAALEM - these three long tracks were recorded when he lived in a tiny container inside the Olympic Rainforest in Washington => hazy, surrealistic dreamscapes made from field recordings of various sites... - lim. 250 copies, numbered, recycled gatefold cardboard with photo sticker
€13.00
Magie Fragile
second album with new studio recordings by the re-activated German "minimal / industrial / wave" duo, who proceed with their typical 80's sounds in a great way... lim. 300, lyric sheet
€16.00
Chromanatron
"a hallucination on the music of SAND by ANDREW LILES & STEVEN STAPLETON" - long awaited new NWW album that destroys (again) all expectations => a collage made out SAND material (incl. the legendary "Golem") with additional arrangements on guitar, french horn and "atmospheric grooves" feat. MATT WALDRON (IRR.APP (ext.), this is KRAUTROCK pushed to other / new dimensions! Pic-LP version lim. 500 in special die-cut window sleeve !!
€24.50
Lumbs Sister
more than 20 years after the first announcement this (never used) film-soundtrack finally sees the light of day; recorded already 1986 / 1987 with one track being a collaboration with COIL ("How to destroy Angels II"), this is an outstanding dark & dense soundtrack with some typical eerie NWW elements appearing in the mix, really captivating like a bad dream.... length 70+ min. !!
€19.50
Brained By Falling Masonry/Cooloorta Moon
first vinyl re-issue of the praised "BRAINED by.." (1984, L.A.Y.L.A.H. 7), with J.G. THIRLWELL vocals on the title piece, PLUS the "COOLORTA MOON" 12" (1989), both feat. DAVID TIBET... as a bonus, the track "Sarah's Beloved Aunt" from the rare "Rushkoff Coercion" 7" is included; re-mastered by ANDREW LILES, comes as picture disc in die-cut sleeve
€31.50
Alas The Madonna Does Not Function
re-issue of legendary 12" from 1988, marking a new sound direction for NWW... *it brought rhythmic and almost \"musical\" elements into play. Madonna could be seen along with the Soresucker and Cooloorta Moon EPs as the bridge between the old and the new, the natural precursors to Thunder Perfect Mind and Rock'n Roll Station.* - re-mastered by ANDREW LILES, die-cut sleeve, picture disc !!
€31.50
Thunder Perfect Mind (special ed.)
luxus / collectors re-edition of the legendary 1992 album, for the first time on vinyl since its initial releas, three picture discs containing all the bonus material from the various CD editions, all newly re-mastered + with large poster, numbered ed. 300 copies
€88.00
The Grave And Beautiful Name Of Sadness
two unpublished archive remixes of this very dark, haunting, soundtrackish track recorded already in 1984 - both differ a lot from each other - "This feautures two archive mixes of the original 1984 recording. A 2007 epic variation recorded for possible inclusion in Peter Strickland's film 'Katalin Varga' and a unique 'psychedelic' version from 2012 which until now has never been heard." - comes in green marbled "eco" vinyl
€28.50
Odal
second album on COLD SPRING for this Russian shamanic dark ambient ritual FOLK band who performs mainly on old Icelandic language and uses traditional instruments and old overtone singing techniques (Kangyraa), "inspired by the traditional music of the indigenous peoples of Siberia, the Old Icelandic epic and the atmosphere of classic Norwegian black metal"; - very ceremonial & professionally performed, with a focus on polyphonic singing
€12.00
Agitation
second full length album for this German Post-Industrial project, for fans of rhythmic old school industrial & powerelectronics with vocals, analogue sounds & voice samples; very powerful, dark & grim, they are able to transform the classic elements nto a contemporary version of "conscious" industrial without the typical clichees
€13.00
Four Meditations / Sound Geometries
two of the more complex and experimental orchestra works by PAULINE OLIVEROS (who sadly died in Nov. 2016), one recorded live at the 'Ars Musica' Festival in Brussels in March 2003, the other a day earlier in a studio: improvised drone-minimalistic pieces that follow special instructions (i.e. the picked-up sounds are processed in geometrical patterns by the 'Expanded Instrument System'), or accompanied by the vocalisations of singer IONE... - CD version now in stock!
€13.50
Kiso Three Rivers
Onodera's minimalist palette and detailed approach to spatial sound design balances microscopic field recordings and tonally-rich traditional instruments, which he applies with stark focus to the subject of the Kiso Three Rivers across eight extended pieces of music arranged into two distinct parts.
€22.50
Valentin
after a long time, a typical "rare & mysterious" ORGANUM EP, a very strong piece coming in two versions using percussion & choir-elements (!) paired with field recordings & piano & noise; a very unusual sound!! 45rpm 7" lim. & numbered 233, exquisite artwork the label is known for, designed by JACKMAN / J. COLECLOUGH
€12.50
Organum Electronics
ORGANUM transmuted into ORGANUM ELECTRONICS, and also the sound became much more complex and noisier as before, without loosing the typical characteristics of repetition and timelessness.., 3 tracks of about 15 min., lim. 500 copies - "..'Electronics' is dense and huge; a roiling swamp of electric din that would appeal to fans of Jackman’s early collaborations with The New Blockaders ('Salute'), and 'Wrack'), though this is more atmospheric than aggressive.." [HS / Vital Weekly]
€14.00
The new Year is over
stunning new epic work between cosmic synth-ambience & more powerful hypnotic psychedelism, using guitars, etc... 9 long tracks, among his best material yet! Lim. 300 oversized covers
€18.00
Memory of a safe Place / La Forest a non fa pura
this new series from the Italian ambient label combines acoustic & visual art: a lim. LP + large A4 booklet (16 pages) with b/w photographs of the same artist; FABIO ORSI starts the series with time-suspending dense transcension drones & beautiful forest pictures; lim. 250 copies, white vinyl
€18.00
Qui Vicino
the Italian master of subtle "intimate daydream ambience" encharms with a melancholic 33 min. piece based on a most sublime & harmonic evolving guitar drone, soft as a summer breeze and going round in slow circles...think of: ULTRA MILKMAIDS, early AIDAN BAKER, STARS OF THE LID, TROUM.... comes with 16 page A4 booklet with b/w pictures taken by ORSI himself, showing the lonely moments of daily life....lim. 250
€15.00
Uncharted Waters
first CD for the Italian ambient composer on ZOHARUM, going now very much into 'Berlin-school' 70's electronica directions, with one epic track.. "at the core of this record the layers become voluminous, thick with an organ that sounds as if Orsi has slept on the keys and as he breathes and snores the slight alterations develop in the mix quite organically, as if the body is fully orchestrated into the action of the chord progression and descent." [Toneshift] lim. 300
€12.00
Otto
first collab by FABIO ORSI with TEZ (Maurizio Martinucci), a long active soundartist wh worked with ADI NEWTON, TAYLOR DEUPREE and others => on 8 tracks they spread very electronic, harmonic and outcomposed tracks, at times sacral and suspended towards the sky, at times more mellow and cinematic...."they have created a work as dense as it is intense, with cosmic traits that are aptly depicted in the images featured on the artwork.." - excellent sleeve design, lim. 200 copies
€13.00
Psychoacoustic Electronics
Chicago based member of PANICSVILLE (known for wild performing) and man behind NIHILIST with a captivating, epic album dealing with "Psychoacoustic Electronics", working with unlistenable (but perceivable) frequencies, binaural and masking effects, etc.. => field and object recordings + found sounds heavily transformed, noises and vocal mutations, an album full of surprises and unusual twists, an aural adventure and experience ! - lim. 300 copies, gatefold cover, inlay
€48.50
same
debut album of a Finnish duo (with => TERVAHÄÄT connection) producing very refined, perfectly balanced "handplayed" ritual drone with very hypnotic and slow contemplative percussion and spheric electro choirs....this is dark cosmic ambience with the drive to completely dissolve into the universe.. very beautiful, dark, elevating, 3 long epic pieces (49+ min) of superb dark ambience... lim. 500
€13.00
Dobranoc
new release in the nice "graphic / sound" interaction picture-disc series; lim. 268 copies
€17.50
End Times
the first album from 2002, finally available on CD again: *A 40 minute album consisting of a large variety of material... from gloomy brooding heavy electronics to rusty and dark rhythmic metal percussion industrial, and epic atmospheric tracks. Aggressive vocals from Mikko with a dirty analogue sound.* - PAIN NAIL is MIKKO ASPA (GRUNT, ALCHEMY OF THE 20th CENTURY) with MARKO KOKKONEN (FLESHPRESS)- "Creepy as shit, dark and hideous noise." [LinesinWaxxx]
€13.00
Aa Sschmmettrrooossppecctivve
from the incredible work & life of 'transitional object' sound artist C. PALESTINE: 1000 pictures and documents on 1132 pages !! 30x30 cm artbook, ed. of 500 copies; "...superimposed in ‘strumming’ layers, weaving the historical & present, works & performance, private & public into a tightly knit sschmmettrroobookk"
€35.00
N°8
LASSE MARHAUGs beloved magazine (almost a book) for "noise, music and the cosmic soup" with a new issue: GHEDALIA TAZARTES, JANA WINDEREN, PETER BRÖTZMANN, PETER REHBERG, OTOMO YOSHIHIDE, GX JUPITTER-LARSEN, RACHEL SHEARER, BENJAMIN NELSON - all with extensive interviews incl. many unseen photos, cover pics, posters, etc.. - A4 format, 100 pages, full colour
€11.00
Vignettes Amplifie
microscopic concrete drone ambience, using many "small sounds" objects; first collab by these two sound artists from USA & Italy.. lim. 500 on the rising Russian label NITKIE - LAST COPY!
€13.00
Between Ecstasy and Death
conceptual/'existential' dark ambience collaboration about the topics "Ecstasy" and "Death", each artist contributed two appropriate tracks which was then remixed-reworked by the other... -*the album masterfully blends ominous drones, classical orchestration and analogue synths to craft an atmospheric odyssey through the depths of the human psyche. A deeply evocative exploration of the human condition, it invites listeners to confront the intensity of life’s most profound extremes.* - lim. 300
€14.00
Ya Tog Rid Pa'i Gyer
after the successful CHÖD albumshere's already another epic double CD with two long tracks of deep throat spiritual vocal emanations.. "the exploration of various techniques and discovering new inspirations in eastern culture makes Phurpa musicians more and more eager to use traditional instruments in addition to their distinctive 'rgyud-skad' singing, thus enriching the already familiar formula" lim. 500
€16.00
Suntria - Imaginal Sonotopes
the "imaginative journey" of site specific recordings arrives with U43 and JOAO CASTRO PINTO at the mythical forest Sintra and its surroundings near Lisboa, Portugal; in 12 sound pictures he captured the sounds of nature, people and machines, ruptured by loud breaks in between, relating to the notion of a "Sonotope" from the Sound Ecology research; a very versatile and challenging release with many surprising breaks and sophisticated concept; lim. 200
€14.00
Of Wolves and People
the Portugesian sound designer and field recordist MELISSA PONS followed the paths and sounds of the Iberian wolf, NILS MOSH in Germany focused on the return of the Grey Wolf at the Ruhr area - both created side-long collages filled with howlings of wolfs and other environmental sounds, added musical elements and spoken words / quotes about htis fascinating topic, in order to enhance the respect and the awareness about this animal.. - comes on dark marbled vinyl !
€20.00
How the Heather Moonlit Shivers
this is the first epic vinyl release by this US American dark folk / dark poetic ambient project => acoustic guitars, amorph drones & whispers, melancholic tunes, but this also has a very sensual, erotic, night-shade coloured side... incl.a cover version of an AMBER ASYLUM song; comes in a stunning gatefold cover on RED vinyl, lim. 406 copies
€10.00
Pagan Day
mythic PTV album from 1984 with early song demos and sketches of ALEX FERGUSSON and GENESIS P.ORRIDGE, recorded on a simple 4-track cassette machine and originally not intended to be released as "finished" material; feat. "We Kiss" and "Cold Steel", one of the most intimate PTV albums - appeared first as TOPY 003 on 23rd Dec. 1984 as lim. picture disc. only available in the shops for one hour!
€13.00
Magpie & Raven
one-sided clear vinyl LP with epic 25 min track - feat. members of BURIAL HEX as well as BEN FLEURY-STEINER (PARADIN) and TARA VANFLOWER; lim. 350 in clear PVC outer sleeve / vellum inner sleeve; incl. download code card
€20.00
Venus Flytrap Exotica
the highly successful ambient / dub project of DOMINICK FERNOW (PRURIENT) and LOW JACK (who runs Editions Gravats in France): "a tropical spell from on a lights-out dancehall voodoo tip - Powerful spells, strongly recommend to fans of Demdike Stare, Equiknoxx, Shackleton, Burial." [Boomkat] - ed. of 400 copies on GREEN vinyl
€13.00
Prospectus I (Redux Version)
remastered & remixed '20th anniversary' re-issue of R.D.s first album from 1993, filled with religious chants, choirs, bells & creating a 'gothic' atmosphere, this marked the invention of the typical R.D. sound, somehow a mixture of post-industrial & archaic catholic mysticism... comes with diverse bonus-tracks from the same sessions
€17.00
Time-loop Anomalies
collection of single tracks and remixes, often rhythmic & trancy in the "typical" & adored RAPOON-style (all previously unreleased)... "eerie, ethereal music lingering on the borderlands of dreamworld and reality"
€12.00
Blue Days
RAPOON is productive as ever so this is already the fourth album with new studio material for the Polish label in 4 years: on 60 minutes 14 tracks spread with 'sketches and ideas' that form a wholeness together, relying on the typical sound ingredients (sampled choirs, percussion, exotic drones) but sounding here much more melancholic, slow, and less floating and shimmering, and we also hear Mr. STOREY singing... a winter album that slowly enfolds... lim. 500 oversized gatefold-cover
€13.00
Waiting by the River
RAPOON as you have never heard it before: this is a collection of "songs", with electro-beats, vocals, instruments, guitars, samples, all arranged in the typical hypnotic RAPOON style but still sounding completely unexpected, thematically based on the decline of the "booming 60's" that were filled with huge optimism, but ended up in today's miserable state of the world... a very political, sad and also ironic album about the triumph of capitalism and delusions..
€14.00
Rhiz
re-issue of this very rhythmic, unusual album from 2002 (Klanggalerie), using also female voice material in the typical RAPOONian way.. lim. 500
€12.00
Moka 24
inspired by the ficticious nightclub "Moka Efti" in the "Babylon Berlin"-series, this album interpretates the 1920era in connection to the demise of the West in 2024... - *Tracks vary wildly but are all unified within the same setting. An aural cabaret of sounds that depict and define a certain moment. A moment that has already existed in the past, exists in the present and will exist in the future..*
€15.00
Tour de Force
the second RAPOON P231 collaboration (after 'Palestine' in 2007) results in long, almost psychedelic electronic soundscapes which are not typical for both artists,...lim. 500 in fragile cardboard die-cut 'box' design with metallic colour, white silkscreen print and a set of 6 postcards, over 70 min. of playtime, lim. 500
€15.00
Mara
limited pic-LP feat. a live recording made July 2018 in a church in Lockenhaus, Austria, very much vocal-based and melancholic, using backing material from Norwegian and American tradionals..
€25.00
Oaxaca Dawn
the series of picture discs on Elevator Bath (with visual artwork by the artists themselves) continues with a release by TOM RECCHION (co-founder of the LOS ANGELES FREE MUSIC SOCIETY), who captured field recordings from Oaxaca (Mexico) and Hana bamboo (Haiti), lovely obscure recordings (i.e. masses of cocks) with no further re-working; a must for fans of the UNFATHOMLESS / MYSTERY SEA and GRUENREKORDER labels; lim. 250 copies - BACK IN STOCK !
€20.00
Dreamz / Blue Polz
two new pieces using EMS synth, 2 sine wave generators & shortwave radio, the picture disc reproducing two paintings of REED, edition of 260 copies
€17.50
Gurdy Hurding
incredible: 30 years after their last album RENALDO & THE LOAF are back with a NEW studio recording release! "immediately recognizable, with goofy voices and exaggerated accents, bizarre lyrics involving topics like garden gnome bedmates or a hatred of soap, non-obvious chords and melodies, acoustic instruments played abnormally and extreme sound manipulation to make everything sound unnatural." [The Pulse]
€14.50
Woodscratcher
curious installation of pure sounds from a wood-scratcher machine that cuts tree-trunks into 2,5 cm thick "discs", while being amplified with 4 pick-ups and send to four loudspeakers; so that he machine is 'playing' the acoustic wood-information. astonishing work by this Austrian sound-artist who is known as a collaborator of BERNHARD LANG and PETER ABLINGER; the picture disc has an image of a wood piece on it: a most curious record, very limited
€20.00
Zur Arbeit I
already the third collaboration by RLW with PETER KASTNER aka PAAK, this time on the subject WORK: on three pieces called "Schnaps" (booze), "Kantine" (canteen), and "Gerberei" (tannery) they distill the typical sounds from these "areas" of work in the 19th, 20th, and 21th century with a sarcastic and at times dadaistic approach, using harpsichord, mellotron, rhythmbox, voice and field recordings; a very curious record to say the least !! Lim. 300 colour vinyl & inlay
€17.00
PARKANLAGE
BACK IN STOCK this art catalogue (21 x 19 cm, 60 pages) with many colour pictures of installation works, plus texts in German & English, released on the occasion of the PARKPLATZ exhibition (Wolfsburg, Juli-September 2006) from this German soundart artist who was once active as KENOTAPH, K:EIM & SKALP! - On the CD 63 minutes of material with highly abstract and nice droning musique concrete. Still to discover !!
€18.00
Recovery Suite
British duo also known as TWINKLE with jazz / impro / world music roots, creating hard to categorize ethno-electronica / fourth world ambient landscapes with the extensive use of the Shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute, "dystopic lounge ambiance" the label calls it; very curious, unique music... lim. 250
€15.00
Mass / Massa
first time release of this epic, 7 hour work that was created between 1989 and 2004 at the EMS in Stockholm, consisting of 12 electro-acoustic compositions that sound like nothing else with their religious references, vocal material from liturgys, chants, organ sounds and electronic noises, building a complex collage that seems to be in a constant movement of arching and warping... - 7 CDs in sturdy box with two booklets
€50.50
The Geometry of Night
re-issue of the second S.E.T.I. album from 1996 with its classic rhythmic sci-fi ambient sound, comes re-mastered and with additional sister album 'Companion' with over 60 min. of new material, with deep space transmission drones, digital glitch noises and crackles from the far beyond, not too far away from the typical BAD SECTOR sound...
€16.00
Vibrating Cloud
finally in stock, the latest "new" album by the German Kraut / Psych / Kosmische / Experimental legends, celebrating their 50th anniversary with 10 NEW tracks, plus 6 tracks that are remakes of older classics; - * Over 5 decades Sand is a timeless narrative machine full of pictures and scenarios, each title a unique piece that stands alone. * - black vinyl ed., numbered, "android" cover art by ENKI BILAL, 200 gr. vinyl
€32.50
Tottering Steps
MINORU SATO (aka "m/s", known from releases on Senufo and SPEKK) and ASUNA (who had a 7" on Meeuw with the sound of 100 toy keyboards at the same time) in collaboration again, creating multiple layered drones with a cryptic technical concept through casio-synths, AIR COLUMN RESONATOR und HELMHOLTZ resonator... "and there is some great interaction between all those resonances produced, keys of keyboards taped and motor being picked." [Vital Weekly]
€7.00
Aegean
the great epic album (19 tracks, 64 min.!) from 2014 now on vinyl! => the Californian cult band goes deeper "back to the roots" with tribalesque percussion, 'oriental' sounding guitar melodies and surprises with female vocals and a wind section even, but also has very powerful 'wall of sound' / post-punk influenced tracks, and a stronger experimental approch as before.... lots of guest-musicians as BLAINE REINIGER (TUXEDOMOON) on violin appear... spreading in all directions... lim. 400 w. wonderful cover
€28.00
Meteora
what started in 1982 with the genius "Tragic Figures" album finds a continuation in 2021 with "Meteora"; although the line-up has changed completely, you can hear in every second that this IS SAVAGE REPUBLIC, rich harmonic instrumental tracks in the typical "desert rock" style change with aggressive, vocalized and more post punking tracks... the power, the emotion, the yearning, it's all still there... one track has been written be E.G. LEWIS (WIRE) - a great comeback once more !
€14.00
Mask of Cheerful
highly experimental nine collage works (55 min) = all kinds of field recordings, object sounds, instrumental / voice sounds (+ reaktor synths) were collected and at the end mixed by ANDREW SHARPLEY, the long active British experimentalist once in STOCK HAUSEN & WALKMAN; it's fascinating how very concrete snippets collide with electronic sounds and micro-drones, always in search for the truly anomalous arrangement; very much recommended for discoverers of the non-ordinary!!
digipack with weird collage pictures, probably pretty limited
€14.00
Lieder zum Summen
a collection of 16 purely electronic 'songs'/ miniatures by the German ambient project dedicated to autumn atmospheres... => soft poetic aural pictures, with track titles like "sonnentropffen", "erde riechen", or "regen gucken"... very subtle and calm, this music mirrors certain 'magic moments' while experiencing nature phenomena... comes with full-colour 16p. booklet
€13.50
Eis
a monochrome sound-entity that can be located in the loneliness of the mind, in the mountains of the own brain = in cold delusion (as the german info puts it) => extremely bleak drone- & fogscapes with twinkling shimmers, wide & borderless, we love it ! Six long tracks incl. the epic (37 min) "Plattentektonik"; comes w. handmade cover & on lightscribed CDR
€12.00
Mbira
epic one tracker of 80 minutes using sounds of various artists from the MBIRA-label such as VZUSDW, ARTIN MUCHT, MOEDRA, [:kopfapffel:], etc. etc.. => cosmic bubbles drenched in endless reverb, far away sonics waving in slow passages, weird electronic and non-electronic acoustic objects appear for a short time, etc...no rhythms, extremely subtle, real subconscious space - mind music ! full-colour cover, lightscribed cdr, the MBIRA jubilee release !
€12.00
The Disintegration of Silence
beautiful raw guitar-ambience, transforming tones in slow changes, completely effected in analogue ways... this comes with a 28 page full-colour art booklet with collage works from STEFANO GENTILE, using the washed out fragmentations of female model pictures; another smaller booklet is included too.. pure timeless melancholia and transience, numb. ed. 250 copies
€20.00
Erosion of the Analogous Eye
lim. 300 letterpress edition with different handcreated cover-pics
€13.00
Von
first rare album from 1997, darker & more experimental than nowadays => hyper-spheric & free floating dronescapes (instrumental sounds, field recordings) with multi-layered elfin-vocals + tracks that sound already song-oriented like a raw version of the typical later SIGUR ROS sound.... great album, available again !
€14.00
Zhang Zhung
collaboration of SiJ with the Russian ethnomusicologist, SERGEY GABBASOV who dive together deeply into the Tibetan & Eastern Ritual Music tradition of the BÖN (the archaic religion of the Tibetan Himalaya), combining sounds from the original instruments (also from Armenia, Moldavia, Tuva, etc..) with foggy transcension drones and chants... two epic tracks, 79 min. & full colour booklet with pictures from the region of the old ZHANG-ZHUNG in Tibet
€13.00
same
melancholic & experimental ambience by this Italian project formed by ANDREA MARUTTI (AMON) and ANDREA FERRARIS (UR, etc.); lim. 500 in the typical nice "cardboard-box" style from Diophantine
€12.00
Bloodletting
lim. 3-track pic-10" (777 copies) by the project of ex-MAYHEM frontman with unreleased CURRENT 93 - track & paintings by DAVID TIBET and EDVARD MUNCH on the disc!!
€15.00
Corranach
the second project of MICHAEL PAGE (FIRE IN THE HEAD) now on Reverse Alignment, presenting three epic tracks (57 min total) of unsettling, eerie ambience pulses and waves, a must for any LOKI or CYCLIC LAW fan.. "...one of the craziest, exhilarating journeys I’ve ever taken when listening to dark ambient. Have you ever had that dream where you were flying high enough you never saw the land? Corranach was the soundtrack to that dream." [Resounding Footsteps]
€12.00
The Clarity
re-issue of the one-sided 12" from 2014 by the stoner-rock droners who got so famous with their "Dopesmoker" album...one long track, cool as ever; there are several editions, ours: "180 gram GREEN/CLEAR vinyl housed in a plastic picture disc style sleeve with the Sleep logo silkscreened in glow in the dark ink."
€20.00
Crown of Marches
epic one-tracker, digipack ; STEVEN R. SMITH is a member of HALA STRANA & THUJA
€14.00
XAj3Z
debut album from the project by PETER CHRISTOPHERSON (COIL) and IVAN PAVLOV (COH) from 2009, which appeared in an octagon shaped cover originally..* a digital reference to jazz: seemingly acoustic, effervescent, boundary breaking, digital-era entertainment where light rays and tropical heat are backed up by zeroes and ones. The album is a defining statement, and an arbiter of the possibilities in the (then-)developing late-2000s music landscape...* - black vinyl version
€33.00
Highdrophobia
re-issue of early cassette (1986) from this Japanese noise project who uses self-built guitars that often take bizarre forms and shapes (extra necks, pick-ups, strings,etc..) - "With his stunning modified guitar, Solmania uses tape, radio, metal, turntable and vocals creating three incredible sound tracks of wild noise madness.." - three ecstatic noise tracks, lim. 199 copies, 12" inlay
€24.00
Purf
re-issue of legendary Avant/Free/Experimental album from 1972, by this French collective ~ *they create a sound full of invention, rich technically, made by many differents instruments which incorporated judiciously elements from the rock music, free-jazz, acid-psych, concrete, ethnic and experimental making them as one of the most atypical French Underground group, and seems somewhere more closer to the German “krautrock” bands like BETWEEN, AGITATION FREE, etc..*
€26.00
Jouska
favoured Drone Rec.-artist STROM NOIR (originally from Slovakia) is back with an epic and simply enchanting album of timeless droning melancholia, warm and nostalgic, slowly spiraling waves that evolve into something majestic and elevated - guitars (?) that sounds like organs or layers of acoustic instruments, like a dream that dreams itself, a dream that goes around in endless circles... - almost 2 hours playtime, 11 tracks, comes in oversized, 6 panel digipack, lim. 200
€17.50
Orga
the Swiss project by RETO MÄDER (URAL UMBO, RM 74) with an impressive album, merging dark instrumental ambience with melodramatic song elements, reminding us on BEYOND SENSORY EXPERIENCE or HUMAN GREED: "The album is a hybrid of ritual drums and eerie percussions, atmospheric analog electronics and epic drones forming a drifting orchestral wall of sound. Darkness, light and its reflections is what emerges from this mysterious aural mist."
€13.00
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ØØ VOID
CD re-issue of their second album from 2000 feat. four side-long tracks with the "typical" ultra-low guitar-drone sound they got famous for
€13.00
1-3 (re-edition)
the very experimental debut for SUPERSILENT - this was also the start for the prolific RUNE GRAMMOFON label, an epic 3 CD release in 1997: improvised, dense jazz-avantgarde with influences from ambient, noise and electronic experimentation, at times wild and ecstatic for a fully percussive NOISE BLAST.... every piece is a surprise, even after numerous listenings; comes in triple digipak with full colour booklet; this is the re-issue from 2002
€32.00
The Seer
the praised new epic studio album (almost 120 minutes of material) - the condensation of 30 years SWANS - standard edition
€20.00
To be kind
their new monstrous masterpiece, this is the lim. do-CD version with a bonus DVD feat. a live / festival performance from 2013 with almost 110min. of filmed material in b/w => "epic sonic sprawl, droned out and psychedelic, hypnotic and heavy, more sound than song, impossibly abstract, and yet utterly entrancing, like a twisted, more avant garde abstract GODSPEED mutated into some sort of dense, blackened, gloriously majestic, and yet strangely minimal demonic drone-dirge songsuite" [Aquarius Records]
€22.50
The Glowing Man (special ed.)
"The final album by the Swans. Finally, Peace." [MICHAEL GIRA] - 8 tracks spread on 2 CDs, with three epic pieces over 20 minutes, sounding more atmospheric, dense and hypnotic as before.... "The love in his music is as terrible as it is beautiful, a wrenching act of spiritual determination." [Pitchfork] special editions comes with bonus DVD ! (live 2015)
€20.00
Iso-Erotic Calibration (brown vinyl)
album from 1994 by ADI NEWTONs (CLOCK DVA) research project for psycho-acoustic music, for the first time on vinyl! *"Iso-Erotic Calibration" explores the potent topic of human sexuality. Recorded over a period of three years, this could be considered on of their more "accessible" albums.* - lim. 300 brown vinyl
€27.50
Iso-Erotic Calibration
album from 1994 by ADI NEWTONs (CLOCK DVA) research project for psycho-acoustic music => pulsative sequencer electro-waves and exotic samples, a futuristic, tension-filled atmosphere, repetitive structures and quasi-rhythms... *"Iso-Erotic Calibration" explores the potent topic of human sexuality. Recorded over a period of three years, this could be considered on of their more "accessible" albums.* - the CD version has 4 bonus tracks !!
€15.00
Interiors Three
a meditation on empty rooms once inhabitated by humans, combining slowly fading keyboard sounds with cosmic and choral drift, creates a wonderful, thought-provoking space... three long tracks on LP + CD plus a 16 page art booklet with pictures "a metaphor for the plasmic, entropic energy of human spirits, and their referential ephemera, using the glimpses of other peoples lives" ed. of 300 copies
€34.00
Quoi qu'il en soit
first posthumous release by the French artist who died in Feb. 2021 => a small 48 page fullcolour book showing pictures of TAZARTES studio curiosities ("Wunderkammer") filled with sculptures and art objects... on the CD is a document (35+ min.) of the only live performance by the trio of TAZARTES, JEROME LORICHON and QUENTIN ROLLET, recorded in Paris 2019; ed. of 300 copies
€20.00
Nerv.Sys
epic work about "distress in modern civilizations" by the south-German ambient industrial & cassette-networking pioneers
€15.00
Apara
the long standing Finnish ritual / drone noise project, slow and low fi thick walls of otherwordly sounds, often going into almost subliminal areas, with a strange effect on your minds.. - *a mix of beautiful bright moments and dark atmospheres, an epic journey to the depths of human psyche with no option of return... * - 200 copies
€13.00
thisGrey hates the sun
recommended debut for this Italian dark ambient & experimental project, moving between tension filled crunch and grate sounds and harsher ambient suction noises with collage elements, really captivating..." This first album by Giordano Rivolta proves that it is possible to describe darkness, alternating powerful 'sound pictures' with fragmented soundscapes captured in slow motion, where the idea of silence and absence becomes part of the music itself.."
€10.00
Vessels
lim. 300 clear vinyl - more song-oriented & orchestral material from the Canadian droner, forming a new vision of epic drone-pop using also synths, rhythms & electronics
€20.00
8493
'From the forbidden depths of Siberia' - Russian one-man "ambient guitar drone" project SLEEPWALKER in collaboration with TQA on the amazing Ksenza label - both artist met first on a show in Tomsk at the Planetarium in 2018 and have exchanged material since then for this project => four epic tracks emerged, full of immersive guitar drones and dark harmonies, swirling noise spirals... - 4 tracks 49+ min.
€13.00
Biotop
re-issue of early TIETCHENS album from 1981 - obscure & pure analog electro-Pop-music, in the typical ASMUS STYLE;) - his second album for Sky
Records
€15.00
Eine ganze Menge
warehous found, this mini CD feat. 3 tracks (about 20 min.) with three "Teilmengen" tracks, the typical *microwave ambience* from TIETCHENS from this time, somehow glitchy and electronic, sometimes on the border to silence, for a concentrated contemplation in sound and beyond sound...- *sinustöne und weißes rauschen modifiziert zu riesigen fast-nichts-räumen, abstrakter menschenleere, in schnüffelndes und knabberndes* - cardboard cover
€8.00
Fast ohne Titel, Korrosion
eight different stages of "Ernste Musik" (serious music) on this new TIETCHENS work, the title-names filled with the typical irony but the sounds build a wonderful journey into unorganic micro-sound drones and a kind of electro-acoustic minimalism, with a development from the 'serious' to the absurd &surrealistic...
€13.00
Abraum
microscopic ambience work based on field recordings of steel tubes transporting waste during the creation of a new subway-tunnel through Hamburg; lim. 300
- "Obwohl »Abraum« gerne aus der Menschenferne zitiert, wirken die vier Kompositionen in ihrer sterilen Offenbarung eingesunkener Materieströme und ziselierten Klangklumpen wie neugewonnenes Gold aus Tietchens audiophiler Alchemie.." [AEMAG]
€13.00
Parergon
'Sounds from te Vacuum' - TIETCHENS continues here to follow the idea of recycling already recycled material, in order to create something completely new (NO remixes), no moods or 'pictures' should be evoked, the basic intention is: JUST LISTEN!
€13.00
Air
a most surprising collaboration on this disc, with DIRK SERRIES (FEAR FALLS BURNING, etc.) delivering unusual basic sounds from accordeon, melodica, clarinet, harmonica, concertina ; ASMUS TIETCHENS has disintegrated, deformed and reassembled the material in his typical way, adding a most unreal note.. 6 tracks, 47 min., 300 copies
€13.00
Script Geometry
first vinyl release by this French soundartist also known as TO => a work about \'density\', using sounds of a tropical forest as if they were synthetic, as if it was an artificial construct => quite massive, pulsing drone waves with eerie organic sounds inside, arrays of undecipherable microsounds, atmospheric vibrations with strange \'electronic\' sounding animal phenomena and surprising cut-ups; a mysterious sounding album with interesting concept, comes in gatefold cover with additional CD - BACK IN STOCK!
€24.00
Ljubimaya / Daur
re-issue of the very first TROUM release (the 3-track 10" vinyl-only "DAUR" from 1998, Cohort Rec), plus the LJUBIMAYA 10" from 2003 (Waystyx 03); cover pictures by Dmitry Chistov aka HUM; lim. 500
€12.50
Autopoiesis / Nahtscato
finally a CD version / re-issue of the two vinyl-only releases AUTOPOIESIS (pic-LP from 2004) and NAHTSCATO (12" from 2005); plus two unreleased versions / bonus-tracks recorded 2003; 6-panel digipack, edition of 500 copies
€12.00
Autopoiesis / Nahtscato (re-press w. different artwork)
re-press with slightly different cover (glossy spiral on backside) of about 300 copies: the re-issue of the two vinyl-only releases AUTOPOIESIS (pic-LP from 2004) and NAHTSCATO (12" from 2005); plus two unreleased versions / bonus-tracks recorded 2003;.."When suspending their drones as lugubrious slabs of sound, Troum emerge as a brooding doppleganger of the shoegazer ethos." [Jim Haynes /The Wire]
€12.00
Fenetres interieures
the third proper release by this highly interesting Canadian composer from Montreal, presenting 8 works (2009-2014), with the intention to open up (inner & outer) windows: wildlife/animal sounds worlds, memories on lost persons and their acoustics, our relationship with time, studies of vibrating strings, the horror of Fukushima, "protest acousmatics" of the younger generation, => all perceived from a poetic and philosopic perspective and transformed into electro-acoustic pieces
€14.00
Ginnungagaldr
epic new work for this occult ritualistic project from Scandinavia who got well known in the black ambient scene through CDs on Zazen and Black Mara - acoustic results of shamanistic acts rather than musical compositions.. - *This offering of sounds and vibrations is an attempt at crafting an audio talisman... No rules. No boundaries. Only pure, introspective experience through the medium of sound and vibration.* - lim. ed. 8 panel digisleeve
€18.00
After Rain
perfect chill-out ambient techno from Budapest, this is the first album with a dedication and use of rain forest atmospheres and field recordings... "After the rain stops falling and the storm clouds withdraw beyond the horizon, the tide once again rolls in like a wave of evening colour glow. Hypnotizing and captivating music to spend half-awake in your bed through the thick tropical night." - 12 page full colour booklet, 79+ min. playtime
€13.00
Lust from the Underworld
comp. dedicated to "Love & Eros in mythology, symbolist & decadent art". With JACK OR JIVE, CHAOS AS SHELTER, MONDBLUT, LEGENDARY PINK DOTS, ONE INCH OF SHADOW, MUSTERION, 4th SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE, etc ...lim. 500 with beautiful art design & big booklet w. 30 "bizarre erotic pictures"
€22.00
![RECORDS ARE NOT FOR BAKING [RANFB] (Full Subscription)](/pictures/albums/7674/V.A.-recordsarenotforbak150.jpg)
RECORDS ARE NOT FOR BAKING [RANFB] (Full Subscription)
subscription ed. lim. 200 / 6 x 12" plus 6 picture LPs only for subscribers!!! Contains also poster & original artwork. with: NURSE WITH WOUND, IRR.APP(EXT.), LA STPO, FRIDAY GROUP, BRUNNEN, CHRISTUS & THE COSMONAUGHTS.
LAST FULL COPY IN STOCK - SPECIAL OFFER NOW!
(the cover image shown here is from the IRR.APP(ext.) pic ed!!)
€300.00
The Recommended Records Sampler 1982 - 25th Anniversary Edition
re-issue of this historic milestone collection - the first compilation Recommended Records released (do-LP in 1982)t, now a collectors item, with exclusive material by: FAUST, ART BEARS, THE HOMOSEXUALS, UNIVERS ZERO, AKSAK MABOUL/HONEYMOON KILLERS, THE WORK, HENRY COW, ART ZOYD, THIS HEAT, THE RESIDENTS, PICCIO DAL POZZO, ROBERT WYATT, HECTOR ZAZOU, and many more... 2 hours of material, BACK IN STOCK
€17.50
Hassaniya Music
Sahrawi music from Western Sahara & Mauritania, recorded in 2006/2007, all based on the 'Hassaniya' dialect; using typical folklore-instruments but also electric guitars & synths; comes w. beautiful gatefold-cover & much background info
€27.50
BALI 1928, Vol. II : Tembanf Kuna - Songs From An Earlier Time
recordings of "Songs from an Earlier Time" made 1928 in BALI - original Balinese vocal music, which was pressed originally on 78 rpm discs in 1929 !! "The lyrics, fully translated, some from the archaic Old Javanese language and included in the liner notes, reveal intensely urgent erotic, mystical and romantic meanings."... comes with 110 page PDF with in-depth essay on the topic..
€14.00
![Insane 80's [EV01>EV10]](/pictures/albums/17310/INSANE 80s.jpg)
Insane 80's [EV01>EV10]
collection of pieces from the (mostly deleted) 10 x vinyl 7"es on EE Tapes, + 5 bonus tracks from rare cassettes: NOSTALGIE ETERNELLE, PSEUDO CODE, HUMAN FLESH, OPERA MULTI STEEL, BENE GESSERIT, NINE CIRCLES, etc.. bringing you back to the glorious times of the typical 80's minimal wave & industrial synth pop; liner notes by PETER VERCAUTEREN (GONZO CIRCUS); lim. 500
€12.00
Musique Concrete
re-issue of this all-time classic from 1960 (!) which contains the results of 2 years of studio-work by the early "Groupe de Recherches des Musique Concrete" (GRMC): through tape manipulations, filters and "phonogenes" incredible pieces were created: XENAKIS "Diamorphoses", LUC FERRARI "Etude aux sons tendus", "Etude aux accidents", PIERRE SCHAEFFER "Etude aux sons", but also lesser known works by MICHEL PHILIPPOT and HENRI SAUGUET, showing the microscopic details & richness of M.C...
€21.00
Avantgarde is happening because..
special compilation with exclusive material only, released for the re-established "Avantgarde" festival 2017 in Schiphorst, Germany: NURSE WITH WOUND, FAUST, ASMUS TIETCHENS, QLUSTER, V!V!V!, and many more new and unknown names of projects that were performing there with lots of KRAUT and PSYCHEDELIC experimentalism...lim. 500 and almost sold out at the label as many were picked up at the festival..
€14.00
Escape
we recommend the fine ED.DEGEM compilation series, always centered around one topic and with many (mainly German) new & fresh names, sounds and concepts from the Sound Art and Electro-Acoustic scene , incl. booklet. Theme: ESCAPE : FLUCHT(en): 15 tracks, SIMON VINCENT, JULIA MIHALY, KAI NIGGEMANN, KIRSTEN REESE, CLAUDIA ROBLES-ANGEL, FELIX LEUSCHNER, HIROMI ISHII, STROM, NIKOLAUS HEYDUCK, etc... for explorers !
€13.00
Drop the Beat
we recommend the fine ED.DEGEM compilation series, always centered around one topic and with many (mainly German) new & fresh names, sounds and concepts from the Sound Art and Electro-Acoustic scene, incl. booklet. Theme: RHYTHMS. 11 tracks: MARC BEHRENS, KAI NIGGEMANN, LINA POSECNAITE, KIRSTEN REESE, MICHAEL HARENBERG, JÖRG LINDENMAIER, etc..
- SPECIAL OFFER now, for explorers !
€7.00
Transit
we recommend the fine ED.DEGEM compilation series, always centered around one topic and with many interesting sounds and concepts from the Sound Art and Electro-Acoustic scene, incl. booklet. theme: TRANSITION (Übergang, Verwandlung), 8 pieces by some more established composers this time: CLEMENS VON REUSNER, THOMAS GERWIN, MONIKA GOLLA + N: HEYDUCK, HANS TUTSCHKU, KLARENZ BARLOW, DIRK REITH, JOHANNES S. SISTERMANNS, JAN JACOB HOFMANN:::
€13.00
20_20
we recommend the fine ED.DEGEM compilation series, always centered around one topic and with many (mainly German) new & fresh names, sounds and concepts from the Sound Art and Electro-Acoustic scene, incl. booklet. theme: this existential year 2020: GERALD FIEBIG (known from Attenuation Circuit), CLARENCE BARLOW, WOLFGANG MOTZ, LUDGER KISTERS, JOHANNES S. SISTERMANNS, MARC BEHRENS, RALF HOYER, 15 tracks in total, so much to discover for adventurous hearts !
€13.00
Live in Berlin
lim. 100! NEW recordings by this occult / ritual / experimental project very active in the 80's, running "World Satanic / Surrealistic Network System" who released the legendary "The last supper" pic 12" inspired by JIM JONES mass suicide; this is a recording from a live performance that happened in Berlin at NK, March 31, 2012, available normally only at the "Extreme Rituals" festival by Harbinger in Bristol, UK, 30.Nov-2.Dez. 2012. LAST COPIES !
€23.23
Chronostasis
guitarist / sound-artist from Greece with very first album - a widely open approach and airy atmosphere, combining acoustic sounds of Ney, Guitar, Flute, Sho, female Voice (ANNA LINARDOU) and Percussion with Electronics, Tapes and No-input Mixer, the 10 pieces are like meditative sound pictures describing a certain moment of time, incorporationg near-silence passages and unusual noises... quite special and very worth to discover !!
€14.00
Sonido Descompuesto
DAVID VELEZ captures the "psychogeography" of a certain countryside landscape in Columbia, with an interesting mix of hazy slow-drones & more concrete elemental sounds, melting daydreamlike acoustics from natural, human and animal sources... fabric-pressed CD, numbered ed. 200 copies, in the typical artwork-style (beautiful patterns from nature & natural objects) of Daniel Crokaert
€14.00
The Broken Air
cassette only release by Chicago's Blake Edwards aka VERTONEN, a work about / inspired through the topics communication, electricity, radio waves, broken equipment... - this noise doesn't sound "noisy", but in a strange way ghostly and mysterious, like an artefact from the ancient past... think of JOE COLLEY, FAMP, etc.. - C-60, 125 copies, prof. cover & duplication, sold out from the label, US import
€11.00
Einige Schadstoffe
Chicago's BLAKE EDWARDS aka VERTONEN with a very dark "industrialized" album, all of the nine titles are entitled on German and remind impressively on industrial classics from M.B. to T.G... - * feverish arppegiations cascading through nervous distortion, followed by plodding rhythms and dead-toned electronics that gird case studies on living monstrosities.. " - prof. printed cover in the typical Helen Scarsdale design with jewel-case, lim. 125 copies
€13.00
Monad
the 100th release for the now maybe most important dark ambient label around: a studio collab between PHURPA and the project of label-owner VISIONS, the typical PHURPA vocal and ritualistic instrumental sounds are drowning in a deep morass of huge reverberations, but there are also moments of complete, rather silent alienation, whispers and winds from unknown spheres, timeless and lonely harmonic rays of elevation.... a very beautiful album, highly recommended! vinyl lim. 200
€20.00
Monad
the 100th release for the now maybe most important dark ambient label around: a studio collab between PHURPA and the project of label-owner VISIONS, the typical PHURPA vocal and ritualistic instrumental sounds are drowning in a deep morass of huge reverbarations, but there are also moments of complete, rather silent alienation, whispers and winds from unknown spheres, timeless and lonely harmonic rays of elevation.... a very beautiful album, highly recommended! CD version 500 copies
€13.00
Realites Servomecaniques
" Sounds are machines - machines are Sounds" - one of the true "Industrial" records (originally as LP 1984), this is the real machine-sound - now as deluxe CD re-edition with 32 pages hardcover book, with texts in english / french / japanese + pictures
€20.00
Telefon / Circuitnoise / Arbeit Nummer 24
"Eine Reminiszenz an das analoge Zeitalter der Telekommunikation" => artefacts from the analogue telecommunication: recorded answer-phones, audio adverts, pictures, german telephone boxes, silly jokes about blonde wifes with telephones, etc.. and the change to circuitnoise / smartphone, often channelled into noises, comes with a special white oversize cardboard package and 32pp A4 booklet full of obscurities, full colour, numbered.. - a great weirdo musique concrete + noise collage !!
€25.00
Cut Down and Re-Order
collector's item - lim. 100 w. gatefold cover, feat. two pieces of mysterious hum tones and fizzing drones, based on field recordings from the Swedenborg Chapel in Cambridge, USA, plus other unusual 'esoteric' sources as it's so typical for VON HAUSSWOLFF; the piece on Side B is dedicated to Z. KARKOWSKI
€26.00
Silo
"Aufnahmen für die Installation names PICTURE POWDERHORN dieses Klangkünstlers, welche die Sounds in und um Getreide-Silos zum Fokus hat => rauhe industrielle Maschinen-Klänge sind hier ebenso präsent wie field recordings von Latino-Tanzmusik, Kinderliedern, alte Fiedel-Melodien und vokales Material... ein obskures und fast schon Hörspiel-artiges "musique concrete"- Porträit des post-industriellen mittleren Westen der USA...versetzt einen an andere Orte und Zeiten! " [Drone Rec. info] - BACK IN
€14.00
The All most quiet
the SWANS guitarist (since 1983!) with his first widely available solo-LP, spreadening hypnotic, subtle guitar drones which slowly change... "The introduction of new layers, textures and tones, shifts in the scale and pace of oscillations change the mood, subtly, inconspicuously, but no less definitely..." [Aural Aggravation] contains CD copy of the same material
€22.50
Leaving A Dream
epic album (their third) from this Polish band, who combine elements of grinding no wave / noise rock and industrial with hypnotic spoken word vocals, a 120 minutes cathartic dream, dark and opressive like SWANS, but also with more harmonic / deeply melancholic passages going into the Post Rock and Ambient direction - even BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE and NEUBAUTEN shine through... feat. various guest musicians this album shows a great development and maturation, absolutely to discover !
€16.00
Unrelated
second solo-LP for this German artist under his real name (once known as [-HYPH-] ) who works in the field of gallery sound-art, taking samples from various sound sources to treat them "live" with his technique of 'modulated feedbacks' => challenging collages in various shapes, from fast changing, overloaded craziness to abstract drone-scaping, these are highly sophisticated compositions full of microscopic details... comes on clear vinyl, lim. 200 copies
€22.50
Thank You
the Berlin-based filmmaker and musician who creates "songs" beyond all typical styles or genres, has released this impressive 10";, the main instrument used is the Cello, which is played in minimal structures or drone-harmonics, at times enriched with percussive elements, found sounds, strange object noises, musique concrete, film-music... the effect is extreme ly intimate, "hand-made", and exciting, 11 tracks are to be found here that sound all completely different!! Lim. 300
€13.00
Aviation Hypnosis
"Occult electronics, Satanic industrial and sound alchemy since 2008" is the self-description of this Finnish project, founded in rather untypical minimal, creaking loops and pulses, very dry and mechanic, low-fi, somehow "damaged" and old school sounding, for fans of pure analogic structured noises that surrounds you in waves or circles...- think of a more pulsing M.B., old ESPLENDOR GEOMETRICO, etc..
€12.00
Poems 1950-2003
Colourful picture – disc with 31 obscure / funny / “visual” / concrete / sound-poetic poems by this FLUXUS-artist ! Comes with extensive liner-notes & explanations on the backcover.
€18.00
The secret Resonance of Things
three abstract / microscopic noise compositions derived from 'scientific data' (Supernova explosions, chaotic processes, 'models of imaginary instruments'- for other planets) by the ever interesting concept artist from UK.. " ranging from intense, almost old-school contemporary electronic/musique concrete to percussive interludes to wild simulated impossible brass instruments." - comes with highly interesting / mathematic booklet explaining the incredible working methods - really mindblowing stuff!!!
€23.00
The Shame
Experimental one-man project from Canada with limited CDR release on the french Underground-Label RURALFAUNE, comes in handmade cover and reminds on typical 80's / 90's cassette-scene style.. - special green granular paper cover, lim. 81 copies - *Drifted noises, distorted voices & murky electronics in the land of the spectral moose. The ghost of the beast whistles in the tunnel of dark forest. *
€8.00
Divination Bones
Drone Records DR-99
lim. 250 PICTURE DISC!
EXTREME HANDMADE / HANDPAINTED COVER!
€8.50
Divination Bones (2nd extended ed.)
second edition with revised & complete versions of both tracks previously released as a picture-7"; silver coloured vinyl & new full cover design, ed. of 400 (of which only 150 are for sale as single copies); FREE TO ALL (excl. postage) WHO ALREADY HAVE THE PICTURE DISC / FIRST EDITION
€6.00
Hibiki Hana-Ma / Mycenae Alpha / Polytope de Cluny
this LP concentrates on XENAKIS fascinating POLYTOPE-compositions: "Hibiki Hana-Ma"-created for the Expo in Japan 1970 (Steel Pavilion multimedia installation with lasers, mirrors, etc.), "Polytope de Cluny" (1972)-a Polytope composition presented in Paris, "Mycenae Alpha" (1978)-pure synthetic sounds constructed with his graphic system UPIC
€20.00
Taurhiphanie
this LP concentrates on XENAKIS late electroacoustic works that became purely electronic, four strangely spiralling and staggering electronic pieces (1987-1997), "explicit computermusic'" hardly to compare with anything else: with the UPIC machines drawings are transfered directly into sounds & noises, on the last two electronic pieces he created random-based digital samples which were running through a "composing machine"...
€20.00
Crash & Cross
unpublished collaboration recordings created in Nantes, France (in 2014 when Z'EV performed and stayed there), partly live, partly studio, undergoing a long mixing process after...- the combination of typical ZEV with JULIEN OTTAVI's noise approach leads to interesting results and non-ordinary, abstract (non)-structures... - 7 tracks, 60 min. playtime, very nice 6 panel digipack with 8 page full colour photo booklet , 200 copies ohly
€14.00
Songs
ZEITKRATZER playing real "songs" with vocals (by MARC WEISER aka RECHENZENTRUM) in their typical way with incredible result; heavily orchestrated, excessive.. "what a beautiful goodbye to Pop"
€16.00
7.10.12
re-issue of the rare ALT.VINYL "3D"/ architectural cover art release in box (2012) that came out on 3 vinyl formats on 7. Oct. 2012... => "7.10.12" is a very versatile collection of many shorter tracks (18 in total), many field recordings and obscured material appears, but also more typical Z.F. "harmoniques exotiques" pearls, backwards-sounds and 'undecipherable atmospheric noises' (U.A.N.) en masse... a most beautiful & mysterious Z.F. album from their later phase... lim. 300 copies
€29.50
poem#red128dot
"Der erste Schritt Mars F. Wellinks nach der Auflösung des Vance Orchesters ist diese vermutlich limitierte CDR-Produktion im übergroßen Cardboard-Cover in Plastik aus Griechenland. Ein gegen 40 Minuten tendierendes langes Stück im entspannten Spannungsfeld zwischen Musique Concrete, experimenteller Elektronik mit ambienten Charakter inkl. wohl eingesetzten Fieldrecordings. Hier findet sich alles wieder, was das Vance Orchestra so unverwechselbar gemacht hat, eine organische Entwicklung, die den Hörer nie ganz losläßt, aber auch nicht knebelt und fesselt. Hervorragendes ambient noir, das aus meiner Sicht gar nicht hoch genug geschätzt werden kann. Gewidmet dem Andenken Geert Feytons (Noisemaker's Five, Negative Entropy und NMT Productions), der im Juli 2006 gestorben ist." [ [cs] / Bad Alchemy]
VANCE ORCHESTRA is dead, long live AD]VANCE[D]! This is the first release of the follow-up project of the split-up VANCE ORCHESTRA, Arnhem-based musician and designer MARS F WELLINK does it now alone! "Poem#red128dot" is dedicated to GEERT FEYTONS from NOISE-MAKER'S-FIFES, who died last year. A real sound-poem.
"Vance Orchestra from Arnhem are no more, but out of his ashes new paths are chosen. Robert Deters plays around with various people from the local scene, including Machinefabriek, while Mars Wellink goes on solo. As (ad)vance(d) he now presents his first solo work, I think, for the Absurd label. It has been around in their offices for a while, but it's release comes in handy. In various cities (Arnhem, Leiden, Molovos) Mars recorded some field sounds which he knits together to a thirty six minute sound poem. Voices play a role, but more over it's here to create an atmospheric piece of music. The backdrop is a sort of ambient piece of a wall of synthesizers, but it's too angular to be a dull piece of music. On top of that hotbed, Mars lets his recordings drop in and out of the mix, bird calls, insects, people walking and talking. Over the course of the piece things move away from the ambient patterns played at the beginning and moving into the world of strict soundscaping and then spiral back into the ambient backing of the start. A highly atmospheric work that is more like a sound picture, be it of different places, of sound moving in and from various directions than a strict music piece, more like a sound environment." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€10.00
Two Events
Waystyx goes vinyl! Fabulöses neues Werk vom niederländischen Projekt um MARS WELLINK, allerbeste atmosphärische Collagen-Musik und archaische Drone-Fliessmuster, loopig-pulsierende Strukturen in typisch VANCEiger Machart. Bisher seine überzeugendste Veröffentlichung! Limitiert auf 200 im Poster-Cover mit Postkarte!
"Not much info on this otherwise beautifully packed LP. The story should be known: following the split of Vance Orchestra, Mars Wellink started (ad)vance(d), together with Jan Dekker. The music of (ad)vance(d) is a continuation of lines set out by Vance Orchestra: that of the cross road of ambient music, bit of rhythm (mainly through samples) and a hint of industrial music. Two side long pieces, an event per side me thinks. The music slowly evolves and develops - the archetypical form of drone music, which is in these four hands in great form. Deep rumbles from below the earth's surface, which grow in intensity and take a big shape, almost without the listener realizing this. Voices (?) seem to mumble, the rattling of a bike, all against a nice, thick brick wall of sound. It reminded me of some of the best work of zoviet*france. The rotating swirls fit the medium, or the medium fits the swirls of sound. Two particular great pieces that one keeps rotating on end. Fabolous headspace
music." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
www.waystyx.com
€16.00
Vesuvius
Neues US-Label mit neuer 12“-Serie, wo um es die akustische Darstellung von Naturkatastrophen geht. Den Anfang macht das
[LAW RAH]-COLLECTIVE aus den Niederlanden mit einer bedrohlich-dark ambienten Umsetzung des Vesuvausbruchs! Goldenes Vinyl.
“...'vesuvius' is the second vinyl release on force of nature and the first in a series, where each release will be describing a different natural disaster. both tracks are around fifteen minutes in length and created with analog sound sources only. while the first side of the 12" describes the expulsion of volcanic gasses - solfataras - poisoning the air, the second side sketches a picture of Pompeii, herculaneum, oplonti and stabiae, each hidden under 10 to 75 feet of tephra (ashes). two days of volcanic activity killed over 3300 people. the design and packaging of 'Vesuvius' is explosive itself; slightly transparent golden vinyl resembling the power of the magma hidden deep inside the earth. An ash and smoke colored cover insert designed by dominick fernow of hospital productions not only gives a brief history of the volcano; it also acts as a guardian protecting the gold of an once so prosperous city which is no more.” [label info]
€12.00
Between Checks and Artillery. Between Work and Image
https://15dbz.bandcamp.com/album/between-checks-and-artillery-between-work-and-image
Exzellente 2-track 10" dieses US-Trios, die sich hier weniger "industriell-elektronisch" als eher minimal Gitarren-dronig mit Hang zum Monumentalen zeigen.... anschwellende Gitarren-Anschläge, tiefe Drones, Rausch-Effekte, allmächtige Crescendi, erhabene Weiten
& wuchtige Pulses auf Seite auf Seite B..
"A trio from San Francisco composed of Daniel Blomquist, Mark Wilson and Michael Addison Mersereau, 15 DEGREES BELOW ZERO, with previous releases in CD or CDR format on the FORCE OF NATURE and CRUNCH POD labels, brings us their first production in vinyl format. It is comprised of 2 exclusive tracks, on 10’’ vinyl, released on the Montreal based label .ANGLE.REC., still fond of the vinyl disc. 2 tracks which suggest an even more brilliant and exploded future for this exploratory vehicle born on the ashes of the famous IMPERIAL FLORAL ASSAULT UNIT project. The trio’s most recent CD, ‘’Under A Morphine Sky’’, offered a well-balanced perspective between improvisation and composition, a sound alchemy that is realized without any pretension under a purple and…of course… morphined sky. Power-Electronics in symbiosis with Dark-ambient in symbiosis with Guitar-Noise in symbiosis with various layered and shifting acoustic and electronic elements …The result and the overall feel were stunning. This 10incher is the log ical follow-up to the madness. 2 face(t)s, 2 slices of life. A side, ‘’KRONOS’’, proposes us a guitar-based canvas with multiples effects and spacious microworlds, with an accelerating insanity and intensity, an 8-9 minute segment which flies like the wind. It can also be considered as an extrapolation on the last minutes of ‘’THE RETURNING’’, found on B Side; ‘’THE RETURNING’’ begins with an epic lo-fi martial/neoclassical/doom segment but rather soon, haunting post-rock/shoegaze guitar-based structures come to occupy the main stage, and the power electronics segment also turns up very quickly following that, the whole being accomplished with a constant mastery and concern for texture. It is chaotic, foggy buy damned melodic and moving …and it does not stop gaining in intensity. Towards the final segment, we have samples and then a melodic guitar-based motif with a healthy dose of echo, which reverberates while consuming itself, till the end … 15DBZ has crazy surprises in store for us. Discover why, now. Many ambiences and textures on this 10’’ remind us of the reasons why we got interested, in the first place, in various ‘’nocturnal’’ and/or ‘’subterranean’’ musical universes. The beauty of it all is that here, everything is presented in condensed fashion. 2 tracks which fly too fast despite their relative length. Another welcome add to the .ANGLE.REC. vinyl series." [label info]
www.angle-rec.net
€8.00
Open Doors
15 Degrees Below Zero is Mark Wilson, Daniel Blomquist, &Michael Addison Mersereau. The first release by this project was in 2000, so 21 years later we get to see how the project has progressed. Despite this album being started over 10 years ago it fully expresses a great maturity and beautiful diversity of styles. This is a truly epic album and I'm proud to present it to the world along with the members of the project.
Mastered by Thomas Dimuzio for full effect as well.
https://oxidation.bandcamp.com/album/open-doors
"For those unfamiliar with this project, 15 Degrees Below Zero is the work of Daniel Blomquist, Michael Addison Mersereau, and Mark Wilson (who also performs under the name Conure). This project began after the demise of Imperial Floral Assault Unit, and the structured improvisations that they have become known for would continue for the next 20 years. This album has been 10 years in the making. To give you a sense of how long it has been, a live version of "Horizon, Skyline" originally appeared on the Conure/15DBZ split cassette that was released on Danvers State Recordings in 2012. Still, this album still holds up as if it were recorded yesterday.
I have often enjoyed 15 Degrees Below Zero’s music because of its cinematic qualities. In previous reviews I've compared it to In The Nursery’s Optical Music series. One of the things that is consistent in 15 Degrees Below Zero is, ironically, their inconsistency. One album kind of reminded me of The Durutti Column with a little bit more of an edge to it. Others have a cinematic quality that sounds like it’s straight out of a soundtrack (they have often referred to their music as “cinematic isolationism”). This one is a slight departure in that the soundtrack would be for a very unhappy post-apocalyptic film where there is no happy ending. If you want a microcosm of this album, you can look no further than the first track Horizon, Skyline. This track begins with lush drone combined with a beautiful harmony. However, just beneath the surface is a wall of static that continually threatens to overrun the track. Toward the end we’ve achieved a kind of uneasy equilibrium with equal parts rumbling static and drone.
15 Degrees Below Zero enjoys messing with the listener and giving us what we don't expect. Just when you think they are moving back into beautiful soundscape territory, we find ourselves being slowly dragged back into a sea of squalling feedback and static. Sometimes the static comes completely to the forefront, as in “The Dead Sea.” In this track, we have high pitched squeal and harsh noise that would be right at home on any noise album. This is unsurprising, as I saw both Mark Wilson’s solo project Conure and Daniel Bloomquist’s solo project at this year’s Northern California Noise Festival.
This album is the best of all possible worlds in experimental music. In some ways, there is something for everyone. If you have a friend that wishes that bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor would let loose and be more experimental and chaotic, hand them this disk. This is what that would sound like. Do you know someone who is not really into harsh noise because they think it all sounds the same, or they simply want something more to it? Hand them this disk. There is all of the noise, but also all of the beauty. That is precisely what makes 15 Degrees Below Zero such an engaging act. You never quite know what you are going to get but you know it's always going to be worth getting. Highly recommended." [Eskaton, Chain D.L.K.]
"Eine offene Tür ist ein ausgesprochen vielgestaltiges Symbol, und das erstrecht, wenn es sich gleich um mehrere handelt. Sie zeigen unmissverständlich, dass der vor ihnen stehende weder ein- noch ausgesperrt ist und dass jede Wand, jede Grenze durch sie passierbar ist. Dem Auge jedoch offenbart sich in einer offenen Tür nur ein rahmenhafter Ausschnitt, der meist mehr versteckt als offenbart. Und mit dem, was man durch die Tür zu sehen vermag, steht und fällt jede Hoffnung, die ihre Offenheit suggeriert. Das Ausschnitthafte, Unbestimmte, mitunter Mysteriöse offener Türen ist beinahe ein perfektes Motto für die musikalische Erkundungsreise, die das Drone- und Noise-Trio 15 Degrees Below Zero auf ihrem vor einigen Monaten erschienenen Album „Open Doors“ unternehmen.
15 Degrees Below Zero ist das Projekt der drei Kalifornier Mark Wilson (besser bekannt als Conure), Daniel Blomquist und Michael Addison Mersereau, die in den 90ern bereits unter dem Namen Imperial Floral Assault Unit zusammenarbeiteten, und machte vor allem in den Nullerjahren von sich reden. Nach Wilsons Umzug nach Berlin und der Konzentration der Musiker auf andere Projekte wurden die Aktivitäten irgendwann seltener, und so brauchte es beinahe ein Jahrzehnt, bis „Open Doors“ fertig gestellt wurde.
Wenn es einen roten Faden auf „Open Doors“ gibt, dann dass die in den einzelnen Stücken entworfenen, meist düsteren Settings nie klar definiert bleiben, sondern immer wieder ihre Gestalt durch subtile Überblendungen und Verästelungen modifizieren. „Horizon, Skyline“ – der Opener und gleich längste Track des Albums – startet mit verunsichernden Rumpel- und Kratzgeräuschen, eingehüllt in eine mysteriöse Wolke aus dichtem Rauschen. Doch von titelgebenden Horizont dringt bald ein tief erdendes Ambientdröhnen ins Zentrum des Geschehens, intensiviert sich und verdrängt alle Kantigkeit, um am Ende Platz für weitere, perkussive Details zu schaffen, und so entpuppt sich jeder Moment, in dem man verweilen möchte, als vergänglicher Übergang zu weiteren, unbestimmten Orten.
Die abgeklärte Desolatheit, die sich bereits hier erahnen lässt, scheint in den folgenden Tracks deutlicher hervor: Im „The 5:15“ betitelten Stück breiten sich rauschende Wellen wie schwerer Atem über monotones Saitenspiel aus und mutieren zu etwas, das an gequälte Stimmen erinnert – alles scheint sich hier auf eine Eskalation zuzubewegen, während das Gitarrenmotiv stoisch unverändert bleibt, bis perkussives Klopfen für etwas Erleichterung sorgt. In manchen Stücken scheint es in emotionaler, atmosphärischer Hinsicht am Ende doch so etwas wie ein kleines Fazit zu geben.
Noch weitaus unbestimmter und wechselhafter offenbart sich der Titeltrack, der sich zunächst als knarriger Ambietdowner in die Gehörgänge bohrt. Hat man sich erst einmal eingelebt in seiner resignativen Statik, so sorgen allerhand kleine feine Bewegungen für Erleichterung: Helle Sounds bimmeln wie abstrahierte Glöckchen durch den Raum, doch das wiederum ist nur die Ankündigung für einen durch donnernde Detonationen eingeleiteten Sturm, der viel ungehörtes aufwirbelt. Interessant ist dass all diese gegensätzlich wirkenden Bestandteile der Kompositionen sich nie gegenseitig in Frage stellen, sondern in all ihrer Ambiguität zu koexistieren verstehen – vielleicht ist dies am deutlichsten spürbar in “White Sands”, dessen treibende Dynamik aus dem Hintergrund wirkt und die anrührende Melodie im Vordergrund nie antastet. es ist eines der kraftvollsten Stücke des Albums.
So haben letztlich alle Stücke ihre eigene kleine innere Dramatik, ihre eigenen Brüche und Richtungswechsel, und natürlich auch ihre Schwerpunkte. Lässt der nach dem Roten Meer benannte Track eine wuchtige Ambientwelle eine fast meditative Unbewegtheit in dem mit Klappern erfüllten Raum entstehen, so offenbart sein am Ende des Albums verortetes Pendant “The Dead Sea ” die größte Ambiguität zwischen Ruhe und Unruhe, zwischen getriebener Bewegung, schönen Synthie-Soundscapes und einem rabiaten Noise, der von etwas, das an Schreie erinnert, durchzuckt ist.
“Open Doors” ist ein ungemein reichhaltiges Album und jedes enthaltene Stück würde den Stoff für einen kongenialen Filmscore abgeben. Wenn die so untermalten Stoffe – mehrere Kollegen schrieben zurecht über postapokalyptische Dystopien – durch zahlreiche Ereignisse und zugleich durch eine nie zu eindeutige Stimmung auffallen würden, wären sie der Musik am ehesten angemessen." [U.S./African Paper]
€13.00
10
To celebrate the 10 anniversary of 2kilos &More, Audiophob presents a new aspect of the project on a double CD release. The first CD of this set contains live recordings of tracks from the previous releases as well as an unreleased remix the duo created from material provided by Rapoon (founding member of Zoviet France). The live recordings originate from two festival appearances of the band in Nancy and Jouy Le Moutier and feature the guest vocalists Flore Magnet and Phil Von (both Von Magnet) as well as Black Sifichi. Some of the songs can be found for the first time on CD with lyrics, as they have been released as instrumental tracks so far.
The second part of the release features new approaches to the 2kilos &More sound as provided by the remixes from a remarkable selection of artists (Rapoon, Imminent, Von Magnet, Bérangère Maximin, The Berg Sans Nipple, Needle Sharing, Roger Rotor, Spherical Disrupted, Muckrackers, Picore and Wild Shores.) Besides different variations of Ambient and Industrial/Noise sounds, more unexpected approaches from Post-Rock and Drum'n'Bass can be found.
(auphcd019)
https://audiophob.bandcamp.com/album/10
€16.00
Mother Moon
The new album from 400 LONELY THINGS, produced by WILLIAM BASINSKI, is a dark ambient, sample-based séance to the Banning Mill - a real-life decaying \"mansion\" and haven for artists, freaks and misfits in the backwoods of the American Deep South in the 1970s-1990s - and an extraordinary piece of art that lived there.
An archaeological excursion in found sound - wandering through the art and memory of a real place, \"Mother Moon\" is an origin story for 400 Lonely Things. In the 1990\'s, Craig Varian was fortunate enough to frequent the Mill in the years before it closed. It was here that he was exposed to the artwork of Richard Scott Hill. The impact is hard to overstate.
Built on the Snake River in the early 1800\'s as a textile mill, it operated until the late 1960\'s and when its doors closed on that era, and reopened on another. In 1971, the Mill was purchased by a young wealthy \"eccentric\" (to use the vernacular of the time). He was openly gay in the deeply bigoted Old South, a collector of fantastic and surreal art, a drug enthusiast, an owner of at least one mental illness, and a self-described entrepreneur with a vision. In the years that followed, he turned this sprawling, mildewed structure into a private hippie art collective, music venue and refuge for Southern misfits - gays and gender-benders, visual artists, musicians, mystics, ghost-hunters, wizards, pagans, intellectuals, poets, nerds and psychedelic explorers by the dozens drifted in and out, creating their own alternate universe in its hundreds of rooms.
One of these artists was Richard Scott Hill. Hill\'s work stood apart from everything else at the Mill. It was all black and white or hand-coloured photography - typically stark portraits of people - almost always wearing masks. These photos were disturbing and disarming, hilarious and crazed, unsettling and aggressively surreal in their confrontational simplicity. His work both captured and fed into the Mill\'s sinister yet playful undercurrents of mania and depression. By the conservative 1980\'s, the Mill became a very different place. A dark and quiet ectoplasmic hangover haunted its rooms with just a handful of tenants, remaining so until its doors closed for good in the late 90\'s.
Varian had friends that lived there, and after hearing quiet legends of the Banning Mill since the late 80\'s, was finally able to visit. While the Mill itself was transformative enough, turning down a disused hallway, Varian encountered the image on the cover of this album and quite simply became a different person. A lifetime spent as a Southern misfit had led to fruitless artistic, philosophical, spiritual and psychedelic pursuits as relief. At this time, an obsession with visual collage and audio sampling had been brewing and upon seeing this image, boiled over. He realized that the sounds and images he\'d been seeking had been sought by many others and that for a time, these seekers had lived here in the secret winding halls of Banning Mill in the wilds of the Deep South. In particular, this nude cow-faced woman was the Minotauress who sat at the heart of that maze.
Since the days of the Mill (and Varian\'s subsequent purchase of Hill\'s \"Minotauress\" shortly before the Mill closed), Varian, along with best friend and musical partner Jonathan McCall, found a thread of music they\'d been consistently making yet had previously failed to notice - melancholic instrumentals with weathered sampling at its core - going back to their earliest recordings in the late 1980\'s. Eventually, this music was called 400 Lonely Things, and eventually an album would be attempted to honor both the Mill and Richard\'s \"Minotauress\".
The Mill has been closed for about 25 years now and all that remains of it is a gutted skeleton covered in yellow caution tape. After a dozen albums, Jonathan McCall has since passed on to the next realm. But this album, born out of that first visit to the Mill, is finally here - an imaginary soundtrack to the many years of solitude the Minotauress spent hanging in that musty hallway.
For this album, Varian reached out to Mr. Hill and a friendship and artistic relationship has developed. Richard - now in his 80\'s and an established figure in the established art world - still creates fantastically bizarre works daily from his home studio, just a mile from the remains of the Mill. He says that the music of 400 Lonely Things is from another dimension and he hopes you enjoy it and his previously unpublished art gracing the cover.
Presented in a 6-panel spot-varnished digipak.
credits
released April 11, 2023
Produced by William Basinski
Additional Mixing and Mastering by Preston Wendel
Covert art by Richard Scott Hill
\"Mother Moon is a cypher that saves an important hidden fragment of cultural history from erasure.\" Ben Ponton, Zoviet France.
\"Mother Moon is darkness calling. It will take you to the outer limits and leave you there. Guaranteed to twist your mind.\" Andrew Hulme, O Yuki Conjugate.
\"A wistful, burrowing, beautiful nightmare.\" Daniel Kraus, NY Times Best Selling Author of The Living Dead with George A. Romero, and The Shape Of Water with Guillermo Del Toro.
https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/mother-moon-csr319cd
"It's one of those weeks... Being a former ginger/redhead, I have problems handling the moist 25-30 Celcius) heat in the Netherlands. So I hardly get to do anything, and I get distracted all the time, like work and such. So I have been trying to start a review of "Mother Moon" by 400 Lonely Things several times, and each time I end up just listening and floating away, Drifting on the waves ... And I didn't even feel bad about listening to it over and over and over ...
Produced by William Basinski, 400 Lonely Things is a project by Craig Varian inspired by recordings around, based in, or related to an old mill. A beautiful PDF was sent to us, and it might well be part of the Bandcamp download, but how you get your hands on it when you get the CD: I don't know. The 400 Lonely Things concept focuses on the arrangement of lost and found sounds, and the melancholia is certainly audible in the release. Also, the journey aspect is very well set in this release, the journey being the descriptive part of environments through sound as a medium. So in many areas where the boxes should be ticked to make a release interesting, those boxes are actually ticked.
Musicwise, "Mother Moon" is an absolute beauty. Almost 80 minutes, with deep drones, minimal melodic lines, scarce structural sounds (no rhythms), ambience and, on occasion, a mesmerizing voice preaching solitude and melancholia. And here and there, an ever so slight 'touch of Coil' (for example, in "In Darkness"). So
at this point, I would say: Get the album and don't worry too much about everything else. But the booklet and combined conceptual approach is a bit of a downer for me, as it turns out. I mean: Concepts make many releases I know/heard/have enjoyable, and I know all about it as an artist myself. But in a weird way the conceptual approach is so elaborate and massive that it almost forces me to think about it. And all I want to do is just enjoy the flow, as a psychonaut, ride the waves and not be bothered too much with all that mumbo jumbo. But that's just me. I think... I hope... Other than that: Go Flow, Go Dream, Go Listen, Just 'Be' ..." [BW / Vital Weekly]
€15.00
Hunger's Teeth
Die 5UU’s gehören zum Aushängeschild neuer “Avant-Prog-Rock” oder “Art-Rock”-Bands und wurden oft mit den genialen ART BEARS verglichen....oder als zeitgemässe Nachfolger von YES. Diese Musik ist schwer zu beschreiben: perfekt eingespielte Genre-sprengende Rockmusik, manchmal sehr strukturiert und mit Refrains die man mitsingen kann, i.d.R. mit disharmonischem oder neu-harmonischem Gesang & alles auf den Punkt gespielt; unerwartete Wechsel, fast-Krach-Parts, sehr ruhige experimentelle geräuschafte akustische Szenen, inkl. einem umwerfenden Solo-Stück von THOMAS DIMUZIO; und SUSANNE LEWIS (CORPSES AS BEDMATES) singt auf zwei Stücken.
„....Ein Charakteristikum der UU´s-Musik besteht darin, daß häufig Melodien gegen Begleitungen gesetzt werden, die nicht als Unterstützung sondern als Widerpart wirken. Es macht Spaß, beim Hören zu erleben, wie diese Melodik trotzdem als "schön" wahrnehmbar bleibt (obwohl ich mir darüber im klaren bin, daß viele Hörer einwenden würden, die Melodien seien hier als Melodien kaum noch erkennbar).... “ [Ralf J. Günter / Babyblaue Seiten]
“The re-formed 5UU's first CD, featuring, one-of-a-kind drummer Dave Kerman with new line-up- Sanjay Kumar (keyboards) and Bob Drake (Bass, Guitar, Vocals) and guests Susanne Lewis, Tom Dimuzio, and James Grigsby. Power, complexity and intelligence - an express train that can pirouette on a dime.” [label info]
“....Hunger's Teeth is the most exciting rock album I've heard this year. No, not Anderson exactly, but Robert Drake's vocals do bear a striking resemblance to the Yes man's "angelic" tenor. Is this "progressive rock" for the '90's? A celebration of intricately layered arrangements and polyrhythmic playing, effortlessly combining '70's grandeur with avant-rock, contemporary collage and computing - and only one track in 11 over six minutes! The musicianship (also David Kerman and Sanjay Kumar, plus guests) is superb, not showy, always at the service of the experimental approach to song structure - lots of convoluted instrumental passages that return almost miraculously to "refrains". Brilliant.” [Chris Blackford / Rubberneck]
„...."Mangate" is a minimalist, tape-manipulation piece created by Thomas DiMuzio. It has such a hypnotic effect, that I once missed my exit on the highway because that track had lulled me into a semi-trance. Very neat. Those first three tracks are my favorite part of the album, but it continues to maintain its high quality throughout. The ground it covers ranges from a barbershop quartet singing about barbers to philosophy about a bachelor fumbling his way through mending his own clothes. Plus there's a running theme throughout the album that has to do with horses - the one pictured on the cover, the track title "Roan" (which starts with galloping hoof beats), the rocker "Glue" ("in time, sugar and horses will both become glue") that starts with the trumpet call that begins horse races, etc. Even the album title is apparently meant to be the name of a famous race horse. The more I listen to this disc, the more layers and tie-ins to various themes I find.
This is definitely a highly recommended album, if you're a fan at all of prog's more experimental edges. For those looking to get their first 5uu's album, this would be a good place to start (if you can find it).” [Ground and Sky]
€14.00
Ski
One beautiful digitalized guitar-track with nice effects, soft and melodic!
“Since 1997 Chris Jeely (who is the man behind Accelera Deck) has utilized the guitar in a variety of settings, draping it over nimble breakbreats, or twisted in with IDM. Sometimes dropping all beats and picking up the acoustic guitar and (gasp!) singing. With the release of 2003’s album “Ipsissima Vox” and the lengthy ep “Sunstrings” in 2004, Chris focused on the extremes of guitar noise. Huge walls of sound, piercing digital feedback and general disregard for the eardrums of those in attendance at any of his shows became the norm. Accelera Deck was a complete live experience, and had most venue soundpersons nervously holding there breath, waiting for a speaker to blow. Chris just smiled and asked them to turn it up just a bit more! But now with this release Chris returns with a melodic directness, and extends the song “Ski” (which will appear in a different form on “Pop Polling”) into a decaying piece of delicate beauty. A very simple and effective guitar line slowly overlaps with other melodic fragments, all the sounds begin echoing, stuttering, and slowly fading from sight. An ephemeral piece that is comparable to the work of William Basinski, or Brian Eno for the digital age. Chris, when asked about this music, replied “I personally do not know how to ski, but I might like to learn how one day.”
€5.00
The Helical Word
Neues "experimental drone"-Projekt aus den USA mit hyper-abstrakten Klängen, metallisch-feedbackend & von halluzinogenem Flair..
"....Throughout the music is quite dark, but not atmospherical in the traditional dark ambient sense. As such his own description is quite appropriate. Not too noisy, not too academic or even too experimental, but Aemae treats a fine line between well defined genres and creates something that is indeed his own and that is these days quite an achievement." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
"...a gorgeous and exquisitely crafted abstract free noise drone record. dark and deliriously dense, a perfect amalgamation of the experimental dronework of the hafler trio, the sweeping skreescapes of sunrooof! and vibracathedral orchestra and the abstract minimalism of mirror or jonathan coleclough. as well, this has plenty of distinctly unique sonic elements. heavily reverbed chimes and bells are smeared into a twinkling fog, slowly thickening into a dense slab of electrical impulses, woven together so tightly it resembles a buzzing ball of hornets, a throbbing thrumming drone. strange steel drum like electronic pulses, an alien gamelan, pickes out a tranquil melody beneath swooping and blooping spaciness, sheets of industrial shuffle, scrape and rumble, leaving sparkling trails of dense and complex almost idm skitter in their wake, albeit wrapped in thick gauzy veils of warm reverberant flutter. all stretched into distant, soft focus soundscapes of warbling whir and creaking ambience. quite lovely and sublime!" [Aquarius Records]
"brandon nickell, a 23 year-old navigator of harsh synthetic and electronic seas known as aemae, shows his admirable will to construct new kinds of uneasy architectures. the eight pieces of "the helical word" form a pyrotechnic cycle of cascading incidents, timbral shifts and granular abrasions which move like creatures without a preconceived position in an undetermined system, finally finding a way to transform contraptions and extrapolations into rough elliptical shapes and dehydrated approximations of parallel galaxies. nickell starts everything from "a pure exercise in synthesis"; the mobile force of educated noise and a well planned mix, even in absence of natural sources, make this music live its life in full - no dead spots or dull moments. considering the next-to-nil significance of most of today's electronica, not bad at all." [massimo ricci - touching extremes]
€13.00
Humanity needs no Funeral
From the new wave of 'apocalyptic' or 'doom/death industrial' bands surely one of most interesting and impressive projects, AERE AETERNUS build a de-humanized soundtrack full of dark drones, over-expressive tortured voices, and devastating sounds. There is no light in this hellish Miasma, imagine SLEEP CHAMBER meeting LUSTMORD meeting dark HYBRYDS... The CD Version has video-track as bonus !
"Humanity Needs No Funeral", the first full-length album from AERE AETERNUS, was released on the French label Kaosthetik. With a multi-national and eclectic lineup, the band comprises Alex (MACABRE OMEN, THE ONE, RAZOR OF OCCAM), Claudio Alcara (FROSTMOON ECLIPSE, STROSZEK), Cyr (DARK SANCTUARY, ELKTRONIK SCIETY) and Radu. Drawing on the wide range and considerable musical experience of its members, AERE AETERNUS creates a dark, disturbing atmosphere that probably best fits within the ambient and minimalist genres, and which the band themselves describe as "half misanthropic ritual and half sex ritual." The dominant atmosphere combines a sense of impending insanity with sexual deviancy and a large dollop of occultism, creating a dark and troubling misanthropic sojourn that is relatively unique. The final track is probably the most musical, as it is centred on a guitar arpeggio, but no such concessions to convention are present elsewhere on this deeply troubling disk. The accompanying video (CD version ONLY) of "Invocation" shows a Satanic ritual in all its kitchsy glory. Recommended for those looking for something a darker than the usual entities. "When Dark Ambient meets Industrial Deviance" [label info]
€14.00
Faking Gold and Murder
"... Diese drei Urprinzipien, das sind hier gleichermaßen STEPHEN O'MALLEY (SUNN O))), KTL), DANIEL O'SULLIVAN (GUAPO) und VINCENT DE ROGUIN (SHORA), die sich mit ihrem neuen Werk nun ein drittes Mal im Æthenor zusammenfinden und mit “Faking Gold And Murder” ein dunkles Manifest alchemistischer Transmutationen niederlegen. Begleitet wird das Trio von den beiden Perkussionisten NICOLAS FIELD und ALEX BABEL, dem Gitarristen ALEXANDER TUCKER und dem hier bereits als ANOK PE auftretenden DAVID TIBET. Was immer sich aus dieser Zusammensetzung bereits herleiten ließe, nichts bereitet einen wirklich auf diese von okkulter Ritualistik geprägten Kompositionen vor, durchsetzt von Tibets apokalyptischen Inkantationen. Tosend setzt in dem ersten der vier übergangslosen und unbenannten Kapitel ein Schlagwerkgewitter ein, umbrodelt von den unterirdisch anmutenden Klängen des Keyboards und der Gitarre, während Tibet zu sphärischen Klängen des Beckens und des Glockenspiels seine mitunter zweistimmig intonierten albtraumhaften Visionen in die Komposition hineinwebt, nur um nach einigen Minuten wieder vom zeremoniell anmutenden Lärmen der Perkussionisten übertönt zu werden. Selbst in seinen leisesten Momenten ist das Ganze so komplex und durchdacht arrangiert, dass es an keiner Stelle seine hypnotisierende Wirkung einbüßt. Längst hat vollkommen unbemerkt das zweite Stück begonnen, traumhaft übergleitend in minimal intonierten Ambient, der nach und nach mit dem Einsatz der regengleichen Klänge des Rhodes und eines anhaltenden Drones an Intensität weiter zunimmt, bis Tibet das Stück mit einer wie aus weiter Ferne gesprochenen Passage zu einem von tiefen Bassfrequenzen dominierten düsteren Ende führt. Spätestens mit dem Beginn des dritten Kapitels wird man gewahr, dass dies alles unaufhörlich in einem stärker werdenden Sog in eine Tiefe zieht, deren Boden unabsehbar geworden ist und in der man längst die Orientierung verloren hat. Eine durch wellenartig geschlagene Handtrommeln aufgebaute Spannung liefert hier die Grundstimmung für die Verstörendste von Tibets Inkantationen, unterstützt und bald überrollt vom infernalischen Rumpeln und Brausen des Schlagwerks und der anderen Instrumente, sich verdichtend zu einem vor apokalyptischer Brachialgewalt starrendem Ende. Wie in einem Nachwort endet mit dem vierten Kapitel das Album im erdigen Drone des Harmoniums und sphärisch darüber flirrenden Keyboardklängen, die den Hörer, zu Tibets fast schon gesprochenem Epilog, auf eine beruhigende Weise erden und das erste Mal nach 35 Minuten wieder frei durchatmen lassen. “Faking Gold And Murder” ist ein für den aufmerksamen Zuhörer ungemein lohnenswertes Machwerk. Wer sich darauf einlässt, dem offenbaren sich die komplexen Kompositionen in einer an Greifbarkeit grenzenden Dimensionalität, der hat Teil an einem archaischen Ritual von schauderhafter Schönheit, gekonnt in Szene gesetzt durch das mal fragile, mal tosende Zusammenspiel der Musiker und intoniert von Tibets geisterhaften Deklamationen. Letztere sind es auch, die “Faking Gold And Murder” eine Dimension verleihen, die die beiden Vorgänger nicht aufweisen konnten und das Album so zum eingängigsten und wertvollsten aller bisherigen Æthenor-Alben machen." [Stefan O. / NONPOP]
"Third earth shattering outing for Vincent De Roguin (Shora), Stephen O'Malley (Sunn0))), KTL) and Daniel O'Sullivan (Guapo). For Faking Gold and Murder, the core trio is joined by percussionists Nicolas Field and Alex Babel, as well as renown guitarist Alexander Tucker and the inimitable David Tibet. Faking Gold is Æ’s heaviest outing, driven by a weighty low end and the full fury of Babel and Field’s free-wheeling drums. The trio’s electronics, guitar, Rhodes, and organ ride the waves of sound in a tightly-controlled blare, leaving plenty of space for Tibet’s declarations of the mystical and supernatural. Tibet is on top form here, rising out of the tempest at just the right moment, almost plain-spoken in places – grounding the squall at times, voicing the apocalypse at others.
“Brooding, primeval, dark alchemical epics are full of a ferocious intensity, sounding more like a starlit night being ripped open by lightning than a musical group. Intelligent and primal, like a dæmonic workshop, battering up Pandemoniums and dreaming of gold and murder, Æthenor are spectacular.”- David Tibet
Cover design by Nicola Todeschini and Vincent De Roguin. CD is in a tri-fold letterpress folio, printed on heavy black art paper by Stumptown. Deluxe LP is 180 gram, pressed at RTI, in letterpress cover on heavy black art stock by Stumptown, with custom gold on black inner. Cut by John Golden. A fantastic sounding and looking item." [label info]
www.vhfrecords.com
€20.50
Gezieferreigen
»Blauholz« ist ein Buch von Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg, gelesen von Lippstueck. Henry Marcuse »Eros y Civilisación«, gelesen von jayrope. Mittschnitt der Radio-Sendung »Biesentales« auf Cashmere-Radio vom 06.01.2018
Musik
Daniel Bjarnason »Over light earth«
Murcof & Philippe Petit »The call of Circé« *
Ju..rgen Ploog »Tapes von unterwegs 1971-1976«
Murcof & Philippe Petit »The call of Circé« *
jayrope [live] »Einerlirre«
Pauline Oliveros & Musiques Nouvelles »Four meditations for orchestra«
Dead Mauriacs »Nouvelles fonctions exotiques« *
Songs of Norway »Inner arms and legs«
Felix »As blue as your eyes lover«
jayrope [live] »Zweierfrei«
Column One »Cherokee«
Felix »What i learned from TV«
Dead Mauriacs »Nouvelles fonctions exotiques« *
Dan Hayurst »Great day atonal soda«
Ellen Fullman & Konrad Sprenger »No home«
Murcof & Philippe Petit »The call of Circé« *
Dimitris Petsetakis »The prophecy«
jayrope [live] »Eisglas«
Musik erscheint hier mit Zustimmung der Künstler, insbesondere Murcof & Philippe Petit »First Chapter« [Aagoo Sec./Rev Lab.]
* Ausschnitt
Lippstueck und jayrope danken Cashmere Radio, Berlin, Robert Schalinski und den Musikern und Autoren.
Coverbilder
Jan Focke
Vorderseite: »Picknick« 2015, Öl auf Leinwand, 120 x 150 cm; Innenseite: »Haus mit Leuten« 2016, Öl auf Leinwand, 140 x 180 cm
www.molokoplusrecords.de/finder.php?folder=Label&content=76
€13.00
Sometime, never
Following on from his critically acclaimed False Positives and Editions Mego collaborations with E.G. Lewis of Wire / Dome, ex-pat Scotsman and long-time resident of Hiroshima Paul Thomsen Kirk delivers his fourth album—ten tracks full of atmospheric, powerful, beat-driven, electronic-based compositions. From the persuasively percussive-led to dark ambient soundscapes to sleazy, wide-screen, full-on, bass-bin rumblings, Sometime, Never has it all… just because. “[A] meld of post-punk toxic ambient angst (à la Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire) with contemporary rhythmic models…. Akatombo is big on alienation and … generally conveys a feeling of being close-up to events and places while at the same time feeling disconnected and uncomprehending of them…. [A] brilliantly compelling, adrenalin-soaked antidote to the tranquil hedonism into which electronica has been too apt to lapse in recent years.” —David Stubbs, Resident Advisor “[Paul Kirk’s] beatscapes hearken back to the industrial pioneers of the mid-’80s, but his sound is decidedly contemporary, a mix of drums, bass, bleached tones and samples that veer from dub to club…. The best tracks display more than mood; they reverberate with sass.” —Richard Allen, A Closer Listen “A killer collection of programmed beats, layered samples, dark atmospheres, thick guitars, and droney-ambience, sounding at times like Muslimgauze, or like a more chill Necro Deathmort, or one of those bands who might have shared a compilation with Techno Animal or Sidewinder back in the day. The vibe is definitely on the isolationist tip, murky and claustrophobic, the beats are crunchy and caustic, more often lurching and lumbering than skittering or shuffling, and those beats are set amidst thick swells of grim sinister ambience, and blackened late-night atmospheres….. A sort of dubbed out downtempo dance music that’s not so much for dancing, but lurking, hanging out in the shadows, in empty clubs in empty cities, everything crumbling and decayed, a seriously dystopic soundtrack for some wasted scorched earth future.” —Aquarius
€13.00
Saturno o Cipolla
Erinnert sich noch jemand an die hervorragende französische “Rock”-Band (Rock im Geiste von THIS HEAT wohlgemerkt) namens BÄSTARD? Dies ist das äußerst empfehlenswerte erste Solo-Album des ehemaligen BÄSTARD-Mitglieds ERIC ALDEA, der sich hier in drone-ambiente Gefilde begibt und ein meisterliche Atmosphären & Sounds erzeugt, betörende Drones mit orientalen Blasinstrumenten, Resonanz-Loop-Schichten verschmelzen mit field recordings, glitchig-fremdartige Frequenzfelder tauchen auf, getaucht in warme Klangfarben ... bester deep Ambient & atmospheric Electronic! BIOSPHERE meets ZOVIET FRANCE meets GLITCH.?
“Eric Aldéa was a member of Lyons based post rockers Bästard, whose collaborators included Chicago luminaries Bundy Brown and Casey Rice, and was previously in industrial hardcore merchants Deity Guns. His first solo record betrays few of those influences though; compiled from various pieces written for dance company La Baraka, Saturno o Cipolla ? delivers a warm, organic take on experimental ambient electronics. Aldéas approach is informed more by the lo-fi layering of industrial types like Zoviet France or the tapeloop outings of Fripp & Eno than by the cut 'n paste glitchscapes beloved by the average bald bloke with a Powerbook, though we do get a bit of digital snap crackle n blip on a couple of pieces. Elsewhere Aldéa delicately weaves together shortwave transmissions, field recordings and acoustic instrumentation with rarely heard skill. While countless TV advertised ambient compilations may promise to, er, take the listener on a journey, Aldéas gradual unfolding of his pieces seems to do just that. The thirteen minutes of "02" are especially seductive; opening with a chatter of shortwave crackles and bleeps, an opressive string figure repeats itself to be swept away by a held, suspended chord flecked with bowed double bass harmonics and gurgling synthetics. A phone goes off somewhere; footsteps are briefly heard. A gentle synth loop fires up eventually to be overrun by glassy digital tones and telex bleeps which swarm and multiply before abruptly fading. Here Aldéa's manipulation of acoustic space recalls David Toop and Max Eastleys classic Buried Dreams, though is less likely to give you nightmares. Less successfully, "03" and "04" stray into more conventional electronica territory, with looped sinewave drones, clicks and metallic synthbursts piling up and receding in typical minimal art techno fashion. The closing trio of pieces save the day though; revolving around mournful, muted strings, alternately decorated with bubbling analogue synth, dolorous cello and distant xylophone figures, they evoke a calm tinted with a vague sense of unease, like seeing a single black cloud in a summer sky.Immersive, often beautiful and with a slightly ungraspable quality that makes you want to stick it on again as soon as its finished, Saturno o Cipolla ? may well turn out to be one of the records of the year...” [Peter Mash, BBC website]
€13.00
Disappearing in a Mirror
talian sound artist GIULIO ALDINUCCI drops his 2nd album on Karl: “Disappearing In A Mirror” is again a truly masterfully composed and sound-designed ambient masterpiece and a more than worthy follow-up to the critically acclaimed “Borders And Ruins” which made it onto several year’s best lists for 2017.
Over the course of four solo albums on labels like DRONARIVM plus EPs and collaborative albums (a.o. with IAN HAWGOOD), GIULIO ALDINUCCI successively has been refining his skills as composer and sound designer. His elegant style which blends ambient and field recordings came to full impact on his 2017 album “Borders And Ruins” which gained the Italian sound artist a lot of critical praise and made it onto several year’s best lists, a.o. Acloserlisten.com. ALDINUCCI’s latest effort is again not only a musical masterpiece of sublime beauty and sacral majesty, it also deals with philosophical concerns. Where “Borders …” was a reflection on the instability of borders - borders as an extreme attempt to discriminate and rationalize that turns into a source of chaos and cultural ruins on both sides - and their impact on the relationship between people and territory, “Disappearing In A Mirror” raises the very personal question of identity. In the words of ALDINUCCI himself:
“ ‘Disappearing In A Mirror’ focuses on the fluidity of the identity concept, highlighting the harmonious coexistence of contradictory elements and the transitional features that characterize every transformation. It is a reflection on the current situation of change and disruption and at the same time it is a gaze into the human timeless soul and its inner soundscapes.”
https://karlrecords.bandcamp.com/album/disappearing-in-a-mirror
"Apart from his various collaboration and split releases, Disappearing In A Mirror is Giulio Aldinucci's follow-up to 2017’s Borders and Ruins, and it is his second release for Karl Records. If you thought Borders And Ruins depicted a rather dark view on the state of the world, you’d better be ready for this new album. “Where [Borders and Ruins] was a reflection on the instability of borders and their impact on the relationship between people and territory, 'Disappearing In A Mirror' raises the very personal question of identity." Aldinucci manages to create a sonic version of a hall of mirrors, where you can get completely disoriented from the images of yourself trying to find a way out. In a striking combination of gritty distorted sounds and distant orchestral and choral arrangements that sound like a stretched Beethoven symphony, the first two tracks present a frightening dystopic view. But from there, Aldinucci [somewhat] restores the balance with 'Notturno Toscano', as if he doesn’t want to scare the listener too much. But even in this track the intensity slowly increases again. There’s no way out of the mirror maze, it seems… "Disappearing In A Mirror focuses on the fluidity of the identity concept, highlighting the harmonious coexistence of contradictory elements and the transitional features that characterize every transformation. It is a reflection on the current situation of change and disruption and at the same time it is a gaze into the human timeless soul and its inner soundscapes." If the sweat in the palms of my hand is an indicator of emotional intensity, this album definitely belongs on the top the list!" [Headphone Commute]
€13.00
Real
Italian sound artist Giulio Aldinucci returns with his fourth album on Karlrecords: Real is again a truly masterfully composed and sound-designed ambient masterpiece and a more than worthy follow-up to the critically acclaimed Borders And Ruins (2017), Disappearing In A Mirror (KR 055CD, 2018), and Shards Of Distant Times (KR 076CD/LP), which all made it onto several year's best lists. With now his fourth album for Karlrecords, the sound artist from Siena, Italy has proved a steady and prolific artist on the label roster. And each time, Giulio Aldinucci delivers a new ambient masterpiece that clearly carries his signature as composer/producer and yet reveals a slightly different approach to his modus operandi. Aldinucci's massive layers of sound, built from field recordings and an array of electronic gear, blend drone-y ambient with heavenly voices/sacred music that create an atmosphere of a consolatory melancholy -- alien, but with a graspable presence of human souls. And each album deals with a topic that Aldinucci came across in his observations of and reflections about today's society. In the words of Giulio himself: "The digital media we live with shape and define reality by filtering it, letting us run the risk of living without our personal and unique one. My new album expresses a need of something unmediated and authentic. Real is a reflection on the endless possibility of sonic transformation, the ability we have to create new realities transmuting the soundscape around us and the inner soundscape inside us, even only by imagining it. A (deep)real experience permeated by dreamy lyricism." 180 gram vinyl; gatefold sleeve; includes download card.
https://karlrecords.bandcamp.com/album/real
€18.50
Bureau
Matteo Uggeri : Field Recordings and Beats
Giulio Aldinucci : Field Recordings and Drones
In 2016 Matteo Uggeri took hundreds of pictures during his working days in 70’s building aimed at training and desk work located in the surroundings of Milan
Later that winter the photographs served as inspiration for this album themed on alienation of offices working life. Tracks are based on outdoor field recordings
looped, treated and re-shaped in order to be transformed into beats,rhythms, (Matteo) drones and melodies (Giulio)
https://adnrecords.com/album/giulio-aldinucci-matteo-uggeri-bureau/
"An emotionally absorbing, vibrant and sensitive personal voyage
Matteo Uggeri is one multifaceted and emblematic sound/noise designer artist from Italy—also one founder member of the chamber post-rock collective Sparkle in Grey. His usual signature can be described as composite ambient sceneries where sonic textures meet story-telling minimal sketches and expanding downtempo vibes.
In this new release he collaborates with Giulio Aldinucci, who is a seducing and creative electroacoustic soundscaper whose production (in solo or in collaboration, notably with Francesco Giannico) is largely recognized in the DIY indie community with a fancy for mesmeric, chilled-out then discreet electronic ambient music.
Bureau is an emotionally absorbing, vibrant and sensitive personal voyage through a vast array of emotions, tone colors, flexible tones and kinetic electronic impulses. This is mostly one electronic and ambient-centered atmospheric album with a stylistic inclination for hypnotic organic textures (as in the ravishing “Fire Dome”) and minimal-tinged chilled out soundscapes with more abstract sounds and airy clicks and cuts (in “Inceneritore” “Ghiaccio”), even flirting with glitch-esque vibes (“Ghiaccio”) and hauntology (in the eerie and weirdly “Zoo”).
An easily recommended listening and catchy electronic effort to consider if you are into post-minimal techno, IDM and syncretic ambient waves. Somewhere between Christian Fennesz, Microstoria, Oval, Hecq, and Beequeen."
[Philippe Blache (Igloo Magazine) August 23, 2020]
"Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had already registered the return of ADN Records, erstwhile a cassette label with some great releases (New 7th music, Amok, Pascal Comelade, Bourbonese Qualk etc) in the 80s. They were called (not by me) the Italian version of Recommended Records. They have come back, already some time ago and picked up on a generation of ‘younger’ musicians. Matteo Uggeri took hundreds of photos of his workplace in a ’70s building and that became the inspiration for this work with Giulio Aldinucci. They both use field recordings, but Aldinucci melts the re-processed field recordings into drones and Uggeri into beats. These beats should not be understood as a bunch of big 4/4 rhythms, but minimalist drum patterns of a dark nature. It fits the ditto dark drones as produced by Aldinucci, that are sometimes pretty straight forward sustaining clouds of sound, but most of the time also add a small melodic touch to them. I have no idea where these field recordings were made, only recognizing the fanfare on the street in ‘Chinese New Year‘ and some wind/rain/water sounds in other pieces, or vast empty parking space. Sometimes the beats produced by Uggeri seem almost absent, such as in ‘Inceneritore‘, but maybe they are even more spaced out here. I think it is quite a clever move to work with field recordings in the way these gentlemen do; just treating them into big chunks of abstract ambient music has been done quite enough, but adding minimalist rhythms and re-shaping field recordings into lovely chunks of melodic ambient is also perhaps not unique, but it is not done to death yet (at least, not that I know) and as such, this is a great album." Frans De Waard (Vital Weekly n. 1246)
€13.00
Hora Aurea
Zwei neue ALIO DIE – Stücke auf dieser 10”, wie sie entrückt meditativer kaum sein könnten... ganz sanft und doch mit vielen interessanten Sounds gespickt, breiten sich magische Drones repetitiv aus, betäubend wie schweres Perfüm...
“SmallVoices proudly presents the new ALIO DIE work entitled "AUREA HORA". Two exclusive tracks of evocative magmatic soundscapes in the typical atemporal Alio Die aim. The two completely new recordings (with drones, loops, zither and integrated radionoises from an old Valvular model) are similar to early Alio Die experiments or one of his best albums "Sol Niger". Catching atmospheres will bring you in Stefano's magic world, which is an oneiric, dreaming journey to the inner self satisfaction...” [label description]
€12.50
Aura Seminalis
Auf AURA SEMINALIS verwendet ALIO DIE vokales und chorales Material, welches elektronisch verfremdet oder mit elektronischen Effekten angereichert wird. Dabei entstehen zwei lange Stücke von unglaublicher Emotionalität und Tiefe, frei fliessend & sanft wirbelnd um imaginäre Zentren....Die sakralen Choräle verschmelzen auf eine einmalige Art und Weise mit akustisch-elektronischen Sound, vielleicht das beste ALIO DIE -Album bisher, auf jeden Fall aufregend anders als vorherige Arbeiten !
"The new work by Alio Die it is part of the Castle's sonorisation series, titled AURA SEMINALIS. The first track 'Sine Tempore part I-III' it's an epicentre of mystic music carachterized by a gold cathedral's atmosphere, while 'Aura Seminalis part I-II' displays an ascensional soundworld of arcane purity and rare beauty. One of the best works by Alio die so far. CD packaged in an elegant three sides digipack!! HSL 045" [label info]
"This latest release in a recent outpouring of creativity from Italy's master of organic drones is possibly the most unique in this artist's long career as a sound sculptor. While most of his recent releases on his own Hic Sunt Leones label have been collaborations, this is his first solo effort since the release of the 10 inch vinyl Aurea Hora. As the elaborate Renaissance style artwork on the cover suggests, this music points in the direction of a more "classical" sound insofar as the utilization of Gregorian style chants. These are successfully incorporated into Musso's customary drones comprised of field recordings, acoustic instruments, and electronic processing, giving this disc a particularly reverent ambience. Don't think Enigma or Delerium, because as one listens to this they may be inclined to bow their head and meditate or pray rather than nod or chill. I imagine that if today's sound recording abilities were available during those times evoked by the artwork or chants, they too would have then added the organic elements that Alio Die does, creating a balance of both the heavenly and the earthbound. Fans of his music may or may not find this approach a departure from what they are accustomed to, but it is certain that this artist is going beyond his previous huge body of work to encompass a broader sonic pallette." [Pauldient / Discogs.com]
https://aliodie.bandcamp.com/album/aura-seminalis
€15.00
Circo Divino
"This is the first collaboration by ambient master Alio Die with soundscape creator Parallel Worlds. The unique sound achieved could be described as a hybrid sonic world, made out of bouncing electrons and air vibrations. The modular machines of Parallel Worlds are merged with the acoustic instrumentation and drones of Alio Die, joined by the ethereal voice of the Polish vocalist/composer India Czajkowska, resulting in a surreal, yet down to earth, listening experience. The compositions, being, at times, minimal and calm and, at other times, full of mystical darkness and microsound elements, take the listener into a place were mental and physical boundaries have no need to exist.
The beautiful Digipack artwork is by the painter Romanie Sanchez.
Tracks:
1 Lost Fractales
2 Circo Divino
3 Nuvole di Palissandro
4 Sorinel
5 Electrostatic Forest
6 Slide of Grace
All tracks composed and produced by Bakis Sirros and Stefano Musso
(BMI) between 2008 and 2009, in Milan, Italy and Athens, Greece.
Parallel Worlds : Doepfer A100 modular, Serge Modular Music System, AS Integrator modular, Metalbox/CGS modular, modified Oberheim 4-Voice, modified EMS VCS3, String machines, Tape Echoes, Tone & CV generators, wave shapers and modifiers.
Alio Die: Drones and Loops, Zither, Carillon, Effects and Treatments.
Voice and effects on tracks 1,3,4 by India Czajkowska recorded in Verezzi, Italy.
Mastering by Stefano Musso at Temple Studio, Milan.
Cover pictures by Romanie Sanchez
www.romanie.net" [label info]
www.aliodie.com
€15.00
Angel's Fly Souvenir
Immer wieder kollaboriert ALIO DIE mit neuen, uns noch unbekannten Musikern und schafft so eine Erweiterung seines typischen Ambient-Trance-Stils .... hier besonders bemerkenswert die vollen Zither-Sounds und ost-europäische Choräle, die wunderbar eingebunden werden...
“ 'Angel's Fly Souvenir': a CD by ALIO DIE & FRANCESCO PALADINO with contributes by IN GOWAN RING and JACK OR JIVE An album out of any definition, music at the same time dreamy and deep, a concrete and ethereal journey, born from the pleasure to experiment, the project was starting from acoustic sounds and voices recorded throw a long tube with zither loops, flutes, and different sonorous objects not identified at all and from the 'nose' sounds by Francesco Paladino. The album contains seven tracks, two of that are enriched by the epic collaboration track with In Gowan Ring in 'Ancient Consciousness of the End', and with the voice by Chako of Jack or Jive in 'Flowing Out from the Core of the Mountain'.
Francesco Paladino apart from his passion with video art, it's active in music from early seventies and was a member of Doubling Riders.
The recordings of Angel's Fly Souvenir were started in spring 2003, and now the Cd is finally come out to the light, with its bright and dark abisses, and its own night meditations.” [label description]
€13.50
The Threshold of Beauty
"On their second collaboration, these cult Italian musicians create an hour of meditative dream-infused soundscapes and beatless mystical textures. Following their 2015 Projekt album Holographic Codex, Alio Die (with 65 releases) and Lorenzo Montanà (with 17 releases) come together for six tracks of deep ambient soundscaping, intersecting a potent alchemical brew of pure organic sounds.
The threshold of beauty is a transcendental vision of beauty as an integral part of the cosmos. The connections of the music with nature and human spirituality are mixed in an ineffable picture that create a contemplative frame of mind.
The recordings started with Alio Die performing on a psaltery (an ancient medieval instrument like a dulcimer but played by plucking the strings) augmented with real time electronic improvisations & processing by Lorenzo. The tracks were then edited by Alio Die adding layers, additional effects and loops to complete the expansive ritualistic tapestry.
Undeniably calming and moving, the breathing slows, the mind quiets and opens. As the introspective ambience washes over the listener, a naturalistic dronescape unfolds with alluring aural scenarios of evolving, intimate sounds.
* Alio Die has over 65 releases, 7 on America’s Projekt Records and others on his own Hic Sunt Leones label. Montanà recorded 5 collaborations with Pete Namlook on Pete’s German FAX label, plus released 12 solo albums with various European imprints.
Limited edition of 500, May 31 2019"
https://projektrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-threshold-of-beauty
€15.00
The Sleep of Seeds
Sehr entspannte Drone-Improvisationen praktisch ohne elektronische Sounds.. eine weitere neue VÖ von ALIO DIE, hier in Zusammenarbeit mit SAFFRON WOOD.
“ The title is also the opening track of this macroscopic journey into a world which spontaneously engages us when we travel through it. A link between life and earth, a passageway between time and change. A melodius itinerary in which a time hourglass often makes no sense but only the sound of articulated and fragmentary notes...50 minutes between a seed and a grain of soil to wander into an infinite space while listening to a far away earth longing sound. Recorded in Savona Italy august 2002, with different flutes, tubes, accordion, various objects, rattles, shells, bells... Drones and loops, effects, editing and mastering on Pro-tools, at Temple studio Milano spring 2003. All the Cds comes in a special artwork compositions with tissues leaves, seeds...” [label description]
€14.00
I may never see you again
Iranian composer and Kamancheh virtuoso, Saba Alizadeh releases his new album "I May Never See You Again"on the newly founded Hamburg label 30M Records.
Born in Tehran in 1983 to world-renowned tar and setar virtuoso and composer Hossein Alizadeh, Saba Alizadeh studied the Iranian Kamancheh – an ancient Persian violin – becoming one of the foremost players of the instrument of this day. Alizadeh later studied experimental sound art with Mark Trayle at the California Institute of the Arts and inspired by the conceptual approaches taught there, started composing music that deconstructs and abstracts Iranian traditions and scales into a new musical language and style.
Influenced by Iranian harmonics, musique concrète and sophisticated, forward-looking beat science, Saba Alizadeh's "I May Never See You Again" represent an incredibly exciting act of mutual inspiration - when Iranian scales and Western electroacoustic understanding powerfully unite.
The nine predominantly instrumental tracks on the album fuse tradition and innovation inspiring meditations on the subject of memory. On the one hand, the credibility and resilience of one's own memory is musically dissected, whilst on the other hand, Saba Alizadeh proceeds conceptually, deploying erstwhile dictators’ speeches in his music as a means to question the course of history.
I May Never See You Again also features handpicked collaborations with musician Andreas Spechtl and electroacoustic sound artist Rojin Sharafi. Spechtl, singer of the band Ja, Panik, found fame in the German-speaking world primarily thanks to his song lyrics, in which he deconstructs words in a similarly abstract way as Saba Alizadeh does the music.
Spechtl joins Alizadeh on two tracks for the album, while Vienna-based Iranian Sharafi joins on one.
https://30m-records.bandcamp.com/album/i-may-never-see-you-again
€24.50
Theseus vs. Luz Alibi
"Liz Allbee's second full length solo unwinds a cozily misanthropic sonic cloth with hidden barbs sure to draw blood. Each track treads further into unnerving terrain: sonar-pings dizzy your ears, unknown nursery rhymes warble from an abandoned tongue, a blur of wings beating in phase consumes all perception until a flat drum slowly summons resplendent horns and vocals rising to dump the entire hell onto its back.
Fasten a thread to one finger, but dare to take yourself inside "Theseus vs." Limited edition of 350, packaged in a handmade silk screened box." [label info]
www.resipiscent.com
"As a women is Liz Allbee, who lives in Berlin and her instruments are trumpet, electronics and voice. You might perhaps jump to the conclusion that Allbee comes from the world of improvisation and that's where she operates. That is only partially true. There is a lot happening on this CD: perhaps somehow, somewhat based in improvisation, but there is so much more, above all: its musical. Sometimes one gets the impression that Allbee wants to play a poptune. I have no idea what her electronics are about but no doubt some form of loopdevice to create rhythms. Perhaps using her voice, perhaps her trumpet, or perhaps there is some rudimentary form of a drum computer. But I think she loops more than just that: also her voice, also her trumpet and thus forms little melodies around she improvises her work. Maybe that seems an odd combination but its one that works surprisingly well. At times a bit noisy, at other times more like serious avant-garde, but always keen to add that (small) pop
angle. The tracks are short and to the point. A bit sketch-like perhaps, but due to the variety of approach this is a highly enjoyable and well succeeded hybrid of styles, with Allbee doing something that is surely her own." [FdW, Vital Weekly]
€16.00
Xerrox Vol. 4
"Alva Noto returns to his much awaited Xerrox project with Vol. 4, the fourth installment of the five-piece intended series based on the concept of digital replication of source material.
Using the process of copying as a basis, the Xerrox series deals with the manipulation of data by means of endless reproduction. Due to the inherent fallacy of the procedure involving the making of copies made from other copies, everyday’s sounds become so altered that they can be hardly associated with the source material. As a result, entirely new sounds are created: copies of originals become originals themselves.
Following Xerrox Vol. 1 (2007), Vol. 2 (2009), Vol. 3 (2015), Carsten Nicolai continues the pentalogy eluding the accuracy and precise sound design for which he’s renowned, and turning to a more harmony-driven composition technique.
Unlike the previous Xerrox albums, whose starting point is a set of samples extracted from external sources and fragments of recordings, Vol. 4 compounds under a unified cinematic soundscape, warm chords, thrumming digital ambiences, liquified electronics, drones, and noise sustained by floods of strings. The tension between the organic warmth and static curves, broads tones into distant roars and electronic cascade of sounds.
While Alva Noto's oeuvre is predominantly affiliated with pristine sound design, Xerrox holds more intimate gestures and emotional sensibility. This fourth volume shuns further from the conceptualism and orderliness of prior musical outputs, ranging from heart-warming elegies to mind-bending sci-fi projections in extrasolar territories." [label info]
"It took five years for Carsten Nicolai to release the third volume to his five-part series Xerrox, and it took five more to release the fourth. At this rate, it will be 2025 when we will see the final chapter. Although there are rumblings on the intarwebs that the fourth instalment, which should be depicting the letter 'X' again of the typeface 'XERROX', is actually the first one, with the same image on the cover. I guess we'll have to wait and see. Meanwhile, one of the reasons for an interval in between the volumes can be attributed to the split between the Raster and Noton labels, which occurred in 2017, after the Raster-Noton's 20th anniversary. So, although a keen eye may notice that this particular entry in the series appears on another label, the continuity between the music, artwork, layout, packaging, and pretty much everything else, is still intact. For that we thank thee. Whereas Volume 1 was attributed to the "Old World", Volume 2 "To The New World", and Vol. 3 was "Towards Space", this fourth instalment is subtitled as "Transit Extrasolar Territories And Inner Worlds". So the trajectory is further and out, and so are the sounds, depicted within.
This fourth instalment is even more 'ambient', if one may call it that. Gone are the digital structures, copied with all of the artefacts of the process, and replaced with warm swells of organic-sounding strings, which breathe with the punctuating deep bass. I would have almost expected the opposite, as we flew into the extrasolar regions of our universe - something darker, colder, and void. But upon another reflection, fundamental sonic expressions within the fourteen pieces of the album totally make sense, since it is the human world, of the old and new worlds, that occupies within the digital domain. The rest of the creation is beyond the numbers. And yet... if digital emerged from minds and will of humans, is it not part of the organic? This, and many other questions, can be but glimpsed by travelling onboard with Alva Noto, who intricately weaves an aural frame which is by far his best in series.
Of course, I've got all of the four instalments on CD, and have aligned them all to spell out "XERRO..." but at this point, I'm leaning towards grabbing a 2x12" edition of the album, since its vibrations and pure chime must be experienced through surface listening. It's also worth noting, that this album was originally finished in February, just as the pandemic began to unfold across the globe. And, as my dear friend Peter van Cooten notes on his ambientblog writeup, "this means that the emotional impact of this music is different now than it would have been without the COVID-19 crisis," with which I wholeheartedly agree. Xerrox Vol.4 is an album worth listening to on numerous continuous repeats, and if you prefer, you can lie down and turn off the lights. And as you float out of these outer worlds and through your inner, I hope to see you on the other side." [Headphone Commute]
€16.00
Live Knots
"Oren Ambarchi captured in two exceptional live performances. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M. Pressed on double 140g vinyl & CD. Photography by Traianos Pakioufakis and artwork by Bill Kouligas.
'Live Knots, Oren Ambarchi's first release for PAN, presents two live realizations of 'Knots', the epic centrepiece of his Audience of One (Touch, 2012) release. Built on the interplay between Ambarchi's swirling, guitar harmonics and the metronomic pulse and shifting accents of Joe Talia's DeJohnette-esque drumming, the piece merges the organic push and pull of free improvisation with an overarching compositional framework.
'Tokyo Knots' presents the complete recording of a duo performance of the piece by Ambarchi and Talia recorded at Tokyo's legendary SuperDeluxe in March 2013. The performance builds gently on the foundation of Talia's insistent ride cymbal and the shifting tonal bed of Ambarchi's rich overtone-drenched guitar, eventually going into a free rock free fall of buzz- saw harmonics and crashing drums. From within the maelstrom, Talia picks up a pulsing motorik rhythm that leads the piece back to where it began, with the addition of the shuddering, elastic tones of a hand-played spring reverb unit. Krakow Knots' works with the same basic structure but stretches it out to nearly twice the length and adds strings played by the Sinfonietta Cracovia, led by Eyvind Kang on viola. The strings expand the piece's textural range with lush chordal blocks, uneasy dissonances and occasional Ligetiesque swarms of micro-activity, the swelling string tones intensifying the ecstatic nature of the piece as it moves towards its mid-point crescendo in which Ambarchi unleashes a particularly malicious continuum of stuttering harmonic fuzz. The strings then enter with a series of swelling chords, announcing the piece's final movement, and reaffirming the uniqueness of the tonal and compositional language that Ambarchi has patiently developed over the last two decades, in which the influence of post-minimal composers such as Alvin Curran, Gavin Bryars and David Behrman can be felt alongside the inspiration of raw free jazz, harsh noise and academic psychoacoustics. The final moments of the performance pit Talia and Crys Cole's amplified objects and spring reverb textures against a field of gently gliding string glissandi before the audience erupts in much-deserved applause.' Francis Plagne" [label info]
www.pan-act.com
€29.00
Worried Friends
"october 2007 release; a pair of “piano music” pieces, acting as the debut collaborative single from two of contemporary experimental music’s most prolific/consistently rewarding practitioners; oren ambarchi and lasse marhaug... those of you expecting something on par with maurizio pollini’s reading of satie’s gnossiennes might be a little shocked to find instead a fierce 12+ minute inside-piano scrape-fest, hedged with bursts of live-electronic feedback & a “hot” fidelity familiar from any number of david tudor recordings... yet at the same time not too far removed from the new blockaders’ whole gesamtnichswerk; this is anti-music at its finest... not something for strict followers of oren’s friendly/subdued sine-guitar throb, nor lasse’s harsh wall of electronic sound; but definitely one for those whose preferences fall in the noisier end of the electro-acoustic composition/improv spectrum... "
[Mimaroglu]
www.picadisk.com
€8.00
Garden of Love
Nach langer Pause fünf neue Stücke von KRIS FORCEs Band; melodramatische, Kammermusik-artige Elegien wo ein klares Song-Gerüst aber immer zu erkennen ist, eingespielt mit Bass, Piano, Violine & Cello, Bläsern, Percussion, und dazu KRIS eindringliche Stimme;
zurückhaltend, slow, so einsam & verloren... bisher ihre ergreifenste, weil ausgereifste Veröffentlichung !
"San Francisco's Amber Asylum return with their first new recordings in nearly five years . Five dark, brooding chamber works of misanthropic resonance and chilling emotional beauty. A blackened neo-classical masterpiece following their previous recordings on Relapse and Neurot as well as their acclaimed collaborations with Neurosis, Swans and Jarboe amongst others. Just under half an hour of new recordings, featuring the bonus soundtrack recording, "Serenade"." [label notes]
www.paradigms-recordings.com
€10.00
Music for Film and Exhibition II
"Like baking a sweet cake or cooking an indian dish you need good ingredients and spices to get the right mouthfeel and the splendid flavor of your desire. 'Music for Film and Exhibition II' is just like that: a levelled declitre of raison d'être, a brimful tablespoon of Atomine Elektrine, a couple of teaspoons of Necrophorus and a little bit of this and little bit of that, mixed into a perfect blend of many tastes. Peter Andersson, well-known from projects like Raison d'être, Stratvm Terror, Necrophorus and Atomine Elektrine, shows here broad spectrum of sonic atmospheres, like if all of his different music projects were combined into one. From ambient-drone-textures and electronic chill-out to concrete sounds to even pure atmopsheric piano tunes. 'Music for Film and Exhibition II' is the sequel of 'Music for Film and Exhibition' (Yantra Atmospheres, 2007). While the previous output contains collected works from different exhibition projects and movies spanning from 1999-2005,
this sequel is focused on one single project; an exhibition. Peter Andersson has lately worked as a media producer at Swedish Air Force Museum and being involved with their new large permanent exhibiton about the Cold War.
Within this project Peter has worked with sound design and movie production in particular.
The sonic results are presented on 'Music for Film and Exhibition II'. Some of the tunes are used as soundtrack for exhibition movies while the main part are sonic atmospheres and soundscapes to create the ambience of the exhibition rooms. The music is presented here as stand alone productions, displaced from its original context. To fully experience the music in its environmental Raison d'être there is no other way but to travel to the Swedish Air Force Museum. Until then, you may enjoy the music on its own. The CD comes in a six panel digipak covered with beautiful Sunset painting by italian artist Christian Montagna/FLOODSart.
For same samples go here :
http://www.oldeuropacafe.com/main.php?nav=pd&prdct=10127" [label info]
www.oldeuropacafe.com
www.oldeuropacafe.com
€13.00
:existence
"
A U F A B W E G E N RELEASE INFO
cd-audio
releaae date: 25.05.2001
artist: ANEMONE TUBE
title: :EXISTENCE:
order no.: aatp09
time: 50:12 min
jewel case / 500 handnumbered copies / fold out colour insert
:existence: as a great mix between rumbling noise and floating ambience. four hasrh tracks and three more dense and collage like works make this a varied and thrilling listen!
tracklisting:
Flesh & Bombs (10:13)
Secondary Master (4:43)
Choke Down (5:41)
Existence (11:10)
Red Waves (5:56)
Continuity (4:08)
The Encounter III (8:19)
Anemone Tube was founded in Summer of 1996 by Stefan Hanser who felt the urge to express deeper personal feelings and dreams. The audioworks from Anemone Tube vary a lot along with the different means Stefan Hanser uses as
sound source and for manipulation and could easiest be described as industrial-, ambient- and noisescapes of organic and synthetic sounds. The use of constantly shifting and altering sounds and moods is possibly one of
the most intruiging things about the audio creations of Anemone Tube with the purpose of trying to put the listener into a delirious mental state, to irritate, torment and caress him no matter if in a positive or negative way:
to cause emotional reaction!
Over the years plenty of releases, several participations on compilations, split and
collaborational releases on tape, vinyl, cd and video have been realised by different labels worldwide such as Transfixional Entertainment/Ravensburg, AufAbwegen/Köln, Solipsism/USA, Loud!/Italy, Napalmed/Czech, Inner Space Records/USA and many more.
www.transformed.de/anemone.html" [original press release by AUF ABWEGEN]
"German ambient-industrial project Anemone Tube was formed in 1996, and has explored a variety of heavy noisescapes and rhythmic blocks of sound; the Tube's modus operandi has always seemed to focus on putting the listener into a state of delirium caused by constantly shifting sounds and tones sourced from assorted organic and synthetic sounds, and this approach has resulted in a stylistically diverse body of work over the years. On the debut full length Existence, a nearly hour-long disc released in a hand-numbered limited edition of 500 copies, Anemone Tube is at it's heaviest, constructing seven bulky tracks that move from gorgeous ambient dronescapes to crushing, loop-heavy walls of distortion and menacing melodic tracers undulating over grinding rhythmic throb, sort of like what I'd expect a collaboration between Wolf Eyes and Maurizio Bianchi to sound like, although you can also draw lines to Throbbing Gristle, SPK, and violent early UK power electronics when tracks like 'Choke Down' and 'The Encounter III" get into full swing and start obliterating speakers with ferocious torrents of factory distortion. I really dig the way that Existence manages to balance the haunting, atmospheric drones and buried deconstructed rhythms with the louder, brutal passages of rumbling machine filth, making this much easier to digest than many of Anemone Tube's peers. Packaged in an elegant jewel case with a large 10-panel booklet glowing in fiery, fractaled reds and oranges, imprinted with mysterious pictograms." [Crucial Blast]
€12.50
Golden Temple
"anemone tube’s third release of the 'suicide series' tetralogy is an immersive industrial music album and the most ambitious and complex work yet, a long-term project of no less than 6 years, pursuing a highly sophisticated approach full of cross-cultural and historical references. painting a sonic landscape, 'golden temple' is perfectly real and dreamlike at the same time, endorsing archaic, mythological and worldly ideals alike. beauty and evil, the profane and chaos, apocalypse and hope - anemone tube keeps account and observes the antagonist forces of life. composed of raw urban field recordings collected in japan and china, combined with layers of piercing feedback and sinister hovering synth melodies, 'golden temple' confronts you with an all-embracing atmosphere of aggrieving darkness and glorious harshness, fathoming the possibilities of the genre. to ensure due impact, it has been sharply engineered to perfection by mastermind james plotkin. pursuing radical psychological effects of sound, the 13+ minutes initiation 'l`homme et les sirenes' is a mind-bending journey into the human psyche, a slowly emerging sinister landscape evoking man’s intrinsic imbalance with (its own) nature, followed by the noisy debris and crushing buildup of 'apocalyptic fantasy' as well as 'tower of evil', which is the central piece of the album, conceptually and musically, multi-layered and sample-heavy, related to tokyo’s roppongi hills mori tower, which is regarded by natives as a symbol for the uninhibited commercialization of life. 'negation of myth' descends into a barren, metallic darkness, radiating an equivocal sense of melancholy, before 'sea of lights (golden temple)' ascends in sparkling brightness and divinity. the evanescent bleakness of 'anthropocene - the dark abyss of time' finishes the main part of the album on a perversely promising, almost calm, spiritual note. under the heading 'arcadia - dreamland and myth', which constitutes a coherent sequel to the album, anemone tube explores questions pertaining our longing for a return to the realms of myth and emotion. whereas the sinister seething 'i, death, rule even in arcadia' picks up the first piece’s topic of sirens and conjures up the dionysian reunion with the innermost depths of nature and chaos, the psychologically strenuous 'tojinbo - tranquil sea of equanimity' composed by radical sound artist dave phillips (switzerland, schimpfluch-gruppe), using field recordings of the country’s most notorious suicide spot, demands the ultimate choice: how far to go to find your peace of mind. after the purely fantastic 'dream landscape' conjuring up an apocalyptic vision and the dark, brooding landscape of 'death over china' slowly spreading as thick smog (as a consequence for china’s uncompromising economical and societal development causing irreparable environmental harm), the semi-fictional work 'golden temple' is the series’ logical sequel . it suggests a (meta)physical landscape, here in form of global cities and metropolises proudly and brightly soaring in darkness, and bestowing golden radiance and divine beauty. with its alluring metaphorical world of images, symbols and sounds it is the very symbol of our innermost longings, desires and fears and our attempts to escape from a disconcerting reality. the 'golden temple' is comforting and threatening at the same time: consoling as it promises to reveal the secrets of beauty, threatening as it becomes a mirror of our secret death wish. strongly influenced by pasolini’s cinematic masterpiece 'medea', which evolves around the subject matters of estrangement from traditional values, the loss of contact with the mythical and the sacred in an increasingly rationalized and consumerist society, anemone tube brings matters to a head with an invocation of religiously charged symbolism, with the 'golden temple' acting as more than a singular viewpoint, but as a meta-sign, functioning in its paramount acknowledgement and acceptance of complex, sometimes contradictory subject matter. supported by the use of ancient and contemporary imagery, literary and cinematic references reproduced in the lavish accompanying booklet anemone tube creates different narrative levels, juxtaposes contemporary western and long-standing asian culture, plays with symbolic meanings and values - however, while doing so, never takes an unequivocal stand. anemone tube with his varied interests and approaches always strives to present a holistic work of art, and 'golden temple' works on many levels accordingly. the considered use of field recordings and samples, the arrangement of old masters’ paintings, contemporary photos and a variety of quotes from literature and movies - nothing is random, everything is part of the big picture. 'golden temple' is a multi-facetted recording, absorbing and inspiring as well as a complex concept waiting to be discovered. quality time lies ahead for those who get involved and visit the golden temple! the cd comes with a beautifully designed 6 panel digifile with golden print on black paper and a lavish 12-page booklet." [label info]
"Im Zentrum von Tokyos Bezirk Minato erhebt sich die Skyline der Roppongi Hills, einer Gruppe von Bürotürmen um den mächtigen Mori Tower, den die kritisch gesinnten unter den Einheimischen in leicht abergläubischer Weise den bösen Turm nennen. In ihrer Wahrnehmung steht er für die Macht, die das Kapital und der entfesselte Konsum auf alle Lebensbereiche ausweitet. Für den Musiker Anemone Tube, der vor einigen Jahren Japan bereiste und am Fuße der Türme das Covermotiv und nicht wenige der Sounds seines aktuellen Albums „Golden Temple“ aufnahm, ist der Ort ein Symbol der kapitalistischen Spatmoderne, der Tower of Evil, den er im gleichnamigen Stück besingt, ist eine Allegorie, die nicht nur in Japan ihre Manifestation hat.
„Golden Temple“ – man mag beim Titel an Mishimas Temple of the Golden Pavillon denken, woraus im opulenten Booklet zitiert wird – ist der dritte Teil von Anemone Tubes „Suicide Series“ und somit Nachfolger von „Dream Landscape“ und „Death Over China“. Ein weiteres mal geht es um Landschaften, die sich in der Spätform unserer Zivilisation herausgebildet haben und die zugleich ihren selbst hervorgerufenen Kollaps symbolisieren. Auf „Golden Temple“ ist all dies noch stärker als zuvor mit textlichen und ikonischen Zitaten und Anspielungen unterfüttert, die viele Fragen stellen und gelegentlich auch die eine oder andere Antwort in den Raum stellen.
Noch deutlicher als auf „Death Over China“ dreht sich auf „Golden Temple“ alles um das Thema der Entfremdung und ihrer apokalyptischen Dimensionen, und wie es scheint wird ein historisches Panorama entfaltet. Im eröffnenden „L’Homme et les Sirenes“ wird gewissermaßen die Ursünde der Entfremdung abgehandelt, der Trick des Odysseus, dem verführerischen Gesang der Sirenen zu widerstehen, oder allgemeiner: durch scheinbare Disziplin, die in Wirklichkeit eine Selbstfesselung ist, über die Natur und ihre Geister zu triumphieren. Dieser Akt, von Homer gefeiert und noch in der Dialektik der Aufklärung als Sternstunde der Zivilisation gewürdigt, erscheint hier als Auftakt einer fatalen Dystopie, zumindest lässt der knochentrockene Schleifsound, der seine destruktive Wirkraft erst nach und nach entfaltet, nichts anderes vermuten.
Von der Irrfahrt des Heroen bis zum finalen Anthropozän in „Anthropocene – The Dark Abyss of Time“ mit seinem an apokalyptisches Flammengeprassel erinnernden Rauschen ist es ein weiter Weg, und der ist mit Marken versehen, die so etwas wie einen Kampf zwischen Sein und Entfremdung anzudeuten scheinen. Auf musikalischer wie textlicher Seite herrscht der Nihilismus des all-encompassing destroyer aus dem zentralen „Tower of Evil“. „Apocalyptic Fantasy“ knüpt mit fatal dröhnenden Kreisbewegungen und einem Sound, der an Gitarrensoli diverser Metalgenres gemahnt, an die vorab veröffentlichte EP „In the Vortex of Dionysian Reality“ an, und schon dass hier auf Fantasy und nicht auf Nightmare verwiesen wird, unterstreicht das Lustvolle, dass dieses Untergangs-Narrativ bis zum kaum verständlichen Sprachample durchzieht – wie im Tarot Crowleys ist der Turm, der hier durch brettharte Noisewände evoziert wird, eine dem Einsturz geweihte comfort zone, deren Implosion gefürchtet und zugleich erhofft wird.
Nach einer eindringlicheren Version des schon auf dem Vortex-Tape enthaltenen „Tower of Evil“, hier mit dem Zusatz „The Ultimate Truth“, führt uns „Negation of Myth“ in die etwas filigraneren Regionen der Anemone Tube-Kosmos, was allerdings nur heißt, dass die nosigen Sounds weniger verwaschen und die einzelnen grobkörnigen Partikel deutlicher herausgearbeitet sind. Wer vergleichbare Passagen auf „Death Over China“ oder auf der Split mit Dissecting Table kennt, weiß, dass solche Tracks immer noch niederdrückend sind, und hier ist es v.a. das kosmische Hintergrunddröhnen, das den Eindruck von etwas Verlorenem aufrecht erhält. Vielleicht ist es diese Evokation von etwas ungreifbar Verlorenem, die auch den vielleicht schöngeistigesten Track „Sea of Lights (Golden Temple)“ so eindringlich macht.
Anemone Tube war stets an einer angemessenen allegorischen Aufmachung interessiert, doch diesmal ist das Booklet besonders reichhaltig gefüllt. Auf der bildlichen und paratextlichen Seite, die hier entfaltet wird, erwacht eine hetrotopische Gegenwelt, die so etwas wie ein nicht entfremdetes Sein zum Thema macht. Teil dieser Gegenwelt, wenn auch auf sehr radikale Art, ist zumindest der erste der beiden Bonus-Tracks, die wie eine integrierte EP unter dem Titel „Arcadia – Dreamland and Myth” angehängt sind: „I, Death, Even Rule in Arcadia” greift das Motiv der Odysse wieder auf und deutet eine alternative Erzähung an, in der der Held dem Ruf der Geister nachgibt und – auf tragische Weise, der Entfremdung jedoch entrinnend, wieder mit seiner eigenen Natur verschmilzt. „Tojinbo – Tranquil Sea of Equanimity” wiederum ist besonders doppelbödig, scheinen die vom schweitzer Soundaktivisten Dave Philips abgemischten Feldaufnahmen aus der Nähe einer für zahlreiche Selbstmorde bekannten Felsenklippe in Japan doch eher wieder eine Folge der Entfremdung statt ihre Alternative zu beschwören.
Letztlich bleibt es eine Frage der Interpretation, ob man die schönen Seiten des in „Golden Temple“ beschworenen als eskapistische Gegenwelt, als Einklagen einer veschmähten Kostbarkeit, als reine Dokumentation oder als vorsichtig hoffnungvolle Zukunftsaussicht auf ein Danach lesen will. Nietzsches Umschreibung des Dionysischen als „Ja zu Leben in all seiner Tragik” kommt mir dabei allerdings nicht aus dem Sinn. Sicher ist, dass das immer etwas links klingende Wort Antikapitalismus und das immer etwas rechts klingende Wort Antimodernismus selten so sehr überblendet wurde, wie auf diesem an Andeutungen und Anspielungen reichen Album, das den Geist Pasolinis wie ein Kontrastmittel über die Goldenen Tempel unserer Zeit gießt – und damit selbst die namenlose saufende Schönheit zu Füßen der Kolosses aus Glas und Beton zum Strahlen bringt." (U.S./AFRICAN PAPER]
www.raubbau.org
"The second chapter in "the suicide series" from Berlin's Anemone Tube is a suitably grim offering of machined noise, discordant feedback, and industrial field recordings of urban sprawl from a protracted visit to China a few years back. Anemone Tube's inclusion of these Chinese sounds comes from a very conscious decision to express the unfortunate side of the human condition to lay blame of current ills on the foreigner, the other - as Sartre explored in The Stranger. These recordings of locomotive engines grinding against the tracks, jet-engines surging into the sky, and the deafening roar from turbines are not unique to China, but the acceleration of environmental decline through such activities should also be seen as a mirror to the European civilization, whose cities have complex histories to war, famine, death, and disease. Hence, the title refers more to the gleaming optimism of human progress when everything points to another conclusion. Anemone Tube captures this in an immersive construct of these revolving field recordings, compounded by sinister synth passages and haunted drone, that keep us thinking of the likes of Morthound and Megaptera, in the death-industrial realms." [Aquarius Rec.]
€13.00
In the Vortex of Dionysian Reality
Related to Nietzsche`s notion of the Wagnerian music drama as a revelation of the abysmal truth about man, “In the Vortex of Dionysian Reality” allures us into the Dionysian dreamland, where tragedy reigns, in pursuit of the ultimate oneness. With its washes of noise and layers of piercing feedback on a subbase of wavering synths, it is a maelstrom of sound generating a hallucinatory reality. The atmosphere oscillates between destructiveness and aggravating frenzy, between the archaic and the sacral, between frenzied passion and abyssal melancholy, serving the mythical experience of music in a world where language has failed as a method of communication and music figures as the primordial form of expression.
As he considers humanities to have reached their limit, young Nietzsche hopes to find ultimate spiritualization and idealization in the reborn myth. Music alone (“our German masters”), as the primeval form of poetry and revelation of true Dionysian wisdom, may achieve triumph over the Apollonian shallow world of apparition.
With his timely musical rendition of mythical experience as “In the Vortex of Dionysian Reality”, Anemone Tube conveys an emotionally and mentally charged album which reveals his soft spot for progressive post rock metal acts like Amusement Parks On Fire, Blut Aus Nord or O.L.D. Their special approach of dreamy melodies vs. atonal, discordant sounds is skillfully recreated through polyphonic synths lines, which are then modulated into feedback and added for good measure.
Carrying the same title as the 2015 cassette EP release on The Epicurean, this CD with its 40+ minutes total length and five all new, yet unreleased tracks is less a mere re-release, but rather a full stand-alone album, featuring Ukrainian dark ambient artist Monocube on one track, as well as including sounds by Russian avantgardists Post Scriptvm and sound processing by French sound artist Pacific 231.
epicureanescapism.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-vortex-of-dionysian-reality-2
€13.00
The Three Worlds - Vanity of Allegory
Far reaching pleasures will be at hand – Anemone Tube reveals a series of three CDs entitled “The Three Worlds: Allegory of Vanity / Forget Heaven / Vanity of Allegory”, referencing a cosmological treatise on the universe from the Theravada Buddhism of the 14th century, the subject matter of which is the description of three levels of existence of all beings and mythical creatures.
This extensive retrospective release contains selected tracks from various tapes released between 1997 and 1999 - mostly rare and unavailable today - as well as yet unreleased tracks recorded between 1997 and 2013, a.o. outtakes from the “Death Over China” recordings, handpicked and recontextualized by Anemone Tube, representing the project’s roughest and most atmospheric material up to date, ranging from depressive ritual experimental ambient over dark rhythmic industrial soundscapes to whirlwind noise. Sharply mastered by Hunter Barr for a powerful, contemporary sound, each CD comes in a 6-panel digifile featuring beautiful photography by Dario Lehner and is available as single CD as well as a limited edition 3 CD set in a lavish slipcase with poster, sticker and patch.
“The Three Worlds” is a work about transience on many levels, perfectly elucidated in the Buddhist Sutra “Far Reaching Pleasures”, “The three worlds are transient like clouds in autumn / Birth and death of all beings unfold like a dance / Their lives rush away like a mountain stream / Vanish like lightning in the sky”, which serves as the contextual framework for the CD series and is translated in the most beautiful and poetic fashion with three painstakingly arranged photographic scenes based on vanitas symbolism of old masters’ paintings.
The object photograph “Vanity of Allegory” plays with the dissolution of all phenomena, the transience of all things, all allegories, featuring an extinguished candle, jewellery – and the artist himself, vacuously pointing his finger a skull laughing at the spectator from the mirror. All that is combined with poetry suggesting the dissolution of the ego, seemingly closing the circle. Besides collected tracks from old and recent cassette releases and compilations, this also features three unreleased tracks from the “Death Over China” recordings and therefore represents the newest cut from the trilogy and thus musically bridges the gap to the recent works of Anemone Tube with their profound depth and complexity of sound.
credits
released October 23, 2017
Music composed, mixed & edited by Anemone Tube. 1 recorded 2013, previously unreleased. 2–4 recorded 2007 – 2008 (Death Over China recording session), previously unreleased. 5 recorded 1998, previously released on Deafness Is Not A Gift compilation CD (Deafborn, 2000). 6 recorded 2012, prev. released on the The Transfiguration Of The Image cassette (Danvers State, 2013). 7 recorded 1998, edited 2012, previously released on Anomalous Silencer 3 comp. CD (Napalmed, 1999). 8 recorded 1998, prev. released on the Allegories For The Future cassette (Loud!, 1999). 9 recorded 2008 and 2012, previously released on This Dismal World split cassette with Dissecting Table (Black Horizons, 2013).
Concept, art and design by Anemone Tube 2015/17. Photography by Dario Lehner 2015, set design, photo editing by Anemone Tube 2015/17. Mastering by Hunter Barr 2017.
The Epicurean . cure.19
La Esencia . NER020/2017
Format: CD & download
Playtime: 37:58 min
epicureanescapism.bandcamp.com/album/the-three-worlds-vanity-of-allegory
€12.50
The Hunters in the Snow
"Inspired by the Pieter Bruegel’s seasons paintings, the three industrial music projects Anemone Tube, Jarl and Monocube developed a cosmos of sound over the course of more than five years. The result “The Hunters in the Snow – A Contemplation on Pieter Bruegel’s Series of the Seasons” is an all-encompassing work of art from every perspective – exploring the seasons paintings through poetry, literature and sound. Originating from a visual piece of art, the musical interpretations meet every aspect of the sceneries, merging their unique approaches and individual styles into one vivid, ever-changing sonic landscape of the recurring cycle of decay and renewal. Sharply mastered by James Plotkin for eternity.
The spearhead “The Gloomy Day” seduces us to open up and give in to being carried away, a dream of a barren winter landscape that invites to calm and to rest while the sounds describe the first buds of spring penetrating the icy ground. Life returns with all its wonders. The relationship between man and nature comprises the leitmotif of the work - and is a cruel one: Albeit winter is the season where life slows down and one may enjoy ice-skating, as seen in the title picture, it is also the time where mankind struggles for survival. The need for hunting in the face of scarce resources, the killing of an animal to secure one’s own survival contrasts the peace and quiet. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth: Anemone Tube, Jarl and Monocube directly put their fingers on this ambivalence, aurally contrasting the peaceful scenery with darker tunes, rough electronic patterns that convey tension and unease. These sounds provide a space where we are confronted with the harsh side of the cold, the mere fear of dying while man has no control over the course of seasons. Again, we find rest within more quiet pieces, like “The Return of the Herd”, thus meandering between the sense of natures’ threat and its welcoming, nourishing side. Tunes of silken softness gently touch the conscious and the unconscious, like the autumn sun caressing the golden fields. And while one meditates over the essence of life, surrounded by the vast compositions that reflect the most intimate creative capacities of the three artists, it is where we connect with the core of our humanness and touch upon our own spirituality.
The CD comes in a luxurious 8-panel digifile with embossed cover on high quality natural paper, accompanied by a booklet which includes an essay on Pieter Bruegel’s landscapes by Sven Schlijper-Karssenberg & Kim Dohlich, and a poem by Jean Gebser that corroborates the conceptual framework. Conception, music production and art direction by Anemone Tube.
The Special Edition CD set comes with obi strip, sticker, moss spores and a certificate for supporting “Ekayana Forest Project” – a Buddhist community sharing a common forest worldwide, located in various reforestation projects. Their aim is to develop a climate-supportive and environmental-friendly spiritual practice. 3€ donation flows directly into the planting of trees. The moss spores are for home gardening – moss binds huge amounts of carbon dioxide and thus also positively influences the climate.
€14.00
Woe is the Reward
Davide Del Col has been working in the specific and uncompromising ritual dark ambient genre since the end of the 90s, this firstly under the moniker of Ornament for a couple of very rare limited editions then as Antikatechon which now represents the highlight of his artistic and stylistic creativity. A first full length album has been published on Silentes Minimal Editions back in 2011, this one provides a very accomplished effort in the realms of hauntingly dark ambient music with a touch of melancholic-spiritual inflected nihilism. Signed on Rage in Eden, "Chrisma Crucifixorum" is an other eloquent and complex release which oscillates between stately gazing drone sequences and original audio treatments, the whole thing surrounded by a sacral aura. 2013 saw the rise of a collaborative effort with the pioneering ethno-noise ambient act Nimh, also from Italy. This musical meeting gave birth to a passionate and typical dark ambient offering. The conceptual-visual background is connected to the visions and powerful painting works of Goya. Davide Del Col presents here his new catchy electronic dark ambient release entitled "Woe is the Reward", welcomed by Rage in Eden Records. A tremendous, entrancing and blasting dark ambient odyssey full of majestic sound sculptures, huge resonances, bleak noises, metallic reverbs and many more. This sonic, soundtracky and "acoustically haunted" ambient symphony will totally enthrall and ravish the listener. Be prepared to this intense sonorous adventure. -- Philippe Blache
€12.00
Climb up
"In the fall of 2007, around Apse's 8th year as a band, Michael Gundlach and founding member Bobby relocated to the quiet shores of outer Cape Cod, Massachusetts and began living in virtual isolation. A few months into the move and for various reasons the 2 brooklyn based members of the band were no longer in the picture, leaving only Bobby, Michael and their faithful touring bass player / contributing member John Mordecai, living 4 hours away.
Together Bobby and Michael found multi-instrumentalist Jed Armour who joined the band and introduced them to drummer Brandon Collins. Both of them highly talented musicians and long time residents of the cape, the addition of these two members greatly impacted the creative capabilities of the band as well as Bobby and Michael's understanding of - and integration into the year 'round life in the band's new home.
After rigorous preparation with the new members rehearsing for an already-booked 6 week European tour that saw them performing at ATP Vs. Pitchfork and several other noteworthy dates across Europe the band returned to Cape Cod and began writing a new album. In August of 2008 during the early stages of the writing process, All Tomorrow's Parties reissued the band's 2006 Spirit to warm critical reception. Labeled as a post-rock record by some, a genre-splicing giant to others, Spin Magazine's Kenny Herzog likely put it best: "Spirit is the deathnail for the labored beast that is "post-rock," revealing the much more alluring potential that always lurked around its sinister corners."
Since making Spirit - originally completed in 2006 and after releasing a number of smaller albums both before and after the ATP reissue, the band found itself ready to take on its next major endeavor. Just as a director might make respective films - changing subject matter, approach and format for each - the band was inspired to explore new means of composition, songwriting and production. Its range of members were influenced from a diverse array of art and music, life experience, fiction - and were unanimously uninfluenced by their surroundings - as there were little social distractions or creative camaraderies to be had.
The bulk of this writing process then took place between the fall of 2008 and the spring of 2009. Forging the album through long days and nights in the quiet beauty of the winter months on outer Cape Cod. The record that's come out of it, entitled Climb Up is undoubtedly a reflection of the very process that made it - tying into the creative methods as well as the story of the lives of the band's members as they crafted the album.
Climb Up was recorded entirely by the band in their homes. The bulk of the arrangements and mixing were authored by Bobby Jed and Michael. Drawing from a mixture of existing demos that were turned into working songs as well as full-band improvised live recordings that Bobby cut up and formed into song structures, overdubbing effects and vocals on top of them - the band ultimately chose and honed in on a final cut of 12 tracks, culled from a larger body of work.
The ever-changing obtuse creative strategies of Bobby and Michael, paired with the adept musical knowledge and performance abilities of Jed and Brandon - and the diverse inspirations of all members combined to create an album that bares a fantastic dialogue between imagination and songcraft. Climb Up is wildly unique, versatile, and inarguably the bravest yet most accessible work by the band.
The record is a major departure from the band's most notable predecessor, Spirit - which was completed 4 years prior. Where Spirit explored a dark world of reverberant guitars, ambient passages, and minimal, haunting vocals, Climb Up proves a bold step out of that darkness. The intricacies of this new world are depicted as if staggering from the world of Spirit into a very different, more illuminated place.
Not to mention its packed with more grooves, a greater use of electronics, a range of instruments both modern and classical and – notably – a much stronger emphasis on voices and melodies.
Climb Up is dense, innovative, cinematic. Apse draw from a colourful palette of different genres, techniques, instruments and approaches - and with that have made what is likely to be one of the most curious, and probably largely unexpected albums of the year. Listen, and be immersed." [label info]
www.atpfestival.com/recordings.php
€10.00
Climb up
"In the fall of 2007, around Apse's 8th year as a band, Michael Gundlach and founding member Bobby relocated to the quiet shores of outer Cape Cod, Massachusetts and began living in virtual isolation. A few months into the move and for various reasons the 2 brooklyn based members of the band were no longer in the picture, leaving only Bobby, Michael and their faithful touring bass player / contributing member John Mordecai, living 4 hours away.
Together Bobby and Michael found multi-instrumentalist Jed Armour who joined the band and introduced them to drummer Brandon Collins. Both of them highly talented musicians and long time residents of the cape, the addition of these two members greatly impacted the creative capabilities of the band as well as Bobby and Michael's understanding of - and integration into the year 'round life in the band's new home.
After rigorous preparation with the new members rehearsing for an already-booked 6 week European tour that saw them performing at ATP Vs. Pitchfork and several other noteworthy dates across Europe the band returned to Cape Cod and began writing a new album. In August of 2008 during the early stages of the writing process, All Tomorrow's Parties reissued the band's 2006 Spirit to warm critical reception. Labeled as a post-rock record by some, a genre-splicing giant to others, Spin Magazine's Kenny Herzog likely put it best: "Spirit is the deathnail for the labored beast that is "post-rock," revealing the much more alluring potential that always lurked around its sinister corners."
Since making Spirit - originally completed in 2006 and after releasing a number of smaller albums both before and after the ATP reissue, the band found itself ready to take on its next major endeavor. Just as a director might make respective films - changing subject matter, approach and format for each - the band was inspired to explore new means of composition, songwriting and production. Its range of members were influenced from a diverse array of art and music, life experience, fiction - and were unanimously uninfluenced by their surroundings - as there were little social distractions or creative camaraderies to be had.
The bulk of this writing process then took place between the fall of 2008 and the spring of 2009. Forging the album through long days and nights in the quiet beauty of the winter months on outer Cape Cod. The record that's come out of it, entitled Climb Up is undoubtedly a reflection of the very process that made it - tying into the creative methods as well as the story of the lives of the band's members as they crafted the album.
Climb Up was recorded entirely by the band in their homes. The bulk of the arrangements and mixing were authored by Bobby Jed and Michael. Drawing from a mixture of existing demos that were turned into working songs as well as full-band improvised live recordings that Bobby cut up and formed into song structures, overdubbing effects and vocals on top of them - the band ultimately chose and honed in on a final cut of 12 tracks, culled from a larger body of work.
The ever-changing obtuse creative strategies of Bobby and Michael, paired with the adept musical knowledge and performance abilities of Jed and Brandon - and the diverse inspirations of all members combined to create an album that bares a fantastic dialogue between imagination and songcraft. Climb Up is wildly unique, versatile, and inarguably the bravest yet most accessible work by the band.
The record is a major departure from the band's most notable predecessor, Spirit - which was completed 4 years prior. Where Spirit explored a dark world of reverberant guitars, ambient passages, and minimal, haunting vocals, Climb Up proves a bold step out of that darkness. The intricacies of this new world are depicted as if staggering from the world of Spirit into a very different, more illuminated place.
Not to mention its packed with more grooves, a greater use of electronics, a range of instruments both modern and classical and – notably – a much stronger emphasis on voices and melodies.
Climb Up is dense, innovative, cinematic. Apse draw from a colourful palette of different genres, techniques, instruments and approaches - and with that have made what is likely to be one of the most curious, and probably largely unexpected albums of the year. Listen, and be immersed." [label info]
www.atpfestival.com/recordings.php
€17.50
13th
ARC ist die 3köpfige “Band” von AIDAN BAKER, der ja schon mit einigen fantastischen solo-releases auf sich aufmerksam machte. Bei ARC vermischen sich ethno-Einflüsse mit ambient-drones, alles live eingespielt. Sanft schwingend & pulsierend, melancholisch-schön..
Schon die Nr. 10 in der schönen low-priced Serie das Pariser Label (ex Harmonies) !
“ Arc is a Canadian trio comprised of Aidan Baler, his brother Richard and Christopher Kukiel. It was formed spontaneously in 1999. Arc's music is based on drones and melodic loops created by Aidan's heavily-treated guitar. Add Richard and Chrisopher's tribalish rhtyhms made with various percussive instruments and you get the picture. When we, at taâlem, first heard Arc, we couldn't help thinking of Life Garden and Voice of Eye, those great US tribal ambient bands from the 90's. But Arc is no copycat !”
[label info]
http://taalem.free.fr/
€5.00
Devices 1987-2007
Texturen aus Sirenen-Klängen und Sinuston-Feedbacks, repetitive Patterns aus Extrem-Frequenzen, Effektgerät-Übersteuerungen bilden seltsame Klangkegel aus, elektronische Cut-Ups formen Kaskaden aus befremdlicher Rhythmik. Und alles basiert nur auf einer Soundquelle: Feeback! Auf dieser russischen Kollektion des emsigen MONOCHROME VISION-Labels findet sich älteres rares Material von längst vergessenen Compilations, aber auch neue Stücke von 2007, welche nahtlos an die Vergangenheit anknüpfen, insgesamt aber weniger noisig & offensiv klingen. Very special stuff!
"Anthology of rare and previously unreleased tracks by Arcane Device, recorded within the 20 years. It is divided into two parts. The first one consists of tracks from compilations issued by Subterranean Records, Tragic Figures, SFCR Tapes, and Generations Unlimited, but also unreleased material remastered and/or remixed in 2007. The second one is subtitled as "Feedback symphony" and based on various recordings, presented in four movements and finished in 2007. One more chance to approve the exceptional skills and compositional/ technical talent of David Myers who can control the electrons by will, creating fantastic soundscapes. Arcane Device is the unique project of american graphic designer and musician David Myers, active between 1987 and 1995. His creative output is going beyond any categorization, because it’s possible to re-arrange and demonstrate such many styles of modern music with only one thing that is feedback. This effect usually happens when you shortcut the input and output of any electric device. It’s hard to believe but this almost uncontrolable beast became the driving force for Arcane Device music, armed by self-made bank of delays and filters. Looking like inward sound research, decorated with finest web of random processes and microvariations, it becames the peculiar feature. Endless circulation of electrons, never repeating routes and always having some chance for individual life inside of any macrostructure." [label notes / credits]
"....I might be wrong, but the oldest guy here is David Lee Myers, also known in the mid eighties as Arcane Device and one of my heroes of the time. Myers created his own feedback machines long before someone thought of 'no input mixers'. Myers controlled his feedback with all sorts of sound effects, which made him sound differently than say the average industrial musician. No wonder his first release was on Recommended/ReR records, known for improvisation rather than noise. In the time span of less than eight years Arcane Device released a bunch of CDs, a LP, a double 7" pack and some cassettes (many of them these days available from http://www.pulsewidth.com). For Monochrome Vision, Myers went to his archive to pick some rare (from various compilations on Subterranean Records, Tragic Figures, SFCR and Generations Unlimited) and unreleased for his double CD. I admit straight away that it has been a while since I last played a CD by Arcane Device, but hearing this feast of recognition, prompts me to pull them all out and play them again in the next weeks, when time allows me. The strength of Arcane Device, to work with such unmusical sounds in such a musical form, hasn't lost any of his magic to me. Unlike say the current wave of no input mixers, who like to be microsound, minimal or overtly harsh, but nothing musical, I only know of one equivalent to Myers and that's Marco Ciciliani, who I once saw play a no input mixer in such a musical manner. Great stuff!" [FdW / Vital Weekly]
www.monochromevision.ru
€17.00
Radio Station
"Tune into the shortwave bands in and around San Francisco and you're likely to discover little more than static, hiss and electrical interference broken up by an occasional transmission from a libertarian wacko in the Santa Cruz mountains. Scott Arford has spent his entire carrer manipulating a similar static from televisions in his searing audiovisual installations ans perdormances, so it makes perfect sense for him to begin investigating his hometown's cracked ether. Just as he does through his jacked up TV's, he seeks only the most caustic radio signals as his source material and aggresively cobbles together jagged layers of hotwired sound. In many ways, Arford picks up where John Duncan and Daniel Menche - particularly in the use of conglomerates of throbbing pulses and sub-frequency vibrations - Arford manages to highlight the most inherent "musical" nature of a highly fascinating cause of aural enjoyment." [Jim Haynes/ THE WIRE]
"In the Bay area he's quite well-known, Scott Arford, operator of the 7HZ label, video artist, musician and collaborator of Francisco Lopez, Randy Yau and Micheal Nine. His output however is quite small. 'Radio Station' is his latest work, and it deals with one of the easiest to obtain sound sources: radio sounds. Not the speech type, or plunderphonica, but everything in between the stations - the cracks, the static, the hiss. Arford is not a sensitive man: whatever he finds on the radio waves he uses, but with a high intensity. His work is not about careful, delicate sounds, but a rather forceful, mean and loud mixture of waves crumbling over each-other, falling apart, chopped up. Not really moments of silence and contemplation here, but on the other hand, Arford isn't interested in doing 'just' a bunch of noise either. He knows how to make a strong, vivid collage of sound out of these radio station and how to make a forceful, interesting piece of music. Energetic and present. The use of radio sounds may not be entirely new, the results of Arford are certainly very very nice." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Mirrorion - Telegnostic Edition
After a long period of unavailability we are proud to release the debut album of Arktau Eos 'Mirrorion - Telegnostic Edition' through our Stellar Mansion series.
Presented in seventeen chapters that can be approached as singular gateways or a slowly unfolding journey of epic proportions, the debut album of ARKTAU EOS is a challenging, complex work. Born of intense private musico-magical sessions held in places abandoned by man and further refined in the temple-laboratory of the duo, it is the distillation of seven arduous months of work.
As the title suggests, 'Mirrorion' is the music of stellar light thrown down from the Heaven's zenith and its eldritch reflections in the depths below, uniting atavistic elemental noise with serene passages of crystalline, spectral ambience. Ultimately, 'Mirrorion' seeks to surpass such earthly definitions in favour of a non-dual vision of reality, hopefully transforming the listener in the process.
For this recording ARKTAU EOS have favoured an organic approach with majority of instrumentation being of acoustic variety, including the unearthly choral of the kanglings, piercings blasts of windbones, accelerating steel-plate rolls, singing bowl and various kinds of stringed instruments.
The album is enclosed in an oversized screen printed cardboard covers including an 8-panel booklet with historical and other additional notes and eight full-colour insert cards within a stamped envelope. Limited to 493 copies.
www.auralhypnox.com
"Das fantastische AURAL HYPNOX-Label aus Nordfinnland mit einem neuen Projekt, das wie HALO MANASH und AOEGA mit dem Labelgründer ANTTI HAAPAPURO verbunden ist. Diese Aufnahmen entstanden (man glaubt es beim Hören kaum) ohne elekronische Soundquellen, sondern nur auf archaischen Instrumenten in spontaner Improvisation & an abgelegenen Plätzen... fliessendes Wässer wie aus tiefen Grotten, Gong-Drones, gutturale Gesänge & Anrufungen, Sounds aus Holz- Wind & Metall, das alles in finsterster, ritueller Katakomben-Stimmung, mal sehr mächtig, dämonisch, mal sanfter & dark ambienter.... dazwischen schälen sich als Auflockerung mitunter instrumentelle dark-Folk-artige Arrangements hervor, aber stets im Rahmen der schamanistischen Noises...
Der perfekte Soundtrack um mit der "Andernwelt", die auch in uns ist, in Kontakt zu treten..." [Drone Rec. info to the first ed]
€15.00
Hopes & Fears
"New digipak reissue of the first Art Bears album, originally issued by Recommended in 1978. Fred Frith : guitars, keyboards, bass, violin; Dagmar Krause: voice; Chris Cutler: percussion. With: Tim Hodgkinson: keyboards, woodwinds; Georgie Born: Bass, cello; Lindsay Cooper: bassoon, oboe, soprano sax, recorders. "Originally recorded as a Henry Cow album (but eventually assigned to the trio of Art Bears), during the late 70's this grouping made one of the most powerful statements yet in the world of Art-Rock. Whereas Henry Cow showed an inclination to write long-ish compositions interspersed with improvisational aspects, Art Bears' approach combined a more lyrical display, with shorter, extended-song forms. Typically, the word-strong poetry of drummer Chris Cutler was the impetus for the group's recordings. Once written, it was set to music by multi-instrumentalist Fred Frith, (often in a spur-of-the-moment fashion) and was then extrapolated upon and built up by the group during the recording/mixing process in a way that usually validated the lyrical intent.
Hopes And Fears shows the group at its most formidable stage in terms of composition. The pieces are often highly complex, with ideas that zig-zag through a maze of musical imagery, highlighting the group at their peak of virtuosity. Dagmar Krause's vocal prowess is stunningly effective, and the recording itself was edited in a sequence where repeating themes and studio wizardry present the album as a cycle of related, 'songs'. Of the best and most bizarre of the old school of Art-Rock." [press release]
€14.00
Subsurface Aquifers
"The arum lily (zantedeschia aethiopica) is a species of flowering plant in the family Araceae, native to southern Africa. What does this beautiful flower have to do with experimental industrial music? The rather obscure second album of Arum Lilies, a brainchild of Mark Groves (Von Einem etc.), does not provide answers.
What it does provide, however, is an album of vaguely unsettling, eerily obscure experimental electronics. Harrowing, subtle atmospherics clash with moments of eardrum shattering industrial noise; warbling pseudomelodies are offset by crackling static and piercing feedback; ominous vocal samples are layered on passages of tightly controlled minimalism. Subsurface Aquifers is a piece of music that migrates between poles, from an almost ambient sparsity of expression to exuberant bursts of chaos.
Subsurface Aquifers is not an album of shallow industrial nihilism or typical power electronics misanthropy. It does not allow itself to be defined so easily. As such, it demands more from the listener – but also offers more."
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"From the very onset, there’s something delightfully warped and just ever so slightly twisted about Australian Arum Lilies’ second album Subsurface Aquifers. From the covers and packaging to the music itself, it’s all a bit off in a way that’s vaguely disconcerting. And it makes the album intriguing.
Painting with broad strokes, it’s easy to pigeonhole Arum Lilies. Industrial of the noisier kind, check. But going beyond that… well, things get trickier and Subsurface Aquifers becomes harder to pin down. Which adds to the intrigue.
Discogs, for example, labels Arum Lilies power electronics. And, for sure, there are moments here that are power electronics. And stuff that could be described as noise. And I wouldn’t object if you said of one or the other section that it sounds a lot like death industrial. But on the whole, none of those descriptors apply to the album as a whole.
You see, whilst there are outbursts of vicious noise and unsettling layers of feedback, grinding drones and white noise, there are also plenty of warbling sections of hackneyed, distorted pseudomelodies and understated, even minimalist atmospherics. Dark ambient!, I hear you call out. Well… no. Except to the extent that yes, I do think fans of dark ambient will also find stuff here that suits their palate.
The genius in Subsurface Aquifers is in how these two work together. Blasting noise melts into a limping melody that sounds like a distorted, broken tape. Beneath a (possbily sampled) melody, layers of subtle electronic noise add a subliminal feeling of unease. The noise subtly grows, only to blast into a satisfying but brief climax at the very end. Over this interplay between chaos and broken order, edited and manipulated speech samples are overlaid, only strengthening the alien feel of the music.
I’m loath to use words such as apocalyptic or cataclysmic in regard to this album, but undeniably there’s a strong feel of this album being post-something. Post some fall. Not the end of the world as a glorious explosion, but rather as an afterthought; a banal event, which most don’t realize has taken place. But slowly things start to go slightly left, just a bit wrong; and as the unnerving offness increases little by little, people start to realize. It’s not quite melancholic, either… more like world weary, like a long held in sigh that’s finally released, if that makes sense. That’s the kind of end of the world feeling that permeates Subsurface Aquifers.
The most perfect embodiment of this is The Late Great Planet Earth. A slightly pitch-shifted male voice waxes poetic about fabled yesteryear with sickening nostalgia of how things used to be better “back in the good old days” over a warbling melody that just feels off. Beneath, the menacing noise of broken down electronics lurks just at the edge of auditory perception – until it bursts to cover all like a tidal wave.
Subsurface Aquifers is a weird little album. But it’s also a rewarding one. And despite its weirdness, surprisingly easy to get into, at least as far as industrial noise goes. And that’s a positive comment. The album has a very sensible running time of just over half an hour, and despite being an eclectic combination of approaches, it’s not obtuse or unapproachable. The initial intrigue of the weird mood naturally segues into an appreciation of just how well-crafted the album is."
[Only Death is Real]
€13.00
Rites III & IV
Awaited follow up to the 2019 album Rites I & II, we're presented with 2 subsequent aural rituals from Peter Verwimp intricate guitar driven soundscapes. The Rites series touches on the importance of ceremony and ritual in our daily lives. It deals with our interconnectedness with nature as a whole and the necessity to acknowledge and use this connection as an amplifier of thoughts, ideas and emotions. Minimal, meditative ambient drones with layers of meandering guitars and voices mixing elements of doom, drone and ambient experimentation. Rites III & IV expand on the shamanic and animistic path, an ongoing journey through flesh, sound and spirit.
CD Edition of 500 copies in 4 panels Digisleeve. 2 Tracks. Running Time 37:24
LP Edition of 300 copies on Black Vinyl. Matt Lamination and black Paper Sleeve. 2 Tracks. Running Time 37:24
https://cycliclaw.bandcamp.com/album/rites-iii-iv
"Ashtoreth is Belgian Peter Verwimp, and this release is a follow-up to 2019’s Rites I & II. Here, Verwimp uses overlapping electric guitar, percussion, and voices to create menacing soundscapes. Of note is his broad palette for each of these instruments. The guitar provides heavily distorted chords, drones, and brief melodies with cleanly-picked notes. The voices are both male and female, often wordless or unintelligible, and can be beautiful, poignant, or painful. The percussion is largely based on bell-like sounds. This instrumentation blends into a wafting and moody ambiance. Rites III & IV explore humankind’s relation to nature, evoking ancient rituals and a connectedness that is largely missing from the modern world." [Avantmusicnews]
€13.00
Aokigahara, the Black Sea of Trees
"Aokigahara, The Black Sea of Trees is an abstract visual and sonic story-telling which takes place in a forest located in Mount Fuji, Japan. The forest of Aokigahara, has a world-wide fame for the thousands of suicides which took place there and now has an almost mythological statue.
The forest is spread all through with ephemera and items such as photographs, letters and instruments left behind by the leavers, all untouched due to respect. almost entire forest is covered with long ribbons people used to be able to return if they changed their mind. therefore, the entire land is embodied with the vicarious objects that depict the sense of memory, loss and hope.
The auditory side of this album can be related to musical genres such as ambient and drone, but also of importance to this album is film and film abstraction; the experience of light moving in time, as for example the work of Stan Brakhage. An audio story-telling which derives from the contrast between dark and intense sounds to more delicate and quiet auditory landscapes, where the sense of an intrinsic lament is always present, and stepping into the oblivion gets distilled into pure sensation, that of belonging to life and hope. Asphodel puts an emphasis on the romantic, that of life relived through the forest.
Asphodel is a musical and visual project of Atay Ilgün and Alper Yildirim. Asphodel focuses on textural music and it's combination with experimental film. Atay Ilgün and Alper Yildirim run the Turkish label Wounded Wolf Press."
[label info]
A spooky ambient recording from this Turkish project who conceptually based this album on Aokigahara, a forest near Mount Fuji in Japan which has achieved notoriety because of the large number of people who have committed suicide amongst the trees, leaving behind considerable ephemera of their lives. Notes, pictures, objects all litter the forest floor as the final tracing of a human life. While a cascading horror is evident on the first half of this album, evinced through dynamic, tumultuous roars of caustic rumble and desolate pools of isolated tone, Asphodel conjure a shifting internal drama of emotion not limited to sadness, hope, and loss through flecks of wooden guitars and flutes, eerie reflective modulations from feedback manipulation, disembodied voices crackled through ghostboxes, and a ton of reverb. This is a very complex piece of abstraction that honestly confronts the topic at hand while not forgetting to draw from the existential bleakness in mapping out these very impressive recordings. Originally released on Asphodel's Wounded Wolf imprint as a cd-r, now issued on swank vinyl via Invisible Birds, limited of course. (Aquarius Rec)
€18.00
Through the Sparkle
"Through the Sparkle is a collaboration between French ensemble astrïd and American pianist and composer Rachel Grimes.
Rachel Grimes is best known for her chamber music project Rachel’s, a hugely influential group formed in 1991 in Louisville, Kentucky, releasing six studio albums between 1995 and 2005. She has also released a string of contemporary classical works in recent years on labels such as Temporary Residence. astrïd is a collective of four musicians based in Nantes, releasing records on Rune Grammofon and Home Normal.
After years of mail and email back and forth over the ocean, from Nantes to Kentucky, astrïd invited Rachel to come for a residency to make music together and play shows in France. They gathered for a few days, here and there, in 2012 and 2013 to write songs in Cyril and Vanina's home studio in the countryside.
The compositions found on Through the Sparkle glow with a unique, connected energy and a pure, instinctive musical understanding. Considered contributions from all sides allow the pieces to unfurl naturally. Each note and phrase feels like it simply couldn’t be placed anywhere else in the album.
Charming, gentle and cinematic sounds are found here in abundance. Melodies circle and reveal themselves without force, allowing the listener to focus and explore the depths of what is on offer. Musically, Through the Sparkle is an expansive and evocative album. There is a presence to be felt throughout, from Cyril Secq’s emotive tremelo’d guitars of M5 to the darker, more haunting mood of The Theme, to the tension in Mossgrove & Seaweed. Strings and woodwind coalesce around intricate piano and guitar movements creating a wealth of harmony and melancholy.
Through the Sparkle is a record of miniature symphonies, of elegant restraint. A gracious and generous offering from a group of musicians at one with each other and at the top of their game."
www.gizehrecords.com
https://gizehrecords.bandcamp.com/album/through-the-sparkle
"Man, that’s devastating! If the reverb-drenched guitar on this record’s second track doesn’t move you to tremble with tears, then the soaring strings on “M1” surely will.
Pianist/composer Rachel Grimes follows up her best-of-2015 The Clearing solo outing with the magnificent Through The Sparkle, a seven-song collaboration with the French chamber ensemble Astrïd, out today digitally, on CD and on vinyl through U.K.-based Gizeh Records. This thing’s gotta be heard to be believed.
Striking, again, with some of her finest work, Grimes’ piano flashes more contemporary flourishes than the heart-wrenching Romanticism of her landmark years with Rachel’s, everyone’s favorite post-classical ensemble. While there are still gentle, lulling notes – I’m looking to the album-closing “Le Petit Salon” and, again, the epic “M1” – Grimes’ metronomic figures on “The Herald en Masse” and “Mossgrove & Seaweed” positively pulsate with life, lending a record laced with restraint loads of emotional force.
This says nothing of Astrïd multi-instrumentalist Vanina Andreani, whose violin wraps its fingers around Grimes’ ephemeral melodies in much the way Christian Frederickson’s viola did in Rachel’s. Guillaume Wickel is brilliant on bass clarinet, drummer/percussionist Yvan Ros does a fine job anchoring the melancholy, and didn’t I already mention the eerie repercussions of Cyril Secq’s guitar? This ensemble, featuring Grimes, seems to have a beautiful way of making even the most composed moment seem instinctive, lending a gentle humanity to the proceedings.
There are less “classical” and more “post-classical” moments on the record, too, like the haunted “The Theme,” which starts with an emotive bass clarinet figure and kalimba, and expands, more often through the space between notes than the notes themselves, with an electric guitar right out of Hotel2Tango in Montreal. Or there’s “Hollis,” which punctuates Grimes’ refrains with more kalimba, subtle bass, and a shuffling, jazzy backbeat before descending into a field of mathy beeps that could be summoned from piano and, maybe, a Fender Rhodes.
The whole record is breathtaking gossamer – definite year-end-list material." [Justin Vellucci/Popdose]
€20.00
Hand in Hand
Félicia Atkinson's new full length album ‘Hand In Hand’ is an expanded development of her musical compositions started with the highly-acclaimed 'A Readymade Ceremony' released on Shelter Press in 2015, and follows her collaborative effort with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma 'Comme Un Seul Narcisse' (Shelter Press, 2016).
Composed over the year of 2016 at EMS during a snow storm and at home in Brittany, Hand in Hand could be considered as the most ambitious body of work recorded by the French musician and artist.
Doubt and Optimism are the two sides of a same coin. Hand in Hand is arid and warm in its whole synchrony and opposition. Days are burning and nights are made of ice. Coyotes are exchanging sounds with rattles snakes while bunnies are hiding. Strident modular sounds are tearing apart minimal beats and drones. The stories told by A Voice to the auditor are no longer fictions and become slowly reality.
Electric waves transmitted by living creatures and machines seem to deliver special sounds and frequencies that only non-human can hear. They grow and vibrate despite of the walls and interdictions. Therefore, the human who is listening to this record might find in it a particular kind of emotion a way to take space in silence, and frame a certain vision of thinking while losing a certain notion of time, acknowledging step by step its universal environment. Plants, galaxies, animals, machines, Hand in Hand.
This record is meant to be a moment of common thinking and listening in its diversity and abstraction. In the same way a sci-fi novel by Philip K. Dick or a sculpture by Guy Mees can be percieved: trivial, sensitive and mysterious at the same time.
The opening track, I’m Following You is a bleached romantic ballad for Fender Rhodes that could be the ending title of a Martian love story, whereas Visnaga praises the resources of a desert plant through asmr voices, field recordings and evasive chords. A House A Dance A Poem is a feminist hymn composed as a pyramidal structure, referring in the same time to the A-frame houses, the yoga position of the triangle, the first letter of the roman alphabet and the feminine sex. In the closing song, No Fear But Anticipation, Atkinson offers an open hearted plea about the existentialist necessity of finding desire even when the times seem too dark to think about it. A telepathic and non-scholastic anthem for Don Delillo, Joan Didion and Jean Paul Sartre. The final Buchla sounds that close the record seem to deliver an unspeakable message that only birds and aliens could transcript.
The echo of the 80’s sci-fi anxious aethetics resonates with today’s transparency of digital sounds in the whole record. The cohabitation of simple midi textures and historical Serge and Buchla signals are convoked and confronted together by A Voice. The human instrument appears here as the epicenter of the recordings, giving to the others instruments a gravitational point.
Joan La Barbara, Robert Ashley or Delia Derbyshire are the main influences of Atkinson in their own way of inviting fiction, composition and abstraction as the essential materials of composition. For Hand In Hand, Félicia Atkinson used different sources for the lyrics and scores of her tracks: house plant instruction books, Desert Magazine old issues, architecture manuals, JG Ballard and K. Dick’s books, as well as her own poetry.
https://shelterpress.bandcamp.com/album/hand-in-hand
€25.00
The Antikythera Mechanism
"A container of all the knowledge about the universe. The motion of the gears deeply intertwine a link between micro- and macrocosm. A mechanism that simulates cosmology and senses characteristics of an eclipse, with color, size and associated winds.
Define a question, and there will be a calculated answer, even capable of astral divination. Is it an all-seeing eye, or perhaps something beyond even that; a magic entity capable of creating the cosmic events that it is supposed to measure and foretell.
If so, is it by nature auspicious or ominous. Or is it merely a representation and extension of ourselves and our senses, trying to reach both the celestial and the intrinsically unobtainable.
Winter-Light warmly welcomes Peter Andersson to our label, with his 'Atomine Elektrine' project and a stunning new studio album 'The Antikythera Mechanism'.
Here we are invited or compelled even, to delve deep into the intricacies and finely tuned mechanics of this mysterious, all-encompassing machine.
Infinitely extending it's influence across multi-dimensions of time and space, constantly calculating, cogs ever turning, gears whirring, mapping, learning, storing and moving ever onwards. Leaving in it's wake, a vast ocean of unimaginable cosmic events, left to ripple through time until they too fade away to become yet another click in the eternal cycle of 'The Antikythera Mechanism'.
Difference between the CD/Digital and vinyl version
'The Antikythera Mechanism' has a small degree of randomness built-in to the sounds which means that the output of each rendering becomes slightly different. The tracks on the vinyl are of a different rendering than the tracks for the CD/Digital version. This is a natural glitch in 'The Antikythera Mechanism' and it is more or less noticeable.
The sounds are the same but the positions in the sounds are time offset in an arbitrary mode. Any further inequalities are due to the fact that a different mastering technique has been utilised for the vinyl version, than for the CD/Digital version.
As well as there being a different final rendering for the vinyl version, the DLP also comes with an additional and exclusive track, which clocks in at 19:52."
https://winter-light.bandcamp.com/album/the-antikythera-mechanism
"This mechanism Peter Andersson is referring to in the title of the new Atomine Elektrine offering is considered as the first analogue computer. The device was constructed by the ancient Greeks to predict future astronomical occurrences and phenomenas. Even this day it’s an object of scientific researches and studies as its technological sophistication is still unexplained for XXI century scientists and scholars. One of the greatest enigmas in the history of mankind and… what an inspiring theme for a dark ambient artist to explore through music.
It’s not a secret that Peter is a truly versatile musician within the electronic underground, always efficient, no matter if he seeks more noisy approach or more atmospheric one. Atomine Elektrine was born of his fascination of science and instead of wandering through lost cathedrals and desolate wastelands we explore the secrets of space and quantum physics. Clearly, it’s not just the words in the titles and press releases, but the music is unlike his other projects as well. For 25 years the foundation of Atomine Elektrine sound was the use of analogue synthetisers, the old-school instruments cherished by the German masters from the 70s. His music was constantly developing over the years, in all projects, apart from Atomine Elektrine also Raison d’etre, Necrophorus, Bocksholm and several others. Often the inspirations were morphing one through another (for example Necrophorus’ “Imprints” has a one hundred percent Atomine Elektrine vibe), but in general high quality is practically always guaranteed.
I have to admit that while my favourite Peter’s “non-raison” release is “Drifting In Motion” by Necrophorus, it is Atomine Elektrine I value the most as a whole. Maybe not exactly the very first albums, like “Elemental Severance” where it was Jean Michel Jarre a godfather rather than Klaus Schulze, but “Nebulous” or “Laniakea” are very frequent guests in my CD player, up to this day.
Can’t declare today that “The Antikythera Mechanism” will also regain its place in my personal pantheon of all Peter’s releases as it is quite crowdy over there, but yes, it is good, it is goddamn good! The opening dark space of “Arcturus Alpha Boo” made me think of the cosmic vacuums generated by some of the Loki Foundation maestros as the deep rumblings and the feeling of an infinite expanse made me feel small and irrelevant. It calms down after a few minutes and brings a mystery of a titular mechanism to the forefront. From the universe entirety to this tiny device that can capture its secret.
I’m in love with “Metonic Spiral”. You know why? Because it’s like taken straight from “Drifting In Motion”, those delicate synth passages combined with weird bubbling and swirling sounds recall the atmosphere of that masterpiece. Yet while that one had this overwhelming aura of sadness and solitude, in “Metonic Spiral” I hear… a hope that the wonder of what hides behind the ionosphere can be comprehended by the human mind. That feeling is intensified by the second half of the track where these slow melodies and analogue sequences take it one step closer to the old-school German electronica.
In the following track, “The Exeligmos Pointer” all these rhythmic pulsations may recall a working mechanism, while the majestic background textures compliment the structure as a subject of that work. They’re huge and beautiful, they can be compared to the sun/moon eclipse, watched by you, predicted by the device. Subtly disturbing “Time Dislocated By The Mechanism” is. It may sound bizarre, but this piece have something in common with what Penjaga Insaf did on their “Sama Sadja”. While conceptually both projects couldn’t be more distant one from another.
The organic aura of “Epicylic Gearing” is represented by these cyclic sequences, coming and going, pulsating like a bloodflow, later that bass rumblings appears, like a heartbeat. And that simple repeated melody, combined with the mentioned elements develop a tremendous track, which brings another name to my mind. Predominance. Remember that one? Yes, as you can see, that Loki reference few paragraphs ago wasn’t accidental.
Such albums like “The Antikythera Mechanism” deserve an epic ending, yet one must have in mind that Peter Andersson doesn’t really like to finish his albums with a bang. “Fragment F” is not a praise of a human mind, the awe of its endless powers and capabilities. No, it’s a cosmic space, quiet, soulless, without beginning nor end.It’s like the blackest shade of black, it’s probably Peter’s most oppressive finale since “The Eternal Return And The Infinity Horizon”.
And probably one of his best works, at least within the last couple of years. This reference may sound funny, but he’s like Stephen King of dark ambient and I know that a lot of folks grumble that “it’s not the same, his older novels were classic and now he’s just reaping the benefits of his older efforts.” Not true, “The Outsider” or “Sleeping Beauties” are as good as the novels from his so-called “golden era”. Same goes with Peter Andersson, I heard more than once that what he does now is not the same as 20-25 years ago. Wrong. Don’t let nostalgia speak for you. He’s still in a very good shape and the astounding sound of “The Antikythera Mechanism” is its brightest, or rather darkest example." [Santa Sangre]
€13.00
CQ CQ
AUME’s first album Agere Urendum Mentis Epode was described as “the soundtrack playing in my head while I’m falling through a wormhole on my way to creation… to rebirth…” Their second full release, Elemental, extended the wormhole to the visual realm through non-representational film and surround sound. Their new release CQ CQ continues to explore the abstract non-representational aural/visual realm through the use of headphones. Though the album sounds great on speakers, the immersive environment created from deep listening in headphones once again sends the listener through a visual wormhole.
CQ CQ refers to the shortwave radio abbreviation for “calling any station”. This theme came about from a disillusionment created by the overwhelming amount of information being transmitted. That any individual voice falls on deaf ears in the midst of a maelstrom. That one is never more isolated than when everyone is talking at the same time. CQ CQ is full of vocal transmissions, most of which are indecipherable. They are failed attempts at communication. Those voices that are understood depict unintended mutations that lead to the disintegration of communication. Despite this, humans have the ability to adapt and resonate in the physical world. To transform isolation into a breath of silence.
USB Flash Drive + Digital Album
Handcrafted Box with USB and scroll. 24bit album, 16bit album, Transmission video, Transmission video Mix audio, and more.
Listening Instructions
1 - Substance of choice (optional)
2 - Put on headphones
3 - Turn out the lights
4 - Lay down
5 - Hit play
6 - Enter the wormhole
7 - Regain consciousness
8 - Repeat
Transmission video: youtu.be/7F5mFP9C65w
Featured in the 2018 International Drone Cinema Festival
produced and curated by Kim Cascone of Silent Records
silentrecords.bandcamp.com
Cover image: Radio transmitter of Che Guevara
Photographed at the Museum of the Revolution, Cuba
https://aume.bandcamp.com
€30.00
CQ CQ
AUME’s first album Agere Urendum Mentis Epode was described as “the soundtrack playing in my head while I’m falling through a wormhole on my way to creation… to rebirth…” Their second full release, Elemental, extended the wormhole to the visual realm through non-representational film and surround sound. Their new release CQ CQ continues to explore the abstract non-representational aural/visual realm through the use of headphones. Though the album sounds great on speakers, the immersive environment created from deep listening in headphones once again sends the listener through a visual wormhole.
CQ CQ refers to the shortwave radio abbreviation for “calling any station”. This theme came about from a disillusionment created by the overwhelming amount of information being transmitted. That any individual voice falls on deaf ears in the midst of a maelstrom. That one is never more isolated than when everyone is talking at the same time. CQ CQ is full of vocal transmissions, most of which are indecipherable. They are failed attempts at communication. Those voices that are understood depict unintended mutations that lead to the disintegration of communication. Despite this, humans have the ability to adapt and resonate in the physical world. To transform isolation into a breath of silence.
https://aume.bandcamp.com
€14.00
Un_b°tong
"B°tong’s second release on Attenuation Circuit is, as the title suggests, quite atypical for the dark ambient soundscapes the Swedish-Swiss artist is best known for. In six rather short tracks, B°tong explores the sonic possibilities of digital audio manipulation of several sound sources, mainly recorded voices used as sources of pure sound, not linguistic information. The results feel somewhat like an unlikely combination of lowercase electronica and Mille Plateaux-style cuts’n’glitches and updated audio poetry in the tradition of William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Henri Chopin.
“Un_B°tong” opens up a new direction in the artist’s work while remaining true to the spirit of experimentation with non-musical sounds that has been informing cutting edge music for about a century now, including the original practitioners of “industrial” music that have been inspiring B°tong’s work. Those with ears tuned to today’s rather limited definition of the genre as “dark” music of some sort or other may find the intellectual playfulness of B°tong’s approach on this release too lighthearted, even humorous, considering titles like “Colourful, Comfortable, Weatherproof” or the tongue-in-cheek combination of biblical quotes about the devil with the “subliminal” message “B°tong isst heimlich” (“B°tong eats secretly”) almost hidden in the cover copy. For those interested in truly contemporary audio experiments, however, this crisp little outing has a lot to offer within the space of its 18 minutes." [label info]
www.wix.com/attenuationcircuit/attenuation-circuit
€6.50
Les machines ecarlates
The project of BOTCHAN KARISEN (Belgium) with a new work, a deep tour de force into a electronic / technological chaos-music, with influences from Industrial, Collage-Sounds and even Electro-Acoustic, dark & ecstatic & dangerous !
"A man with a fish eye stared at me when I satisfied my computer with this CD. The artwork on this release is awesome, something which is thoughtful to do when you release your CD in a DVD case. On the front of “les machines ecarlates” stands a man pierced through his forehead with a huge piece of piping. On the back a man with a fish eye gives me a look, which keeps me away from the track listing underneath it. I must say, it pleases me to receive such artwork, I could write a good review about the artwork alone.
Babylone Chaos is new to me, not only as an artist, but the music is very new to me too. Listening to the first track “Dissect me” I got very enthusiastic. This artist knows how to frighten someone with sounds. Electronic heavy sounds flow back and forth while strange ‘ahhh’s and ‘oohh’s can be heard. A shivering breath, winds and strange electronic drums complete the picture. Shocked awake by a heavy pound on a barrel and a cracking door. Where am I at this point? The gruesome sounds I heard before are overtaken by heavenly sounds, birds and some vocals. But it was a short victory, the dark sounds kick in again and the beat starts to get back at me. I am stunned, this is not music, this is straight on sound-engineering! The second track “Scared datas” goes like the first track, but gets more of a triphop sound. Dark triphop, that could become a trend. Count me in for that genre, because what Babylone Chaos is doing here is new, refreshing and awesome. The third track “Blood on thorns” gets a lot noisier than the previous tracks and is suddenly petrifying when circus music starts. (I always had something against the circus and clowns, don’t ask why.)
Listening to the CD I found that Babylone Chaos can be compared, in a strange way, with Aphex Twin. You can hear beats, but they never last longer than a few measures. That is one of the reasons why this CD sounds so great. Babylone Chaos doesn’t care about being tagged with a genre; the artist just does what he wants. The CD isn’t one you listen to on a regular occasion. Listening to “les machines exerlates” is a trip. A trip to the beautiful, the ugly, the frightening the heaven and the hell. As I continued my exploration, I found even more interesting material. The piano pieces in the fifth track “Death crusade” are so strange. It doesn’t fit with the music, but in some way it jet [i]does[/i] fit. The tender background sounds are divided and shattered to pieces by deep noisy scrapes, pounds and scratches. This is music which can be compared with using acid. But please dear reader; don’t use it at the same time!
The tracks go well into each other, although that isn’t hard with such experimental music. Track eight, “Paranoiac morons”, made me think of a scene in the Kubrick movie “Full metal jacket”, where Joker tries to find the sniper who turns out to be a woman. I’ve always found that scene and especially, the music, incredible. But I think “Paranoiac morons” would be even better as a soundtrack to that scene.
As an overall thought I must say that this release surprised me muchly. The packaging is awesome, although I can’t stand it when a CD doesn’t fit between the regular jewel cases and digipacks. The music is refreshing and “les machines ecarlates” is more like a piece of art then a CD filled with songs. “Les machines ecarlates” brings you to the verge of your life, a leap of faith, a trip to hell and back and leaves the unprepared to wonder. This isn’t my regular “sing along in the shower” CD, this is something I admire, treasure for the special moments and certainly use in tiny portions. All those experimental fans out there, beware! “Les machines ecarlates” gives you the journey of a lifetime." [Heathen Harvest]
label-website: www.opn.fr
€8.00
No. 104 (Dez. 2019)
"Artrock Festival 2019 mit Theo Ceccaldi Freaks und Ryorchestra; Freakshows mit Tatvamasi, White Pulse, Albatre, Welcome Inside The Brain, Alex's Hand, La STPO; W71: Rodrigo Amado's This Is Our Language; Geoff with yer Head!: Geoff Leigh; Hackepicciotto; Kamilya Jubran & Werner Hasler; Go: Organic Orchestra - Sirkis/Bialas IQ - Audiophob / Krater - Gruenrekorder - 90 % Wasser; Feature: Norwegen - Ja, Vi Elsker Dette Land!; Internationales Festival für Experimentelle Musik in München ... 88 Seiten, keine Werbung"
€4.00
Chronoland
"This new album of Massimo Magrini is the soundscape for a mind movie and another masterpiece that picks up where the previous work CMASA left off. Twelve beautifully crafted chapters of music segueing between morphing layers of thick drones, haunting melodies and crackling vocal transmissions. Chronoland unfolds a fascinating and cineastic atmosphere of frightening ambient melodica with dark soundwaves deeply imbedded in the music and bursts of electro-acoustic effects. This release is another step forward into the sound cosmos of Massimo Magrini with new directions but always in the unique way of BAD SECTOR." [label info]
www.loki-found.de
€13.00
Ampos
This was the first full-length album released by Masimo Magrini as BAD SECTOR in 1995 as a CD on STAALPLAT. For the 25th anniversary of that album we are proud to go for the re-release into vinyl format of such a masterpiece.
Including some bonus material of the same era.
This album became an Instant-CULT immediately after its release and still truly is a masterpiece of Dark-Ambient Industrial!
An album without age somehow reminding to best Psychadelic and German Space-Muzak but with his own and very tipical and inconfondible Bad Sector aproach and trade-mark.
To the original recordings we added as bonus on 4th LP side 4 additional tracks from the CDr album "Transponder" released as a CDr on BLADE RECORDS.
Comes on good, old black vinyl - Limited to 300 copies.
€33.00
Ampos
This was the first full-length album released by Masimo Magrini as BAD SECTOR in 1995 as a CD on STAALPLAT. For the 25th anniversary of that album we are proud to go for the re-release into vinyl format of such a masterpiece.
Including some bonus material of the same era.
This album became an Instant-CULT immediately after its release and still truly is a masterpiece of Dark-Ambient Industrial!
An album without age somehow reminding to best Psychadelic and German Space-Muzak but with his own and very tipical and inconfondible Bad Sector aproach and trade-mark.
To the original recordings we added as bonus on 4th LP side 4 additional tracks from the CDr album "Transponder" released as a CDr on BLADE RECORDS.
Comes on good, old black vinyl - Limited to 300 copies.
€42.50
Idioblast
"In 2005 a small Russian label, Insofar Vapour Bulk, proposed to Massimo Magrini to work on a recording made by Hiroshi Hasegawa (Astro). It was a "drone-like" sound of a few minutes, Despite the difficult nature of the assignment, Massimo loved the very static and cryptic structure of the original. So, starting from this basic recording (without using additional sounds) he developed a 45 minutes long suite: it was like using a magic audio lens which revealed a myriad of hidden details in a microscopic world. The original Astro sound can
still be heard at the beginning and at the end of the suite. The re-edition comes in beautiful cardboard case with silver-embossed printing." [label info]
www.loki-found.de
"... IDIO BLAST verzaubert mit drones und regelrecht glitzernden Klängen, kristallin-klar und glasig-summend und mit seltsame Zwischentöne versehen..." [Drone Rec. 2006]
€13.00
Liminoid / Lifeforms
"While Alien8 Recordings has had the pleasure of releasing three full-length albums by Aidan Baker's ambient doom project Nadja, as well as his collaborative effort Fantasma Parastasie with Tim Hecker, this marks our first solo release with the artist. Although we consider Liminoid/Lifeforms to be a solo effort, there are in fact no less than eight guest musicians helping out on the recording. These include Canadian noise legend Knurl (a.k.a. Alan Bloor) who has been released three times on Alien8 Recordings prior to this recording, as well as members of Arc, Picastro, Forest City Lovers and Whisper Room. Liminoid is a composition for large ensemble exploring sonic immersion in drones and textures, rhythms and pulsations. Incorporating composed and improvised segments, the piece uses elongation of sound and layered polyph- ony in an attempt to create a liminal and/or numinous state. This recording of Liminoid is from its premier at The Music Gallery's X-Avant Festival in Toronto, October 25, 2008. The piece features a powerful vocal performance with every member sharing the vocal duties. The lyrics have been adapted from 5th-8th century Coptic Christian texts and inspired by the book Ancient Christian Magic by Marvin W. Meyer & Richard Smith. The ensemble members for this performance were: Aidan Baker (guitar/ voice), Clara Engel (guitar/voice), Nick Storring (cello/voice), Jakob Thiesen (drums/voice), Richard Baker (drums/voice), Tillman Lewis (cello/voice), Laura Bates (violin/voice) and Jonathan Demers (guitar/voice). Lifeforms is a composition for strings, prepared/effected guitar, and amplified metal works. Likewise incorporating written and improvised material, the piece was originally commissioned and performed by The Penderecki Quartet in 2003. This recording was made in August 2008 at Commonwealth Studios in Toronto. The performers were: Aidan Baker (guitar), Nick Storring (cello), Mika Posen (violin) and Alan Bloor (metal works). This recording has been both skillfully mixed from multiple recordings and mastered by James Plotkin." [label info]
www.alien8recordings.com
"The latest from the always impressive, and always prolific Aidan Baker, who creates thick wall of sound doomgaze in the duo Nadja, and much more personal, hushed drone music under his own name, but more and more has been expanding his scope with various collaborations and large ensembles. This might be the biggest ensemble he's worked with, 8 players, all contributing vocals, three guitars, two drummers, violin and two cellos. And it does sound like what you might imagine, a sort of Aidan Baker drone record / chamber music
hybrid, long languid tones, plenty of cymbal shimmer, the strings moan and sing, the sounds ebb and flow, swelling ominously, building to
swirling crescendos, before slipping back into something more minimal and contemplative, "Liminoid" is split into 4 movements, and is about as close to classical music as Baker has come, at least in the first part, the second part shifts gears dramatically, transforming into something more jazzy and propulsive, a sort of krautrock thing, but with a jazzy slow shifting Necks vibe, eventually building to a dense tribal workout, before slipping into part 3, all shimmery blissy drift, soft focus and sun dappled, the drums an understated slowcore
shuffle, leading up to the 15 minute final movement, where the vocalists team up for a haunting bit of choral drama, which explodes
into full on free jazz freakout wall of sound, finishing off with a long form spaced out drone jam, that definitely reminds us of a super
stripped down White Hills, psychedelic and washed out and very hypnotic.
The second piece, the nearly 30 minute "Lifeforms" is a smaller ensemble, Baker on guitar, with violin, cello and 'amplified metal works', the metal works had us expecting something clangy and bombastic, but instead, it's almost all warm whirling ambient shimmer,
much more in keeping with Baker's solo sounds, near the end, the sounds shift, and the strings move to the fore, weaving dramatic melodies over the slow burning drone underneath, the result very cinematic. Quite nice." [Aquarius Rec.]
"One of my favorite noise albums, "Frequency LSD" by Japanoise artist Masonna was released on Alien8 Recordings in the mid-90's. With this in mind, and in combination with the release of present two albums, there shouldn't be any questions about the the great span of styles released by Alien8 Recordings - Canada's probably most interesting label of the underground. Aidan Baker is a Canadian multi-instrumentalist and sound artist that creates music in the field from post-rock across drone ambient to modern classical. His latest release "Limonoid / Lifeforms" roughly comes across all aforementioned styles. On the album Aidan Baker has allied with concrete noise artist Alan Bloor alias Knurl / Pholde, Richard Baker on drums plus a number of other acoustic members on instruments such as cello, violin and guitars. As the title suggest the album is divided into two main sections: A section called "Limonoid" consisting of four intersections and the long and final piece titled "Lifeforms".
"Limonoid" is as mentioned earlier an interesting crossover between neo-classical chamber music, noise-rock, post-rock with associations of earlier Krautrock (first of all Amon Düül I + II) and neo-folk with elements of middle-age expressions. Quite interesting and very trippy psychedelia with vocals from Clara Engel is what the first four chapters of the albums presents. But in my opinion, the true gift is the second main section of the album titled "Lifeforms". "Lifeforms" is a lengthy piece clocking approximately 30 minutes. Where the aforementioned section was a crossover of a number of styles "Lifeforms" mainly focus on ambient-expressions but with clear interventions of classical instruments such as violin and cello meanwhile aforementioned noise artist Alan Bloor controls his usual ultra-aggressive sound equipments being amplified steel and metal as sound sources into more subtle and very attractive noise drones. The piece is quite repetitive with a long hissing drone of amplified strings but with organic interventions of concrete sounds of aforementioned instruments. Halfway though the track, hissing drone fades away giving way to more plain acoustic ambience until another drone appears. The atmosphere is hypnotic and very intense through out the running time of the piece. Very interesting album showing the wide span of Aidan Baker." [NM / Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Enomeni
Some years ago, when we (Cosima & Dimi) visited a live performance of Dirk Serries Microphonics, he asked us, if we ever will marry and we answered, that if we do, Dirk had to play a wedding concert for us. Back then, it was just a running joke. Well, finally we ended up with a wedding band consisting of our three favorite artists Dirk Serries, N and Aidan Baker.
“Enomeni” (which is greek and means “connected”) is a document of a very special live performance. Aidan Baker, N and Dirk Serries came together for the first time to play an improvised live session. The result is an one hour session, divided into four tracks, which show up an impressively increasing soundjourney with accentuating moments, ending up in a massive drone with squeaking and buzzing guitars.
The set starts very cautious and you can hear how the three musicians are coming together to build up an epic track, in which they find their perfect roles. Aidan Baker takes over the rhythm section by looping some sweeping sounds, N builds up a valley of ambient and drone sounds with hills, mountains and endless horizons and Dirk Serries rounds up everything by accompanying both or bringing in some accents like bowed guitar sounds. Like mentioned before everything ends up in an encore which also could bring you in mind, that they were joined by members of Sunn o))) or Earth for a big drone finale.
The set was mastered for vinyl by Fear Falls Burning (Dirk Serries), being divided into four tracks, each one hosted on one 12inch side. The artwork is made by N, using photos by Cosima made in Greece during the church wedding vacations.
The record comes as a double vinyl in an edition of 250 copies, housed in a gatefold sleeve, printed inside out with an incredible hand feel. We have 150 copies on black vinyl and a limited edition of 100 coloured copies.
www.midirarecords.com
€27.50
A Bout de Souffle
"keine intros, keine outros, kein einfaden, dito raus. mit schöner brutalität mitten ins geschehen: das platten manchmal unvermittelt anfangen ist so manchmal ja nicht unbedingt; bei einzelstücken sogar noch mehr; eine ganze platte, bei der jedes stück sich darstellt, als bekäme hörer und -in immer nur einen (besonders interessanten?) ausschnitt eines (unbekannten?) gesamtwerks präsentiert, ist dagegen alles andere als die regel. vielleicht habe ich das in dieser konsequenz das letzte mal allen ernstes auf der "guitar" von frank zappa gehört (auch eine gute platte, übrigens), die mal eben lässig nur die gitarrensoli zusammencuttete. hier also aidan baker mit jakob thiesen (drumkit, percussion, processing; auch in kanada tätig, auch ambient-ping-posse) und ausschnitten (zwischen 4.33 und 10.39 min) aus "sporadic sessions", die, live aufgenommen, von aidan baker gemixt und, ganz offensichtlich, gelayert wurden, so wie er es beispielsweise bereits bei der "at the base of the mind is coiled a serpent" getan hatte. mit einem entscheidenden unterschied: das, was aidan baker und jakob thiesen hier vorlegen, verlässt die reine drone oder ambient schiene oder zumindest deren engere definition und geht durchaus in richtung "arc", einer weiteren (gruppen)aktivität von aidan baker: #1 + #7 mit rollendem, (nicht nur fast) groovingem bass, sehr deep im untergrund schiebend, die percussion tief eingebettet, die darüber liegenden gitarren oft (!) akustisch und bei ausschnitt #2 z.b. in einem laid-back bluesfeel (nicht erschrecken, vertrauen in aidan baker hat sich doch bisher fast immer ausgezahlt) mit archaisch marschierender rudimentär-percussion und x-ebenen darüber und dahinter. der elektro-akustische eindruck und die verwebung einer vielzahl von ebenen, innerhalb derer mal nicht ausnahmslos flächen generiert werden, um diese dann gegeneinander laufen zu lassen, sondern wo eine diktatur der mikroereignisse herrscht (listen to #5, "the end of breathe 2", dann weist du was ich meine), die sich zu einem 3D kosmos ergänzen und, egal wie hibbelig das einzelne sein mag, im zusammenhang dann eben doch einen grossen, fast meta-zusammenklang schaffen, dieser eindruck bleibt auf voller lauflänge erhalten und lässt zumindest assoziationen in richtung oren ambarchi's "sun" zu, deren ebenfalls mysteriöse elektro-akustische melange eine sehr ähnliche stimmung evoziert wie eben "a bout de souffle". und noch mal die #5: lang vorbereitet, dieses kippen um die 10.00 und perfekt in die #6, "take a breath". keine ahnung, ob die familienzugehörigkeit der titelgebungen genau dieses phänomen unterstützen soll oder ob zufall: weite teile der 7 tracks nehmen mit ihrem ende bzw. anfang bezug aufeinander; eine weitere rätselhaftigkeit dieses releases, werden doch die abstände zwischen den tracks auch dann eindeutig als pause markiert...
ein überraschendes kollaborations-release im schicken digipack mit naturinspirations-makrozoom-coverbild, angeraut durch kontrastkorrosion. + übrigens: auch am ende keine fade-out gnade..." [Hellmut Neidhardt, www.unruhr.de]
"A Bout De Souffle is a 54 min Collaboration between Aidan Baker (who is also known as Nadja together with Leah Buckareff) and Percussionist Jakob Thiesen (who recently joined baker live on stage to play live drums). Aidan baker is famous for his experimental guitar music. This time things are a bit different. You wont find the typical aidan baker drone stuff here, but instead both men created an incredible journey through the fields of krautrock, Psychedelic and drone music. The Percussion of Jakob Thiesen adds a certain deepness to Bakers guitar explorations were he also uses bass and acoustic guitar to build an mind blowing album full of surprises and wonderful melodies." [label info]
"Waterscape is a new label, owned by Martin Fuhs, whom we also know as Seconds In Formaldehyde and it's mission is to release ambient music made by guitars. The first release is by Aidan Baker, our highly productive guitarist, who teams up here with Jakob Thiesen, who plays percussion, like he did on 'Desire In Uneasiness' by Nadja. Despite his many releases, Baker is a man to find new forms and shapes. On this release things are more experimental and improvised as opposed to being the more ambient player he is on some of his earlier solo releases. Baker tinkles away, sending his guitar through his many devices while Thiesen supplements nicely with percussive sounds, but it's more a supportive role than an active one or playing a 'solo' himself. The ambient element is not entirely gone, as much of it stays on an equal dynamic level and could perhaps pass on as a sort of rough shaped mood music. Nice stuff." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
www.waterscape.de
€9.50
Fantasma Parastasie
Die beiden ungekrönten Könige des kanadischen Drone-Ambients in Kollaboration! Trotz ihres sehr unterschiedlichen Backgrounds (der eine v.a. analog mit Gitarre arbeitend aus der Jazz & Impro-Szene stammend, der andere mit rein elektronischem Hintergrund eher aus Techno & Noise-Gefilden) treffen sie sich in einer fast undefinierbaren "Mitte", wobei unklar bleibt wer wessen Material bearbeitet hat oder ob es zu real-time Zusammenspielen kam. Frei flottierende Gitarren-Drones, teils ultra-sperrig verfremdet, teils subtil & beruhigend, dann wieder ausserweltlich und überbordend. Sehr variantenreich und ausufernd. Ungewöhnlich auch die Indexierung auf der CD: Die 7 Stücke verteilen sich auf ganze 66 Indexe!
"Fantasma Parastasie sees the pairing of Aidan Baker, of the ambient doom band Nadja, and Tim Hecker, two of Canada's brightest musicians in the world of abstract electronic music. Tim Hecker has been enjoying the rewards of a stellar career and discography, devoid of filler, due to his incredibly high quality control. His full-length Harmony In Ultra Violet was viewed as a major release in the genre of experimental electronic music. Aidan Baker, on the other hand, works under very different circumstances, releasing material both as a solo artist and as a member of the duo Nadja. His prolificacy is on par with that of Merzbow and the late Muslimgauze. Thankfully, Aidan Baker is one of those musicians with the ability to record and write new music quickly and without sacrificing the quality of his art. Anyone familiar with both Aidan Baker and Tim Hecker is more than likely familiar with Alien8 Recordings as the two musicians have collectively released seven records for our label thus far. While Baker has collaborated with the likes of John Duncan, Black Boned Angel and Fear Falls Burning, among others, this marks the first collaboration to be released by Hecker. This release, divided in eight movements, blends together to form a fluid example of a collaboration that works. Unlike one of those collaborations where artists throw some sound files back and forth via the internet, this release is the fruit of various real-time recording and mixing sessions the two artists worked on in Tim Hecker's Montreal studio. The pieces on the record blend seamlessly into one another, creating a deeper listening experience, as is the case on a number of Tim Hecker's solo outings. While Baker and Hecker share a penchant for creating a powerful blend of ambient noise, Fantasma Parastasie finds the more dissonant elements tempered by an emphasis on ambience and even occasional melody. This release is available on CD in a digipak packaging." [label info]
"... But somehow, the sounds on Fantasma Parastasie manage to transcend, allowing glimpses of familiar sounds, hints of each
artist's own work, but woven into a whole that is unto itself, a gloriously abstract swirl of sound, longform landscapes of bliss and blur, of buzz and even roar, extended movements, in which the various elements drift and shimmer, overlap and intertwine, melodies and songcraft meet texture and soundscapery, guitars unfurl tangled melodies one second, bleary eyed chordal blurs the next, harmonics glisten and hover amidst deep soft swells, distortion and buzz build into fierce walls of blown out psychedelia, the sounds crumbling and
decaying before our ears, threatening to collapse, and in this fragile state lies the beauty of those sounds, effulgent, incandescent, but at the same time, blackening, beginning some unnamable process of inevitable decay. And eventually it does decay, those thick roiling sounds dissipate, leaving something soft and shimmery, glistening on a
bed of shed buzz and crumbled crush, floating heavenward, its notes and melodies catching the sunlight, and offering up prismatic reflections.
The strange thing about this record is that each song is separated into super short pieces, eleven in most cases, each part between 15 and 45 seconds (it's obviously much more noticeable on the cd). We tried listening to it on shuffle, presuming that was perhaps the intention, and while it still sounds cool, it was a bit too and took too much away from the overall effect. Instead, the various parts, played in order, slip seamlessly into one another, so much so that if you weren't watching the tracks tick by on player, you
wouldn't even notice.
The two work amazingly well together, bits of guitar, fragments of riffs, looped and repeated, swathed in thick smears of digital
crunch, of buzzing rumble, much of the record sounds like a heavier William Basinski, as if the two were experimenting with they own
Disintegration Loops. A few of the tracks are quite tranquil, abstract and minimal, but for the most part, Baker and Hecker seem more
interested in distressed sounds, in distortion, in pushing the limits, composing in the red, needles pegged, but taking what in other hands
could be harsh and abrasive, and crafting those sounds into something simultaneously soft and dreamlike. Even the various movements, drift
smoothly into one another the entire record almost like a single piece, expansive and varied and sprawling, epic and majestic, but
inward looking, introspective, melancholy, imbuing the crumbling crunch and blown out minimalism, with emotion, with distinctive mood, at once dark and mysterious, but also strangely hopeful.
The album closer and title track, is the only one not split up into movements, and is easily the most abstract, the most minimal, a
stretch of lugubrious low end, so soft, so weightless, a hushed musical murmur, no distortion, no buzz, just a simple swell and sway, drifting fading, and finally disappearing.
Absolutely breathtaking."" [Aquarius Records review]
www.alien8recordings.com
€13.00
In Darkness let me dwell
An epic imaginary soundtrack for an imaginary film noir. Something happened, titles can suggest a story that the listener can make up... An old unsolved case. A tormented detective on the trail of a missing girl. Someone is in danger. A showdown with inner demons. Maybe it was all a dream.
"In Darkness Let Me Dwell" is a quote from a piece by Renaissance lutenist John Dowland (1563-1626). In a dreamlike and nocturnal atmosphere, filled with rain and decaying sounds, the album deconstructs, reworks and wants to pay homage to the imagery and clichés of cinema noir, ranging from classic 40s and 50s movies, up to the works by David Lynch ("Twin Peaks", "Mulholland Drive", "Blue Velvet"), passing through films such as "The Element of Crime" by Lars von Trier, or "Cure" by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
Alessandro Barbanera (ROHS! Lontano Series) is a musician, composer, sound artist, guitar maker from Assisi, Italy.
'It’s a lovely album, best played at the end of the day; the lights are still out when the day turns into evening, and darkness slowly falls".
- Vital Weekly
credits
released March 7, 2025
Composed & produced by Alessandro Barbanera (May-September 2023).
Mastering by Francis Gri at KSND Studio.
Released by Owl Totem Recordings, OTR-02
Distributed by Fonodroom, FD-28CD ~ linktr.ee/fonodroom
https://owltotem.bandcamp.com/album/in-darkness-let-me-dwell
€13.00
Fantas Variations
Fantas" is the epic opening track on Caterina Barbieri's acclaimed 2019 release Ecstatic Computation (EMEGO 259LP, 2019). The original "Fantas" laid out a magical path of patterns leading the listener on a journey into the sound itself. Fantas Variations maps out eight new potentials sprung from this initial path as constructed by a diverse mix of artists lending to a wide spectrum of new works extrapolated from the original work. For this project Barbieri invited friends and long-time collaborators from a variety of musical backgrounds to create a more sustainable and inclusive landscape in terms of stylistic, geographical, gender, and generational balance. The results are a diverse array of approaches and instrumentation which blur the boundaries between the acoustic and electronic. Fantas Variations embraces a platform for mutual exchange and support between like-minded artists, where active and collective re-imagination is prioritized over the traditional model of remixes, which is often strategic, functional and more passive. Longtime friend and collaborator Kali Malone rearranged "Fantas" to a slowed-down, austere and eerie version for two organs. Evelyn Saylor created a piece for a vocal ensemble consisting of her, Lyra Pramuk, Stine Janvin, and Annie Garlid, joining forces to express the choral, psychedelic and vital nature of the piece. Barbieri's former guitar professor at the Conservatory in Bologna, Walter Zanetti, composes "Fantas" for electric guitar, by translating every single gesture of the original electronic piece into a personal, nuanced and detailed interpretation. Bendik Giske's reinterpretation for saxophone and voice captures the atmospheric essence of "Fantas" and its psychic meteorology. Longtime collaborator and along with Barbieri the other half of the outfit Punctum, Carlo Maria, resynthesizes "Fantas" for TR808 and MC202, bringing a more club-oriented dimension of the piece to life whilst unveiling the sonic continuum between rhythm and pitch through a sensitive timbral approach. Jay Mitta's Singeli reinterpretation of "Fantas" transpires with pitched-up percussion and turbo-fast polyrhythmic patterns unleashing the frenetic, shifting, transformative matter within the piece to a higher plain of euphoric dance. Baseck's variation is a rave fantasia, where the prismatic trance of the original is channeled into fierce, uncompromising hardcore, whilst Kara-Lis Coverdale's take is a phantasmagoria for piano that gently, yet inexorably, captures the relentlessness chimerical qualities of the original, unveiling its spectral backbone. Mastered by Rashad Becker, February 2021. Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnittstelle, Berlin, February 2021. Artwork and typography by Ruben Spini. Lettering by Alice Fiorelli.
01. Evelyn Saylor (feat. Lyra Pramuk, Annie Garlid and Stine Janvin) - Fantas Variation for Voices (7:38)
02. Bendik Giske - Fantas for Saxophone and Voice (7:31)
03. Kali Malone - Fantas for two Organs (10:21)
04. Walter Zanetti - Fantas for Electric Guitar (7:27)
05. Jay Mitta - Singeli Fantas (12:03)
06. Baseck - Fantas Hardcore (4:44)
07. Carlo Maria - Fantas resynthesized for 808 and 202 (4:29)
08. Kara-Lis Coverdale - Fantas Morbida (3:04)
https://editionsmego.bandcamp.com/album/fantas-variations
€25.50
The Other Heaven
Zweite fabrikgepresste CD für BARDO.. und wieder klingen sie anders als noch zuvor, hier setzen sie auf monotone loops die mit rituell oder sakral anmutenden Sounds versetzt werden - eine unheimliche, beschwörende, z.T. auch sehr religiöse Stimmung wird erzeugt... wieder sehr gut ! Neben REUTOFF, CISFINITUM und LUNAR ABYSS QUARTET z.Zt. wohl die beste russische „post-industrial“ oder „experimental ambient“-Band !
“ Fascinating second opus from the russian (St Petersburg) dark ambient masters. This time atmospheres are developed in a less abstract way than the first CD on Athanor. Bardoseneticcube use of percussions, bowls, bells and ritual chants are mixed with strange ambiance to give it an exquisite and mysterious martial and virile mystical touch. The progression of the album invites us to be a part of the mystery, like we were witnessing the surrouding and the heart of an ancient religious secret society order, whose place could be the monastery hidden in the blue fogged forest depicted on the cover. A new sound approach for BSC, not far away from some early ritual Coil or Deutsch Nepal recordings.” [label info]
€13.00
Inner and Outer Space
This is already the second collaboration album of Bardoseneticcube from Russia and Shinkiro from Japan, this time under their own names. The first disc "Four Noble Truths" was released under the combined title of Bashin on the French label Athanor in 2011 and was dedicated to the basic principles of Buddhist teachings. The meditative and contemplative subject continues here as well, now being focused on the aspects of inner and outer space.
We submerge in the dark thick matter of sound, fluid, transparent and stratiform. Woven from abstract electronics, omnifarious samples and transformed voices, textures are smoothly interchanging, always showing new visions in the black mirror of our viewport. Makes you wonder - does the perceivable exist separately from the percipient? In any case this is dark, nocturnal, cosmic music, not devoid of epicism and dramatism. Worth having in your playlist for the next space travel!
The disc is packed in a matte 4-panel cardboard digisleeve with artwork made by Vitaly Stromchinsky (X3D5, Eternal Return Records).
http://zhb.radionoise.ru/
€12.00
Insubstantial as Ghosts
BArTc is London based experimental electronic audio visual artist Jason Barton, with his nom de plume comprising the symbols for three chemical elements - Boron (B), Argon (Ar) and Technetium (Tc) - while also giving nods to both Hungarian composer Béla Bartók and his own surname.
'Insubstantial As Ghosts' is Barton’s debut album and contains fourteen highly atmospheric soundscapes. Taking the title from a William Gibson novel that was also used in a citation about Sleeping Sickness (‘they neither conveyed nor felt the feeling of life; they were as insubstantial as ghosts, and as passive as zombies’), he comments that “I have always loved the phrase as for me it perfectly describes minimalist, other worldly dark ambience.”
Initially inspired by instrumental electronic records in his father’s record collection by titans such as Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre, Barton soon gravitated towards underground ‘industrial’ icons such as Coil, Einstürzende Neubauten, Chris & Cosey and Skinny Puppy, as well as digging deeper into the work of early German electronicists such as Cluster, Musique concrète pioneers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, plus the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Citing sound recordist (and Cabaret Voltaire co-founder) Chris Watson as another influence, adding that “I have always loved environmental sounds and often carry a field recorder on my travels which I use to create texture in my pieces.”
Further explaining his modus operandi, Barton explains: “I build layers to create something abstract yet strangely beautiful, mixing source material, organic and experimental sounds plus field recordings that are heavily distorted with various effects. For me, creating music is a form of meditation, and to lose oneself in an improvisation is a wonderful experience. I just need to remember to hit record!”
Having collected synthesisers and made music (both alone and with friends) for several years, Barton subsequently started the project Less Than One to create accompanying videos that he began posting on Instagram. Initially solely for his own work, he soon earned plaudits from a worldwide community of electronic artists that in turn has led to commissions from the likes of Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini.
Much of ‘Insubstantial As Ghosts’ was recorded in January 2021 while the UK was in lockdown. “I participated in an annual Instagram music making challenge, where artists post a short piece of music every day using the hashtag #jamuary2021. Recording my contributions at the same time every evening (22:23), I amassed many minutes of music and ideas. Some of these were expanded to become tracks for the album or inspired further recordings through the dark winter nights.”
ICR's Colin Potter heard some of Barton’s work and agreed on a releasel. He has handpicked several of the pieces included on ‘Insubstantial As Ghosts’ and also mastered the album.
https://icrdistribution.bandcamp.com/album/insubstantial-as-ghosts
€13.00
The complete Recordings 1949-1950
"This box set reissues the complete recordings of Yitshak Jacques Zaludkowski (Ben-Baruch) published on 78-rpm picture discs by "Saturne" in 1950. born on 1914 in Stawiszyn, to a religious family of eight children, this singer's repertoire is diversified: synagogal-like religious songs in Hebrew, Yiddish songs, songs about religious and about the inception of the State of Israel" [label info]
www.subrosa.net
€16.50
A Shadow in Time
"World-renowned as one of experimental music's most vital and impressionistic composers of the past few decades, William Basinski’s tape loop works have been especially influential, particularly on the historic series, The Disintegration Loops, where distorted, orchestral tape samples burrow deep into the listener's psyche through meditative repetition. On his new album, A Shadow In Time, Basinski plunges deeper than ever for the plaintive, solitary eulogy to David Bowie, aptly titled “For David Robert Jones.” Conversely, the title track, “A Shadow In Time,” is a subtle, celestial escalation of melody and drone. The result is one of the most truly transcendent pieces of music he has ever committed to – or wrung from – tape." [press release]
"Basinski's new album A Shadow in Time contains some of his strongest work since The Disintegration Loops introduced him to the world at large.
In the fifteen years since William Basinski released the debut installment of his Disintegration Loops series he has been rapidly, and rightly, lionized. But for two decades prior to that, he was just another eccentric artist in New York, a tinkerer who built his own instruments, ran a venue and experimented insatiably with tape loops. He would tune in to the easy listening piped out by CBS and record snippets of it, creating a massive archive of schmaltz that, through the alchemy of sampling, could be transfigured into something infinitely more haunting. “I would set up loops, get them going, put on the tape recorder and let it go for the length of the cassette because if it was going, it captured this eternal moment,” he told The Quietus in 2012. That eternal-moment is quintessential Basinski; his work has been uniquely fixated on time and loss, his compositions heaving with longing, melancholy and a sense of impenetrable mystery.
At its best, Basinski’s music inspires the sort of rapturous testimony usually reserved for peak experiences, cult leaders and the dead. When it’s not working as well, it can feel not unlike so-called “ruin porn” or the photography of Edward Burtynsky: lovely aestheticizations of late-capitalist collapse that comfort more than they confront. Thankfully, his new album A Shadow in Time contains some of his strongest work since The Disintegration Loops introduced the world to the artist.
The two pieces on A Shadow in Time offer contrasting entry points into his work. The title track is a richly layered composition for the archaic Voyetra 8 synthesizer that was a year in the making and showcases Basinski at the height of his compositional powers. David Bowie tribute “For David Robert Jones,” on the other hand, is an off-the-cuff tape loop piece commissioned by LA’s Volume gallery in the weeks after the artist’s death. Built with re-purposed tape fragments that had been chewed up by a former roommate's cat (“this big, fat motherfucker,” he called it) “For David” exemplifies the entropic decay he’s most known for while adding specific, Bowie-riffing details.
As with all Basinski’s work, there’s a tantalizing juxtaposition between chance and intention (the Voyetra 8 wasn’t even guaranteed to turn on, and when it did, it “was already doing some weird shit so we used it and more”). But on “A Shadow in Time” this tension plays more of a supporting role than a lead. The piece opens with a slow-motion cascade of shimmering high harmonies and murky, shifting lower tones. In its austere beauty, it calls to mind Pauline Oliveros’ landmark Deep Listening, but with an added dash of dread. Clocking in at just shy of 23 minutes, “Shadow” spends its first half stretching towards infinity and its second collapsing on itself.
Around the seven minute mark (amazingly it only feels like three), the piece begins to hollow out. Gradually those glassy high notes drift away like the dust tail of a comet, and tape hiss overtakes the piece. The sense of deterioration is palpable, made more dramatic by distant synth moans and weird bursts of chirping noise that poke through just as “Shadow” drifts into silence. It’s the kind of ending that makes one feel less like a listener and more like a witness.
In the wake of the A-side’s descent, “For David Robert Jones” feels like a cool down for the audience and a victory lap for Basinski. An orchestral clip that could easily be a Disintegration Loops outtake opens, circling around itself and never quite resolving. We’re on more familiar footing here, and the emotional tenor of the the piece, though engaging, is less arrestingly in-your-face than “Shadow.” Six minutes in, a gnarled saxophone juts through rudely, throwing the chilled out transcendence pleasingly off balance. A nod to Bowie’s own saxophone honking on “Subterraneans,” it’s an amusingly punk bit of sabotage, but it fails to develop into something more. Over fourteen more minutes the tension dissipates and “For David” runs out of steam.
Discussing The Disintegration Loops in 2012, Basinski told the Quietus “Over the period of the hour, that melody just decayed right in front of my ears… and eyes… I remember thinking, 'This is not about you.’” While this sense of riveting discovery isn’t fully achieved on “For David,” the album nonetheless offers a stunning journey into a vast, ink-black void." [Pitchfork]
€15.00
Divertissement
"Divertissement is the third collaborative full length from minimalist composer William Basinski and sound artist Richard Chartier.
The duo utilize electronics, piano, tape-loops and short wave radio to evoke a dense atmosphere suggesting hundreds of years of history rising up from the depths of a reverberating cathedral. Subtle, buried and intense murmurs of melody morph through this deeply consuming and slowly evolving composition in two parts.
Pressed in an edition of 500 with beautiful cover drawings by artist James Elaine.
William Basinski is a classically trained musician and composer who has been working in experimental media for over 30 years in NYC and most recently, California. Employing obsolete technology and analogue tape loops, his haunting and melancholy soundscapes explore the temporal nature of life and resound with the reverberations of memory and the mystery of time. His epic 4-disc masterwork, The Disintegration Loops received international critical acclaim and was chosen as one of the top 50 albums of 2004 by Pitchfork Media. The Temporary Residence deluxe LP box-set reissue from 2012 was awarded best re-issue of the year and a score of 10 on Pitchfork. Installations and films made in collaboration with artist-filmmaker, James Elaine have been presented in festivals and museums internationally, and his concerts are presented to sold out crowds around the world. Most recently, Basinski was chosen by Music Director, Antony Hegarty to create music for the new Robert Wilson opera, The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic which had its world premiere at the Manchester International Festival in July 2011 and toured Europe in 2012 and North America in 2013. Orchestral transcriptions of The Disintegration Loops by Maxim Moston have been performed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Queen Elizabeth Hall and La Batie Festival in Geneva, Switzerland. Basinski is currently touring the world in support of Cascade and The Deluge, his latest works which will be released in Spring 2015 on 2062/USA.
Richard Chartier (b.1971), sound and installation artist, is considered one of the key figures in the current of reductionist electronic sound art which has been termed both microsound and Neo-Modernist. Chartier's minimalist digital work explores the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception and the act of listening itself. Chartier's sound works/installations have been presented in galleries and museums internationally including the 2002's Whitney Biennial and he has performed his work live across Europe, Japan, Australia, and North America at digital art
electronic music festivals and exhibits. In 2000 he formed the recording label LINE and has since curated its continuing documentation of compositional and installation work by international sound artists/composers exploring the aesthetics of contemporary and digital minimalism. In 2010, Chartier was awarded a Smithsonian Institution Artist Research Fellowship to explore the National Museum of American History's collection of 19th-Century acoustic apparatus for scientific demonstration." [label info]
www.importantrecords.com
€25.50
VL Tones
How does an invitation to create a one minute long piece of music based on a single instrument source become a two and a half hour 3CD epic?
Towards the end of 2018 Frans de Waard of Freiband was invited by a Japanese label to create an album of one-minute pieces using only the Casio VL-Tone 1. The VL-Tone is perhaps best known as being the first commercially marketed digital synthesiser, a cheap plastic instrument barely a foot in length. The idea was for each track to be a joint effort with a different collaborator from Frans’ past musical career. One of those collaborators was Steven Wilson of Bass Communion – the two over the years have recorded two 3inch CDr’s, an LP and a flexi disc. Steven had no VL Tone, but Frans sent him a few raw recorded sources made using the two that he owned. Using these, Steven quickly created five one minute pieces for consideration. One was selected for the compilation…
… And that might have been the end of the story. Except that Frans suggested using the other 4 pieces as source material for further collaborative work. Subsequently, over the next few months several hours of music was generated, with each musician processing what the other would send, using both digital and analogue technology, resulting in a plethora of mixes. The only rule was that the only sound sources allowed were the original VL Tone recordings, now twisted, reshaped, and reprocessed beyond all recognition. Once the 2 musicians had decided enough was enough, the final selection was made, edited and sequenced to create the listening experience found on the first 2 discs in this set. The 4 original miniature pieces are heard both in their original form, and then processed through many transformations; from dark ambient to musique concrete collage-style pieces, from rhythmic to drone-ambient, from brief interludes to lengthy journeys.
The third disc comprises additional pieces that didn’t make the main selection, but nevertheless the 2 collaborators liked them enough to include them on a bonus disc.
Cover design by Carl Glover. The sleeve notes comprise a time-line conversation between Bass Communion and Freiband during this project.
https://tonefloat.com/2019/11/07/bass-communion-freiband-vl-tones/
€29.00
Unsung
"Unsung – the new solo album by Martyn Bates (voice/guitar) completed September 2012 and produced by Alan Trench & Martyn Bates. Released on November 13th.
'With Unsung Martyn Bates takes on the more traditional role as a singer-songwriter, armed solely with his guitar for accompaniment, save for the occasional sparse colouring. At this time — when this particular role has been explored and done to death & beyond by long lines of both old and young musicians — one would think that there possibly could not be much to add (not that singer-songwriters generally are out on a mission to add something to the format). But as we know from the past history of Martyn Bates and Eyeless In Gaza, they do invent, they do new things, they sound fresh over and over again. So this is exciting, indeed!
From initial listenings to the album, one happily fails to find anything reminiscent of the new breed of singer-songwriters that tend to sound so same-ish, even when they try to sound “alternative”, “sensuous” and “independent” suggesting the listener would be convinced that it (albeit artificially) “sounds so right”. Here, in contrast, you find someone who plays and sings as if no one has ever done any singing accompanied only by his own guitar playing before. The lyrics are thoughtful, the music is lush and different, the voice is superb and the music is respectful of the intelligence of the listener. Still the music is certainly not dull or gloomy, but spirited and infectious. I think you will agree.– Jerry Nilson" [label info]
www.eyelessingaza.com/asr.html
"These acoustic guitar based songs largely came from sessions relating to the Twelve Thousand Days project in which Martyn Bates collaborated with Alan Trench of Orchis in the 2000’s. Though it’s also produced by Trench , Unsung has a very different feel, and it finds Bates at his most concentrated and immediate. Bates is essentially a singer songwriter but his work in Eyeless in Gaza and other collaborations reveal he’s also adept at improvisation and manipulation of sonics. Here the latter is limited to some ambient drift and phantasmal backing vocals, which sound particularly strange on ‘’And This The Day’’. But essentially Unsung relies just on his voice and acoustic guitar, which is beautifully recorded with a big , full sound. At times his expansive picking recalls Bert Jansch or Roy Harper.
As a singer-songwriter Bates has a wide stylistic lexicon, ranging from soft susurrations to notes that feel wrenched out from somewhere deep. On ‘Muted Music’, he evokes the heightened poignancy of its inevitable transience. One of the album’s loveliest melodies, ‘Caustic’ is, however, a bleak look at how memories of events can differ between two people, with the song’s narrator the one left with nothing of comfort to recall.
His love of traditional music was first overtly stated on the Murder Ballads series he made with Mick Harris in the 1990’s, and the influence of Martin Carthy suggests itself here. But his own work is more in tune with the unfettered feelings that run through folk song. On Unsung, he seals his engagement with tradition on ‘’Love Came To My Door’’, an a cappella tale shaped as a disquieting visitation rather than a cause for celebration."
[Mike Barnes, THE WIRE]
€13.00
Fireworks & Jewels / The Colour of Amber
"Fireworks & Jewels is the 3rd solo album in as many years from Eyeless In Gaza’s Martyn Bates – being a collection of mostly voice/guitar pieces with a focus on the SONG – words and music stripped to core elements. Working with these elements, Elizabeth S. and Alan Trench introduce subtle colours to the body of these performances – with Trench adding particularly deft applications of electronics & tape treatments – creating a whole other supporting soundworld for the seeming fragility of Bates’ apparently often elusively private world of words & music. As Bates’ states, for him, the whole process of music-making is cathartic. On this occasion the resulting songs address some elusive and mercurial ideas and concepts. According to Bates: “ … I wanted to put across … the way that during heightened moments in everyday life – within those moments where there are “fireworks & jewels” as you might say – there’s always a spark or a thought there that flashes the colour amber – an elusive, tantalising light that you know is eternal, and forever, and yet … it’s somehow, always, always held out of reach … .” The appropriate watchwords here might well be, perhaps, Process & Effect, Illusion & Reality, or feasibly, in keeping with the album’s title, Shadow & Substance.
Fireworks & Jewels / The Colour of Amber was completed July 2015 and recorded at Bridge House Studios, on the Greek isle of Evia – the atmosphere of whose current social and political situation of doubt and uncertainty could perhaps be said to have had a noticeable influence upon the brooding & unsettled spirit at work throughout this album."
[label info]
www.eyelessingaza.com/mb.html#1
"Looking back to the year of twenty-fifteen, my audio intake was considerably pepped up by the appearance of the "Mythic Language"/"Egg Box Mask" triple c.d. set. So much so that this retrospective from British post punk/art pop duo Eyeless in Gaza was made number one with a bullet by yours truly on the Terrascope yearly poll.
So now, only a matter of months later, the Becker/Bates family tree (pictured as an ancient yew in an English country churchyard of course...), has sprouted an extra limb with the emergence of "Fireworks..."; Martyn Bates' sixteenth (!) solo outing (on almost as many labels, I might add). To discover that was certainly a surprise (thank you Discogs!), as I simply had no idea he was that prolific!
This beautifully artworked/six-panelled disc (his third in as many years...), finds Martyn joined by Alan Trench ('tronix/sundry percussives/field recordings/kitchen sink) and the mysteriously named banjo player and backing vocalist Elizabeth S. It's a baker's dozen of dream pop constructs in which a slight sense of unease might be detected which, according to the accompanying cribsheet, could be due to the fact that the recording took place on the Greek isle of Evia, during Greece's economic/political upheaval(s). Things mostly focus on Martyn's acoustic guitar work and vocalese and emphasise a concept of pure songcraft, where certain emotional states are laid bare for all to experience. Introspective soul transmissions, if you will, that come nuanced by a number of impressionistic backdops that thankfully, don't overpower the proceedings one jot. Whichever way you huffle the pack there's always seems to be something of genuine worth. Take for example an adaption of a Walter de la Mare poem "Embers, Starry Tapers"; a vision of otherworldliness, which largely comprises of solo vox humana and layered, lighter than air vocal atmospherics. Then there's the finger-cramping banjo exercises underpinning "Belong" and "The Fall", a personal favourite in which a rhythm bed of stately piano lines is deftly overturned by what appears to be a splurge of sustained feedback/sheet metal that has the signature of Master William Reid; late of the J.A.M.C. imprinted upon it. Excellent.
Copies are available through the Eyeless website (see above) and also through the auspices of Rough Trade, i-tunes (who they?) and Amazon. Order early to avoid disappointment... accept no imitations etc etc... "[Steve Pescott, Terrascope UK]
€13.00
Eternal Ice melts
Faszinierendes Gletscher-Dröhnen & erhabene Voice-Poetry von FRANZISKA BAUMANN, dazu 5 Remixe ihres Stückes von MICK HARRIS, SEETYCA (soon on Drone Rec!), SUBMERGED....
"...Highly recommended compilation to anyone interested in contemporary electronics from subtle field recordings to expressive breakbeat-science." [NMP / Vital Weekly]
"In the fall of 2003 Franziska Baumann performed at the Matrix Festival of contemporary music, in Leipzig, Germany. Her manipulated recordings of melting glacier ice wowed the audience, but just as memorable were the 125 copies of a remix CD distributed at the event. Noted artists Lull, Seetyca and Clemmens Presser were drafted to compose pieces based on her works. For Mick Harris (Lull) fans, finding a copy of this CD has been their holy grail. On October 16 Soleilmoon puts an end to their frustration, and does it in typical over-the-top Soleilmoon fashion, with a hand numbered limited edition presented in a silkscreened vellum slip cover. Fortunately, the quantity is more reasonable this time: 500 copies will be made. And finally, just for this new edition, Kurt Gluck (Submerged) has contributed a heart pounding new drum’n’bass track. Lull is the name of the dark ambient side project of Mick Harris, former drummer for Napalm Death and current leader of challenging industrial music band Scorn. German artist Seetyca is a prolific artist who records his bleak, isolationist soundscapes music for many labels, including darkwinter.com. Clemens Presser, another German artist, has contributed to several compilations and is now working on his first solo album. Kurt Gluck runs the Ohm Resistance label and is a famous drum’n’bass DJ. He has collaborated with Bill Laswell and John Zorn, and regularly moves back and forth between the dance and experimental music scenes. Franziska Baumann is fascinated by the glacier as a listening space. She has been examining the forms of sound in and upon the glacier, inspired by the enormous tide of ice and its multilayered temporal and spatial dimensions, and she sets her own voice in a dialogue with its icy spaces Using stereo, zoom and contact microphones, Franziska Baumann senses the aliveness and dynamics of ice and the poetry of the sounds that live in glacial crevasses and grottos. The sounds of the glacier (creaks, drips, rumbles, shuffles etc.) were recorded at different times on and within. Her voice touches the icy crevasse walls in their various states, from karstic to icy smoothness. Warmth and cold produce different sound pictures. In collaboration with glaciologists from the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and the Swiss Computing Center in Zurich, she has transformed seismographic recordings of glacial movements into sound paintings. A portrait of this work was broadcasted on Swiss television in December 2001." [press release]
€13.50
Dust Tears and Clouds
"Following the previous albums released, among others, by Last Visible Dog and Digitalis, "Dust Tears and Clouds" is the fifth full-lenght work born from the collaboration between Gianluca Becuzzi and Fabio Orsi. Becuzzi is an electronic / electroacoustic composer and sound artist active since the first half of the ’80s. Founder of the historic Darkwave / Industrial project Limbo, since 1999 his artistic production is characterized by a strong experimental imprint and by a clear tendency toward abstract aesthetic forms and micro/macro noises/sounds. Among his recent artistic production - in addition to what he has published under his own name - we should at least mention his projects Kinetix, Noise Trade Company and Grey History. On the other side, Orsi sits among the most interesting names of the European electronic and experimental scene. Following his early output on A Silent Place and Smallvoices, his music works have been published by many other labels worldwide, including Porter Records, Boring Machines and, of course, Silentes. His talent has become an estabilished reality thanks to his abilities in finding a nice balance between experimentation and melody. “Dust Tears and Clouds” combines two CDs in a single release. The first disc, entitled “Dust Tears and Skinny Legs Poets”, was recorded in 2007 and remained unreleased until now. It contains eight highly evocative tracks that feature American Folk samples recorded by Alan Lomax mixed with guitars and electronics. This work can be seen as the ideal follow-up to the acclaimed “Muddy Speaking Ghosts Through My Machines”. The second disc collects the three long tracks previously released by Foxglove back in 2007 as a 3x3” MiniCD-Rs extremely limited edition, with the welcome addition of an unreleased fourth track. Here Becuzzi and Orsi offers two solo efforts and two collaborative numbers; the voices and samples that graced the first disc are absent and the musicians create denser experimental plots soaked with field recordings, synthesizers and effects. Overall, the two Italian artists showcase a broad range of solutions and, once again, they create a rich work whose repeated listening will reveal more and more details." [label info]
www.silentes.net
"Deceivingly simple. That's what I thought when I noted on the cover 'contains american folk samples by Alan Lomax'. Lomax recorded a whole bunch people singing traditional songs, usually without any instruments, and that's true treasure vault if you want to spice up your abstract music with a more musical element. It almost immediately turns your music into a movie soundtrack or radio play. Easy stuff? The easy road of Moby? Perhaps, perhaps, the eight pieces recorded by Gianluca Becuzzi and Fabio Orsi, who use a lot a of guitars and field recordings here, and seem to have reduced the electronics, create some great music with not just their instruments, but use the Lomax archives with relatively fine sparseness. Not too much, not too little, and sometimes it seems they process a bit of that too, or just the insects in the background and create perhaps indeed easy music, but easy music that works very well. In the two parts of 'Talking With Ghosts' the original Lomax recordings are a bit too much with not enough 'anything else', but these are with three minutes each also the shortest ones. The other six pieces are longer, but are more in favor of new music with the Lomax samples to support it. Nice stuff, relaxing, ambient, micro sounding but with an odd twist. Just why did it take so long, as this was recorded in 2007, to release it? Maybe Becuzzi and Orsi weren't that sure either? As a bonus (?) there is a second CD with four longer pieces of which three were released in 2007 as three 3" CDRs by Foxglove, with one piece by Becuzzi and Orsi each solo and two duo pieces, of which one is previously unreleased. This is more familiar territory for both artists. Long pieces of ambient like sounds, in which all of the sources - field recordings, guitars, electronics - are further processed and make up some dark ambient music, but not in the strictest drone sense. It moves about in a calm and gentle way, but is perhaps also a bit long here and there, and a bit with form. It moves in irregular shapes and colors and is alright. Not great actually and perhaps a bit too much common ground?" [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€16.00
Sturmwind and Gilbert
"The time has come: Beequeen’s final single “Sturmwind” is now available on Tonefloat records! With this single, surely our most ‘pop’ release ever, comes an end to nearly 30 years of Beequeen. What a beautiful and fun ride this has been, so much we have seen, heard and learned for which we have so many people to thank. Do things really end here? Who knows? As always, I keep working on new material. “Sometimes my arms bend back” – to the future…
Meanwhile, the “Escape” CD, featuring covers of the songs on “Asylum”, the 1985 album by The Legendary Pink Dots will be released soon. It features my solo version of “Golden Dawn” of which I’m actually quite proud😉
THE PRESS BIT: Achtung! Beequeen (Olga Wallis, Freek Kinkelaar and Frans de Waard) goes pop. But Beequeen being Beequeen, it is not pop as we know it. Sturmwind, as the title suggest, is sung in German and probably the first single in history to paraphrase German Dada artist Kurt Schwitters in the chorus of “Du, deiner, dich, dir” from his famous poem An Anna Blume. Couple this with an existentialist lyric about overwhelming all-consuming love at the end of the world and an uplifting melody and rhythm and you end up with the typical surreal-twist that was also present on Beequeen’s latest album “Around Midnight”. The other side of this single tells the story of Gilbert; who hungers for love, but fails to understand what the concept of ‘love’ actually is. Gilbert is set to an 80s shoegazing tune where desperation gets mixed-up with hope. And with this single the Beequeen bids us, after more than 30 years, goodbye. Sturmwind/Gilbert was written by Freek Kinkelaar and Beequeen, produced and mixed by Peter van Vliet (The Use Of Ashes) and mastered by Raymond Steeg. Sturmwind/Gilbert will be out on March 19 as a limited edition 7inch (300 copies) in a numbered sleeve designed by Carl Glover." [Freek Kinkelaar web & label info]
"Achtung! Beequeen goes Pop. Aber da Beequeen Beequeen ist, es dabei kein Pop wie man ihn kennt herausgekommen. Sturmwind ist, wie der Titel bereits suggeriert, Deutsch gesungen und wahrscheinlich die erste Single in der Geschichte die den deutschen Dadaismus Künstler Kurt Schwitters mit seinem berühmten Gedicht An Anna Blume im Chorus "Du, deiner, dich, dir" frei aufgreift. Verbinden Sie dies mit existentialistischen Texten von überschwänglicher, alles auffressender Liebe am Ende der Welt und einer aufbauenden Melodie und Rhythmus und man landet bei dem typisch surrealen Schwung, der auch auf Beequeens letztem Album "Around Midnight" präsent gewesen ist. Die andere Seite dieser Single erzählt die Geschichte von Gilbert; der nach Liebe hungert, aber nicht versteht was das aktuelle Konzept von Liebe ist. Gilbert ist an eine selbstverliebte 80s Melodie gebunden, bei der Verzweiflung und Hoffnung eng beieinander liegen. Und genau mit dieser Single sagen uns Beequeen, nach mehr als 30 Jahren, Goodbye. Sturmwind wurde von Peter van Vliet (The Use Of Ashes) gemischt und produziert." [label info]
www.tonefloat.com
€9.50
Titan : A Crane is a Bridge
TITAN - WINNER of the New Music Scotland 2018 Award for New Electroacoustic / Sound Art Work.
This original commission, for Cryptic Glasgow, premiered at the Sonica '17 Festival in Glasgow.
Begg’s extraordinary electronic sound installation... with huge, swelling harmonies, occasionally building to moments of ecstatic beauty... its slow-burn, cumulative effect is one of uncompromising power and inevitable decay, both a celebration of enduring strength and a memorial to its demise
The Scotsman
Begg’s installation is perhaps the standout at Glasgow’s Sonica… The wheelhouse becomes the humming dark heart of the crane as Begg’s electronic enfolding and eroding of the raw sonic materials sets a rich and taut piece in perpetual motion… turning the iconic structure into a gently haunted compound of wind and noise.
The Wire
With Michael Begg’s instrumentation, the Titan Crane feels like a living creature. One that tells us an important story.. if only we listen.
Ambient Blog
Michael Begg makes architecture sing like no one before him.
Stephen Fruitman, Igloo
https://omnempathy.bandcamp.com/album/titan-a-crane-is-a-bridge
"For TITAN: A Crane is a Bridge, sound artist Michael Begg enlists the gigantic, titular Titan crane of Clydebank in Scotland both as a performance space and as an instrument. In the windy, beefy lattice frames and oily joints of the towering device, Begg teases out all sorts of metallic resonances and ironclad drones. Over these, he layers his own gentle instrumental additions - to great effect. At times, it resembles ‘dark ambient’ music. Only actually good. A Sonica Festival 2017 commission, the work is available on CD through Omnempathy in a glossy Japanese digipak." [Norman Rec.]
"By now there is quite a bunch of Michael Begg releases, twelve it seems, under his own name and as Human Creed and also from the group he’s a member of, Fovea Hex. A busy man, but he also finds time to create audio-visual installations and one of those was in the wheelhouse on to the Clydebank Titan, as part of the 2017 Sonic-a festival. That was quadrophonic, reduced to stereo (obviously) for the CD release. The music is made from field recordings in the area, as well as Aeolian harps Begg build over the years. The wind around the wheelhouse playing those harps is also at the foundation of the music. All of this is very ambient and as such it may seem odd (or at least I thought so) that the eight pieces are not very long; from a mere one-and half minute to six, but around four is the most usual.
It’s good to see someone who believes less is more and not plays out his ideas too much and thus spreading it thin. In all of these pieces there is an endless amount of drone material, but of a lighter nature. Delicate and sparse, rather than full and dense. I had the impression that some of these pieces consisted of just a few sounds, rather than a multitude of sources. Begg’s music may be ambient and quiet, but it is not always very gentle, which is exactly how I love these things. He knows how to add a sharp edge to his sounds, almost as if he’s aware of the hole that he can fall into, the dangerous shady world of new age music. Begg stays safely away from that world with his ringing and singing overtones, like singing wine glasses and loops of obscured field recordings (in ‘It’s All Triangles’ for instance), topped with a fine spice of dark reverb and, as easy as that may sound, that’s all you need for great album by Michael Begg." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€13.00
A Moon that Lights Itself
During the 1870s, Charles François Daubigny, in the last years of his life, took increasingly to painting nocturnal scenes en plain air from his boat studio, Le Bottin. This was a period in time when the idea of the musical nocturne had progressed from being an indication of what point during the evening a particular piece of music should be played, towards becoming an articulation of the unique atmosphere and emotion occasioned by moonlight.
Elsewhere in France, Edouard-Lean Scott de Martinville conceived and produced the phonautogragh. This device, appearing years before Edison’s phonograph, enabled sound, for the first time, to be captured. Unlike Edison, however, de Martinville neglected - or saw no need - to provide the means to playback the recording. Rather, a visual representation was captured on a lamp black cylinder.
It wasn’t until 2008 when researchers at Berkley University used digital technology to recover the audio. The recording, the first ever made, was of a human voice singing Au Clair De La Lune.
Written and produced by Michael Begg
Mixed and mastered at Captains Quarters, East Lothian
A Moon That Lights Itself was premiered at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh on September 16th 2016, with cello accompaniment from Clea Friend
The work was commissioned by National Galleries Scotland, in conjunction with the major exhibition, Inspiring Impressionism: Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh, and was completed with the generous support of the Hope Scott Trust.
https://omnempathy.bandcamp.com/album/a-moon-that-lights-itself
REVIEW:
"A Moon That Lights Itself was commissioned by the Scottish National Galleries as part of the Inspiring Impressionism exhibition, focussing on the works of Charles François Daubigny, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh. On September 16th 2016, Michael Begg (of Human Greed / Fovea Hex) performed the work, amidst the exhibition space, in the auspicious surroundings of the Royal Scottish Academy situated on the Mound in Edinburgh.
Drawing on the works of French landscape artist Charles François Daubigny, Begg's commission was described as a "work for electronics, strings and moonlight". I must confess that of the three artists featured in the exhibition I wasn't at all familiar with Daubigny. Consider Begg's work with Human Greed where their first release Consolation featured a moonface in Deryk Thomas's artwork on the cover; Black Hill: Midnight At The Blighted Star, the title of a later album which included 'Dalkeith Night' speaks for itself; and even Dirt On Earth featured a blackened nightscape on the cover it's perhaps particularly apt that Begg focusses on Daubigny's later work and specifically the twilight and nocturnal scenes of his later years, from which he painted while ensconced on a studio boat on the Oise. A Moon That Lights Itself is set in the context of mid to late 19th century France, and the cusp of impressionism, modernism, together with the earliest known sound recordings by Edouard-Lean Scott de Martinville and his phonautograph invention.
A Moon That Lights Itself moves from dusk to dawn in the course of its 9 tracks. From tranquil drones overlaid with tumbling piano notes and solemn cello movements the opening track 'Le Crepuscule' moves into drifting drones before 'Moonrise' which like many of the tracks on A Moon That Lights Itself blends location recordings into the compositions. Here water in the form of lapping waves and crashing waves, bird chatter and the quack of ducks - ducks were a recurring motif within Daubigny's impressionist landscapes - are found amidst passages of glistening drone and moments of sombre piano and cello swell. Still and serene, glinting flourishes merge with stirring movements, its lapping waves resembling the tidal pull, and backward spinning electronics. 'Moonlight' bathes in the glow of light glistening sound textures set against deep reverberating rumbles and piercing glassy shrieks. Bells ring out before it moves into quieter echoed atmospherics.
Daubigny often painted from his floating studio on a boat on the River Oise, and 'Le Bottin' aptly illustrates this with watery ripples dappled with tender piano notes and broader sound shudders, flowing into an end section comprising elegiac strings and melancholic synths.
With its rippling metallic sounds, harsher noise elements and sluggish voice recordings 'The Birth Of Modernism' is much more abstract in composition. Those voices, taken from the 1860 phonautograms of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, like modernism are almost blown in on a wind like drone. Scott de Martinville's recordings, sensitively mixed as another layer of sound here, were never intended for playback but recent research managed to transform these into playable sound files, discovering a male voice, probably of Scott de Martinville, singing a partial segment of the French folk song 'Au clair de la lune', which fits nicely here as in English it translates to 'In the Moonlight'. Elsewhere on 'The Birth Of Modernism' voices and bird calls are rendered as electronic squiggles, reflecting the movement away from realism to abstraction, perhaps.
Begg returns to his palette of location sounds on 'Daubigny's Reverie' where lapping water and duck quack augment the shimmering sound spans. The drone filled atmospherics create a sense of melancholy; a captivating dreamspace only broken by the call and sing of birds in flight. Those flying birds could be seen as sound metaphor for the transition from Daubigny's impressionism to a new world of abstract representations, something furthered on 'Between Two Movements' which unfurls to a two pronged approach where undulating drones and glassy shrill frequencies are cast against evocative classical strings. It could even be electronics, Begg has an uncanny ability to sidestep the listener with his use of instrumentation that sound like something else.
'A Last Dance Under The Moon' moves to doleful cello sweeps and forlorn nocturnal electronics, achieving a graceful and mournful presence, largely due to the Clea Friend's cello score. A Moon That Lights Itself closes with the arrival of 'Dawn', a classy ensemble piece of piano score and cello, contrasting sombre cello movements with more optimistic and joyful piano notes, and as the sounds coalesce it seems to herald the new whilst paying homage to the past.
Begg referred to this in a blog for his performance at the Royal Scottish Academy as being a "pochade", a sketch, "for Daubigny, for the moon, and for an extraordinary time in the development of European culture, when our sense of capturing the world around us and within us took extraordinarily bold, though markedly sensitive, steps forward." Recorded immediately after the performance, Begg once again proves himself to be a superlative composer, with a suite of evocative atmospherics using electronics, classical strings and location recordings to evoke the nocturnal workings of Daubigny. A Moon That Lights Itself is bathed in a liminal essence; a quality that defines all his work. From the Human Greed releases Black Hill: Midnight At The Blighted Star, Fortress Longing, World Fair to the Fragile Pitches collaboration with Colin Potter, Michael Begg has been behind a number of great releases. A Moon That Lights Itself now sits alongside those titles as one of his finest solo offerings in a release that is sombre, inventive and utterly captivating." [Compulsion Online]
€13.00
Let the cold Stove sing
"These recordings comprise work conceived for theatre, gallery and installation contexts. They are concerned with defined and definite spaces, places and absences. These places arise both from nature and through construction. In turn, the construction may be natural or virtual.
They are informed by the great divorce of music and context occasioned by the birth of recording, and by the 20 year fermata occurring after the invention of recording and before the discovery of the means of affecting playback. This was, by definition, the period where we began to conceive of the need to listen repeatedly, in the way an archaeologist brushes repeatedly at the desert, for clues, details, and, possibly, reason." [label info]
www.omnempathy.com
"East Lothian based composer Michael Begg has quietly but steadfastly released (in this listener's humble opinion) some of the finest and most affecting albums of the last decade, such as 2008's dark and yearning 'Black Hill: Midnight At The Blighted Star', 2011's melancholic masterpiece 'Fortress Longing' and 2014's career best 'World Fair'. Along the way many noted and esteemed collaborators have added their voice or presence to proceedings such as Julia Kent (Antony And The Johnsons), David Tibet (Current 93), Chris Connelly (Ministry) and Clodagh Simonds (Mellow Candle, Fovea Hex). Working in the realm of drones, electronica and modern experimental composition to create vast, atmospheric and hugely evocative pieces of sound and melody, Begg has little in the way of contemporaries although aficionados of the windswept work of Richard Skelton, 'On Land'-era Eno, the dark soundscapes of Andrew Lilies and the classic recordings of Reich, Glass and Popol Vuh will find much to fall in love with here. Referencing both, according to Begg, 'gallery, theatre and installation works, as well as my preoccupation with defining space, place and time with sound' this is an essential and crucial work that needs to be heard and experienced.
The album begins with 'Hopetoun Tower Before The Harvest', named after a forbidding and lonely construction that stands defiantly on a hill near Begg's Captain's Quarters recording studio. As befits its namesake, the track rumbles with exposure to some building and growing winds as snakelike electronics creep and wisp into view. A beautiful and tentative string section enters, trembling emotively as bowed strings and bowls resonate. It feels sacred, like a storm has suddenly and dramatically silenced leaving a hushed and perceptible sense of being in the universe. The title track follows, piano and droned strings echoing out into darkness, both tangibly lonely and filled with a gorgeous sadness. There is something deeply existential about this work, one feels small in the face of the space and sounds that evoke the surrounding skies and landscape. 'The Children Will Wet The Academy Floor' adds some truly lovely chamber strings that reverberate and haunt, a spectral symphony of lamentation and grief whilst 'Paris is Closing' is a field recording of chatter and metro sounds that are pleasingly though disturbingly disorientating. Next, 'Pendrachin Wood: Pollen And Frost' is a frozen and glacial layered piece of orchestral electronica, reminiscent of Bowie's Berlin experiments; this literally lifts the hairs of one's arms and neck as it swells and recedes with visions of snow covered pines in the darkening Scottish winter afternoons. Human Greed are no simple drone or electronic act; these are carefully wrought and constructed compositions that evoke and emote in an almost avant classical sense. They are almost unique in working in this field and are creating pieces of heartbreaking genius that this listener implores you to discover and fall in love with; it is criminal that Begg is not more revered outside of the underground as the pioneer and composer that he is.
'Francis Bacon; A Room' is as complex and unsettling as the British artist himself, a corrosive drone and buzz hovering over the mutter of voices whist a sister song 'Louise Bourgeois: A Cell' allows chimes and electronic hums to flutter and slither malevolently throughout. 'Leisure In F' glides majestically into being, epic and choral strings ebbing and flowing until ominous notes and birdsong float into focus; reminiscent of charcoal skies passing by overhead with the threat of snowfall as nature and animal life reacts accordingly this is an incredibly moving and transportive piece. 'Made And Unmade In Europe' rasps and buzzes as a bird's lonesome call cries out against the imperious landscape, an unforgiving wind suddenly giving way to a soprano song and weeping strings in a genuinely breathtaking moment. 'Cunny For Thine Mountain Penne' almost silently emerges on delicate notes and drone sounds, distant percussion and mournful brass reminding this listener of Gorecki's 'Sorrowful Songs'. Stately, graceful and melancholic this regal and funereal piece stays with the listener long after the album has finished playing. Next, 'Intermission For Blisters And Russian Weddings' is driven along on wary and eerie violin bursts, a solar echo resonating and unfurling slowly and perceptibly whilst gentle bass notes hold anchor. This is music to play when the sky is huge, dark and forbidding, to watch the stars blink on and off with cosmic indifference to us watching.
'Studies In Space And Density' is equally massive in scale and suggestion; a cold, sad throb through the universe that becomes increasingly distorted and growling before returning to an icy, repeating refrain of solar wind. A sudden warmth enters with 'Let The Cold Stove Sing Within Reason' as a bass throb and beautiful melody grows and layers over a distant electronic howl and circling strings. Hugely affecting, there is an integral human component at the heart of everything Human Greed or Begg does, this is music about the human condition, about what it is to be in this casually cruel and beautiful universe. 'Whiteadder Water After The Harvest' brings us full circle and close the album with the burble of streams and rivers, metallic and windswept notes sweeping overhead.
I cannot recommend this album highly enough. There is more detail, more arresting and heart-rending moments, more creativity on this album than there is in some other artist's entire oeuvres. One for those lonely, late night listens or for accompaniment of solitary walks and dérives, 'Let The Cold Stove Sing' is a heartbreakingly beautiful and important album, perhaps quite easily already my album of the year. The cold stove is singing, now one must listen." [Grey Malkin/The Active Listener blogspot]
active-listener.blogspot.de/2016/06/michael-begg-human-greed-let-cold-stove.html
€13.00
Threat Level Charlie
BOB BELLERUE aka HALF NORMAL ist ein Sound-Tüftler aus Los Angeles, auf "Threat Level Charlie" schafft er einen dichten, detaillierten Geräuschteppich gegen alle "unternehmerischen, spirituellen, und politischen Machtsysteme". Diverse Objektklassen & Materialien setzt er ein (Glass, Metall, Papier, Holz), seinen Körper, Röhren (via Kontaktmikros), eine Bambusflöte, Radiosounds und verzerrte Stimmfetzen von den mächtigen Leuten dieser Welt. Fünf sehr unterschiedliche Stücke entstehen, im Spektrum zwischen Noise und ruhigerer, aber immer rauen, Feedback-Resonanzen ausstrahlenden & höchst energiereichen & lebendigen Geräuschmusik. To discover!
"Threat Level Charlie is a composition for material, space(s), electronics, programming, body, sound and power.(Tube microphones or other prepared acoustic mics; sheets of glass, metal, paper, wood; mixer; laptop; dynamic microphones; contact mics, including one loose on a long cord; PA or speaker cabinet, homemade metal speakers; bamboo flute; radio.) Microphones are placed inside of tubes and made to feedback, and filter a portable radio that wanders in between stations. The performer plays non-musical instruments made with common materials representing consumer protection and comfort (panes of glass, metal, paper, wood), using hands, bows and feedback. A contact mic is place in the mouth, played with the tongue and gluttoral palette; it is held to speakers and plays them with feedback. A bamboo flute is played; stomping and clapping occur: these sounds are filtered through the various systems in action. Broadband noise is generated from ambient and prepared-ambient recordings; speeches by George Bush and Osama bin Laden are shredded together. The result is a visceral wail against corporate, spiritual, and political power systems, using organic and alleatoric rhythms, melodies, textures; chthonic sounds, oppressed signals." [artist description]
€13.00
Silent Uprising
Zweites Album vom Projekt um NICOLAS LAMPERT, der eine Hälfte der Monumental-Noise-Droner von NOISEGATE war! Ausgefeilter dark ambient mit
vielen Details und melancholischen Passagen...
“A truly stunning follow up to their debut 2002 "Inside Passage" offering! "Silent Uprising" features five flowing & meditative compositions clocking in at 70+ minutes. A demanding engagement from drifting drone composers Nicolas Lampert & Dave Canterbury. An alchemical mixture of lulling musical melodies & dense cinematic environments. BENEATH THE LAKE embrace a forlorn melancholia of haunting, whispering memories & organic soundscapes. A beautiful album with a distant hope, forged through nature's sadness...
“....Beneath The Lake is a project based on creating soundscapes combining minimal ambient music and found sounds, with an emphasis on composing the music to compliment the sounds instead of just using the sounds as a backdrop. Where their first record focused more on nature, Silent Uprising shifts the focus a bit more toward the increasing influence of the urban landscape as cities continue to encroach on nature and change the balance forever. The record begins with the clatter of trains rushing past, the receding sound of the train is soon joined by a simple strident guitar riff, accompanied by a mournful wooden recorder. The two drift and shift and slowly build in intensity. Very reminiscent of Neurosis at their most mellow, surprisingly enough. The riff shifts and twists, shadowed by the recorders melodies eventually being joined by the sound of another train and eventually being drowned out by the roar of the wheels on the tracks. The second track is a simple, gorgeously melancholy guitar melody, slowly and deliberately picked, over a bed of crackly static that could be either the sound of rain falling or the crackle of a fire, or both. The sound on Silent Uprising is much more musical than on Inside The Passage with the drone being relegated to just one of many instruments / approaches as opposed to the very dark and slow shifting all encompassing drone of the earlier record. Here, it's -that- guitar, all dark and shimmering and reverberant, and the brooding slow building melodies that creep across the sonic landscape. It sometimes almost sounds like the slow core of Low being performed in a steel mill or a rail yard, the band struggling to be heard over the sound of rain and wind and trains and passing cars. Strangely powerful and poignant. Packaged in a gorgeous oversized sleeve with breathtaking images of winter foliage and urban landscapes, printed in all muted browns and tans. So lovely.“ [Aquarius]
€13.00
Usure.Paysage
"usure.paysage combines the strongest particles of Bernier's kaleidoscopic oeuvre: an expressive mix of lively field recordings, tiny and massive electronics and sparkling relocations. The docker barks out aloud, the little insect crawls through the 19th century woodworker's atelier, forgotten voices vanish and the rest is no silence. This is truly some of the finest musique concrète ever released on vinyl - very charming.
Nicolas Bernier: electroacoustic artist, surround sound composer, occasional curator, old typewriter aficionado and sandcastle manufacturer. Careless about aesthetic tags, Bernier navigates through live electronics, installations, musique concrète, art video, performance, music for dance, theatre and cinema. In the midst of this eclecticism, his artistic concerns remain constant: the balance between the cerebral and the sensual, and between organic sound sources and digital processing. He is the founder of the sound art microorganism Ekumen, member of the media art organization Perte de Signal and the art director of Réseaux, a major Canadian electroacoustic concert producer. His works have been awarded or broadcast in festivals around the world including ZKM, Transmediale, Prix Ars Electronica, Akousma, Mutek and DotMov.
Artwork by urban9
Mastered & cut at D+M Berlin
Vinyl only, 300 copies
http://www.nicolasbernier.com" [label info]
www.hronir.de
€16.50
The Cartesian Plane
"Elevator Bath's ongoing series of picture disc LPs (each record being adorned with full-color artwork by the recording artist) continues with Keith Berry's debut appearance on vinyl: An absolutely mesmerizing cycle of deep, meditative tranquility inextricably linked to Berry's otherworldly painting which appears behind the record's grooves.
The soundscapes along The Cartesian Plane are beautifully absorbing, heavy with the slow unraveling of emotions, almost beyond belief. There is an immense weight to these recordings, the richness of which belies the careful subtlety of the compositions. The sound is expansive and unreal, a perfect complement to the record's visual aspects which seem to describe a kind of alternate existence. Like bookends, the colorful images house a wealth of experiences, wonderful and frightening. As you gaze upon the rotating colors and Keith Berry's dense dream-sounds pour out of the speakers, total immersion in The Cartesian Plane is more than probable, it is certain.
Five years have passed since Keith Berry's masterful The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish, a disc that was something of a revelation for the lucky few who were able to obtain a copy of the original release. Since that time Berry's reputation has steadily grown, even though his discography has not. Aside from a few compilation appearances (including Elevator Bath's A Cleansing Ascension), he has remained silent. The release of The Cartesian Plane then truly calls for celebration, as it is precisely the record those of us who admire Berry's work have longed for.
Keith Berry's music has been released by such labels as Trente Oiseaux, Twenty Hertz, and Crouton. He resides in London.
This picture disc LP has been released in an edition of 233 copies.
Total running time: 47 minutes" [label info]
www.elevatorbath.com
€17.50
Teratogenesis
oversized digipack
Bedrohlich klaustrophobische Welten beschwört "Teratogenesis" herauf, einengend nah und intensiv scheinen elektronische Drones & Sounds wie Waffen anzugreifen, wie eine Psycho-Geisterbahn der völlig derangierten, morphenden Art... kein typischer dark ambient, eher düster-industrielle Elektro-Akustik !
"Bestia Centauri is a solo electronic music project begun in 1999. "Teratogenesis" is its fourth release after "Ubbo-Sathla" (Somnambulant Corpse Recordings, 2002), "The Antideluvian Earth" (Afe, 2003) and "The Self Immolation Rite" (Somnambulant Corpse Recordings, 2004).
The aim of Bestia Centauri is to create sonic landscapes that convey a sense of the numinous, the horrific, and the extra-human. Its sounds have much in common with those of electroacoustic music, but the compositional structures generally display a much greater sense of flow. Although Bestia Centauri's music is (to put it mildly) very different, the early releases of Tangerine Dream (circa 1972-1975) remain a tremendous source of inspiration for the composer, along with the orchestral, choral, and organ works of the composers Gyorgy Ligeti (Atmospheres; Lux Aeterna; Lontano) and Giacinto Scelsi.
Older works of electroacoustic or tape music, such as the compositions of Basil Kirchin, Tod Dockstader, and Iannis Xenakis, offer the listener another frame of reference. With the new release, "Teratogenesis", Bestia Centauri defies once and for all the persistent mischaracterizations of its sound as belonging to the "Dark Ambient ghetto". Electroacoustic and computer music elements come brazenly to the foreground, and contribute even more so to the flow of "crawling chaos" that has always characterized and inspired Bestia Centauri’s compositions. The genesis and development of a monstrosity is the theme of this new work, which charts a course from mutated unicellular sonic DNA to the resultant life-form that reaches "from the jaws of the dragon, from the depths of the abyss". With "X" and its deranged rhythmic outbursts, which suggest a creation gone radically wrong, with "Nebular Embryo", a microtonal and minimalist homage to the work of Giacinto Scelsi, and with "E Faucibus Draconis, E Profundis Barathri", a pure electroacoustic work of epic scope, Bestia Centauri demonstrates a new-found range and mastery in its work.
Four years in the making, "Teratogenesis" represents Bestia Centauri's most mature mating to date of flowing soundscapes and electroacoustic sound design. It also represents a point of departure for even more radical works, to come.
This albums comes as an Eibon Records / Afe co-production whose artwork was designed by Chris Donovan of Somnambulant." [label description]
www.eibonrecords.com / www.aferecords.com
€13.00
Sonic Sigils
Wieder eine empfehlenswerte Ausgrabung auf SCARCELIGHT aus der sich permanent erweiternden und weiter verzweigenden Geräusch- & Experimental-Szene. CHUCK BETTIS benutzt die psychologische „Spiegel“-Technik als Inspiration und schafft hier digitale Klanglandschaften von höchster Abstraktheit, für die Begriffe wie „Noise“ oder „Ambient“ nicht mehr relevant scheinen.
Das Ganze fängt eher hektisch-dissoziiert an und bewegt sich langsam aber stetig in pulsierend-meditative Bereich.....digitale, metallische Klänge überwiegen. TIP for Explorers !
“There is some kind of menacing magic at work here. The magickal intonations captured on this disc were inspired by the acifist/psychological technique of calming people in heated conversations by catching up to the breathing of the upset person, then slowly, by utilizing your own breathing, slowing down their breathing by slowing down your own. This deluxe 3" CD features scratchy, fuzzed and distressed scrapes and burbling skittered fragments. Gorgeous graphics by Chuck himself. Contrasting mechanical whines, and tones, tiny microscopic signs of life all darting around in their droplet universe” [George Parsons./ Dream Magazine #5]
€8.00
Korrelations
Vierte CD des B.S.E.-Projekts, welche eigentlich Bestandteil einer Box werden sollte. Unveröffentlichtes Material plus einige Remixe, teils rhythmisch, teils eher krachig ausgerichtet....
“The production of the anounced special box was cancelled ! but we will now produce a 4th CD in the BSE series with unreleased BSE material plus remixes by Mr. Nordvrgr, Alk0, Do Shaska, Alexxx & more” [label info]
“....Obscure, rumbling, subterranean noise, typically BSE, can become trance, as disenchant, light or classic melody, in a gloomy crescendo like a mute horror soundtrack, in a powerful proceed comes close to martial cavalcades.”[Tanks]
€13.00
Faint
"With their new full-length album "Faint" Beyond Sensory Experience are back revisiting ghosts of the past to create memories of the future. Eleven divergent studies of transformation elements result in BSE’s most complete and intriguing album to date; full of liquid dark ambient soundscapes, salient samples and entrancing melodies. Hold your breath and close your eyes, when winter turns to water, day turns to Faint.
Edition of 500 copies in 4 panel digi sleeve with 12 page booklet. 11 Tracks. Running Time 60:00" [label info]
"They didn’t make us wait very long for a “Modern Day Diabolists” follow-up. Along with “Faint”, we have the opportunity once again to move away from the senses under the watchful eye of Drakh and K. Meizter. And because they’re fully fledged professionals, in this case also the trip on the edge of and even beyond the human self turns out to be very fruitful.
Fruitful, but somehow familiar. Our fellow Swedes have defined their specific path for quite a while, they have their own unique style and sound and are sticking to it, leaving the battering down of this already open door to younger and more hot-headed travelers. It’s an experienced project, their aforementioned style is usually recognizable after only a few sounds – “Faint” isn’t at all different. I think even woken up in the middle of the night it would take me maybe a few seconds to pinpoint whose creations are filtering from the speakers.
I never meant what those two nice Swedes do as dark ambient does. Certainly, the genre’s characteristics have always been to a larger or lesser extent present on previous albums, but they were never incorporating a typical, textbook darkness with particular relish. And with each consecutive release its amount becomes lesser and lesser. On “Faint” you practically won’t find the typical background-filling drones. This role is ascribed to either a stretched echo single guitar or piano tones (just listen to “Blank”), or simply silence which operates here on the same basis as the specific sounds, instruments, field recordings or samples. I always appreciated musicians who can play with silence.
As for the album’s atmosphere, I could actually copy-paste here what I wrote about “Modern Day Diabolists”. Ethereal, dreamy parts, mesmerizing in a way, sometimes serene (“Bystanders”), sometimes pulsating with a distant, uncertain threat (such as in my favorite piece, “Legacy”). Sometimes it feels as if the Swedes deliberately want to lull the listener, so that all external protective barriers are down and then hit with horror, war or apocalypse. But it never happens, though you never know what lies beyond the horizon.
Calm down, you can safely turn off for those few minutes. Beyond Sensory Experience doesn’t interfere with the bliss. It only gently wags its finger at us at times, saying that “next time there’s going to be a nightmare” (“Exhausted”), and we don’t have to believe the Swedes anyway. Probably in a year or two they’ll release another album, and again we’ll allow ourselves to be seduced by those ambient spaces, a pinch of post-rock atmosphere. We’ll smoke another cigarette, listening to the yearning, aching samples spoken in different languages… Another successful, very solid release by Beyond Sensory Experience and another – which one is it already – strong position in the Cyclic Law roster." [Stark/Santa Sangre]
€13.00
Celtichants
"Lost and found all of a sudden, this album is the exploration made with the chanting voices of unknown nature. Choral fragments were decomposed and restructured, arranged with the effects and atmospheric shifts, creating the mysterious soundtrack to the otherworldly ceremony. These echoing voices are going directly from the lost memory or the daydreams, nobody can tell you where they are from, where they are calling you. Here are some words of the author, giving you just the hint but not the clear explanation. Postface : The knowledge exemplified affect distress to their natural peduncle environment. Destructive invention progressed towards purposes in some external fumes surroundings and deplete globalization performance bloody resources applied precipitous challenge. Developed simple efficient disrupt generations usually prominces changed damned systems especially from tightness with instrumental reason practical poisonous organized inorganic entities immaterial in the compulsive habitat. Wooden marginalization virtual techniques combine to produce skills processes for neurotic medical combined with additionally oppression formalize endeavor output engineering parasites investigation for principles among exclusively retrieve the challenge development advanced research in the excessive leading towards primitivism to dissolve the molesters emergence earliest alienates shape. Discovery allowed early multimedia digestibility progressivism sophisticated retractile for misanthropic domain transition with prominence contribute specialization adjacent a role processing alloys utensils near the harness evidence inhuman innovations borrowed structures. Advancements countless transit miniaturized resulting alienating after complex treatments support them, microfractures perform the entirety existence proponents morally pessimistic are increasing serious disarticulation chained with passionately communicate infrastructure to describe mortal lethargy perspective unique overall for muscular lucubrations. Limited edition of 500 copies in special packaging - custom made of textured paper with black/silver print, assembled by hand. Different colors available: china white, pearl white, lemon yellow, mallard green, lime green, concrete grey, dark grey, dark violet. Comes with the set of 3 photos of miocenic basalts made by Siegmar Fricke in Maspalomas (Gran Canaria Island)." [label info]
www.alone-at-last.com
€15.00
Azazel
"Three long and “majestic” tracks where Maurizio Bianchi’s typical deep and reverberated sonorities, full of crepuscular melodies and subtle dissonances, get enriched by more electronic elements and fascinating elaborations, sophisticated manipulations and strong dynamic interventions operated by Crìa Cuervos… Three touching compositions built on progressive “crescendos” and a raging of slow sonic stratifications that lead to real “explosions” of sounds, drones, pulsations, frequencies, vibrations… A new, magnificent and very successful collaborative experience." [label info]
www.silentes.net
€13.00
Rekviem MB-JMI
"A "classic" minimal ambient album; just one long track, a bit obscure, of a static nature but unarrestable as a matter of fact and slowly developing, built with layers of soft and “round” sounds, heavily processed and effected, whose origin seems to be an organ... "Atypical" for sure, if confrontated with the huge and widely diversified productions of Maurizio Bianchi, this new album is probably one of the last and not to be missed releases signed by “M.B.”, since he has already announced his definitive departure from the musical scene. Another extraordinary collaborative CD, involving this time Jan-M. Iversen, an artist of international fame who managed to enrich and elaborate with great effect the "sound materials" provided by Maurizio Bianchi." [label info]
www.silentes.net
"...Thirty seven minutes pure ambient bliss with a touch of experimentalism. One of the best works from either of them in recent years." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€12.00
Alienation
5 tracks, professionally printed. Exciting tension-bath, deranged synth sounds, rough drones, pulses, microwaves, this is how ambient industrial should sound today. For a BIANCHI release this is highly chaotic and versatile, raw & dark!
"Estranging sounds complex in five unusual recordings, edited and assembled in an alienor period of two years. Fantastic collaborative work; file under: experimental, concrete music, deep dark noise ambient.Limited to 700 copies only. Format: special professional silver CDr (= same quality and “look” of a CD) in beautiful digi-sleeve package.
Maurizio Bianchi: tapes, radio waves, electronics, samples.
Claudio Rocchetti: dusty analog devices.
Mastered by Valerio Tricoli.
Preface:
A DANGEROUS TERMINAL DRAMA UNDER THE ACTUAL IMPROPER REVENUE OF ALIENATION WASTE, OF SOCIAL-CULTURAL SPHERISTERION, WHEN THE MAIN ELECTRONIC TOPICS IN THE VAN OF SHIFTLESS ACCESSORIES WAS PLANNED AS RESTRICTIVE SCULPTURES. THE VIOLATED ACTIVITIES, GRINDED OF THE EMBRYONIC INGREDIENTS REMAINED BETWEEN EXISTENTIAL INDIVIDUALISM AND TRANSFORMATION OF PARASITES WORTH, VISITING A RECREATIONAL ESTRANGEMENT. THE GRAVITATIONAL PEOPLE REMAIN INTERESTED WITH ELEMENTS OF PICTURED INTERIORS INSIDE A REFINED CRUELTY... THE BEST RESULTS ARE A DETERIORATION OF EDUCATION SYSTEM, THE ANALYSIS OF VARIOUS RETICULATED METROPOLIS, IN FRONT OF THE IMPURE HUMANIZATION OF INNOVATOR PROCESSES. THE PARTICULAR USE OF FANCIFUL CONCRETE-TONES LEAVE YOU WITH A GREAT IMPRESSION OF CHROMATIC CONSISTENCY, FAR AWAY FROM BUREAUCRATIC AND COMMERCIAL MORBIDITY." [label info]
www.finalmuzik.com
€10.00
Nefelodhis
Das Schwester-Album zu "Erimos" verknüpft melodische und mitunter fast andächtige Instrumentalklänge der italienischen Post-Rock Band SPARKLE IN GREY mit den z.T. obskuren Geräuschsounds von M.B. - das klingt manchmal dann fast nach GODSPEED oder anderen Post-Rock / Psychedelikern, sehr introvertiert und ruhig mit viel Violin-Einsatz... Namensgeber für die 8 Stücke sind Bezeichnungen verschiedener Wolkenformationen, sehr passend !!
"Nefelodhis album was then recorded in few days in a totally improvised session where Sparkle in Grey, the ensemble of Alberto Carozzi (guitar, bass), Cristiano Lupo (piano, guitar, drums), Franz Krostopovic (violin) and Hue (laptop, objects), played melancholic melodies on the mysterious analogical and a-rhythmical soundscapes provided by MB. The results of these sessions, recorded into the factory where Sparkle in Grey are used to have their rehearsal, was assembled and mixed by Hue himself. As the sounds coming from MB were mainly analogical (treated guitars, DVD players, tapes and other unknown instruments), and as the laptop was used only in the mixing phase, the result is a dirty but very analogical mixture of sounds, where the concrete drony noises and the textures of violins and guitars melt in a quite uncommon way. Nefelodhis is a desperate but dreamy picture in sounds of the concept of clouds (in Greek 'Nefelodhis' means 'cloudiness') and, after the careful mastering of Giuseppe Ielasi, sounds like a trip through the wet lands made of vapor. Being part of a complex quadrilogy about the spaces Between the Elements, this records inaugurate a series of CDs of various experimental sounds, where Erimos (in Greek “Desert” is the second chapter, already available on the American label Digitalis Industries." [label info]
www.freakofnature.it/coldcurrentprod
€12.00
BM-01
"The 'BioMechanica' project marks the first collaboration between FRANCISCO LOPEZ and ARTURO LANZ (founder and member of the current ESPLENDOR GEOMÉTRICO tandem) after thirty years of an ongoing relationship. Their debut album, "BM-01", is the outcome of years of intense work in multiple cities across the world, from Beijing to Reykjavik all the way to Johannesburg. Raw power and original rhythms, together with an overwhelming sound complexity, a multi-channel spatial virtuality and a spectacular production come together in BioMechanica, synthesizing the insight and experience of two internationally acclaimed industrial/experimental music makers." [label info]
www.geometrikrecords.com
"Recently I had a discussion about musicians who produce a lot of work, and in that conversation also the name Francisco Lopez came up. A friend of mine admitted he gave up on Lopez some time ago, as he said there were too many similar works by him. You could, he argued, pick a few of the essential ones ('La Selva' and 'Buildings [New York]' being two that are always mentioned), but it was perhaps not necessary to collect all of his releases. I don't know: I am not really much of a collector but I can see his point. But I didn't hear BioMechanica when we talked about this. Lopez is, besides a producer of many CDs, also someone who collaborates with others, as he does here. Just as with remixes, it's always good to see something moving in a totally different area, and that's something that happens here. Lopez teams up with Arturo Lanz, the only original member of Esplendor Geometrico and maybe an unlikely partner for Lopez. Lanz plays 'germ rhythmic patterns' while Lopez is responsible for 'rhythmic pattern evolution, environmental recording mutations, composition, editing, mixing and mastering'. So Lanz recorded some of his trade mark rhythms, which we love for more than thirty years now, while in return Lopez adds his likewise trademark sound material. However this is not a question putting one and one together in the hope it's going to be two, which usually doesn't work. But that's not what Lopez does here. He cuts his sounds short(er) too, and creates a mechanical rhythm out of that too. His field recordings here sound like they found their origins inside a factory - hissing and bleeping of motors, sustaining sounds from mechanical devices and such like. That gives the music perhaps a sense of old fashioned industrial music but that is maybe the whole idea behind this. It works wonderfully well, especially when Lanz creates those banging industrial rhythms, such as in '01' and '05', which sound almost like Einsturzende Neubauten. A great release, almost like pop music, which is a rare thing for Lopez. So, yes, I can imagine people asking themselves why they should buy every new Lopez (related) release, but this one is actually very good - an essential one even (the future must proof this). And seeing they took a 'band' name, I wouldn't be surprised if there is more to come." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€14.50
Dropsonde
"Dropsonde was originally released by Touch (UK) in 2006. This is a reissue with seven previously unreleased recordings.
Widely regarded as one of Norwegian electronic music's most important artists, Biosphere's [Geir Jenssen] career spans nearly two decades, several albums, lots of remixes, various sound installations, commissions, soundtracks and even the odd Himalayan summit.
You may recognise his work without knowing it, so frequently does it crop up on TV trailers and idents. In the early 1990s he was a pioneer of so-called 'Ambient Techno', but since then, he has refined his sound into something more magnetic and enduring.
Dropsonde' isn't a soundtrack like the interwoven 'Substrata' nor an episodic journey in the way that 'Autour de la Lune' is. Here Geir Jenssen is pushing new directions towards the jazz colours of Miles Davis and Jon Hassell, whilst re-invigorating the pulse and projection of his signature sound: a hypnotic combination of pleasure and dread.
The spatial aspects some have dubbed "Arctic sound" but it summons strong feelings, or as Exclaim from Canada put it, "in order to climb higher, you must first go deeper". Jon Savage adds: "As with all of the Biosphere albums, the music draws you in and makes you want to listen and feel. Jenssen's work acts on a very emotional level, one that encourages you to drift away into a haze of images and scenes brought to you by the music, where spectacular beauty hides unseen danger. Intense and moving, but comforting and soothing at the same time."
[A 'dropsonde' is a weather reconnaissance device designed to be dropped from an airplane or similar craft at altitude to take telemetry as it falls to the ground. It typically relays information to a computer in the dropping airplane by radio. The fall may be slowed by a parachute. Information collected by a typical dropsonde may include wind speed, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure.]
https://biosphere.bandcamp.com/album/dropsonde-reissue-with-bonus-album
€16.00
Dropsonde
"Dropsonde was originally released by Touch (UK) in 2006. This is a reissue with seven previously unreleased recordings.
Widely regarded as one of Norwegian electronic music's most important artists, Biosphere's [Geir Jenssen] career spans nearly two decades, several albums, lots of remixes, various sound installations, commissions, soundtracks and even the odd Himalayan summit.
You may recognise his work without knowing it, so frequently does it crop up on TV trailers and idents. In the early 1990s he was a pioneer of so-called 'Ambient Techno', but since then, he has refined his sound into something more magnetic and enduring.
Dropsonde' isn't a soundtrack like the interwoven 'Substrata' nor an episodic journey in the way that 'Autour de la Lune' is. Here Geir Jenssen is pushing new directions towards the jazz colours of Miles Davis and Jon Hassell, whilst re-invigorating the pulse and projection of his signature sound: a hypnotic combination of pleasure and dread.
The spatial aspects some have dubbed "Arctic sound" but it summons strong feelings, or as Exclaim from Canada put it, "in order to climb higher, you must first go deeper". Jon Savage adds: "As with all of the Biosphere albums, the music draws you in and makes you want to listen and feel. Jenssen's work acts on a very emotional level, one that encourages you to drift away into a haze of images and scenes brought to you by the music, where spectacular beauty hides unseen danger. Intense and moving, but comforting and soothing at the same time."
[A 'dropsonde' is a weather reconnaissance device designed to be dropped from an airplane or similar craft at altitude to take telemetry as it falls to the ground. It typically relays information to a computer in the dropping airplane by radio. The fall may be slowed by a parachute. Information collected by a typical dropsonde may include wind speed, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure.]
https://biosphere.bandcamp.com/album/dropsonde-reissue-with-bonus-album
€32.00
N-Plants
"Geir Jenssen writes: Early February 2011: Decided to make an album inspired by the Japanese post-war economic miracle. While searching for more information I found an old photo of the Mihama nuclear plant. The fact that this futuristic-looking plant was situated in such a beautiful spot so close to the sea made me curious. Are they safe when it comes to earthquakes and tsunamis? Further reading revealed that many of these plants are situated in earthquake-prone areas, some of them are even located next to shores that had been hit in the past by tsunamis. A photo of Mihama made me narrow down my focus only to Japanese nuclear plants. I wanted to make a soundtrack to some of them, concentrating on the architecture, design and localizations, but also questioning the potential radiation danger (a cooling system being destroyed by a landslide or earthquake, etc). As the head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said: the plants were so well designed that 'such a situation is practically impossible'. The album was finished on February 13th. On March 17th I received the following message from a Facebook friend: 'Geir, some time ago you asked people for a photo of a Japanese nuclear powerplant. Is this going to be the sleeve of your new coming album? But more importantly: how did you actually predict the future? Kind regards, David." [label info]
"Obviously we have to believe Geir Jenssen when he writes that in February he decided to make an album about Japanese post-war economic miracle, found a picture of a nuclear power plant, and wondered why so many are close to the sea, and what would happen if a tsunami would sweep the land? We know the answer by now. I assume Jenssen didn't make this story up as good line to sell a CD. Its been a while since we last heard Biosphere, a new work that is, as 'Patashnik' is still an ipod favorite here, and a work that breaks away, it seems, with the more recent ambient works. 'N-Plants' sees a return to the world of rhythm and that makes this quite a remarkable work. Biosphere going back to the world of dance music, although its hard to imagine people actually dancing to this. But if my crystal ball gazing is right, ambient house is soon to be on a revival trip, following the recent explosion in cosmic music, and then Biosphere can't do wrong. He plays here with the elements of cosmic music and adds nice minimalist beats to it. Loops of keyboard sounds, spiced with 4/4 minimal beats (more Cologne than Berlin) as well as layered drones of what might be more keyboards, or heavily processed field recordings, make up some great music, returning to his earlier music, but expanding it. Out are the voice samples, the beats are reduced to the bare minimum, the ambience is more to the foreground, making this another essential Biosphere record." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€32.00
Substrata (Alternative)
Substrata was the third studio album by the Norwegian electronic artist Biosphere, released 25 years ago by All Saints Records in London.
In 2016, Pitchfork ranked it at number 38 on its list of the 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time.
Here are ten alternative versions picked from the Substrata recordings sessions that took place between 1995 and 1996.
David Stubbs´review of the original album in Melody Maker ,July 12th 1997:
Biosphere, aka Norwegian Geir Jenssen, is transmitting from a cold, polar outpost of the imagination. "Substrata" is the best ambient album I've heard in an ice age, an album of terrifying, desolate and all-enveloping beauty, the music of a man who's stared too long and too hard at the Northern lights, a music of distant rumbles, tremors underfoot, stray radio signals, yawning chasms and indistinct, grainy images in the half-light when the mind begins to play tricks. "Poa Alpina" reminds me of recent, frightening TV footage of vast chunks of iceberg cracking and falling away into the sea under the duress of global warming. As for "The Things I Tell You", imagine what Oasis would have sounded like had they been born Eskimos. "Sphere Of No Form" is shot through with a frantic peal like the Mayday song of the world's last whale and, best of all, "Kobresia" looms with a vast, mournful, symphonic motif, like the ghost of the Titanic. Chill out has never been this chilling.
https://biosphere.bandcamp.com/album/substrata-alternative-versions
€15.00
Object Holder
“Stunning thorough worked piece that breaks new ground altogether; an extraordinary achievement, 3 years in the making and rewriting a lot of rules. Text and singing (Susanne Lewis, inimitably) Also features Charles Vrtacek (Piano), Andy Kredt (Guitar) and Chris Cutler (percussion, electrics, texts). A Dense, profound field of sound, music, silence.” [label info]
" “Object Holder” is Biota’s 12th release and as we celebrate the origins of Biota with the re-release of the Mnemonists “Horde” (see AAJ April 99’ review) it seems appropriate to shed some light on Biota’s latest release. Analogous to the music and era depicted on “Horde” which was recorded 20 years ago, “Object Holder” is a fascinating endeavor that illustrates the impetus and cutting edge strides this band has made since the early 1980’s.
Released in 1995 and recorded between 1992 and 1994, “Object Holder” contains 23 tracks that interweave, ultimately representing a series of dreamlike pieces as the musicians incorporate a vast array of acoustic, electronic and exotic instruments. Forever Einstein’s C.W. Vrtacek lends a helping hand on piano along with percussionist-composer Chris Cutler who handles percussion and electronics duties.
The press kit alludes to the music being that of “a half remembered dream”. Prior to reviewing this CD and reading the press release, this writer immediately conjured thoughts or impressions that parallel that notion.
Vocalist Susanne Lewis of the fine band “Thinking Plague” makes her debut with Biota on this release and supplies an angelic and multi-colored balance that rides on top of the textured yet highly abstract thematic developments and unusual rhythmic patterns. Unusual instrumentation such as Steve Scholbe’s use of a marxophone and rubab compliment the guitars, electronics, horns, accordion’s and pump organs. A hodgepodge of diverse instrumentation all add to the uniqueness of these pieces yet the blending, coloration and skillful implementation is what makes it all work. The music is dense yet prone to delve into ephemeral passages that catch the listener off guard.
Biota explore different diatonic and chromatic regions by fusing or meshing sounds of instruments that emit unorthodox voicings as the outcomes are frequently compelling and quite interesting. Overall, Biota provides enchanting dreamscapes supplanted by odd thematic developments that contain elements of elasticity and musical shaping which adhere to a formula that is unique to this band. Comparisons are tough. Biota has created a deeply personalized style that has evolved over many years and needless to say; the music is enticing and picturesque which coincides with the colorful CD artwork by the Mnemonists. “Object Holder” gets **** ½ out of 5 stars." [All About Jazz]
https://biota.bandcamp.com/album/object-holder
€15.00
Funnel to a Thread
"Gut zwei Jahre nach „Cape Flyaway“ meldet sich das amerikanische Avant-Rock-Kollektiv BIOTA mit einem neuen Album zurück. „Funnel To A Thread“ erscheint als CD auf RER. Seit ihrer Gründung 1979 (unter dem Namen MNEMONIST ORCHESTRA, später MNEMONISTS) beglücken BIOTA ihre weltweite, treu ergebene Fan-Schar mit in unregelmäßigen Abständen erscheinenden Alben, die stets als Gesamtkunstwerke aus Musik und Artwork zu verstehen sind. So vielseitig wie die musikalischen Einflüsse ist auch das Instrumentarium der elfköpfigen Formation: elektrische und akustische Gitarren, Hammond-Orgel, Micromoog, Trompete, Geigen, Bass, Akkordeon, Klavier, Percussion und gelegentlich Gesang schichten sich zu frei fl ießenden, kollagenartigen Songs, wobei Folk-Elemente als Leitmotiv dienen. BIOTA kreieren ihre ganz eigene Musikform, in der Zeit als dauerhaftes Kontinuum erscheint und nicht als stringente Abfolge von Ereignissen - experimentelle Psychedelia der ganz besonderen Art.
Kristianne Gale: voice, strumstick; James Gardner: trumpet, kim; Tom Katsimpalis: electric, nylon, 12-string guitars, Crown bass, Clavioline, zither; Randy Miotke: Rhodes, trumpet, flutes; Charles O’Meara: piano; Mark Piersel: resophonic guitar, editing; William Sharp: mix, editing, electronic processing; Gordon Whitlow: Hammond electric & Estey pump organs, accordion, kaen, autoharp; Larry Wilson: kit drums, percussion, ranat, xylophone; Randy Yeates: Biomellodrone keyboard, Roland Space Echo; David Zekman: violin, mandolin, banjolin
Since the late 1970s Biota has ploughed its own furrow, producing a body of work that resembles nothing anyone else has done or is yet doing. Their compositions evolve in long, constantly shifting timbral blocks filled with fragments and echoes of quasi-familiar musical languages. They use instrumental resources bridging half a millennium and two thirds of the planet to create unique combinations of texture, colour and movement. It’s a music of constant flux, dissolving, re-forming and mutating without agitation or stress, where motion and stasis blend into a single ambiguous condition. And although it will never arrive, the path, with its simultaneous familiarity and strangeness has an eerie power to compel.
The recordings, as always from the Dys Studio, are meticulous and carefully constructed - the fused product of generation after generation of processing and mixing. There’s an almost Feldmanesque quality of necessity and unpredictabilty. The band now takes, on average, five years to prepare, record and finalise a new release. They’re in no hurry.
BIOTA
Founded in Colorado in the late 1970s, Biota's first recordings were released under the name of the Mnemonist Orchestra which, between 1980 and 1984, released five albums on its own label, before linking up with ReR in1984. That was also the year in which they split into an independent visual arts collective - which retained the Mnemonist name - and the recording project, Biota. Since which time, their releases have presented the work of both groups in tandem." [label info]
www.rermegacorp.com
"We should have known better. If Biota decide to come out with a new CD after “just” three years instead of leaving us to wait for the large part of a decade as always, the occurrence is presumably concealing specific implications. As if they were anxious of re-establishing a connection with preceding issues without losing the grip on the chain of circumstantial matters that originates the current visions.
So here we are, celebrating Funnel To A Thread as a foundational chapter in the collective’s history, possibly standing among their all-time best if such prosaicness makes sense. But maybe – just maybe – this will encourage at least a portion of the populations still shamefully unfamiliar with the subject to ultimately deepen it. Let me be straight. Someone as, say, The Residents have managed to reach cult status via marketable mysteries and a body of work which, in terms of musical depth, is mainly insignificant. What are Biota to do – besides producing beautiful, fulfilling, seriously groundbreaking albums accompanied by jaw-dropping artworks – to be formally welcomed in the elite of veritable contemporary innovators?
The connoisseur will never cease to fight against the ignorance surrounding this rewarding acoustic macrocosm. A place where past, present and future are literally embraced by the same kind of emotional reverberation. Where conscious species of listeners inevitably find answers to essential questions that appeared impossible to decode before. Where a concatenation of short episodes streaming without solution of continuity leads through a lifetime of intuitions that had been kept for ourselves to date, and now – at last – we can stamp as “right”, not really caring about sharing them. These people produce sounds that naturally regulate our synchronous response to a physical energy directly connected with what the trade brands as “cosmic vibe”, in spite of an external appearance often relating to finely aging forms of folk expression. How they manage to do this remains an enigma.
Twenty-one tracks conscientiously played and painstakingly assembled, rooted in clearly perceptible influences, morphing as clouds in an autumn sky. Katsimpalis and Piersel’s guitars are a conspicuously driving presence, textbooks of heartfelt arpeggios and bucolic phrases which made me consider the bygone existence of a John Fahey / Neil Young hybrid. Gale’s vocal shards appear suddenly to instantly run away, a grace too shy to be evaluated. Whitlow’s accordion scientifically places signposts of reassurance when things seem to turn towards a mild turbulence. Zekman’s violin tells of the inevitability of a goodbye, minus the tears. O’Meara’s pianistic interventions are simple and unresolved at once, magniloquence removed from the vocabulary. Sharp’s typically masterful hands and ears exalt details that usually stay unnoticed, the audio landscape disclosing a palette of ineffable amorphousness around precisely defined arrangements and spatializations, more than anywhere else in the band’s recorded output. Mixing skills that nobody knows, except those who smile instinctively hearing words like “Tumble” or “Tinct”. Favorites? Quite absurd to ask: a Biota album is, by definition, a whole movie. However, in truth there are scenes that linger on; were this writer forced to choose with a gun pointed at his temple, the transition between “Understory” and “Numberless Years” might liquefy a hardened heart at any given moment.
Biota is an entity that attributes fresh meanings to the concept of altruism, for this music is a richness for anybody willing to dive in. An unpretentious assertion of confidence surrounded by colors conveying humanity and nostalgia, with an unremitting focus on clever ways to distil sonic significance from the forthcoming." [Massimo Ricci / touching extremes]
€15.00
Fragment for Balance
After 4 years of work on their 11th release for ReR, this extraordinary, reclusive, and highly individual audio-visual collective continues to evolve through the painstaking accumulation and disposition of a seemingly incompatible range of both exotic and familiar musical languages, instruments, techniques and studio manipulations into one of the few genuinely original bands at work today. It took a long time to refine their unique process of composition to this level of ambiguity and depth and newcomers will wonder how they strayed so far from orthodoxy and yet managed to retain a lucidity and transparency that is quite rare in contemporary music. Timeless, almost weightless - yet teeming with life, motion and complexity - this is a music that suggests an untroubled world in which nostalgia, tragedy and agon, while rudely present, remain subservient to deeper, calmer currents. Sic transit gloria mundi.
The bullet points are that Biota is a unique project, defying genre with, like all such cult artists, a small but extremely dedicated public that, over the last 15 years has grown continuously as new listeners discover them.
BIOTA
Founded in Colorado in the late 1970s, Biota's first recordings were released under the name of the Mnemonist Orchestra who, between 1980 and 1984, released five albums on its own label, before linking up with ReR in 1984. That was also the year in which they split into an independent visual arts collective - retaining the Mnemonist name - and the recording project, Biota. Since then, their releases have presented the work of both groups in tandem.
http://biotamusic.com/
https://biota.bandcamp.com/album/fragment-for-balance
"Für ihren 11ten bei Recommended Records (oder ReR Megacorp) veröffentlichen Tonträger (EP, LP oder CD) haben sich Biota aus Fort Collins in Colorado wieder etwas mehr Zeit gelassen. Nachdem 2014 "Funnel to a Thread" erschienen war, legte man erst einmal eine längere Pause ein, um dann vom Frühjahr 2016 bis in den Herbst 2018 hinein das neue Album einzuspielen. Das Ergebnis - "Fragment for Balance" - wurde schließlich im Frühling 2019 veröffentlicht. Das Album kommt in einem bunten Digipack, versehen mit einem dicken Beiheft voller expressionistisch-tiefsinniger Bilderwerke. Die ersten 150 Exemplare beinhalten - wenn man direkt beim Label bestellt - zudem einen kleinen Pappschuber, in dem ein originale, von Tom Katsimpalis gestaltete Bildcollage steckt. Sehr edel!
Offenhörlich haben Biota ihren Stil gefunden, bewegt sich doch die auf "Fragment for Balance" zu findende Musik in sehr ähnlichen Gefilden, wie die des direkten Vorgängers. Die Besetzung ist zudem identisch. Allerdings scheint mir "Fragment for Balance" etwas homogener und klangvoller voran zu fließen.
Eine recht eigenartige folkig-elektronische Kammermusik gibt es auf "Fragment for Balance" zu hören, oder einen seltsamen elektronisch-kammermusikalischen Avant-Folk, bestimmt von filigranem Akustikgitarrengeschrammel, Violinenklängen, allerlei Blaswerk, analog-elektronischen Tastensounds, Piano, Harmonium, Akkordeon und diverser Perkussion. Deren Tonerzeugnisse werden (teilweise effektverfremdet) mit verschiedensten Elektronikgebilden, komplexen Tonskulpturen und prozessierten Klangfragmenten unterlegt, bzw. von diesen verwoben, so dass sich das Album als lange und vielteilige, elektronisch-akustische Suite voran arbeitet, bei der die einzelnen Nummern ineinander übergehen. Über all dem schwebt Kristianne Gales wunderbarer, gälisch-folkiger und ätherisch-luftiger Gesang.
Im Vergleich zu früheren Alben, insbesondere denen aus den 80er- und 90er-Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts, ist die rezentere Musik von Biota eher ruhig, fast sanft gehalten, wobei dieselbe immer ausgesprochen unkonventionell dahin gleitet. Dies trifft auch auf "Fragment for Balance" zu, welches stilistisch Folk, experimentelle Elektronik, moderne Kammermusik und eine Art von Avantrock zu einem dichten, sehr homogenen und seltsam gewichtslosen Ganzen vereinigt. Sorgfältig geplant und komponiert arbeitet sich die Musik voran, dissonant aber friedlich, gleichzeitig erstaunlich harmonisch, rund und vertraut, dann aber wieder sperrig und ausgesprochen fremdartig. E-Gitarre, Bass und Schlagzeug sorgen dafür, dass es immer mal wieder rockt, doch arbeitet sich der Großteil der Musik eher formlos voran, ohne aber auf Struktur und Zielstrebigkeit zu verzichten. Momente unglaublicher, fast absurder Schönheit wechseln sich mit schrägem Plingen und Hallen ab, mit voluminös-symphonischen Tonschüben, wolkigen Klanggebilden, akustisch-kammermusikalischen Abschnitten, dynamischen RIO-Prog-Momentaufnahmen, repetitiv-minimalistischen Exkursen und wirren Tondurcheinandern.
Chris Cutler bezeichnet Biota als eine der 'few genuinely original bands at work today', und dem möchte ich durchaus zustimmen. So wie Biota klingt derzeit keine andere Band auf dieser Welt. Wer progressive Musik in einem folkig-elektronisch-freiformatigen Kontext schätzt, der sollte "Fragment for Balance" (und "Funnel to a Thread") kennen." [Achim Breiling / Babyblaue Seiten]
"As obvious as this may sound, the years run way faster as one grows older. When Biota announced the release of Fragment For Balance, my delight in receiving a new bulletin from the collective “after not so long” was soon replaced by the mild shock of realizing that their previous outing Funnel To A Thread had been published in 2014. I wasn’t paying attention to all those months flying away (to paraphrase another title from the group’s discography).
Even worse, this period was rendered heavier by two major losses in Biota’s universe. In 2015, visual artist Joy Ann Froding left this planet following the successful surfing of an ocean wave; in 2018, multi-instrumentalist Charles “Chuck” O’Meara (formerly Vrtacek) suffered a heart attack while he was cutting wood to warm his winter. In the sadness, it is somewhat relieving to note the natural ambience of these occurrences, presuming that Froding and O’Meara were in a comfortable place inside when the call from nowhere came. The album is dedicated to them, and the artwork commemorating the pair on the accompanying booklet – a flower and a bird embedded in unique Mnemonists shades – nearly caused this writer’s tired eyes to well up. That ear-gracing piano inevitably puts the soul in “still here with us” mode; Chuck was, and forever will be, a certified Biot.
Every single snippet of the multitude of sketches, proposals and fully fledged visions represents a piece of fertile ground for sensible roots. Yet the process of absorption doesn’t really happen through the listener’s mind, exploiting instead the most unconventional features of sympathetic resonance. There’s always been a touch of magic in William Sharp’s slight defacement of arrangement and equalization, be it a chiaroscuro of off-key echoes or the enhancement of quietly intertwining arpeggios. Throughout the 26 (!) consecutive tracks comprised by the program – duration from 0’38” to 9’48” – the achievement of a flawless amalgamation of tunings, melodic intelligibility and aural daydreaming remains at the core. The instruments shine brighter than ever, with particular regard to guitars (Tom Katsimpalis and Mark Piersel) and violin (David Zekman). They seem to trace coordinates and paths to places of blinding light amidst the hand-woven textural patchworks and gentle superimpositions informing the orchestration.
Apropos of that, flashes of enlightenment are born from the melting of a larger number of voices (including Kristianne Gale’s apparitions, a singing mermaid in a sea of wistful refractions). Keyboard constructions totally deprived of preset futility lie at the basis of revealing harmonic disseminations, Gordon Whitlow’s accordion and Hammond organ strengthening the sonic tissue with typical wisdom. Also notable is the role of Randy Miotke, his trumpet and flugelhorn supporting the contrapuntal constitution, and its various transmutations. Larry Wilson’s drums emerge in unexpected spots, attributing hues of temporal non-existence to otherwise regular rhythmic cells.
And so on and so forth, one would have to conclude. It’s been decades by now, yet attempting to describe the essences emanated by Biota’s garden still makes me feel stupid, or useless, or both. Nevertheless, the sensation of understanding a little morsel every time – of the music itself, of the fight against big-mouthed superficiality, of the painful impossibility of communicating with lesser levels of perception – is incomparable. In less than ten minutes, a track like “Walking Is Missing” teaches much more than the millions of words spewed by cretins most everywhere.
When that packet from Colorado materializes, my gradually greying beard doesn’t matter anymore. All it takes is sniffing the cover’s scent, observing once again the profound art of human beings who do not accept commands, or foolish indications, by anyone. And, of course, spinning the disc without putting the finger on the whys and the whos. Just intuiting the actual reasons of aliveness, and envisioning our future merging with the meaningful consequences of the acoustic laws.
Or, as good ol’ Chuck would have it, “learning to be silent”." [Massimo Ricci]
€15.00
(Go with the Flow) like a Twig on the Shoulders on a mighty stream
* BJERGA / IVERSEN - (Go with the Flow) like a Twig on the Shoulders of a mighty Stream CD (TIBProd 100, 2008) € 12.00
Zusammenstellung von 12 Stücken von dem norwegischen drone/noise/impro-Duo, die in den letzten Jahren mit ZIG CDR releases präsent waren. Ihre Drones sind nicht edel, harmonisch, oder grossartig strukturiert, sondern low-fi, dreckig, feedbackend, obertönend,
als Klangquellen kommen allerlei Instrumente, Objekte und Effektpedals zum Einsatz... das erinnert an ähnliche Sachen von MY CAT IS AN ALIEN oder BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL... als komprimierte Compilation ein kurzweiliger Überblick im Booklet ausführliche liner notes von Tobias Fischer (Tokafi).
".... A fine introduction into four years of hyper activity from two minds from the Nor-scene. Lots of guitars, lo-fi electronics, mild distortion, waving minimalism and lengthy drones, this is what their world is made off. Their selection is very fine, I'm pretty sure I would have picked similar pieces from their catalogue - the more quite lengthy drone pieces of buzzing electronics and fine guitars. I can imagine you can't collect all fifty previous releases, but if you need one, then why not this one?" [FdW / Vital Weekly]
www.tibprod.com
€12.00
Live at Moving Furniture Records
"Split album between Sindre Bjerga and Nils Rostad recorded live at Moving Furniture Records HQ on 8-03-2011.
The CD-R comes in handmade eco-pack sleeves with pictures of both artists glued on them. The names are handwritten on each side.
There is also a hand-numbered pro-printed insert.
Includes unlimited streaming of Live at Moving Furniture Records HQ via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more." [label info]
www.movingfurniturerecords.com
€7.50
Fur Your Bears Only
Looking for some strange music? Here it is.. Der Ex-STILLUPPSTEYPA hier in Zusammenarbeit mit einem gewissen Jonas OHLSSON quälen uns mit Mutanten-Techno inkl. schnuckeligen BÄREN-Samples, hochabstraktem digitalen Microwave-Gebruzzel, undefinierbaren field-recordings mit hohem Abartigkeitsfaktor, Stille, und was sonst nicht noch alles..
und dann noch solche Titel wie „My Arse Glitches“, und Bären-Collagen auf dem Cover!
Coverartwork, Titelgebung, Musik = Popmusik an der Grenze zum Irrsinn, frische Neurotransmitter für eingerostete Synapsen.
“heimir björgúlfsson is an ex-member of the longstanding icelandic group stilluppsteypa and jonas ohlsson is a reknowned visual artist, both based in amsterdam, the netherlands. "fur your bears only" is their second collaboration after the "unspoken word tour" album in the brombron series released by staalplaat and extrapool. "fur your bears only" is the most melodic and poppy music ever to have come out of björgúlfsson & ohlsson, providing 8 tracks that show how disco & house can get distorted once in the hands of these two gentlemen. from the epic opening 10-minute title track onwards this work is full of abstract dancefloor sympathies.” [press release]
€13.00
Creature Comforts
Noch ein heisser Anwärter für den Seltsamkeits-award; super seltsame, surrealistische Hawai-gitarren, lazy beats, elektronische pulses, schwankend & leiernd der Sound, irgendwo befinden sich auch Stimmen (Gesang kann man das nicht nennen), kurzum: undefinierbar, unbewertbar, unergründlich. Einfach klasse schräg.
„Jim O’Rourke hat einmal so boshaft wie zutreffend bemerkt, dass es etwas anderes ist zu improvisieren oder nur improvisierte Musik zu spielen, sprich, sich selbst zu imitieren. Insofern muss man mit Creature Comforts (FATCD32) konstatieren, dass BLACK DICE keine BLACK DICE-Musik spielt, sondern BLACK DICE mit jedem Release neu erfindet. In radikaler Abkehr von der Voodoo-Psychedelic von Miles Of Smiles entfaltet ihre neue CD in unverhofft Miro’scher Heiterkeit eine elektropopig-surreale Skurrilität. Ausser dem Nenner „weird“ scheint die Bandästhetik komplett ausgetauscht. Ein flockiger Cartoon-Leichtsinn kapriolt durch acht Tracks, die aus vielen undichten Ventilen wie Gameboys dudeln und wie R2D2 zwitschern. Es eiert, loopt, wabert und schwip-schwapt auf sämtlichen Synthie-, Chorus- und vor allem Gitarrenspuren, die Percussionabteilung ist dafür weitgehend paralysiert. Das Ganze verhält sich zu Kraut wie Jad Fairs Best Wishes & Half Robot zu Punk. Heftige Dub-Effekte lassen 80s-Elektro-Trash abdriften in Richtung Mondo Exotica 2001 - Odyssee im Kinderzimmer. Vier 1-2-Minuten-Knirpse odradeken um die 6- bis 9-minütigen Freak-Epen „Treetops“, „Creature“ und „Night Flight“ und den viertelstündigen Monolithen „Skeleton“, ein tapsiges Schreckgespenst, durch dessen Rippen Gitarren und Synthies jämmerlich jaulen. Während man vorne ein Mona-Lisa-Lächeln geschenkt bekommt, steigen auf der Rückseite hinter den sieben Bergen Sprechblasen wie Rauchzeichen auf. Genau dazwischen, in der Hirnrisszone, inszenieren BLACK DICE ihr Happening, das die Nerven etlicher Mucker blank legt: „Lärmbelästigung!“ „Hirnmüll“ direkt aus der Klapse... bekloppte Katastrophe für unmusikalische Gefühlsambutierte“... „Musik von und für Nerds.“ (Intro-„Probefahrt“) Köstlich. [BAD ALCHEMY 44]
"This is the official follow-up to their DFA debut CD and Double LP Beaches & Canyons. It finds the band pushing in yet another direction, at once unmistakably Black Dice, and noticeably different. Recorded with Steve Revitte (Liars, Kill Me Tomorrow), the DFA & Nicolas Vernhes (Fisherspooner, Fiery Furnaces). Venturing further into their own psychedelic, increasingly electronic world, Creature Comforts is as expansive, experimental and structurally unique as its predecessor, but there is a new sense of playfulness and accessibility mixed with naïve wonder and not-quite-steady rhythms. It is hazy, dreamy, but they have suddenly emerged as a band with an untouchably original terrain, mixing dub, tropicalia and the entire history of psychedelic rock music into one heady concoction." [press release]
€14.00
Im Gegenteil
BLACK SUN PRODUCTIONS beweisen auf dieser 4-track mcd eindrucksvoll, dass sie mehr sind als schwule COIL-Jünger,
elektronisch – rhythmisch – experimentell – philosophisch geprägt und sehr eigenständig klingen ihre Stücke, fantastisch das tribal-hypnotisierende „Das Gegenteil“.
“Best known in some quarters for their collaboration with Coil in some of the band's most iconoclastic live installations and for their epic performance project Plastic Spider Thing, Black Sun Productions' children of darkness are about to release the official follow up to last year's highly acclaimed operettAmorale. Black Sun Productions' Im Gegenteil unveils new material from the forthcoming full length album The Impossibility Of Silence (A Well Hung Monk; God?) as well as a two exclusive non album tracks (Clear Skies & Dark Skies; Das Gegenteil). "It's musick for the Church Of Body. There is a powerful technotic, entrancing pulse that runs through the session dancing between the sacred and the profane. Sometimes there is a strong tribalistic rhythm, at others a granular flicker of the taste of electrickery.
”Darius Akashic, Crooked Stylus"
Written, produced and performed by draZen, Pierce & Massimo. Released by Sheela-Na-Gig Sha-Na Penisring Ning [a sub of DANHUSER Org.] ”Ariot Fleischmann, black-sun-productions.com” [press release]
€10.00
Somewhere between Desire and Despair
"After a couple of collaborations on tracks, Black Sun Productions finally get together with Val Denham for a full length release. Val Denham might be best known for her paintings that have appeared on releases by Marc and the Mambas, Psychic TV... but over the past few years she has been releasing short-run CD-Rs of her lo-fi sounds. Homosexual overtones inform much of Black Sun Productions material but with Val Denham, a transgendered figure, the focus moves on to a new form of sexuality.
Somewhere Between Desire and Despair opens with the haunting atmospheric drone of 'A Tale of Two Cities' with Denham reciting lines from Charles Dickens. From then on much of the first half of Somewhere Between Desire and Despair flirts with various forms of electronic music. It's clear from 'Cobalt Blue' that Massimo and Pierce haven't forgotten their past association with Coil, as it picks up on the rhythmic shuddering Coil-like electronics with Denham's voice pitched deep and treated, alongside passages of sped-up processed vocals. Val Denham is something of a character and, at times, she sounds like a Northern housewife reared on a diet of glam records. 'Stars', a Denham collaboration with Testing Vault, goes all downbeat with dark electronics, featuring Denham's idiosyncratic take on a pop vocal. Denhams' voice is almost helium-fuelled on the disco-chug of 'We Are The Hydrogen'. 'Eat Us Mother!' foregoes the electronics for a surprisingly sparkly run through post-punk dynamics. Denham picks up on a rock persona teasing the listener with her shrieky and screechy vocal careering over booming bass and discordant guitar scrapes from her longtime collaborator Oli Novadniek.
Things slow down in the next half with a collection of evocative tracks, much in the vein of Black Sun Productions fantastic OperettAmoralle. The disorientating queasy electronics of 'Absinthe' has Denham relating a tale of alcohol abuse, evoking the Green fairy alongside some effective harmonium and harmonica drone. Many of the tracks here use mournful orchestration taken from a track called 'Morphium' - though the source isn't given. 'Andromeda' taps into the mind of the transgendered artist. It's almost poetic as Denham delivers a spoken vocal in her homely Northern tones. Much more poignant is 'Flowers In The Trenches' which tells of transgendered and transexual soldiers who fought in WWI. Amidst sombre strings and military snare drum rolls Denham speaks of those unnamed and forgotten soldiers who were, in fact, "women in their heads" fighting in another "man-made catastrophe" and "suffered for nothing". Enlightening stuff.
Val Denham really shines on the campy theatrics of 'I Try To Kill The Man' over the Weimar Berlin cabaret sounds of 'Das Lila Lied', an early 20th century homosexual anthem, here performed by the Ophelia Orchestra. Similarly 'Emerald Green' uses the score of Marlene Dietrich's 'Such Trying Times'. Denham is finely positioned to evoke the decadence, sexual transgression and dark wit with her sarcasm and style. Black Sun Productions have, of course, produced their own musical tribute on the works of Bertolt Brecht to tremendous effect and Denham's contributions don't disappoint.
Somewhere Between Desire and Despair is much more fun-filled than previous Black Sun Productions. It strikes a balance between electronic music and cabaret music, and a balance between poignancy and absurdity. It's not the most coherent release, partly due to the varied list of collaborators, but Val Denham manages to carry it all off with a verve and panache, informed by her strength of character, her honesty and humour. Somewhere Between Desire and Despair comes in a 6-panel digipak with wonderful representations of Val Denham's artwork."
[Review by Compulsion]
www.touretterecords.com
€13.00
Rückwärts Backwards
“Black To Comm is an alias for Dekorder label owner Marc Richter's audio excursions. "Rückwärts Backwards" is his debut full-length album recorded between 2003 and 2005 in his adopted hometown Hamburg and his childhood home in the Black Forest located in the south of Germany. With a background in many musical styles (from Psychedelia to pure Computer Music) BTC's music is never easy to pin down.
This album is essentially created from scratchy shellac and vinyl loops merged with ambience field recordings (with some voice manipulations and kitchen gamelan thrown in for good measure). The warm hiss of analogue recording techniques combined with the apparently antique sounds of vintage organs, acoustic & electric guitars, pianos, glockenspiel and mbira used on these tracks generate a kind of hyperreal, fake nostalgia playing with one's perception of a pseudo-recollection. The layering and hypnotic repetition of short loops extracted from old Psychedelia, Free Jazz, Vaudeville and Traditional records reveal a haunting melodic quality sometimes not distinguishable within the original source material, evoking a hovering feeling of bittersweet melancholy with an omnipresent, slightly disturbing atmosphere hidden beneath the surface.The 8 songs constantly sway back and forth between simple, almost naive arrangements and dense surreal drones with rare, yet intense distorted climaxes making this album one constantly absorbing listening experience.” [label info]
“First of all this CD is beautifully packaged with a tri-fold disc holder. Each picture bears its own character (blurry forest with handscrawled text, a sleeping cat, and what appears to be an old wallpaper pattern) But on to the music. Black to Comm (aka Marc Richter who also runs Dekorder) knows how to keep it short and sweet with 8 songs clocking in at under 37 minutes. Ruckwarts Backwards opens with the aptly titled 'Bees' some gentle buzzing of said insect is later accompanied by some child-like hums, this gives way to the second song 'Levitation' which is a gentle soundscape of rising and falling organ tones backed by a field recording. 'Lucifer Lacca' ushers in an operatic vocal loop that reaches crescendo and ends with another bit of children's singing. The feel is still subdued and continues throughout the record, I'm reminded at times of Tape, not so much in sound but in how I feel while listening to them. The title track is a series of interlocking vibraphone melodies that
are augmented by computer processing. The computer treatments are more of an enhancement rather than something that would radically alter the source sounds. Track 5 is my personal favorite with a minimalist and slightly buzzing drone that cross-fades with a quieter drone. The remainder of the album hits just the right drone spot! Minimal loops with a somber feel, that guides you right to the end. The credits list microphones, voice, and kitchen gamelan, and Marc is good at assembling seemingly unrelated segments into gently blurred landscapes that roll by with an ease and comfort. In a few words..... simple, and elegant. Ruckwarts Backwards follows a self titled 10" also on Dekorder. Very curious to hear to more from this project” [CJ / Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Fractal Hair Geometry
"Black To Comm is the solo venture of Dekorder label boss Marc Richter. Having released two and a half albums on his own label he is slowly establishing himself as one of the more prolific drone artists out there with a forthcoming album on the American Digitalis label, a collaborative CD with Datashock on Ikuisuus, a 7" on the Irish Trensmat label and a collaboration with Xela in the works.
"Fractal Hair Geometry" is Richter's most refined and original work to date, picking up where the electrifying drone works of his monumental Double-LP left off. Like the last records this album is centered around recordings of a variety of vintage organs. While "Wir können leider..." often featured pure harmonium sounds and spacious recordings of chuch organ and mellotron, the new album opts for a more electronic, effects-laden sound, sending an old Farfisa Compact Deluxe and Casio SK-5 through an armada of analogue & digital effects pedals. The results are massive one-chord drones layered into dense & ecstatic, flickering & pulsating clusters of psychedelic electronic sound. Additional wordless vocal effects, hyperventilating & sizzling drum machines and hypnotic violin and guitar noises make for a hyperactive sound that never stands still even though most of the music is pure drones (sometimes consisting of more than 50 recording layers). Decidedly simple but gorgeous melodies shine through the mist from time to time, making a Black To Comm record always much more accessible than your average drone album.
There's even a heavy 4/4 bass drum smuggled into a track dedicated to the late Leigh Bowery, one of the most enigmatic creative figures of the mid-80's UK club scene (and singer of Minty).
Guests include Jonna Karanka (aka Kuupuu) on piano, Guido Möbius on trumpet and current Black To Comm (live) band members Renate Nikolaus on violin and Ulf Schütte (of Datashock, Aosuke, etc.) adding electronic sounds.
Along the lines of the music, seminal German artist Oliver Ross has created a massive multi-layered neon-coloured collage artwork which is printed on special ultra-heavy cardboard stock." [label info]
"..Chanted vocals, whirring organs, mysterious shimmers, squiggly melodies, buzzing Theremins, electronic glitches, analog synths, wheezing harmoniums, and those are just guesses, cuz just like that museum exhibit, it's difficult to tell what the source sounds are. We also didn't try that hard. It's like trying to peek under the table to see how a magician does a trick. We don't want to know. It's more fun
to get lost in these mysterious sounds. One track even introduces a muted techno throb, and for a brief second it sounds like the weirdest
record Kompakt never released. It's really hard to describe this stuff, which is probably why we like it so much, check out the sound
samples, and hear for yourself!" [Aquarius Records review]
www.dekorder.com
€13.00
Alphabet 1968
"Marc Richter alias Black To Comm ist kein Newcomer auf dem Feld der elektronischen Musik. Als Kopf des in Hamburg ansässigen Labels Dekorder hat der Musiker und Designer die Musikfans schon mit zahllosen Kuriositäten beglückt, mit seinen eigenen Kompositionen machte er allerdings am meisten Furore. Richter ist ein Pionier auf seinem Gebiet: Mit Bandschleifen, alten Orgeln und einer Flut zufällig gefundener Sounds schuf er einen ganz eigenen, organischen Drone-Sound. Mit "Alphabet 1968" indes bewegt sich Richter eher hin zu klassischen Mustern, hin zu Songs (in Ermangelung eines besseren Begriffs). Kurze Stücke, die für ihn Meilensteine repräsentieren, die ihn wiederum an seine Lieblingsplatten erinnern. So entstanden zehn
atemberaubende Songs, die über 45 Minuten Weltmusik, Techno, Noise, Avantgarde, Ambient und sogar Exotica streifen, die Reverenzen reichen dabei von Moondog über Basic Channel bis zum Soundtrackkomponisten Bernard Herrmann. Jedes Stück ist mit elektrostatischem Radiorauschen unterlegt, das einen durch das Album wie auf einer alten Senderskala wandern lässt. // A sprawling epic of a record from Hamburg's omnipresent Marc Richter.
Marc Richter (aka Black to Comm) is no newcomer to the experimental music scene. As the figurehead of the Hamburg-based Dekorder label, the musician and designer has brought countless oddities to the attention of rabid music fans in the last few years, but it is with his own compositions that he has made the biggest splash. Releasing for a plethora of labels including Digitalis, Trensmat and of course his own imprint, he has pioneered a new, organic drone sub-genre using tape loops, vintage organs and an inexhaustible swamp of found sounds. With this latest album however, it was Richter’s intention to move away from the epic drones he had made his own and into something more ‘classic’.
The mission statement for ‘Alphabet 1968’ was to write an album of ‘songs’ for want of a better word. Short tracks which represented genre points, the milestones which stuck in Richter’s mind when he thought back to his favourite records. What we arrive at is an breathtaking ten track album which, over the course of forty-five minutes, explores world music, techno, noise, avant-garde, ambient music and even exotica. Each track is linked with a loose thread of radio static or environmental sound, dragging you through the album as if tuning in to a stray broadcast or a particularly adventurous mix.
Richter has pieced the album together from hours of recordings made at his studio with home made gamelan, small instruments and loops gathered from a collection of ancient vinyl and 78 records. The scope of the album is admirable but ignoring this it is simply a shockingly arresting collection of experimental oddities, with references ranging from Moondog to Basic Channel by way of the Bernard Herrmann. It’s not hard to fall in love with ‘Alphabet 1968’, far harder would be to place exactly where the record should fit into your collection." [label info]
www.typerecords.com
€15.00
Selected Pieces
"since the time i came across ‘romance’ LP (on korm plastics, netherlands) and the ‘two women’ tape (on sph, spain) almost 20 years ago fell in love with the work of blackhumour, and his simple but Immersive way of playing with the human voice (be it found sound or recorded by himself), its transformation and the way he perceived his universe and his approach. in ‘selected pieces’ we find recordings done mostly in the 00’s culled from his archives for this release showing in almost the best way his sound in various manifestations (be it harsh, bizarre or mesmerizing like the ‘incantatory’ piece based upon the sounds of a hypno-dominatrix). and couldn’t find a better release to coincide with the outbreak of my new fanzine ‘emvoes’. housed in a foldout poster this release can be seen either as a cd, an audiopostcard, an audiozine or whatever situation the listener wants to find himself into…" [label info]
blog.noise-below.org
"probably one of the more curious careers in music: blackhumour, who spells it without capitals, like any thing he writes really. so we humour him with this review without capitals. curious career, since in the late 80s he was active on the cassette scene, released a lp even, and then seemed to have disappeared and releases have become more sparse since then. what i enjoyed back then about the music of blackhumour was the consistent use of only voice material, which he cut into loops and layered them together, very much like steve reich did with his 'come out' and 'it's gonna rain'; in later he work blackhumour cut phrases out of conversations and moved them around, creating new contexts. that work appealed less to me, i must admit. the six selected pieces here are from the period 1996 to 2002 and hold the middle ground between those 'heavy' drone like pieces from the early years and the cut 'n paste pieces of later. repetition plays a big role here, and most of the time it seems like not much is changing here - except for 'arbitrary', which seem to contain glitches from the digital audio tape it was once recorded on (unless this is a dirty cd), which add something to the voice material. Otherwise these pieces are as minimal as you can get, and it's the blackhumour i like very much. it has that fine hypnotic sound, with enough information to concentrate on one thing for a while and then something else. 'le mot juste' is the piece in which things change around into something entirely different. 'revision' adds in density over the course of seventeen minutes before changing over, in order to grow again, which is pretty much a standard blackhumour compositional technique. this is a most wonderful release. it should have fitted on monochrome vision (blackhumour has a strong black and white aesthetic too), but on noise-below is equally in the right place. if you have no idea who blackhumour is or what he does and if 80s unsung cassette heroes is your 'thing', then this cd is the best place to start. my pick of the week." [Fdw/Vital Weekly]
€10.00
Litany of Echoes
"Initially inspired by the guitarists of the '60s Takoma label to teach himself fingerpicking, London-based musician James Blackshaw writes pieces primarily for solo 12-string guitar that share more in common with the minimalist works of composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Charlemagne Palestine, as well as French composers Claude Debussy and Erik Satie, than the blues/raga influence of his peers. Using drones, overtones and repeating patterns alongside a strong inclination for melody, Blackshaw creates instrumental music that is both intelligent, hypnotic and unashamedly sentimental. Litany of Echoes, Blackshaw's sixth studio album in five years, shows a more mature, focused and, on the whole, accessible approach to composition. While the album often feels darker and more introspective in nature than on previous releases, many of the songs have a huge-sounding, classical quality to them. With Blackshaw adding some glistening piano work for the first time and Fran Bury returning to play swarms of sweeping string parts for violin and viola, Litany of Echoes is a truly original, affecting and timeless album from a guitarist/composer coming into his own." [press release]
"With each new James Blackshaw release, we're always amazed at how someone who works within such a small musical framework can continuously exceed our expectations. Definitely a favorite among favorites of solo guitarists, Blackshaw has bulked up his arsenal of compositional approaches by introducing for the first time the use of piano as a key element. Bookending the album are two long form pieces of solo piano in a minimalist style that remind us of Charlemagne Palestine or Lubomyr Melnyk. When the twelve string is first heard on the second track, it's not before we're set up with a foundation of resonant timbres of violin and viola (played by Fran Bury) that give
weight to the airy modal improvisations of the guitar. Adding subtle layers of richness and dynamics, the strings ground and support the ringing overtones of the 12 string creating complex harmonies to the pulsating melodies. We can't imagine we'll ever tire of hearing Blackshaw's shimmering textural pieces. Amazing how sound so deep, dark, damp and resonant can be so transcendentally uplifting." [Aquarius Records review]
www.tompkinssquare.com
€13.00
Lost Prayers and motionless Dances
James Blackshaw's second release, originally recorded in October 2004 by John Hannon, NRS. Released as a CD-R on Digitalis December 2004.
"An absolutely monumental recording, Lost Prayers and Motionless Dances re-examines many of the themes that were explored on Celeste and distills them into one brilliant 35-minute composition that is full of excitement and surprise. The piece begins with a harmonium drone and acoustic 12-string, tuned to the guitar-unfriendly C-F-C-F-C-F (I can't find any examples of this tuning being used elsewhere) and unfolds beautifully. Blackshaw moves effortlessly from Takoma-inspired picking into electroacoustic improvisation and concludes with 12-string, harmonium and ride cymbal falling into a blissed-out circular folk groove that is absolutely infectious." [Grown So Ugly]
www.tompkinssquare.com
€13.50
The Glass Bead Game
"I'm extremely pleased to announce that James Blackshaw will now be releasing his absolutely spellbinding music via Young God Records. He has received attention as a 12-string guitar prodigy / virtuoso. He used to be in punk bands in England, but then he started listening to people like John Fahey, Robbie Basho, etc., and I assume locked himself in a room for 12 hours a day for several years and just played constantly. It takes intense discipline and a religious commitment to get to the place where he's at with his instrument. But his music isn't about his "skill." It's not showy. It's deeply meditative--the secret language of a pre-thought, pre-dream place. "Blackshaw plays soulful and kaleidoscopic, ever-shifting mantra cycles of incredible beauty. Just his guitar by itself, with its swirling overtones, cascading notes, and a thousand points of light, resembles an orchestra, but with further orchestration--piano, strings, wind, and vocals--the music is positively cinematic and mesmerizing. "The 18-minute-plus gem on this record is 'Arc,' performed on piano with the sustain pedal on full throttle. The rush of sound created by the overtones from Heaven, augmented by strings and wind, when played at proper (full) volume, is one of the most thrilling pieces of music I've heard in years. It takes a rare and single-minded courage and commitment to make music with such a powerfully positive force at its heart, especially in these troubled times. This is healing music that reaches for what's possible, just beyond our grasp. It is stellar... "Blackshaw is joined on this record by Joolie Wood (Current 93, Simon Finn) on violin, clarinet, and flute, and John Contreras (Baby Dee and Current 93) on cello. Lavinia Blackwall (Directing Hand) is a classically trained singer and contributed vocals." [Michael Gira/Young God Records]
"... We totally love how his style and aesthetic remains intact, whether he’s sitting at the piano or with a guitar on his knee, his close attention to detail and use of hypnotic, emotionally captivating melodies shines throughout. Notes flickering and shimmering about as overtones soar above like clouds.
There’s so much about this record that you can get fully wrapped up in, so much detail it would be impossible to absorb it all in just one listen. We’ve already been listening to Glass Bead Game for over a week, and still new details keep popping out of the woodwork. And to top it off, beautifully fitting, earth-toned artwork of various birds of prey perfectly adorns the album with some magical visual hex. By far our favorite Blackshaw album to date and quite possibly his best, highly and fully recommended!" [Aquarius Records]
€17.00
Celeste
"Re-issue)Guitarist/composer James Blackshaw?s 2007 Tompkins Square album, The Cloud of Unknowing, received "Top 50 Albums of the Year? honors from Pitch-fork and Wire Magazine. Fresh off a U.S. and UK tour with Jose Gonzalez, and a bevy of year-end praise from the blogosphere to The New York Times, Tompkins Square reissues four catalog titles previously only available as tiny, limited edition CDR pressings. "Mr. Blackshaw plays 12-string acoustic guitar, picking endlessly circling, intertwining arpeggios: stately, tolling ones on the lower strings and faster ones, verging on tremolo, up above. Yet what usually emerges from the welter of notes is not bustle but tranquillity. The music has the same contemplative scope that turns countless tiny daubs into a Monet water lily." - Jon Pareles, The New York Times, Dec 31, 2007 www.myspace.com/jamesblackshaw"
[label info]
www.tompkinssquare.com
€14.50
Misery is a Butterfly
Wonderful album by one of the best spheric / emotional and genre-breaking / transcending “Pop/Rock”-bands of this planet, now on the cult-label from the 80’s / early 90’s, 4AD, and working with strings (i.e. played by EYVIND KANG) !
“Freed from all constraints, Blonde Redhead are beautifully reborn on Misery Is a Butterfly. True, feelings of loss, insecurity, and outright alienation do factor heavily into the record's thematic vision (this butterfly isn't called "Misery" for nothing), but the band's sense of assuredness surrounds the album's themes of vulnerability. Misery Is a Butterfly was recorded before being shopped to a label, but judging by the sound of the album, its eventual release on 4AD seems to have been an inevitability. From track one, the record is lacy and moody, perfectly suited to the one-time home of the Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil. The word "lush" doesn't quite capture the fluttering whirls of strings, keyboards, and delicately plucked guitar that open "Elephant Woman"; I'd go so far as to label such enveloping richness of instrumentation "baroque," perhaps even "rococo." For Blonde Redhead's latest incarnation, the softer production simply serves as polish for tarnished, tired guitar, drums and keyboards. Here, the bristling energy that once held would-be sympathizers at bay has been turned inward, resulting in an unprecedented illusion of warmth. "Anticipation", for example, ventures into completely foreign territory for the band; it's vulnerable, yet remains emotionally available, and is breathtaking even in comparison to the band's most typically pretty compositions. Never before have Makino's gentle whispers seemed so genuine or close at hand. The psychedelia-inflected title track and the fractured desolation of "Falling Man" also offer inviting hints of the underlying humanity Blonde Redhead had, until now, been so reluctant to display. Of course, even now, that humanity may be little more than an apparition. Their tales of heartache and desperation have cast Makino and Amadeo Pace-- the emotional heart of the band-- as tragically misunderstood, tortured poets who pin misery on their sleeves, never conceding that anyone else could be capable of understanding their pain. And despite the more inviting nature of Misery's music and production, they remain insular and distant here, as well. Only on "Anticipation" are Makino's vocals as beckoning as their musical surroundings; elsewhere, Blonde Redhead remain as they've always been: beautiful and vacant......”
€15.00
Heuristics
"One day it dawned on me that tons of material over the last 15 years had sort of grown an organic cohesiveness to it that is suitable to be looked at together, both backward and forward. In 2004, I had a dream about a child going through what could be said of a certain toad; that if you put a toad in a pot of water and slowly boil it, this toad would adapt and survive. If you put a toad in an already boiling pot of water, it would die immediately. In my dream, I saw a child suddenly being immersed in a similar fluid, causing him to grow up immediately. When he did grow up so abruptly, the result was a person with writing all over his body and black tar coming out of his mouth. Like the Empress in the tarot, this child lept forward from virginity to creativity. I made this photo shoot happen with my friend and photographer, Iris B., and I never knew what I was going to do with it. At one point, I thought it would be an exhibition of photography. Eventually, though, it dawned on me to de-saturate and sort of purify the images and use it to frame this material.
This material, ranging from 2000-2015, represents a lot of things I sort of hoped would be on 7 inches or prestigious compilations, or they were criminally under-released, perhaps prematurely. For instance, I went to a piano class at a local community college to learn just one song; "Viper's Drag" by Fats Waller. My final exam was to be able to get through the first page of written music, and I did it, like a gallivanting jalopy and a horse-drawn carriage of maddening, youthful frustration. My version, "Maggot's Drag (Notte Del Casu Marzu)" tells a short horror story of killer flying maggots. It was meant for a "monster music" compilation I was curating, that was more or less sabotaged by a cover artist whom I paid in advance, who didn't deliver for over two years. I got my money back after a fair amount of doin', but the steam I did not.
Also in the picture, is the audio for a performance I did with Right-Eye Rita on 06/06/2006, at a party I curated with Betty DeVoe. It was a ritual performance called "The Stifling Air", supposedly based on some works by Jacques De Molay, Grandmaster of the Knights Templar in the 13th Century. It included a custom made coffin and a nude model, and a king. I always felt it needed to reside somewhere, but only now did it make sense to put it somewhere. I could have produced the piece yesterday.
Some of my early performances exhibited a variant amount of sound structures, with me screaming the words "Remove All Doubt" over it until I felt like my vocal chords were bleeding. Featured here is one such piece, some of my more musical work.
There is also a track, "Mention This", featuring the vocals of Atalee Judy, a woman who was a kind and passionate supporter and friend early on. She'd given me a cassette of a'capella recordings, and I was inspired for weeks to create music to them. In this case, prior to knowing anything really about experimental music, I made music that is still bizarre, even to me now. Screeching synth-cellos and heavily effected broken glass, sampler percussion, among many other things, provided a back-drop for Judy's incredible voice. I once played this track to a man who did sound engineering for radio plays, and he said I'd achieved sounds and dynamic stereo ranges that he wouldn't understand how to do. Maybe he was just being nice.
Another track features Nikola Vasilic, where he and I did another piece for a Halloween compilation, with piano, organ, and lots of samples from horror movies. Yet another track was made by me with harmonica, bass guitar, sampler, vocals, and masochistic microphone abuse. I could go on and on. There is a story to every piece, and it is a diverse listen for sure. It is 60 minutes in duration, and I humbly suggest you give it a try.
SHRINK WRAPPED IN A JEWEL CASE, HIGH QUALITY INSERTS.
https://nopartofit.bandcamp.com
€10.00
Bad Ground (soundscapes of utter desolation)
Great dark drone / isolationism-ambience newcomer from Italy !
"Disquieting homemade isolationism by Ascanio Borga of Rome. "Bad ground" sounds like a biologist´s characterization of what is left behind to rot in the soil by industrial pollution, or confines where something terribly evil has happened, like a death camp. Either way, Borga´s "soundscapes of utter desolation" are no tourist sites. Released last year, this is apparently Borga´s first album in four years, but if a gestation period of that length is necessary for him to conjure up such spine-tingling "untertainment", then I´ll gladly wait until 2010 for the next one. For Bad Ground is a minor masterpiece of hopelessness.
The CDR is comprised of two suites. "The Boundary" would have made a highly serviceable alternative soundtrack to Andrei Tarkovsky´s seminal film "Stalker". As in the movie, one should heed the guide´s warning about crossing into this zone - what lays beyond is frightening, inhuman, and beyond reclamation. The scariest thing is that, despite the environment´s utter lack of fecundity, there does seem to be "life" of some sort dwelling inside the drones - but not life as we know it, or would voluntarily choose to acquaint ourselves with.
That eleven-and-a-half minute piece segues seamlessly into the thirty-five minute title track. Nothing but hostility here, either, both from above and below. With electric guitars, synthesizers and samples, Borga succeeds in turning the very earth we walk upon and the skies that vault above us into a single, leaden, threatening habitat. Almost disconcertingly, the final ten minutes feature soaring guitar chords over a bed of cozy, deeper note clusters, almost a pick-me-up; perhaps there is some kind of redemption, some sanctuary to be found here after all.
An excellent accomplishment and a worthy example of the genre." [Stephen Fruitman / Sonomu]
€8.00
Borinosophil
listen: https://dave-phillips.bandcamp.com/album/--2
Alexei Borisov - Guitar, Electronics, Voice
Olga Nosova - Drums, Electronics, Objects
Dave Phillips - Bass, Electronics, Voice, Field Recordings
released by Monotype Records, Warsaw in an 'Ecopack' sleeve. artwork by dp.
source material recorded in Moscow in the summer of 2009. most was improvised in alexei's living-room on tiny speakers with an assemblage of instruments and objects. one track was recorded in a studio with drums, guitar, bass and vocals. the resulting hours of recorded material were analysed - most of it was dismissed - the remains were taken apart and reassembled into 5 distinctive and epic sound-compositions. loud intimate music.
arranged 2010/2011 & mastered May 2011 in Zürich by dp.
REVIEW courtesy of Frans De Waard/Vital Weekly # 839 (July 2012)
This disc has the regular performing duo of Russia's finest, Alexei Borisov and Olga Nosova. Together they traveled the world, playing together but also performing with others, such as Anton Nikkila, Matthieu Werchowski, Dora Bleu, Thomas Buckner, Tom Smith, Jandek, Anton Mobin and a_spirale and somewhere along the lines they bumped into Dave Phillips, who is best known for his radical approach to noise, silence, performance and video. This trio worked together in june 2009 in Moscow and the recordings were later on edited by Phillips. It combines the energy unleashed by Borisov/Nosova together with the more continuous sound world of Phillips and occasional rapid editing from him. It seems to me that all three go off their usual path a bit. Its not as loud as I would expect from Phillips (but maybe I am not listening in the same volume as he plays live… actually I am sure of it) and perhaps also less object based as I would expect and it seems less improvised for the duo, although I am not sure. But that leads however to music that is quite good. Densely orchestrated electronics, in which the voice of Nosova is there, but pushed away it seems, and throughout the music has a hypnotic, psychedelic feeling to it. Great stuff.
Includes unlimited streaming of БОРИНОСОФИЛ via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. less
€12.00
Dødsverk (Dodsverk)
skandinavian old-school industrial and power electronics.
No warning shots will be fired
When you change the law
No warning shots will be fired
When you steal our freedom
No warning shots will be fired
As your fortress crumbles around you
No warning shots will be fired
When you set foot on our property
No warning shots will be fired
When we let the dogs run
https://tescogermany.bandcamp.com/album/d-dsverk
"Bøltorn’s Dødsverk is maybe noise on paper, but a thorough and fluent sonic experience when listened to. The trio, also featuring one Nordsvargr, put out a few full-lengths and an EP throughout the year, with Dødsverk being the most impactful of the bunch (even though each of them have their own unique characteristics and strong suits), and I found myself listening to it on repeat for days on end, and still do if I ’mistakenly’ put it on. There’s just something invoking and holistic in their approach to noise, power electronics, and whatever else, constituting of droning walls of varying racket, discernible samples, and intelligible vocals. All in all Dødsverk is probably what I’d pick as my favourite album of the year, with some day-to-day caveats left out of the equation." [Everything Is Noise]
€26.50
Sketches from Dust
Extreme amorph drone-scapes that invite to discover even the tiniest micro-details inside the undulating, waving, floating sounds... very relaxing, meditative, contemplative, tensionless movements..
A one-tracker of 40 minutes. Standard edition.
“Following on from ‘Memorias Extranjeras’ (Alluvial Recordings) with ‘Sketches from Dust’, we again have a less ‘typical’ Paul Bradley release. For this CD, gone are the field recordings and over the forty minutes we hear a piece that is mainly constructed from Guitar and Piano (the latter being played by Maja Elliott of Current 93). The recording is augmented by various acoustic sounds and some precise mixing techniques to form an organic and possibly ‘looser’ feeling recording than we might be previously expecting. What we hear is an intimate yet murky, almost eroded sonic journey. A primitive earlier outtake of ‘Sketches from Dust’ appeared on the limited ‘Notes from Past - Sketches from Dust’ CDr released earlier in 2006.” [label info]
€13.00
Sketches from Dust (special)
Extreme amorph drone-scapes that invite to discover even the tiniest micro-details inside the undulating, waving, floating sounds... very relaxing, meditative, contemplative, tensionless movements..
A one-tracker of 40 minutes. Special edition.
“Following on from ‘Memorias Extranjeras’ (Alluvial Recordings) with ‘Sketches from Dust’, we again have a less ‘typical’ Paul Bradley release. For this CD, gone are the field recordings and over the forty minutes we hear a piece that is mainly constructed from Guitar and Piano (the latter being played by Maja Elliott of Current 93). The recording is augmented by various acoustic sounds and some precise mixing techniques to form an organic and possibly ‘looser’ feeling recording than we might be previously expecting. What we hear is an intimate yet murky, almost eroded sonic journey. A primitive earlier outtake of ‘Sketches from Dust’ appeared on the limited ‘Notes from Past - Sketches from Dust’ CDr released earlier in 2006. This now fully realized work is released in two CD editions, one limited to 200 copies in hand painted card sleeve and a second unlimited edition with printed card insert in a plastic wallet.” [label info]
€17.50
Talking Drum
27 Sound-Snaps von traditioneller Ethno-Musik und field recordings verschiedenster Lände – CUBA, BALI, TÜRKEI, PHILIPPINEN, KANADA, werden hier verbunden mit live-Aufnahmen einer Computernetzwerk–Installation zur Generierung polyrhythmischer Klänge...klingt etwas arg konstruiert, aber das Ergebnis ist sehr vital, ungewöhnlich und vielseitig ...
“Binaural motion recordings composed as a dialogue of distances. Live recordings of music for electronic network music ensemble juxtaposed with location recordings of traditional music and environmental soundscapes. Made in Bali, the Philippines,
Turkey, Europe, Cuba and America 1991-99. This compilation/composition documents nearly a decade of work that began with the recording of dense sonic environments, both 'natural' and urban. Talking Drum is an interactive installation made with four networked laptop computers programmed to explore cyclical polyrhythms in large acoustic spaces. While the performance of the entire system is synchronized by one computer, each computer station generates independent results using genetic-programming algorithms which are affected by acoustic musicians' performances. Each station in the space “grows” its own rhythmic response to the situation, like similar plants growing differently in adjustment to their locations in an environment. The musicians improvise with the rhythms, interacting with the response of the computers they play next to, and the whole is a quartet of these human-machine duets. This recording compiles moments from these performances, and the recordings that inspired their creation, into one continuous piece. Electronic music is normally thought of as a medium emphasizing unlimited access to timbre - I think this is often over-emphasized, and that, at its best, it changes our experience of space. The traditional African talking drums are played held under the arms so that their laces can be squeezed to change the pitch of the drum-head as rhythms are played. The changing pitches and rhythms imitate patterns of the tonal languages of West Africa, and can be used like musical telephony to communicate over long distances. This recording follows this design, creating conversations between different places, environments, people, rituals, and parties on a global scale.
Chris Brown (b. 1953), composer, pianist, and electronic musician, creates music for acoustic instruments with interactive electronics, for computer networks, and for improvising ensembles. Born and raised in Chicago, he moved to California to study electronic music with Gordon Mumma and composition with William Brooks at Univ. of California/Santa Cruz, and with David Rosenboom at Mills College. He was active early in his career as an inventor and builder of electroacoustic instruments; he has also performed widely as an improvisor and pianist with such groups as Room; and the Glenn Spearman Double Trio. In 1986 he co-founded the pioneering computer network music ensemble The Hub. He is also known for his recorded performances of music by Henry Cowell, Luc Ferrari, and John Zorn. He has received commissions from the Berkeley Symphony, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio, the Gerbode Foundation, the Phonos Foundation and the Creative Work Fund. His recent music includes the poly-rhythm installation “Talking Drum”, the “Inventions” series for computers and interactive performers, and the radio performance “Transmissions” series, with composer Guillermo Galindo. His 1992 epic electroacoustic work “Lava”, for brass, percussion, and electronics is also available on Tzadik. He teaches Composition and Electronic Music at Mills College in Oakland, where he is Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music (CCM)” [press release]
€13.00
Two Characters
"Through more than 25 years of existence, the French composer CHRISTIAN RENOU, aka BRUME, has developed a unique 'handwriting' style within the experimental underground, something one may call "atmospheric Musique concrète". It is the marriage of many concrete sounds, hand-played acoustic instruments and electronic drones / noises that are arranged in a manner somewhat akin to a "narrative" - highly emotive and often evolving in a dramatic way. We are delighted to have received two tracks for the Substantia Innominata series that are simply extraordinary: expressing the wordless, indescribable oscillations arising from mental states, the qualia and conditions of two fictional 'souls', the aura of a personality.
Compounded by electronics (synths), field recordings (door jarring, water), alto sax, gramophone, tapes, various processed voices, percussion, bass, home-made instruments, both 'characters' start as a rather smooth ambient pieces that develop & expand into orchestral, mysterious post-industrial entities, showing a compelling process of densification.
Lim. 500 copies on lovely coloured vinyl (mixed blue, white & black), artwork by Mal Hoeschen (MULTER)." [label info]
www.substantia-innominata.de
"One of the things I like about Drone Records sub-division Substantia Innominata is that it doesn't exclusively deals with the darker than dark drone/ambient music which one would maybe expect from a series of 'works inspired by or related to "the unknown" around or within us. There is also room for sound collage, such as with RLW, Column One and perhaps to a lesser extent Illusion Of Safety. Not always the most obvious names and Brume is another one of those less obvious names, I would think. Christian Renou has been active since close to thirty years and in his early years was active with releasing cassettes, in the early 90s a bunch of CDs and in the last decade or so a bit more sparse with releases (or perhaps it has moved out of my sight?). In the old days his sound theory seemed 'no silence please', and using electronics in a very raw sort of musique concrete manner. On his new record, he uses "electronics (synths), field recordings (door jarring, water), alto sax, gramophone,
tapes, various processed voices, discreet percussion, discreet bass and home made instruments. He paints portraits of two characters, as indicated by the title of the record, and the two pieces, 'Zaklasta-re the beautiful' and 'Glazüük, the dreamer'. In the first the beautiful is unveiled through some dark drones, which move dark and majestically, whereas on top we hear occasionally the alto-saxophone, wailing about, in and out of the mix. This is a fine piece, more ambient and drone like perhaps then you'd expect from Brume, but the saxophone and the occasional electronic sounds add a certain weirdness to the piece. The other side is perhaps less dreamy than it would suggest, and moves in various places, maybe an uneasy night rest? It's in the second half of the piece that we land into a dreamy world via controlled feedback and reverb, and before that, perhaps more the uneasy REM sleep? Here we find voices slipping in and out of the mix; another sign of musique concrete past. An excellent record. It made me lean towards my CD collection and pick some older works of Brume to play in the more quiet hours of the evening." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
"One of many characters in the whole post-industrial diaspora who we have not really carried in part due to the difficulty in getting a hold of many of Brume's releases on small European imprints and in part due to not knowing where to start, especially with a catalog that tracks somewhere around 100 releases over 25 years. So, we'll take our cue from Drone Records and their Subtantia Innominata series of 10"s for this introduction into the woolly musique concrete and viral electronics from the French artist Christian Renou. His is a very creepy type of sound design with B-side backmasking, nightmarish vocals all laced throughout atonal, sci-fi tension, squiggled radiophonic explorations, and dark ambient swells, it's almost a cross between the incidental moments of the Logan's Run soundtrack and Coil's Musick To Play In The Dark. The A-side situates a low-end thrumming that's all brooding and ominous in the Svarte Greiner and Deathprod means of shadow-sound manipulation; but out of nowhere comes a crushed horn that's probably a saxophone, but sounds way more like a Tibetan horn with an unkempt scratchiness and apocalyptic fervor made all the more evident through a slow and heavy mechanical iron-on-stone hammering that brings this track to its definitive end." [Aquarius Records]
€12.00
L'ombilic des Rêves
"The nightmare is a theme that interested the medical field very early on. The first mentions in medical texts are already found in the writings of Hippocrates. But the nightmare has also fueled popular folklore from the ancient period to the present day. The meaning of the term nightmare is to be taken here in its original meaning. Etymological analysis allows us to distinguish two elements. The term “cauche” is the Roman form of the Latin calcare, meaning “to crush” The term “mar” derives from the Germanic term ''mahr'', which refers to a ghostly entity riding a horse. This spirit has the habit of surprising the sleeper in his sleep to trample him from his horse and kill him. The horse theme is also found in the English language: doesn’t night mare literally mean “mare of the night”?
Nowadays, the nightmare corresponds to the notion of bad dream of the first meaning of the nightmare. From antiquity until the end of the 19th century, nightmares designated a completely different neuropsychological disorder. The constant elements noted throughout the descriptions of the nightmare, whatever the country and the historical period, are the following: sudden awakening, with a feeling of suffocation, chest tightness, heavy feeling and intense anxiety that can be severe, accompanied by a feeling of imminent death. A temporary paralysis of the limbs accompanies the picture. Sometimes the vision of supernatural beings in the bedroom or the feeling of sexual areas being touched completes the picture.
Presented in a recycled cardboard gatefold sleeve with a photo sticker on the front and an insert inside. Limited to 250 handnumbered copies." [press release]
https://taalem.bandcamp.com/album/lombilic-des-r-ves-alm-145
---
"A few weeks ago, I asked in a review if it’s okay to say one is a ‘fan’ of someone’s work. Because it was a new album by Christian Renou, a.k.a. Brume, and well … I am a fan. And I don’t care what all of you think, but as always, I will write my reviews with a bit of distance towards my own opinion. Because that’s what a reviewer i.m.h.o. is supposed to do.
The Taalem label, which we all know from the 3″ CDRs they’ve released for years and years, has stopped doing them, and after a year of silence, they’re now releasing full-length CDs in a minimal brown cardboard sleeve with a little imagery. Excellent and minimal as it was and still is. But instead of the approximately 20 minutes of the 3″ you get ‘full releases’ on CD or even 2CD. The same goes for the side label Kokeshidisk, by the way. Brown sleeve, minimal artwork. And with Desaccord Majeur, Murmer and Brume Taalem set the level high for all future releases. Taalem knows what he’s doing and mark my words: This label will have a catalogue of beauty if they keep building it like this. A paradise for drone heads like us.
In my opinion, “L’ombilic Des Rêves” is a complex album. The reason is it’s very strongly themed on the theme of nightmares. But just as nightmares can (will?) be different each time you have them, the music on this album varies a lot. From chaotic ambience with horns to rhythmically driven short interludes, this album is a journey through the insides of your head. This album perfectly exemplifies Renou’s dynamics as an artist and sound designer. Sounds straight out of synths, manipulated field recordings, found footage / spoken word and the before mentioned horns or wind instruments on one hand, and the other side compositions with a lot of erratic changes, ambient approaches, long compositions (11 and 14 minutes) as well as shorter ones – 2 minutes and even one just over 1 minute – harmonics and dissonance … This album is lovely in its variation on so many levels. Personal favourites are “Hot Concrete / Turning To Nightmare” and ” Dreams Are Not Free”, but my oh my … Mr Renou did it again. And Taalem. Both. Chapeau. " [Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Syncronicity & Wandering Current
"Synchronicity & Wandering Current" is a specific concept album by BRUME, based on a compact, closed composition, outlined in a way typical of Christan Renou's work. This suite, lasting almost 60 minutes, divided into 3 parts: 1. "I Know You Well", 2. "Tout peut faire tout" 3. "Iridium", performed with particular attention to detail. Numerous loops, borrowings and cut-up figures seem to create a sophisticated, intuitively readable and exceptionally coherent message. With each successively sounding fragment, a narrative is realized in real time, intended to provoke the listener into multiple, in-depth and multi-layered reinterpretations. Thus, the creator invites his listener to co-create a work that is not completely closed, but with each listening allows for multiple, infinitely different realizations.
The recordings were made between January and March 2024, and Christian Renou invited several excellent musicians to make them, including: Jonathan Grieve (Hastings Of Malawi), Pat' Blanch and trumpeter and saxophonist Patrick Mazaltarim.
CD in a six-panel eco-pack, designed based on the collages of the French artist Françoise Duvivier, whose works have previously appeared on several BRUME covers
Brume/C.Renou, all easy & complicated stuff.
Thanks to Jonathan Grieve (Hastings Of Malawi) for voice & electronic sounds, Pat' Blanch for voice/tape and Patrick Mazaltarim for trumpet & saxophone.
Recorded between January and March 2024 at Brume Rec sudio, Colleville Montgomery..
https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/syncronicity-wandering-current
€13.00
House Unwillently
CDR-Version der vergriffenen LP !! Finally out, the CDR version of the sold out LP !!
“This Lp is a collaboration between Brume, aka Christian Renou and Tbc, aka Thomas Beck. I have sent musical material to Brume and he has made five typical Brume tracks out of it. I think I don`t have to introduce him, because over 70 Releases speak his own language.This is the second lp for him and me too. On " House Unwillity" you find all this: a complex texture of soundstructure using drones and enviromental soundscapes from Tbc and abrutlly cuts, "primitiv" percussion and the usual absuse of traditional instruments from the musical talents of Brume. The enviromental recordings was made in a old house near the habour in Hamburg. This house is a part in spectulating with money around this area in Hamburg to get a new architectonic face of happy capitalism. It`s near the wellknow "Hafenstraße", a squat with places for concerts, bars, food on a low profit d.i.y. culture.” [label info on original LP release]
€8.00
The Beekeeper's Dream
Eine Art Retrospektive von der BEEQUEEN-Hälfte mit seinen melancholisch-süssen, folk-angehauchten Homerecording-Ambient-Songs… einiges davon ist wohl bereits auf anderen Formaten schonmal erschienen, aber vieles scheint auch neues Material zu sein.
Diese limitierte Vinyl-Version ist auch gleichzeit Teil 3 der RECORDS ARE NOT FOR BAKING – Serie, die es im Abo auch mit Bonus pic-12“ gibt!
“Brunnen reveals that part of Beequeen's Freek Kinkelaar which is the strange wandering minstrel/alchemist (half-orc cleric with a +2 mace). If only more records were so cogently perplexing. A slightly cinematically arranged, quasi-psychedelic little dear of a hushed pop song opens the album. Freek's vocals sublimate in a pleasant whisper, not unlike (ahem) a quieter Yo La Tengo song. Freek, perhaps true to his name, does not hesitate to then very, very slowly weave together a spacious tone poem whose initial notes live counties apart, concocting an outré sort of high lonesome that might sonically drift across the same sort of plain as Wenders' Paris, Texas does visually. Kinkelaar's vocal delivery tugs at shirt tails ala Just Drifting era Psychic TV balladry or introspective LPD. Subtly amplified guitars chime quietly against slo-mo keyboards, occasional samples, tablas and air. An understated rave-up of Trust In Me from The Jungle Book is a nice exclamation point. A musical sandwich, really, with the outer psychedelic pop buns keeping the avant-garde middle meat warm.” [label info]
€17.00
Burial.Hdbcd001
„Auf "Burial. HDBCB001" schickt BURIAL die unterschwellig sexy Beats des britischen Garage über den Umweg von Funkstörungen in eine heimelige Gummizelle aus tiefem Bass, nicht ohne auf der Reise noch einen Zwischenstop im Berliner Dub von POLE einzulegen. Dabei klingt es, als würde BURIAL das Südlondon der nahen Zukunft unter Wasser setzen. Das allumfassende Knistern ist gleichzeitg das Statikgeknister eines Piratensenders und der tropische Regen, der sanft ans Fenster schlägt. Die Melancholie der Tracks öffnet ihre Arme und sucht nach ertrunkenen Liebhabern. Der Mix von BURIAL wird von den Echos aus einer anderen Zeit heimgesucht. Signale einer fremden Frequenz strecken tastend ihre Fühler aus. Eine Flutwelle aus Lärm verschlingt alles und lässt nur die schärfsten Beats zurück. Doch der Lärm schmerzt nicht; er streichelt, kitzelt und erregt die Nervenenden. Willkommen in der Welt von BURIAL.
This first album on Kode9's Hyperdub label comes from the mysterious Burial. On this self-titled CD debut, Burial carves out a sound which sends the dormant slinky syncopations of uk garage, via radio interference, into a padded cell of cushioned, muffled bass, passing through the best of Pole's Berlin crackle dub. Burial explores a tangential, parallel dimension of the growing sound of dubstep. Burial's parallel dimension sounds set in a near future South London underwater. You can never tell if the crackle is the burning static off pirate radio transmissions, or the tropical downpour of the submerged city outside the window. In their sometimes suffocating melancholy, most of these tracks seem to yearn for drowned lovers. The smouldering desire of ‚Distant Lights' is cooled only by the percussive ice sharp slicing of blades and jets of hot air blowing from the bass. Listen also for a fleeting appearance from Hyperdub's resident vocalist, the Spaceape unravelling his crypto-biography. In its loud quietness, Burial takes his kitchen crackle aesthetic neither from the digital glitch nor merely a nostalgia for vinyl's materiality. Instead, as irates' suggests, Burial crackle mutates the tactile surplus value of pirate radio transmissions. Burial's mix is haunted. Echoed voices breeze in and out, on road to another time. Pirate signal from other frequencies steams in. A tidal wave of noise submerging all but the crispest syncopations. The noise is not violent, but caressing, tickling, exciting the ends of your nerves. Seducing you in.“ [press release]
€15.50
Curse Go Back
"William Burroughs was in and out of London from the mid-50s to 1974 and for several years quite settled in a flat near Piccadilly. During this latter time he developed and refined the techniques he used for creating cut-ups on tape. Working closely with Ian Sommerville, who helped acquire, and no doubt maintain, the various tape recorders that Burroughs used and abused in these experimental works. The work here is in two sections, which in their original form lasted for over an hour and first appeared in 1998 under the name Electronic Revolution as a free CD with Issue One of the French magazine Crash. The CD was quickly withdrawn with maybe only 100 copies finding their way into circulation. This edition is edited down to 46 minutes and comprises the core of the original recording. It employs the now familiar techniques of random drop-ins and cut-ups of readings. The readings themselves are also cut-ups of words on the page. The first section of the tape uses further processing by means of a second tape recorder. Recorded in Duke Street in 1968, the tape was then passed on to Brion Gysin in Paris where it remained in his archive until 1998. This is the first readily available edition of an hypnotic and meditative recording that examines the hidden power of words. Closer to work of sound poetry than anything literary. The album includes a 12"x12" insert with an essay by Ben Harper and several previously unseen portrait photos of Burroughs, taken by Harriet Crowder in her Hammersmith flat during a drug experiment. The back cover uses another Crowder image - the very next frame after the famous shot that appeared on the cover of the English Bookshop/ESP Call Me Burroughs LP (1965). Pressed at Optimal on transparent vinyl. Edition of 500 (numbered)."
€22.00
DAEMON TRANCES I-VI
This album is about trauma and PTSD.
The music portrays the emotional loop...
the continuous reminiscing about the traumatic event
the never-ending anxiety and
paralyzing panic attacks...
... from which a traumatized person simply cannot escape.
I call this state the daemon trance
(and, unfortunately, I know it far too well...)
Recorded between January and May 2021 at SINE studio, Ireland.
but I'm not is Pawel Grabowski (processed live instruments, field recordings, objects.)
Mastering - Colin Potter at IC Studio, August 2021
Cover photo: Artur Mieczkowski (www.instagram.com/anxious_93/)
https://silenceisnotempty.bandcamp.com/album/daemon-trances-i-vi
"It's been a long time since I heard music by Pawel Grabowski (check Vital Weekly 414, 424, 492 and 508, but following that flurry of releases, it all went quiet for him. That was "mostly due to family, and life in general". Now he has a new moniker and a new label. The new name is But I'm Not (lower case, except for 'I'), and on 'Daemon Traces I-IV' he wanted to compose that captures that unique state is known only to people suffering from the
aftermath of a traumatic event". According to the cover, it is something that he is "unfortunately all too familiar with". "Each of the six compositions portrays different aspects of what a traumatized person goes through, often every day - the continuous reminiscing about the traumatic event". This is one of those things of which I think "had I not known this, would I have heard it?". I guess not, but my personal view towards music is a very 'absolute' one. Music is never about anything. Anything attached to music to make it about something is not music; they are words used, descriptions, images (a record cover), that kind of thing. Grabowski explains the nature of the trauma for none of these six pieces, which leaves something to imagine, I guess, but also a hole in our knowledge (why not go all the way). Grabowski uses "processed live instruments, field recordings and objects". It is a pity that these live instruments are not specified. I hear a piano on quite a bit on the pieces,
solemnly slow bangs on the keys, Gregorian voices in the first one (which I think that Grabowski went all gothic, but, good news, he didn't), a fair bit of synthesizers and sound effects and the samples of marbles in a bowl (also in the opener). Some of the other sounds are harder to define. Throughout the music solemn, slow and very moody. A bipolar disorder, with some extreme darkness and extreme happiness, is not to be found here. Grabowski reminded me what I thought of his older releases in a private letter, but they are so far away in the past that I don't remember them. Therefore it is not easy for me to say to what extent this new one is different from his previous releases. I think this is a solid album, a severe one, and while the subject is not very well spend on me, I can see that he's serious in creating music that paints a picture of those suffering from trauma and PTSD. [FdW / Vital Weekly]
FULL PRESS RELEASE:
About daemon trances
“Daemon trances I-VI tells a story about experiences of living with trauma and PTSD.
My objective when composing this music was to capture that unique state known only to people suffering from the aftermath of a traumatic event.
And so, each of the six compositions portrays different aspects of what a traumatized person
goes through, often every day – the continuous reminiscing about the traumatic event, the
never-ending anxiety, paralyzing panic attacks...
For my use, I refer to this state as the “daemon trance,” and the music on this album perfectly
represents what I often struggle with in life.”
About Pawel Grabowski
Pawel Grabowski (b. 1977) – composer specializing in writing deeply personal electroacoustic and drone music.
Grabowski uses prepared instruments, field recordings, and objects to create meditative and
hypnotic compositions to convey emotions and create unique atmospheres.
He refers to his music as Imaginism.
Background:
● Although he doesn’t have a formal music education, between 1998 – 2001, Grabowski
studied double bass with a famous Polish jazz bassist, Janusz Mackiewicz.
● He also took private tuition in classical composition between 2000 - 2002, first with prof.
Krzysztof Olczak, then with prof. Eugeniusz Glowski
● He also participated in international composition workshops at the Academy of Music in
Gdansk, Poland, in 2002.
● In 2002, he was selected as one of the artists representing his home city, Gdansk, at the
Art Biennale - “ArtGenda” in Hamburg. He wrote music commissioned for various
projects of the biennale.
● In the same year, he composed a piece commissioned by the Baltic Cultural Centre in
Gdansk, showcased during a presentation of composition students of the Academy of
Music.
Career:
● Grabowski founded a chamber trio, Miasto Nie Spalo, in 1998 and recorded two albums
with the band: Festspielhaus (1998) and Piesni Zalobne I-VII/Threnodies I-VII (2000 -
released on the famous polish label, Obuh recs.)
● Between 2001 – 2006, Grabowski recorded solo, publishing his music on such labels as
Drone records, Laub records, Cronica, Mystery Sea, Dark Winter, and more.
● Since 2020, Grabowski performs as but I’m not and runs a small, independent record
label, Silence Is Not Empty.
€12.00
Pochen - - Oder : Mit Nachschleifendem Zwirnsfaden Die Treppe Hinunterkollern
https://gregorybuettner.bandcamp.com/album/pochen-oder-mit-nachschleifendem-zwirnsfaden-die-treppe-hinunterkollern-2
I recorded the sounds for this piece in March 2011 at the "Performance Arts Forum" in France. The PAF is housed in a former convent school, which was built at the end of the 19th Century in the village of St. Erme in Picardy. After the convent school and a hospital during World War I, various temporary uses and a long term of vacancy, the PAF was founded in 2006 as a workplace for artists.
During my three-week stay, I kept sneaking through the 6.400 m2 building: From the attic to the basement, from the small private chapel through the various rooms and artists' studios. I examined the old monastery acoustically, recorded sounds and improvised together "with the house". The role of the house kept moving between sound generator, resonant space and instrument. I recorded breathing wood planks or flickering light switches, explored the different resonant cavities, made metal cabinets resonate or prepared out-of-tune pianos. From the recorded material I worked out a composition, which, organized in chapters, permeates the house acoustically and connects found sounds, digital processing and experimental performance techniques into a "throbbing".
All music by Gregory Büttner (2011-2012).
Another version of the piece was commissioned by WDR3 Studio Akustische Kunst. Premiered July 2013.
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.
Photos and cover design by Gregory Büttner, photo inside middle by Anja Winterhalter.
€13.00
Complete Song Books
“ … to consider the Song Books as a work of art is nearly impossible. Who would dare? It resembles a brothel, doesn’t it?” John Cage. Volume 3 in the Perihel series on Karlrecords is dedicated to one of the most iconic composers of 20th century: John Cage. All 92 pieces of the “Song Books” in stunning interpretations by Reinhold Friedl, recorded at Rashad Becker’s Clunk Studio who also contributed live electronics.
John Cage (1912-1992) is one of the most important composers in modern music: with more than 250 compositions, many of which are considered key works of New Music, and theoretical essays on composition he significantly changed the way we think about and perceive music today. But Cage not only left a major impact in the academic world, he is also cited as an important inspiration by a wide range of diverse musicians from a younger generation, be it electronic producers, experimentalists or noise artists. His “Song Books”, published 1970 in three volumes, is a collection of open works that contains not only songs but a strange hybrid collection of compositions, graphic scores, meditation rules, experimental settings, absurd musical instructions, performance settings, musical references, and Fluxus-inspired actions such as eating fruits or drinking cognac (Cage loved whiskey and cognac)… - When Reinhold Friedl (director of the ensemble Zeitkratzer) entered the Clunk Studio to record the whole cycle with Rashad Becker (who handled the feedback cabinet and live electronics), the idea was quite simple: to approach each single piece in an informal way but to do all 92 pieces in the right order. What came out in the end is a kaleidoscopic lecture and interpretation of the compositions with the help of a strange mixture of ancient and modern tools: new electronics, old and special microphones, self-built instruments, arbitrary garbage sounds, sophisticated live-electronics devices, quotes… “Complete Song Books” turns out to be an early hymn for sonic freedom, a sonic promenade full of beautiful references.
All music composed by John Cage. Constructed by Reinhold Friedl. Performed by Reinhold Friedl: voice, toys, wooden games, metal objects, complex objects, microphones, garbage… Rashad Becker: feedback cabinet, live electronics. Mastered & cut at D&M, Berlin. Artwork by Lillevan."
€26.50
The Erivar
https://adnrecords.com/album/capricorni-pneumatici-the-erivar/
"Historically, Italy is home to not only a large number of respected industrial/noise projects, but also wider experimental music in general. One such project is Capricorni Pneumatici, which has been active since 1987. This is a duet of two musicians, hiding under the names of Pazuzu and Soda Caustica. The project plays gloomy music on the verge of ritual ambient, drone and concrete music.
The album was released in 2016 by the Italian label ADN in cooperation with the Russian label Monochrome Vision, in the form of jewel case CD, as well as on tapes, limited to edition of 50 copies. At the moment you can order this album on the websites of labels.
The cover of the album is made in blue tones. On a blurred blue background is a pale blue medieval picture of a lion’s head with open jaws, in which there is a tied man. At the top is the name of the project, done in pale blue with a simple font. At the bottom of the cover is the album’s title The Erivar, written in the same font. On the turn of the two-page booklet is depicted a snake-like dragon, trying to swallow a human-like caudate creature, which is in some sort of cocoon or ellipse. The drawing is also made in medieval style. On the back of the booklet is a list of songs and various other information. The back part duplicates the last page of the booklet.
The album consists of eight tracks of different duration. The total time of the album is just under an hour. It is worth noting that tracks three and seven, have participation from one of the more famous names with experimental scene Z’EV, who recently left this world…. Of course, I was interested in these two tracks, but about those a little bit later.
So, the album begins with the almost five-minute composition ‘Inside Mother‘. Atmospheric pulsating metal Drones are supported by a long lingering vocal and rare ritual blows … A very interesting atmospheric beginning of the album.
Next is the track ‘The Erivar‘, which is the longest track here – just under twelve minutes. The tracks constructed around creaking of bass strings, a distant low hum, a metallic grinding noise and a rumbling sound like a low-tuned cello or double bass create an eerie and disturbing atmosphere. Closer to the end, tension builds up, but almost at the very end, everything calms back down.
The third track is called ‘Ode to Fortum‘, and it was recorded along with Z’EV, who also did the processing of this track. It is worth noting that the tracks made in co-authorship with Z’EV were recorded in 2009, while the rest of the tracks were made in 2014-2015. Naturally, I expected a big difference in sound. My expectations were justified. The track sounds more raw, it’s almost noise, saturated with delay and reverberation. It is difficult to single out individual sounds, all squeaks, tapping, and drones merge into one background droning noise.
The fourth track, called ‘You Are Four And Magic‘, in many respects repeats the string sound of the second track but is more relaxed, and there is also a high male vocals, the manner of which is similar to a spell or mantra.
Then comes the shortest track of the album. Its duration is just over four minutes and it is called ‘Mon Fordon‘. We hear reversed rhythmic metal drones, into which, in the course of the composition, a higher hum and a slight rustling and tapping are intertwined. This is the most ambiguous track on the album. It seemed somewhat boring and synthetic.
The sixth track, called ‘Ohyf‘, is almost ambient with a touch of drone. By sound, this track is close to ‘Ode to Fortum’, which was made with Z’EV, but not so overloaded by delay and has a more transparent and rich sound.
The seventh track ‘Ord Traditori‘ was also recorded and processed together with Z’EV in 2009. Naturally, I expected to hear a more raw sound, similar to the second track. But I heard a crystal clear sound. It’s a dark Dark Ambient with low drones and creaks. There is an ominous voice of an indefinite sex, which very emotionally recites the text unknown to me in French.
The last track is called ‘Cyngus Olor’ is a kind of Outro. It’s pretty simple stringed drone, resembling the sound of Indian tanpura.
The whole album left a very pleasant impression on me, despite the second track that broke out from the general style, as well as a short but somewhat boring fifth track that could have been possible left out. My favorite tracks are ‘The Erivar‘ and ‘Ord Traditori‘. As a result, we have a good conceptual work in the style of acoustic Drone / Ritual Ambient, which I’m sure I’ll listen to again." [Musique Machine]
€13.00
The Story surrounds us
"Kate Carr melds the exquisite details of her field recordings with an ephemeral approach to the song. This Australian has relocated herself to London after many trips around the globe. With each orbiting journey, she has collected innumerable sounds from the urbane to the aqueous and from the frenetic to the sublime, contextualizing all of these into compositions rippling with primordial melodies through guitar, piano, and electronics. The Story Surrounds Us follows her highly acclaimed albums I Had Myself A Nuclear Spring (first released on her own Flaming Pines imprint in 2015) and Carr's debut for Helen Scarsdale in 2016, It Was A Time Of Laboured Metaphors.
Emblematic of her work is a gentle dislocation between the environmental sounds and her drone-dub ellipses of somnambulant melody. The clatter of a frozen dock or a vibrational shimmer from rustled objects or the unintelligible whispers displaces the sense of self amidst a sea of disparate symbols and coded thought. More a travelogue in and out of one's own body than to any particular place. Carr suggests "In a way, it is about restlessness, an uncomfortable tossing and turning in all these many different places, a struggle somehow to forge a connection between my own internal world and all these places and persons I have encountered. I think this holds a sense of unease and strain, with both beautiful and failed moments of intimacy and connection which are made either possible or impossible in the difficult and distorted context of being away. It is quite sad, really." Look to Carla dal Forno, Alan Lamb and those moments of clarity in the shapeshifting ethos from Jewelled Antler for neighboring sounds to Kate Carr's chimerical compositions."
www.helenscarsdale.com
"A rather fast follow-up to her last tape (It Was a Time of Laboured Metaphors, also on Helen Scarsdale), Australian sound artist Kate Carr's latest work is another entry in a rapidly growing discography that blends elements of both traditional composition and the unpredictable nature of field recordings. She does this and merges them together seamlessly, coming together as a beautiful set of sounds and moods from across the globe, yet still unified as a part of the human experience.
Elements of The Story Surrounds Us were recorded during Carr’s travels to Iceland, Mexico, Sweden, and Spain, all of which clearly had an influence on the work; most obviously in the natural recordings she utilizes throughout. The tape is bookended by two sets of untreated field recordings from Ólafsfjörður, Iceland that perfectly capture the juxtaposition of her work. The first, "The Creaking Door Of The Abandoned Concrete Factory" is half a minute of just that: creaking sounds of post-industrial decay, capturing the emptiness of what surely was once part of a thriving industry. The end is “Water Lapping at Ice on Melting Lake”: the sound of wet and watery nature decaying, no doubt exacerbated by the same industry.
Between these two most obvious field recordings lay eight songs that are never truly a-musical, but never become overly conventional either. "Things That Stubbornly And Resiliently Subsist Without Leave" features a lot of sparse, delicate guitar playing, but the musicality is broken up by mysterious, more synthetic-like passages that never become unpleasant. This combination also features heavily in "I Didn't Get A Lot of Sleep in Mexico", with light floating tones melded with processed guitar-like sounds, peppered with incidental found recordings and hints of music throughout.
A brilliant pairing of compositions is the untreated recordings of "Communication Wires In Tropical Storm, Si'an Kaan, Mexico", and their appearance in the more compositionally based "We Were The Pulse Of A Wire Pulled Tightly". The former recordings are simply the sound of undulating metallic cables whipped about in heavy winds, taking on an odd beauty that contrasts their significantly more frightening pedigree. On "We Were The Pulse…" they reappear as overt pulses and jittery echoes resonating within electronic swarms and insinuations of percussion. The final product is moody and expansive, but concludes on a much lighter, drifting note compared to its more menacing moments.
Other moments of this tape showcase Carr’s more conventional musical tendencies as well. Gentle melodies are the initial focus on "There Was a Lot of Whispering Involved", with a bit of plucked string being counterbalanced by the heavier subterranean rumble. On the whole it sounds much more traditional, but no less gripping. On the other hand, "1001 (Missed Connections)" begins with crackling voices on a PA system and ugly buzzing noises, but soon is realigned into sustained, yet chilly melodic moments. What even resembles a traditional 4/4 bass drum comes in, but just a bit too briefly.
Conceptually, The Story Surrounds Us continues Kate Carr's focus on studying the sounds of specific locations, as well as the effects of social decay and its inevitable renewal. However, the music is captivating on its own as well: a wonderful blend of composed sound blended with the incidental, ephemeral sounds that surround us at all times, culminating in a strange, sometimes almost alien, but never mundane experience." [Brainwashed]
€10.00
Mutia
https://carlos-casas.bandcamp.com/album/mutia
"While developing my last film about the elephant graveyard myth, I tried to imagine what that jungle and landscape that protected it might sound like. To do this, I created a series of soundscapes, atmospheres to help me understand that park, to imagine it; I tried to place it in the near future, around 2046. All the sounds that make up those sound compositions come from my references throughout the project, and from the atmospheres and radiofrequencies captured during the filming in Sri Lanka; the deep jungles and magical places that helped me undertake that journey. When I finally finished editing the film itself, I decided to rework those sessions, to create an album that would recap that entire imaginary world I had created. The album is a way of inviting audiences to undertake that journey."
Carlos Casas, 2019
Sound compositions, field recordings and radio frequencies by Carlos Casas
Additional sound captured in location by Marc Parazon
Mastering and cut by Frédéric Alstadt at Ångström studio, Brussels
Layout and pictures by Carlos Casas
Thanks to all the partners on this journey.
Produced by Christopher Denruyter & Cedric D’hondt for Matière Mémoire Editions
MATME002LP © Matière Mémoire Editions - Art Sonore Sprl - www.matiere-memoire.com
€20.00
The Mont Aigu Tapes II
THE MONT AIGU TAPES
TAPE 2
Sound and Radio Frequencies
captured in location in Mont Aigu
Part of Fieldworks#26
Thanks to all the MHArt team.
Mastering by Frederic Alstadt
Pictures by Carlos Casas
Design & Layout by Cedric D’hondt
€12.50
Epitaph
Neues Werk des Berliner Künstlers & Musikers auf dem feinen russischen Label WAYSTYX, welches inzwischen von Mikhail Tumanov betrieben wird. CASPAR geht hier (mal wieder) neue Wege, setzt fliessendes Wasser, Kirchenglocken und andere Feldaufnahmen ein, lässt einen „female robot“ BAUDELAIRE zitieren, um dann allmählich in industriellere Gefilde zu versinken, mit verhallten und wummernden Maschinen-Geräuschen, metallischem Quietschen & Zerren, und wieder the robot... experimenteller Industrial zwischen Maschinen- & Natur-„Noise“ und schwarzer Lyrik ! Spezial-Cover !
“Penetrating sound confession from respected german master Co.Caspar, Berlin-based activist of an experimental sound, built with propulsions, sound vibrations from corporal movements, consisting of four tracks, each for 20 minutes. First of which “Benediction” and Replica are composed for a paintress from Quebeck/Canada, based on two field recordings (river & wood) in the canadian nature, used as the soundtrack during the vernissage of her paintings. 'Benediction' origines from the anthology Les Fleurs du Mal by Ch. Baudelaire spoken by the artist. purest drop of human prejudaces, fears, drawbacks essence heavy, humid and clouding impicated by the fistfull of various cuts of everyday life hypnotic song of far away syrene vibrant, graceful, controversive, whispering and shivering......” [label info]
€13.00
The Cassiber Box (1982-1992): 40th Annniversary Cassiber Box (redux)
Long out of print, this is the definitive Cassiber collection in a solid box and fully documented. Made up of the Four classic studio albums, re-mastered by Bob Drake, two extra CD collections: The Way it Was – an amazing set of studio sketches and live recordings with guest appearances by Dietmar Diesner and Rene Lussier and Collaborations, documenting three extended special projects: Duck and Cover – with the addition of Fred Frith, Dagmar Krause, Tom Cora and George Lewis, Cassix – a recording project from Montepulciano with half of Stormy Six; and one track from Otomo Yoshihide/Ground Zero’s Cassiber Live in Tokyo with Shinoda Masami Remix project, as well as a two hour DVD of live and studio footage from Brasil, Frankfurt and Berlin - including a mini-documentary made during the recording of A Face We All Know. The new edition comes in a sturdy box with 40 pages of documents, interviews, information, photographs, pictures, itineraries and miscellaneous memorabilia.
Context:
In 1982 Cassiber crashed into the Deutsche Neue Welle. Founded by Heiner Goebbels, Alfred Harth, Christoph Anders and Chris Cutler, they fused experimental rock, fringe jazz, punk, pop, plunderphonics, improvisation and musique concrete into a complex form of studio - and then concert – composition that was unique in mashing experimental form with a risky and expressionist mode of execution. In content and aesthetics, Cassiber tracked and anticipated the political and technological changes of its times, shifting, over its 10 years of existence, from the high stakes energy of the earlier releases to the more composed and complex studio works of its later years. Most impressively, Cassiber opened up song form by abandoning, extending or crashing sideways into it – and by creating unlikely structures from a combination of noise, libido, high musicality, dramaturgy and cultural debris.
€50.00
Radio Ghosts
"The name Tim Catlin may not be terribly well known amongst the avant-guitarist circles; but his recorded output clearly stands amongst the best that Glenn Branca, Keith Rowe, and Jim O'Rourke have mustered from their six strings hard wired into the histories of electroacoustics, minimalism, and post-punk experimentation. Based out of Melbourne, Catlin is a guitarist who incessantly tinkers with the mechanics of his instrument, envisioning it as alternately as a mimetic sculptural object and a pure sound generator. Through his experiments with alternative tunings, atypical string gauges, and Rube Goldberg contraptions of interconnected motors, speakers, and radios, he seeks out the rasping textures of strings vibrating against each other, the acoustic phase patterns of two microtonally tuned strings, and the electrical purity of circuits feeding back upon themselves, essentially creating a polyglot drone symphony cast in smoldering monochrome. Radio Ghosts arrives nearly five years after his debut album Slow Twitch and showcases Catlin's unassuming expertise with the finer aspects of the mechanically prepared guitar. For all of its dynamic frequencies and crosshatched vibrations, Radio Ghosts is devoid of Marshall stacks, Sunn amps, and stomp boxes, as Catlin captures the acoustic phenomenon of the guitar's transient vibrations and steers clear of any tricked out sonic demolition. Instead, Radio Ghosts focuses upon the minutiae of the guitar: wood, strings, and amplifier. Through his refined, tabletop guitar techniques, Catlin prefers to set his guitar in motion, allowing the process dictate the course of action with minor edits and sleights of hand from the composer himself. Catlin's drone guitar work is simultaneously capable of expressionistic illusions (e.g. cicada choruses, industrial grind, uncanny ephemera from the radio waves, etc.) and a sonic transcendence of pure sonic introspection. Given that the final piece on Radio Ghosts replaces the guitar with a crash cymbal that Catlin agitates through similar processes, Catlin's work shows that Organum does not have exclusivity on the bowed cymbal for creating epic, tactile sound fields." [label info]
www.23five.org
€13.00
Arctic Moon
Arctic Moon’ is the first full-length studio album by Chameleons since the release of ‘Why call it Anything?’ in 2001.
“There is an obvious maturity to the songwriting on this record, and anyone familiar with our past work will hear that this is a positive step forward. While we’re proud of the band’s legacy, we really wanted to forge something fresh while retaining that profound and imaginative quality we’re known for. We think that we have managed to do that and deliver a very strong record!” Vox concludes.
The band will continue to tour extensively either side of album release, with dates in Spain and Portugal between 6th-19th June followed by a set at the Forever Now festival in Milton Keynes on 22nd before a return to the US for headlining shows plus a dozen with The Psychedelic Furs commencing on 26th. A further headlining tour of North American cities kicks off a fortnight after the release of ‘Arctic Moon’, plus mainland European dates in Germany and the Benelux scheduled from late October ahead of a previously announced UK tour in November
Long cited as a hugely influential act, having inspired the likes of (The) Verve, Oasis, Interpol, The Killers, Editors and White Lies, Chameleons are renowned for their transformative catalogue and intense, emotionally charged live performances, creating a legacy that extends far beyond their four studio albums to date. Their widely acclaimed debut, ‘Script of the Bridge’ (1983) has been cited by many as a masterpiece way ahead of its time, and was followed by ‘What does Anything mean? Basically!’ (1984), ‘Strange Times’ (1986) and ‘Why call it Anything?’ (2001).
Their unique sound quickly won them an audience with its mix of melancholic yet energetic and powerful tunes, hypnotic, ethereal riffs and a potent, timeless lyrical style. They are considered one of the most influential guitar bands of the ‘80s and ‘90s, contributing substantially to the post-punk, shoegaze and indie scenes.
2024 saw the release of two EPs that kicked off a new chapter for the band. ‘Where Are You?’ consisted of three new songs, while ‘Tomorrow Remember Yesterday’ featured five re-recorded archive tracks. ‘Arctic Moon’ sees them propelling forward musically while retaining the essence that originally made them iconic.
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The legacy of The Chameleons dates all the way back to 1981 when the band were discovered by the legendary BBC Radio host John Peel. Following their debut single In Shreds for Epic Records in 1982, the band released three seminal albums: the widely acclaimed Script of the Bridge (1983), cited by many sources to be a masterpiece way ahead of its time, its follow up What Does Anything Mean?
Basically! (1984) and for the US based Geffen Records Strange Times (1986). Their unique sound quickly captivated the public through their very own mix of melancholic, yet energetic and powerful tunes, hypnotic ethereal riffs and the potent, timeless lyrical style. The Chameleons are considered to be one of the most influential guitar bands of the 80s and 90s, contributing substantially to the post-punk, shoegaze and indie scenes and are often regarded as one of the most underrated bands ever to emerge from the city of Manchester England.
The Chameleons disbanded in 1987 only to re-emerge in 2000 with the independently release, Why Call It Anything and toured widely across Europe and the United States. However following the tragic death of their drummer, John Lever, and the departure of another founding member guitarist, Dave Fielding, the group disbanded once more. The Chameleons reformed in 2021 with surviving founders and principle writers: guitarist Reg Smithies and bassist, vocalist & lyricist Mark Burgess, joined by guitarist Stephen Rice, Danny Ashberry on keyboards and on drums Todd Demma.
Over the decades the popularity and reputation of the band continued to grow leading them to share the stage with the likes of U2, Killing Joke, Bauhaus, Simple Minds, Talk Talk, The Cure amongst others. The Chameleons regard themselves primarily as a ‘live band’, which has earned the fan’s loyalty and respect for decades with their effortlessly intense and emotionally-charged performances. They have been touring extensively in the EU, UK, US and as far abroad as Australia, South America and China.
The Chameleons are excited to announce the release of their first new single in over a decade: Where Are You coming out on May 24th on Metropolis Records in conjunction with ‘Strange Times Entertainment.
“We are thrilled to be working on our brand new album titled Arctic Moon coming out later this year. We’ve been working extremely hard and we’re really proud of the results so far. We all feel it’s the best work we’ve done so far. Fans might have the chance to hear some of the new songs on the upcoming tour in the United States, Europe, Australia and South America.”
https://www.metropolis-records.com/artist/chameleons
€26.50
Dawn Syndrome
TOPHET PROPHET is maybe the only real dark ambient / industrial-label in Israel at this time. This new CHAOS AS SHELTER-release spreads on 9 tracks lots of very clear metal / bell / glass –sounds & drones, “eastern/oriental” ethnic found sounds and melancholic melodies, wonderful vocals from VERA AGNIVOLOK on one piece, conrete recordings from broken glass, etc... and the epic drones CAS is known for... A high-class release and also perfect introduction into the mystic-drone world of CHAOS AS SHELTER ! [Drone Rec. info 2006]
“After releasing over 18 releases since 1999, Chaos As Shelter needs no further introductions. His latest work, dawn syndrome, was recorded in 2001 and is dedicated to the end of Kali Yuge, the age of iron, which is the final and most negative of four evolutionary Yugic cycles, the end of the world, and the dawn of a new golden age - Sataya Yuga (the age of purity). Dawn Syndrome is an eight-track composition of ritual dark ambient crafted in the skillful way Chaos as Shelter is known for. The usage of organic and artificial sound sources which has been his trademark. It is a hymn of submersion and rebirth, of confusion, ambiguity and enigma, of the darkest moment before sunrise.
Dawn Syndrome was recorded at new Jerusalem studios and Chaos As Shelter was supported by Vera Agnivolok , Helena Dorsht and an accidentally obtained presto home recorded vinyl disc.“ [label info]
€10.00
Tannenholzrauch
"Dark fir woods and weird pentagram-esque runes on the cover: How can the contents of this album not be a clichéd, possibly black-metal influenced rendition of the idiotic “stay true to the soil” creed? Well, Alexander Marco has succeeded in tricking us all. His music on this album under the Chaotalion moniker is a vast expanse of breathing, pulsating ambient dreamscapes, cleverly evoking certain black metal genre elements, but totally eliding its ideology.
Marco uses guitar and electronics to create the music on this album, but his textural approach owes a good deal to his work with not-so-musical sounds. A regular participant in the Noise Factory sessions hosted by Y-Ton-G, Marco is also schooled in musique concrète and assemblage of found sounds, and this rather constructivist approach gives this release a refreshingly sober, clear, kitsch-free touch. Actually, the album, with all its packaging and teutonic titles, might well be a conceptual ‘joke’ on certain ‘black’ aesthetics, but the music is too well-crafted to allow for an easy interpretation as a simple parody.
File under: ambient" [label info]
www.attenuationcircuit.de
"Attenuation Circuit Records have been rumbling around for a while. It’s mindblowing how much effort Sascha puts up into his releases, shows, tours, and his activism on the contemporary avant-garde scene skyrocketed the label to the top. It’s no wonder why this is the case considering the number of releases Attenuation Circuit has managed to publish in previous years. The numbers speak for themselves. Tannenholdrauch by Chaotalion is just a tiny particle in the label’s vast universe, but the significant gear on the modern dark ambient scene. The album comprises of nine cleverly layered dark ambient numbers that burst with eerie atmospherics. These eerie atmospherics consist of a wide array of spacey sounds, subtle synthetic drones, occasional guitar experimentations, and delicate non-organic noises. Chaotalion uses calm tones as overtures for his compositions, perpetuated by simplistic ambient keys. The situation becomes complex when the artist includes the mentioned elements to enhance the overall listening experience. The transitions between monotone and polytone sequences are nicely composed, so Tannenholdrauch keeps attention thought complete sessions. There’s a certain accentuation of composite darkness showcased through loads of assorted half-tones. However, Chaotalion maintains a dosage of melody that sounds intentionally odd, but pleasant to the listening apparatus. The artist has also included pulsing sequences at some points to retain listeners’ attention during the exhausting monotone segments. Still, these monotone segments are incorporated to maintain a dark, depressive, obscure ambiance that lurks around throughout the complete album. If that was the intention of the Chaotalion, than the artist unquestionably nailed in his intent to depict macabre imagery through Tannenholdrauch. The album comes with minimalistic photography of the woods, characteristic for depressive black metal bands, and it includes stylized pentagram logo, which serves as a Chaotalion’s symbol. Tannenholdrauch carries the dosage of depressiveness characteristic for the vast majority of dark ambient works, but this particular one provides a more eerie atmosphere than the other artists. Tannenholdrauch has come as a compact disc, and it can be purchased at the Attenuation Circuit Bandcamp page." [Thoughts Words Action]
€8.00
The Otolith
58 Minuten voller Wunder und Geheimnis! Mehrere Jahre haben LOREN CHASSE (THUJA, etc.) und MICHAEL NORTHAM eine unglaubliche Fülle von Klängen zusammengetragen (Field Recordings, Aussen-Objekt-Aufnahmen, Instrumentalsounds) und daraus auf acht Stücken Räume voller konkreter Details und dröhnender Sphären erschaffen, es tönt so soft und obertonreich und doch nie beliebig, Originalsounds bleiben oft im dunkeln aber betören stets in höchstem Maße. Das ist "organischer Ambient" oder "Microsound Musique Concrete" in Vollendung!
"The recordings of Loren Chasse and Michael Northam begin and end with the great outdoors. Yet, the well-documented wanderlust of these two kindred sound artists is only part of the equation. Field recordings of wind, water, and stone intertwine and hybridize within private rituals of droning psychedelic ragas that return as a folklore reiterating the mystery of the natural world around us. Through his numerous contributions to the multi-faceted Jewelled Antler as well his solo work, Chasse has long postulated the microphone as an extension of his ear, which magnifies and probes the surface of the earth for a tactile grit that permeates all of the sounds that he generates. Northam claims his inspiration from vast geographies, microscopic detail, and severe weather, which he compacts through various techniques to explore what is between improvisation and acousmatic composition. Both Chasse and Northam entertain such notions through an alchemy of arcane instruments: autoharps, ouds, flutes, bells, gongs, bowed wires, harmonium, and Northam's magnetic table harp. The Otolith is the result of several years of work, with sounds gathered collectively in the San Francisco Bay Area and throughout Europe. The album speaks as a bramble of fence wire and chaparral scrub oak, acquiring an unkempt collection of rubbish, cobwebs, insects, and soil within its tangle. As the wind pushes in one direction, this mass emits a quite if scratchy melody as if the ghost from a forgotten song; but when the wind changes directions, it bellows a rasping din of metal and vine cracking against itself. This sodden calliope tumbles into a miasma of droning atmospheres, softly rasped distortion, and very subtly rendered lulabies lurking deep within the overgrowth." [label info]
" Throughout the Marin Headlands just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, the coastal mountains are dotted with countless bunkers which were built during World War II in anticipation of the Japanese invasion that never came. Nearly 70 years later, these bunkers have been weathered by wind, fog, rain, and of course the sodden folks who tromp through the Headlands on a daily basis. These concrete structures with small portals facing the Pacific all have amazing reverberant qualities; and it shouldn't be a surprise that the more frequented bunkers and passageways inevitably echo with the sound of children dying to hear their own voices tossed back to them. The Headlands have been a favored destinations for Loren Chasse, who has sought many of the lesser known and lesser travelled environs for field recordings and jam sessions that would eventually work their way
into all things Jewelled Antler (Thuja, Franciscan Hobbies, The Blithe Sons, Of, Ov, etc.). In his recordings, Chasse extracts a profound mystery and grand sense of wonder from that echo, the bunker's grit, the soft recurrence of surf bleeding through those walls, and the distant bleat of a foghorn.
Back in 2005, Chasse took his fellow globetrotting wanderer Michael Northam to the Battery Townsley where the two set up long
string wires and various handheld instruments to begin a series of recordings which took a few years to complete after Northam left
California. The two did manage to meet up once again in Estonia, there exploring the Soviet industrial ruins that pock the Estonian landscape with similar intentions. Out of the bramble of overgrown weeds, rebar, concrete, dirt, rock, wind, and water, Chasse and Northam straddle those psychedelic leanings of Jewelled Antler and the more studied aspects of minimalism.
The Otolith begins with an acoustic clamor, as if billions of iron filings were brushing against each other under the direction of a
couple of hefty magnets, before shifting into a harmonium blur of sustained tones hinting at a melody well beneath these clouds of tousled energy. Softer drones and Aeolian fragments flutter forth out of bowed strings and gently tapped gongs amidst a golden hue of opiated atmospherics. Scrabblings across the surfaces of leaves, rocks, mud, and metal fuse with field recordings of wind and water, as a continuing demonstration of Chasse's alchemy with naturalist sound to bring forth stately ragas and dreamtime psychedelic lullabies.
Chasse and Northam work amazingly well together, having produced this thoroughly amazing album. Think Popul Vuh, Parson Sound, Pandit Pran Nath, Harry Bertoia, and Eric La Casa. Totally beautiful and mesmerizing." [Aquarius Records review]
www.helenscarsdale.com
€13.00
Flora
"Neuer Drone-Monolith bestehend aus Kyle Benjamin (guitarist for Chicago´s Unfortunaut), Jason Hoffman (a.k.a. darkwave composer Anatole), Trevor de Brauw (of Chicago instrumentalists Pelican) und Phil Dole (of über-dronists X-Bax). Folgende Herangehensweise: Es gibt einen Chord und jeder der hier Teilnehmenden spielt davon eine einzelne Note - Monotonie in seiner reinsten Form. Da brummen die Boxen, glühen die Kabel, vibrieren die Eingeweide, vorausgesetzt, selbstredend, natürlich, wo denkste hin, ´maximum volume yields maximum result´. Ein ´sonic titan´ zwischen Lotus Eaters und Growing." [Flight 13]
"Evanston, IL. - CHORD was formed at Dr. Wax, a once thriving record store (now sadly closed, but immortalized as the title inspiration for prolific casio-rocker Wesley Willis’s 2000 full length) that was an appealing gathering place for musicians and music aficionados alike. Amid endless musings about the finer points of texture, tone, and Jimmy Eat World’s rousing single “The Middle”, Kyle Benjamin (guitarist for Chicago's Unfortunaut), Jason Hoffman (a.k.a. darkwave composer Anatole), Trevor de Brauw (of Chicago instrumentalists Pelican) and Phil Dole (of über-dronists X-Bax) devised an outline for CHORD that lived for many months in the realm of conversation. With a shared appreciation for the works of Tony Conrad, and Glen Branca the group formulated a collective vision: exploit and explore the sonic depth of a single chord.
CHORD performances consist of each player being assigned one note from a pre-selected chord. They are then expected to consider all ranges of flexibility concerning octave, rhythm, playing style and effect treatments. The overall effect CHORD generates is that of a single note being rendered into an unsolvable riddle – a harmonic Gordian knot that creates an almost pastoral feel of being blinded by the sun. The rejection of melody and structure in favor of sweeping and epic tones inspires a sense of rousing apprehension. Shrouded in the individual tunings of each player the pieces never become diluted, instead finding resolution in collective dissonance and consonance. To be in the presence of chord achieved is transcendent.
CHORD first performed during February 2004 at Evanston's Nevin's Live, stunning a sold out crowd who had gathered on a combination of word of mouth and their appreciation for the other folk-rock acts on the bill. A few select shows followed including coveted opening slots for Jakob, Savage Republic, Growing, and The Austerity Program, as well as a headlining appearance in Brooklyn at a benefit for The American Red Cross. CHORD released its debut recording FLORA on Neurot Recordings in spring 2009." [label info]
"...It's all quite dramatic and epic, quite beautiful, stately at certain moments, almost chaotic and crumbling at others, anyone into Conrad, Cale, Maclise, Flynt and especially Branca and Chatham will definitely dig this. As well as guitardrone freaks who count Fear Falls Burning, RST, Seconds In Formaldehyde, Elm, Continuum and the like among their favorites." [Aquarius Records review]
www.neurotrecordings.com
€14.00
Pagan Tango
Newly remastered reissue of 1991's `Pagan Tango', depicting synth-pop pioneers Chris & Cosey stepping into a new decade with uncanny, atavistic traces of bygone exotica and ritual musicks. CHRIS CARTER & COSEY FANNI TUTTI's remastered limited edition vinyl series continues in 2023 with the release of Techno Primitiv (1985), Trust (1989) and Pagan Tango (1991) - all available on vinyl for the first time since their original release. The remastered albums will be available on coloured vinyl, each with a printed inner sleeve of archival photos, via CTI. Elemental 7, Muzik Fantastique!, and Feral Vapours of The Silver Ether were released earlier this year, and the series has seen many of Chris & Cosey's influential albums available on vinyl for the first time, giving listeners a new opportunity to revisit some of their celebrated catalogue. Pagan Tango - described by Melody Maker as "C&C formulating perfection" - originally released in 1991 on Wax Trax!, and sees the pair once follow their own hypnotic beat in new directions. The album was originally presented ten years after C&C's legendary debut `Heartbeat', a decade in which they deployed no fewer than 10 albums, and acted as spirit-guides for the post-industrial era's phase shift to synth-pop and new wave. In title and function `Pagan Tango' echoes an occult thrust that underlined their music since the beginning and would parallel and dovetail themes of PTV, a rising new age consciousness, and neo-folk. It features Chris Carter continuing to refine his drum programming to whirring, intricate latin trills and triplets best for dancing (and which pissed on anything coming from Gen's apocryphal club projects, for example), and comparable with prevailing energies of body music, latin freestyle electro, Washington Go-Go and new jack swing, as much as the pagan tango of the record's title. Chris' rhythms would nothing without Cosey's sensual vox and cornet, found here like a sleek, gynoid cyberpunk presence mixed beautifully clear and wide across their retro-futurist projections. From the off they move perpendicular to trends, with `Ecstasy' clearly referencing the '91 drug du jour, but quite unlike its conventions, before the album sashays between echoes of `Exotica' in 'Synaesthesia', to the taut EBM of `Take Control' or `Sin' and its kinky title tune, via sultrier downstrokes in `Face to Face', the new jack swanger `Feel to Me', and Washington funk of `Go-Go Latino', with the pair's energies and sound design most hallucinatory in `Sacred Silence'.
€30.50
Enantiodromia
Sieben Werke aus der letzten Schaffensperiode des genialen griechischen Komponisten († 1970), der nur 44 Jahre alt wurde. Ob flirrend-ekstatische Klangfelder, Geräuschkaskadenerzeugung mittels der Klangkörper der eingesetzten Instrumente, ob atonale Improvisation oder „industriell“ anmutende rhythmische Muster mit unheimlichen Stimmen, JANI CRISTOUs Musik zeugt von hoher Intensität und Dichte und einer kaum mehr zu überbietenden, körperlich spürbaren Spannung, die sich z.B. bei ENANTIODROMIA eindrucksvoll entlädt.... Hier enthalten: ENANTIODROMIA (1965-68), PRAXIS für Streichorchester und Klavier (1966-69), EPICYCLE (1968), ANAPARASTASIS III (1969), MYSTERION (1969), ANAPARASTASIS I (1968), PRAXIS for 12 für 11 Streicher und einen Pianisten (1966).
Dazu im booklet hochinteressante liner-notes über seine Konzeptionen von Metamusik, Proto-Performance, Klangpatterns und seine spezielle Kompositionstechnik mit eigener Notation...“Er sah die Musik vielmehr als ein Mittel an, uranfänglich gemeinsame Emotionen zu aktivieren, die ansonsten durch Zivilisation unterdrückt sind, und einen mystischen Zustand der Trance oder der Hysterie zu erreichen.“ TIP !!!
Seven works from this genius greek composer from the sixties, absolutely intense stuff ! Comes with booklet in german/english liner notes, with many interesting background infos about this conception and philosophy. VERY MUCH RECOMMENDED !!
€18.00
Ghost Machine
Chrome was founded in San Francisco in 1975. Their sound wasn't easy to label - being ahead of their time, Helios Creed and Damon Edge created music that featured heavy elements of feedback and distortion.They experimented in mixing synthesized noise with rock instrumentation, therefore they are now seen as part of the post punk movement (even when punk was still in full flow at that time). Their breakthrough came in 1977 with their second album Alien Soundtracks. The band largely abandoned conventional rock compositions, instead employing cut-up and collage techniques and heavily processed sound to create a kind of sci-fi punk style. The album was given 4 out of 5 stars in the UK music paper Sounds, and Chrome began gradually to gain a cult reputation in the UK and in Europe. In the 1980s Damon Edge released several rather electronic records under the Chrome name, but Helios Creed had by that time left the band. He pursued a solo career but picked up the name Chrome again after Damon Edge died in Paris. The album Ghost Machine came out in 2002 on the German Dossier label. It is an often overlooked gem in the band's discography and has been out of print for over a decade. Creed reinstalled all the Chrome trademark sounds mixing electronics with his distinct guitar sound, and unusal production and mixing methods. This new edition comes in a digipack and with remastered sound.
www.klanggalerie.com
€14.50
Sayeh
"Reise in den Klangkosmos des Nahen Ostens: zweite EP des Münchner Elektronikers.
Hinter dem Projekt Chronomad verbirgt sich Saam Schlamminger. Der 1966 in Istanbul geborene und jetzt in München lebende Musiker hat sich auf die persische Bechertrommel (Zarb) und die Schellentrommel namens Daf spezialisiert, die er beide elektronisch verfremdet. Er hat weltweit schon mit den verschiedensten Musikern zusammengespielt, u. a. mit Susan Deyhim und The Notwist. 2004 veröffentlichte er ein Album und legt sechs Jahre später mit "Sayeh" seine zweite EP vor: eine wilde Reise in drei Etappen durch den Klangkosmos des Nahen Ostens. Eine eindringliche Musik, gespickt mit Feldaufnahmen, ambitioniert und vielsagend." [label info]
www.alientransistor.de
€12.50
Sayeh
"Reise in den Klangkosmos des Nahen Ostens: zweite EP des Münchner Elektronikers.
Hinter dem Projekt Chronomad verbirgt sich Saam Schlamminger. Der 1966 in Istanbul geborene und jetzt in München lebende Musiker hat sich auf die persische Bechertrommel (Zarb) und die Schellentrommel namens Daf spezialisiert, die er beide elektronisch verfremdet. Er hat weltweit schon mit den verschiedensten Musikern zusammengespielt, u. a. mit Susan Deyhim und The Notwist. 2004 veröffentlichte er ein Album und legt sechs Jahre später mit "Sayeh" seine zweite EP vor: eine wilde Reise in drei Etappen durch den Klangkosmos des Nahen Ostens. Eine eindringliche Musik, gespickt mit Feldaufnahmen, ambitioniert und vielsagend." [label info]
www.alientransistor.de
€9.00
Wappinschaw (lim. clear red vinly)
- For Fans of: This Mortal Coil, Xmal Deutschland, Interpol, Zoviet France, Clan of Xymox - First ever reissue - CD and vinyl download card include three rare b-side bonus tracks // Cindytalk is the mercurial, expressionist outlet of Scottish artist Cinder. An evolution of her early 1980's Edinburgh-based punk band The Freeze, she launched the project upon moving to London, inspired by the crossroads of exploratory UK post-punk and early European industrial. Her work thrives on chance and transformation, collaging elements of noise, balladry, soundtrack, catharsis, and improvisation. After a series of celebrated albums for the Midnight Music label as well as collaborations with This Mortal Coil and Cocteau Twins, Cinder migrated to the United States, becoming involved with various underground techno collectives around the Midwest and West Coast. Subsequent relocations to Hong Kong and Japan further expanded Cindytalk's horizons, resulting in a fruitful partnership with Viennese experimental institution Editions Mego, for whom she released five albums of swooning, granular atmosphere. 2021 finds her as engaged as ever, at the precipice of long-awaited back catalog reissues alongside multiple new works, guided by her lasting love of discovery and deviation: "new pathways always being uncovered." Across decades of activity Cinder's body of work has forever followed its own elusive muse but nowhere is this restless spirit more apparent and ambitious than the 4th Cindytalk LP, Wappinschaw. Conceived as "a call to arms" inspired by Scotland and its struggle for independence, the title refers to an archaic Scottish battle inspection during which clan chieftains surveyed their group's weapons to ensure they were combat ready. A mindset of reflective preparation threads throughout the record, manifested in forms both naked and noisy, ancient and anguished. Opening with an aching solo vocal rendition of the British folk standard "The First Time Ever (I Saw Your Face)," the album then surges into the Cindytalk classic, "A Song Of Changes," sparkling and spiraling in strange waves of sorrow and joy. From there the mood fragments, tracing asymmetrical paths of feverish dirge, pensive spirituals, noir abstraction, spoken word (landmark Glaswegian writer Alasdair Gray guests on "Wheesht"), bagpipe drone, and apocalyptic post-punk. Given its aggressive eclecticism, it's not surprising that Cinder describes the creation of Wappinschaw as a "precarious" process, composed from "scraps" with abruptly shifting personnel - a situation only compounded by the impending dissolution of their label at the time, Midnight Music. Despite, or perhaps because of, these factors, the collection stands as a testament to Cinder's belief that "so-called experimental can only remain so if you keep challenging yourself." This is singular and challenging music, texturally jagged and emotionally conflicted, swimming through shivering darkness into fragile pockets of light. At the time of its recording, Cinder was attempting to leave London after many years in the city, dreaming of an ancestral return. But as much as "ideas of homecoming were percolating," there remained unfinished business, old ghosts to exorcise, culminating in Wappinschaw's heady, harrowing voyage: "An invocation of spirits of resistance - as much a declaration of war as a declaration of love."
€23.50
The Wind is strong (lim. marble smoke viny)
Cindytalk is the mercurial, expressionist outlet of Scottish artist Cinder. An evolution of her early 1980's Edinburgh-based punk band The Freeze, she launched the project upon moving to London, inspired by the crossroads of exploratory UK post-punk and early European industrial. Her work thrives on chance and transformation, collaging elements of noise, balladry, soundtrack, catharsis, and improvisation. After a series of celebrated albums for the Midnight Music label as well as collaborations with This Mortal Coil and Cocteau Twins, Cinder migrated to the United States, becoming involved with various underground techno collectives around the Midwest and West Coast. Subsequent relocations to Hong Kong and Japan further expanded Cindytalk's horizons, resulting in a fruitful partnership with Viennese experimental institution Editions Mego, for whom she released five full-lengths of swooning, granular atmosphere. 2021 finds her as engaged as ever, at the precipice of long-awaited back catalog reissues alongside multiple new works, guided by her lasting love of discovery and deviation: “new pathways always being uncovered.”
The 3rd album by Scottish industrial enigma Cinder aka Cindytalk began life as the soundtrack to an experimental film by English director Ivan Unnwin entitled Eclipse (The Amateur Enthusiast's Guide To Virus Deployment), and was originally slated for release via Factory Records' video division, Ikon. Inspired heavily by Alan Splet's eerily disembodied sound design in David Lynch's Eraserhead, the collection's 15 pieces seethe between field recordings, wistful piano vignettes, and lurking metallic haze – a hybrid palette Cinder characterized at the time as “ambi-dustrial.” Unfortunately Ikon collapsed on the eve of the project's completion so the film was never distributed, but the Midnight Music imprint repackaged Cindytalk's score as an LP in 1990 under the name The Wind Is Strong... (full title: The Wind Is Strong - A Sparrow Dances, Piercing Holes in Our Sky).
Long out of print, the album remains one of the most elusive and adventurous in the Cindytalk discography, a mix of musique concréte, haunted reverie, and desolate beauty. Even unaccompanied by their intended visuals, this is overtly cinematic music, conjuring forests at dusk and shadowed corridors, equal parts remote and reflective. Cinder cites a belief that “all sound is music,” which fully manifests here, utilizing tape hiss, ticking clocks, flicking flames, and distant whispers as evocative accents in tapestries of luminous negative space.
Although Cinder included the subtitle “A Cindytalk diversion” in the sleeve notes, The Wind Is Strong... is crucial to the project's canon, demonstrating the depth and versatility of her unique ear and intuition. She describes each album as a direct response to the previous one, and in that sense The Wind marks a bold break from the coiled song-oriented post-punk of 1988's In This World, venturing into unknown, unnamed terrain, and finding foreboding new futures to call her own.
https://www.daisrecords.com/products/cindytalk-the-wind-is-strong
Cindytalk ist das quecksilbrige, expressionistische Ventil der schottischen Künstlerin Cinder. Als Weiterentwicklung ihrer Edinburgher Punkband The Freeze aus den frühen 1980er Jahren gründete sie das Projekt, nachdem sie nach London gezogen war, inspiriert von der Kreuzung aus forschendem britischen Post-Punk und frühem europäischen Industrial. Ihre Arbeit lebt vom Zufall und der Verwandlung, sie collagiert Elemente von Lärm, Balladen, Soundtracks, Katharsis und Improvisation.
Nach einer Reihe gefeierter Alben für das Label Midnight Music sowie Kollaborationen mit This Mortal Coil und den Cocteau Twins wanderte Cinder in die Vereinigten Staaten aus und engagierte sich in verschiedenen Underground-Techno-Kollektiven im Mittleren Westen und an der Westküste. Spätere Umzüge nach Hongkong und Japan erweiterten Cindytalks Horizont und führten zu einer fruchtbaren Partnerschaft mit der Wiener Experimental-Institution Editions Mego, für die sie fünf Alben mit schwelgerischer, granularer Atmosphäre veröffentlichte. 2021 ist sie so engagiert wie eh und je und steht an der Schwelle von lang erwarteten Wiederveröffentlichungen des alten Katalogs neben zahlreichen neuen Werken, geleitet von ihrer anhaltenden Liebe zur Entdeckung und Abweichung: Immer neue Wege werden aufgedeckt.
Das dritte Album des schottischen Industrial-Enigmas Cinder aka Cindytalk begann als Soundtrack zu einem Experimentalfilm des englischen Regisseurs Ivan Unnwin mit dem Titel Eclipse (The Amateur Enthusiast's Guide To Virus Deployment) und sollte ursprünglich über die Videoabteilung von Factory Records, Ikon, veröffentlicht werden. Inspiriert von Alan Splets unheimlichem, körperlosem Sounddesign in David Lynchs Eraserhead, bewegen sich die 15 Stücke der Sammlung zwischen Field Recordings, wehmütigen Klaviervignetten und lauerndem Metalldunst - eine hybride Palette, die Cinder damals als "ambi-dustrial" bezeichnete. Unglücklicherweise brach Ikon am Vorabend der Fertigstellung des Projekts zusammen, so dass der Film nie vertrieben wurde, aber das Midnight Music Imprint verpackte Cindytalks Partitur 1990 als LP unter dem Namen The Wind Is Strong... (vollständiger Titel: The Wind Is Strong - A Sparrow Dances, Piercing Holes in Our Sky).
Längst vergriffen, bleibt das Album eines der schwer fassbarsten und abenteuerlichsten in der Diskographie von Cindytalk, eine Mischung aus konkreter Musik, geisterhafter Träumerei und trostloser Schönheit. Selbst ohne die visuelle Untermalung ist dies eine offenkundig filmische Musik, die Wälder in der Dämmerung und schattige Korridore heraufbeschwört, die zu gleichen Teilen entlegen und nachdenklich sind. Cinder beruft sich auf die Überzeugung, dass ügalles Geräusch Musik ist,üh was sich hier voll und ganz manifestiert, indem sie Tonbandrauschen, tickende Uhren, züngelnde Flammen und entferntes Flüstern als evokative Akzente in Wandteppichen aus leuchtendem Negativraum verwendet. Obwohl Cinder den Untertitel "A Cindytalk diversion" (Eine Cindytalk-Abwechslungü) in die Cover-Notizen geschrieben hat, ist The Wind Is Strong... entscheidend für den Kanon des Projekts und demonstriert die Tiefe und Vielseitigkeit ihres einzigartigen Gehörs und ihrer Intuition. Sie beschreibt jedes Album als direkte Antwort auf das vorherige, und in diesem Sinne markiert The Wind einen kühnen Bruch mit dem songorientierten Post-Punk des 1988er Albums In This World, indem sie sich in unbekanntes, unbenanntes Terrain wagt und eine neue Zukunft findet, die sie ihr Eigen nennen kann. Für Fans von: Harold Budd, Tor Lundvall, Lawrence English, Kevin Drumm, Loscil, This Mortal Coil, Drekka, Zoviet France.
€23.50
Camouflage Heart
https://cindytalk.bandcamp.com/album/camouflage-heart
Cindytalk is the mercurial, expressionist outlet of Scottish artist Cinder, inspired by the crossroads of exploratory UK post-punk and early European industrial. Her work thrives on chance and transformation, collaging elements of noise, balladry, soundtrack, catharsis, and improvisation.
"We were trying to find our own space," says Cinder of the formative period 'Camouflage Heart' emerged from, amidst a move from Edinburgh to London and Cinder's evolving exploration of gender identity, well before culture at large was equipped to understand. With contemporary discourse we see that the project manifested her transgender ideas as visceral music. The guttural, feral sound marked a notably darker turn from The Freeze's six-year run on the fringes of punk. Changing the project's name became vital, not just because they kept hearing the former was already taken, but the desire to embody the spiritual and sonic shift, "to uncover new pathways…to feminize it," she says. Cinder, with bandmates David Clancy and John Byrne, arrived at Cindytalk, a winking nod to Sindy, the British fashion doll rival to Barbie known then for its pull-string talking mechanism. "The goal was to have a more interesting narrative, more interesting dialogue. Music was ultimately my only way of talking to people. That was my conversation with the world, an abstracted conversation…an attempt to make some kind of tiny, tiny mark, if possible, you hope somebody will notice." Over the years, Cinder has heard from fans who did pick up on the signals and find refuge in 'Camouflage Heart'. Subtle then, but she connects the dots more clearly now, playfully suggesting Dais reissue the long out-of-print vinyl in pink — "It had to be Barbie pink" — underscoring the mischief that's been there all along beneath the silvery surface of Cindytalk.
'Camouflage Heart' plays with tension and pace, from creeping to feverish to claustrophobic. The percussion moves between restless marches and barely-there pulses; for some parts, they scratched and hit a tin bath, among other objects. Guitar lines vibrate and stab as Cinder contorts her voice freely. She pulls poetry from a cerebral abyss, like "make the snake in your eye, pierce the camouflage heart" on the slow-droning centerpiece "The Spirit Behind the Circus Dream." In that register is raw power, both vulnerable and menacing, an ability to locate something deep and emotionally charged within. "I still remember that person who was way too intense for their own good," Cinder reflects. "I couldn't make a record like that now, certainly not vocally, while that anger hasn't dissipated; there's still a kind of warrior."
For all the destruction and disintegration of Camouflage Heart, Cinder maintains the objective was never full-on fatalistic; these songs seek not to destroy but to poke and provoke, to transform and heal, to find cracks of light in a crumbling world. She points to the last lines of the opening track, "It's Luxury": "Don't look down," the lyric pines through static and rhythm. Cinder extrapolates, "I'm essentially saying, just keep fucking going. As time went on, for me, that falling became flying. Camouflage Heart is the beginning of believing in flight."
Cinder - all words
Cindytalk - all musics
Cindytalk:
Cinder - voice and instruments
David Clancy - instruments
John Byrne - instruments
Richard Hurding - cover photography
Mick Harvey - drumming on "Under Glass"
Bruce Corser - label photograph
Cliff Ash - sleeve photography
Recorded at Gateway Studio, London, Jan-July 1984
Engineered by David Ros
Except "Everybody Is Christ" – Recorded London, 1982
Remastered by Josh Bonati
Layout by Vinnie Massimino & Nathaniel Young
Dais Records 2025
"for those who came and will come closer"
"elizabeth ... is there room in the rosary for three."
€25.00
Soundcheck
"Recorded in Finland in October 2009, the band describes Soundcheck as “the most contemporary document possible of a Circle soundcheck/concert experience. For this concert Circle was reinforced by the guitars of J. & P. Jaaskelainen, who may be familiar to some from the ranks of Circle’s brother-in-arms Pharaoh Overlord. On the album, this expanded line-up explores the experimental possibilities of concert staples “Virsi” and “Nopeuskuningas” further than possibly ever before.”
“The first part offers two new tracks, beginning with the brief “Kukkakaalia Kapteenit!”, a wispy swirl of shimmery synths, laid back tribal drumming and some dramatic, emotional crooning, very cinematic sounding, almost like it could be some lost 4AD single, dreamy and ethereal, giving way to the way more rocking and intense “Tuhatsata”, which takes up most of the side, a slow burning, blackened bit of Finnish krautrock, super epic, with dueling vocals, crooning versus grunted and growled, fusiony keys, still more tribal drumming, spidery guitars, the track pulsing and pounding, building to multiple crescendos, frenzied freakouts that always lip right back into more looped mesmer.
The album progresses with two instantly recognizable live set staples, first up, “Virsi”, dramatically progtastic, with that super soaring epic intro, all dynamic shifts and huge bursts of instrumental crunch, with vocals howling and wailing almost operatically, before lurching into some rad atonal krauty, fusiony, jazzy, hypno groove skitter. The second track, another Circle classic, and live staple, “Nopeuskuningas”, explodes right out of the gate, with its chugging almost surfy, ZZ Top-ish boogie riff, locked in groove, the whole thing stretched out over the remainder of the side, the band solid, and hypnotic, and intense, and rocking and tight as fuck. Their showstopper for sure, and it clearly did the job at this show as well.
In so much as between albums, Circle, like Grateful Dead, crank out killer live record after killer liver record, often with some of the same songs, always including a few live staples, familiar enough to hit the spot, but different enough that a Circle fan could be forgiven for needing them ALL!” (Aquarius Records)
A stunning and truly unique live album approach by the Finnish masters of hypnorock and unusual sounds.
Originally released as a very limited vinyl edition via J. Lehtisalo’s own imprint Full Contact Records and instantly sold out, Soundcheck is now back to life housed in our luxurious, heavy tip-on mini-LP gatefold packaging featuring fantastic expanded photography and artwork by Jussi S. Karjalainen. Limited edition of 800 copies.
€13.50
Ghostwhite
The fourth album from Circular was arranged and recorded between 2016-2019. It describes the full, unfolding spectrum, leading to the initial shade of Ghostwhite. This release translates the varied colourful and kaleidoscopic spectra into deep audio and sound sculptures. The audio vision of Ghostwhite builds an organic wall of sound as Johannes Riedel starts to add more new elements, such as vocal samples, becoming louder in the mix to match the wailing organs and accelerating synthetic patterns. Circular shines with his new album and creates haunting and gripping sonic works that capture the imagination. Beautiful melodies and rhythms contrast the field recordings and sounds of modular synthesizers to build an abstract image spanning the entirety of the inner cinema. An album to impress and evolve, gathering more elements and styles into the most unique cosmos of Circular’s music.
https://loki-found.bandcamp.com/album/ghostwhite
€12.00
Monochrome
" ‘Monochrome' is a eulogy to Dmitry Vasiliev, a music enlightener, a label owner, a journalist, an ardent devotee of experimental music. Initially the composer Eugene Voronovsky conceived 'Monochrome' as a futuristic 'hi-res' mass, an alchemical fusion of angelic chorales and dub techno pulsations. A dream-like transparency of the material is deceptive in masking its technical complexity. Thus, the rhythmic canvas is built of "non-square" rhythms - 7/8, 15/16, etc., from which the strong beat gains fluidity typical of Oriental music. Ambient textures are based on the works of the medieval composers Josquin des Prez, Guillaume de Machaut, Pérotin the Great. Through reverberation the sound is "placed" into authentic space of the Great Pyramid of Giza; it's a meaningful reference for the album, entitlted in its draft by Enochian key of the alchemist John Dee.
The news of Vasiliev's tragic death caught the author in rendering the final mix. Thus the meaning and the purpose of this year-long work were redefined. ‘Monochrome' became a funeral service for a dear friend, a person whose role for independent electronic music in Russia cannot be overestimated.
The album was originally released as a limited edition cassette by NEN Records in October 2018 and now re-issued on CD by the joint forces of Aquarellist, kultFRONT and ZHELEZOBETON."
"Back in 2005, a very new Russian label released work by Eugene Voronovsky, also known as
Cisfinitum. It was not the first release for him or the label. 'Bezdna' was reviewed in Vital Weekly 478 and more followed from Cisfinitum and the label that released it, Monochrome Vision. In September of last year, Dmitry Vasiliev, the man behind Monochrome Vision (also a mail-order
and organiser of concerts, as well as writing about exactly 'this' kind of music), died in a tragic accident in the Black Sea, thus ending the label. About the same time, Cisfinitum put the final touches on this new release, which became 'Monochrome', a fitting farewell to the man himself.
Whereas I remember most of Cisfinitum's music as being quite atmospheric, ambient and drone-
like, this is not the case here. Rhythm plays an important role here and apparently, these are
'non-square rhythms', 7/8 or 15/16, which again apparently makes "the strong beat gains fluidity
typical of oriental music'. These odd beats guide the sampled sounds of choral music from
medieval composers and that may seem an odd pairing but Cisfinitum melted the choral voices
into something quite abstract and ambient like. The music gets a rather majestically feeling, a
sort of massiveness that works rather good with these beats. I am not sure about the fluidity or
the Eastern feel (although, I must admit at one point thinking of Muslimgauze; in 'Auyaea', I think), but in terms of dark atmospheric music, hearing something interesting in the world of rhythm, this was all a most pleasant release. It would have been something that mister Vasiliev would have been proud to release; sad to realize this is a reminder he's no longer here. Indeed a fitting musical eulogy." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€12.00
same
This is dark experimental ambient with a very piercing edge, evokes a very unsettling and eldrich atmosphere....the other, dark & abysmall side of CLOAMA...
“.....This recording, marking a debut for artist / group on the New Old Sentinel label and for the label itself, is five tracks of experimental ambient music limited to 500 copies. Experimental ambient. Two words guaranteed to send most people running off in sheer apoplectic fright. The fear of the unknown. Ambient in all its forms they can cope with but…‘experimental’…too weird. Too challenging. Never assume. On this recording the balance between the differing genres has been implemented in such a seamless and gratifying manner that its only when the recording has finished do you suddenly realise what a strange aural experience you have lived through.
Track one ‘Radiation Amplifier’ starts with what sounds like Tibetan instruments being struck before the piece swiftly introduces musique concrete electronic effects and a sample before ending in something being strummed. Whoa!! Far fucking out maaan. Track two ‘The New Old Sentinel’ throws a whole caboodle of multi effects into the mix merging part drone / part black ambience / part electro acoustic over ghostly voices. Double whoa!! Double far fucking out maaan. I think you can gleam from this what the other tracks are going to sound like. Manipulated electronic sounds and voices resonate predominately. The music continually fluctuates. To move, evolve and grow. Putting out searching tentacles to probe and envelop. Building up pieces which are then demolished before starting anew all within the same track. This combination, which will happily throw dark and light together and damn the consequences, isn’t afraid to take risks. These are minuscule forays into every genre. Picking the finest flecks and combining them into one ethereal state. The music is abstract enough to be confounding and innovative but it never alienates the listener. Instead you feel a guiding hand leading you gently into the more surreal pieces whilst cooing soothing words of comfort are spoken into your ear as you stand hypnotised at the sonic sculptures unfolding.
If this is a foray into uncharted waters, away from the normal Cloama sound, then long may it continue. To produce a piece of work that is structurally complex and yet easily accessible, without falling into the pitfalls of self absorbing wankery, is a feat many aspire to. Cloama have achieved this easily and comes highly recommended to the more adventurous spirits amongst you. “ [Auralpressure]
€10.00
To beat
"Recorded May 2013 - January 2014. All music and lyrics by Ivan Pavlov / COH. Picking up right where the last track on the previous COH release RETRO-2038 left off, the new album is focused on the use of beats within the similar aesthetics. While most of the previous COH records openly shy away from accentuated beat structures and instead build up their rhythmical content by layering waves and pulses, every track on To Beat is padded with just that - beats. The music transition is illustrated in the album's artwork, displaying transformation of a sine-wave, a tone, into a waveform which is beat. This mathematical progression is made audible in the album's opening track Wave To Beat. The rest of the album, however, steers clear from dull math and presents the beats in their more traditional context of what could be referred to as adventurous dance music, taking the listener through various examples of beat use with the sense of playfulness and joy. The final piece, Beat to wave, wraps it up by dissolving a simplistic post-techno piece into a tonal chord. This brings back the album's main idea, where tone and beat are essentially one and the same, like vowels and consonants in a language, like Yin and Yang in music." [label info]
www.editionsmego.com
"I enter the airlock of TO BEAT: an isolated zone away from the logic and consequence of a linear life, where rebellion and transformation materialise in time and then dissipate into the files of forgotten memory. The opening track tracks the compression of a constant sine tone into sharp punctuations of beat – dynamic curvature compacts into sheer right-angles. For the following 45 minutes, the eternal, fluid unwind of being is chopped up into square and unambiguous blocks of rhythm; life pixelates momentarily, and the endless string of insatiable curiosity becomes a finite ribbon of understanding I can hold in my hands. Once it’s over I shall never speak of it again, taking the airlock out the other side via “BEAT TO WAVE”.
The album’s interior is a strange emulation of dance music. The melodies are tangible and thick – riding 4/4 like an unforgettable congregative chant (it feels somewhat Eastern at points, although I feel ignorant thinking that) – yet the beat emphasis falls in eerie places, causing my body to jut out in a series of unnatural angles. It’s an inhuman sound but far from clinical, and while the combination of hum and pulse evoke a sort of chorus of stable spacecraft monitoring equipment, none of these tracks are sheened with mathematical precision; there are bubbles of warm mid-frequency and the sliding voices of alien worship, placing TO BEAT in an error void between abstract calculation and the music of corporeal organisms.
There are moments that fling themselves into the lust of nightclub strobes: the sterile pump of blood around a dancefloor, puppeteered by rhythms that speak to the instinct to move. For instance, “ungear moi” sends the drip of neon sweat into half-time as rave synthesisers flit between subterranean corners like lasers, or perhaps surveillance cameras. And then there’s “Moonviewhigh”, whose mixture of major-key colour and geometric certainty depicts it as a Rubik’s cube rotating in front of my face – a flicker of squares in digital contrast, punctuated by a sloping reverb that mockingly emulates the spaces that exist beyond TO BEAT’s four titanium walls. It’s a simulated reality, and to step inside is to subvert gravity and co-ordination for just a short while." [ATTN:Magazine]
€13.50
Musick to play in the Dark
Few groups in recent history forged as confounding and alchemical a body of work as Coil, the partnership of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance. From album to album and phase to phase their recordings spelunk perplexing depths of esoteric industrial, occult electronics, and drugged poetry, both embodying and alienating parallel currents of their peers. The late 1990's in particular were a fertile era for the duo, embracing chance, chaos, and collaboration, enhanced by recent advancements in synthesis and sampling. Fittingly, at the summit of the decade's long, intoxicated arc, their divergent strains of interstitial ritual congealed into one of Coil's most celebrated and hallucinatory creations: Musick To Play In The Dark.
Convening at Balance and Christopherson's vast Victorian house / studio in the coastal town of Weston-super-Mare, they began a series of ambitious sessions aided by inner circle associates Thighpaulsandra and Drew McDowall. Although the creative process was admittedly “iterative” and “a bit of a drug blur,” the results are astoundingly inventive and well realized, winding through shades of divination dirge, wormhole kosmische, noir lounge, ominous humor, and black mass downtempo, guided by Balance's cryptic lunar muse, which he announces on the opening track: “This is moon musick / in the light of the moon.”
What's most remarkable about the album 20 years after its release is how brazen, insular, and unpredictable it still feels. The songs follow an allusive, altered state logic all their own, warping from microscopic ripples of glitch and breath to widescreen warlock psychedelia and back again, as much hyper-sensory as inter-dimensional. Even within a catalog as eclectic as Coil's, Musick is a mystifying collection, oneiric evocations of desire, decadence, dinner jazz, and dietary advice, far beyond the pale of whatever gothic industrial ambiguity birthed such a journey.
The record closes with a slow, starlit shuffle, bathed in seething sweeps of spectral texture and high cathedral keys, like approaching the altar of some arcane temple. As the trance thickens Balance's voice rises, processed into an increasingly eerie, gaseous haze, but he resists these unseen forces, intent on delivering a final sermon: “Through hissy mists of history / the dreamer is still dreaming / the dreamer is still dreaming.”
Reissued for the first time in over 20 years, now on double vinyl LP with the complete, unedited versions of each song and an exclusive "D-side" vinyl art etching. Packaged in a sturdy matte jacket with embossed lettering and spot-gloss design elements. The compact disc version mirrors this design, and comes housed in thick tip-on "LP style" package. Both formats are completely remastered by engineer Josh Bonati with restored artwork and layout by Nathaniel Young - all under the project supervision of Drew McDowall and Thighpaulsandra.
https://www.daisrecords.com/products/coil-musick-to-play-in-the-dark
€15.00
Musick to play in the Dark (yellow vinyl)
"Few groups in recent history forged as confounding and alchemical a body of work as Coil, the partnership of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance. From album to album and phase to phase their recordings spelunk perplexing depths of esoteric industrial, occult electronics, and drugged poetry, both embodying and alienating parallel currents of their peers. The late 1990's in particular were a fertile era for the duo, embracing chance, chaos, and collaboration, enhanced by recent advancements in synthesis and sampling. Fittingly, at the summit of the decade's long, intoxicated arc, their divergent strains of interstitial ritual congealed into one of Coil's most celebrated and hallucinatory creations: Musick To Play In The Dark.
Convening at Balance and Christopherson's vast Victorian house / studio in the coastal town of Weston-super-Mare, they began a series of ambitious sessions aided by inner circle associates Thighpaulsandra and Drew McDowall. Although the creative process was admittedly “iterative” and “a bit of a drug blur,” the results are astoundingly inventive and well realized, winding through shades of divination dirge, wormhole kosmische, noir lounge, ominous humor, and black mass downtempo, guided by Balance's cryptic lunar muse, which he announces on the opening track: “This is moon musick / in the light of the moon.”
What's most remarkable about the album 20 years after its release is how brazen, insular, and unpredictable it still feels. The songs follow an allusive, altered state logic all their own, warping from microscopic ripples of glitch and breath to widescreen warlock psychedelia and back again, as much hyper-sensory as inter-dimensional. Even within a catalog as eclectic as Coil's, Musick is a mystifying collection, oneiric evocations of desire, decadence, dinner jazz, and dietary advice, far beyond the pale of whatever gothic industrial ambiguity birthed such a journey.
The record closes with a slow, starlit shuffle, bathed in seething sweeps of spectral texture and high cathedral keys, like approaching the altar of some arcane temple. As the trance thickens Balance's voice rises, processed into an increasingly eerie, gaseous haze, but he resists these unseen forces, intent on delivering a final sermon: “Through hissy mists of history / the dreamer is still dreaming / the dreamer is still dreaming.”
Reissued for the first time in over 20 years, now on double vinyl LP with the complete, unedited versions of each song and an exclusive "D-side" vinyl art etching. Packaged in a sturdy matte jacket with embossed lettering and spot-gloss design elements. The compact disc version mirrors this design, and comes housed in thick tip-on "LP style" package. Both formats are completely remastered by engineer Josh Bonati with restored artwork and layout by Nathaniel Young - all under the project supervision of Drew McDowall and Thighpaulsandra."
https://www.daisrecords.com/products/coil-musick-to-play-in-the-dark
€32.00
Musick to play in the Dark (black vinyl)
"Few groups in recent history forged as confounding and alchemical a body of work as Coil, the partnership of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance. From album to album and phase to phase their recordings spelunk perplexing depths of esoteric industrial, occult electronics, and drugged poetry, both embodying and alienating parallel currents of their peers. The late 1990's in particular were a fertile era for the duo, embracing chance, chaos, and collaboration, enhanced by recent advancements in synthesis and sampling. Fittingly, at the summit of the decade's long, intoxicated arc, their divergent strains of interstitial ritual congealed into one of Coil's most celebrated and hallucinatory creations: Musick To Play In The Dark.
Convening at Balance and Christopherson's vast Victorian house / studio in the coastal town of Weston-super-Mare, they began a series of ambitious sessions aided by inner circle associates Thighpaulsandra and Drew McDowall. Although the creative process was admittedly “iterative” and “a bit of a drug blur,” the results are astoundingly inventive and well realized, winding through shades of divination dirge, wormhole kosmische, noir lounge, ominous humor, and black mass downtempo, guided by Balance's cryptic lunar muse, which he announces on the opening track: “This is moon musick / in the light of the moon.”
What's most remarkable about the album 20 years after its release is how brazen, insular, and unpredictable it still feels. The songs follow an allusive, altered state logic all their own, warping from microscopic ripples of glitch and breath to widescreen warlock psychedelia and back again, as much hyper-sensory as inter-dimensional. Even within a catalog as eclectic as Coil's, Musick is a mystifying collection, oneiric evocations of desire, decadence, dinner jazz, and dietary advice, far beyond the pale of whatever gothic industrial ambiguity birthed such a journey.
The record closes with a slow, starlit shuffle, bathed in seething sweeps of spectral texture and high cathedral keys, like approaching the altar of some arcane temple. As the trance thickens Balance's voice rises, processed into an increasingly eerie, gaseous haze, but he resists these unseen forces, intent on delivering a final sermon: “Through hissy mists of history / the dreamer is still dreaming / the dreamer is still dreaming.”
Reissued for the first time in over 20 years, now on double vinyl LP with the complete, unedited versions of each song and an exclusive "D-side" vinyl art etching. Packaged in a sturdy matte jacket with embossed lettering and spot-gloss design elements. The compact disc version mirrors this design, and comes housed in thick tip-on "LP style" package. Both formats are completely remastered by engineer Josh Bonati with restored artwork and layout by Nathaniel Young - all under the project supervision of Drew McDowall and Thighpaulsandra."
https://www.daisrecords.com/products/coil-musick-to-play-in-the-dark
€30.00
Musick to play in the Dark 2 (Black Vinyl)
After leaving London in 1999 for the sleepy seaside retiree town of Weston-super-Mare, Coil co-founders John Balance and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson set up shop in a palatial eight-bedroom estate to pursue the outer reaches of the group’s heightening cabalistic chemistry. Among the staggering string of late-era masterpieces they produced is lunar opus Musick To Play In The Dark, widely hailed as an artistic zenith upon its release. The sessions that birthed it were in fact so fruitful that a second LP took shape during the creation of the first one.
Aided by the recent addition of Welsh multi-instrumentalist engineer Thighpaulsandra, Coil mined further into the recesses of surrealist eldritch electronica Balance termed “moon music” – post-industrial spellcasting at the axis of narcotic and nocturnal energies. Musick To Play In The Dark² spans a full witching hour of bad acid sound design, synthesizer voyaging, opiated balladry, Luciferian glitch, and subliminal hymnals, alternately ominous, oracular, and absurd. Scottish gothic icon Rose McDowall guests on vocals for two tracks but otherwise the album is a hermetic affair, tapping into the group’s limitless insular synergy.
Opener “Something” is stark and incantational, a spoken word experiment for windswept voids. “Tiny Golden Books” unspools an aerial whirlpool of cosmic synth, both whispery and widescreen. “Ether” is an exercise in funeral procession piano and intoxicated wordplay (“It's either ether or the other”), while “Where Are You?” and “Batwings – A Liminal Hymn” lurk like liturgical murmurings heard on one’s death bed, framed in granular FX and flickering candlelight.
As a whole the collection skews more muted and remote than its predecessor, as if having grown accustomed to the nether regions of these darkening seances. But music box hallucination “Paranoid Inlay” captures the group’s oblique comedic side, always glimmering beneath: over a warped, wobbly beat Balance intones an opaque narrative of serenity, Saint Peter, and suicidal vegetables, accompanied by spiraling harpsichord and stuttering squelches of electronics. “It seems concussion suits you,” he repeats twice, like a macabre pickup line, before dictating a dear diary entry about risks and failures, finally concluding with as close to a self-portrait as Coil ever came: “On a clear day I can see forever / that the underworld is my oyster.”
// Unter der erstaunlichen Reihe von Meisterwerken der späten Coil-Ära gilt das Mond-Opus „Musick To Play In The Dark“ als künstlerischer Zenit der Band. Die Sessions, aus denen es hervorging, waren sogar so fruchtbar, dass eine zweite LP noch während der Entstehung der ersten Gestalt annahm. Unterstützt durch den walisischen Multi-Instrumentalisten und Tontechniker Thighpaulsandra tauchten Coil weiter in die Tiefen der surrealistischen Elektronika, die Bandgründer John Balance als "Mondmusik" bezeichnete. „Musick To Play In The Dark²“ umspannt eine ganze Geisterstunde post-industrielle Zauberei an der Achse von narkotischen und nächtlichen Energien: „Bad Acid“-Sounddesign, Synthesizer-Reisen, opiumhaltige Balladen, luziferischer Glitch und unterschwellige Hymnen; abwechselnd unheilvoll, orakelhaft und absurd. Die schottische Gothic-Ikone Rose McDowall ist bei zwei Stücken als Gastsängerin zu hören."
Mastered by Josh Bonati.
Double LP, with Side D Moon Etching.
https://www.daisrecords.com/collections/releases/products/coil-musick-to-play-in-the-dark-2
€29.50
Musick to play in the Dark 2
After leaving London in 1999 for the sleepy seaside retiree town of Weston-super-Mare, Coil co-founders John Balance and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson set up shop in a palatial eight-bedroom estate to pursue the outer reaches of the group’s heightening cabalistic chemistry. Among the staggering string of late-era masterpieces they produced is lunar opus Musick To Play In The Dark, widely hailed as an artistic zenith upon its release. The sessions that birthed it were in fact so fruitful that a second LP took shape during the creation of the first one.
Aided by the recent addition of Welsh multi-instrumentalist engineer Thighpaulsandra, Coil mined further into the recesses of surrealist eldritch electronica Balance termed “moon music” – post-industrial spellcasting at the axis of narcotic and nocturnal energies. Musick To Play In The Dark² spans a full witching hour of bad acid sound design, synthesizer voyaging, opiated balladry, Luciferian glitch, and subliminal hymnals, alternately ominous, oracular, and absurd. Scottish gothic icon Rose McDowall guests on vocals for two tracks but otherwise the album is a hermetic affair, tapping into the group’s limitless insular synergy.
Opener “Something” is stark and incantational, a spoken word experiment for windswept voids. “Tiny Golden Books” unspools an aerial whirlpool of cosmic synth, both whispery and widescreen. “Ether” is an exercise in funeral procession piano and intoxicated wordplay (“It's either ether or the other”), while “Where Are You?” and “Batwings – A Liminal Hymn” lurk like liturgical murmurings heard on one’s death bed, framed in granular FX and flickering candlelight.
As a whole the collection skews more muted and remote than its predecessor, as if having grown accustomed to the nether regions of these darkening seances. But music box hallucination “Paranoid Inlay” captures the group’s oblique comedic side, always glimmering beneath: over a warped, wobbly beat Balance intones an opaque narrative of serenity, Saint Peter, and suicidal vegetables, accompanied by spiraling harpsichord and stuttering squelches of electronics. “It seems concussion suits you,” he repeats twice, like a macabre pickup line, before dictating a dear diary entry about risks and failures, finally concluding with as close to a self-portrait as Coil ever came: “On a clear day I can see forever / that the underworld is my oyster.”
// Unter der erstaunlichen Reihe von Meisterwerken der späten Coil-Ära gilt das Mond-Opus „Musick To Play In The Dark“ als künstlerischer Zenit der Band. Die Sessions, aus denen es hervorging, waren sogar so fruchtbar, dass eine zweite LP noch während der Entstehung der ersten Gestalt annahm. Unterstützt durch den walisischen Multi-Instrumentalisten und Tontechniker Thighpaulsandra tauchten Coil weiter in die Tiefen der surrealistischen Elektronika, die Bandgründer John Balance als "Mondmusik" bezeichnete. „Musick To Play In The Dark²“ umspannt eine ganze Geisterstunde post-industrielle Zauberei an der Achse von narkotischen und nächtlichen Energien: „Bad Acid“-Sounddesign, Synthesizer-Reisen, opiumhaltige Balladen, luziferischer Glitch und unterschwellige Hymnen; abwechselnd unheilvoll, orakelhaft und absurd. Die schottische Gothic-Ikone Rose McDowall ist bei zwei Stücken als Gastsängerin zu hören."
Mastered by Josh Bonati.
https://www.daisrecords.com/collections/releases/products/coil-musick-to-play-in-the-dark-2
€15.00
Moon's Milk (in four phases) (lim. clear vinyl)
First compiled as a double CD in 2002, Moon’s Milk (In Four Phases) is a suite of four EPs that Coil released seasonally via their in-house Eskaton imprint across 1998. The line-up for these sessions were John Balance, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, Drew McDowall, and William Breeze. Recorded primarily at their home studio in Chiswick, London on the eve of a permanent relocation to the small seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare, the collection has long loomed as a pivotal and pinnacle work in the group's discography, but has never been officially reissued, or repressed on vinyl. Time has only ripened its tapestry of regal strangeness.
Arranged sequentially in tribute to the equinoxes and solstices, Moon's Milk captures Coil at a revelatory crossroads, leaning deeper into improvisation, spontaneity, and sound design. "Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull" initiates the proceedings on Spring Equinox, a two-part netherworld organ séance woven from vocal drones, cathedral keys, seasick strings, and opiated undertow. From there, Summer Solstice skews lighter but no less incantational, with Balance embracing his voice-as-instrument across lucid dream torch songs ("Bee Stings"), purgatorial spoken word ("Glowworms/Waveforms"), sultry chamber pieces ("Summer Substructures"), and falsetto ravings ("A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz)").
Autumn Equinox exudes more of a pensive and twilit mood, from the Rose McDowall-sung folk ballad "Rosa Decidua" ("I hear your voice sing near to me / I've put away the poisoned chalice (for now) / And lie down amongst the flowerbeds") to hall-of-lords hallucination "The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant” to the liminal string-plucked classic "Amethyst Deceivers," featuring excellent alien guitar by Breeze layered with Balance’s oft-quoted couplet: "Pay your respects to the vultures / For they are your future."
The album’s final chapter, Winter Solstice, is its most swooning, remote, and ceremonial. Opener "A White Rainbow" stirs strings, layered choral vocals, and shivering rhythm into an imploding burial hymn. "North" oscillates bleakly, a ghost in the machine murmuring opaque prophecy ("This black dog has no owner / This black dog has no odour"), while "Magnetic North" is its inverse, a guided meditation of gently flickering software and surreal chakra poetics ("Red rose filling the skull / Yellow cube in the lower pelvis / Silver moon crescent below the navel"). The suite fades to grey with a traditional English carol ("Christmas Is Now Drawing Near"), rendered like an executioner's song by Rose McDowall’s doomed, beautiful voice.
The Dais box set includes the entirety of the rare Moon's Milk Bonus Disc CD-R / 2019 Threshold Archives Copal CD, which includes three collaborations with Thighpaulsandra. This material is as rich and intoxicating as the previous four phases, ranging from electro-acoustic singing bowl rituals ("Copal") to dissonant electronic recitations of visionary Angus MacLise poetry ("The Coppice Meat") to ominous classical melancholia ("Bankside"). Once again, Coil confirm the vastness of their confounding, infinite alchemy, explored and refined across decades of experimentation – both sonic and bodily. From post-industrial to post-everything, theirs is an art untethered, in the wilds of its own design.
https://www.daisrecords.com/products/coil-moons-milk-in-four-phases
€65.00
Moon's Milk (in four phases)
First compiled as a double CD in 2002, Moon’s Milk (In Four Phases) is a suite of four EPs that Coil released seasonally via their in-house Eskaton imprint across 1998. The line-up for these sessions were John Balance, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, Drew McDowall, and William Breeze. Recorded primarily at their home studio in Chiswick, London on the eve of a permanent relocation to the small seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare, the collection has long loomed as a pivotal and pinnacle work in the group's discography, but has never been officially reissued, or repressed on vinyl. Time has only ripened its tapestry of regal strangeness.
Arranged sequentially in tribute to the equinoxes and solstices, Moon's Milk captures Coil at a revelatory crossroads, leaning deeper into improvisation, spontaneity, and sound design. "Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull" initiates the proceedings on Spring Equinox, a two-part netherworld organ séance woven from vocal drones, cathedral keys, seasick strings, and opiated undertow. From there, Summer Solstice skews lighter but no less incantational, with Balance embracing his voice-as-instrument across lucid dream torch songs ("Bee Stings"), purgatorial spoken word ("Glowworms/Waveforms"), sultry chamber pieces ("Summer Substructures"), and falsetto ravings ("A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz)").
Autumn Equinox exudes more of a pensive and twilit mood, from the Rose McDowall-sung folk ballad "Rosa Decidua" ("I hear your voice sing near to me / I've put away the poisoned chalice (for now) / And lie down amongst the flowerbeds") to hall-of-lords hallucination "The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant” to the liminal string-plucked classic "Amethyst Deceivers," featuring excellent alien guitar by Breeze layered with Balance’s oft-quoted couplet: "Pay your respects to the vultures / For they are your future."
The album’s final chapter, Winter Solstice, is its most swooning, remote, and ceremonial. Opener "A White Rainbow" stirs strings, layered choral vocals, and shivering rhythm into an imploding burial hymn. "North" oscillates bleakly, a ghost in the machine murmuring opaque prophecy ("This black dog has no owner / This black dog has no odour"), while "Magnetic North" is its inverse, a guided meditation of gently flickering software and surreal chakra poetics ("Red rose filling the skull / Yellow cube in the lower pelvis / Silver moon crescent below the navel"). The suite fades to grey with a traditional English carol ("Christmas Is Now Drawing Near"), rendered like an executioner's song by Rose McDowall’s doomed, beautiful voice.
The Dais box set includes the entirety of the rare Moon's Milk Bonus Disc CD-R / 2019 Threshold Archives Copal CD, which includes three collaborations with Thighpaulsandra. This material is as rich and intoxicating as the previous four phases, ranging from electro-acoustic singing bowl rituals ("Copal") to dissonant electronic recitations of visionary Angus MacLise poetry ("The Coppice Meat") to ominous classical melancholia ("Bankside"). Once again, Coil confirm the vastness of their confounding, infinite alchemy, explored and refined across decades of experimentation – both sonic and bodily. From post-industrial to post-everything, theirs is an art untethered, in the wilds of its own design.
https://www.daisrecords.com/products/coil-moons-milk-in-four-phases
€62.00
Moon's Milk (in four phases)
First compiled as a double CD in 2002, Moon’s Milk (In Four Phases) is a suite of four EPs that Coil released seasonally via their in-house Eskaton imprint across 1998. The line-up for these sessions were John Balance, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, Drew McDowall, and William Breeze. Recorded primarily at their home studio in Chiswick, London on the eve of a permanent relocation to the small seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare, the collection has long loomed as a pivotal and pinnacle work in the group's discography, but has never been officially reissued, or repressed on vinyl. Time has only ripened its tapestry of regal strangeness.
Arranged sequentially in tribute to the equinoxes and solstices, Moon's Milk captures Coil at a revelatory crossroads, leaning deeper into improvisation, spontaneity, and sound design. "Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull" initiates the proceedings on Spring Equinox, a two-part netherworld organ séance woven from vocal drones, cathedral keys, seasick strings, and opiated undertow. From there, Summer Solstice skews lighter but no less incantational, with Balance embracing his voice-as-instrument across lucid dream torch songs ("Bee Stings"), purgatorial spoken word ("Glowworms/Waveforms"), sultry chamber pieces ("Summer Substructures"), and falsetto ravings ("A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz)").
Autumn Equinox exudes more of a pensive and twilit mood, from the Rose McDowall-sung folk ballad "Rosa Decidua" ("I hear your voice sing near to me / I've put away the poisoned chalice (for now) / And lie down amongst the flowerbeds") to hall-of-lords hallucination "The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant” to the liminal string-plucked classic "Amethyst Deceivers," featuring excellent alien guitar by Breeze layered with Balance’s oft-quoted couplet: "Pay your respects to the vultures / For they are your future."
The album’s final chapter, Winter Solstice, is its most swooning, remote, and ceremonial. Opener "A White Rainbow" stirs strings, layered choral vocals, and shivering rhythm into an imploding burial hymn. "North" oscillates bleakly, a ghost in the machine murmuring opaque prophecy ("This black dog has no owner / This black dog has no odour"), while "Magnetic North" is its inverse, a guided meditation of gently flickering software and surreal chakra poetics ("Red rose filling the skull / Yellow cube in the lower pelvis / Silver moon crescent below the navel"). The suite fades to grey with a traditional English carol ("Christmas Is Now Drawing Near"), rendered like an executioner's song by Rose McDowall’s doomed, beautiful voice.
The Dais box set includes the entirety of the rare Moon's Milk Bonus Disc CD-R / 2019 Threshold Archives Copal CD, which includes three collaborations with Thighpaulsandra. This material is as rich and intoxicating as the previous four phases, ranging from electro-acoustic singing bowl rituals ("Copal") to dissonant electronic recitations of visionary Angus MacLise poetry ("The Coppice Meat") to ominous classical melancholia ("Bankside"). Once again, Coil confirm the vastness of their confounding, infinite alchemy, explored and refined across decades of experimentation – both sonic and bodily. From post-industrial to post-everything, theirs is an art untethered, in the wilds of its own design.
https://www.daisrecords.com/products/coil-moons-milk-in-four-phases
€23.00
Husk
Starke Collaboration des field-recording-Spezialisten MURMER aka PATRICK MC GINLEY (er betreibt auch die Radiosendung „Framework“ auf dem Londoner Kult-Sender ‚Resonance104.4fm’) und JONATHAN COLECLOUGH. 4 Stücke, über 70 Minuten Spielzeit, feinstoffliche Resonanzenteppiche verbinden sich mit konkretem Material aus Natur & Alltag und von Instrumenten, der Geist öffnet sich für Mikro-Detail-Geräusche & subliminale Klangwelten... watch out: demnächst (2007) wird es von MURMER eine 7“ auf Drone geben!
“They first met in 2002 after appearing on the compilation LP ‘Chaleur’, and soon began work on the material that would become ‘Husk.’ Sharing a fascination with using ‘found sound’ in their music, ‘Husk’ includes recordings of refrigerators, thunderstorms, sheep, car horns, ferryboats, windblown sand, crackling charcoal, as well as more conventional instrumental sounds including a variety of percussion instruments. Much of the music started as live improvisation, in one case during a radio broadcast on McGinley’s regular ‘Framework’ slot on the London-based radioart station Resonance FM. These live recordings have been carefully edited and mixed over several years. ‘Husk’ is packaged in a 6-panel Digisleeve featuring photographs by Patrick McGinley.” [label info]
€14.00
Beech for John and Miho
A wonderful and amazing power-drone piece (74min) with myriades of overtunes, like be surrounded by three distorted Monochords at the same time..
“ 'Beech for John and Miho' was originally commissioned as a short piece for 'in return', a private wedding CD, where it appeared
alongside music by Joe Weismann (The Jaztronauts), If Thousands, JLIAT, and Space Machine. That fifteen minute version then blossomed into this bold, 74-minute work. An invitation to the wedding spawned a short Japan tour during which Coleclough performed solo and in duos with Aube, Kuwayama Kiyohara, and Narita Mamoru. A limited edition of 150 CD-Rs of 'Beech for John and Miho' were made specially for the trip to Japan, and the piece is now released on CD by Seal Pool. "An epic piece: shimmering and metallic." [press release]
€15.00
Six Guitars
Dies dürft der erste Teil (man könnte auch sagen: das erste Sammlerstück) der neuen "Guitar Series" auf Table of the Elements sein! COLLECTIONS OF COLONIES OF BEES wurden von JON MUELLER & CHRIS ROSENAU 1998 gegründet, hier schichten sie 6 Gitarren im minimalen Breitwand-Modus übereinander, das hat was von meditativem GLENN BRANCA...super! Auf klarem Vinyl, einseitig bespielt mit SAVAGE PENCIL - etching auf der Rückseite.
"Their sound is expansive, vast, and billowing; full of ringing guitars, soaring in the best traditions of the Chatham/Branca standoff; meanwhile, beneath the clouds sprawl dewy meadows of gently rolling electronica. Six Guitars is just what its title states, yet so much more. Wildly versatile drummer Jon Mueller follows the rules by hammering on an electric guitar with mallets, enhancing the Steve Reichian vibe (compare this with Mueller's face-melting solo onslaught Metals). The band sparkles accordingly, lifting to a dazzling climax. It's epic minimalism in exquisite registration, and the perfect selection to introduce the Table Of The Elements Guitar Series (fans will be happy to hear that Mueller is on deck with a solo contribution to the series as well). Beyond the music, there's the similarly spectacular packaging. It's a one-sided, 12-inch LP, pressed on clear vinyl; the reverse is laser etched with an original illustration by acclaimed UK artist Savage Pencil, whose credits include album art for The Fall, Big Black, and Sonic Youth. It's a limited-edition pressing, so get it while you can -- disks from the label's original Guitar Series in 1993/1994 are now some of Collectorville's must coveted treasures." [label info]
www.tableoftheelements.com
€17.00
Acting As If
"When Joe Colley speaks about his work and even about his life, he shrugs in an awkward attempt to stave off an existential frustration that not only his work addresses but also seems to consume his identity. There are numerous metaphors through his titles that allude to endless failures and a nihilism full of contempt, but Colley also implores a desperate urgency to express these poetics no matter how painful they may be. For three decades now, Colley has been a central and persistent figure in the California noise community. First recording under the moniker Crawl Unit and running the short-lived Povertech label, Colley presented a preternaturally strong acumen of electro-acoustic techniques and abstraction through a vast language of blistered textures, atonal noise, and gnarled drone. By 2000, he dropped the Crawl Unit moniker in favor of his own name with an ongoing discography of damaged yet exploratory electronics.
Colley returns to Drone Records for this 10" on the Substantia Innominata series, many years after his Crawl Unit "Tuscon Mon Amour" 7." In describing "Acting As If," Colley offers a vague series of descriptors: unheimlich, terror of the familiar, and no faith in what is "real." Within the sustained movements of scrabbling textures, motorized abrasions, and uncomfortable harmonics, such conditions are made manifest and Colley amplifies them into something eeriely sublime. All of that held within a self-contained logic that works within and against his deep knowledge of drone-on minimalism, musique concrete dynamics, and the explosiveness of noise culture. His swarming masses, throttled rumbling, and smoldering tension are all encircling and folding in on themselves. Rhizomes of sound that speak poison. Drink up, if it doesn't kill you, it will only make you stronger."
[Jim Haynes / Northern California, 2023]
listen to various CRAWL UNIT + JOE COLLEY tracks here:
https://aftersilencepodcast.bandcamp.com/album/as-31-from-crawl-unit-to-joe-colley
https://www.last.fm/music/Joe+Colley
"MECHANICAL RITUALS: 23 years after his EP for Drone Records (DR-28, as CRAWL UNIT) we are proud to release another / new work of conceptual / minimal / object drone artist JOE COLLEY from California.
We think JOE COLLEY (*1972) is a master of using mechanical object sounds and electronic static, but also strange low fi found sources and field recordings, creating alienating, surrealistic effects, similar to the likes of SMALL CRUEL PARTY, JIM HAYNES, DAS SYNTHETISCHE MISCHGEWEBE or even the more experimental side of ZOVIET FRANCE...
His newer compositions seem always to be filled with electro-magnetic hummings, strange hissing and the pourings of metallic objects as a basis, but you never find the use real instruments, synths, or masses of effect procession. Thus a very own scent of mystery appears, as all of these radiations are not really from this planet, without any "cosmic" connotations..
For the creator, these sounds are connected with unreal emotions of "Being Lost", a mistrust in what may be called reality, and a general feeling of alienation... - you can only wonder how this can result in such beautiful droning expanses..
Presented here are over 30 minutes of very best new COLLEY material (entitled "Limit / Limit" und "Always I / Always II") => through these drones of strangeness the mind is thrown inside an unrecognizable and confusing realm of broken electricity and something like audible-made atmospheric pressure..
Lim. 300 copies with artwork by dutch designer and micro label hero MEEUW, using a special silver print (on reverse board), BLACK vinyl. glossy black inner sleeves." [press release]
"I don't keep up with Joe Colley's recent releases for reasons I am unsure of myself. Not that there are many of them, but I only heard a few. Maybe his work is these days within installation work or performing? This new record shows Colley as I know him best. He is a man with an ear to the ground or wall; he hears stuff we don't. I believe he uses very few 'real' instruments, and for convenience, I include all things synthesizer (modular, digital, analogue). With his equipment, he records the unwanted sounds from our world. Buzzing, whirring, near broken cables and other forms of electric debris. It's never clear whether his recording devices are great or lo-fi. It could go either way, I think.
Maybe you need great some great electro-magnetic devices to pick up these sounds, but at the same time, when they are relatively low-key, they might have another attractive quality. Get my drift here? We live in a world with many sounds, at least many of us. I like to think I live in a quiet street, but here too, there is a lot of noise pollution. This pollution, so I believe, is Colley's playground. He collects and collates this material into pieces of dystopian nightmare. Coley's music sounds like I imagine the sound of a leaking nuclear power plant, the last breath of a machine park, and the death rattle of our post-industrial society. Unlike some of the other work I heard from Colley, this new work is relatively 'smooth', I must say. There aren't many hard cuts to indicate the final breath of a sound (but they are also not entirely absent), but Colley, this time, uses smoother transitions in the music. Many fragments are slowly cross-faded into the next section, revealing a less brutal element in his work. Or, perhaps, one could say, it makes his music all the more gentle? Or even more musical? Colley applies all the techniques from musique concrète here but keeps much of his source material in what seems to be a pretty rough state anyway. It's dark; it's real, scary, weird, haunting and haunted and, ultimately, beautiful music." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€18.00
Smelter
The field recordings on this album contain the common theme of water in different states: snow, ice, hail, streams, creeks, in the Puget Sound passing under a ferry boat, pouring from a leaking sea wall, in frozen ponds, as it turns a water wheel, rain in thunder storms, in a pool during winter swimming. These were recorded between 2017-2024. They were usually made quickly while out with my son, and later edited to preserve the sounds of our voices while obscuring the specific content of what was said. In contrast, when Daniel records, he has a predetermined place in mind, and sets off on whole day adventures to document through both photography and audio. Working together melds his high fidelity, pre-meditated recordings with my spur-of-the-moment low-fi recordings.
Daniel and I first met in 2011. We became friends through a shared interest in photography, music, hiking, and in subverting expectations and templates. Since then, we have collaborated on numerous visual and musical projects. When we decided to work together on Smelter, I gave him five recordings of my piano compositions which he treated and added his own elements to - turning them into long drone formations. These were then combined with the various water based field recordings we’d made individually.
Making records this way creates an aural archive of place/time and environment - in the same way a film photograph holds onto a vision in time: the single moment when light is suspended in microscopic halide crystals which can then be recreated and reinterpreted: a form of time travel, where the past is both fixed and also accessible in the present. Daniel is a great story teller. Every album he’s made holds a narrative, and I have been lucky enough to hear many backstories! With “ Smelter” perhaps we have created a time capsule, an index in which to place our combined story telling for listeners to share. -Faith Coloccia
When I was young kid my favourite book in the world was the Dictionary. Hey, It’s the book of life from A-Z! I worshiped the Dictionary like the holiest of books. One Sunday morning I was being bored out of my mind at church. The pastor gave a sermon and preached that “There is no definition in the dictionary for the word “Faith” and that is why it’s so special”. As soon as I got home I cracked open my holy dictionary and searched for “Faith”. Found the word in there but really not much of a definition offered. That mystery of the word “faith" stuck with me all my life and has been a great influence. I’m always searching for the impossible to define things in life. Or even try to create the undefinable! In which I strive for with my own music. What the HELL does this childhood story have anything to do with this collaboration album with Faith Coloccia???? Maybe nothing or maybe EVERYTHING! But this silly childhood church story came to mind when asked to write about our album. This collaboration recording with Faith Coloccia took many years and the longer it took for Faith Coloccia to finish it the better and stronger and even stranger the music became. Whenever Faith would apologise to me for the delay I would respond: “Faith…… I got faith in ya!” And so here we are with a collaboration album that is so special to Faith and myself that I do believe this music cannot be defined or captured by words. And that’s why it’s so special. - Daniel Menche
Compositions and arrangement by Faith Coloccia
Piano, voice, field recordings and sound treatments by Faith Coloccia 2017-2024
Sound treatments, oscillators, noise and field recordings by Daniel Menche 2023-2024
Mixed by Scott Evans at Antisleep, Oakland CA
Stereophonic Mastering by Timothy Stollenwerk
Photography by Daniel Menche
Photo collage by Faith Coloccia
Design by Traianos Pakioufakis
https://room40.bandcamp.com/album/smelter
€17.00
The fastest Way to become the Ocean
"The Chicago based Colorlist is comprised of crossover jazz duo Charles Rumback and Charles Gorczynski. Both multi-instrumentalists, Rumback mans percussion, bells and melodica, while Gorczynski plays saxophone, numerous woodwind instruments, synthesizers and harmonium.
'The Fastest Way To Become The Ocean' is a four track EP recorded especially for Serein. Once again joined by collaborators, the EP features guitarist Jeff Parker of Tortoise on 'Nine Lives' (A2), while Liz Payne lends vocals and melodica to the closing track, 'What We Have Left' (B2). The tracks were mixed by long-time Colorlist cohort, Josh Eustis.
This work finds Colorlist at their very best - during the twenty-six minutes of run-time we are led through a kaleidoscopic ocean of sounds and ideas. Opening track 'Light Conditions' begins on an optimistic note, all feather-light woodwinds and gently brushed snares, the mood is open and care-free. But, like mist rising on a clear day, punch-drunk harmonium drones and haunted sax phrases permeate the air and hint at something darker, more sinister at play. In the end, balance is restored, and we are led into the second piece, 'Nine Lives' feeling a sense of resolution.
'Nine Lives' is a beast of a track. At just under ten minutes in length, it builds from a growl of low bass and drums like waves crashing on the shore. This tumultuous opening is slowly organised into a labyrinthine but perfectly organised series of repeating phrases, steadily falling in and out of phase with one another. Parker's improvised electric guitar playing contrasts with the purposeful repetition of the other instruments. The track continues to build as more and more elements are added to the mix, until, as if reaching some kind of critical mass, tension is broken and the piece resolves with wave upon wave of blissful melody. It's fitting that this epic track closes the first side of the record - many will doubtless feel the benefit of a prolonged period of silence in order to reflect on this breathtaking piece of music.
The perfect antidote to the sheer impact of the pieces preceding it, 'Coming Into Sight' opens side B with an almost hymn-like solemnity. Harmonium is accompanied only by the distant roll of drums and the quiet chatter of birds, it's not difficult to imagine a boat roll in off the ocean bearing a loved one home to shore. The piece, which also falls just short of the ten minute mark, builds until the moment feet hit dry land again, the homecoming heralded by hoarse screams from Gorczynski's saxophone and flurries of thunderous percussion from Rumback.
'The Fastest Way To Become The Ocean' ends on a high with the short, upbeat closing track, 'What We Have Left'. This piece sits slightly apart from the others due to the presence of vocals from Liz Payne – a first for Colorlist and a welcome addition." [label info]
www.serein.co.uk
€10.00
Parallelo
"These abandoned ruins of the seventeenth century are located along a path that I often walk on, uphill, in silence, alone. Not exactly on the path but hidden, deeper into the woods, that place lies parallel to the path that leads to the top of a hill. Even if I do not go (necessarily, every time) inside, that place beyond attracts like a magnet, makes its presence felt, launching its resonance up to the place of my steps. That secondary place is not seen from the primary path, but it is there. And it pulsates with life, neither new nor old life.
Probably in a short time those ruins of an ancient monastery, located in Domodossola, North West Italy, will be demolished. However, that place will remain, even after its erasure.
Parallelo, a work composed between 2007 and 2009, is also an attempt to detect and make feel the coexistence of vital fields ; “places” that exist in parallel but which, thanks to non-ordinary ways, occasionally may touch each other." [Osvaldo Coluccino, May 2014]
"There is an approach to field recordings that I like to call 'the empty room' approach:
one sets up a pair of microphones in an empty space and simply catches the emptiness of
the space in a recording, by using a lot of 'gain', the space becomes alive. Osvaldo
Coluccino has had two releases before (see Vital Weekly 748 and 823) of improvised music,
playing various acoustic objects and acousmatic music. Here he uses recordings he made
in the ruins of a 17th century monastery in Domodossola, North-West Italy. The work was
already composed between 2007 and 2009, and for whatever reason wasn't released until now.
Two pieces here of exactly the same length and the starting point for each piece seems
to me the sort of drone sound one gets from the empty room. That is not yet the complete
thing as Coluccino also has a bunch of other recordings to use here: there is dripping
of water, objects falling onto the floor, and everything reverberates through this giant
space, or maybe even various spaces of varying sizes. Set up one microphone in one room
and let the action take place in the room next to it: you get the idea of ancient reverb
techniques before they got stuck in binary boxes. There are also lots of rumbling sounds,
lots of vague sounds around this place, sometimes leading up to a somewhat messy sound
picture. Coluccino uses the collage form, in which he places various bits one after
another, sometimes with short silent gaps in between. It's hard to say if he applies any
(computer-) processing to his music; sometimes one is inclined to think he does, but it
might also be very likely that he isn't. Throughout this is a soft release, I think;
I am not sure why Coluccino choose to do that. It all makes up, however, a mighty fine
album of a highly varied bunch of field recordings, all trapped inside two lengthy
pieces." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€14.00
Electric Pleasure
"Formed in Berlin in 1991, René Lamp and Robert Schalinski were working together on short-film projects and decided to expand their scope to include audio and multi-media projects among their repertoire. The next thing you know, Column One was born.
On this highly detailed and wonderfully crafted CD (their fourth), the band have dragged the look and feel of 1950s American science-fiction films deep into their underground laboratory, flicked a few switches and have mutated them into an absolute monster of a release, bringing to life a world of Kraftwerkian rhythms and Forbidden Planet background ambience all cohesively joined by an interesting narrative structure; the tracks ebb and flow into one another not as separate entities but as an entire parable of technology overpowering humanity.
On tracks like Re-Start To Move, the low-bitrate hip-hop tracks bounce along with a curious intent, just as a determined robot would as it seeks its next human prey, while on MZ4, the mood is much more melancholy, clearly showing the more human side to the mechanical creatures contained therein.
The band here have clearly done their homework both in terms of studying classic 80s electro as well as the sounds that brought those tracks to life. The bands label, 90% Wasser is also based in Berlin and is a self described non-profit artist label for electro-acoustic-minimal-spoken-digital-ideological-tonal & atonal-electronic-music plus video-releases, writings & picture-art. It may be a mouthful but this suits the release perfectly as both Column One and their parent label go way beyond the typical concept CD or multimedia project.
Column One have come up with a really classy and incredibly detailed release that deserves repeated listening not only because it will make you dance, but to fully appreciate the narrative content. Electric Pleasure works well on its own, but combined with a live audio/visual experience, the band could very well be unstoppable. Just like the robots contained therein. Highly recommended." [BBC Music Reviews]
www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/w3n8
€13.00
Truth and Distance
Neue Drone-Entdeckung aus den Staaten! Nah-Klänge & Vibrationen diverser Instrumente wie Zither, Klarinette, Horn oder Posaune werden mit Kontaktmikros aufgefangen und in obertönreiche, polyphone und recht rauhe Klangfelder transformiert. Drei Stücke mit sehr lebendigen, erhabenen Drones in verschiedenen Färbugen sorgen hier für sonores Entzücken! Zum entdecken !
"...Essential listening for the drone inclined, and any one into Tim Hecker, Aidan Baker, Fennesz, Belong and the like might just have
a new favorite record." [Aquarius Rec]
"Also Gordon Ashworth, also known as Concern, is a new name for me, who delivers three pieces on his 'Truth & Distance' release, which are alike Darwinsbitch in the field of drone music. He uses zither, lap harp, mbira, banjo, piano, clarinet, alto horn, trombone, accordion and lots of reverb. His instruments are scanned with vibrating objects in order to create overtones and it makes this almost a modern classical release. Somewhere in between music for an installation and Phill Niblock, I'd say. This is more the territory where things are on endless sustain, but perhaps due to the variety of sources and the relative shortness of the pieces things don't leap into static, but are vibrating, changing throughout its minimalist approach to keep things fascinating. Ashworth has plenty of skills to deliver three fine pieces. Not a second too long, not a minute too short. Very nice work." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
"Gordon Ashworth is Concern and this is his manifesto. Truth & Distance is a mini-epic, a minor masterpiece. Within these sonic walls lies a stunning landscape, adrift in golden tones and silver siren songs. Ashworth creates beautiful, shimmering music that defies categorization. It stands on its own, droning away into the furthest reaches of the night. Using only acoustic instrumentation, Ashworth conceives pieces of music in which resonance and timbre mutate and in the air and unfold naturally, organically. Hints of piano glisten like night shadows whispering through the leaves. Strings are bowed and plucked into oblivion. Everything is turned into a pile of reverb. Everyone is a ghost. Concern will shine a light on it all. Truth & Distance indeed. It's all coming up roses this time. Co-released with Iatrogenesis. Packaged in custom-designed silkscreened gatefolds by Seizure Palace."
[label info]
www.digitalisindustries.com
€10.00
Ripple
The always genre-crossing project from Japan with a great album, dark & experimental, more rhythm based stuff, (but these are stranged out rhythms, not danceable ones!), but the usual "unlistenable" collage / found sounds-tracks are present too, the more the album continues, the weirder it becomes... again quite unique & not classifiable.
"packaging: special transparent paper booklet w/ inlays + jewelcase. hiroshi hashimoto started releasing music twenty years ago as contagious orgasm. right from the beginning listeners knew that there was something very unique and special about c.o.'s sound - differing from the typical japanese 'industrial scene'. the initial aural transformation of track and release titles were soon replaced by something quite different. themes became more abstract and surrealistic; influences came from various collaborations and often seriousness was undercut with a wink... as on previous c.o. releases you can hear musical and stylistic sources from many cultural areas; for instance on 'ripple' you can hear indian chants, dub bass, electronic clicks/cuts, gongs, a piano, even straight beats and minimal sequencer grooves. styles range from free form to dance music to idm to noise and to ethnic sources. in hashimoto's works these ingredients cease what they were before - they are now transformed into coherent music (without being a eclectic cliché). an example: often many artists use voice samples in their work, to explain or to engross thoughts. hashimoto's usage of samples take the 'instruments of speech' out of their initial contexts - used in c.o.'s metaverse they entirely lose their initial intent and function. if we go further and think about 'rhythms', 'melodies' and 'textures' instead of 'voices', we might have a key to c.o.'s self conception. this album should be experienced with all senses wide open. enjoy this anniversary and look forward to the next twenty years of a great artist." [label description]
"Three years ago I had the great honor of reviewing the first album on Ant-Zen Recordings by legendary Japanese sound artist Contagious Orgasm. Since I had always connected Hiroshi Hashimoto ( a.k.a. Contagious Orgasm) with the Noise scene, thanks to his contribution to various Noise compilations, among others Relapse/Release Entertainment's "Japanese/American Noise Treaty", I was quite surprised to listen his "Dessert Addicts Will Return To This" (Ant-Zen, 2004). This latest album continues the strange landscapes of numerous musical styles. Dealing with everything from drone-based as well as collaged noise, across clicks'n'cuts to almost danceable electro-inspired techno and eerie soundscapes of beautiful ambient, it is an impossible task to finish this album only within a few listens. It is a complex musical voyage, that atmospherically varies from icy minimalism reminiscent of Pan(a)Sonic to militant electro of Kraftwerk until towards the end where the album turns more dreamy and dramatic with a mixture between experimental ambience and gentle acoustic post-rock reminiscent of Tortoise. "Ripple" is a continuation of the style of "Dessert Addicts Will Return To This", and the result is even more intense and clever than the aforementioned. Turn off the light and let yourself fall into the psychedelic tones of Contagious Orgasm. Excellent!" [NM / Vital Weekly]
label website: www.ant-zen.com
€14.00
Escape
"with 'escape' contagious orgasm continue to plough their uniquely peculiar furrow of audio experiments and self improvement, exploring the strange landscapes of numerous musical styles. dealing with influences ranging from ambient, dub, idm/electronica and electro to dark ambient and noise, it is an impossible task to completely comprehend this album’s scope within just a few listens. this aural voyage atmospherically varies from hypnotic echo-based beat pulses and moony synthesized melodies up to disturbing industrial soundscapes. mighty bass strokes, a multitude of different rhythms, manipulated voices and skillfully applied samples result in an adventurous and enthralling work of sonic art captivating with its deep, transparent production. turn off the light and let yourself fall into this album's very own flow. a quite accessible, multifarious, and yet typical element of contagious orgasm's wide cosmos in its charm, enjoyment and surprise." [label info]
www.ant-zen.com
€13.50
Live at Maschinenfest 2018
raubbau picks up the thread and continues with its quest to make available memorable maschinenfest performances. contagious orgasm was a mf regular, and this perfectly shows the progression from the 2008 performance made available last year: gone are the idm leanings, the co sound of the 2010s (which is presented here) is even more a language of its own, abrasive and accessible, palpable and psychedelic at the same time.
get ready for some active listening - “afterglow” and “operation blue” are like a walk over thin ice, with acoustic strings and percussions, intimate melodies, whispered vocals and eerie washes of background feedback. the two parts of “exploration end seeking” are examples of co’s experimental leanings and an appreciation of the musique concrete. “mineral” and “firewalker” sport almost-rhythms and through a psyched-out, spooky back-alley take the performance to its noisy finale. It goes without saying that the sound quality is flawless, representing all the fine details of the truly unique co sound.
www.raubbau.org
www.facebook.com/raubbau.label
credits
released November 20, 2019
recorded live at maschinenfest, turbinenhalle, oberhausen, germany, 21. october 2018. performed by h h, s s, marvel. artwork by stefan alt
https://raubbau.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-maschinenfest-2018
€10.00
Ritualistic Mutilation in the Bloody Darkness
"Controlled Death is the dark side project by the Japanese noise legend Maso Yamazaki a.k.a. Masonna. In April 2018 he decided to make a shudder debut with 1st album Symphony For The Black Murder then followed at the beginning of 2019 from 2nd work in an astonishing black wooden box that included Journey Through A Dead Body on vinyl and Deathwish Tapes 1-3 on cd and double tape. Now we're thrilled to see yet another mind-boggling work on double LP recorded during this year, Ritualistic Mutilation in the Bloody Darkness. Wild and amazing, this one is absolutely essential for any fan of synth and dark ambient music. Cracked minimal electronic sound by Korg MS-20, unclear and disturbing voice with the influence of primitive black metal and dark ritual in this new double album which developed a moisturized doom world while wearing a raw material texture. While listening to the records, each long track does meander their way slowly through proceedings with silent pauses, but they nonetheless generate a respectably dense assemblage of sounds. The smell of death is soaked in every groove produced by the four vinyl sides.
The activities of Controlled Death are like archaic revival to the music experience before Masonna . We can also find the pathology image of the early industrial period and the shadows of Vienna activism such as Hermann Nitsch as well as loose bits of seminal black metal. The existence and art that pierces through conspicuous consciousness and dives to areas of unconsciousness due to death and pleasure.
Double LP has been pressed on 140gr black vinyl and comes in a deluxe gatefold sleeve with impressive photography (of a cave church with the remains of the people who were massacred by the Saracens in 999 A.D. during the invasion of southern Italy) by Aldo Volpe.
This release is not be missed, and with only 299 copies pressed you'd better grab it now!
www.urashima.it
https://urashima.bandcamp.com/album/ritualistic-mutilation-in-the-bloody-darkness
€32.00
Rags / The Golddiggers
Wiederveröffentlichung ihrer ersten beiden LPs von 1980 & 1983!
"Consists of the whole of the LP previously issued as Re/arc and most of "The Golddiggers". Featuring Lindsay Cooper, Sally Potter, Phil Minton, Georgie Born, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Marilyn Mazur, Kate Westbrook, Collette Lafont, Eleanor Sloan, Lol Coxhill and Dave Holland. Explores the song form as so many of the early post Henry Cow records by ex alumni did. With a full book of texts and pictures (74+ minutes)." [label info]
www.rermegacorp.com
€14.00
Rarities Vol. 1 & 2
"This double CD set collects together, amongst other things, all of Outtakes for Other Occasions and The Small Screen, both of which were never commercially released, all four pieces from The Classic Guide to NoMansLand, the subscription 7” Pictures from the Great Exhibition collage, an extract from the Concerto for Sopranino Saxophone and Orchestra, an amazing, unreleased, live recording of Trio Trabant with Alfred Harth and Phil Minton, Education sung by Sally Potter, In the Dark Year, sung by Robert Wyatt, material from the with David Thomas and - the really great discovery - a really extraordinary solo piano performance recorded at Roulette in 1985. Comes with a substantial memorial booklet with newly discovered photographs, and texts by Sally Potter, Tim Hodgkinson, David Thomas and Kate Westbrook." [label info]
www.rermegacorp.com
€22.50
same
CD 1 Recorded live at CCL des Coteaux - Mulhouse by Claude Vorburger - 1978. All the music was played live in total improvisation.
CD 2 Recorded live at MJC de la Meinau – Strasbourg – 1979. All the music was played live in total improvisation.
Double CD in metal boxes including 12 paged b/w booklet with photos and Bruno de Chénerilles' memories.
200 copies.
https://alesiacosmos.com/out-now-alen-disko-corbo-combo-danger/
"Impulsy Stetoskopu is also well-known as a label for re-issuing some of the most obscure music from the past. I must admit I have no idea where the label finds them. On two CDs, we find two groups with a connection. Danger is a duo of Michel Froehly and Bruno de Chénerilles on electric guitars. They both play the same instruments in Corbo Combo, but Froehly adds bass, De Chénerilles, drums, trumpet, and trombone. The other members are Dominique Gasser on alto saxophone, tuyau (whatever that is) and Marie-Berthe Servier on voice and objects. I believe Corbo Combo was there first and existed for a short time. Danger was even around for a shorter period and played only three concerts. The other connection is the free-form music they play. In Corbo Combo, the saxophone adds a certain free jazz vibe to the music, but that doesn’t tell the complete picture. There is also an element of free rock in the music, reminding me of Smegma in similar times; the recordings from both discs are from 1978 and 1979. Danger’s free-wailing guitar improvisations are less jazzy/rockier. Occasionally they slip in a riff or the start of one, and their guitar techniques are not as extended as they would become during post-punk. But there is enough freedom here to enjoy. According to the booklet, some concerts ended in a riot, and it’s easy to hear why this in 1979 wouldn’t go down very well. Of the two discs, I prefer the Danger one, reminding me of seeing Sonic Youth on perhaps their first Dutch tour when Moore and Renaldo did an extensive improvisation at the end. Corbo Combo sounded interesting too, but maybe due to its free jazz connotations not so my thing. I can imagine seeing them live would be great, though!" [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€15.00
Z Sides
Cosa Brava is an experimental rock and free improvisation group formed in March 2008 in Oakland, California, by multi-instrumentalist and composer Fred Frith. The band comprises Frith on guitar, Zeena Parkins on keyboards and accordion, Carla Kihlstedt on violin, Matthias Bossi on drums, Shahzad Ismaily on bass and The Norman Conquest on sound manipulation. All About Jazz described their music as somewhere between folk, Celtic, modern chamber, Latin, funk, Eastern, and prog-rock. Cosa Brava recorded their first album, Ragged Atlas in San Francisco in December 2008, which was released in March 2010. John Kelman in a review at All About Jazz said that the album transcends time and genre and is one of 2010's most auspicious debuts. A second album entitled The Letter was released in March 2012. Fred Friths career began as a rock musician with Henry Cow in 1968, but has since diversified into a number of different genres, from avant-garde jazz to contemporary classical music. He has written scores for film and dance, and music for orchestras and string quartets. He became Professor of Composition the Music Department at Mills College in Oakland, California in 1999. The motivation behind the formation of Cosa Brava arose out of Friths nostalgia for rock music. He said, I really miss what you can do with a rock band. I miss developing material through the push and pull of cooperative rehearsals, I miss what happens when you move away from'the parts and start formulating things with a collective ear, I miss the single-minded commitment to a group identity. Z Sides is the groups third album. Cosa Brava may appear from their studio recordings to be all about songs. However, in live performances these songs were constantly interspersed with improvisations of all descriptions. Z Sides, the brainchild of The Norman Conquest, compiles his stunning live mixes of this material into an imaginary stand-alone performance.
Bass – Shahzad Ismaily
Drums, Voice – Matthias Bossi
Effects [Creative Live Sound] – The Norman Conquest
Guitar, Bass, Voice, Photography, Edited By – Fred Frith
Keyboards, Voice – Zeena Parkins
Layout – Lisa Robotka
Violin, Voice – Carla Kihlstedt
https://klanggalerie.bandcamp.com/album/z-sides
€15.00
same
Die argentinisch-japanische Zusammenarbeit vom ex-REYNOLS-Mann und KOUHEI beschert uns 9 drone-basierte Stücke, vom hyper-tiefen Kontemplativ-Drone bis hin zu komplexen, eher experimentellen Konkret-Material-Drones mit vielen Details. Low-fi, organisch, rauh und mit genügend akustischer Schubkraft und Bizarrheit um immer wieder aufs neue zu überraschen... inkl. einem crazed-out track mit RUDOLF EB.ER.
“9 tracks of solos, remixes, telepathy collaboration and real collaborations. 62min58sec landscape of flying drones, electronics, guitar, unidentified objects, uncertain clarinet, voice, distanced meeting and the memories of co-habitation. Intervention of RudolfEb.er for 8th track” [label info]
“The disc contains nine tracks of widely varying lengths and collaboration methods. To name a couple: remix of the other's material, telepathic collaboration and real collaboration. Most tracks are of a certain ambient nature, but with enough things going on to definitely go beyond that (strange cuts, sudden outbursts of seemingly random noise, etc.). The overall quality is pretty lo-fi, which is very good, because it is combined with very typical computer sounds. This works very well and adds a warm quality to the sound. For me the most interesting piece is actually the longest one: the telepathic collaboration. Somehow Courtis and Matsunaga seem very well in tune and have created a very good track with so many kilometers between them. Somehow this track is almost a condensation of the whole CD. It will be interesting to see what the Prele label has to offer in the future.” [MR / Vital Weekly]
€13.00
(THE) L.K.A. SONAR KIT
Sold out"CRANIOCLAST–maybe the most mysterious & legendary "post-industrial"- group from West-Germany of the 80's-the German counterpart to ZOVIET FRANCE? As CRANIOCLAST have nearly disappeared over the last few years, we are very proud to release a wonderful designed picture-disc containing two new tracks ("DE ZEESTER" and "THE ANEMONE") taking you closer to a bizarre & breathing aural world – listen to distant floating melodies, droney electronic tunes, exotic instruments (Sitar), voices from nowhere, animal sounds, piano, ether-sinus-sounds...as they all merge & form a perfectly relaxed & timelessly emotional soundtrack. Let the world turn into something different and witness how something alien can grow into sheer beauty.
BLACK & WHITE PICTURE DISC, COVERED BY DIFFERENT COLOURED TRANSPARENT PAPER, CLOSED WITH INDIVIDUAL NUMBERED STICKER." [press release]
Tucson, Mon Amour
Sold outwhite vinyl, handmade Coverartwork (sticked papers & pictures with coloured wax), edition of 250 numbered copies
"This project from Sacramento, CA, has released some of the most exciting experimental music in the last few years, which is documented on some CDs, Vinyls and tapes. CRAWL UNIT has shown many different sides to his sound so far, and this EP is no exception: metallic, high frequent reverberated sounds and low, droning backgrounds, accompanied by some harsh outbursts of noise. Extremely suspenseful and not to be missed by lovers of new & independent music." [label info]
€6.00
Spookhouse
"Remember Crawling Chaos?
Debuting post-punk art rock ensemble on Factory UK with the single 'Sex Machine'/'Berlin' (1980). They soon got dumped to Factory Benelux (who released their first LP 'The Gas Chair' in early 1982) for being too unclassifiable. Too weird? What else left but to put up their own Foetus Products for the musical output of Crawling Chaos and their many other disguises....
They reached a modest cult status, especially with the LP albums 'The Big C' (1984) and 'Waqqaz' (1985). 'Spookhouse' is a collection of their last ever recordings from 1987, unpublished so far, except for 2 tracks that were previously released before on cassette compilations by EE Tapes in 1987 and 1990.
Hey, this is CD EE25, these tracks are 25 years old and this label is exactly 25 years old too this year! Coincidence does exist, let's throw a party!
Jeff, this one's for you!
Filed under: art rock, psychedelic rock, avantgarde, experimental" [label info]
www.eetapes.be
"EE Tapes is a very interesting Belgian label that picks hidden gems from the experimental underground scene and present them for audience of today. Present album was originally released 25 years ago - in fact released by a label that also can celebrate its 25th anniversary. The album titled “Spookhouse” comes from the British band Crawling Chaos. The band is stylishly a hard one to pigeonhole. Many styles are emerged to create this cocktail of experimental rock. Throughout the runtime the listener are confronted with everything from sax-driven ska-music across punk rock to something that could have been born in the age of German Krautrock. Especially krautrock-band Amon Düül II crosses my mind as I listen to the “Spookhouse”-album. The sound production of the album is quite raw and unpolished giving a nice feel of authenticity and improvisation. Yet another pearl from the 80’s experimental scene picked by one of Belgium's premium underground labels. Highly recommended." [NM/Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Favorite Encores
Split-Album mit vier Stücken von NOAH CRESHEVSKY und seiner HYPERREALISM-Musik, dazu 3 Stücke vom POGUS-Label Betreiber und experimentellen Urgestein IF, BWANA. Anspruchsvolle & aufregende Neue Experimentalmusik, basierend auf instrumentalen & vokalen Klangquellen..
"A split cd of works by Noah Creshevsky (4 tracks) and If, Bwana (3 tracks). While on the face of it this may seem a somewhat odd pairing, the pieces recorded here comment on and highlight each other. And as the above quotes suggest, an aural adventure is indeed in the offing.
Trained in composition by Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Luciano Berio at Juilliard, Noah Creshevsky has taught at Juilliard, Princeton University, and Brooklyn College. He was director of the Center for Computer Music (1994-2000) and is currently Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. His musical vocabulary consists largely of familiar bits of words, songs, and instrumental music that are edited but rarely subjected to electronic processing. The result is a music that obscures the boundaries of real and imaginary ensembles though the fusion of opposites: music and noise, comprehensible and incomprehensible vocal sources, human and superhuman vocal and instrumental capacities. Creshevsky's most recent hyperrealist compositions explore the fragmentation and reconstruction of pre-existing music in combination with original synthetic and acoustic materials. Moments suggest musical environments of indeterminate ethnicity--simultaneously Western and non-Western, ancient and modern, familiar and unfamiliar.
Hyperrealism is an electroacoustic musical language constructed from sounds that are recognizable parts of our shared environment ("realism"), handled in ways that are exaggerated or excessive ("hyper"). Hyperrealist music exists in two basic genres. The first uses the sounds of traditional instruments that are pushed beyond the capacities of human performers in order to create superperformers--hypothetical virtuosos who transcend the limitations of individual performance capabilities (e.g., Mari Kimura Redux, Intrada, Favorite Encores). Hyperrealism of the second genre aims to integrate vast and diverse sonic elements to produce an expressive and versatile musical language. Its vocabulary is an inclusive, limitless sonic compendium, free of ethnic and national particularity (e.g., Shadow of a Doubt). Hyperrealism celebrates bounty, either by the extravagant treatment of limited sound palettes or by the assembling and manipulating of substantially extended palettes.
Al Margolis has been working under the musical pseudonym If, Bwana since New Year's Day 1984. There are often collaborators in this project‹both knowingly and unknowingly. Both are represented on this recording. Xyloxings was a concept-based work that in the end had the concept discarded for compositional considerations. Lisa Barnard's vocals were recorded with her direct knowledge. Scraping Scrafide uses a portion of Tony Scafide's piano part from a prior work of mine‹3 Out of 4 Ain't Bad‹and processes it. Cicada #4: Barnard Mix is part of my "discipline" series‹an open set of works‹and uses Barnard's vocals from other sessions to create one of many possible versions of this work." [press release]
"... Creshevsy choose the term 'hyperrealis' for the typical electro-acoustical music he developed. In three compositions on this cd ('Mari Kimura Redux'‚ 'Intrada' and 'Favorite Encores') Creshevsky "uses the sounds of traditional instruments that are pushed beyond the limitations of individual performance capabilities". Creshevsky is a master in the field of audio-collage and plunderphonic-like procedures and leaves us with many questions. For example we often hear violins in his work, playing in a style that we are used from normal classical music. But I'm not sure whether he takes samples from already existing (violin)works by others, or whether he composes pieces for violin first to be used consequently by him in his collage work. Comparable to how Biota works. His compositions make the impression of staying close to classical musical structures, but transcended to unknown heights through his virtuoso manipulation work. The music has an enormous speed and drive, combined with an enormous flexibility and maneuverability. In each piece we are constantly exposed to an intensity and complexity that we don't often find in music. His works open dazzling dimensions and perspectives. On the other hand the music remains fluent and accessible, very lively and of an appealing dramatic. Great work! 'Intrada' is of special interest because of the use of (samples of) the fantastic voicework by Chris Mann.
If, Bwana is the pseudonym Al Margolis uses already since 1984 for his musical output. As a guest he was present on Creshevsky's 'To know and not to know'. Between the highly informed and complex music of Creshvesky, the works of If Bwana offers us some rest. His pieces develop in a slower pace and are built from a smaller set of soundmaterial. In 'Xyloxings' and 'Cicada # 4; Version Barnard', the voice of Lisa Bernard plays a prominent role. For 'Scraping Scrafide' If, Bwana makes uses of the piano playing of Tony Scafide, taking from an earlier composition by If, Bwana. In comparison to maximalistic efforts of Creshesky, the works If Bwana are more of a minimalistic approach." [DM / Vital Weekly]
www.pogus.com
€13.00
Creta
CRETA is the new project by MASSIMO PUPILLO (ZU, LANIAKEA), electronic artist LUCIANO LAMANNA and string instrument virtuoso ROBERTO ZANISI. As trio they explore an adventurous sonic territory between COIL in their ambient moments, dark bass pulses and bucolic-mediterranean string sounds.
CRETA is a new trio of artists coming from very different backgrounds: ROBERTO ZANISI is a finger picking guitar player and a virtuoso on strings of all kinds, including “exotic” instruments like the Turkish Cümbüs, the Greek Bouzouki or the Albanian Cifteli. Since 2003 he has been active in many contexts: he worked with GIOVANNI VENOSTA producing sound tracks for SILVIO SOLDINI’s movies, took part as soloist musician in STEWARD COPELAND’s tour “La Notte della Taranta (Night of Tarantula)”, played with the American musician AMY DENIO and performed with SAINKHO NAMTCHYLAK. LUCIANO LAMANNA’s main characteristics are experimentation, analog synths, vinyl and a big love for techno. In 2015, the resident DJ at Ex Dogana, Roma and member of the Italian artist collective LSWHR launched the modular synthesizer project BALANCE (with DAVIDE RICCI), and in 2017 he released the album “Divus” with ZU member LUCA T. MAI, to name a few of LAMANNA’s many releases on labels like EARACHE, BORING MACHINES, SCUDERIA et.al. And, last but not least, there is MASSIMO PUPILLO, highly acclaimed bass maniac with ZU, LANIAKEA and in countless other constellations (a.o. PETER and CASPAR BRÖTZMANN, FM EINHEIT, CHRIS CORSANO). As CRETA, they create outlandish sonic pieces that blend sci-fi ambient atmospheres with dark bass pulses and bucolic-mediterranean string instruments – an unique and yet coherent mix of elements that adds consequently to the oeuvres of the three artists!
Tracklist:
1 … And Everything That Shines
2 Babe In The Egg Of Blue
3 Future Humans In Form Of Aur
€18.00
Des tempes qui se vitrifient ou se marbrent
New material by this italian project, very hissy & droney & machine-like an-organic deep atmo-noise....
“this 20min piece could be depicted as the awakening of a mysterious living being, discovering a hostile world... screepy dark ambient! full-couloured printed 3"cd-r in a slim crystal box.” [label info]
www.taalem.com
€5.00
Orgasm
"Certainly one of the weirdest experimental & psychedelic album with noise and industrial sonorities, first time released by Esp Disk in 1969, an early cult label of free jazz and weird curiosities. An absolute psychedelic tribal UFO and proto-industrial-noise in the story of music.
A pioneer touch of Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Whitehouse, Test Department mixed with something full stoned and tribal ... ahead of its time in the 60's !!!
This epic album is presented for the first time remastered with the same real rough sound and same feeling seeked at the time. And more volume added"
Certainly one of the greatest UFOs in the history of music, Cromagnon and their 1969 concept album “Orgasm” were the precursors of what was to come thirty years later: industrial, metal and experimental music bathed in improvised experiments on lsd.
“The project couldn’t be smooth, otherwise humanity would be lost. There’s room for computers, but the soul is gone.”
Cromagnon is Brian Elliot (†), Austin Grasmere (†), Salvador Salgado, and The Connecticut Tribe :
Brian, Bob and Sal were responsible for lyrics and Brian was the biggest contributor.
Bob, Vincent, Peter, Gary & Louie all helped create the music (writing chord changes etc.)
Tracks :
1. Caledonia (04:22)
2. Ritual Feast Of The Libido (03:29)
3. Organic Sundown (07:14)
4. Fantasy (07:42)
5. Crow Of The Black Tree (09:54)
6. Genitalia (02:46)
7. Toth, Scribe I (10:36)
8. First World Of Bronze (02:45)
€29.50
Waves 3
Magazine announces the album Waves 3 by Curd Duca, the third and last part of the trilogy Waves: Austrian electronic composer Curd Duca is widely known for his 1990s series of critically acclaimed easy listening 1-5 (Normal) and elevator 1-3 (Mille Plateaux). After a long break from the studio, Duca has issued part 1 of the Waves series in late 2020 on Magazine WAVES 001LP. This was in fact his first album in 20 years. The Waves recordings pick up the thread of his '90s work and open up a new chapter. Again, everything is shifting constantly and all tracks are quite different (soft, rough, melodic, abstract...), but complement each other in a surprisingly coherent way to form an idiosyncratic universe. While other experimental artists can sound as if they're attempting to lift lead weights over their heads, Duca is content flicking feathers into their faces. After his impressive 1990s/00s run on Normal and Mille Plateaux, Curd Duca had disappeared for 20 years before emerging from the aether last year. The albums of the new Waves trilogy represent a flawless examination of sound and texture. The Vienna-based producer still straddles high and low culture, but approaches his sonics with a more historically aware ear. So plain and resonant gong recordings are placed next to pop music loops and DSP-fractured cut-ups, and icy electronic jams nudge up against cassette warped instrumental sketches. Waves 3 is a continuation and culmination of the series. In the final chapter, you're drawn in with church bells on dome, but quickly transported to another era entirely with the crackly bläser and absurd zither, a tongue-in-cheek plunderphonic experiment assembled from zither samples. Duca follows this evocative run of tracks with a machine-gun blast of experimental sound, from the percussive 500 GRM to the ferric ASMR birdsong of "ziegenmelker." This is Duca at his most uncompromising, grabbing central European culture and dragging it through his array of processes. Playing the album from beginning to end opens up a weightless cut-and-paste mixtape, stitched together with expert foresight and a knowing wink to camera. Like the best psychedelic experiences, memories are triggered and turned inside-out, and knowledge is allowed to blossom. Curd Duca has been refining his process for three decades now, and few artists have quite the same ability to challenge, provoke, and inspire.
€22.50
I have a special Plan for the World
I had become close friends with Thomas Ligotti, the pre-eminent writer of Nights and DeadEnds and Doubled Darknesses. I had written him many fan-letters, and we both wanted to work with each other. I Have A Special Plan For This World was our second work together, after our In A Foreign Town, In A Foreign Land. This album Channels an enormous emotional response from me. Ligotti was, is, and will be a huge influence on my work. No-one has seen the bells tolling, tolling, tolling for us all like Thomas. Our house is full of his original manuscripts and typescripts, which I have collected from him for nearly 30 years.Andrew Monster Liles has also ReDreamt, ReDreamed, the track and this new version is on Side 2 of the picture-disc, replacing "Extracts From The Bungalow Tapes", which was on the B-Side of the original vinyl version. "Extracts From The Bungalow Tapes" will appear on the CD reissue of this album, as well as both vinyl versions which are on their picture-disc.Remastered from the original, tapes by The Bricoleur at Bladud Flies!, and with the original artwork refreshed and reborn by Rob Hopeye, this 12" vinyl picture-disc comes in a full-colour die-cut sleeve, which is printed on both the outside and inside.This is one of the second group of 4 reissues of the entire back catalogue of C93 on picture-disc and standard vinyl, in the lead-up to the publication of my autobiography at the end of 2026, whilst I also work on many other recording, publishing, and painting projects, and Watch And Pray! Each release in the picture-disc vinyl reissues series is limited to 1,000 copies, and the titles will not be repressed as picture-discs once they have sold out. David Tibet, Hastings, 3 June 2025.
https://current931.bandcamp.com/album/i-have-a-special-plan-for-this-world
€35.00
Imperium
Recorded at the same time as I and Then C93 were channelling Swastikas For Noddy, Imperium was the BackSide GrimStory to the Bright 'n' Breezy (Locust) SummerTime Whistkes of Swastikas For Noddy. I was very ill whilst making both records, and my main memories (along with Speed And Vodka, ThankYou, ThankYou) were lying sick on a grimy couch at the long-gone IPS Studios in Shepherd's Bush. There was a heavy leak in the kitchen and the water was running over the studio floor and up my distressed, distressing leader jeans (with button fly) and Into My Very Soul. Remastered from the original, tapes by The Bricoleur at Bladud Flies!, and with the original artwork refreshed and reborn by Rob Hopeye, this 12" vinyl picture-disc comes in a full-colour die-cut sleeve, which is printed on both the outside and inside. This is one of the second group of 4 reissues of the entire back catalogue of C93 on picture-disc and standard vinyl, in the lead-up to the publication of my autobiography at the end of 2026, whilst I also work on many other recording, publishing, and painting projects, and Watch And Pray! Each release in the picture-disc vinyl reissues series is limited to 1,000 copies, and the titles will not be repressed as picture-discs once they have sold out.David Tibet, Hastings, 3 June 2025.
https://current931.bandcamp.com/album/imperium
€35.00
Twice around the Earth. An Experiment in listening
Ein Hör-Experiment vom Recommended Records-Betreiber, diese Produktion fürs ORF Kunstradio (www.kunstradio.at/2003A/cutler).
Eine unglaubliche Fülle von field recordings werden quasi als „Reise um die Welt“ verarbeitet: ein Versuch, die Subjektivität und Voreingenommenheit beim Hören zu überwinden...
„Out of the Blue Radio ist eine Radiosendung, die in London täglich zwischen 23.30 Uhr und Mitternacht auf Resonance FM (http://www.resonancefm.com), einem unabhängigen Sender für Radiokunst, ausgestrahlt wird. Gestartet wurde das einjährige, budgetlose Projekt im Juli 2002.
Meine Idee für diese Sendung war es, den HörerInnen das Ohr einer anderen Person für jeweils eine halbe Stunde zu "leihen"; ein Fenster zu einer anderen Geräuschkulisse zu öffnen - entfernt oder nah -, die nicht ident mit der eigenen akustischen Umgebung ist. Die AutorInnen, die uns ihre Ohren zur Verfügung stellen, gestalten durchgehende, ungeschnittene halbstündige Aufnahmen von einem Ort ihrer Wahl, aufgenommen zwischen 23.30 Uhr und Mitternacht Londoner Ortszeit; d.h. halb vier Uhr nachmittags in Vancouver, 7.30 Uhr morgens in Peking oder 00.30 Uhr in Wien. Sie schicken diese unbearbeiteten Aufnahmen dann nach London, wo sie wie sie sind gesendet werden.
Ein wichtiger Aspekt des Projekts ist es, ganze Zeitblöcke in ihrer Entfaltung einzufangen; sie nicht zu verbessern oder umzumodellieren zu versuchen; sie nicht den Vorstellungen eines Produzenten, was gut klingt oder ästhetisch wertvoll ist, anzupassen, sondern einfach nur diese Momente einzufrieren. Ort und Tätigkeit sind gewählt, der Rest sich selbst überlassen. Dies sind allerdings nicht Schnappschüsse aus dem Leben, sondern Hörobjekte: Geräusche, die eingefangen werden und in fremden Kontexten reproduziert werden; Sounds, die gerahmt und objektiviert und unabhängig wiedergegeben werden.
Es scheint mir, dass die Beiträge mit ihrer rohen Beschaffenheit, am "Mangel" an Bearbeitung überhaupt nicht leiden - ganz im Gegenteil: sie entwickeln dadurch eine unglaubliche Kraft. Von allen anderen sinnlichen Wahrnehmungen und von ihren lebenden Quellen getrennt, enthüllen sie, was durch die Zwänge des Alltags, durch das wir eilen, unbedacht überhört wird. Geräusche, die instinktiv ignoriert, in Objekten aufgelöst oder absichtlich unterdrückt werden, können durch ihre unmittelbare Irrelevanz und die Gleichgültigkeit von Maschinen, die keine Subjektivität besitzen, zu neuem Leben erwachen.
Selbstverständlich "klingen" diese Geräusche, doch das ist nicht deren "Bekenntnis". Sie verlangen nicht, als reiner Sound gehört zu werden. Sie sind, was sie sind: Autos, Hämmer, Atmosphären - zugleich vertraut und rätselhaft. Und - wie Geräusche, die durch ein offenes Fenster dringen - können sie Beachtung finden oder ignoriert werden. Sie können lediglich eine Atmosphäre tönen - oder die Aufmerksamkeit auf sich ziehen und unser ästhetisches, analytisches und sogar narratives Auffassungsvermögen in Gang setzen.
Als ich gebeten wurde, diese Kompilation zu machen, wollte ich natürlich die Aspekte des Zufälligen und des Unmittelbaren, die so wichtig für das Projekt sind, bewahren. So, anstatt eine Auswahl der "best of" zu treffen oder besonders "interessante" Sounds herauszusuchen, entschied ich, mich von Geografie und Zeit leiten zu lassen. Ich plante eine akustische Reise zweimal um die Welt, wofür 43 der bislang 230 Aufnahmen verwendet werden. Geografische Angaben bestimmten die Reihenfolge der Stücke; der Zeitfluß welche Abschnitte/Orte innerhalb dieser geographischen Zonen gewählt wurden. D.h. ich nahm die ersten 55 Sekunden von der ersten Aufnahme, dann eine Strecke von ca. 0.55 bis etwa 1.50 Minuten von der nächsten usf. durch die Arbeit hindurch. Ich dies aber nicht so genau und entschied beim Anhören erst, wieviel ich von jedem 55-Sekunden-Abschnitt schlußendlich nahm und wo und wie ich die Übergänge gestalten wollte. Anders als die Überblendungen verweilen die "reisenden" Ohren allerdings immer an einem Ort nach dem anderen. Keine der Sounds wurde bearbeitet oder verändert.
Diese freeze-frame Ausgabe von Out of the Blue Radio, die sich eigentlich ähnlich einer Diaschau entwickelt, kann natürlich weder die Ganzheit des Programms noch den kumulativen Effekt, jeden Tag eine andere Welt zu betreten, transportieren; doch ich habe mich an die Priorität des Hörens gehalten, wilde Landschaften zu nehmen, bevor sie gejätet, bepflanzt und verbessert werden. Die täglichen Sendungen, sogar diese Montage, tragen nur leicht die Handschrift von menschlichen Entscheidungen oder Absichten. Der Rest ist, wie er ist.
So wie ich das Stück geschnitten habe, passiert alles, was man hört, während John Scott am Londoner Themseufer entlang läuft, in Hörweite des Big Ben. Das Stück geht John Scott los, der seinen Lauf beginnt, holt ihn bei der ersten Umrundung des Globus ein und kehrt wieder zu ihm zurück als er kurz vor Mitternacht seine Aufnahme beendet. Zwischenzeitlich reisen wir mit virtuellen 49.803 Meilen/Stunde (79.500 km/Sek.) in Quantensprüngen von Ort zu Ort.“ [Chris Cutler]
“An experiment in listening. These compositions are an offshoot of the daily soundscape programme I ran for Resonance FM radio between July 2001-2002, which consisted of commissioned real-time recordings made all around the world between 23.30 and midnight GMT (the time of the broadcast). This CD begins with material from these broadcasts confecting, as it were, two composites of the Earth and a few of its inhabitants, somewhat analogous to what an impossible satellite ear with pinpoint acuity might hear in transit - plus one ear-cleaning stretch between them, taken from a single hear-point. I have tried to make these pieces both open and to work on parallel levels: not only do they have their own narrative and aesthetic qualities, but I hope they also offer a meditation on listening and not listening, interpretation and structure, chance and microphonics. The list of ears around the world who supplied basic material is too long to print here, but it includes many names familiar from these catalogues, and many from the still young soundscape and phonograpic community. Full details of people and places are given in the booklet, along with artwork and thorough notes. You have to trust me on this, it's a really engaging record. Sometimes unbelieveable. I don't think you'll regret giving it a chance.” [ReR]
€14.00
Music for Stockmarkets
Das russische Projekt mit einem kritischen Werk zur Konsumgesellschaft & Finanzwirtschaft, eingespielt auf original russischen "Vintage Electronic" Geräten!
"Cyclotimia is a project from Russia and have created some very good and interesting albums. Albums like ‘Same Time Same Place’, ‘Wasteland’ and ‘Celestis’ are a combination of spatial ambient and IDM glitch, aided with the use of lush synthesizers. The music often times is very deep and free interpretable. A recurring theme for this project is the world of stockmarkets. With this new album ‘Music for Stockmarkets’, stockmarkets is the essential theme and motive. Though the album ventures into the typical Cyclotimia topics, it doesn’t sound at all like the former albums. Well, maybe in some places, but its most of all a totally different experience. Gone are the deep soundscapes as the music is stripped to its bare essential. With a fast listening, it reminds me of music created in the Amiga era, but upon closes inspection, the music is rather layered and there is a lot to be discovered here. The album consists of a lot of bleeps and clicks and cuts, but there is also room for the occasional (piano) melody, together with different sampled sources. The great thing about this album is that it’s very subliminal and can sometimes have a rather disturbing feeling to it. A lot of tracks are very clinical in its approach, but it is interspersed with more layered tracks and deeper sounds. This is really an album which should be listened to with headphones and requires your full attention. If listened to rather superficially, the album can seem somewhat boring, because all the details are missed, which is the essential of this interesting work.
It is music that can be difficult and cryptic, but that’s also the beauty of this album, which turns the music into a piece of art. The music therefore isn’t for everyone, because it’s not a ‘fun’ album. It’s maybe more academic, but with a more human approach. Hard to describe, you just have to listen to it. The artwork is also very nice and really makes the experience complete. The album gets a high recommendation because of its originality, but only to the more advanced listeners of experimental music, but a great album nonetheless." [Gothtronic]
"Cyclotimia is most probably the only project in the world which has chosen the creation of a soundtrack to "globalisation" and life of the "consumer society" as their concept. The project members more than anyone else are immersed into the magic of finance and probably therefore has their creative intuition allowed them to compose the main part of "Music for Stockmarkets" with its unforgivingly precise name "Wallstreet Requiem". Today the whole civilised world is listening to this requiem the first cords of which were played on Wall Street itself... The "Music for Stockmarkets" album with its radically experimental nature stands out in the extensive discography of this Moscow project. The 64-minute album includes 32 tracks divided into three conceptual parts: "Wallstreet Requiem" (25 minutes, recorded in 2004-2007), "Trivial Pleasures" (26 minutes, recorded in 2002, this part was the only one released as a seperate CD in 2003) and "Financial Glossary" (13 minutes, recorded in 2003)... The music material itself is nothing like the one heard in the previous records of Cyclotimia. There is no apocalyptic soundscapes of "Wasteland" times, no cybernetic hi-tech and media madness of "E$chaton", no cosmic downtempo of "Celestis: Space Ceremonial Music"... Minimalism, academic sterility, surgical accuracy and meditative ataraxy prevail on "Music for Stockmarkets". Then again it is not the familiar "idm", "glitch", "noise", "clicks and cuts" and not "minimal techno"... The sound of the album is chrystal-clear and warm at the same time. "Vintage" lovers have a wonderful chance to listen to the masterpieces of Soviet music production (such as Rhythm 1, Rhythm 2, Aelita, Formanta UDS, Formanta EMS-01, Polyvox) in pure sound, unprocessed by effects." [label info]
€13.00
Rivages sur l'Antipode
"Laurent Peter has produced and released electronic music under the d'incise moniker since 2002, from dub to electronica, gradually opening those styles to electroacoustic experimentations. With his projects Diatribes (an open formation with drummer Cyril Bondi) and Karst (quartet with Bondi, Luc Muller and Abstral Compost), he is also involved in free improvisation, for which he is using his laptop, live treatments and various contact miked objects. These projects have included musicians such as Barry Guy, Keith Row, Jason Kahn, Christian Weber, Norbert Moslang, Hernani Faustino, Joao Pedro Viegas, Tzii and many more. Finally, besides coordinating the insubordination netlabel, dedicated to improvised music, and being a member of the audiactiviste netlabel, Laurent Peter is also active as a graphic designer. Composed on a special request from ini.itu, “Rivages sur l'antipode” (shores on the opposite side of the earth) is his first vinyl LP and is based on similar archival material as the one used by Francisco López in his stunning “untitled #228”. Nonetheless, d'incise has achieved radically different results, combining digitally-processed textures, microsamples and humming harmonics rippling out over broken rhythms. He has collaged the least obvious bits of gamelan, many grainy soundbytes from Jakarta, Makassar, Bandung and Yogjakarta into a kaleidoscopic reinterpretation of these shattered fragments. Sudden transitions, alinear progressions and melancholic, sprawling, autumnal atmospheres reveal a very personal soundworld. This LP could evoke Kim Hiorthoy on sedatives under moist tropics, or an alter-ego of Burial in a futuristic decaying Jakarta won back by the jungle, with hints of digital crispiness from Kid606 période Mille Plateaux; a touch of the microsampling of Akufen, all of this marinated into the experiments in folk deterritorialisation made by some Ritornell artists such as Random_Inc / Sebastian Meissner. Icing on the cake, this LP was mastered by James Plotkin in Philadelphia. 250 copies, hand numbered. Some copies come with a serigraphy made by Laurent Peter himself." [label info]
www.iniitu.net
"On an entirely different nature is the album by Laurent Peter, finally we have a name for D'Incise from Switzerland, who received slighty similar sound material as Francisco Lopez did for his album for this label (see Vital Weekly 711), but Peter does something completely different with it. His main method is sampling the hell out of anything. It perhaps also reveals a bit more what Lopez used, as that was rather a mystery back then. Percussive sounds from Indonesia for instance, which D'Incise explores these for the lowest, grainy textures, chopped up to form new rhythms, cut from 'real' sound and the hiss between. Ini.itu compares this with some of the older and more experimental releases on Mille Plateaux/Ritornell, and I can see that. It shares that somewhat crude approach to sampling, the click 'n cut approach musicians like Random Inc and Kid606 had back then, but D'Incise never comes close to playing any 'dance' related music. The textures are sometimes pretty 'vague', shimmering perhaps, but I think that kind of adds nicely to the record. Its probably the best record by D'Incise I heard so far. The compositions are worked out better, and never seem to take more time than necessary. Very nice." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€12.50
Untitled
"One track, 40 minutes over 2 sides. The eagerly awaited and legendary Latitudes session finally sees the light of day. Vinyl comes in a limited run of 700 black and 300 purple and includes an insert and a sticker.
from the liner notes:
July 2005 was a crazy time in my universe. John Loder, my mentor and surrogate big brother, who I had worked alongside at Southern for 20 years, was very ill - battling a brain tumour diagnosed 18 months earlier. Dälek were holed up in my flat, on the sharp end of reducing their number from three to just two. They were recording a session for our relatively new Latitudes imprint - spending days in the studio laying tracks and nights in my living room, working on ideas. We got to know each other, really. (I have the photos of Alap passed out drunk in his boxer shorts to prove it.) I discovered that the hip-hop bravado and crushing beats were only one layer of these guys. They had a secret Metal past, a serious Alt-Country present, and hearts as big as New Jersey. Their love and knowledge of music ran deep.
On the 7th, I got up to head into the office/studio, and left them sleeping away. Half way to the bus stop I got a call from Tony saying turn around, go home, don't get on the bus or the tube. He said there had been explosions in the Underground. I turned around, went home and turned on the news. Alap and Will sat with me and watched London's own version of 9-11 unfold, and then, full of determination and grit, headed into the studio to finish recording. And what did they produce?
Why it's taken this long for this recording to be released is only down to me, and the battles that I've fought in the intervening five years. In August of 2005, John Loder left us. Since then I've had to work very hard to keep Southern going, and though we had to close our warehouse and as a result lose most of our staff last year, we've survived, and actually come out all the better for it. It's like the old days - we're compact, which means we can fight our battles like guerilla warriors - which is pretty much what you need to do to make ends meet these days.
None of this has much to do with the epic grooves that Dälek laid down on this session. And it has everything to do with it, at least when I listen to what MC Dälek is saying. Sonically, this session is a real departure from Dälek's albums. It's a gorgeous, multi-cultural melting pot of sound and space, a serious shot to the head, an opening of the third eye. I strongly urge you to explore the magnificence of this session on headphones, in a darkened room, and let it take you away.
I love it so much that I guess I wanted to keep it to myself for all this time. But it's time to share, and to apologise to you all for taking so long. - Allison Schnackenberg, August 2010" [label info]
http://blog.southern.com/latitudes
€20.00
Betrachtung
"Documenting the sonic side of two audiovisual live performances on the subject of contemplation (‘Betrachtung’), the two 22-minute tracks on this album are remarkably different in character. EMERGE’s samples of breathing sounds, extremely processed, and Gerhard Zander’s prepared electric guitars alternate between near-Cagean intervals of silence, while the second set is a closely interwoven dialogue between percussive sounds and soothing harmonic drones.
‘The Audiovisual Collective’ is an outfit with members from Zurich and Augsburg founded in 2010. While the number of players and the instruments they use may vary, the concept that unites their live improvisations treats the visuals not as an ornamental backdrop for the musical performance, but a visual cue for the sound players to interact with. For “Betrachtung”, the image of a human eye depicted on the album cover was treated to a range of live manipulations, instigating live processing of the samples and guitar sounds. While both of the recorded sets display an astonishing range of textures and timbres given the minimalistic choice of source sounds, each track exemplifies a different approach to free improvisation. Track 1 is a series of isolated events creating an unresolved tension between them that keeps the listener in suspense until the very last minute. Much less ‘noisy’ than track 1, track 2 starts out by defining a clear division of roles between the percussive samples and the harmonic, if not melodic, soothing drones of the e-bowed guitar. The ensuing closely-knit dialogic interplay between the two audible players EMERGE and Zander is a fine testimony to the degree of intensity that can be reached in spontaneous musical communication." [label info]
www.wix.com/attenuationcircuit/attenuation-circuit
€8.00
Verwandlung
"This live performance from the ‘Elektromagnetischer Sommer’ 2011 festival in Zurich features prepared guitar player Gerhard Zander and ‘musicien concrète’ EMERGE, on samplers and contact microphones, both interacting with the visual cues from Eazy’s live processing of abstract images on the theme of metamorphosis (‘Verwandlung’), an extract of which can be seen in the sleeve art. The 45-minute set is dominated by gently droning ambient textures and looped chords in unhurried pulses while a constant interplay with metallic, rather high-pitched samples originating from guitar and electric bass, but sometimes more reminiscent of saxophones, manages to sustain interest throughout.
Formed in 2010 by audio and video artists from Augsburg and Zurich, ‘The Audiovisual Collective’ has since developed towards an ever closer integration of the sounds that are used to communicate a sonic counterpart to the images projected during their performances. With lots of reverb and effects used on the prepared electric guitar, which is frequently played with an e-bow, thus losing its typical ‘plucked’ character, its texture often resembles the droning quality of the time-stretched samples. In turn, EMERGE adds live signals to his mix of samples, picked up through contact microphones and subjected to various forms of live processing. Its idiosyncratic mix of what could be described, depending on the listener’s preference, as aqueous 1960s sci-fi movie sounds or vintage Pierre Henry with mandala-like tranquillity, plus the occasional exhilarating outburst of semi-noisy hyperactivity towards the end, maintains harmonic structures throughout and thus makes for an accessible introduction to the world of free electroacoustic improvisation that still contains lots of interesting details for experts in that field." [label info]
www.wix.com/attenuationcircuit/attenuation-circuit
€8.00
Neunundvierzig Entgleisungen
"....What you hear on this pack is four delirious sides of hermetically-sealed confusion, playing havoc with your acoustical preconceptions and expectations until you won’t know which way is up. Noise, glitches, murmurs and clicks are abstracted by careful processing, and apparently edited together into microscopic mosaic patterns to stimulate your perceptual receptors in ways you’d never have thought possible. Jean René Lasalle contributes profuse printed texts inside the cover, which are likewise streams of cut-up absurdist poetry containing such deathless observations as “glances irrigates elytrons in a trembling headlight”. Françoise Vigot did the cover paintings, featuring the domestic (and amorous) adventures of the red and blue cipher-like figures whose antics I have seen, I think, on a Hypnagogia release by DSM. Verily, Huebner’s universe is an elaborate many-layered puzzle which is slowly coming together for this listener." [The Sound Projector]
"aufabwegen is very proud to offer a new release by what we consider to be one of germany's most important sound projects: DAS SYNTHETISCHE MISCHGEWEBE. DSM is now the sole project of guido huebner, who has been working in the medium of sound and found objects since the early 1980ies. DSM have their very own take on the patialization of sound and the moving around of sonic objects in the stero field. the overall impression is of rawness and fragility at the same time. the music on these two 10" records is super-dynamic and fragmentated and sounds very fresh and alive. DAS have collaborated over the years with artists such as Michael Northam, Frans de Waard, New Blockaders, MSBR and many more and have released material on various labels around the globe. DSM have played many concerts all over and have combined their sound with different art froms, such as projections, film, dance and even conducting workshops fro kids.
"neunundvierzig entgleisungen" comes in a full cover fold sleeve and is slipped in a stable plastic seethrough. it plays on 45rpm, even if the label prints instructs you to run it at 33.
the record was recorded by guido huebner and features texts by jean rene lasalle and artwork (paintings reproduced) by francoise vigot. it was layouted by stefan hanser (anemone tube), mastered by josef suchy and cut by lupo at dubplates & mastering." [label info]
www.aufabwegen.com
€18.50
Long Gradus
https://sarahdavachi.bandcamp.com/album/long-gradus
A new longform commissioned work for any ensemble of four similar instruments. The definitive string quartet version of 'Long Gradus' is available as a 2LP and CD, and the collection of all four arrangements (strings, woodwinds, brass & organ, choir & electronics) is presented as the 'Long Gradus: Arrangements' 4CD set.
'Long Gradus' began in 2020 when Sarah Davachi was selected to participate in Quatuor Bozzini’s Composer’s Kitchen residency, which was to be a joint production with Gaudeamus Muziekweek in the Netherlands. With the postponement of the residency to the following year, the composer was given the opportunity to take a step back and look at the piece over a much longer period of time than would have ordinarily been possible. The resulting longform composition in four parts, written in its initial form for string quartet, was developed as an iteration of an ongoing preoccupation with chordal suspension and cadential structure. In this context, horizontal shifts in pitch material and texture occur on a very gradual scale, allowing the listener's perceptions to settle on the spatial experience of harmony. A system of septimal just intonation helps to further the production of a consonant acoustic environment. 'Long Gradus' uses a formalized articulation of time-bracket notation alongside unfixed indications of pitch, texture, and voicing that allow the players some discretion in determining the shape of the piece. A sense of pacing that is markedly different from that of mensural notation emerges accordingly, while the open structure of the composition results in each performance having a unique and unpredictable configuration.
The piece may be arranged in a quartet format for any instrumentation that can alter its intonation with some degree of accuracy or produce a natural seventh harmonic. Substitution of the string quartet with other instruments as desired or imagined, both acoustic and electronic, is entirely acceptable and indeed encouraged. To this end, Davachi has also offered the 'Long Gradus: Arrangements' 4CD set, which includes the string quartet version as well as arrangements for woodwinds, brass and organ, and choir and electronics. A 'gradus' is a sort of handbook meant to aid in learning a difficult practice; in this case, 'Long Gradus' is designed to considerably slow the cognitive movements of both listener and player, and to focus their attention on the relationships between moments. A rich harmonic landscape that is constantly shifting and which changes with each engagement is the listener’s return. For the player, 'Long Gradus' is an invitation to practice active listening and to immerse oneself in the stillness of psychoacoustic space and time.
Davachi comments: “I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Quatuor Bozzini for the opportunity to go through this process together, which is exceedingly uncommon in the context of chamber music. Typically, when writing for an ensemble or orchestra, the composer is given very few, if any, occasions to actually adjust their work in a meaningful way outside of perhaps one or two brief rehearsals of an essentially final score. It is extremely rare and an enormous luxury to begin with simple sketches or ideas and to actually construct a piece over a period of several months or more from a place of sonic assurance – that is, being able to listen and to explore and to continually fine tune in response to the sound itself, in conjunction with the performers. Part of the reason that my earliest compositional efforts arose within the domain of electroacoustic and acousmatic music is because of the control that it offered, to intuit sound in real time rather than through the indirect interpretation of future sound in the form of a score. Even now, when I compose work for chamber ensembles, I typically always start from a recorded version or from a demo – from the sound itself – and then work backwards to generate the score that will result in that music. It seems to be a vestige of conservatory thinking to view music performance, even in relation to new music, as a kind of reading of notes on the page that simply results in things just falling into place as expected. But, when the music goes beyond what’s on the page to include a dialogue with the acoustic space of the performance, and to require a certain patience and concentration on part of the performers, there needs to be a different approach; the Composer’s Kitchen residency offered that respect and curiosity.”
credits
released November 3, 2023
'Long Gradus' composed and arranged by Sarah Davachi, 2020/21
“Harmonic Observances In Four Parts”
for any ensemble of four similar instruments
TRACKS 1 - 4: LONG GRADUS (STRINGS)
Performed by Quatuor Bozzini
Alissa Cheung, violin
Clemens Merkel, violin
Stéphanie Bozzini, viola
Isabelle Bozzini, cello
Recorded by Zach Blackstone at the Warehouse Studio in Vancouver BC Canada, 14 & 15 March 2023
Mixed by Sarah Davachi and Sean McCann
Mastered by Sean McCann
Special thank you to Susan Gibb & Regina Greene
Made with the generous support of Western Front
TRACKS 5 - 8: LONG GRADUS (WOODWINDS)
Performed by
Rebecca Lane, flute + bass flute
Samara Dunscombe, clarinet + bass clarinet
Recorded by Sarah Davachi and Samara Dunscombe at Emmaus Kirche in Berlin Germany, 11 & 12 May 2022
Mixed by Sarah Davachi
Mastered by Sean McCann
Special thank you to Ingo Schulz, Marta Blazanovic-Drefers, & John Stevens
TRACKS 9 - 12: LONG GRADUS (BRASS & ORGAN)
Performed by Rage Thormbones
Mattie Barbier, alto trombone
Weston Olencki, tenor trombone
With Sarah Davachi, pipe organ
Recorded by Sarah Davachi and Weston Olencki at The Museum Of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles CA USA, 1 & 2 November 2022
Pipe organ recorded by SD at Emmaus Kirche in Berlin Germany
Mixed by Sarah Davachi
Mastered by Sean McCann
Special thank you to David Wilson
TRACKS 13 - 16: LONG GRADUS (CHOIR & ELECTRONICS)
Performed by
Judith Berkson, mezzo-soprano
Sarah Davachi, sine wave oscillators
Recorded by Sarah Davachi at Alms Vert in Los Angeles CA USA, 13 July 2022 and 23 January 2023
Sine wave oscillators performed on a Korg PS-3100 synthesizer
Mixed by Sarah Davachi
Mastered by Sean McCann
€32.50
Music for a Bellowing Room
»Music for a Bellowing Room« is a collaborative durational work by musician Sarah Davachi and filmmaker Dicky Bahto, both based in Los Angeles. Audio recorded live at The MoMA by Omer Leibovitz in New York, 17 September 2023.
With a performance/running time of three hours, »Music for a Bellowing Room« is an exercise in resolution, inviting the audience to shift their concentration and perception through gradual changes in sound and image. This piece was originally commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and received its premiere performance in September 2023. On 8 November 2024, Late Music will release a 3CD+Blu-Ray edition.
Sarah Davachi is a Canadian experimental composer and performer who creates immersive, layered drones using a wide range of acoustic and electronic instrumentation, including organs, strings, brass, and synthesizers. Continuing a lineage of minimalist composers such as Éliane Radigue, Tony Conrad, and La Monte Young, her works expand the human perception of sound through subtle variations of considered harmonic structures, exploring overtone complexity, intonation, and natural resonance.
Dicky Bahto has exhibited work utilizing still and motion picture photography, sound, and performance at a variety of museums, galleries, microcinemas, alternative spaces, and scenic locations spanning the Northern Hemisphere, from the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles to Life Changing Ministries (a former church in West Oakland). He frequently collaborates with musicians, both as a performer and as a visual artist, including Sarah Davachi, Liz Harris, Julia Holter, and Tashi Wada, and with his cat, Katouche.
Packaged in a four-disc, 8-panel digipak. The inside of the digipak, behind the clear CD trays, is plain unprinted white.
Disc 1 (Blu-ray) contains the film with full, unbroken audio.
Discs 2-4 (CD) contain the audio only, split between the three discs.
500 copies pressed.
https://sarahdavachi.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-a-bellowing-room
€53.00
Nott
Nótt is a 34minutes long collaboration album, consisting of one epic slowly evolving drone, named after the personification of the night, the grandmother of Thor, taken from the norse mythology.
Nótt is a beautiful gathering of two musicians. On the one hand you have the electronic drones of Duane Pitre and on the other hand you have the bass clarinet soundscapes of Gareth Davis. The musicians managed to record something very minimal but also very powerful.
limited CD (200 copies) available here:
Gareth Davis - bass clarinet
Duane Pitre - electronics
https://midirarecords.bandcamp.com/album/n-tt
€13.00
same
Radikaler Elektro / Noise / Rhythmic Industrial aus Kanada mit starker politischer, antikapitalistischer Ausrichtung (das RAF-Logo auf dem Cover), dabei musikalisch abwechslungsreich & überzeugend arrangiert, teils fast rockig-tanzbar, teils extrem krachig!
"Die Baader-Meinhof Gruppe / Red Army Faction is Joshua David Richardson with a revolving door of collaborators, which include: Scott E. Farmer (Russian Futurists), Sam Devos (For Greater Good), and Edwin Vanvinckenroye (Tribe) amongst others.
According to Richardson, DBMG/RAF is a chance for musicians and multi-media artists to explore the use of violence within their chosen medium for the expressed purpose of destroying the economic, social, and artistic structures imposed on them by Late 20th and 21st Century Capitalism. It is inspired by the actions of West-Germany’s Red Army Faction (also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group), which sought the violent overthrow of West-Germany’s post-war governments from the 1970’s until its official disbandment in 1998.
Politics aside, this is one freshing new release that actually lives up to being true INDUSTRIAL music. It is noisy, chaotic, harsh, violent, full of anguish and torment while still carrying a strong beat. This is the kind of industrial that will immediate clear the dancefloor at your local goff-idustrial club, will sort out the real rivetheads from the poseurs, and have noise music enthusiasts begging for more. There’s a good amount of variety on this CD too- a post-punk “Peter Gunn” inspired rhythm track with whacked out old school analogue electronics, middle-eastern Indian ambience with the sound of war in the background (perfect for planning your next Jihad), Deutsch Nepal and Memorandum inspired beats with radio transmissions in the background, slabs of whale-toned cries from the deep, broken and distorted sonics over a militant backbeat with appropriately painful processed vocals, wacky distorted rhythmic melodies, and much more. It is experimental without being unlistenable. Alienating while still being engaging. Even when Richardson is using those overly-familiar sounds and elements, they never seem dated or clichéd. When it comes to this kind of music, this guy obviously seems to know what he’s doing and doesn’t wear his influences on his sleeve like so many others who’ve attempted it. If I had one thing to nit-pick about, it might be the use of overuse of spoken word samples, which is a pet peeve of mine in any music genre. Purists can argue as to its appropriateness, but I feel that a constant barrage of it is a bit clichéd. Thankfully, Richard tempers it with other interesting elements.
This release has an awful lot going for it and has so much variety that it has a very high replayability factor, something that I haven’t heard in a good number of harsh music projects that I’ve reviewed positively. It is also not a constant torrent of torturous sounds; there are quite a few quieter moody moments. Nothing is overly-long or intolerable. If this was released on CMI, it might be the album of the year in Europe. Red Army Faction is like having the best moments of bands like Mental Destruction, In Slaughter Natives, Esplendor Geometric and Brighter Death Now rolled into one steaming package.
Perhaps it’s due to the duality of the name Die Baader-Meinhof Gruppe / Red Army Faction and its association that makes this music project totally oblique in a Google search. If you want this music, you REALLY have to know where to look. You can find it on iTunes (Die Baader-Meinhof) or CD Baby (http://cdbaby.com/cd/baadermeinhof) but I’d recommend just going directly to the website since there videos, more info and purchase options there. Definitely recommended!" [Steve Mecca / CHAIN D.L.K.]
www.dbmg-raf.com
€13.50
America’s Greatest Noise
The next book on Korm Plastics contains no photographs of the artists, no list of released records, no pictures of record sleeves, and no footnotes. It is not a hardcover, not on glossy paper and is not expensive.
It’s…
‘America’s Greatest Noise’ tells the story of Ron Lessard, owner of RRRecords, a record store in Lowell, Massachusetts and, from 1986 to 2009, a record label, releasing the albums of Blackhouse, F/i, PGR, the first Merzbow LP outside Japan and many more, regional compilations, three widely acclaimed lock groove records and a series of anti-records, records with no music but a more conceptual and visual edge. RRRecords is also responsible for the RRRecycled Music series, which has over 300 releases on re-purposed cassettes.
Ron Lessard played music with his group Due Process and solo as Emil Beaulieau. Up until his retirement from the noise scene in 2006, he played many concerts and released a string of cassettes, LPs, and CDs. During his concerts, Lessard dressed up like a businessman and used a four-armed turntable, dubbed the Minutoli, and his performances were comical.
In this book, he tells for the first time his story in music about the highs and lows of running a label and a record store, weird projects, unfinished projects, encounters with other musicians, being on the road, and much more. Also included are two appendices: one with interviews from the past (fanzines and websites) and a chapter from Michael Tau’s ‘Extreme Music’ about the anti-records released by RRRecords.
Images used were sourced from flyers, invitations and fanzines. Introduction by Dominick Fernow (Prurient, Hospital Productions)
The first 1000 copies come with an anti-flexi, cutting up a conversation about anti-records between Ron Lessard and the author of the book, Frans de Waard. Cut up by Howard Stelzer. You may use this flexi as a bookmark.
Paperback book, 144 pages, black and white images. Design by Alfred Boland
Ships after July 1st; official release date: July 5th (if you know, you know)
Softcover, 17×24 cm, 144 pages
https://www.kormplastics.nl/americas-greatest-noise/
€15.00
Various Weights
"Various Weights is the first time the duo of Frans de Waard and Martijn Comes come together to present work.
On this album, their uniques styles are combined, where they work with each others sound materials to create truly unique compositions.
Various Weights
In sound art, concepts often take precedence over the actual music. Here, there were none. For their first collaboration, Frans de Waard and Martijn Comes decided on a strikingly simple approach: Each artist compiled a pool of sounds for the other to use as a point of departure. Comes worked with various analog synth- and field recordings by de Waard (including, among others, a Korg MS20 and Koma Field FX). The latter was sent a processed stylophone recording, a sample loop as well as recordings of the Web’s first Software-Defined Radio by the University of Twente.
The results, now released as Various Weights, are two epic and immersive pieces. On “Boundary of Intersections”, Comes focuses on deep sonorities and harmonics, developing his materials into a mind-expanding drone zone. De Waard’s “There are no two pianos” is more subdued, hovering mysteriously at the cusp of acousmatic research and sonic minimalism. Both pieces share a slightly uneasy, surreal feeling – perfectly captured by Bas Mantel’s artwork, which was a direct response to the sounds contained on the disc.
The bonus-CD to this release, limited to 50 copies, contains a full 35-minute performance by both artists at De Ruimte Amsterdam after the project had been completed. Magically, the music appears to be a direct continuation of the album tracks. As such, Various Weights ingeniously juxtaposes live- and studio techniques, solo and duo work, spontaneous improvisation and meticulous composition. That, whether the artists intended it that way or not, probably makes it a concept album after all."
Tobias Fischer, March 2020
https://www.movingfurniturerecords.com/frans-de-waard-martijn-comes-various-weights/
€12.00
Dionysus
"This second release from the recently reawakened Dead Can Dance is quite a delightful surprise, radically departing from its uneven predecessor and displaying a striking degree of creative reinvigoration. Rather than another stab at recreating classic DCD fare like Aion, Dionysus is a conceptually rich and structurally inventive plunge deep into the folklore and spirit of Dionysian rituals and festivals. An intriguing concept does not necessarily lead to an intriguing album, of course, but Dionysus finds Dead Can Dance at the peak of their instrumental powers, unfolding as feast of wonderfully vibrant rhythms, esoteric instrumentation, and inspired arrangements. It is quite a remarkable and improbable achievement, as it sounds very little like prime Dead Can Dance, yet absolutely feels like prime Dead Can Dance. If Dionysus had come out in the band’s golden age of the late '80s and early '90s, there would most certainly be a small but devoted contingent of fans that viewed it as dark horse contender for the duo's finest album.
If I am being completely honest, I truly did not expect Dead Can Dance to ever record another great album, as the feeling I got from the reunion tour and Anastasis was that Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard are now far more like two loosely entwined solo artists who periodically collaborate than they are a united creative force these days. For the most part, Dionysus does little to dispel that sense, but it definitely seems like the duo have found a way to flourish within those conditions. Based on all that I have read about this album, it is quite clear that Perry was the album's driving force and that it was a labor of love birthed from a deep fascination with how pagan/Dionysian beliefs have spread, transformed, lingered, and evolved in the wake of the Roman Empire. Perry was originally drawn to the theme by European spring and harvest festivals, but the reach of the album seamlessly dissolves boundaries in culture, time, and space like only Dead Can Dance can do. For example, Perry's field recordings alone touch upon South America, New Zealand, and Switzerland and his musical inspirations are even more widespread, delving into traditional instrumentation that spans just about the entire globe. While there some wonderfully exotic and otherworldly sounds occasionally appear, such as the eerily flute-like see-sawing tones and jungle-like chirps in the closing "Psychopomp," that unusual instrumentation is less of a focus than it is a set of specialized tools that Perry used to get exactly the feel he wanted. In fact, Dionysus is largely a very percussion-driven affair, an approach that is especially effective on the muscular and propulsively off-kilter opener "Sea Borne," which abstractly evokes Dionysus's mythical arrival from The East.
While the album's bookends are both quite strong and easy to identify, the delineation between individual pieces on Dionysus is quite a purposely blurry one, as the album is structured as a two-part oratorio with different movements that tie to different aspects of Dionysian myth and folklore. For example, "Dance of the Bacchantes" is inspired by a rite in which women "abandoned their domestic duties for trance-like processions and dances," while "Liberator of Minds" celebrates hallucinogens and "The Forest" is a "call to abandon worldly and material pursuits and return to a primeval enlightened state of being." Happily, Perry opted to keep the narrative arc an abstract and impressionistic one, so this concept album deftly eludes the perils of dubious lyrical content or exposition. Curiously, it does sound like Perry is singing actual words in some language in the two closing movements, but the language is a fictional one, as Perry wanted to "convey emotion beyond the boundaries of language itself." In lesser hands, such a conceit would likely end in disaster. In this case, however, it not only flows seamlessly but seems like a crucial part of establishing the timeless and ritualistic headspace that the album inhabits. Recognizable words would have killed the spell. The music is not quite as liberated from the constraints of existing culture, however, as Perry is quite fond of Middle Eastern scales and melodies. The overall feeling is not entirely Middle Eastern though, as some medieval-sounding touches certainly bleed in, as do some sounds that seem plucked from real or imaginary tribes hidden deep in the heart of a tropical rainforest. At Dionysus's best, all of those threads combine into something that resembles an alternately raucous, sensuous, and ritualistic village dance that pulses with visceral rhythms, call-and-response chants, and primal eruptions of ululating yelps.
Admittedly, tt feels a bit weird to love a Dead Can Dance album in which Lisa Gerrard plays a noticeably reduced role, as she only takes over lead vocals on "The Invocation" (I think). However, her voice continually surfaces throughout the album as an added choral layer or to echo or harmonize with Perry's own vocals. That might not sound like much, yet her essence pervades the proceedings in a deeper way, as Dionysus bears little resemblance to Perry's solo work. This simply is not a vocal-centric album in the traditional Dead Can Dance sense, nor does the mood quite suit Gerrard's hammered dulcimer talents and the duo have the good sense not to awkwardly shoehorn in touches that do not belong. In fact, Perry and Gerrard show an almost supernatural instinct for avoiding false notes or missteps, favorably calling to mind a time in the distant past (The Serpent's Egg) when they seemed like an absolutely infallible force of nature and each new album felt like a communion with something deeper and more meaningful than anything the present era offered. There is not a weak moment to be found here, as my sole caveat is that the album feels all too brief at a mere 35 minutes. None of that time is squandered at all though, so it is hard to grumble: if the perfect arc is just over half an hour, then that is the proper length for the album to be. I had hoped that Perry and Gerrard might have some more classic songs or a return to form lurking in their shared future, but Dionysus has easily transcended those modest expectations by feeling like the beginning of an extremely promising second act to their long and illustrious career. Nostalgia and welcome familiarity are great, but reclaiming relevance and forging into compelling and unique new territory is far better." [Anthony D'Amico]
€16.00
Dionysus
"This second release from the recently reawakened Dead Can Dance is quite a delightful surprise, radically departing from its uneven predecessor and displaying a striking degree of creative reinvigoration. Rather than another stab at recreating classic DCD fare like Aion, Dionysus is a conceptually rich and structurally inventive plunge deep into the folklore and spirit of Dionysian rituals and festivals. An intriguing concept does not necessarily lead to an intriguing album, of course, but Dionysus finds Dead Can Dance at the peak of their instrumental powers, unfolding as feast of wonderfully vibrant rhythms, esoteric instrumentation, and inspired arrangements. It is quite a remarkable and improbable achievement, as it sounds very little like prime Dead Can Dance, yet absolutely feels like prime Dead Can Dance. If Dionysus had come out in the band’s golden age of the late '80s and early '90s, there would most certainly be a small but devoted contingent of fans that viewed it as dark horse contender for the duo's finest album.
If I am being completely honest, I truly did not expect Dead Can Dance to ever record another great album, as the feeling I got from the reunion tour and Anastasis was that Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard are now far more like two loosely entwined solo artists who periodically collaborate than they are a united creative force these days. For the most part, Dionysus does little to dispel that sense, but it definitely seems like the duo have found a way to flourish within those conditions. Based on all that I have read about this album, it is quite clear that Perry was the album's driving force and that it was a labor of love birthed from a deep fascination with how pagan/Dionysian beliefs have spread, transformed, lingered, and evolved in the wake of the Roman Empire. Perry was originally drawn to the theme by European spring and harvest festivals, but the reach of the album seamlessly dissolves boundaries in culture, time, and space like only Dead Can Dance can do. For example, Perry's field recordings alone touch upon South America, New Zealand, and Switzerland and his musical inspirations are even more widespread, delving into traditional instrumentation that spans just about the entire globe. While there some wonderfully exotic and otherworldly sounds occasionally appear, such as the eerily flute-like see-sawing tones and jungle-like chirps in the closing "Psychopomp," that unusual instrumentation is less of a focus than it is a set of specialized tools that Perry used to get exactly the feel he wanted. In fact, Dionysus is largely a very percussion-driven affair, an approach that is especially effective on the muscular and propulsively off-kilter opener "Sea Borne," which abstractly evokes Dionysus's mythical arrival from The East.
While the album's bookends are both quite strong and easy to identify, the delineation between individual pieces on Dionysus is quite a purposely blurry one, as the album is structured as a two-part oratorio with different movements that tie to different aspects of Dionysian myth and folklore. For example, "Dance of the Bacchantes" is inspired by a rite in which women "abandoned their domestic duties for trance-like processions and dances," while "Liberator of Minds" celebrates hallucinogens and "The Forest" is a "call to abandon worldly and material pursuits and return to a primeval enlightened state of being." Happily, Perry opted to keep the narrative arc an abstract and impressionistic one, so this concept album deftly eludes the perils of dubious lyrical content or exposition. Curiously, it does sound like Perry is singing actual words in some language in the two closing movements, but the language is a fictional one, as Perry wanted to "convey emotion beyond the boundaries of language itself." In lesser hands, such a conceit would likely end in disaster. In this case, however, it not only flows seamlessly but seems like a crucial part of establishing the timeless and ritualistic headspace that the album inhabits. Recognizable words would have killed the spell. The music is not quite as liberated from the constraints of existing culture, however, as Perry is quite fond of Middle Eastern scales and melodies. The overall feeling is not entirely Middle Eastern though, as some medieval-sounding touches certainly bleed in, as do some sounds that seem plucked from real or imaginary tribes hidden deep in the heart of a tropical rainforest. At Dionysus's best, all of those threads combine into something that resembles an alternately raucous, sensuous, and ritualistic village dance that pulses with visceral rhythms, call-and-response chants, and primal eruptions of ululating yelps.
Admittedly, tt feels a bit weird to love a Dead Can Dance album in which Lisa Gerrard plays a noticeably reduced role, as she only takes over lead vocals on "The Invocation" (I think). However, her voice continually surfaces throughout the album as an added choral layer or to echo or harmonize with Perry's own vocals. That might not sound like much, yet her essence pervades the proceedings in a deeper way, as Dionysus bears little resemblance to Perry's solo work. This simply is not a vocal-centric album in the traditional Dead Can Dance sense, nor does the mood quite suit Gerrard's hammered dulcimer talents and the duo have the good sense not to awkwardly shoehorn in touches that do not belong. In fact, Perry and Gerrard show an almost supernatural instinct for avoiding false notes or missteps, favorably calling to mind a time in the distant past (The Serpent's Egg) when they seemed like an absolutely infallible force of nature and each new album felt like a communion with something deeper and more meaningful than anything the present era offered. There is not a weak moment to be found here, as my sole caveat is that the album feels all too brief at a mere 35 minutes. None of that time is squandered at all though, so it is hard to grumble: if the perfect arc is just over half an hour, then that is the proper length for the album to be. I had hoped that Perry and Gerrard might have some more classic songs or a return to form lurking in their shared future, but Dionysus has easily transcended those modest expectations by feeling like the beginning of an extremely promising second act to their long and illustrious career. Nostalgia and welcome familiarity are great, but reclaiming relevance and forging into compelling and unique new territory is far better." [Anthony D'Amico]
€28.00
Meta
Backwards proudly presents the new full length album of amazing Greek artist DEAD GUM!
"META", Dead Gum’s sophomore studio album, constituted a challenge for its maker. While “GAINER” - its predecessor - hollered for awareness and singularity, this one indulges into multi-layered, ambiguous narratives tracing an impossible duality. With abiding influences that distance him from conspicuous contemporary norms, Panagiotis Spoulos creates a nocturnal, desolate sound collage, invoking a meta-purpose for a/the current status quo.
The public character of the endeavour is almost jostled by the privateness of the overall statement; the invitation thus corresponds to a peek into a baffled brain and a rove around gradual levels of muffled alarm calls and grimy smells. "META" is no post-something. "META" merely stands half foot ahead of absolute nothingness, the true end of it all.
https://deadgum.bandcamp.com
€16.00
Beaute des Mirages
Mysterious French outfit return to Discrepant in full exotic wind force after their sell out cassette, Un Cocktail pour la fin des temps''. Beauté des Mirages picks up on the same themes of frantic, abstract exotica and concrete cocktails the French act is known for. Running for two long 18min sides full of fake(?) vintage atmospheres and armchair jungle hallucinations. An abstract journey into a beautiful (and sometimes scary) world of mirages. All perfectly illustrated by yet another mesmerizing artwork collage by US artists Evan Crankshaw.
The Dead Mauriacs : computer, files, fields recordings, cassettes, text, piano, midi keyboard.
LP released by Discrepant. 2017.
CREP 043
An abstract journey into a beautiful (and sometimes scary) world of mirages.
Perfectly illustrated by yet another mesmerizing artwork collage by US artists Evan Crankshaw
thedeadmauriacs.bandcamp.com/album/beaut-des-mirages
€19.00
Le Parc, rapport d'observations
The music and text that make up this record originate from repeated stays in Brussels. They were born from curious observations and daily recordings, which, when assembled and manipulated, became a kind of dystopian mirror game.
Some of the sounds on the record were recorded in cafés, streets, a park, the Notre-Dame des Victoires church in the Sablon district, others were made with objects found on the spot, a chair, a table, a shutter, and manipulated with the tools of concrete or electro-acoustic music. Some field recordings, made in other places, were added to create this fiction that the text extends: a sort of dangerous game involving agents, observers and parakeets in a park. Sometimes their respective roles become confused, as do time and space.
The Dead Mauriacs entrusted the visual aspect of the project to Evan Crankshaw, with whom they often work. With his collages, he brought a vision that deterritorialises and enriches both text and music.
____________________
Le Parc, rapport d’observations / The Park, observation report.
Part 1
-Les perruches (Parakeets),
-Les ambassades (Embassies),
-Un malaise passager (A passing discomfort).
Part 2
-Diversion (Diversion),
-Manigances feutrées (Mufled shenanigans)
-Soupçons (Suspicion).
-Seconde diversion (Second diversion) :
-Bifurcations et miroirs (Bifurcations and mirrors).
Part 3
-Les observateurs (The observers),
-Le kiosque (The kiosk).
-Une intrigue chorégraphique (A choreographic plot),
-Disparition (Disappearance)
credits
released April 14, 2023
Field recordings :
Brussel (chair, table, rolling shutter, church organ, street
noises, people in a café, sounds in Leopold parc) ;
Rouen (Corean gathering) ;
Saint-Pierre de Varengeville (birds, water, wind in the leaves, ventilation system) ;
Figueira (sea).
Real and fake piano, strings, and everything else played and assembled through Ableton Live.
Music and text by Olivier Prieur
Artwork by Evan Crankshaw
Layout by Rutger Zuydervelt
https://sublimeretreat.bandcamp.com/album/le-parc-rapport-dobservations
€15.00
Son of Concrete
Starke 4-track long-play EP einer Art Supergroup des US-amerikanischen Experimental-Dub & Hip-Hop Undergrounds, mit erstaunlichem Ergebnis zwischen melancholischer slow-Dub Ambience und frei flottierenden Experimenten, viel vokales Material & halluzinogene Atmo...und auch ruhig-harmonische parts tauchen auf. Leute von DÄLEK, DESTRUCTO SWARMBOTS, ODDATEE sind beteiligt. Erschien auf dem wahrhaft grenzüberschreitendem Label PUBLIC GUILT aus Baltimore, MD.
"The Deadverse Massive 12" picture disc brings together three intense forces in music-- avant hip-hop unit, Dälek, ambient guitarist, Destructo Swarmbots and hip-hop madman, Oddateee. Spontaneity, open-mindedness to the recording process and a collective cohesiveness sprung forth an album that none of them would have every created alone and none of them would have imagined before the moment of creation. Easily, the strangest record any of these artists have ever touched. Artwork from the amazing Paul Romano rounds out the release." [label info]
"When hip-hop gets weird, it gets "Deadverse Massive". Mescaline dreams from the deep unconscious rise through psych-ambient guitar drones to meet street socially-conscious poetry and spoken-word in a no less than stellar collision... 8/10 "[Foxy Digitalis]
"A stunning mashup of heavy beatscapes, surrealist avant hip hop, and spacey drones from beyond the wall of sleep... a surreal and drifting collage of beats and psychedelic drones, powerful rhymes and voice transmissions, as informed by classic krautrock and cassette experiments as it is by actual hip hop." [Crucial Blast]
www.publicguilt.com
€15.00
Low Distance
"Low Distance is Deaf Center´s third full-length studio album and perhaps the most focused effort by the Norwegian duo to date. After their last record Owl Splinters (2011) was quite an eclectic endeavor, Erik K Skodvin & Otto A Totland draw their sound back into something more quiet and minimal.
The record starts with a piece of sweeping analougue electronics. It´s a spacious, yet dynamic opener that leads directly into the static tones and piano motivs of Entity Voice, which balances a new sense of abstractation with the classic Deaf Center sound. It´s warm and close while sounding like it´s set in the outer horizon. Overall Low Distance feels both alien and familiar with its atonal synths, close pianos and drowned out noises.
After meeting in studio for the first time since 2011, the recordings came out of a 3 day session in 2017. It was then mixed at both EMS Stockholm and at Erik´s home studio over a longer period to create a blend of deeply layered as well as stripped down pieces. Both Erik & Otto have been active individually since their last meeting as Deaf Center: Otto released 2 solo piano albums, while Erik has furthered his descent into musical abstractation both under his own name and as Svarte Greiner. It´s long overdue to hear them connect their personalities into something new. Low Distance is a welcome return replete with beauty, mystery and uncertainty."
"So I managed to fall into that pattern again, whereby a long-anticipated album by a beloved project sits awaiting just the right time. I need a "perfect" mood and setting to experience Deaf Center, and I must not be interrupted in any possible way. And so I put it to the side. Meanwhile, I procrastinate with promos and suggestions and releases which are all sub par. Then I finally reach out, and I listen for the very first time. Then the second and the third. And time goes by. A month or two. I play it sixth and seventh time, and no, not yet, I'm not prepared to say the right things... I must find certain words to share my thoughts. And time goes by... That is the pattern. Until I recognize it for its block and rip the bandaid off and share. The time has come. Of this I'm certain.
Since their 2014 release, Recount, put out by Monique Recknagel's Sonic Pieces imprint, the duo of Erik Skodvin and Otto Totland have massively raised the bar on their third full-length studio album, Low Distance. I've generally used the word "texture" in the past, to describe the intricate granular details that give a particular recording more depth, complexity and substance, and yet, on Low Distance Deaf Center takes it to a whole new level. Seemingly accidental noises, clips, and circuit howls become the foundation for the platform of this moody record, where Totland's piano finds the courage to reveal its beauty to the world. The heavy fibered bow scrapes at the cello strings to make the instrument convulse and shudder. The sonic gravity of the atmospheric treatments paired with the poignancy of the melodic heartache propels Low Distance into the ranks of albums of the decade, where every coveted position is meticulously picked.
A total masterpiece for anyone inspired by the fine details stitched in a microcosm of harmonies and timbres. One which I will treasure for the many years to come, and with these words I hope you'll too. Highly recommended for anyone delighted by reductionist pianism, isolationist ambience, coarse minimalism and granular spaciousness. Yes, I've authored some of those stylistic genres just for you. But seriously, if you're into anything from the amazing Miasmah (which Skodvin runs), dark and organic drone mixed with evolving soundscapes by the likes of Rafael Anton Irisarri, Ben Lukas Boysen, Brambles, Richard Skelton, and Lawrence English, among the many appearing on this site, you'll be in for a treat. Highly recommended!" [Headphone Commute]
€35.00
Night Sessions
"A collection of fascinating and obscure "nocturnal sessions” alternated with more "classic" electronic parts based on sequencers and synthesizers, more abstract and minimal sonic sketches, involving and tense deep drones musical mixtures, distorted and dilated electric guitars, deformed human voices, more static and fluctuating typical ambient movements, cold inserts of pulsating and "techno oriented" sounds, suggestive atmospheres built on bizarre loops, flat organ backgrounds and low guitar notes, and then again arpeggios, piano clusters, field recordings, more typical "glitch" inserts and hisses... A wide range of original and catching solutions created with the help of many guests, the album includes contributions by Teho Teardo, Philippe Petit, Under the Snow, Jim Coleman, Franck Vigroux, Testing Vault and Annen Berg." [label info]
www.silentes.net
€12.00
In the other House
"It was not born as a concept album, but as it was slowly becoming like the music inside it the sound work of Cristiano Deison and Matthew Uggeri ended up finding itself, step by step, enclosed between the narrow walls of an exceptional home. Arriving there from different places and positions, and never actually meeting, Friulian and Milan found themselves, perhaps in spite of themselves, together in uncomfortable rooms which were populated by dark invisible presences. It is not the scenario of a horror movie, there is no tradegy or fear, just the knowledge that somewhere else or the escape itself may be less reassuring than one has hoped. Therefore Francesca Mele's photos, both a seal of the work and source of inspiration for the music seem to further cloak the place in t that sense of quiet desperation that daily life often implies."
https://matteouggeri.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-other-house
Zwei jüngere italienische Soundbastler treffen sich hier. Beide haben schon vielfach ein Händchen für atmosphärische Landschaften bewiesen; DEISON (komplett: CRISTIANO DEISON) unter anderem hier auf NONPOP mit "Quiet Rooms", einem Album über die Stimmung in leeren Hotelzimmern. Auch UGGERI (komplett: MATTEO UGGERI) hat sein sicheres Gespür für beeindruckende Klangwolken schon aufgezeigt, unter anderem in Zusammenarbeiten mit DE FABRIEK oder MAURIZIO BIANCHI. Beiden Künstlern gemein ist die wohltuende Zurückhaltung bei Veröffentlichungen, man hat nie den Eindruck, dass sie den ohnehin übersättigten Markt der entsprechenden Genres fluten würden. Ihr erstes gemeinsames Album erscheint nun auf FINAL MUZIK (in Kooperation mit OLD BICYCLE RECORDS und OAK EDITIONS), wobei sich die Musiker kein einziges Mal persönlich gesehen haben – Arbeiten im digitalen Zeitalter. Der Titel des Albums sowie die Namen der einzelnen Tracks geben natürlich eine ganz klare Idee vor, aber – und dies ist das erste Kompliment für ein gelungenes Album – es geht auch ohne.
"Fessure" (01) fühlt sich an wie das Hinabsteigen in eine pilzige, fluoreszierende Höhle. Warme, aber gleichzeitig aufschreckende und unruhige Sounds umwabern den Hörer, es ploppt und droned. Sehr atmosphärisch und, außer zu einer Höhle, auch passend zu der wohl toten Frau auf Vorder- und Rückseite des Covers, die ich eben entdeckt habe – Film noir-Feeling. Ein bassiger und unregelmäßiger Beat kommt langsam dazu, ebenso ein schräger Streicher. Und immer kurz vor einer Melodie nimmt die Komposition die nächste Abzweigung. Das äußerst filmische Ambiente bleibt in "So Detached" (02) bestehen. Türen quietschen, Schritte rascheln – hier wird eine Story erzählt, ein ganzer Storyteppich voll von organischen Klängen ausgerollt. Ich höre aufmerksam und angespannt zu, weil jederzeit etwas passieren könnte. Zunehmend freunde ich mich mit der titelgebenden Idee eines fremden Hauses an, durch das wir als Hörer schleichen. Das "Micro Drama" (03) spielt sich in der Küche ab, melodiös liegen gezupfte Piano-Teilchen auf dem Tisch, ein dickes Brummen und Summen zeugt von Insektenleben, und die Streicher quietschen immer wieder dramatisch. Passend zum Besuch im Bad ("Stasis", 04) plätschert Wasser, die Sounds wechseln in noisiges Quietschen und Rauschen, und insbesondere die Cluster aus Blasinstrumenten beeindrucken mich. Menschen räumen Möbel in "Worried Stagnation" (05), verursachen dabei lange, ewige Drones. Und mein Lieblingssound des gesamten Albums erklingt auf der Treppe und im Keller ("Prelude, Largo", 06) – ein Tuba-ähnliches Brummen, welches die sich abwechselnden Passagen zum einen aus ruhigen Ambientflächen, zum anderen aus mächtigen, majestätischen Drones inklusive Piepen und Klingeln umrahmt, wobei sich alle Ebenen mehr und mehr übereinander schieben.
"In The Other House" ist ein wirklich beeindruckender Hörfilm, der mich an andere starke filmische Werke wie zum Beispiel die LAND-Trilogie ("Praha | Wien | Budapest", NONPOP-Besprechung) erinnert. Schleichen durch ein fremdes Haus, Erkunden einer dunklen Höhle, Hauptrolle in einem Film noir – das Album ist fast unabhängig vom möglichen Thema eine fesselnde Reise, und zwar von der ersten bis zur letzten Sekunde. Eine der bisher schönsten, weil stimmungsvollsten Basteleien des Jahres.
Michael We. für nonpop.de
€10.00
La Plinthe
Empfehlenswerte CD dieses Komponisten aus Nantes, LA PLINTHE bewegt sich zwischen digitaler microwave-ambience und spannender Electronica. Bedächtig, elegant, intelligent gemacht..
“La Plinthe” opens with crackling and sizzling noises, then settles into a rhythm of subdued explosions, which leave prismic debris in their wake before fading into the void. Instead of introducing a philosophical analysis of the relation between sound and silence, the first track serves as a sort of meditation, guiding the listener into the core of the album and shutting out uninvited outside noises. Even the glistening drone of the second part is merely a messenger, before a delayed bass and rustily breathing ambiances create the illusion of safety in an entirely alien territory.
It is here, in the middle section of the work, that Delplanque truly unpacks his talent. Comforting hiss, consoling crackles and flirring chordal fenlights are held together by the power of deep, resonating bass vibrations, as tracks settle into the groove of strangely consoling wordless Dream Dub. By locking the body in subtle movement, he is able to caress the sweetly drugged mind with brushstrokes of abstract noises. Even though the record descends into a dark cave towards the end, the grand, eight minute finale picks the listener up again, shining a path through the darkness with a majestic piece made of nothing but a stoically hit piano key over an undulating continuum of swelling hums, a warm impulse drone and the suggestion of rhythm by means of evolving patterns made from grating and gravelling timbres. [label info]
"It has taken some time, but a new generation of experimental musicians, respecting these demands intentionally or by instinct, is making itself heard. Delplanque is one of a few select players who stand a serious chance of reaching beyond the outer edges of a small niche. While his contribution to international trio project The Missing Ensemble may be more pronounced, almost aggressive even in its translation of inorganic sources into emotive compositions, his solo work is fueled by a personal approach capable of touching the listener in the sentive area of his heart. If “Le Pavillon Témoin” (from previous year) sounded as though he were trying to achieve this by means of allowing acoustic instruments and hints of melody and harmony into his oeuvre, “La Plinthe” does away with these luxuries and sheds whatever notion of the old world there might have been. The real aim of this radicality is neither benevolent shock nor progress for progress’ sake, but rather attaining a sense of coherency and of interrelatedness between the album’s building blocks. In an orchestra, there is no intrinsic connection whatsoever between a piano and violin. In Delplanque’s symphonies, however, their faintly shimmering echoes are like brother and sister. “La Plinthe” opens with crackling and sizzling noises, then settles into a rhythm of subdued explosions, which leave prismic debris in their wake before fading into the void. Instead of introducing a philosophical analysis of the relation between sound and silence, the first track serves as a sort of meditation, guiding the listener into the core of the album and shutting out uninvited outside noises. Even the glistening drone of the second part is merely a messenger, before a delayed bass and rustily breathing ambiances create the illusion of safety in an entirely alien territory. It is here, in the middle section of the work, that Delplanque truly unpacks his talent. Comforting hiss, consoling crackles and flirring chordal fenlights are held together by the power of deep, resonating bass vibrations, as tracks settle into the groove of strangely consoling wordless Dream Dub. By locking the body in subtle movement, he is able to caress the sweetly drugged mind with brushstrokes of abstract noises. Even though the record descends into a dark cave towards the end, the grand, eight minute finale picks the listener up again, shining a path through the darkness with a majestic piece made of nothing but a stoically hit piano key over an undulating continuum of swelling hums, a warm impulse drone and the suggestion of rhythm by means of evolving patterns made from grating and gravelling timbres. You need to like these sounds, these delicate crackles and the fireplace-metaphorics they evoke in order to enjoy the album as a whole. It is no longer possible denying their aesthetics by hiding behind a smart concept, simply because there is none. On the other hand, that is exactly why “La Plinthe” works in such a magnetic and rich way: Even though it offers a depth of structures Pop and Rock could never muster, it forces the listener to either hate or love it. Whatever your pick: Kissing your lover to a piece of sound art, no longer seems like a ridiculous thought.." [Tobias Fischer, Tokafi]
€15.00
Latitudes - September 2016
Stijn Demeulenaere is a sound artist and field recordist from Belgium.
‘Latitudes - September 2016’ is the recording of a live set played in his Latitudes series at Q-O2 in Brussels. Latitudes is a project where he brings sounds from North and South together. On the album, the bulk of the sounds come from South-Africa and Iceland. Further recordings were made in Ostend, De Biesbosch, Amsterdam and ‘t Kuipke (Ghent). The album combines a mixture of natural sound recordings and heavily processed sounds.
The album is a cd in a custom A5 sleeve and comes out in a limited edition of 149 copies.
Latitudes is a project where Stijn collects and records sounds from all over the world. He brings these sounds together and explores the relation between climate, geology and how a place sounds. He looks for ways to have the sounds interact with each other and researches the ways nature sounds generate expectations and how one can play with these expectations.
Stijn uses the material to develop installations and live sets where he explores the sonic material, creating new sonic structures juxtaposing the sounds, or melting them together. Latitudes is a project in continuing development: the sounds from Iceland and South Africa are being mixed with sounds from other spaces, nature sounds with industrial ones. If there is enough time and space, Stijn also makes recordings in the cities and places where he performs, and works this material into his live sets.
Amongst others, he made recordings in the northern tundra climate of Iceland and the subtropical climate of South Africa. The recordings in Iceland were made during a Wildeye residency guided by Chris Watson and Jez Riley French in 2015. The sounds from South Africa were recorded during the 2013 Sonic Mmabolela residency under curatorship of Francisco López. Apart from traditional equipment, he also uses a myriad of unconventional microphones and transducers in his search for sound.
"You may not know this name, unless perhaps you visit Belgium quite a bit, as that’s where Stijn
Demeuelenaere’s activities as a sound artist mostly take place. Not really to release his music on CD but as part of sound installations, video work and dance pieces. ‘Latitudes - September 2016’ is his first release, and it is a registration of a concert at Brussels’ Q-O2, and it uses only field recordings, from his trips to South Africa, Iceland and The Netherlands (that man has time and money to burn, I was thinking!), in this piece, just under twenty-four minutes. That is a bit short, I thought. If I understand well there is not really a narrative Demeulenaere is telling his listeners, but more or less puts together sounds from all over the world, choosing and selecting together what he thinks fits best together. There is, so it seems to me, a love for sounds that involve water. In the opening sequence this
sounds like the sound of rowing, along with birds, insects and from there on he expands further into wildlife. It is hard, or perhaps for me impossible, to tell what it is that he’s doing with these sounds, if anything at all that is. This might be a work of pure, untreated sound events stuck together for all I know, but just at the same time it might also be that Demeulenaere creates loops out of his sounds, or
uses quite a bit of sound processing. Only towards the end there is definitely loops and processing going as Demeulenaere creates some odd rhythms out of his material, and whatever was the sound originally we no longer know. For much of the rest of this piece we don’t know if that is the case as well. Now, of course, after hearing the whole thing a couple of times, I would think it is the case; everything is some way or another a bit processed and enhanced. Overall I enjoyed this piece quite a bit, but found it perhaps a bit too short. Why not add another recording, from another concert but
within the same context and double the pleasure for the listener? Now it’s a fine but short debut, hopefully with the promise of more to come." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
https://silkentofu.bandcamp.com/album/latitudes-september-2016
€13.00
Messe Around
We are proud to present this compilation release from one of the most unique the industrial avant-garde of rock music acts from France in the 80s. Limited edition of 300 hand-numbered copies double CD in metal boxes.
"I must admit I know the name Denier Du Culte ever since much of the stuff was recorded that is now on their double CD, which is from 1981 to 1986, and I have been in contact with some of the members, but I never could figure out what kind of band they were. Now I know a bit more. Denier Du Culte was a trio of Lieutenant Caramel on drums, percussion, bass and vocals, Alain Basso on bass and violin and Sylvie Loquet on voice, bass, percussion and lyrics. Caramel and to a lesser extent Basso went to work with electronics in a more musique concrete-like vein, but as Denier Du Culte they worked as an improvisation trio and as such they were part the worldwide cassette movement, releasing a few works on cassette themselves and contributing to many compilations around the world. On the first CD we find a selection of their cassettes and on the second CD fifteen contributions. It's not a complete picture of everything this band has ever recorded, but it gives a nice over view. I must admit I didn't recognize anything from the ol' days - perhaps my mistake. We hear them move from the very rudimentary earliest pieces of shameful self-indulgence to more complex pieces in their later years. It's these pieces that showed the great strength this band had, when, armed with reel-to-reel machines or perhaps synthesizers to further alienate their rock approach. Some of these earliest moments sound perhaps a bit tedious, and devoid of any context one might scratch their head with this amount of rumble and chaos, but in the light of the time, the early 80s of freely re-organising rock music, post-punk, industrial music and such like. What I perhaps didn't realize back then, or not as much as I do now, Denier Du Culte was a great, unique band, which sounded very different from all the other noise boys. This is a most welcome re-issue of a band that is surely over-looked in a long time. Both of these releases are very limited so act quickly!" [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€15.00
Anthropology Vol. 1
"It's as if Dent had returned, irrevocably altered, from an ambitious and expansive field trip through nothing less than the history of digital and analogue ambience to splice his findings with the DNA of late-modernist classical. Loren Dent's intent is no radical re-think of genre; his bent is more recontextual, a fine tension between the vectors of New Music, minimalism, ambient, post-rock and space music. It's a trajectory traversing considerable terrain. Opener, 'Introduction - Dreams and Concrete,' for example, moves from Feldman to Niblock, before picking up on Pärt, in the transition to 'This Thing We Enjoy,' where the borders of melancholia are skirted, and a quiet glow is flirted with, before abandoning itself to a swooping digi-orchestralism and fibrillating fizz closer to the Kranky oeuvre of Tim Hecker and Christopher Bissonnette on 'Another Rural Fantasy' and 'Winter During Wartime.' The parade of references is by way of a rough guide, but the music of Anthropology is more maximalist in its articulation, more sweeping in its scale than all the aforementioned, with great gushes of tonalism surging through the soundfield. And those influences are dissolved, becoming trace elements in a blend of welling and swollen symphonics wrestling with pop ambient pointillism, all couched by Dent in his
own tones." [A. Lockett]
"BEHOLD! An offering from the ambient gods of Infraction. Dust off thine finest goblet, pour from your favorite bottle, remove thy clothes and be pure. Get back to nature and absorb the wonder of pure ambient beauty and message from the heavens that is Loren Dent's 'Anthropology Vol.1'. From the moment I hit play and shiver at the beauty of the intro I realize I'm destined to experience a journey into myself and the wonder of life. The tones here are profoundly uplifting (although there are some darker moments of uncertainty) and moving in a way I am simply unable to articulate. Sadly I'm no "Ambient Shakespeare" but I will say that this is like a soundtrack to life itself, one of joy, love, fear, pain, loss, grieving, euphoria and one which transcends time. Emotions that are integral to the human spirit, despite the age/time in which it exists, be it a modern or an ancient world. This stuff is deep, DEEP material. At one point I was almost reduced to tears, as I felt like I was the only living thing on the planet and felt very lonely... Man the power of music, the sound of those strings. Loren Dent is an extremely gifted artist to the point where it almost feels like there has been a divine hand in the creation of his sound world. His wondrous layers of sound are rich and constantly evolving, always emotional and hypnotic. His tools are both analogue and digital and his use of both is a joy to behold. For any ambient music lover that may have been disillusioned lately and possibly feels that the genre has been reduced to mere simple drones, then I'm fairly sure this will restore their faith in the genre. This deserves a prestigious place in the hearts and minds of all music lovers. To reference particular tracks, for me would be a pointless exercise as this really serves as a complete work..." [Norman Records]
€13.50
La Lumiere des Jours
this is a taâlem release - alm 144 - september 2023
composed and mixed by Jérôme Mauduit - december 2022
text on track 4 by Michel Foucault
mastered by Flavien Gillié
photography and design by Désaccord Majeur
Presented in a recycled cardboard gatefold sleeve with a photo sticker on the front and an insert inside.
Limited to 250 numbered copies.
https://taalem.bandcamp.com/album/la-lumi-re-des-jours-alm-144
"The Taalem label took a rest after their long line of 3"CDRs but now returns with a factory-pressed CD by the long-running musical project Désaccord Majeur. Jerome Maudit, the man behind Désaccord Majeur has been going for many years, with a debut release in 1989. Yet, there have been only ten releases, this one included. From 2003 to 2020, it was total silence. I know I heard many, if not all, of these releases, and yet, I don't have a clear picture of what Désaccord Majeur is all about. After hearing the five pieces on 'La Lumière Des Jours', I still don't know. The music is all electronic, mostly ambient and usually all in a slightly more sequenced way. Not because there is a lot of rhythm, but through sampling and sequencing, many small and bigger elements repeat. Somewhere in the back of my mind, it says that in the past, Désaccord Majeur's music was heavily influenced by Muslimgauze and Rapoon, and maybe it was and still is, but there is something unique about the music of Désaccord Majeur.
Less 'ethnic' (if that is a word we can still use), maybe a bit more 'dance-like', and with sufficient additional sounds, such as the distortion in 'Les Nombres Transfinis'. The music is quite moody and atmospheric, darkish, but it's not for dark for the sake of darkness. We find the shortest piece at seven minutes and almost fourteen the longest. Désaccord Majeur takes his time to let his music develop; it is time well-spend. Nowhere I had the idea that it was too slow (or rushed!), just the right amount needed to let it all develop naturally. Beautiful stuff that made me realize I should, when I have some more time, also return to some of the previous releases." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€12.00
Thaw
"Of the Swedish wave of ambient acts from the 1990s, Desiderii Marginis is one of the few still active and definitely one of the finest of those few. Over the course of 20 years, Levin released 7 full-length albums, a 3-way split and a collection of rare pre-debut demos plus numerous tracks on various compilations. His latest offering entitled "Thaw" compiles the latter and adds 3 tracks from the split "Lost Signals from Unknown Horizons". On the one hand, it is simply a collection of rare tracks, but, on the other, it may serve a purpose of a "best of" album. With the chronology unaltered, it gives you the full picture of the project and its progress. It is a history lesson of the last 20 years in sonic melancholia of Desiderii Marginis.
This edition is released in a 3-panel digipak strictly limited to 1000 copies." [label info]
www.zoharum.com
€13.00
The Bjorn Tapes
"This is a entire reissue of a limited to 50 copies C45 audio cassette originally released by Xerxes (Japan) as ES-27 in April 1999, later re-released as a limited CDr by Blade Records (Italy) in 2004. All material recorded live on 30 January 1999 in Nottinghem, U.K., edited and produced by Dave Uden during February 1999, re-mastered in September 1999.
using electronics, semples, tapes, bass-guitar, vocals, the English duo created here three long tracks of hypnotick electronic music / ambient noise in the "old-school" experimental genre.
White vinyl housed in a three-panel folded silkscreened cover released in a limited edition of 320 handnumbered copies. Released in November 2018."
"I'd like to think the world has finally woken up to Dieter Müh, the long-running industrial ambient project once consisting of Dave Uden and Steve Cammack, which since 2009 has been the solo project of the latter. EE Tapes recently resurrected Mutus Liber, a 1995 giveaway tape compiled for interested listeners and reissued it on CD. The Bjorn Tapes was another short-run cassette released by Dieter Müh first released on tape in 1999. It was a year that would see Dieter Müh share bills with The Grey Wolves, Con Dom, AntiChildLeague and Colin Potter. Colin Potter had a hand in their debut album Black Square, recording and producing it at his studio in Yorkshire. Dieter Müh at this point were Steve Cammack and Dave Uden, both inspired by the possibilities brought forth by the punk/DIY spirit of the seventies. It is industrial music that seeps into their sound, and you can hear it in the drone and noise ridden layers of electronics, manipulations, tapes and field recordings found within The Bjorn Tapes, which was recorded live and later edited in the studio. The entire Dieter Müh discography is littered with some wonderful short run releases on labels such as Tesco, Hanson Records, Harbinger Sounds. The Bjorn Tapes first surfaced on the Japanese label Xerxes run by Yoshida Yasutoshi of Government Alpha.
The Bjorn Tapes was recorded live in Nottingham in January 1999 and edited and produced a few months later. I don't see a show listed in the Dieter Müh gigography so I'm guessing this was a live in the studio affair. It was soon after this recording I first caught Dieter Müh live, where the duo would be huddled over banks of synths, twisting wires and twiddling knobs. I've really no idea how they produced the sounds they did but whatever they did it resonated with depth, feeling and power. The Bjorn Tapes captures the essence of a live Dieter Müh performance.
Silence, space and a keen sense of sound gestation play a role on 'Herma'. Distant throbs and samples ebb into windswept drone terrain mixed with shuffling textures before it seeps into harsher drone based layers. It is a fine example of their ambient sound vibrations where nothing is rushed or overbearing and you really need to listen closely to pick up on the dynamics.
Even though their sound is based in drone based experimental electronics, Dieter Müh are often regarded as an industrial ambient group. If that's the case then 'Herma' focusses on the ambient side of their industrial ambient sound, while the other two tracks emphasise the industrial side of that description. 'Low Feed' mixes industrial churn mixed with tape manipulations where voices become almost alien. An electronic throb pulses underneath, like blood through coursing through the body. Electronics shimmer, whirr and echo, broken by sudden glints of crashing noise. This is the Dieter Müh I remember from the live shows I witnessed where they slipped seamlessly from subtle drones into denser, harsher sound layers writhing with distended, disembodied voices, sampled percussive clatter and chasms of noise. Unsettling, unnerving and oppressive 'Low Feed' is a great track.
The 23 minute side long piece 'Aghor' unfurls in various movements. The opening ambient sonics are laced with taped voices and intermittent bass thuds. It cut to crunchy, textured manipulations, followed by a passage of processed tapes of mutterings, utterings and whisperings shadowed by electronic oscillations, spliced with clicks and micro tone shudders. At this point there's a sense of ritual to be found within the soundscapes and primordial intonations before bass rumbles enter and underpin a dizzying morass of sound, where manipulated and disembodied voices are enveloped in waves of fluctuating distortion and noise and the flickering haze of frequencies. It is an impressive build up of sound, texture and intensity proving Dieter Müh's dexterity and firm grasp of composition. As it unwinds the loose bass tones and taped voices almost take the form of a live Throbbing Gristle performance, surging with brief bursts of vocals, rendered in a power electronics style sinking into silence and then edging out in queasy electronic oscillations.
Originally issued on cassette by the Japanese label Xerxes run by Yoshida Yasutoshi of Government Alpha and subsequently reissued on CD-R by the Italian label Blade Records The Bjorn Tapes is now released on white vinyl housed in a three-panel folded silkscreened cover released in a limited edition of 320 handnumbered copies on the Nuit et Brouillard side label Force Majeure. It's a handsome edition and well worthy of your time, especially if you've missed this group whose roots in early industrial inspired some fine releases, such as Cari Saluti and Tertium Organum, which collaged the sounds of industrial, experimental, ambient, ritual and noise to great effect. For more information go to Force Majeure" [Compulsion Online]
€18.00
Amid Zero Echo
"Thomas Dimuzio's Amid Zero Echo marks the new release from this US underground legend from San Francisco, whose massive hypnotic soundscapes already released in the 90's were much ahead of the time!
Four new transcendental drone masterworks abstracted from electric guitar bristle with life through the dense, rich and detailed sonic expanse of Dimuzio's glorious sound world. Vibrating wires of the electric guitar inform a digital musique concrete modus operandi replete with unheard studio techniques which form a music with a strong organic core. These four drones open wide rooms for phantastic aural imaginations: like flying over endless grounds of unknown origin, sensing a heavy suction of extreme gravity, moving towards a black hole center... or driving into a totally dark mining tunnel with all the metallic ore and dust around.... These are drones that LIVE from the inside! Striking gatefold artwork by Mars Wellink showcases two clear vinyl LPs in an equally compelling and beautifully designed package.
Thomas Dimuzio is a musician, composer, sound designer, mastering engineer, label proprietor, and music technologist residing in San Francisco, California. Inspired as much by John Cage as Led Zeppelin, Dimuzio's music forms a sonic excursion that transports the listener into other worldly aural realms. “His work has a narrative, filmic tug that will draw you into its dark corners, ears alert… brilliant and rarely less than entertaining.” [Peter Marsh, BBC]
Long regarded as a musical pioneer for his innovative use of live sampling and looping techniques, Dimuzio has earned a deserved reputation worldwide as an avant-garde sound artist in touch with the aesthetic pulse of time and technology. A true sonic alchemist who can seemingly create music events out of almost anything, Dimuzio's listed sound sources on his various releases include everything from 'modified 10 speed bicycle' and 'resonating water pipe' to short-wave radios, loops, feedback, samplers, synthesizers and even normal instruments such as guitar, clarinet and trumpet. Dimuzio's eclecticism bespeaks a career equally informed by a profound dedication to his craft and collaborations with friends, artists and technologists alike.
Dimuzio's recordings have been released internationally by ReR Megacorp, Asphodel, RRRecords, No Fun Productions, Sonoris, Drone Records, Record Label Records, Odd Size, Seeland, and other independent labels. Among his collaborators are Chris Cutler, Dan Burke, Joseph Hammer, Anla Courtis, Nick Didkovsky, Due Process, Voice of Eye, Fred Frith, David Lee Myers, 5uu's, Matmos, Wobbly and Negativland." [label info]
www.substantia-innominata.de
"Attending a Thomas Dimuzio performance is like lying underneath a web of freeway bridges with your eyes closed; blocking out all visuals except the brief daggers of light that flicker with each passing car. There is a sense of probable dread—metal, wooden or cigarette debris from the vehicles could fly off and injure you—but also one of hypnotized calm, thanks to the amplified hum of Michelin and Goodyear against greased concrete." [Cameron MacDonald, Pitchfork Media]
"While I was listening to this double 10" record, I was thinking that Thomas Dimuzio has a very distinct sound, although I would not go as far as to say that I could pick him blind in a contest. The four pieces on this record are what we know from Dimuzio and what we love; at least that's what I do. It's never easy to know what Dimuzio is doing, and perhaps I have some romantic notion about it: take a teeny tiny fragment of sound and capture that is an endless range of sound effects, samplers, oscillators and filters and what else he got down in his studio. The cover says 'guitar and processing', so there you go: what do I know. Like so many others he knows how to manipulate the guitar beyond - light-years beyond actually - the sound of the guitar and it sounds like this dark, slow moving landmass; Drone Records, who are behind this series, calls him a sonic alchemist, and that term is perhaps over-used, but maybe not in this case, I think. Dimuzio creates the kind of drones that many
dream of and few can actually do: that of a constant swirl up, down and side ways spin, always moving and changing, never in state of standstill. It's music that could as easily work for as a soundtrack for a film, but is best enjoyed on it's own, in a barely lit room at night and at a louder volume: only then, I would think, the true beauty will be fully uncovered. Music as a total immersion event. The only downside is you have to get and change the record a few times; on the bright side, you have four pieces and the choice to release this as a double 10" is a great one. One day on CD, perhaps, please?" [FdW/Vital Weekly]
www.substantia-innominata.de
€20.00
Emphasis
"Our way to create a record is based on the simple principle of direct-recording – which means the shape and form of our music is basically created within one moment. It is not only about meeting in a studio to do the recordings, but to stay together at one place with a focus on creating music and concentrated listening each day. The isolation from other musical inputs and the reduced input in general, being far off from bigger cities, far off an everyday-live takes you to the point when you don’t want to sound like something you know, you just want to search, experiment and play. John Cage said, that experimental music is where the outcome can’t be foreseen. These things happen through passion and not ambition.
For ‘emphasis’, we again went to Salzburg, where we could set up our gear in the basement of Florian’s parents house for one week – the same place we recorded our first album ‘dirac’. We recorded about 4 hours everyday , experimenting with different materials and instruments. We later listened to the results at the studio garnison7 in Vienna and did more editing work in a small hut up in the snowy austrian mountains in February 2008 – it was cold, electricity was short, but it was silent.
The record contains many details that have personal aural connections to us. The bell which reappears on emphasis is an old-cuckoo-clock from the hut. The crows that fly away are a field-recording from vienna´s augarten park – we went in there during the night and triggered the birds with a short lightimpuls from a flash light. The kids playing were recorded in a village in northern India were Daniel and Peter spent some time doing field-recordings. The trumpet appearing in Bantu was recorded by Peter on a frozen mountain lake in Austria – thereby the natural reverb of the valley is transferred onto the record. The cover-picture shows the roof of an old abandoned farming-house, close to the mountain hut where we worked on the record." [Peter Kutin, DIRAC]
www.spekk.net
€15.50
Fear on Every Side
In the three years since Marius Costache’s previous full-length album for Amek as Discordless, his usual menacing and anxiety-fuelled music has reached even further into the sonic extremes. We can blame it on the world we live in, on the year that just passed or on Costache’ very own distortion-worshipping approach to electronic music and his decades-worth of experience as a sound and recording engineer. Whichever you pick, ‘Fear On Every Side’ will remain a brutal take on contemporary noise music. It is demanding, disorienting and primal work but still captivating and sincere.
Every element found on the record contributes to a narrative that feels simultaneously vast and intimate. ‘Fear On Every Side’ can be perceived both from a first person perspective and as an overview of our decaying reality. The record doesn’t want you to overcome the sense of hopelessness, paranoia and tension it unfolds in front of you, but rather to plunge you deeper in this place of no way out.
https://amekcollective.bandcamp.com/album/fear-on-every-side
€8.00
Aversion Therapy
"Drafted by Minotaurs mainstays are guitarist Ryan Wilson and Ian Fulcher, who contributes trumpet and glockenspiel. Meanwhile members of a floating cast chip in with added textures from cello and violin. Opener "Blueprints for Sunbuilding" spools out a hail of plucked and bowed strings, webs of sound solidifying then melting into steely flow, stall set out somewhere around cultivated Constellation post-rockeries, a mood and sound that may feel familiar to those acquainted with the new backwoods chamberisms and neo-folk drone of UK cottage industrialites such as Richard Skelton (aka A Broken Consort/Clouwbeck) and Seasons (Pre-din). "Sault Locks" proposes cyclical patterns of stringed things that seem to hover shyly apart, before swarming to swell and billow over the listener - not so much a Storm of Drones as a squall of tones. "Skin the Night and Fog," a more veiled sister of the previous pluckings and bowings, plays out a psych-infused dream sequence. These three tracks forming Side A work with their own distinct harmonic and textural patterns, while seeming like movements of something overarching. Miasmic minor chord tidal flow abounds, the music's motion determined by languorous bow-strokes, its textures by warm-prickly needles of guitar pizzicatos. Side B's single extended track, "Sunday's Morning Ghost," is wrought from similar materials, but aspires to more transcendant levels, led by the celestial harmonics of Fulcher's treated trumpet. It takes on atavistic echoes redolent of some distant Miles Davis or Jon Hassell blowback, as if viewing In a Silent Way through a post-Kosmische kaleidoscope, or channeled through Eno/Budd cathedrals to meet today's psych-drone and ambient trajectories. Overall, Aversion Therapy thrives on such productive tensions between genres and eras, as it does between live and recorded, spontaneous and pre-structured, making for engaging, at times thrillingly psychotropic, listening." - alan lockett " [label info]
www.infractionrecords.com
"A duo is Drafted By Minotaurs, being guitarist Ryan Wilson and trumpet and glockenspiel (an unlikely combination me thinks) Ian Fulcher, whose 'Aversion Therapy' is their first LP. A great package with a gate fold sleeve - no costs are spared here. Their ambient is much more open and gentle then say Dent, and miles and miles away from the music of Malignant Records. The guitar is clearly to be recognized, even with some folk strumming in 'Sault Locks'. Whatever glockenspiel and trumpet are doing is however a bit unclear. My best guess would be is that are looped through a variety of sound devices and which form the ambient backdrop in which the guitar seems to move so freely. Side A has three tracks, under which the aforementioned 'Sault Locks', which is quite short, which are nice, but the best piece is the side long b-side 'Sunday's Morning Ghost', in which the trumpet plays a more dominant role (or at least can be recognized more), in long sustaining tones, meandering together, merging gently with the guitar sounds, which now are close to the trumpet. The glockenspiel? It plays its own spiel somewhere, like shimmering metallic sounds pushed towards the end of the spectrum, but they haven't disappeared altogether. Great cinematic beauty. Top class ambient album." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€26.00
La Chambre de Stryrene
"This album is the first release of the DRAHOMIRA SONG ORCHESTRA, the musical subsidiary of the multimedia art factory 'INSTITUT DRAHOMIRA'. Eight obscure ambient tracks: bizarre string loops and mysterious unidentified speaking voices create a worrying atmosphere of claustrophobia. So far, their works (about 50 albums) were only produced on CD-R or tapes and distributed randomly by mail, to people picked in the phonebook. Since the late 80's some live performances were also organised in secret places and transmitted by phone to the audience. Weird!" [label info]
€10.00
Snow:Field
Schnee-Musik ! Alle Quellen-Klänge auf dieser CD-R wurden irgendwie mit Schnee erzeugt, und dann zu sieben langen Stücken verarbeitet. Sanftes Wummern, typisches Schnee-Knirschen, geheimnisvolles Wispern, eine detailreiche akustische Mikrowelt tut sich einem hier auf!
Ein Projekt von JAMIE DROUIN und LANCE OLSEN des Künstlerkollektivs INFREQUENCY.
Seven long pieces based on original sounds created with snow... soft vibrations, typical snow-crunching, mysterious whispers, a detailed acoustic micro-world opens..
check: www.infrequency.ca
“this 5" full-length cd documents portions of the audio installation of the same name recently seen at the folly gallery, uk. all sounds in this production are the result of the interaction with snow and feature drouin/olsen's best work to date. limited to 200 copies” [label info]
€10.00
Aphonia
"Out of the many recordings and releases by this group (comprised of Adam Elesh, Brett Smith, Andrew Crane and Jon Thomas), the main three releases that we have picked to digitally re-master are: "Green" the 1986 debut U.S. and Worldwide release (here available with bonus track "Sparrow"); "Aphonia" the instrumental 1990 release which has been beautifully re-mastered (with added bonus track "Dulce Periculum" 2006); and the digitally re-mastered re-release of the classic opus "Satori" originally released Worldwide by Nate Starkman. This CD "houses" many of the tracks from "Nierika", "Bloody Boy" and "Ultraviolet"." [label website info]
www.scarfacecharley.com
€11.50
Quelques Usines Fantomes
"As a listener, I’m always intrigued as to what attracts me or doesn’t with regard to works in the field recording vein. The same applies to other areas of music as well, of course, but it’s especially interesting in these works composed of sounds generally taped on site and, to a lesser or greater degree, assembled back in the studio. They’re simply sounds, after all, more or less what I could hear on my own by concentrating on my surroundings at any given moment (allowing for different sources from different locations) which I often do anyway. Why be so absorbed by someone else’s impressions?
Two things, I think, at least. One is a basic affinity with the assembler as far as particular sounds that he or she finds beautiful, fascinating, notable, resonant. As much as one might consciously think that such hierarchies are entirely beside the point, there remains that nagging tendency, whether culturally or genetically inculcated, to prefer one sound, or combination of sounds, to another, at least to the extent one hasn’t fully assimilated Cage et. al., often a more difficult, thornier task than readily admitted. Second is the way these sounds are ordered, layered and contrasted, certainly as subjective a judgment, but one having to do with an appreciation of the composer’s poetic sense, in the perceived “rightness” of the sequence of sounds, ultimately not so different, I think, to one’s enjoyment of post-AMM improvisation.
Though I’d heard examples of this approach since college days, the first such music to really make a strong impression on me was probably Luc Ferrari’s “Presque Rien”, and shortly thereafter, Toshiya Tsunoda’s “Scenery of Decalcomania”. They certainly, for me, contained the two elements described above and, more, evoked an extremely realsense of place, in the manner that I hear things, a very self-centered view, but one I think comes part and parcel when listening to work in this area. Over the years, hearing countless examples of field recording as it has become more and more pervasive (often mixed with live improvisation, sometimes set to disc untouched, often manipulated in the studio), I’ve often questioned myself as to why this example failed to move me while that one did. It’s usually very hard to quantify, somehow even more so than determining the relative value in a free instrumental performance.
I was thinking through this while listening to Bruno Duplant’s “Quelques usines fantômes” (which would be translated into English as “some ghost factories”). Why is this particular collection and distribution of sounds so appealing? They seem to have been drawn, largely, from a waterside area, perhaps a canal, not an overly busy one but where a certain amount of activity is taking place, maybe early in the morning a la Ferrari’s classic work. Duplant eschews going for overt watery sounds, contenting himself with low-level, subtle lapping, the soft creaks of hull on wooden piers, the gentle puttering of a small outboard motor, etc. These serve as the spine of the piece and are consistent throughout (after the first few minutes, at least), another aspect I tend to find compelling: choosing a given sound world and sticking to it, investigating its features in detail, allowing it time to generate a larger effect than mere sonics. There are plenty of other sounds, to be sure: metal objects dropping to the floor, unidentifiable hums, an odd, theramin-like wavering tone, wind billowing in enclosed spaces—at least this is how I hear them; who knows their actual source? But that’s of no import; one accepts this world, which is a basic thing for me. As in any good story or film, the reader/viewer has to accept the presented world as valid, as internally consistent, as “real” at least in the mind of its creator. “Quelques usines fantômes”, whether one picks up on the spirits being manufactured or not, readily achieves this. One is immersed in the world, deriving both sensual enjoyment and, more, generating one’s own narrative, trusting that one is on solid ground. The periodic, electronic-sounding hums that surface give the world a bit of a science fiction or otherworldly sheen, perhaps appropriate given the work’s title, though it’s those real world sounds that anchor the piece for me. Duplant has said he wanted to create a “between world” and I think he has.
A full, rich work then, one of the better things I’ve heard in this lineage in recent years and very much worth losing oneself in.”
(Brian Olewnick, May 2011)
www.unfathomless.net
€14.00
Nox
The sound piece Nox (in addition to reflecting the traditional nocturnal effluvia specific to the title) is based on the multiple meanings and interpretations that can be made of the incomplete form of the dactylic hexameter and palindrome In girum imus nocte ecce et consumimur igni. This Latin phrase, pictorial and poetic, most often attributed to Virgil, refers to the moths that circle around the candle before burning themselves, and which means: “We go around in circles in the night and we are devoured by fire “. It is also, much closer to us, a French film directed by Guy Debord in 1978. The film (lasting 95 min) describes the consumer society and capitalist alienation, applying to highlight the condition of modern slaves. Today even more this Latin expression takes on a new meaning with the phenomena of ultra-liberalism and major climate crisis. Man, like moths, burns his wings on the fires he himself lit and continues to maintain despite warnings and threats. Are we witnessing the end of the Anthropocene, of the consumer society and capitalist alienation described by Guy Debord?
~
La pièce sonore Nox (outre le fait de refléter les traditionnelles effluves nocturnes propre au titre), repose sur les sens et interprétations multiples que l’on peut faire de la forme incomplète de l’hexamètre dactylique et palindrome In girum imus nocte ecce et consumimur igni . Cette locution latine, imagée et poétique, le plus souvent attribuée à Virgile, fait référence aux papillons de nuit qui tournent autour de la chandelle avant de s’y brûler, et qui signifie : « Nous tournons en rond dans la nuit et nous sommes dévorés par le feu ». C’est aussi, beaucoup plus près de nous, un film français réalisé par Guy Debord en 1978. Le film (d’une durée de 95 min) décrit la société de consommation et d’aliénation capitaliste, s’appliquant à mettre en évidence la condition d’esclaves modernes. Aujourd’hui encore plus cette expression latine prend un sens nouveau avec les phénomènes d’ultra-libéralisme et de crise climatique majeure. L’Homme, tels les papillons de nuit, se brûle les ailes sur les feux qu’il a lui même allumé et qu’il continue a entretenir malgré les avertissements et les menaces. Assistons-nous à la fin de l’anthropocène, de la société de consommation et d’aliénation capitaliste décrite par Guy Debord ?
(Bruno Duplant, May 2022)
Release Date : June 20, 2022
Duration : 40:00
Format : glass mastered CD/digital
Track : nox
Regular Edition : 165 hand-numbered copies
Packaged in clear vinyl sleeve with folded insert + additional art card on 350gr satin paper.
Cover design, card & treatments by Daniel Crokaert
Based almost exclusively on photos by Bruno Duplant and some additional textures from
Unfathomless' archive
"It seems as if no week passes by without a new release by Bruno Duplant, the French composer of whom I never seem to know much about. Releases for Unfathomless deal with field recordings, and this one is no different, except, perhaps, for the fact that many of these field recordings are made in one place. Duplant
recorded his material in Waziers, Berlin and London, without being very specific about the exact locations. That too is sometimes different on this label. And lastly, Duplant uses some instruments here. I believe to hear a piano and some instrument played with a bow; that might strings or a cymbal. The title refers to "the multiple meanings and interpretations that can be made of the incomplete form of the dactylic hexameter and palindrome In girum imus nocte ecce et consumimur igni. This Latin phrase, pictorial and poetic, most often attributed to Virgil, refers to the moths that circle around the candle before burning themselves, and which means: “We go around in circles in the night and we are devoured by fire". I am not that smart. More explanations on the Bandcamp page. Maybe the piece is indeed a palindrome. At least when I opened it in an audio editor it gave that impression. As with some of other recent works, Duplant seems to be layering a lot of sounds that may not have
many relations with each other and then finds a dialogue among them. By slowly fading up and down particular sounds, he creates a very rich sound world. I am not sure to what extent this is to be understood as random in the John Cage-sense, or if the composer willingly allows sounds to be louder or quieter in the mix. There are some massive, drone-like rocks, very detailled small field recordings, the occasional piano tone, the bow across the cymbal/violin, crackles and it all works very well. 'Nox' lasts exactly forty minutes, but I am sure this could be twice as long and still be interesting. I know this, because I had it on repeat and didn't notice the change over that much and it wasn't until much longer that I realized it started again. The overall tone of the piece is quite moody and atmospheric, but I guess such is the nature of densely layered field recordings. High quality work, as usual." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€14.00
Real Ruido Pastizo
Embrace the unexpected! Again C.D. manages it to create very unexpected and uncommon soundscapes made up out of found sounds & samples. This has at times even a jazzy & funny feel, but its like being in a totally deranged & transformed reality-system. Collage-music, Loops, all arranged very nicely. Check it out!
"Christian Dergarabedian is by now more known through his Earzumba than his previous engagement with Reynols, and releases a great bunch of great CDRs. More and more he relies on the sampler to be the crazy melting pot of sounds and here he seems to be taking matters a bit further. From the field recordings of 'Intro' to a heavily cut up reggae collage madness in 'Descuidado'. Spinning vinyl by hand and picking up crazy fragments, and not by strange coincidence Editions_zero remarks that this is a nice soundtrack to a b-movie. I was playing this a couple of times in a row, and each time I turned it back on and discovered new themes in this crazy road movie. It has a strange appeal, this madness, this hotchpotch of music. A strange kind of radio play even when words aren't really used here to any extent. Not even a real story actually now I come to think of it. Turntablism without turntables. A story of no words, but the perfect soundtrack to out and make your own crazy roadmovie." [FdW /Vital Weekly]
"I managed to create a film score sensation giving the dynamic as if it were done strictly following a script. Includes one mash up in between Bernard Herrmann & Silvestre Revueltas." [Christian Dergarabedian]
label: www.void.gr/absurd
€8.00
Secret Highways
“EBSK are an improvising duo from Washington DC, with a new release, "Secret Highways/Wobbly" (Scarcelight SLR15), a very goddam original take on contempo basement prog (or some such thing). The instrumentation is Casios, drums, bass guitar, and B flat clarinet. If this suggests some kind of Milo Fine or Flaherty/Colbourne action, the direction that they head in is pretty original. Without the help of beats, they manage to create a newish sounding electronic environment, inside of which events happen which eventually coalesce into something that walks, looks and quacks a whole lot like rock. The crudity of the electronics and the sparseness of certain elements brings to mind such small units as Young Marble Giants or even The Method Actors, but the sounds are of such aesthetics placed inside a strange post-Rock In Opposition Prog continuum, then manhandled by picnic apes. Which is pretty cool, no matter how hard you shake it.” [Byron Coley. The Wire]
€5.00
Tether
"Zoharum presents ECHOES OF YUL in their new release entitled 'Tether'. After two longplayers ('Echoes Of Yul' and 'Cold Ground') and a split CD, it's time for the next release, atypical in every respect. It's not a full album in the exact meaning of this word. 'Tether' is an extended play which has a record running time for such a release which clocks at 78 minutes. It's a stylistically varied project which is the result of the collaboration with many artists of different backgrounds. 'Tether' contains 4 new tracks full of slow heavy riffs, sounds from broken synths and ethereal atmospheres plus a number of reinterpretations by Different State, iconAclass (MC Dalek), James Plotkin (OLD, Khanate), Maciek Szymczuk, Stendek, Steve Austin (Today Is The Day). All compiled to sound not like a compilation, but a stand-alone cohesive album with many unexpected twists and turns." [label info]
www.zoharum.com
€10.00
Jewels
Kartenspiel als Navigationssystem: 15 Miniaturen der Experimentalband; + Film. "Jewels" ist ein Konzeptalbum mit 15 zwei- bis dreiminütigen Songs, die ursprünglich nur als monatliche Download-Geschenke an die Supporter der dritten Phase des Neubauten.org-Unterstützerprojektes gedacht waren. Die Zeit, die auf den Schliff der Juwelen verwendet werden konnte, war begrenzt: Zwei Tage mussten reichen, um von einer ersten Idee zum fertigen Song zu gelangen. Die Band um Blixa Bargeld suchte also nach einem Verfahren, das die dafür nötige Dynamik entwickeln konnte. Man erfand ein Kartenspiel als Navigationssystem. Jede Karte gab einen kryptischen Hinweis auf Elemente des Neubautenschaffens seit 1980: Instrumente, Materialien und Strukturen, mit Bezug auf Strophe oder Refrain, Intro und Outro, soziale Beziehungen und Bündnisse: Wer mit wem? Wer womit und mit welcher Geschwindigkeit und Haltung? So entstand eine Art Musik des Zufalls, die einige der egofreisten Kompositionen der Band beinhaltet. Die CD erscheint in Ecolbook-Verpackung mit 40-seitigem Booklet, Liedtexten in Deutsch und Englisch sowie dem 40-minütigen Film "Acht Lösungen". [press release]
"Much will be made of the strategies that Einsturzende Neubauten used in making The Jewels. Frontman Blixa Bargeld devised a series of arot-like cards which represented the vast collection of materials which are at Neubauten's disposal - steel, tin, zinc, wood, plastic, glass, ceramics. The entire band would then draw cards, and the compositional process would begin. The tracks tend be a bit shorter
than the typical Neubauten opus, and the songs follow the recent aesthetic shifts towards quieter, controlled orchestration for their
unusual materials. On a few tracks, there are hints of their formerly infernal selves, glancing back to one of the last true masterpieces Funf Auf Der Nach Oben Offenen Richterskala. Originally released as a subscription only download through their website; now available with a 40 minute film as a Quicktime movie and large book with lyrics and Blixa's insight into the process." [Aquarius Records review]
€17.50
The Secret Golden Flower
"ELDAR, the Spanish Dark Ambient/Martial project that once started on Cold Meat Industry, return with yet another conceptual album presenting a wide range of beautiful sounds. The concept of this album is inspired by the mystical and psychological archetypes to explain the universal version of a generic soul that rules from the collective unconscious of individuals in all human civilizations since antiquity. These archaic prototypes were copied, emulated and used since the dawn of humanity, and fantastic dream and images have been represented in myths and symbols, trying to explain these exemplary patterns that are still alive and latent until today. They sleep present in popular folklore, in the psyche of every human being, influencing yourself and collectively in the beliefs and ideas that lead them to make beautiful and creative acts or carrying even their own destruction, evolving or backward from that inexorable shape societies through time and history. This album runs in his melodies and lyrics the long road of archetypes that continue to print his psychological injury in each individual and that shape their behavior in society, determining the fate of humanity. Composed by Marc Merinee & Merce Spica and recorded at Oxid Studio Barcelona 2011. Produced & Mastered by Marc Merinee. Art Work by Alonso Urbanos." [label info]
www.oldeuropacafe.com
€12.00
Bad white Corpuscule
"Electric sewer age was thought up in 2006 by a man called John Deek (r.i.p). The original idea was for likeminded souls, amongst particularly the coil fraternity, too compose music, which would be released, with no credits to the creators.
This would allow the listener to listen, and not have a preconceived bias, as to which song they liked best, based on their favourite composer etc.
While in Bangkok 2006, I talked with Peter Christopherson (r.i.p) about the project and he jumped aboard. He supplied many loops which made their way to Texas and onto the UK.
These segments might or might not be used in here, you explore.
Danny Hyde continues his fantastical journey in sound with this second release under the ESA name and completely moves beyond expectations.
Disproving the doubters, this EP is pretty much just him in his studio wrenching new creations out of his equipment; the trainspotters amongst us will no doubt pick out some of the shards he pulls from his past.
But he doesn't make them the focus of what is going on here, they are there merely to accent, to add a bit of depth and help illuminate how many years he's been at this.
Does he follow a muse?
If so, it must not be one that operates in the traditional sense. Perhaps it is more of a compulsion to create and then endlessly refine what you've done down to the most primal of elements.
There are ghosts all over this thing, you can feel the weight of their absence and at some points you swear you can actually hear them.
Tricks of the sound field, the mirror casting back shadows. If anyone else is on here, they have come out of the ether to make an appearance. Don't be afraid, put on your headphones and immerse yourself into a symphony that Hyde terms "an ode to loss".
He'd know.
We can all see from the outside what happened over the last decade but for him, it was all right there. Up close and personal. Through the usage of heavily processed vocals and arcane terrestrial instrumentation, Hyde lives up to his reputation for creating amazingly detailed yet extremely dark electronic compositions.
The symbiosis of organic and synthetic influences would be his forte and he's not holding anything back this time out, believe me, there's a feel to what is on here that isn't easily conceived. To just sit down and begin knocking out what 'Bad White Corpuscle' contains I don't think could be done unless you had planned and plotted out every last possible contingency down to the millisecond.
I've played this a lot but by comparison he's probably got mixes and additional versions of what's on here that could fill terabytes of hard drive space without batting an eye.
Electric Sewer Age exist between two worlds: the one of now and an older, more disturbing place which with the passage of time only becomes more savage and terrifying to visit.
As it appears he's chosen to put Aural Rage to bed, we have these excursions to look forward to; every few years Mr. Hyde will come out of seclusion to reveal where he's at and where he's going.
Clearly, this project is a form of therapy for the guy and having researched precisely what a bad white corpuscle is there's an uneasy feeling that foreshadowing is being employed here.
I'm not privy to whom this refers, I can only hope they know what they're doing.
This is so intense, so unflinchingly expressive that I come away completely drained.
Up by Sunday.
Peter.
Very elegant electronica, as you are used from best Coil's albums.
Dreamy and doped muzak for the real dreamer.
Tracklist :
01. Grey corpuscle 3.56
02. Corpuscular corpuscle 5.11
03. Amber corpuscle 5.12
04. Rising corpuscle 8.40
05. Bad white corpuscle 6.27
06. Black corpuscle 5.20 " [label info]
www.oldeuropacafe.com
€16.00
Voices of the Cosmos
"Project "VOICES OF THE COSMOS" is an educational-artistic initiative created by two artists from Kujawsko-Pomorskie: Rafał Iwański (X-NAVI:ET) and Wojciech Zięba (ELECTRIC URANUS). Both of them have lot of experience in creating experimental and electroacoustic music. In recordings of this album original extraterrestrial sounds captured from space by radio-telescopes (pulsars), sounds from space missions and the space itself.
Every artists created 3 tracks that form the 40 minutes album. Instrumental tracks played and recorded in rhythm with tones of "space sounds", are made manually with use of electronic and acoustic instruments. All that makes this project very unique. It is the only type of it in Poland. The project had also gain reputation in science circles. "VOICES OF THE COSMOS" is the electroacoustic dark ambient (although it should not be genered this way), it's music that in 100% the title itself explains - the voices of cosmos. We watch the sky and the stars, we know many photos of heavenly bodies, other galaxies. All that fascinates us, is beautiful and colorful. But those are not environments kind to us. They are terrifying, cold or extremely hot places. And this how this album is. It can take you out there but it can scare you too.
As a bonus two tracks are added in video version, made with exclusive video-art by Chris Konky. The "VOICES OF THE COSMOS" is released by Beast Of Prey and Eter Records in a three panel digipack." [label info]
www.beastofprey.com
"Rafal Iwanski is the man behind HATI, a percussion group from Poland, but in his spare time he is also the man behind a solo project called X-Navi:et, which is all about electronic music. Here he works with Wojciech Zieba, also known as Electric Uranus. They already released an album in 2011, which was more a split album, which each of them playing three pieces. The name, Voice Of The Cosmos, should be taken literally: they use recordings from out space, picked up with a 32 meter radio telescope in Torun. Here they have five pieces which they performed live at the the Planetarium and Astronomical Observatory in Grudziadz, plus two solo pieces each. You could, perhaps all too easily, think this is the kind of early long form synth music, with pieces that last twenty minutes, lots of arpeggio's on the keyboard, bouncing jolly forward. This is not the case here. These men keep their pieces actually quite short for this type, and not exclusively build with the use of synthesizers, but also with samples from space and even a heavily processed voice. This is the kind of music that is actually striving to be a pop song, even when the music is not entirely 'pop' like. The structure of the pieces is all to be a rounded song structure, and not a more open ended free fall of synth sounds. The use of long wave sounds in this music add a nice experimental component to the music. The solo tracks, aren't the divided sum of the total, but more along similar lines, so perhaps you could wonder if perhaps this could have been entirely in solo mode, but of course the element of creating together adds that a bit of extra tension to the music. It's worth picking up their 2011 album, the split one, and get a more complete picture of the development. Excellent cosmos music, something just out of the ordinary, but not too estranged." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€12.00
VOICES OF THE DEAD
"Photographer and videoartist Yuri Elik is primarily known as one of the founders and permanent members of multimedia project 2012, creating audio-video installations on various contemporary art festivals (SKIF, Heilige Feuer, Multivision, etc.). Apart from this Yuri performs on his own making video- and slide-shows for a number of experimental musical bands in St. Petersburg. Yuri is also the video show author for the performances of Simon Magus ballet written by D. Kakhovskiy and the designer of several CD artworks and websites. Gosha Solnzev (also known as "Van Gog" - 1g0g) - big industrial showman, leader of the project Noises of Russia well-known in Russia, organizer of several festivals, such as "Noise vs. Glamour", "Military Days", "Noisy Women", etc. Gosha has always claimed that he plays funeral music, so it's no wonder he showed interest in the phenomenon of voices of the dead, discovered by Friedrich Jürgenson in the late 50s of the past century. Electronic Voice Phenomenon (voices of the dead, Raudive voices) are the voices of anomalous origin appearing while making records on tape recorders or other electronic audio devices. EVP researches claim and have proof that this is a possible way of communication between physical and some other non-physical planes of existence. The exploration of this phenomenon led to an effective cooperation between Van Gog and Yuri which resulted in a series of live performances with the "Voices of the Dead" program and this short film, with 24 minutes an obscure psychedelic drama evolving in front of the spectator. A multi-layered collage of concrete visual images and kaleidoscopic colour fields constantly transforms, accompanied by unusual and uneasy sombre ambient with real voices of the dead samples interlaced in it's structure. As a bonus this disk also contains a 12-min. slide-film "City Spirits": alternation of photos by Yuri Elik with his own soundtrack constructed from city noises. Yuri skillfully focuses attention on subtleties of usual things that remain unseen to the eye of a usual human being, generally too busy with thinking over his insubstantial problems and forgetting about the beauty of the world surrounding him. The release is packed in a special cardboard sleeve and goes with a booklet with an encyclopaedic reference about the phenomenon of electronic voices." [label info]
http://zhb.radionoise.ru/
€12.00
Growing A Beard, Driving A Bike With A Naked Girl On Your Lap Does Not Make You A Man
"Notes: Side A: Recorded live in New York, US on 17 September 2009
Various analogue instruments used,
Mastered at The Plantation Capetown October 2010 on Nakamichi RX50
Side B: Recorded live in Pieterburen, NL on 6th June 2008
Various analogue instruments used
Mastered at The Plantation Capetown 2010 on Nakamichi RX505
Both play LOUD.
C-60, 100 copies" [label info / credits]
www.impulsystetoskopu.pl
"In the recent, second, volume of the Encyclopedia of Noise, released by Impulsy Stetoskopu, we find an entry for Ellende. We learn its an anonymous musical project, led by one Wim Bontjes (who died in 1995), an author whose work is the basis of sound material. Musicians from all over the world deliver their sounds to the project and mixed together by the other three members from The Netherlands. Some of their music has been reviewed before. This cassette, also released by Impulsy Stetoskopu, contains two live recordings, one from 2008 (in Pieterburen, The Netherlands) and one from 2009 (New York). No members are mentioned here, but both pieces were created with 'various analogue instruments'. Both were picked up using a microphone, rather than a line recording, which adds a more raw edge to the end result. Probably its fair to say that we are dealing here with a rough form of cosmic music. Lots of synthesizer buzz around, sweep, oscillate and bubble and create fine, dense waves of cosmic music. Effectively it may seem that both concerts sound alike, which made me think that the same musicians are at play here, even when the 2008 concert is a bit more louder. I have no idea which literally references are in play here, but the title is great!" [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€9.50
Odyssey, A Sentimental Journey
Odyssey, a sentimental journey: Ellende’s latest release sees the band bringing together an album based on a trip Wim took to Japan to visit his cousin in the early 1990’s. Most of the music in the records was recorded live at The Plantation in 2018, with a few minor overdubs added at various locations (Tokyo and London). The music might sound a bit nostalgic, the ambience of warm February nights in Cape Town while the sounds of old French movies seep through a badly tuned piano. Sometimes the doors are shut and large metal sheets are heard processed through guitar pedals. A modular synthesiser, analogue synths (Roland SH-101, Juno 6, ARP Solus, Solina) and guitar have been used as well throughout the album.
Dave “Slave” Mbambi: Guitar, Drones, Synths
Lodewikus Pretorius: Piano, Modular, String Synths
John John: Synths, Bows, Percussion,
Martinus Antonius: Recording, Mix, Tapes, Phasers
Rafael Anton Irisarri: Mastering
Richard Hart: Design and Art Direction
https://ellende1.bandcamp.com/album/odyssey-a-sentimental-journey
"For quite a few reasons this release is a big surprise. First of all, I had not heard of Ellende in many years. The last time was back in Vital Weekly 772 when I reviewed a live cassette from the group. That was after some hiatus, but between Vital Weekly 346 and 444, there were no less than ten different releases reviewed in these pages (I even wrote “by now Ellende seems to appear in every new Vital Weekly”) including the all-revealing 'Kut Met Peren' 3"CDR. So that is Dutch and so is the word Ellende, which stands for 'misery'. That is one surprise. The next one is that this release doesn't fit the previous somewhat lo-fi aesthetic of the old work, but this a lovely, beautiful release. The records are packed inside the front cover of a hardcover book (actually an oversized dust-cover, and some thirty-six pages of text and images, all in beautiful black and white. The third surprise is that Ellende is still around and still very little is known about them. Wim Bontjes and his cousin Martinus Antonius start it out with tape experiments. Bontjes committed suicide in 1995 and the group continued with his "conceptual ideas", even when these ideas remain unnamed. Over the years many people have been a member, all in steady flux. This new record was recorded in South Africa, as, mystery solved, they are from there and not The Netherlands, with Dave "Slave" Mbambi on guitars, drones and synth, Lodewikus Pretorius on piano, modular, string synths and John John on synths, bows, percussion while Antonius is responsible for recording, mix, tapes and phasers. Bandcamp is a bit more specific: "Sometimes the doors are shut and large metal sheets are heard processed through guitar pedals. A modular synthesiser, analogue synths (Roland SH-101, Juno 6, ARP Solus, Solina) and guitar have been used as well throughout the album. "The release is about a trip Wim made to Japan to visit his cousin (I assume Antonius) and the stories are about a "pitiful chase of sex', portrayed by "women's death-masks-like faces", as such by Richard Hart in the book. I mist admit that I re-read some of the old reviews to remind myself what Ellende was all about; I forgot after all those/despite all those releases. I must say I very much enjoyed this new release. There is an excellent dark mood depicted here, fitting the likewise dark images of the book and the tales of sordid sex. An endless stream of synthesizers mingles very pleasantly with sustaining guitar sounds and sound effects used to place accents in strategic places. Sometimes the guitar is strummed in a more traditional way, such as in 'Girlfriend Experience' but against a doomy backdrop of much reverb. Throughout this album carries on the torch of Ellende's previous work with fuzzy and busy drones, beautifully colliding. This is one damn fine release; one that is just perfect, both in music and packaging. It is almost like a pre-programmed collector's item. I am very curious if Ellende will slip back into another period of hibernation. I hope that is not the case." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€38.00
Traces Ephemeres
"An eclectic ensemble of 18 instrumental arrangements evoking an epic and existential soundtrack determined by the power of momentary destiny and reflective sentiment. Music played by Andrew Chalk and Timo van Luijk. Clarinet by Jean-Noël Rebilly. Piano and koto by Tom James Scott. Edition of 350 copies." [label info]
www.lasciedoree.be
"When not playing his own music, Timo van Luijk is busy with recording music with other people, and with some of them as part of an on-going collaboration, such as In Camera with Christoph Heemann and Elodie with Andrew Chalk. This is Elodie's fourth full length release (see Vital Weekly 781 and 828) and like before the album has rather shortish pieces, even more fragmented, it seems, than before, eighteen in total. It therefore isn't one of those 'one drone, one side, LP done' sort of releases. This is all highly atmospheric music as you can surely imagine given the reputation of both of these composers, but then played on a wide variety of instruments, of an acoustic and electronic origin. The carefully strummed guitar (Chalk), the flute, percussive bits, (both van Luijk) along with electronics - no computers I should think - play short and sketch like pieces. Not refined oil paintings on canvas but pencil sketches on paper. Introspective music, moody, but also airy and light. Moving like clouds on a blue sky, some white, some grey, some times rainy. Textured music, like you have textured paper, with spots of ink on them. Excellent stuff here." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€18.00
Shanti
" “Shânti” (1972-73) for electronic and concrete sounds. Electronic music studio, WDR, Cologne, Germany, 1972-73. Digitalized and revised version from 2001.
“The term “meditation music” triggered many conflicting comments including positive ones (“... let us say that Shânti belongs to those very rare works that change you after listening to them. You are not exactly the same before and after.” - Gérard Mannoni, Le Quotidien de Paris, 1974). Others, wondering at the strong sound presence of the piece, consider such aspect as hardly helpful to their own meditation... Let us be clear: “what meditates” here (”that” who meditates) is the composer. He is the one who takes you on his journey and guides you through his work like in a classic or romantic symphony. As a listener you are invited to follow “his” meditation... The composition is the meditation.” " [label info]
"Was I recently 'complaining' about 3CD sets with music of people I never heard of, I wasn't perhaps thinking of Jean-Claude Eloy. First time around the mailman decided to keep the CDs, but the second time delivered them duly. I hope he likes them as much as I do. I may have heard the name Eloy before, but not his music, or where to place him, these two sets, six discs in total will set the record straight (pun intended). Eloy was born in 1938 and studied with Darius Milhaud. I believe he composes all sorts of work, but his main line of business is electronic music. I review them in order of composition. 'Shanti', which means 'peace', was composed after 'Kamakala' for three orchestra ensembles, five choir ensembles with three conductors, so it was perhaps 'necessary' to compose an electro-acoustic work at the WDR studios in Cologne, Germany. A work of meditation, or so Eloy tells us. Now this is not a work of pure and solitary drone music, as one would perhaps expect from 'meditative music'. They are here, that's for sure, but there is also an interview with Aurobindo and Mao, as well as a small piece called 'Soldats', with soldiers speaking and 'Vagues Lentes, Boucles De Feux', which takes their singing into an electronic landscape. This is of course an album about 'Peace', but rather then just produce a drone or two, Eloy brings in a political element, the soldiers. However the majority are those various drones, played on those ancient machines (great pictures in the booklet here), the mystical oscillators, wave generators and such like - which defy any laptop, I'd say. Excellent music, although not always exactly as meditative as promised, but that, I thought, was hardly a problem. Unsettling meditation, which is better than just go with the flow." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€25.00
Indulgence
"There is only one sound artist whose knowledge of the underground is so reliable that it knows out to bring out the best literal sounds of sand, gravel, dirt and mysterious mysteries from the lower levels. Emerge is the artist that I’m writing about.
Many of Emerge’s releases are shimmering, softly crawling into the shadows of suburban city lights and below the surfaces within sewer systems. However this time with this new release things are different; here Emerge doesn’t go for the sound of after night city lights, subway systems or drainage, but indeed literally goes under the ground as being the polar opposite of astronauts that would go out into space.
Here Emerge explores the sounds of the real underground, as the vast amount of dry dirt and mud is being slit through in order to reveal sound places that nobody (except Emerge) really knows about; underground rooms in which the private artist and explorer hides out in all his privacy; places from which genially engraved holes provide the sounds of a controlled sea, the one that you could hear in snail shelves, or in toilet bowls; but yet never heard before!
With the help of Emerge you don’t need to do anything at all; just listen to this release as it will take you deep under the underground surface for your recreational, or even scientifically approved purposes.
I say recreational as in one moment of slipping through the microscopic sand rocks the artist seems to handle over a ping pong table tennis racket for a friendly underground game.
Afterwards Emerge transforms the audio surroundings into a real cozy one; a pleasant underground cave with a damp feeling and pleasurable water drips & muffled sounds of possibly bad weather above surface; nothing is better than being dry, warm, cozy and among a good friend deep down below; while others are above ground getting soaked while struggling with opening their umbrellas.
Emerge will keep us all thoroughly entertained by leading the way through even deeper surfaces, a dense hallway that seemingly picks up the sounds of a long and lost highway now sophistically beamed down in Emerge’s underground network.
Let Emerge be the eye opener to a place of the beautiful underground world that we normally just step over." [Yeah I know it sucks]
https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/indulgence-2
€10.00
Mortusae III
Mortusae III is the third compilation of songs representing an era of Empusae music.
The compilation features songs from:
Lueur 2017
Œuvres Au Noir 2020
SHäk 2023
Uzupis (Sieben Remixed) 2018
https://empusae.bandcamp.com/album/mortusae-iii
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Nicolas Van Meirhaeghe, also known as Sal-Ocin, is a Belgian artist who creates music in the genres of Ethnic Rhythm Noise and Dark Ambient. He is active not only as EMPUSAE but also in projects such as TZOLK'IN and formerly THIS MORN’ OMINA. Together with Christel Morvan (Nesisart), they created a sound and visual work that is mesmerizing but also unsettling, forcing reflection on a world where living in darkness is an everyday reality. Nicolas is known for creating multi-layered, magical musical landscapes that blur the boundaries of many musical genres. What always unites them is their incredible energy, the beauty of execution, subtlety, fragility, and delicacy, which have the power to enchant and hypnotize the listener.
The disturbing, pulsating, slightly irregular rhythm, slowly increasing tempo, and gradually building layers of sound create an oneiric, mystical atmosphere, cantered around chants. The unsettling ‘Retinae Tenebrae’ develops subtly based on successive layers of sound and contrasts forest and murmuring water sounds with very disquieting musical matter. It is shocking because nature - at least in everyday understanding - is usually associated with calm and positivity, whereas here it bears the signs of entering the darkness, something threatening, unknown, and unsettling. A similar contrast between light and dark seems to be the basis for the slightly more electronic ‘SHäk’, which successfully showcases the transitions between sharp, harsh sounds and fluid, melodic ones.
The beautiful, slightly more rhythmic and dramatic ‘Asok’, is full of diverse sounds and ingeniously arranged instrumental / vocal layers, perfectly complementing the soundscape of the entire release. The sound impulses in ‘Obsidian’ electrify and capture attention, unobtrusively piling up instrumental richness and the leading motif of deep, slightly melancholic sound repetition. It intensifies, gains strength and dynamism towards the end of the track and, especially after the contrast with the previous tracks, hits the listener with great force.
The album concludes with the track ‘Uzurpis’, where EMPUSAE presents his own version of another talented musician Matt Howden’s piece, known as SIEBEN. EMPUSAE’s version is less electronic, more fluid, trance-like, and hypnotic, losing some of its original sharpness and violence and highlighting the leading sound of the violin. It is very much in keeping with the atmosphere of ‘Mortusae III’ - the leading motif of an uneasy, dark melody that I perceive as wrapping and tying all the tracks on the album together, a bit like vessels in the pupil depicted in the artwork - here too, this black, spreading circulation is exactly illustrated sonically, gradually gaining intensity and darkness.
‘Mortusae III’ has thrilled me. It can be read in multiple layers - as a sound story of the artist’s illness, an amazing sound journey - dark and captivating at the same time, as a display of instrumental skill, or as a showcase of the ability to interpret and shape another artist's work. It is a mature and consistent release, without weak spots and with an unobvious beauty and depth that is worth exploring. Bravo!"
[Reflections of Darkness]
€13.00
A Mirror Holds The Sky
From Lawrence English: "In late months of 2008, I had the great fortune to spend some weeks in the Amazon. The visit, facilitated through Francisco Lopez's Mamori Artlab residency, remains one of the most deeply affecting experiences I have had . . . Living in Australia, tropical rainforests are not foreign to me. I would even say I am rather at home in them. My family, who lived and worked on the land of the Ngajanji people, had an admiration for, or in the very least a respect of, the rainforest. What makes time spent in the jungles of the Amazon different however is the scale and sheer volume (metaphoric and literal) of the life that inhabits it. Hundreds of thousands of narratives are in play moment to moment, their interactions flow together forming a perpetual cascade of arrival and departure, fertility and decay -- these fundamental states are intrinsically linked and constantly informing one another . . . To listen in the jungle is to listen in close relief -- in every square meter, thousands of insects cry out, their voices reducing the horizon of listening to a matter of centimeters at certain times of the day (and night) . . . The abundance of birds, mammals, beetles, flies, ants and so many other creatures are a source of constant and evolving fascination. In the lakes and rivers too, the hydro-sonic environments are perpetual and effortlessly deep . . . A Mirror Holds The Sky is in some ways an act of acoustic and temporal compression. It is a rendering down of the lived-in moments and environments that became points of intense listenership. If I am to be honest, it has taken me the better part of a decade to know how to approach this archive of materials. I owe a debt of gratitude to Chico Dub at Festival Novas Frequências, who very gently encouraged me to realize a piece for diffusion as part of his program in 2019. That invitation retuned my ears and in the process unlocked a way of approaching the mammoth 50+ hours of recordings I had gathered during my time there. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to my wife Rebecca, who was instrumental in gathering some of these recordings. Her ears reflected an entirely other set of interests than my own and without that, this piece would be substantially less than what it is." 48-page perfect bound book featuring photographs by English, taken on location in the Amazon.
https://lawrenceenglish.bandcamp.com/album/a-mirror-holds-the-sky
€24.00
Viento
In 2010, Lawrence English made field recordings in Patagonia. You can hear abandoned buildings, lone trees folded over in fields of tundra-like grasses, quivering road signs, wailing fences and other objects shaken into life by the wind. In the booklet, the sounds are accompanied by pictures.
Artist statement: "In the summer of 2010 I had the opportunity to visit Antarctica through an invitation extended by the Argentine Antarctic Division. It was nothing short of life-altering, as I am sure anyone would suspect. Upon departing from Buenos Aires for the iced continent the Hercules transport aircraft, under direction of the Argentine military, made a routine stop at an airbase outside Rio Gallegos.
What was meant to be a few hours layover turned into several days as, on landing, a strong wind storm blew in unexpectedly. Conditions exceeded expectations, and before long it was clear the transport could not take off. The situation was only compounded by adverse weather along the Antarctic Peninsula.
Whilst the scientists and military personnel we were travelling with bunkered down in their quarters, I found myself drawn outside into the howling air. The wind in Patagonia is, well, breathtaking. Literally, there were moments where it was so physical, that it was difficult to catch my breath. Across three days I recorded abandoned buildings, lone trees folded over in fields of tundra-like grasses, quivering road signs, wailing fences and other objects shaken into life by the wind. It wasn't a comfortable experience by any means, but the multiplicity of sounds I was able to capture, I hope, speak for themselves.
The Antarctic recordings were made during two blizzards at Marambio and Esperanza bases. During the blizzard in Marambio, the temperature dropped to -40 degrees centigrade (with wind chill) which made recording particularly challenging. The wind battered the base’s structures and telecommunications equipment, making a range of unsettling, phasing choral drones and deep low frequency vibrations that resonated inside the base itself. The blizzard at Esperanza was mild by comparison, but still strong enough to coat penguins in layer of snow as they huddled together during the worst of the storm.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of completing these compositions and since that time, I have had the pleasure to diffuse them on numerous occasions. With those experiences in mind, as well as the format on which these works are now being made available, I have revisited them and completely remixed and remastered the pieces.
Listening back to these recordings I am struck by the sheer physicality of the wind. It's rare that you feel physically reduced by the motion of air, but in both Patagonia and Antarctica that is just how I felt. A small speck of organic dust in a howling storm."
https://lawrenceenglish.bandcamp.com/album/viento
€23.00
Music for Installations
Though containing music that goes back to 1985, Music For Installations is hardly a retrospective in any traditional sense. It’s more a whimsical line connecting ideas in Eno's own personal Long Now.
Not long after Brian Eno coined the term “ambient music” in the late 1970s, he generated another Eno-ism with an extended lifespan, one with an appropriately slower dissemination.”I want to be living in a Big Here and a Long Now,” the producer wrote in a notebook. He thought of his then-recent recordings as sound “suspended in an eternal present tense.” Perhaps unconsciously channeling Baba Ram Dass's brand/mantra, Be Here Now, the always-conceptual Eno began to expand his sense of scale. Two decades ago, Eno helped start the Long Now Foundation, working to connect the present moment to the far-extended arc of human history. One project was the 10,000 Year Clock, for which he created patterns for the clock's chimes, each to be rung once and never repeated.
By the mid-’90s, the period representing the general starting point of the six-disc Music for Installations, Eno's “ambient” work had largely fallen under the subtly different rubric “generative” (that is, music that is created according to a system of algorithms, only partly under its maker’s control). Each piece here represents its own individual slice of one possible Long Now, with Eno providing the finely considered coordinates so that the music itself can run infinitely, changing into new patterns like a river or an ocean. Grown from mid-’80s experiments with four tape recorders looping cassettes of differing lengths, Music for Installations contains what are essentially field recordings from a series of different environments, each its own universe. Filled with gorgeous washes of bells and drones and unidentifiable luminous shimmers, deep vibrations moving across widescreen stereo fields, one might imagine them all as separate galleries and vestibules in a vast museum, each filled with light and sound, running constantly as night and day change outside and the seasons pass. Though Music for Installations contains sound created for specific situations and places, as a box set, it might be used to step outside of time.
Of course, a streaming service might still label all of the above as “ambient,” part of the new chill-out economy seemingly driving Spotify to its own kind of generative musak. But what Music for Installations proves beyond a doubt is that, to paraphrase Chevy Chase, he's Brian Eno and they're not. Though containing music that goes back as far as 1985 (”Five Light Paintings”), Music For Installations is hardly a retrospective in any traditional sense. It’s more a whimsical line connecting ideas in Eno's own personal Long Now.
Eno is everywhere and nowhere in this music, much of it not so much performed by him as willed into existence, like a character from a science fiction novel who dreams in sound. On several of the longest pieces, such as the 44-minute 77 Million Paintings, low rolling notes played sparsely at long intervals seem to indicate melodies unfolding too slowly for immediate comprehension, perhaps even direct continuations of the similar motifs from 1978's Ambient 1: Music for Airports. Released in DVD editions in 2006 and 2007, 77 Million Paintings constitutes the audio accompaniment of a generative video program Eno created. As he recounts in the liner notes, when he first set it up, he began to document individual frames of it with a still camera, shooting off some 800 pictures before surrendering to the ephemerality. The feeling of listening to Music for Installations is often similar. Its pieces are beautiful and always different, and yet always the same, generic without losing character.
Much of it is resolutely not chill-out music. The nearly 40-minute piece “I Dormienti” is filled with a ceaseless moving richness that's hard to reconcile with the idea of machine creation. High-frequency electronic tones and clusters of upper register piano notes flutter between percussive samples of vocalist Kyoko Inatome, amid other layers. Composed for a joint installation with the sculptor Mimmo Paladino in the subterranean space beneath London's Roundhouse, the music is perhaps more suited for the kind of contemplation that goes along with quietly freaking the fuck out, an accompaniment to Paladino's haunted work as it was seen in the darkroom, pieces displayed on the floor like strange creatures preserved after a Pompeii-like disaster.
The set's final two discs don't actually contain music for installations, except in ever more conceptual ways. Making Spaces was a CD sold at installations, and little of it feels generative in composition or structure, though the liner notes don't clarify. In the context of the box set, it feels not only like a separate, hidden Eno album of its own, but a brilliant one, demonstrating that Eno is still perfectly capable of seizing the means of production. The nine pieces feel less like spaces and more like the objects inside, sculptures with distinct shapes and boundaries and artistic intentions. The unearthly “New Moons” features a sparsely strummed guitar part with defined chords (and even a bridge), aglow from start to finish, perhaps one haunted vocal away from fitting perfectly onto the song-based album some strata of Eno fans always want dearly. “All the Stars Were Out” contains a background flutter that could equally be the sound of crickets or the flicker of a film projector, but is just one more expressive tone carved out by Brian Eno. Each of the tracks contains its own inventions and deployment of color-forms or unexpected tonal voices or structural turns.
The set-concluding Music for Future Installations, meanwhile, is perhaps the box's cheekiest conceit, music for new places, new situations that haven't yet happened.”I often find it helpful to have an alibi for making a piece of music,” he observes, and the seven discs of Music for Installations might serve many contexts. Music For Airports was never for airports (though it certainly is capable of providing calm inside one), and the function of Music for Installations is wherever the listener might like to install it, less about the purpose of the music and more about the listener's desired level of engagement. But no matter what level of engagement one chooses, Eno will be there, too.
The set's 60-page liner notes are filled with documentation, though it's sometimes unclear which recordings correspond to which installations, if any. More, though, it acts as a Little Red Book of Eno-isms, where he lays out one deeply awesome hot take after another.”I thought of television as a light source rather than a narrative source,” he writes about his video installations, “at that time the most controllable light source that had ever been invented.” (I… had never thought of it like that.) No matter how vibed-out the music may get, there is always the sense of a voice and mind behind it. Even when trying to abdicate the order and arrangement of the notes being played, Eno's control over sound remains at a practically spiritual level. “Eno is God,” ran the early ’80s graffiti, and depending on how you define his domain it might still be true, manifesting in the smallest of breezes and the tiniest of bleeps.
€55.00
Niblock + Lamb
A Drone with a View
By choosing to combine for this recording two complementary but distinctly different drone-based, immersive pieces by the legendary veteran composer and artist/film-maker Phill Niblock (born 1933, USA), and the younger, Berlin-based composer/violist Catherine Lamb (born 1982, USA), Norway’s Ensemble neoN creates a perfect sense of aesthetic balance. Loud is followed by quiet; what seems like random patterning gives way to orderly design; and the opening instrumental ensemble-setting is transformed by the subsequent addition of guest voices. Listening to both pieces one after another is like experiencing thesis and anti-thesis through the medium of Side A and Side B.
The incredible wind-tunnel rush of the Niblock piece, ’To Two Tea Roses’, can feel at first like 23 minutes of head-spinning noise. A combination of microtonal intervals, concert hall-reverb and the interplay between pre-recorded and live performance modules, sets up a maelstrom of sound where it's impossible for the listener to separate auditory fact from auditory illusion. Lamb’s beautifully airy ‘Parallaxis Forms', by contrast, provides a kind of balm for the soul through a delicate but no less immersive combination of voices and instruments: a quietly meditative, almost devotional acoustic world that in he accompanying Artist’s Note from the ensemble is described as “concreteness and chaos sitting inside a cloud of sound”.
But the more one listens, the more nuanced the effect of each piece becomes. Soon, the Niblock is neither as ferociously forbidding, nor the Lamb so placidly restrained, as they first appeared. As one’s imagination starts to take flight, and the hallucinatory power of the infinitely suggestible sounds go to work on the brain and senses, each new hearing reveals quite different and even opposing textual details. What can sound, in one Niblock ‘exposure', like ritualistic bells and Tibetan horns, becomes in another the indistinct echo of a free jazz sax and trumpet section. Electronic hum transforms into tamboura drone; noise becomes music, and vice versa. Like viewing a colour-field painting or meditating on a mandala, everything changes yet somehow remains the same, such is the transformative, push and pull power of the overarching drone. An additional clue to ‘To Two Tea Roses’ comes from its title, and the dedication to Niblock’s friend, Walter Branchi, the Italian composer and grower of tea roses. Just as intricately subtle gradations of colour demarcate varieties of tea rose (an illustrative selection of late-nineteenth century descriptions is quoted by Niblock in the notes) so the composition seems to progress through a fluctuating flicker of tonal colours, even if the colour - like most of the music - is all in our minds.
Phill Niblock’s customary methods of composition derive from his celebrated epiphany when, as a young motorcyclist overtaking a truck on a steep mountain rode, he experienced the near synchronicity of the two vehicles’ engine-noise (“The strong physical presence of the beats resulting from the two engines running at slightly different frequencies put me in such a trance that I nearly rode off the side of the mountain.”), while Catherine Lamb works with the vibrations of microtonal pitches to produce what she calls “interacting spectra”. Using a variant of just intonation, the ancient tuning system revived and explored by mid-century US composers Harry Partch and Ben Johnston, among others, and influenced by non-western and particularly Hindustani sources, Lamb's works typically explore the interaction of sounds in specific physical spaces or rooms. In ‘Parallaxis Forms’, the phonetic timbres of the two vocalists are expanded and developed by the instruments within the ensemble to create a kind of tonal colour-wash or blur, that is both analogous to, yet strikingly different from, the effect in ’To Two Tea Roses’.
For Ensemble neoN, the challenge of performing such physically exacting music is partly to make it seem so effortless. "The "charm" or rather the power of Phill's music lies in the physical effort required to produce the drone-y sound that he is after”, says the Ensemble’s Heloisa Amaral, who plays piano on the Niblock recording, and also took part in a recent performance of ‘Parallaxis Forms' at Phil Niblock’s Intermedia loft space in New York. "In the case of 'To Two Tea Roses’, we are basically doing the same movement for twenty-three minutes, practically non stop. You feel it the day after...The only way to overcome or to forget the physical discomfort is to dive as deep as one can into the sound, and just stay there until the end. Put like that, it may sound masochistic but what it does in reality is make you profoundly aware of the connection between movement and sound.” Of the Catherine Lamb, Amaral says, “What is interesting is the immense listening effort required from the musicians, on the one hand because of the unusual intonation, and on the other because our voices dovetail with each other without being precisely notated rhythmically. Playing this piece is a bit like playing Morton Feldman: the listener may experience it as a long, calm and effortless meditation while in reality we musicians are working like crazy."
Commissioned by Ensemble neoN and Ny Musikk Oslo for the Only Connect Festival 2016 with support from the Norwegian Arts Council. The piece was recorded at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, 4 and 5 December 2018.
Produced by Ensemble neoN and Lasse Marhaug
Mixed and mastered by Lasse Marhaug
To Two Tea Roses
2012
Live recording from Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, September 9, 2012 at 1PM.
Parallaxis Forma
2016
The piece was recorded at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, 4 and 5 December 2018.
https://ensembleneon.bandcamp.com/album/niblock-lamb
€14.00
Spilla
Black Truffle is thrilled to announce Spilla, the second album from Nantes-based Ensemble Nist-Nah, 48 minutes of music for Gamelan, drum kits, wood and metal percussion instruments, and plucked strings that will surely count as one of the most electrifying records you hear this year. Founded by the Australian drummer/percussionist Will Guthrie in 2019, continuing the explorations begun in solo form on Nist-Nah (Black Truffle, 2020), the ensemble (eight or nine core members with occasional guests) has been consistently active in the half-decade since: composing, rehearsing, recording and touring Europe (with a mass of equipment in tow) to great acclaim. Spilla tracks the continuing evolution of the project since the recording of their first album, Elders (Black Truffle, 2022). The two sides of this record document two different iterations of the group, and the members' compositional input has increased: each side contains one piece by a member other than Guthrie. It has become clearer than ever that Ensemble Nist-Nah is not an attempt at a European Gamelan ensemble but rather a hybrid percussion ensemble that uses instruments from a Javanese Gamelan alongside other percussion to perform original music informed by a variety of South East Asian music but also by everything from free jazz to contemporary hip-hop: while Nist-Nah and Elders both featured traditional Javanese pieces, on Spilla the only tune not generated by a member of the group is by Guthrie’s long-time musical hero and occasional collaborator Roscoe Mitchell.
The two short pieces that open the record could almost be the two sides of a wild 7” selected to show off what the Ensemble can do. On opener ‘Gerak Maju’, intricately skittering open-snare patterns bounce over clanging metal, chiming bell-like tones and deep gong hits, adapting the rhythm-register connections heard in traditional Gamelan musics—where the lowest pitched sounds are heard least frequently—to a cut-up breakbeat straight off Feed Me Weird Things. ‘Strollabout’ then moves into an entirely different realm of meditative repeating patterns, performed entirely on Chinese, Javanese and Vietnamese gongs. The remaining seven pieces, ranging from three to twelve minutes, offer up a wealth of different percussive, compositional and arrangement possibilities. On ‘Ghostly Klang’, two drumkits mirror each other’s moves, bouncing hats and snares across the stereo field in a way that recalls On the Corner and the jittering hi hat patterns of trap, while slow moving melodies on the tuned instruments add a sense of majesty contrasted by scurrying details in resonant wood. The epic closing track presents a take on Roscoe Mitchell’s ‘Uncle’, performed by the Art Ensemble of Chicago on their classic Urban Bushmen live album. Where the Art Ensemble used Mitchell’s dirge-like melody as a jumping off point for virtuosic improvisational flights, Ensemble Nist-Nah rethink the piece as a near-static dialogue between the monumental, slow-moving sequence of unison tuned percussion notes and a textural cloud that grows in richness and intensity from whispering cymbal rolls into a mass of gong overtones and bowed metal.
Beautifully recorded and mixed, Spilla arrives in a sleeve decorated with core member Charles Dubois’ drawings of cymbals and gongs. Against the backdrop of a wider musical landscape dominated by over-produced electronic slop and bland harmonic wallpaper, Ensemble Nist-Nah stands out as a reminder, vital and unpretentious, of the joys and possibilities of human beings playing instruments together.
https://willguthrie.bandcamp.com/album/spilla
€28.00
Cynorrodhon
Sold outENTRELACS ist das neue Projekt von YANNICK DAUBY und MICHAEL NORTHAM, auf dieser Single präsentieren sie detailreiche, hochfrequente mikro-drones..
“Originally our label wanted to present YANNICK DAUBY’s solo work, knowing him from some fabulous field-recordings (unfortunately most of them are still unreleased), he came up with a new project he has put together with “organic-drone-master ” MICHAEL NORTHAM, known from several beautiful installations and field-recording releases. Both are present in their new project going under the name of ENTRELACS. Here they enchant us with live improvisation of high-frequency drones & overtones, some concrete microscopic sound-objects as well as a rumbling appearing from time to time. It’s like millions of small sounds condensed together here... very rich in details. The B-Side is more challenging with a much stranger and darker atmosphere using sharp & sawing clear sounds. Somehow this music seems to reveal no “outer” or “objective” rhythm but rather the ‘inner-essence’ of nature itself. The title of this record ‘Cynorrodhon’ is the name of a plant also named "Rosier des chiens" in French. It develops “delicate flowers in spring time, red fruit in autumn and bears spines the whole year.” (Yannick Dauby) Filed under: organic micro/macro-drones.
CLEAR VINYL. BEAUTIFUL PRINTED COVERS WITH PICTURE OF CYNORRODHON. EACH COPY HAS A STAMPED DRONE SUN & AN HANDWRITTEN CATALOGUE-NUMBER.” [press release]
€6.00
Underleaf
"Erste Veröffentlichung des Projekts von YANNICK DAUBY und MICHAEL NORTHAM: magischer Konkretismus von flüsternden Blättern und Ästen, die sich mit sanften Gong-Drones und Metallrauschen verknüpfen." [old Drone Rec. info]
"A project that was formed by Michael Northam & Yannick Dauby in 2003 and put out only 2 releases: "Underleaf" CDR on Italian label S'agita Recordings and "Cynorrodhon" 7" single on Drone Records. This CD is a reissue of "Underleaf". Sound sources are a walk along a fallen tree in Corbet, Oregon and a conversation with found objects in Paris, France." [label info]
www.semperflorens.net
"Entrelacs is the sporadically operational collaboration between longtime aQ fave eco-dronologist Michael Northam and phonographer Yannick Dauby, as Northam is perpetually wandering back and forth between North America and Europe, and with Dauby residing in Taiwan. These recordings actually date back to 2003, made "along a fallen tree in Courbet, Oregon and [at] a conversation with found objects in Paris." The Entrelacs project begins with the collection of found objects, continues through the manifestation of tactile sounds from those objects aided by some use of digital manipulation, and concludes when the objects are returned from where they were found. This lends itself well to the discovery of previously unknown sounds in new regions, especially when these two would perform live. On their website, they site an impressive array of atypical sound making devices that would give Matmos more than a few good ideas for their electro-acoustic madness. Amplified chimney sweeps, bowed escargot, obsidian shards, dried chardons, and needles piercing leaves are just a few of the more interesting ones. We're very curious to know where those bowed snails are in the mix! Underleaf unfurls slowly through a slow crunching of organic materials occasionally jolted with the sharp tinkling of what must be those obsidian fragments. Aggregated masses of those textures blossom throughout the 49 minute track in blurry drones that settle in the background of those tactile sounds, eventually giving way to a bowed metal chorale near the 30 minute mark that has all the right Organum / Andrew Chalk references." [Aquarius Records SF]
€13.00
Minnesmärke
Mats Erlandsson makes his debut on the Swiss label Hallow Ground with »Minnesmärke,« at once a nuanced sonic exploration of the industrial and political history of his native Sweden and a deeply personal album. One of the key figures of the Stockholm drone scene, the prolific composer worked with The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble’s Hillary Jeffery, violinist and long-time friend Gaianeh Pilossian as well as sound artist and frequent collaborator Yair Elazar Glotman for a two-part composition built around tuned sustained tones performed by electronic and acoustic instruments that were combined with field recordings in order to evoke a psychedelic state of reflection, a dream-like elegy for the acoustic properties of the former iron ore mine Ställbergs Gruva where the music has been conceived and recorded. Following up on releases on labels such as Hallow Ground label mates Kali Malone and Maria W Horn’s XKatedral imprint, »Minnesmärke« is Erlandsson's most accomplished work yet.
Originally a commissioned work by the Non Existent Center for a month-long artist residency in Ställbergs Gruva last Summer, »Minnesmärke« conceptually picks up on the socio-political and economic history of the Bergslagen region where the mine is situated. After mining operations had been on-going for decades prior, in the Industrial Age iron became one of the country’s largest exports, making the mining industry an integral part of the country’s progression towards a socialdemocratic welfare state in the years after World War II. With the rise of neoliberalism and the simultaneous erosion of the welfare state however, the mines around the region started closing, which resulted in the surrounding community losing its relative prosperity. Erlandsson’s interest in this story though does not exclusively stem from the historical significance of the mine, that has been re-opened in 2012 as a centre for cultural activities and critical thought. In fact, his grandfather was born and raised in the vicinity of it and thus his life - and, by extension, his grandson’s - was inextricably linked to its fate and the ebbs and flows of the industrial development in the area.
It’s no surprise then that the two parts of »Minnesmärke,« which translates to »memorial« or »monument,« is marked by a sense of dislocation and dissociation. »Working in Ställberg was a somewhat surreal experience from the point of view of a musician some one hundred years later,« says the artist. »Being in that environment makes you view time from the side - since the place remains the same it accentuates the deep chasm that separates my perspective from those of my relatives, while at the same time providing a form of intimacy with them.« This naturally shaped the recording process, which saw Erlandsson create an interaction between the acoustic and the electronic, the human and the machinic as well as the natural environment and the technology that has shaped it as much as it has been shaped by it. A combination of synthetic and recorded sound sources was processed by reamping it in various rooms of the vast mining complex. The resulting hybrid field recordings were transferred to tape and have then been treated extensively. An arrangement for Pilossian’s violin, Jeffery’s tuba and trombone playing as well as Glotman’s parts on double bass were recorded separately and similarly manipulated to create an expanded chamber ensemble with a wider range and an ability to transcend the usual temporal bounds of the instruments.
The outcome of this intricate working process calls to mind Phill Niblock’s most dense compositions, the iconic yet subtle work of Pauline Oliveros in the field of deep listening or even Jóhann Jóhannsson’s evocative examination of similarly politically charged topics on the »The Miners’ Hymns« OST amongst others. While Erlandsson shows his knack for creating emotive dynamics by bringing the acoustic recordings into a pulsating flow, the manipulated field recordings are used as a counterpoint throughout both parts of the composition, commenting on and fostering the ever-shifting dramaturgy of the record. Most importantly though, the 41 minutes are marked by a continuous tension that almost feels tangible. It’s the looming shadow of history, materialising in the form of a monument, a memorial for the past generations that have etched their hopes and aspirations into the walls of Ställbergs Gruva.
Hilary Jeffery - Trombone, Tuba
Gaianeh Pilossian - Violin
Yair Elazar Glotman - Double Bass
Mats Erlandsson - Everything Else
Mastering by Andreas Lupo Lubich
Artwork by Marijn Degenaar
https://hallowground.bandcamp.com/album/mats-erlandsson-minnesm-rke
€21.50
Everything was forever until it was no more
Deluxe 180gram vinyl edition comes in a foil-embossed and die-cut cardstock jacket with printed inner sleeve and additional 12x12 art cards featuring the collages of Maciek Szczerbowski. All the art interacts with the die-cut jacket framing. Edition of 300. Rooted in a distinct and immediately identifiable sound_with the cello of Rebecca Foon (Saltland, Set Fire To Flames, Thee Silver Mt Zion) and the marimba of ex-Godspeed You! Black Emperor percussionist Bruce Cawdron at its core_Esmerine has long embroidered emotive chamber works using threads of post-classical, post-rock, Minimalism, neo-Baroque, jazz, pop and a wide array of folk traditions. Multi-instrumentalist Brian Sanderson, who joined the group in 2012, has furthered Esmerine's melodic and ethnomusicological sensibility ever since, expanding the ensemble's palette as its third core member with guitars, ngoni, ekonting, hulusi, brass horns of all sorts, and more. Since 2003, six stately and filmic instrumental albums have inscribed compositional landscapes through epigrammatic miniatures, longform multi-movement chronicles, and all manner of evocative musical prosody between. Marked by an inimitably turbid yet tempered pastoralism, alternately lit by dappled dawn and disquieted dusk, Esmerine's musical narratives balance asceticism and romanticism, melancholy and hope, stillness and wanderlust. Esmerine now shares Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More, its seventh full-length album and first in five years. The band surprise-dropped the full album digitally on 06 May 2022, with the CD and Deluxe 180gram LP editions hitting stores on official release date 26 August 2022. Following an acclaimed run of mid-career records on Constellation through the 2010s_the last three of which have all been finalists or winners of Juno Awards for Instrumental Album of the Year and/or Album Packaging of the Year_Esmerine began working on new music at decade's end. Under the auspices of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, and a summer 2019 residency at Le Château de Monthelon (an artist commune in France where the band has cherished long-standing spiritual, creative, and personal connections), compositional seeds were planted_and then pandemic rooted everyone in place. In between lockdown waves, at the respective rural Québec homesteads of Cawdron and Foon, longtime co-producer Jace Lasek (The Bernard Lakes) began capturing the band in various stripped-down configurations with spartan remote equipment. More fulsome arrangement and overdub sessions at Foon's converted barn during the summer of 2021 brought the album to full fruition_where a notable increase in the use of acoustic piano also poured forth, with just about every band member having a go. The record also signals the definitive integration of bassist Philippe Charbonneau_having joined Esmerine as a touring member pre-pandemic, he plays throughout the album on upright and electric bass, with turns on piano and synth, as well as sound design contributions via tape echo and other processing. Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More grapples with the existential tensions between atmosphere and airlessness, seclusion and claustrophobia, forbearance and coalescence. In many ways it is one of Esmerine's most restrained records. Only a few passages are driven by full percussion. There is palpably less Sturm and Drang or overt crescendos compared to its recent predecessors. The new album roils with a different sort of dynamic intensity, where instrumental densities ebb and flow within an overtonal centre, melding into each other with gauzy timbral warmth, sometimes tracing fleeting tendrils outwards, but always rotating around a saturnine gravitational force. Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More is like a dark forest lit by a closely-orbiting opalescent planet; it could be the alternate score to Von Trier's Melancholia or Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
https://esmerine.bandcamp.com/album/everything-was-forever-until-it-was-no-more
€27.50
Subconscious Dissolution into the Continuum
Langsamer Doom Metal mit extrem melancholischem & düsteren Einschlag von dieser britischen Band, die einen recht einzigartigen Stil begründet haben, die Gitarrenarbeit erinnert an GODFLESH oder mitunter gar COCTEAU TWINS, dann wieder gibt es disharmonische & abgründige Arrangements, immer langsam, schleppend und schwer... an den Gesang muss man sich vielleicht etwas gewöhnen, aber wir meinen der ESOTERIC Sound kann auch für Drone & Dark Ambient Hörer durchaus interessant sein..
"...ESOTERIC befinden sich irgendwo auf der Kreuzung von Noise, Psychedelia und extremem Doom Metal. Da sie mit Funeral Doom Geschwindigkeit mit stark verzerrtem Bass, einer Steinmauer aus Gitarren, verfolgenden Samples und haarsträubenden Vocals spielen, ist ESOTERIC’s Sound mit einem schlimmen LSD-Trip oder einer Überdosis einer harten Droge vergleichbar. Sie sind zweifellos die düsterste, selbstmörderischste, psychedelischste und verwüstendste derzeit existierende Band und schaffen es, mit ihren bizarren Soundlandschaften gleichzeitig zu entzücken und zu bedrücken. Und wenn euch diese Beschreibung nicht ausreicht, um euch ein Bild zu machen, kann ich euch nur empfehlen reinzuhören." [Ben Meulemann]
"It's never an easy job to review an Esoteric release. They have gained such a reputation for being one of the most unique and extreme bands in the Doom spectre that it is hard to oppose, they are almost untouchable - and with good reason. The fact is that "Subconscious Dissolution Into The Continuum" is not an easy listen. It's devoid of any pleasant human feeling; it's savagely cold, heavy and droning. It'll put you in a miserable state - yes, it is as fascinating as it seems.
The sombre torturous atmosphere of this album left me speechless. This is not typical Funeral Doom; it is basically as slow as you probably expect, but there's this whole psychedelic sense, and really raw and mechanical distortion. As opposed to that more ethereal sound of other bands that rely on keyboards and clean vocals, for example, like Pantheist or Skepticism. Esoteric is closer to bands like The Funeral Orchestra, with their frightening sound and disharmonic, multi-layered structuring [...] Esoteric may seem monotonous at first listen, but you have to let yourself be absorbed by its aesthetics, you can't listen to this on just any day. Once you get past beyond its fever-inducing slowness you'll be ready to realise the true power and beauty of "Subconscious Dissolution Into The Continuum" and actually enjoy everything about it. Even the same slowness that used to put you off. This is truly a devastating and intense experience that I recommend highly to anyone who can appreciate extreme Funeral Doom Metal." [Passenger / Metalstorm]
www.season-of-mist.com
€13.00
Veritatis Splendor
"SECOND REMASTERED EDITION (nov.2008). Veritatis Splendor (1994) is the first Esplendor Geométrico album recorded in the nineties, after the split work with Most Significant Beat -Control remoto 1.0 -. It sets the beginning of a new period of the band, where the incorporation of digital technology, synths and rythms, can be felt. Veritatis keeps the typical characteristics of EG sound but with a greater production, complex rhythmic structures, and most of all, it achieves an original and personal fusion of classic Industrial sound with elements of tribal music, and also others of avant-garde techno. It has a bigger variety of registers than in their newer repertoire, ranging from the hypnotism of "La radio al día", the classical sound of the duo in "Poder de ruptura", and the bright dance rhythms of "Ensayo de compresión", or "La meta del servicio", an exciting sequence really surprising, with some tribal screams. It is noticeable the constant presence of radiophonic emissions throughout all the album. A classical sold out since 1995 and now available again, remastered and with different artwork." [label info]
www.geometrikrecords.com
€13.50
La Vue
"Etant Donnes is a French duo named after Marcel Duchamp's last major work. The group consists of brothers Marc and Eric Hurtado, born in Morocco and working mainly as performance artists and musicians. Their sound can be described as a mix of field recordings, found sounds and sometimes whispered, sometimes violent vocals. They describe their sounds like this: "Through Marc and Eric, it is the volume of each word that becomes an object-sculpture, together with the power of their bodies expressing their voices. Each event is a scream - indeed even the glissando - of the strength of the word that sometimes abruptly becomes a rock, a solid surface, not in the least fluvial, as is the narrative of a tale, novel or poetic epic. With both of them, there is no more trace of ancient prosodies, no more trace of the incomprehensible Sainte-Beuve who could claim: "I have to collect a volume of prose". The word, the voice, the volume take shape with each other, unveiling a theatre that theatre usually ignores, which has given it such things as a Samuel Beckett's Fin de Partie." Over the years Etant Donnes have collaborated with people like Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira, Alan Vega and Genesis P-Orridge. La Vue was the first ever recording, dating back to 1979 and originally issued on French Bain Total label (run by Philippe Fichot of Die Form). For this re-issue, the band has found a longer version than was previously available, so this is a unique chance to hear Etant Donnes in their earliest form in a version that has previously been unpublished." [label info]
€15.00
L'opposition Et Les Cases Conjuguees Sont Reconciliees
"Etant Donnes is a French duo named after Marcel Duchamp's last major work. The group consists of brothers Marc and Eric Hurtado, born in Morocco and working mainly as performance artists and musicians. Their sound can be described as a mix of field recordings, found sounds and sometimes whispered, sometimes violent vocals. They describe their sounds like this: 'Through Marc and Eric, it is the volume of each word that becomes an object-sculpture, together with the power of their bodies expressing their voices. Each event is a scream -- indeed even the glissando -- of the strength of the word that sometimes abruptly becomes a rock, a solid surface, not in the least fluvial, as is the narrative of a tale, novel or poetic epic. With both of them, there is no more trace of ancient prosodies, no more trace of the incomprehensible Sainte-Beuve who could claim: 'I have to collect a volume of prose'. The word, the voice, the volume take shape with each other, unveiling a theatre that theatre usually ignores, which has given it such things as a Samuel Beckett's Fin de Partie.' Over the years Etant Donnes have collaborated with people like Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira, Alan Vega and Genesis P-Orridge. L'Opposition Et Les Cases Conjuguées Sont Réconciliées was the band's second album, originally released in 1981 on French label Bain Total, run by die Form, on cassette only. For this CD re-issue we have added a long bonus track not on the original album."
www.klanggalerie.com/gg304
€15.00
Cinq Portes Soudées
https://www.klanggalerie.com/gg472
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxfX574peL8
Etant Donnes is a French duo named after Marcel Duchamp's last major work. The group consists of brothers Marc and Eric Hurtado, born in Morocco and working mainly as performance artists and musicians. Their sound can be described as a mix of field recordings, found sounds and sometimes whispered, sometimes violent vocals. They describe their sounds like this: "Through Marc and Eric, it is the volume of each word that becomes an object-sculpture, together with the power of their bodies expressing their voices. Each event is a scream - indeed even the glissando - of the strength of the word that sometimes abruptly becomes a rock, a solid surface, not in the least fluvial, as is the narrative of a tale, novel or poetic epic. With both of them, there is no more trace of ancient prosodies, no more trace of the incomprehensible Sainte-Beuve who could claim: "I have to collect a volume of prose". The word, the voice, the volume take shape with each other, unveiling a theatre that theatre usually ignores, which has given it such things as a Samuel Beckett's Fin de Partie." Over the years Etant Donnes have collaborated with people like Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira, Alan Vega and Genesis P-Orridge. Cinq Portes Soudées was the band's fifth album, originally released on Die Form's Bain Total label in 1984 on cassette only. For this CD re-issue we have added a long bonus track not on the original album. Full tracklist: 1. Cinq Portes Soudées Part 1 2. Cinq Portes Soudées Part 2 3. Music from the film Des autres terres souples Part 4
Das fünfte Studioalbum (1984) des französischen Experimental- / Performance-Duos Etant Donnes "Cinq Portes Soudées" erscheint erstmalig als CD im Digipack-Format und mit Bonustrack auf
Klanggalerie. 1980 in Grenoble von den beiden Brüdern Eric und Marc Hurtado ins Leben gerufen, legte das nach einem Werk des französisch-amerikanischen
Dadaisten und Surrealisten Marcel Duchamp benannte Experimental- / Performance-Duo, das seitdem mit Genregrößen wie Genesis P-Orridge,
Alan Vega, Michael Gira, Mark Cunningham und Lydia Lunch zusammenarbeitete, schon ein Jahr später sein Albumdebüt "L‘Opposition Et Les Cases Conjugues Sont Rconcil" vor. "Cinq Portes Soudées", ein
zeitlos spannender Mix aus Industrial / Noise, Avantgarde- Klängen und Musique Concrete, war das fünfte Album der Band aus dem Jahr 1984, das
ursprünglich auf dem französischen Label Bain Total (unter Leitung von Philippe Fichot von Die Form) nur als Kassette veröffentlicht wurde. Für
diese CD-Erstauflage wurde ein langer Bonustrack hinzugefügt, der nicht auf dem Originalalbum enthalten ist ("Music From The Film Des Autres
Terres Souples Part 4").
€15.00
Split
"Two-storied USA duo institutions share war stories across twelve miles of raw wax, and the rest of us are lucky enough to eavesdrop. Missoula, Montana's Ex-Cocaine continue roping that weird rambling wind that seems to stir the soul and keep America mellow, and the pair of anthems they jam out here encapsulates the whole breadth of their sea-to-shining-sea cosmosis. Plainsong guitar lassoes around loose-limbed percussion flame-fanning, building and burning till a boss bonfire glows on the horizon, then they close out the side with a ragged and earnest Meat Puppets cover that's become a live staple of late. Real and roamin'. On the B, Yellow Swans channel a supreme slice of psychedelic eulogy that cuts twice as deep with the knowledge that after many a summer (they birthed in 2002-ish) dies the Swan. Pete and Gabe's DYS saga has spanned the decade and their impending non-existence will be lamented all over the world, so the more 11th hour record books they want to stencil with their electric synergies, the better for all of us. R.I.P.eace out. In a stunning "sexy legs" kaleidoscopic masterpiece art jacket by Religious Knife Maya Miller. Half on bleached olive vinyl, half on black. Edition of 600." [label info]
€15.50
Plague of Years : Songs and Instrumentals 1980-2006
'Songs and Instrumentals 1980-2006'. Noch eine EIG-Zusammenstellung, die aber mehr auf die experimentelle Seite zielt, 21 Stücke die die ganze Bandbreite der Band aufzeigen, mit einigen sehr raren Stücken. Special low priced !
"One of the great bands that emerged post punk... They were truly unique.... I still love them..." [Alan Mc Gee / March 2005]
"this CD deals with two sides of the group. first is its deeply lyrical vein, with summits like See Red and Lights of April, tracks that have almost never been included on "best-of" projects, despite the fact that they represent some of the most moving songs these musicians ever wrote. this collection also explores the group's more adventurous side through a number of instrumental pieces. this aspect of their output is little known and often neglected, even though it was there from their very beginnings. these two combining currents, where experimentation precedes lyricism (and the other way around), turn this album into a truly new way of (re)discovering Eyeless in Gaza. This unique architecture creates the impression that each side strengthens the other one's presence. probably for the first time ever, the 21 tracks so redistributed provide the band with irrefutable arguments toward its rebirth. Yes, Eyeless in Gaza is one of the most underrated groups. in this world of ours, will integrity finally pay off ?" [label info]
"Plague of Years is a single-disc retrospective by Peter Becker and Martyn Bates, aka Eyeless in Gaza. The duo began recording with minimal instrumentation -- Becker's piano and keyboards, some primitive drum machines, a guitar here and there, as well as a traditional drum kit (or at least the snares and cymbals) -- and made music in the post-punk era that was both challenging and hideously beautiful. The reason for that description comes from the sound of Bates' voice: nasal, emotionally overwrought, and often flat, it was a voice that expressed things in his utterly naked and poetic words that the heart could comprehend, but that the intellect often could not. Long before Morrissey ever warbled, Bates ripped the door off the closet of his fear, longing, love, and disappointment, framing it with colors that held many shades of gray, but also held out the glimmer of gold for hope. There are 21 cuts on this set, beginning with their earliest tracks from 1980's debut album, Photographs as Memories ("John of Patmos"), and the amazing "Every Which Way" from 1981's Caught in Flux, issued by Cherry Red, and moving through their utterly brilliant albums Drumming the Beating Heart, Song of the Beautiful Wanton, Orange Ice & Wax Crayons, and Back from the Rains. There are cuts from compilations, such as "To Steven" and "Sun-Like-Gold," that appeared as two parts of a three-part suite on Sub Rosa's Myths. Instructions., singles such as "County Bizarre" on NDN, and the gorgeous "Falling Leaf/Fading Flower" from the 12" Pale Hands I Loved So Well, which was a bonus disc tucked inside the Drumming the Beating Heart CD. There are also cuts here from Bitter Apples, the album they released for World Serpent in 1995, and Saw You in Reminding Pictures from the Ambivalent Scale label. This is but a taste, of course, since Eyeless in Gaza needed to be taken album by album, but one honest encounter with one of their songs will send the listener scrambling for more. The music here is beauty that is so out of place in this world, it can scarcely be borne." [Thom Jurek / Allmusic.com]
€12.00
Summer Salt & Subway Sun
Nach vielen Jahren erscheint zum Jahresende 2006 endlich auch NEUES Material des legendären britischen Duos von MARTYN BATES und PETER BECKER ! "Wyrd Folk" ist in aller Munde, aber EYELESS IN GAZA haben Folk- und experimentell beeinflusste Musik schon seit ihrer Existenz gemacht und einen einmaligen Stil etabliert...
die 11 neuen Stücke sind z.T. erstaunlich spröde, einige wirken eher sessionhaft-improvisiert mit langen Instrumentalparts und
kontrastieren aufs beste mit den so verehrten melancholischen Gesangstücken von MARTYN BATES..
"Originally, the intention was to put together a double album, centering around an “escalated excitement with the idea of cities as new, blank texts – contrasted with the kind of sense of alienation and loss evoked in such works as J.G. Ballard’s Concrete Island.” The completed Summer Salt & Subway Sun works as a kind of survival or synthesis of these ideas – and also as an illustration of Eyeless In Gaza as ‘studio animal’, contrasted with their (newly re-discovered) life as a regularly gigging band. (– The band has been off the road since the late 80’s, but have recently gigged in Bruxelles, London, and Athens – with forthcoming gigs in Italy, Iceland and the U.S.). The album thus neatly encapsulates two key aspects of the music Eyeless in Gaza are presently creating – offering a balance of atmos/acoustic material and sprawling, rhythmic/semi-improvised spidery electric pieces. This has resulted in a heady blend of song based material juxtaposed with a distinctive brand of kaleidoscopic, “cityscaping” filmic musics. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is the latter, primarily instrumental pieces which gleefully reflect the band’s recent activity in cinema – in Patrice Chereau’s controversial Intimacy, and Jim Jarmusch collaborator Glen McQuaid’s poetic, sub Hammer short, The Resurrection Apprentice.
After the plaudits attributed to the 25th Anniversary release of No Noise compilation (“They were one of the great bands that emerged (from the) post punk (period)” – Alan McGee) Eyeless In Gaza continue to display a characteristic “fierce independence” of style and attitude – with the release of Summer Salt & Subway Sun, issued via the band’s own A-Scale label...." [website info]
€13.50
Summer Salt & Subway Sun
Erweiterte Neu-Auflage des letzten EIG-Albums, kommt mit einer kompletten Bonus-CD in einer dickwandigen / überformatigen Box mit 16 Seiten Booklet! 600 Stück.
"Martyn Bates offers the following commentary on this huge set of recordings. "For me, one of the key impulses at work behind this set of recordings is an understanding of "The City", where individuals are clearly a microcosm within the macrocosm -- a distinct sense of a
'person' as a player on a stage with activity going on below them, around them, above them and also within them. The feeling is of
something at work that is always subterranean … a sense of the invisible machinations of men and Gods. This is evidently something
material -- namely, work being done in the here and now. It is an expression of something non-corporeal, however … of something bigger than 'spiritual', you might say. And yet it is holistic, and 'of the body' somehow. For me, this is a 'big picture' that makes perfect
sense: this context of living, as a body and a sprit -- where the THE CITY is resolutely an outward manifestation of the human psyche. This warming and awe inspiring thought was with me during the writing, arranging and recording of this mammoth set of recordings." [EIG mailing list]
"Standard 2CD edition. Standard edition of 600 copies are packaged in a deluxe full color book bound box, 16 page lyric booklet , full color book bound cd cases. Eyeless are an earful. Messrs Bates et Becker have miraculously come trembling through the decades musically unscathed. And yay though it is within the office of many bands to have precedents in other bands, EIG really only sound like Scriabin saw. Or like Stonehenge weeps. Or like cumulus clouds unite to make bunny shapes. Caught in flux, as usual, EIG are absolutely in top form. Martyn is in brilliant voice and sounds like an angel, and the harmonic house in which Peter and Martyn domicile this angel is the Taj Mahal. Or is it as simple and small as a poor carpenter’s cup, which some would call a grail? Either way, this is dope! The familiar old chunking guitar and baleful organ-synth are there as well as the swelling minor chord miasma of texture and noise that no human could possibly evoke. Oh wait, that’s right, humans ARE doing it! Care to go on sublime, long-form instrumental excursions through the centre of the Green Man’s bindu? EIG got it! Been itching to rock out to well written, post punk pop tunes? EIG got it!! Have you and your family been craving that astrally projected experimental fondue pot of swirling beauty and skewed rhythm that makes you feel like you’ve crawled back to the womb and the best chill room ever was there? EIG got it!!! Have you ever wondered if anyone can combine virtuoso musicianship and studio effects in a truly magical way that doesn’t make it seem like everything has been CGI’d in? EIG GOT IT!!!! Ebb and flow; high and low; cooked and raw. See Martyn. See Peter. See Eyeless. GO!!! Pulchritudinous all the way…as in ravishing…as in splendorous…as in metal pipes rattled in a driveway while someone is playing the piano. So many soft little things. So much perfectly appointed emptiness. Such sweetly crafted, quiet headbangers. Prosetry in words and music. Songs and un-songs. Some cadences and atmospheres even smell a bit like cosmic third stream jazz. This must be the 4th stream. Float down it. For once 2 CD’s isn’t even enough. How can it be that 2 people have made their umpteenth truly sublime album? Rumour has it they bought the stratosphere." [label info]
www.blrrecords.com
€19.00
Everyone feels like a Stranger
"The edition is limited to 1000 copies and as with other Eyeless In Gaza albums, we do not know when or if there will be more editions coming, so get it now. The album is song-focussed and the running time is 46 mins 52 secs. The 12 tracks are: 1. Voices, 2. Dance of Hours, 3. Much Wants More, 4. Morning Singing, 5. Seeing/Book of Days, 6. Among the Gathering Skies, 7. So You Appear, 8. Slow Eve, 9. Childhood Knives, 10. Dreaming Body, 11. If I Could Live as the Sun Does, 12. Endless Trees.
Dance of Hours, Childhood Knives and So You Appear have appeared in pre-view versions on radio programs and on YouTube, but have been perfected for the final release here. Morning Singing is a new take on the Martyn Bates solo classic from 1982, but since Eyeless In Gaza has performed this live as a band several times lately, this reflects how it is interpreted these days as a song by Eyeless In Gaza.
Martyn Bates writes about the new album:
Through the Summer of 2011 while we were putting together the tunes for Everyone Feels Like a Stranger, an unexpected pattern began to emerge. Clearly, as we were recording and completing pieces, much of this new work was showing a distinct prejudice /alignment to the form of songs, as opposed to instrumental explorations and improvisations, pictures without words. Now of course, all of the music we make has a story to it – much as we are all stories, because, well … that’s all we have really: stories beautiful / terrifying / ecstatic / anecdotal / awake / asleep etc. etc. These particular song-stories all naturally feed into Eyeless In Gaza directly, and, as far as I’m concerned, the songs then go on to take on a life of their own.
That being said, I was already aware that these particular songs seemed to have arrived coloured with something that struck me as being particularly inward looking and reflective, for the most part. It was Peter Becker who first suggested that we title this album of songs Everyone Feels Like a Stranger – and initially I was unsure, as I felt that somehow this phrase ran the risk of conveying the ‘wrong kind’ of negative connotations. However, I see now that he was right. What we have here within these songs is a collective meditation upon the double-edged sense of exhilaration and closeness that can occur when one enters that peculiar state of mind and being that being alone can sometimes give.
Where to ‘feel like a stranger’ oddly brings about a wayward sense of subtle happiness or comfort. And where distance and separation somehow connect with a sudden elevation and insight, and link in with an unsettling sense of security within that isolation. Where being ‘alone’ takes on an almost religious intensity .Where you are connected to the Quiet, the calm, the silence. Where Everyone Feels Like a Stranger, true … but, at the same time, no-one ever feels like a dispassionate collaborator.
Dance of Hours – a YouTube film directed by David Black for Black Creative Limited with additional footage from Elizabeth Bates, recorded at Mont St. Michel out of the shores of Normandy in late August 2011.
My own initial reaction to Everyone Feels Like a Stranger – not as negative in mood as the title might suggest. This is an album that is hard to tell why one should hold in high esteem, but one should, because it is greater in some ways than previous albums. It shows a deep respect for the song format and that is at the core here. I might find more improvisational material more exciting, but here they really bring out the best of what is central to making music – melody/harmony, wonderful voice, thoughtfulness, inventiveness, atmosphere, colouring and all without sounding presumptuous, nor trying to live up to what others might regard as great, but rather define it. An album not to be missed!" [website info]
www.eyelessingaza.com
€13.00
Sun Blues
"An album of unusual songs, sounding both exotic and as a new take on things, but somehow familiar and the music comes together in a way only Eyeless In Gaza music can. The music often sounds stern and sometimes deeply melancholic, with exciting and successful soundscapes. I am sure this album will stand out as one of the more memorable albums from last 10 years, but we never know where they go from here. Always an exciting adventure to follow as it unravels!
Listen to Tamarisk (early version) on YouTube, which gives an idea of what to expect from the album, even if the album cover quite a big territory:
https://youtu.be/Lv1uXVByACw
Martyn Bates : e-guitars/voices/clarinet/kybds.
Peter Becker : bass/drums/e-guitars/voice/percussions/slide-guitar/piano/wasp/drum-machine/tapes/all engineering & recording.
❖ First album of all-new Eyeless In Gaza material since 2014’s Mania Sour.
❖ Completed August 2016 recorded at A-Scale studios Warwickshire, the Bates/Becker produced Sun Blues sees Eyeless In Gaza offering a 2016 styled distant cousin to 1982’s classic Pale Hands I Loved So Well. In an environment where the studio is very much a musical instrument, the band deliver a collection of filigree musics created via an organic osmosis, layering techniques, together with a painstakingly considered collaging of all elements. Here are instrumental discoveries & improvisations/pictures painted with words – songs that have an inbuilt claustrophobia and sonic density – playfully investigating the soundworlds/territories of the kosmische.
❖ On Sun Blues, of particular note is the combination of Martyn Bates’ at times melancholic, sometimes passionate vocals – which come across exceptionally strongly – teamed with the extraordinary, mercurial bass guitar work of Peter Becker. Sun Blues album would seem to be a groundbreaking distillation of everything that Bates & Becker have ever produced during their 36 year lifespan. Quite simply, Sun Blues is already being acclaimed as the definitive Eyeless In Gaza album."
www.eyelessingaza.com
"Eyeless in Gaza have had several trajectories since their original lo-fi outings in Coventry and Nuneaton in the early 1980s. The duo of Peter Becker and Martyn Bates seemed to be heading towards pop at one point, but en route diverted through textural soundscapes, improvisation, avant-folk, sonic experiment and occult rock; indeed, they still visit these places. Picture the Day is a well-overdue compilation that actually covers all the band’s output, including both the Cherry Red releases from the 1980s and the self-released albums on Ambivalent Scale that have been issued since the 1990s.
The story of course starts with Ambivalent Scale and a 7 inch single, following some cassette releases. The edgy, synth-driven ‘Kodak Ghosts Run Amok’ is tucked away here in the middle of the first CD (unfortunately the superb ‘Feeling’s Mutual’ from the B-side isn’t) which selects from the band’s Cherry Red releases. Listeners are edged into the music with some of the more accessible end of things, a quick drift through some folkier songs and then the gorgeous emotive instrumental ‘Falling Leaf/Fading flower’ before restlessly moving on, from genre to genre, or more often falling between genres.
The second CD features the Ambivalent Scale recordings, and is a similar mix of work. If more recent work isn’t as familiar to me it’s mainly due to growing up and not being able to spend time with new music in the same way that being a teenage and then a student previously facilitated with the original LPs. It’s clear I need to get my act together and have a relisten – this stuff is great.
Together, the two CDs paint a broad, involving picture of this peculiar and engaging band. I like the fact it in no way pretends to be a ‘best of’ or ‘greatest hits’, but simply showcases some of the highlights from their numerous releases. I’d like to have seen the uplifting brassy pop of ‘Sun Bursts In’ here, but otherwise it is a perfect snapshot of one of my favourite bands, lovingly compiled and superbly sequenced.
Eyeless’ new CD, Sun Blues, shares one track, ‘Tamarisk’ with Picture the Day and is a set of new music from the more experimental end of things. Having said that it’s more about mood and texture than the wild excesses of the band’s early output, although ‘Ill-Star’ is intense and loud, with some great honking sax in the pulverising maelstrom of sound. Elsewhere, Martyn Bate’s warm vocals are positioned within rich, dense music that both propels and entwines the songs and the listener. There are also three instrumental vignettes, two back to back in the centre of the album, the third a coda or finale.
It takes some time to truly ‘hear’ the layers and complexities of this album, in the same way it takes time to grasp the width, breath and achievement of Eyeless in Gaza’s musical history. But time spent will be rewarded: Eyeless in Gaza remain one of the most accomplished and interesting bands to have emerged from the music-making underground post punk and postpunk. Here’s to further decades of experiment and beguilement." [Rupert Loydell/ International Times]
"After nearly half a century performing together, Martyn Bates and Peter Becker must seem like a married couple – finishing each other’s sentences, telepathically sensing where their individual muse is leading them and effortlessly hopping on and enjoying the ride. With an extensive catalogue of well over two-dozen releases, they still sound as fresh and invigorating as that ground breaking EP, “Kodak Ghosts Run Amok” that started everything way back in 1980. Looking back to those early releases, the duo suggest their latest is a “distant cousin” to 1982’s classic Pale Hands I Loved So Well. But this is another century, and technological advances have enabled them to use their studio almost as an additional instrument, layering sounds, playing with various improvisational techniques, and offering, perhaps, a third pair of ears and hands to the proceedings.
Yet at its heart is the combination of Bates’ breathy, almost theatrical vocal styling (a little Antony Hegarty, a tad Andy McCluskey) and intelligent, thought-provoking lyrics, revealing numerous layers of meaning and intent as each verse trickles off his soothing, emotional delivery, and Becker’s inquisitive bass lines, harmonic tape manipulations, and various percussive effects. While tracks like ‘Solar Logic’ may initially sound like a simple love ballad, further listening reveals intricate harmonic vocal interweaving, funky, almost African percussives, and the perfect placement of bells and tape manipulations that demonstrate how much the studio has been welcomed in to add lustre to their creative juices.
‘Tamarisk’ envelops the listener in swirling effects and percussive embellishments that wouldn’t be out of place on a Peter Gabriel album, while ‘New Take/Notkar’ offers a harsher splash of ice water in the face, evolving out of an almost industrial percussive backbeat and syncopated guitars that push the listener towards Faust or Nine Inch Nails gut crunchers. But never ones to fall into a rut, the following ‘Longing Song’ is an uplifting, lilting lover’s plea that rises from the ashes of desolation “To bring the morning alive...to be amazed/n you’ll be mine....”
The duo occasionally include improvisational instrumentals in their albums, and the cinematic, provocative and evocative ‘Wind, Sand, Sea & Stars’ pretty much covers the gamut of the external universe – a breakneck journey through land, sea and sky, while ‘Unborn’ traverses the inner universe, wallowing, swallowing mouthfuls of life-giving amniotic fluids on the 9-month journey into a cold, shattering life that no one asked for or had any choice in bringing to fruition.
But before we get too deep, let’s enjoy the sprinkling, sparkling, shimmering flourishes of duelling ukuleles, thumb pianos and glockenspiel on the celestial ‘Juniper’, and the soft, reflective instrumental closer ‘Long Gon Pa’, full of meticulous slide and acoustic guitar and Becker’s fascinating, dreamy devices and tape loops. An imaginative, emotional, headswirling buzz to wrap up another fascinating release from the always reliable duo, who never fail to excite us while eliciting nuances of emotional responses that are all-too-rare in this cookie-cutter, commercial world of Voices, Idols, and other nameless, brainless distractions."
[Jeff Penczak/Ptolemaic Terrascope, November 2016]
€13.00
Skeletal Framework (The Cherry Red Recordings 1981-1986)
• The complete Eyeless In Gaza Cherry Red recordings, compiled and curated by Martyn Bates and Pete Becker.
• 5CD clamshell box set featuring sleevenotes and extensive song-by-song reminisces by Martyn Bates.
• Their entire 1981-1986 output for the label re-worked into five thematic suites by the band, bringing new life and light to familiar and much-loved material.
• Includes the classics ‘Invisibility’, ‘Veil Like Calm’, Kodak Ghosts Run Amok’, ‘New Risen’ and many more.
• A brilliant introduction for the curious and a fascinating re-visit for long-term fans.
During the first half of the 1980s, few artists cut a path as individual and self-contained as Eyeless In Gaza. Over six albums and several classic singles, the duo followed their muse in multiple different directions at once, unrestrained by any desire to fit in with whatever was going on around them. Bursts of primal electronica sat comfortably alongside reflective ballads and lo-fi recordings and polished productions were equally valued, all of it pulled together by Martyn Bates’ unmistakable vocals and a singular, minimalist approach to songwriting.
Curated by Eyeless In Gaza, and accompanied by Martyn Bates’ song-by-song reflections on their work, ‘Skeletal Framework’ presents the band’s entire Cherry Red output re-cast as five themed suites (or perhaps even playlists), each reflecting one of their many sides. The group’s best-known work sits comfortably alongside deeper album cuts and rarities with interesting results, as the duo guide us back and forth across recordings spanning almost six years of one of Cherry Red’s most distinctive artists.
Track Listing:
DISC ONE
VOLUME ONE: LOOKING DAGGERS (ROCK and RHYTHMIC)
1 Looking Daggers
2 Skeletal Framework
3 Half Light
4 September Hills
5 The Feelings Mutual 6 In Your Painting
7 Fixation
8 Continual
9 Scale Amiss
10 Faceless
11 The Decoration
12 Voice From The Tracks
13 Whitewash
14 True Colour
15 Out From The Day-To-Day
16 Plague Of Years
17 Taking Steps (Original Version)
18 A Keepsake
19 From A To B
20 Soul On Thin Ice
21 Seven Years
22 Knives Replace Air
DISC TWO
VOLUME TWO: ROSE PETAL KNOT (POP TUNES etc)
1 Others
2 No Perfect Stranger
3 Twilight
4 One By One
5 Sweet Life Longer
6 Everpresent
7 Two
8 China Blue Vision
9 New Love Here
10 Speech Rapid Fire
11 Changing Stations
12 Sun Bursts In
13 Point You
14 Clear Cut Apparently
15 Veil Like Calm
16 Welcome Now
17 New Risen
18 Pencil Sketch
19 Picture The Day
20 Rose Petal Knot
21 Invisibility
22 Pearl And Pale
23 Keynote Inertia
24 Taking Steps
25 Kodak Ghosts Run Amok
DISC THREE
VOLUME THREE: YOUR RICH SKY
(Approximate BALLADS and SIMILAR)
1 Drumming The Beating Heart
2 Lie Still, Sleep Long
3 See Red
4 Bright Play Of Eyes
5 Corner Of Dusk
6 Before You Go
7 At Arms Length
8 Catch Me
9 No Noise
10 Evening Music
11 Every Which Way
12 Stealing Autumn
13 My Last, Lost Melody
14 Far Lands Blue
15 Your Rich Sky
16 Only Whispers
17 Leaves Are Dancing
18 Back From The Rains
19 Between These Dreams
20 Flight Of Swallows
21 Catch Me, Count Me, Catch Fire
DISC FOUR
VOLUME FOUR: STILL AIR (ATMOS-SONGS)
1 Light Sliding
2 Dusky Ruth
3 Ill Wind Blows
4 The Eyes Of Beautiful Losers
5 Inky Blue Sky
6 Throw A Shadow
7 Tall And White Nettles
8 Sixth Sense
9 Lights Of April
10 Scent Of Evening Air
11 Transience Blues
12 Through Eastfields
13 Lilt Of Music
14 To Ellen
15 Tell
16 Still Air
17 She Moves Thru The Fair
18 Blue Distance
DISC FIVE
VOLUME 5: DREAMING AT RAIN
(EXPERIMENTS and IMPROV)
1 Big Clipper Ship
2 Dreaming At Rain
3 Pale Saints
4 Lies Of Love
5 To Steven
6 John Of Patmos
7 Avenue With Trees
8 Sun Like Gold
9 Sheer Cliffs
10 Letters To She
11 Jane Dancing
12 Three Kittens
13 To Elizabeth S
14 Falling Leaf/Fading Flower;Goodbye To Summer
15 Warm Breath Soft And Slow
16 You Frighten
€49.50
Parallel Disalignment
Fallen Sun is the solo noise / industrial alter ego of Y'ng-Yin Siew (Reverse Image) from Malaysia. An intense and explosive affair, the sonics on "Parallel Disalignment" are jagged and abrasive as they collide into each other or assume meta-rhythmic forms which flutter violently into torrents of searing lava. Formed from a pedal noise set-up with the exception of one track which was created with Eurorack, the seven pieces successfully apply new meaning to a genre synonymous with the likes of Incapacitants, Merzbow and Masonna. "Parallel Disalignment" presents the perfect title to an album grand in its quest to reach beyond something it might be seen as being part of. Besides the dynamic interplay at work throughout it, often cut with an edge which at first appears as hostile as it is impenetrable, there's something almost uncontrollably joyous to behold. This is evident on the collaborative piece, 'Session 46', which witnesses the deployment of birdsong by Peter Wullen to help counter the overtly incendiary nature of the proceedings with sounds more organic or celebratory. The final track is taken from a live appearance at the Negative Frequencies show in Malaysia - so powerful you can picture yourself being washed over in this assault of merciless cadences; like being showered in razor blades whilst grinning from ear to ear. Ltd x 300 copies in a digipak.
https://fallensun.bandcamp.com/album/parallel- :
"Since Fallen Sun’s debut CD, 'Beyond the Flat Earth', which appeared on Fourth Dimension Records in 2024, there have been rare live appearances and collaborative releases by this solo project of Malaysian electronic artist, Y’ng-Yin Siew. She has also released a few albums under the name, Reverse Image, which is a comparatively sedate project given to more atmospheric sounds yet no less metamorphic or unsettled because of that.
Fallen Sun, as the name itself alludes to, is a rather more intense and explosive affair, however. As with the debut, the sonics are jagged and abrasive as they collide into each other or assume meta-rhythmic forms which flutter violently into torrents of searing lava that are utterly unforgiving as they burn into the very being of the listener. Formed from a pedal noise set-up with the exception of one track which was created with Eurorack, the seven pieces successfully apply new meaning to a genre that’s already gone a long way since the likes of Incapacitants, Merzbow and Masonna helped render it as one to be considered seriously. While it is true that such music (and, please, let’s consider it thus) first mapped itself via the likes of Whitehouse, Non, Ramleh, SPK, Consumer Electronics and so on, or even arguably Lou Reed’s 'Metal Machine Music' album, its reach has traversed far and wide over the decades since, both globally and with respect to an understanding of composition from more academic masters such as Xenakis.
To that end, 'Parallel Disalignment' presents the perfect title to an album grand in its quest to reach beyond something it might be seen as being part of. Besides the dynamic interplay at work throughout it, often cut with an edge which at first appears as hostile as it is impenetrable, there’s something almost uncontrollably joyous to behold. This is evident on the collaborative piece, ‘Session 46’, which witnesses the deployment of birdsong by Peter Wullen to help counter the overtly incendiary nature of the proceedings with sounds more organic or celebratory.
To end everything, there’s a lengthy track taken from a live appearance at the Negative Frequencies show in Malaysia whereby everything is so powerful you can picture yourself being washed over in this assault of merciless cadences right there in the venue itself. It’s like being showered in razor blades whilst grinning from ear to ear and, ultimately, proof positive that Fallen Sun is a force to be reckoned with in this setting" - Richard Johnson, Fourth Dimension Records
credits
released August 29, 2025
Session 46 - Field Recordings by Peter Wullen
Session 47 - "Live" at Negative Frequencies Vol.1, Moutou, Kuala Lumpur, 18th April 2025
Mastered by Sion Orgon
Artwork by Paul Takahashi
Layout by Thomas Bey William Bailey
CD Inlay Photo by Fallen Sun
disalignment
€13.00
Tilwin
Tilwin (meaning 'colouring' in Maltese, Robert's native tongue) started being written during the summer of 2023 and was concluded on the last day of that year. The album reflects some major life events Robert encountered throughout that same year. Tilwin is an attempt at embracing a period of lows and highs, an effort of encapsulating these experiences within recordings. Each event described here is coloured in Robert's mind by a 'hue', that was then reflected in each track forming the album. Tilwin depicts events as varied as a tragic incident endured by a loved one and their period of convalescence, as can be heard on the song 'Long Wait', to the birth of a new family member on the Christmas day, as can be heard on the song 'Post Christmas'. Hence the album name: Tilwin.
https://dronarivm.bandcamp.com/album/tilwin
4 panel digipack, soft touch finish
- cardboard slipcase (Keaykolour Lipstick, 300 grm), handstamped
- all titles written in the original author's handwriting
- 150 handnumbered copies
€14.00
j US t (Just us)
"Die Hamburger Krautrock-Pioniere mit einem Überraschungspaket aus Avantgarde, Dada und Folk.
Die Hamburger Band Faust gehört zu den großen Namen, die der Krautrock der 1970er-Jahre hervorgebracht hat. Als Jean-Hervé Péron und Zappi Diermaier 1971 ihr Debütalbum vorlegten, wollte das in Deutschland niemand hören, im Ausland jedoch verkauften sich "The Faust Tapes" über 100.000-mal. "There is no group more mythical than Faust", schwärmte der englische Musiker und Krautrock-Kenner Julian Cope Jahrzehnte später. Mit "Just Us" setzen Faust ihren musikalischen Weg fort. Während Diermaier seinem Handwerk - Schlagzeug und Perkussion - treu bleibt, integriert Peron allerhand unübliche Klangquellen in sein Bassspiel, verschiedene Streichinstrumente, Klavier und sogar eine Nähmaschine als Metronom. Tracks wie "Nur nous" und "Ich bin ein Pavian" zeigen, dass Faust nichts von ihrer Vorliebe für Avantgarde und Dadaismus verloren haben. Ausflüge ins folkloristische Gefilde ("Cavaqui-ho", "Gammes") runden das wahrhaft faustische Überraschungspaket ab. //
j US t - pronounced "Just Us" - is the new album from legendary Hamburg band Faust. Founder members Jean-Herve Peron and Zappi Diermaier have laid down twelve musical foundations, inviting the whole world to use them as a base on which to build their own music. The tracks presented by Peron and Diermaier are clearly, intrinsically typical of Faust in their own right, yet offer enough space for completely different works to develop. Which is exactly what they hope will happen. Whilst Diermaier largely remains true to his habitual handiwork - drums and percussion - Peron, as we might expect, incorporates all manner of unusual sonic sources alongside his bass, various string instruments and piano, even using a sewing machine as a metronome. Tracks like "nur nous" and "ich bin ein pavian" show that Faust have lost none of their predilection for avantgarde Dadaism and improvisation. Peron and Diermaier actually surprise us with folkloristic excursions ("cavaquinho", "gammes"). In short, there is something for everyone to work with here. Peron and Diermaier await the results with bated breath. Faust will follow the same principle on the accompanying tour by inviting local artists to collaborate with them on stage." [label info]
www.bureau-b.com
"Faust’s intentions have never been easy to discern. Over their 40-plus years of morphing, discontinuous existence, they’ve been so good at dodging expectations and confounding analysis that even when they’re playing it straight, you wonder if something else is going on. So when the press sheet for j US t (pronounced "just us") claims the band is "inviting the whole world to use [the album] as a base on which to build their own music," it’s hard not to get suspicious. Is this a decoy? Do Jean-Hervé Peron and Zappi Diermaier want you to imagine other music so you won’t focus on theirs? Is it simply a way to say "if you don’t like it, make your own"?
Perhaps Faust truly are earnest about wanting this album to inspire public collaboration. But the idea does point to something that’s always been intriguing about Faust’s music: it’s often just as much about what they aren’t playing as what they are. Their work is full of implications and innuendos, spaces waiting to be filled in. j US t doesn’t necessarily have more of that than most Faust albums, but implication does seem to be a main theme here. This is music in which every note suggests many more possibilities.
j US t begins by proclaiming more than intimating, and in this way it bears an uncanny resemblance to the last Faust effort, 2011’s stellar Something Dirty. That record began with three bold, practically rocking tunes, and so does this one. Based around simple riffs and looping beats, these songs are like free-form post-rock, sturdy in their rhythms but opened-ended in their direction. And despite how well-defined the base of each track is, there’s also tantalizing space in each one. Take "80Hz", whose simple two-note bass figure flows beautifully with the well-timed accents of Diermaier’s percussion and Peron’s sonic grab bag. At times it dips to near-silence, in other places it crests to frantic peaks, but throughout it maintains a tension that compels attention.
The balance between action and suggestion tips more toward the latter for the rest of j US t, in ways both fascinating and frustrating. Some songs maintain the attraction of anticipation, hinting at where they might go without ever fully abandoning other options. But others feel more flat than ripe, not so much flirting with tense silence as drifting into empty inertia. One in particular, the seven-minute "Palpitations", is mostly limp. Its intermittent percussion and electronic squiggles sound more random than impulsive, making it the only instance on the album where I find myself wishing I could already hear other bands filling it in.
It takes a few tracks to recover from that mid-album drop, but Faust manage to rebound on closer "Ich Sitze Immer Noch", whose slow, rising lope sounds like a sunny homage to Spiderland-era Slint. Like the bulk of j US t, it offers a lot worth hearing and just as much worth daydreaming about—in other words, it achieves the band's stated goals. Maybe Peron and Diermaier really did mean what they said." [Marc Masters / PITCHFORK]
€22.00
LANDSLIDE (For Fields Recordings and Sine Waves)
2x12" LP + 12" 4-page insert, ltd. 300 copies
Side A - Landslide (17’58”) by Gianluca Favaron and Stefano Gentile
Side B - Landslide reworked (18’07”) by Rod Modell
Side C - Landslide (remix) (17’57”) by Carl Michael von Hausswolf
Side D - Landslide (remix) reworked (18’01”) by Rod Modell
On October 9, 1963, 260 million cubic meters of rock broke off from the top of Monte Toc. It fell into the reservoir of the Vajont dam, producing an enormous wave of at least 50 million cubic meters of water. The dam, completed in 1959 and one of the biggest in the world at the time, did not suffer any serious damage. However, flooding destroyed several villages in the valley and killed almost 2,000 people. In some ways, it is as if the landslide swept away the past and the future of an entire community. An apocalypse lasting just a few minutes left scars and stigmata for decades to follow.
Time is crystallised in an eternal present.
Around the Vajont area, you often hear small landslides.
Landslide: a natural downwards movement, more or less rapid, of large masses of earth and rock; also the hole created by this movement, and the accumulation of material from this release.
Movement and accumulation are two keywords that guided the search for the sounds hidden in the silence of the Vajont landscape. In quiet moments today, the landscape reveals reverberations of it’s past... the movements of downward sliding, crystallized substances, and ghosts of its previous inhabitants. Frozen in time.
Exploring the area, one wonders if anything remains under the surface. The original version of Landslide, and the Carl Michael Von Hausswolf version, re-construct nature in a unique and unusual way. Sewn with the smallest amount of sonic fabric. Resulting not in a verbatim recreation of an event, or emotional responses of that event, but rather.... a more intangible interpretation. Impulses that trigger feelings of the fall, the movement of land, and detachment. Expressed with a new code of sound. Mixed together, overlapped, collided, reaccumulated, and merged together again. While the Modell versions offer a more organic approach. Sounds of the valley at night, layered with psychotropic drones and other hovering noises. Echoes of present combined with echoes of the past.
CALAMITA/À (2013-ongoing) is a tool for investigating the contemporary Vajont and the topic of catastrophes in general. The project is curated by Gianpaolo Arena and Marina Caneve.
“0” is a collaboration between CALAMITA/À and Silentes where visual arts join sound.
13.silentes.it/private_sounds/sps2142_favaron_gentile_von_hausswolff_modell_landslide.htm
€36.00
Woes of the desolate mourner
"it's probably one of the most eerie and atmospheric drones i performed live but one i'm very satisfied with". soweit fear falls burnings selbsteinschätzung zu diesem neuen werk; als 7" auf tonefloat und ein (oder teile eines) konzert(s) im extrapool in nijmegen auf die heimanlage transportierend. und man muss der selbsteinschätzung unbedingt recht geben: sind andere ffb-veröffentlichungen durch eine dichte und extreme schichtung geprägt, so stehen bei der "woes" über lange zeit einzelne bögen im raum, denen sogar die zeit gegeben wird, langsam zu verklingen, ohne das sie (wie sonst) loopartig immer wiederkehren und als grundgerüst des weiteren aufbaus dienen. freigelassen und im sound fast (gitarren-)synth-artig werden erst auf der zweiten seite der 7" die einzelteile zu einem teppich verwebt, der das für fear falls burning so typische dreidimensionale fließen im sound zeigt und sich schließlich in einer tremolo/vibratofläche fängt. unbedingt empfehlenswertes kleinod und in seiner verpackung aus packpapierfarbenem umschlag mit einer typografie in klarlack auch noch extrem hübsch anzuschauen." [Unruhr]
€7.50
same
FEARTHAINNE ist ein Band-Projekt mit den zwei Leuten von FAUNA, die mir ihrem Debut-Album kürzlich beeindrucken konnten. Auch hier sind ihre tracks episch angelegt und minimal instrumentiert, und nicht minder emotional wirkungsvoll. Nach einem fantastischen Poly-Drone Intro setzt sich ihr erhaben trauriger Akustik-Gitarren Folk (der an ruhigere NEUROSIS bzw. STEVE ON TILL oder MICHAEL GIRA erinnert) in Szene, der von Sehnsucht nur so durchdrungen zu sein scheint, begleitet von sparsamer Perkussion; auch Zither & Violine werden sehr schön integeriert. FEARTHAINNE entwerfen hier auf ihren urlangen Tracks die stets mehrere Teile haben, eine Art ambienten "Ritual Drone Folk" mit starkem Naturbezug, der einen nicht kalt lässt.. und wieder glänzt GLASS THROAT mit so einem wunderschönen grossformatigen Doppel-Klappcover aus speziellem Karton..
"I have the tremendous honor of announcing, what is to be our Winter Solstice 2008 release. From Cascadian soil, FEARTHAINNE will bless us with a pure nostalgia for being. A debut full length 2xCD, embracing four deeply potent healing crafts of acoustic mourning & regeneration. Featuring the two spirits of Cascadia's Ritual Black Metal atavism FAUNA.
Fearthainne's first release represents the nadir of a journey into earth. Conceptualized and written in wild environments in the West, this collection of songs is a picture of the labyrinth traveled by a human organism, seeking life outside the long shadows of unremitting gray. The seekers masquerading as musicians who have created this document have used these sounds as a conduit for the reconnection with being, and have chosen to make it available to those who might hear the voice of the Others speaking to them from within. Exclusively utilizing acoustic instrumentation, Fearthainne is the unending rain that calls forth the blossom, the harbinger of the organic future we inevitably face. A sonic expression of green in all its capacities, this project is a document of the search for Home, a declaration that we will never settle for existence in the meaningless maze of history.
As beings we have struggled for many years to imbue our lives with depth, bending our ears towards the chorus of elders that the natural world is. Brought to fruition in a culture whose theme is loss, we recognize the wisdom of Earth in the various shifts that will unravel these ten millennia of aberration, and celebrate the dawning of day for what is truly human. As participants in this calamity, we call forth those spirits of the land, sea and sky who have always borne witness to our cyclical lives, the deep mind of which we are only a part, to see us and hear our voices as we proclaim our allegiance to Life. May this blood that flows from us cleanse the land of its wounds. May our animal bodies shield our battered hearts as we break the hands of Time. May this be the end..." [label info]
"... But in Fearthainne, all of the buzz and lbuster have been replaced by delicate crystalline guitar, gruff emotive vocals, deep ominous drones, all woven into a slow, drifting, meditative mountain folk. On the same label that in the past has brought us mysterious sounds from At The Head Of The Woods, The Elemental Chrysalis, Ruhr Hunter, Alethese and Beneath The Lake, Fearthainne sound right at home, blending dense whirring minimal soundscapes, with gentle meditative folk rituals. Long long tracks that slowly blossom, smoldering, clouded in warm browns and cool greys, strings weep and moan, effects gently cradle the various elements, adding texture more than changing the sound. Mesmerizing, trancelike ruminations on nature, on death, on the beyond. Simple percussion demarcates sprawling folk strum and fields of lilting shimmer and and delicate flutter. The vocals are a strange contrast, almost atonal, moaned more than sung, reminding us of solo records by either of the Neurosis frontmen, giving the proceedings a much more ominous vibe, ritualistic and hauntingly spiritual. Gorgeous in its simplicity, mysterious in its minimalism, Fearthainne is the soundtrack to a land outside of time, of trees towering over a world unspoilt, clouds drifting across empty skies, night turning into day, the cycle of life continuing on, the world and the universe around it gradually moving into a new, more magical existence. Beautifully sublime. Incredible packaging, full color 6 panel oversized sleeve, amazing images of ancient forests, late night rituals, and the band gathered beneath a mighty tree, cradling a baby, dressed like witches, and looking like a band of bearded forest dwellers (which they may very well be!)." [Aquarius Records review]
www.glassthroatrecordings.com
€18.50
Ahuenna
"„AHUENNA“ ALBUM INFO: This album consists of a single, 45 minute long title. No computer, no digital sound preparer. Everything live. Contact microphone, sound effect units and various other sources. The entire piece was recorded at home in the studio of “Feine Trinkers bei Pinkels Daheim”.
Pure, live produced sound. “Ahuenna” is a typical album but still different. With
“Ahuenna” Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim has broken new ground and thus has the history of the project posted on.
ABOUT FEINE TRINKERS BEI PINKELS DAHEIM:
Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim ist the experimental music project of J. Eberhard
and it’s based in Bremen and have toured everything from the Netherlands to
Switzerland and Russia extensively over the last 2 decades.
In the last 2 decades, the project released unique vinyl CD and cassettes in multiple
editions, usually personalised and with personalised hand-painted artwork.
Every show of Feine Trinkers bei Pinkels is an experience for itself - it's timeless, it's
a feast for the ears, and it's such a pleasure to see him doing all the work on stage
when you just lean back staring at him, with his aural earbuds tickling your eardrums.
Now, Yesterday or Tomorrow, and why do he have such an attention to detail - that's
the question you will ask yourself." [label info]
www.format-noise.com
€9.50
Becs
"The last time Fennesz released an album on Austrian label Mego it was 2001 and the name of that release was 'Endless summer'. Now, in 2014 Editions Mego is extremely proud to release the conceptual follow up that landmark of abstract pop. Bécs (pronounced 'baeetch') is Hungarian for Vienna and is the first full length Fennesz solo release since 2008's 'Black Sea'. Eschewing the more drone orientated works of 'Black Sea', 'Bécs' returns to the more florid pop mechanisms as deployed on Endless Summer. 'Static Kings' features the extra leverage of Werner Dafeldecker and Martin Brandlmayer who deploy a range of atmospheric abstract effects to shape a bewitching sound world. The 10 minute centrepiece 'Liminality' (featuring Tony Buck on drums) is classic Fennesz: epic, evocative, beautiful, impossible. 'Pallas Athene' creates a sanctuary of hovering beauty which leads into the title track. Emotional and assured, the track Bécs' is an astonishing contribution to contemporary pop. 'Sav' (co-written by Cédric Stevens aka Acid Kirk) inhabits a less structural terrain as one enters a forest of small sounds and oblique atmospheres, where the closing 'Paroles', a gentle melody unravels amongst swirls of electronics and fried disruption. Bécs is not just an album or a series of songs, it's a world to inhabit, a landscape ripe with sounds, songs and that esteemed Fennesz signature. A singular work by a singular artist. All tracks by Christian Fennesz, except 'Sav' by Cédric Stevens & Christian Fennesz. Modular Synthesizer on 'Sav' by Cédric Stevens. Bass on 'Static Kings' by Werner Dafeldecker. Drums on 'Static Kings' by Martin Brandlmayr. Drums on 'Liminality' by Tony Buck. Recorded & mixed at Amann Studios, Vienna, 2013/14. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Cover design by Tina Frank." [label info]
www.editionsmego.com
"Aside from a couple of respectable collaborations and some soundtrack work, Christian Fennesz hasn't released a proper solo album since the album Black Sea, which came out on Touch WAY back in 2008. On Becs, Fennesz returns to the label that introduced him to the world, in Editions Mego; and he pretty much continues along the same path that he set for himself on that last album he recorded for them, the much lauded Endless Summer from 2001. That was a fracturous record of polygonal melodies bathed in a candy-crush fuzz of pixelated, shoegazing blur, always alluding to the sunkissed glow of the California Dream, whatever that may be. Becs may not have the advantage of following up one hell of a single by Fennesz (in the very late '90s, he covered The Beach Boys and The Rolling Stones, the latter of which was originally commissioned for tUMULt's Painted Black anthology!), whereby he contextualized his sonic dislocation within the lineage of rock'n'roll and all of its mythologies of dissent, rebellion, sex, and whatnot. Yeah, it's a tough act to follow; but Becs is a wildly adventurous album with a substantial parity when it comes to the risk/reward equation. A heavily flanged, blindingly bright corona of digital treatments surrounds the Fennesz' guitar sound at the album's introduction, with all of the soft melodies buried in twinkling electronics and mirrored refractions. Fennesz follows this with a detuned alarm-call pulse that forms an insistently crawling rhythmic structure blasted with a malleable distortion, which in turn he counterpoints with a gorgeous, cathedral drone of sustained harmonics. An incremental retinal burn of guitar distortion shapes the brilliant track "Liminality" built upon a beautifully bittersweet, slowcore guitar chord whose roots lie in Slint, Codeine, or maybe even the Durutti Column. Sparkling ambient passages beget discordant piano treatments akin to a computer-cracked Angelo Badalamenti which in turn beget more blossoming noise. Fucking brilliant." [Aquarius Records]
€13.50
Mosaic
This is Fennesz's most reflective album to date. Composed and recorded at the end of 2023 and completed in the summer of 2024, Fennesz set up a new studio space, the third one in four years. He had no immediate concept, this time starting from scratch, with a strict working routine. He got up early in the morning, worked until midday then had a break and worked again until evening. At first, just collecting ideas, experimenting, improvising. Then composing, mixing and correcting. Yet the title came early, Mosaic, which mirrored this process of putting an element into place one at a time to build the full picture, an ancient technique of making an image, before pixels did it in a flash. This "9 to 5" working routine had already been developed on Agora. All the other albums before were done differently; a few weeks work, then months in between and another few days or weeks of work. Mosaic was done from beginning to end without a break. Packaged in the now familiar DVD-style case with artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft, there is an echo to Venice but 20 years later the division between the land, the horizon and the deep blue sea is more extreme. Fennesz experiments with unusual time signatures. It's not obvious, but "Love and the Framed Insects" is in 7/4. "Personare" is somehow influenced by West African pop music from the 1980s. "Goniorizon" originally consisted of six hard rock guitar riffs mixed on top of one another. Then it became this "thing" that somehow opened possibilities for new things to come -- all this adds up to a filmic, highly involving and beautiful score of diverse influences and multiple possibilities to be explored by the listener. Recorded by Christian Fennesz at Seven Fountains/Vienna between January and May 2024. Mastered by Denis Blackham. Photography and design by Jon Wozencroft.
https://fenneszreleases.bandcamp.com/album/mosaic
€17.00
Solitude Transit
NEVER BEFORE RELEASED.
Innersleeve with exclusive pictures & liner notes.
Transversales Disques is very glad to announce the release of « Solitude Transit » (1989)
unpublished archives by electroacoustic music pioneer Luc Ferrari.
Music composed for contemporary dance, choregraphed by Anne-Marie Reynaud
Musique composée, interprétée et enregistrée par Luc Ferrari.
Solitude Transit, 1989-1990.
Musique en 3 actes pour le spectacle de la chorégraphe Anne-Marie Reynaud :
Roman de gare / Ligne de fuite / On part chez Marie-Christine
Chorégraphie : Anne-Marie Reynaud
Musique : Luc Ferrari
Décors : Claude Meiller
Costumes : Jean Pierre Capeyron
Lumières : Jacques Roveyrollis
Dramaturgie : Michel Azama
Huit danseurs
(p) 2022 Transversales Disques sous licence exclusive Brunhild Ferrari.
Editions : Maison ONA.
credits
released September 15, 2022
« Affiliated with French Radio’s Groupe de Musique Concrète, co-founder of the GRM with Pierre Schaeffer in 1958 Luc Ferrari (1929-2005) major figure of musique concrète and electroacoustic music broke away to pave his own path of individualistic expressions of minimalist music, musical theatre, field recordings, orchestral music and soundtracks…»
https://lucferrari.bandcamp.com
€27.00
The Apple never falls far from the Tree
https://final1.bandcamp.com/album/the-apple-never-falls-far-from-the-tree
"from grind core pioneers napalm death and industrial metal duo godflesh to the wrist slashing sadness of jesu, the twenty-odd year career of justin k. broadrick has spawned a slew of uniquely recognisable formations. despite representing his very first steps on the scene, broadrick’s final moniker, focusing on dark electronic soundscapes, has occasionally seemed a side thought in comparison. after putting the project to rest for almost an entire decade, final however resurfaced stronger than ever in the new millenium with a string of improvisation based works as well as a hypnotic collaboration with fear falls burning. the apple never falls far from the tree continues this gradual return to the limelight, presenting final as an act comfortably sandwiched between uncompromising sonic explorations and the most far out corners of the post rock cosmos.
conceptualised especially for the vinyl format and complemented by lasse hoile’s congenial photography, broadrick has envisioned the new final full length as a classic double album, with each side based on a unique mood and compositional approach of its own: from the a side’s darkly glistening, occasionally dub infused soundscapes and the harsh noise propositions of the b side to the more luminous and drone-oriented second half of the album, the apple never falls far from the tree highlights the full scope of broadrick’s work. most of all, it constitutes a showcase of his singular approach to the guitar, which remains firmly recognisable as the main harmonic and melodic instrument despite being sent through a colorful array of effect channels.
the diversity and experimental nature of the material notwithstanding, the apple never falls far from the tree has turned out a continuous and coherent journey, eventually culminating in a piece of pure and beguiling instrumental folk. available in three different versions, on marbled (75 copies), clear (125 copies), and green vinyl (300 copies), in a deluxe gatefold picture sleeve. the release date is october 10, 2010, and available from the tonefloat store."
[label info]
www.tonefloat.com
"Its been a while since I last heard Final, Justin K. Broadrick’s solo project, following his involvement with Napalm Death, Godflesh and Jesu (all of which were never really my cup of tea). It was in those years when ‘Isolationism’ was a much used buzz word to describe music that was firmly rooted in ambient but with a noisy edge. Final, along with say Lull, was a project in which the guitar played an all important role. Broadrick didn’t use the name Final for nearly ten years but now picked it up again, and recorded this 2LP, especially for this format. Its like going back to something that you haven’t done in ages, but it still feels conformable. Although I expected four LP sides with a piece each, this is quite the contrary. The pieces are rather short, a few on each side, and each side has its own character. The harsher, analogue synthesizer like sounds are on the b-side, while the a-side is much more mellow, rhythmic even, certainly towards the end. The first record seems to be all electronic, synth based, but the second is all about guitars and effects. Broadrick strums away, while his effects pick up the signals and create long form, sustaining patterns with that. The isolationist music in optima forma (a fine reminder to play that double CD on Virgin again also, come to think of it). As such it seems nothing happened but maybe that’s of less importance: the music is still great. An excellent return. Hopefully more to come!"
[FdW / Vital Weekly]
€30.00
Pleasure-Voltage
BENJAMIN FINGER, JAMES PLOTKIN and MIA ZABELKA craft a mesmerizing sonic world that buzzes and drones, glitches and slithers, eventually careening into unexplored musical territory.
“Pleasure-Voltage” was born in the mind (and studio) of BENJAMIN FINGER – a composer, electronic music producer, DJ, photographer and film-maker based in Oslo / Norway who in recent years has become quite a prolific artist, expanding his stylistic palette from piano miniatures and off-kilter pop experiments to lysergic, dream-like sound collages spiced with gentle warmth and sublime melody. These ingredients are also characteristic on this latest work where FINGER set the musical frame before passing it on to his inspired collaborators: MIA ZABELKA who for decades now has been involved in countless projects, be it as musician (violin / electronics), curator or founder of the international sound art centre klang.haus and who has worked with a.o. JOHN ZORN, FRED FRITH, ELECTRIC INDIGO, ROBIN RIMBAUD (SCANNER), DÄLEK or PHIL MINTON. And last but not least there’s JAMES PLOTKIN who entered the scene with his first band OLD LADY DRIVERS (or OLD) on EARACHE in 1987 and later was a member of KHANATE (with a.o. STEPHEN O’MALLEY) while also exploring the areas of dark ambient and electronics by working with or remixing SCORN / MICK HARRIS, K.K: NULL and many more.
On “Pleasure-Voltage” which had its live-premiere at the REWIRE festival 2018, the trio crafts a mesmerizing sonic world that buzzes and drones, glitches and slithers, eventually careening into unexplored musical territory somewhere between ambient / drone / psychedelia.
https://karlrecords.bandcamp.com/album/pleasure-voltage
€18.00
Prosa Profana
" "Prosa Profana" is a follow-up to "Guernica Macrocosmica" and the 2nd post mortem dedication by Olegh Kolyada collaborating with Albireon neo-folkers this time. A low-key unison of dissonant ex-Soviet schlager melodies and forefront Italian vocals in a tender naive manner offer a unique nostalghic experience. The release comes in a beautiful digipak with a 12-page booklet.
Tribute:
Dedicated to my father Vasyl O. Kolyada (1950-2008).
Production:
Conception + composition + engineering + arrangement + alternative sampling & vinyl scraping (vinyl & tapes restoration, including the 1970-80`s ex-Soviet recordings by Ariel, Tsvety, Sinyaya Ptitsa, V.Obodsinskiy) + vocals engineering + lyrics in English/translation of P.Celan`s 'Die Niemandsrose' poem + improvisations upon Cl.Debaussy and M.Dietrich songs and ex-Soviet ‘Autumnal Marathon’ and ‘The Star Boy’ motion pictures themes by Olegh Kolyada (with Helena K`s contribution in piano & clavier parts), 2005-2008/Zhytomyr, Ukraine. Strings + trumpet + cello by Zhytomyr Chamber Orchestra, early 2000/Zhytomyr, Ukraine. Acoustic guitar on "Eye-Deep in Hell" and "Late August Flowers" by Pavel Voskoboyev, November 2007/Zhytomyr, Ukraine. Vocals in Italian + lyrics renderings + mandolin on "Every Time I Turn around (another Year is over)" by Davide Borghi; vocals recording and engineering + samples editing on "Eye-Deep in Hell" (children’s talking-away), and "Every Time I Turn around (another Year is over)" (rain and wind snippets) by Stefano Romagnoli, summer 2007/Carpi, Italy. Layout & artwork by Katia Ilieva, winter-spring 2007-2009/Sofia, Bulgaria.
Conception:
Prosa Profana unveils a humane feeling of nostalghia as that of sorrow towards present lack of integrity, commonness, and harmony. Homesickness and melancholy, grief and yearning, but also hope and belief nostalghia is a deep relation one cannot relinquish or renounce since it is the purest sacrificial nature of a man. Sacrifice as a consequence of nostalghia is a verdict to overwhelmingly materialized time, its impiety and de-spiritualization. Nostalghia is a confession, humble declaration of love as generally the highest art manifestation ever possible. Prosa Profana is our verdict to ourselves." [label info]
www.nitkie.ru
€12.00
Four (One unearthly Room)
"Five years after the last full-time album of Fjernlys, the Leipzig based outfit returns with new recordings. Fjernlys’ attention to detail is typically exquisite here: the looped bowing of a cello provides a droning bassline beneath pitch-bent chimes and melodic pads. Clear homogenic sounds creeping deep organic rhythms with lovely effects have been incorporated in a poetic ambiance guided by brilliant vocals. A collaboration with Peter Bjärgö on vocals for 'The Fervid Flood' intoning a new and inspiring way of recordings and production. FOUR appears to have abandoned tracks that aim to move bodies in favour of ambient songs that aim to move hearts. Atmospheric and sensitive Ambientsongs with accented percussion elements, vibraphone sounds and viola supplements to set the electronic soundscapes into wonderfully concentrated and organic pieces. Swimming beneath Fjernlys' ambient arrangements is a primordial cosmos of sonics: the falling of rain outside a window, the tumble of unknown random oscillations, a whirl of ebow guitars. The hustle and bustle of these sounds ground the grandiose orchestration on the record and give it an abstract sense of the transcendental space. On the second CD are remixes of 4 tracks from the album, revisited by Kammarheit, Peter Bjärgo, S.E.T.I. and Herbst9. Every single interpretation these artists made completes the puzzle of this release to its entire form of One Unearthly Room." [label info]
wp.loki-found.de
€15.00
Nubes, Cometas, Rumores y Orugas: selected works 1994-2004
Einer der ganz aktiven frühen Industrial-“Cassettentäter” aus den 80ern war RAFAEL FLORES, der unter dem Namen COMANDO BRUNO arbeitete. Das Moskauer Label MONOCHROME VISION hat nun neueres Material zusammengetragen, welches nur in mini-CDR-Auflagen erhältlich war. FLORES Musik besticht durch die Verwendung mechanischer loops & „industrieller“ Geräusche, metallischer Drones & merkwürdiger verzerrter elektronischer Strukturen.....alles sehr hypnotisch, minimal & repetitiv, und manchmal recht abgründig....
das ist der 80er Jahre Noise-Minimalismus, wie man ihn von M.B., S-CORE oder TAM QUAM TABULA RASA geschätzt hat...
“First official CD album of Rafael Flores who hails from the depth of spanish noise underground scene, known for his early works released under Comando Bruno moniker. This compilation presents the latest decade of his sound experimentation, and shows quite diverse sides of his creative efforts, which ranges from collaged field recordings to noise ambient loops, from rhythmic structures to hypnotic electronic passages.“ [label info]
“....Rafael Flores first came to my attention in 1984 or 1985 when he worked as Comando Bruno, and was featured on many cassette compilations around the world. I even released a cassette of his, I think in 1986. Despite me xeroxing the cover, it had all sorts of stamps made by Comando Bruno, as he was also heavily into mailart. But my contact with Flores was rather small, and in the later half of the eighties we were no longer in contact and when people started to release LPs and CDs, he seemed to have disappeared. His cassette was re-issued on CDR (and sold really few copies, not that I was surprised), and suddenly Flores knocked on my door asking for a few copies. Since then we are not in contact, but it's good to know he's back. From the lost years, 1994-2004 he now releases a CD - his first in twenty-five years. It's great to hear this music without the hiss and static of a cassette. Flores plays industrial music, but one that strictly along the 'old' rules. He takes he sounds from rather primitive sources (such as the radio depicted on the cover), feeding them through electronics, chopping them into small rhythm particles (such as in 'Boucher 2' which sounds alike Esplendor Geometrico), but never the material dissolves into a mass of noise sound. Crisp clear, layers of electronic sounds, processed field recordings (in 'Para'), this is music that reminded me of the late eighties Asmus Tietchens. Forceful, yet intelligent industrial music. A major step forward and hopefully much more to come.” [Frans de Waard / Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Mirror
Das 2000er Album der Space-Ambient-Rocker, songorientierter und melancholischer als zuvor, Nick Drake-artige Folk-Strukturen mit psychedelischen Gitarren, und sogar elektro-rhythmischen Elementen..
„...it ranges from loud tracks with distorted washes of guitars to pretty, acoustic numbers, and even a couple tracks with a bit of a drum and bass injection. Even with all that, though, it still manages to flow fairly well and Dave Pierce is showing why some are considering him as sort of the continuation of My Bloody Valentines Kevin Shields, perhaps sort of picking up where the latter left off in creating shimmering guitar tracks while not managing to stagnate either.“ [almost cool]
€14.50
Brouillard
"Winter-Light is extremely proud and happy to announce its very first release on the Winter-Light label by the Dutch dark ambient producer, FoetusDreams. "Brouillard" is the first full length dark ambient album produced by FoetusDreams, who has previously contributed music to compilations.
From start to finish "Brouillard" is a real ambient journey; sometimes an introspective one, sometimes a glance from the inside looking out and far beyond the reach of the human eye. The tracks are beautifully sculpted pieces of ambient excellence and from the opening moments of the first you are transported into the world of "FoetusDreams". Rich drones resonate across starkly crafted, ice-cold landscapes where your only companions are the sounds that flow around you. Vibrant musical layers, occasionally punctuated with a clever use of samples, draw the listener ever further away from reality towards a deeper, more meaningful sense of self. You could easily be standing on the edge of the universe looking out, or traversing the caverns of your own mind in a search for that place of inner peace. The title track "Brouillard" is a master class in drone ambient with its ever present trance inducing hum that lowers a mist over the eyes and takes you to a very dark place indeed.
If you are looking to go on a journey then it begins right here. The tracks have been mastered by Frederic Arbour from Cyclic Law.
"There is only one God and that God is man himself."
1. Way Of Be
2. Abandoned Planet
3. Winter Light
4. Cavern
5. Travel Within
6. Slowly Approaching A Dead Star
7. Brouillard
8. Interference
9. Molecular Cloud
10. Endless Horizon
Professionally manufactured CD-r comes in a beautifully produced 6-panel digipack. 10 tracks, total running time 62:51. Edition is limited to 150 copies." [label info]
www.winter-light.nl
"The dutch label Winter Light comes out with its first full-length release, composed by the Dutch project Foetusdreams. Beginning with the first song, ‘Way Of Be’, we are given a hint to what this opus stands for: sacral, atheistic dark ambient, as suggested by the recitation ‘There is only one God and that God is man himself”, repeated on the droning fluid of a choral-tinged musical line.
‘Abandoned Planet’ is a cinematic picture of an irremediable future, a play on indefinite and elusive notes, as if covered by the very dust that will whip out everything we now observe in such a careful manner. This same absence of light that the music suggests here will immerse into darkness those who once were saints and murderers alike…
‘Winter Light’ contains even more grave accents and sullen notes, a saturnine sense of despondency, as if this light, diffused somewhere in the distance, could be the only real thing between the worthless earth and a sky that simply does not exist. And those piano chords, so naive and worldly, are written like an irrelevant epitaph on the tombstone that spares you from another daylight.
From here, a place of eternal farewell, the piece ‘Cavern’ ressembles an invitation to a voluptuous meeting within the caves of the earth and what, by an anatomical reading, should represent traces of the earth’s disease; holes and gangrenas in its crust come now to be the only place still safe and pure. In parallel, the following track, ‘Travel Within’, moves more fluidly: blood here and there, coagulated and bubbling, in response to a personal prophilaxy directed to the external world. This return to the womb imprints a suggestive movement to the music’s metabolism and therefore the drones are let loose to encircle the mind in a hypnotic and quite perverse attitude.
Someone said that the dream is the music of the soul. ‘Slowly Approaching A Dead Star’ corresponds to such a dreaming of the impossible. A song built on a catatonic development of dazzling cosmic drones. Out of this dream, from which one should never wake up if they want the dream to really materialize, we are taken to the next song, ‘Brouillard’. Here the sculpture is different, adopting a more industrial style. The pulsating drones reside on flashes of undertones and the musical line is completed by an Amerindian poem interrupted at intervals by a French nihilistic monologue. It should be the album’s pièce de résistance, because it’s simply sublime in its cynical shrewdness of the text, maintained along with that gloomy Dalinian melody, a pure postmodern folk song.
I have avoided giving references, but ‘Interference’ reminded me so much of one of the liturgies from MZ 412’s ‘Infernal Affairs’. The crushing feeling of religiousness and demonic energy, which actually translates in meta-nihilism, pervades this song all along. At the hearing of the escalating drones, the great spaces of hollow matter receive a new personality. On ‘Molecular Cloud’ the Dutch artist seems to paint his drones on the very air around him with gentle brushes, in tones of grey that no soon are dried up, remain imprinted solely on the listener’s mind.
The massive 63-minute long album closes with ‘Endless Horizons’. This journey between vivid drone sculptures has been a passage between the world as one sees it and the world as one feels it, a walk through this multifaceted corridor that we can take only in dreams, or music, or mist." [Santa Sangre]
€12.00
Marchantiophyta (2nd edition)
"The new release is a psychedelic travel to a secret land called Marchantiophyta. It can serve as a journey to our inner state of mind. The combinations of experimental and conventional sounds create massive clouds of sinister atmospheres. The layered textures increase the tensions of exotic darkness. The sinister timbres are seductive and jarring. It is a shocking sample of an alternate reality. The music deeply penetrates into our subconsciousness and can reveal internal pictures. As sound springs served admissions from the rain forest, a coffeemaker, a glas of water, little tubes, contactmics, guitar, various synthesizers and some effects." [label info]
www.subterraneansonic.de
€9.00
The Living Room Series Vol. 1: Inland
For Kings and Queens – the living room series
The new living room series contains three volumes of sound collages exploring the inside and outside environments.
Limited handmade edition of 50 with special packaging and artwork.
Music and sounds by Jens and Barbara Kindermann
Art work by Maria Cutugno
Text by Clara Kindermann
Recorded between 2015 – 2017
.
Vol 1: Inland:
Dull summons of the giants from the depths of the tempting vest, pounded and healed the breathing heaviness of the splintering dream.
Torn and trembling in flight, the vibration of the wild bird was splashing wet.
Vol 2. Ausland:
The humming of the air-conditioning and the humming of the cooling-house is represented in a one-dimensional picture, which is represented in a suction of the vacuum of the consciousnesslessness, in a mystery of the intermediate world, in a disturbing friction.
The disorientation of the indiscriminate underwater drum repeated backward chirping and rattling of the aircraft march.
Vol 3. Umland:
Urgingly penetrating, the hard metal saw and scraped the proximity of the radio distance.
The popping and balling of the ecstasy, rattling and rattling, approached threateningly.
forkingsandqueens.bandcamp.com
€12.00
The Living Room Series Vol. 2: Ausland
For Kings and Queens – the living room series
The new living room series contains three volumes of sound collages exploring the inside and outside environments.
Limited handmade edition of 50 with special packaging and artwork.
Music and sounds by Jens and Barbara Kindermann
Art work by Maria Cutugno
Text by Clara Kindermann
Recorded between 2015 – 2017
.
Vol 1: Inland:
Dull summons of the giants from the depths of the tempting vest, pounded and healed the breathing heaviness of the splintering dream.
Torn and trembling in flight, the vibration of the wild bird was splashing wet.
Vol 2. Ausland:
The humming of the air-conditioning and the humming of the cooling-house is represented in a one-dimensional picture, which is represented in a suction of the vacuum of the consciousnesslessness, in a mystery of the intermediate world, in a disturbing friction.
The disorientation of the indiscriminate underwater drum repeated backward chirping and rattling of the aircraft march.
Vol 3. Umland:
Urgingly penetrating, the hard metal saw and scraped the proximity of the radio distance.
The popping and balling of the ecstasy, rattling and rattling, approached threateningly.
forkingsandqueens.bandcamp.com
€12.00
The Living Room Series Vol. 3: Umland
For Kings and Queens – the living room series
The new living room series contains three volumes of sound collages exploring the inside and outside environments.
Limited handmade edition of 50 with special packaging and artwork.
Music and sounds by Jens and Barbara Kindermann
Art work by Maria Cutugno
Text by Clara Kindermann
Recorded between 2015 – 2017
.
Vol 1: Inland:
Dull summons of the giants from the depths of the tempting vest, pounded and healed the breathing heaviness of the splintering dream.
Torn and trembling in flight, the vibration of the wild bird was splashing wet.
Vol 2. Ausland:
The humming of the air-conditioning and the humming of the cooling-house is represented in a one-dimensional picture, which is represented in a suction of the vacuum of the consciousnesslessness, in a mystery of the intermediate world, in a disturbing friction.
The disorientation of the indiscriminate underwater drum repeated backward chirping and rattling of the aircraft march.
Vol 3. Umland:
Urgingly penetrating, the hard metal saw and scraped the proximity of the radio distance.
The popping and balling of the ecstasy, rattling and rattling, approached threateningly.
forkingsandqueens.bandcamp.com
€12.00
Scaath Catfish
Songs about the river are a common trope in the history of music. Psalms of being cleansed, being baptized, being redeemed. There are ballads of murder, lost love, jealousy, and all sorts of rank human emotion reflected in the surface of the water. Respect, praise, and worship of the river are other themes often channeled through music as well. Even in the realm of ambient music, digital mimesis of the aquatic is commonplace. Fossil Aerosol Mining Project, in their ongoing archaeological approach to a post-industrial sound design, offers their own variant on this topic with considerable differences. It is not only the sediment, the debris, the waste, the scum, the mud, and the rot that are the source materials in Scaath Catfish, but also what is preserved in those elements and new forms of life fostered in this conceptual framework.
Sibilant mutations from Fossil Aerosol’s multiple sources (field recordings, found sounds, etc.) spill forth as dilated tones, mesmerizing echos, clattering loops, and harmonic distortions. Floods of dense sonic accretion give way to languid mirages with human intervention complicating matters. Fossil Aerosol gives a preternatural language to the river, one that parallels their occasional collaborators in :zoviet*france: as well as the environmental ruminations of Biospshere and the practitioners of power ambient (Rafael Anton Irisarri, Fennesz, Tim Hecker, etc.)
Fossil Aerosol addresses the album this way:
Scaath Catfish was recorded in the spring of 2016, implementing field recordings made in the Illinois River valley and instrumental material found on a homemade cassette recording. The field recordings were made along the banks of a backwater lake and in the shadow of an aging power plant, following a spring flood. Twenty-six years earlier, one of the members of Fossil Aerosol purchased a homemade instrumental cassette tape recording (marked only “sacred”), at a thrift store in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. In 2016, fragments of the found cassette recordings were mixed with those made in the mud along the river. The result was Scaath Catfish.
https://www.helenscarsdale.com/published/famp-scaathcatfish.htm
€15.50
Gone every Evening
"... Ihr bittersüßes Timbre, die fast mit Händen zu greifende Melancholie, sind einzigartig. Die Musik dazu, nur dröhnendes Harmonium und eine Handvoll schwarzer Pianoperlen, ist wie ein Rabenflügel, ein samtiger Saum, wie der Schatten, den diese Melancholie nicht abschütteln kann. In ‚Gone‘ verschwinden ein Baum, ein Bild an der Wand, die geliebte Katze, sogar der alte Teppich unter den Füßen und auch der Boden selbst. Eine Elegie des Verlustes, der diebischen und mörderischen Zeit. Von Geisterpiano und gespenstischen Stimmen umschallt, rezitiert Fabrizio Palumbo die Strophen, Simonds und Laura Sheeran singen den Refrain: Well
well well Nobody can tell Why why o‘ why Nobody knows. Das ist schon sehr tongue-incheek (wie Hitchcock das genannt hätte), purer Edward Gorey." [Bad Alchemy]
"DIE STADT is honored to inform you that a limited edition 7" vinyl single "Gone Every Evening" was released today April 1, (and no, we're not having you on...) 2008. The record features two collaborative pieces by ANDREW LILES & FOVEA HEX, with Fabrizio Palumbo as special guest. Featuring Andrew Liles, Clodagh Simonds, Laura Sheeran, Fabrizio Palumbo and Michael Begg, these two strange songs will find the way swiftly to your very core, quite by themselves, to simultaneously delight and only faintly unsettle you. Needless to say that everyone who enjoyed the 'neither speak nor remain silent' trilogy by Fovea Hex will also love this. It comes packaged in an attractive gatefold cover with printed inner sleeve designed by Andrew Liles in an edition of 500 copies of which only 250 copies will be available for wholesale." [label info]
"Following three excellent mini CDs produced with the top layer of sonic experimentalism, Clodagh Simonds teams with here Micheal Begg, Fabrizio Palumbo and Laura Sheeran, all under the guidance of Andrew Liles (rapidly climbing up to the top layer) to record two lovely tracks on a 7". 'Gone' is on side a, and 'Every Evening' on the other. The a-side has piano at the hearth of the piece and Simonds heavenly vocals solo with beautiful ambient like electronics humming sparsely about. 'Every Evening' has a strange narrative by Palumbo and multi-layered singing by Sheeran and Simonds and has a fairy tale like atmosphere, but with an unsettling undercurrent in the piece. This is beautiful too but much more spooky. Way too short on this format, one could only want some more after this. Fascinating, beautiful, small treasure." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
label: www.diestadtmusik.de
€12.50
Hierophany | Иерофания
"In such conservative genre like ambient there is not easy to find something to discover, but the music of Yannick Franck can change this widespread prejudice. Infuenced by recent trip to Russia and the orthodox culture, he composed the continuous suite of three movements, showing his personal vision of the ancient rite. Release date is 29th December 2012. Limited edition of 500 copies in jewelcase." [label info]
www.monochromevision.ru
"Oily drones be found on Hierophany, an album released on the Russian imprint Monochrome Vision, inspired by the ancient rites of Russian orthodoxy, and produced by a Belgian on a working holiday whilst touring to the east of his homeland. Over the years, Franck has worked with Pietro Piparbelli (aka K11) with the two of them collaborating on a project based on recordings from Aleister Crowley's Abbey of Thelema (yes, K11 has released at least three other albums drawn from Thelemic residues). Theological differences aside (which are obviously massive), Franck's interest in both Crowley and the Russian Orthodox church seems to find common ground in the gnostic mysticism of meditation rituals and their capacity to introduce the process of transcendence. The massively thrumming drones that Franck presents on Hierophany seem to be based on field recordings made within a cathedral during a service, with the bell tones and chants reflecting into a gray wall of steely reverb and delay. Elements of human speech sporadically bounce within his system of acoustic and processed sound, creating something of a feedback loop of particular sonorous frequencies, reinforced and thickened by Franck's sonic sensibilities. The album quickly hits a uniform plateau of saturated environmental and electronic din, slipping rather subtly from one complementary movement to another. Well executed work that conceptually and aesthetically may have more than a few similarities to Current 93's early tape collage days." [Aquarius Rec.]
"More field recordings, but perhaps a bit differently when it reaches the point of release, is the new release by Belgium's Yannick Franck. He's been releasing on various labels before, such as Silken Tofu, Young Girls Records and Silentes, and has worked with K11, Craig Hilton, Alan Trench and Esther Venrooy. Here however he is solo and he uses instruments and 'non musical objects', voice, radio signals and field recordings. Perhaps so far not much difference, but it's the way Franck executes his music. Instead of using the collage form, Franck sets wheels in motion, and when they are all in motion, then he subtly moves them about. Perhaps the word 'drone' music could apply to his music? Derived from various sources, his music is played altogether at the same time, adding and subtracting on microscopic level, all along using minimal changes in the use of sound effects. Quite a dense sound he arrives at here and like with the other release, the three pieces flow nicely into eachother. In the final part, 'Dying Down', you realize you are in a church, with whispering voices, and a far away choir practice. And then it seems like the other two pieces shared that same sort of big hall/cathedral reverb. That makes it perhaps all a bit too religious for my taste, but throughout I thought this was a very refined disc of challenging drone music." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€12.00
Replicas
"Wenn ich das recht verstehe, dann entstand FREIBAND, eines der Soloprojekte des umtriebigen Frans de Waard, aus einem per Scrollrad erzeugten Geräusch, das ihn an Asmus Tietchens‘ Daseinsverfehlung (Stille Andacht, 1993) erinnerte. Der Hamburger hatte dieses Album aus den kratzenden Klängen fabriziert, die entstehen, wenn man eine Tonbandspule über den Tonkopf zieht, und die 13 Tracks allesamt ‚Freiband‘ getauft. De Waard wollte als einmaliges Projekt etwas Ähnliches probieren, woraus dann Microbes (Ritornell, 2001) entstand. Wie das bei FdW so ist, wurde daraus ein Fass ohne Boden, in das nun nach dem Gesetz der Unvermeidlichkeit auch Replicas (Monochrome Vision, mv19) eintaucht, das tatsächlich den Ausgangspunkt, nämlich Tietchens‘ Freiband-Tracks, als 13-faches ‚Re‘ remixt. Selbst das Cover ist eine Revision des Originals, jenem Haus mit Fenstern wie zwei aufgerissenene Augen und ein großes Maul. Inzwischen ist es eine Ruine mit eingeworfenen Fensterscheiben, herbstlich gesäumt von Ahorn. Wenn hier etwas einschlägig ist, dann A.C. Dantos Begriff ‚Aboutness‘ - Kunst ist immer ein Über-Etwas - , gesteigert, aber gleichzeitig auch implodiert, zu: Kunst ist Über-Kunst. But what is it all about? Schleifende, knisternde, pulsierende, blasende, kristallin funklende Geräusche, dazu - mit etwas Phantasie - aber auch paranormal, d.h. verhuscht und verzerrt ‚singende‘ oder ‚sprechende‘. Das leerstehende Haus wird da zum Geisterhaus, auch wenn de Waards nüchterne und spröde Akribie diesen hauntologischen Schluss selbst nicht nahelegt." [Bad Alchemy]
"Highly conceptual project that combines features of remix, recycling and plagiarism - the re-interpretation of classic album by Asmus Tietchens “Daseinsverfehlung”. All what can be heard on this CD, as always in case of Frans de Waard framework, is made from music that already existed: every sound, word in titles and even the cover picture - all is just processing and manipulation techniques. Freiband is one of solo projects by Frans de Waard. Besides Kapotte Muziek, Frans currently also plays in Beequeen duo with Freek Kinkelaar, runs Plinkity Plonk and other small labels, writes tons of reviews for the Vital Weekly newsletter. When just get some free time, he becomes active with various side-projects like Goem (minimal techno), Quest (ambient), Shifts (post-rock), Captain Black (remixes) etc." [label notes ]
"... Without getting too trippy or spacey, I would like to propose that this is the kind of music that alters your state of mind and being. Not the kind of album that you'll play in the background, 'cause it wants your full attention. It freezes your body and at same time makes you experience it from head to toe. In this way it has the same effect as most of Francisco Lopez' work has on me: it grabs you by the ears and sucks you right in." [SdT, Vital Weekly]
label-website:
www.monochromevision.ru
€13.00
True Type
"Freiband is one of the many projects by Frans de Waard, one of the Dutch masters of experimental electronic music.
For True Type he has not made new music but he selected mp3 releases that needed a proper release because of quality. The 4 selected releases we find here are Reflection previously released on the now defunct mp3 label techNOH, the release Parallel for the 12K side label Term., remixes for the now defunct .Tiln/Antiopic mp3 label and EARLabs released on the now defunct mp3 label EARLabs (still working as review site) which contains remixes of the music by Jos Smolders.
The music is now finally available in full quality as it was supposed to be.
For the Freiband project he gets his inspiration from Asmus Tietchens making use of glitches and pops from scratched cd's and such. Because of this Frans himself would call this popmusic. True Type is a lovely collection of music which shows the diversity of the Freiband project very well.
True Type is limited to 100 pieces."
[label info]
www.movingfurniturerecords.com
€7.50
Stainless Steel
"ini.itu is releasing a new vinyl only LP, the 8th of its catalogue, composed by Freiband
• Freiband is one of the long lasting projects of Frans de Waard, who is making music since more than 25 years under many aliases and in different line-ups, the most well-known being Kapotte Muziek ( with Roel Meelkop and Peter
Duimelinks ), Goem ( same team, different tools ), THU20 ( same, augmented by Jac van Bussel and Jos Smolders ), Beequeen ( w/ Freek Kinkelaar ), and more recently Wieman ( formerly known as Zèbra ) ( w/ Roel Meelkop ),
Ezdanitoff ( w/ Wouter Jaspers ) and Tobacconists ( w/ Scott Foust from Idea Fire Company ). Solo he has been active under his own name, Shifts and of course Freiband. His other activities include : editor and writer for Vital Weekly, programmer at Geluidswerkplaats in Nijmegen, organizer of the residencies Brombrom and director of the
labels Korm Plastics, Moll and Plinkety Plonk.
• the name Freiband itself is picked from Asmus Tietchens' album Daseinsverfehlung, on which he explored sounds created by rubbing tape freely on magnetic heads. Frans de Waard transferred the concept to the digital field and now mostly uses that name for his computer-based pieces.
What Freiband proposes here is 2 sides of radically reworked gamelan :
• Side A seems to progress through an acid bath and take the magnifying glass to enhance the digital decays, evoking various stages of textural corrosions. Through these aggressive and irreverent treatments, the naturally metallic harmonics are by twist and turns abruptly dismantled and fractured into crunchy, dense and fuzzy fireworks. Despite the stop & go transitions this hard-edged and raw piece still holds a nice unity across the digital errs and disturbances.
• on side B, through some arcane wirings, some machines end up spitting out shifting binary patterns with a somewhat alienating feeling. Proof that electronic music can be minimal and eschew the 4/4 dance floor pattern, in favour of
some dry and uncompromising “Unerforschtes Gebiet” between minimal beats and Steve Reich’ early tape compositions.
this LP further expands the horizon of ini.itu, successfully interrogating the link between south-east asian instruments and electronic contemporary music. Maybe something to file along Hecker, Pita, Mika Vaino, Fennesz or Alva Noto's Xerrox LPs.
p.s. Frans de Waard will also simultaneously release a companion 3” on his Moll imprint, with a totally different track from the
same sessions that couldn’t be included on the LP. That track is a spectral exploration of the higher frequencies, followed by a pile-up of gamelan sounds." [label info]
www.iniitu.net
"The LP thus both presents the quality of the gamelan style in its pure origin and 21st electronic avantgarde by one of Holland's finest sound artists. A superb ode to the importance of the gamelan music for the modern sound experimentations of the Western world." [NM/Vital Weekly]
€12.50
Technology of Tears
"FRED FRITH erfand The Technology of Tears (ReRFRO011) 1986/87 für eine Choreographie von Rosalind Newman. Er konnte dabei auf Henry
Kaisers neuem Synklavier im Maximum an Samplingtechnologie jener Zeit schwelgen. Der Duktus ist hämmernd und zuckend, das Klangbild gesättigt mit synthetisierten Gitarren- und Geigensounds. Dazu schrillt im ersten Drittel ‚Sadness, its bones bleached behind us‘ John Zorns Altosax und Tenko skandiert kläffend ihre Kampfkunstschreie. Mensch und Automat, heiß und kalt, reiben sich im ostinat hackenden Chop-chop-chop des Maschinenbeats. Die beiden folgenden Teile behalten die Motorik bei, ein
tänzerisches Hmtata, aber zunehmend auch ein kniebrecherisches Zickzack, gespickt mit Tenkos Ha!s und Ho!s, mit repetitiver Gitarrenarbeit
und Geigenstrichen in Frith-typischer ‚Imaginary Folk‘-Manier, d. h. eingetaucht
in urbane Dynamik und auf sarkastische Weise futuristisch statt idyllisch und nostalgisch. Der Beat ist dabei so ‚imaginär‘ und dominant
wie bei Skeleton Crew. Christian Marclay stiftet Phantomklänge per Turntable, die den ‚Palace of Laughter‘ mit plunderphonischem Trubel rocken. Für ‚Jigsaw‘, ebenfalls eine Tanzmusik für Newman, die mit ähnlicher
rhythmischer Hartnäckigkeit motorische und dynamische Anstöße gibt, machte Frith das Meiste selbst, sogar die Schreie und skelettierten Gesänge. Vielspurig häuft er Gitarren-, Geigen-, Bass- und Drumloops und
diesmal stößt Jim Staley mit der Posaune dazu. Das Ganze hat einen Schwung, der immer und immer wieder angriffslustig gegen die Fassade
von Trägheit und Unlust rammt. Doch bis heute gilt: Man muss sich Sisyphos als glücklichen Menschen vorstellen." [Bad Alchemy]
"With an all-star line-up that features Tenko, John Zorn and Christian Marclay (with guest Jim Staley on trombone), Technology of Tears started life in New York in 1986 as a dance commission by Rosalind Newman. Fred took this opportunity to experiment with Henry Kaiser's brand new synclavier (the absolute state-of-the-art sampling and processing technology of the time - Henry had to take out a second mortgage on his house to buy it). It was the sophisticated sampling that fascinated Fred, and the piece is characterised by technological "comparisons" between real and virtual voices which constantly merge into one another. Tenko and Zorn tear through it all with breathless intensity. Parts two and three, which follow, couldn't be more different, for them Fred adopts a completely different methodology, playing everything himself mostly on low-grade instruments, then inviting turntablist Marclay to add plundered parts. Here is a completely different approach to "sampling": exploring dense layers of quotation intercut with melodies formed using random editing processes (with subsequent transcription and re-performance). Lastly there is Jigsaw, a later work, also made for Rosalind Newman, reflecting the frustrations experienced making Technology... where, every time Fred would complete a stable version, Rosalind would ask for changes (incidentally, sending the recording way over budget). This time Fred decided to make a modular piece that could be re-assembled in any way requested - and having no pre-determined structure at all. The original composition consisted of dozens of musical cells, each recorded separately in increments of between 3 and 12 measures; all at the same tempo, and in the same key. The idea was to play the elements separately and then ask Rosalind how she would like them constructed. Ironically, the test assembly, made as demonstration of what was possible, won instant approval, and no reconstruction was ever necessary." [label notes]
€14.00
Rocking The Boat (Volume 1 Of The Fred Records Story, 2001-2020)
"First of a three-box collection by one of the most innovative guitarists and composers of his generation, containing 8 ReR CDs, plus a bonus Fred title & a fat historic booklet with artwork, photographs, extensive notes and other comments by Fred, all packed into in a sturdy box -- and at a budget price. Box one contains: The legendary Guitar Solos, Gravity (with Etron Fou Leloublan and Samla Mammas Manna), Cheap at Half the Price, Killing Time (with Bill Laswell and Fred Maher), Impur (for very large ensemble), Middle of the Moment (film score), Keep the Dog (double CD feat: Rene Lussier, Bob Ostertag, Zeena Parkins, Jean Derome & Charles Hayward). Plus, bonus CD Dropera. Biographical: Recipient of Italy's Demetrio Stratos Prize for his life's work in experimental music and Professor Emeritus at the legendary epicenter of American experimental music, Mills College in Oakland, California, Fred still teaches in the improvisation master's program at the Musik Akademie in Basel & as visiting faculty in the Universidad Austral in Valdivia, Chile, where he has been collaborating on the creation of a new School of Music & Sound Art. Also featuring Lars Hollmer, Marc Hollander, Hans Bruniusson, Eino Haapala, Olivia Bruynhooghe, Chris Cutler, Tina Curran, Catherine Jauniaux, Frank Wuyts, Michel Berkmans, Etienne Conod, Denis van Hecke, Veronique Vincent, Asha Curran Frith, the 13th Street Puerto Rican Summertime Band, Fred Maher, Bill Laswell, Paul Sears, Jean Derome, Charles Hayward, Rene Lussier, Bob Ostertag, Zeena Parkins, Ferdinand Richard, Tim Hodgkinson, Fabrizio Appelius, Mikaela Dietl, Robert Lax, Sandra M'Bow, Ida man walatAkhmudan, Tshanak ag Abalbal, women from the Kel lforas tribe, Josefina Lehmann, Johann le Guillerm, Bertrand Duval, Attila Zombori, Jean-Paul Lefeuvre, Hyacinthe Reisch, Emmanuelle Jacqueline, Didier A, Nasser Sai"dani, Catherine Guinamard, Ensemble Heteroclite, David Wood, Pascal Pariaud, Sophie Dufeutrelle, Laure Michel, Catherine Leuchter et al."
Neue CD-Box-Serie des weltweit bekannten und renommierten britischen Avantgarde-Gitarristen FRED FRITH. „The Fred Records Story“ erscheint mit jeweils neun CDs in den drei Teilen „Vol. 1 - Rocking The Boat“, „Vol. 2 - Crossing Border“ und „Vol. 3 - Stepping Out“ auf RECOMMENDED.
Der Multiinstrumentalist FRED FRITH zählt seit fünf Dekaden zu den wichtigsten und einflussreichsten Impulsgebern der zeitgenössischen Jazz- / Rock- und Avantgarde-Szene. So startete der studierte Musiker (Cambridge) seine Karriere Ende der sechziger Jahre als Gründungsmitglied der legendären Artrock-Band HENRY COW. Nach Auflösung der Genre definierenden Band (1979) gründete er gemeinsam mit CHRIS CUTLER und DAGMAR KRAUSE die ART BEARS und rief kurze Zeit später (gemeinsam mit BILL LASWELL) die Formation MASSACRE ins Leben. Zudem veröffentlichte er zahlreiche Soloalben, arbeitete mit renommierten Kollegen unterschiedlichster musikalischer Provenienz wie BRIAN ENO, MIKE OLDFIELD, JOHN ZORN, HENRY KAISER, PHIL MINTON, THE RESIDENTS und RICHARD THOMPSON und ist darüber hinaus als Film- und Theater-Komponist („Step Across The Border“ / 1990), Produzent (DAVID MOSS, TENKO, ETRON FOU LELOUBLAN) und Hochschullehrer (Mills College Kalifornien) tätig. Die neue Box-Serie „The Fred Records Story“ fasst themenspezifisch die Karrie des Ausnahmekünstlers zusammen, wobei mit „Inimitable“ in „Vol. 3 - Stepping Out“ sogar ein bisher unveröffentlichtes Album enthalten ist.
Inklusive: Guitar Solos, Gravity, Cheap at Half the Price, Killing Time, Impur, Middle of the Moment, Keep the Dog (2CD), Bonus: Dropera
https://fredfrith.bandcamp.com/album/rocking-the-boat-vol-1-of-the-fred-records-story-2001-2020
€70.00
Crossing Borders (Volume 2 Of The Fred Records Story, 2001-2020)
"Second of a three-box collection by one of the most innovative guitarists and composers of his generation, containing 8 ReR CDs, a bonus Fred title and a fat historic booklet with artwork, photographs, extensive notes & other comments by Fred, all packed into in a sturdy box -- and at a budget price. Box 2 contains: Live in Japan, Speechless, Prints, Step Across the Border (film score), Impur 2 (large ensemble), Art of Memory II (with John Zorn), Skeleton Crew (double CD with Zeena Parkins and Tom Cora). Plus, bonus CD Helter Skelter (remastered). Cover photo: Heike Liss Biographical: Recipient of Italy's Demetrio Stratos Prize for his life's work in experimental music & Professor Emeritus at the legendary epicenter of American experimental music, Mills College in Oakland, California, Fred still teaches in the improvisation master's program at the Musik Akademie in Basel and as visiting faculty in the Universidad Austral in Valdivia, Chile, where he has been collaborating on the creation of a new School of Music and Sound Art. Also appearing: Guigou Chenevier, Margot Mathieu, Ferdinand Richard, Jo Thirion, Tina Curran, Roger Kent Parsons, Asha & Storm, George Cartwright, Hans Bruniusson, Mars Williams, Steve Buchanan, Bill Laswell, Fred Maher, Bernd "Uimsch' Lehmann, Dave Kerman, Mike Johnson, Sebastian Gramms, Alexandra Schulz, Sheena Dupuis, Tom Cora, Zeena Parkins, Bob Ostertag, John Zorn, Daihachi Oguchi, Jean Derome, Rene Lussier, Kevin Norton, Eino Haapala, Marc Hollander, Lars Holl mer, Tim Hodgkinson, Iva Bittov. Pavel Fajt, Eitetsu Hayashi, Haco, Rabi, Lu, Katrin, Dave Newhouse, Laurent Frick, Pascal Pariaud, Joel Jorda, Laurent Vichard, Samuel Chagnard, Stephane Lambert, Philippe Madile, Serge Sana, Claire Mollard, Stephane Grosjean, Cyril Cambon, Stephen Tissot, Guillaume Quemener, Ghilem Lacroux, Bader Gharzouli, Gilles Laval, Jean-Michel Quoisse, Denis Mariotte, Claude Monteil, Edmond Hosdikian, Fred Giuliani, Kiwi, Nadine Laporte, Richard Peter et al."
https://fredfrith.bandcamp.com/album/crossing-borders-vol-2-of-the-fred-records-story-2001-2020
€70.00
15 Songs (down at Jinxey's)
"A lone thumb piano, a singing woman, children at play, howling and crackling electricity, chirping birds, tones from a toy organ, sounds of traffic - Dan Fröberg´s remarkable compositions are intersections of shapes, environments, times, places and wildly disparate contexts.
As a listener you may recognize individual sonic fragments and create pictures and scenarios through private associations - like an inner movie running parallel to the works - but still the sound environments appear so curious and raise so many questions in our minds.
What are these shapes, milieus and tales that Dan Fröberg illustrates for us, and what do they want to convey? Traveling Dan Fröberg´s soundscapes renders you the feeling of a cloud passing freely between various geographical, temporal and cultural settings and contexts.
Occasionally a dream appears. A folk music ensemble commences to play nearby, some giggling children run by, an orchestra of traffic looms large, and rustling leaves fall. The cloud hovers on, through walls, mountains and a brook, suddenly appearing in another time, in another place, where other figures tell their stories.
In the world of Dan Fröberg everything is inspired: people, animals, places, sound, shadows, memories. Even though the sounds appear crystal clear in their purity, they convey many remarkable stories, while simultaneously leaving the field open for the listener´s fantasy. Dan Fröberg´s compositions and sound recordings are as clean as can be. No post-production processing of the sounds has been applied. Dan Fröberg works with a kind of sound magic. Nothing is left to arbitrary randomness. Each sound is chosen with care.
When Dan Fröberg composes his pieces, each small detail of the soundscape is rendered vitality and significance. The significations are gradually transformed and new tales emerge as the different sound worlds are confronted with each other. As a listener you are transferred somewhere else just as your questions have began to formulate themselves - into a new world, quite familiar, albeit with something completely new and alien totell.
The properties of time and space are always shifting in these pieces where figures, occurrences and reflections approach, materialize, convey something only to drift by or dissolve - as something novel appears, something else through the journey. Dan Fröberg prefers to brand his acoustic works folk music, rather than musique concrète, field recordings, sound art or something else that would be convenient. The compositions on this CD, or the journeys, if you like, take shape through 15 songs, wherein the shapes, environments and events constitute the voices that sing and establish this folk music that sounds like nothing else, in the borderland between here and now."
[Daniel Rozenhall, Executive producer, Fylkingen Records.]
"Also from Stockholm and sometimes connected to Firework is Fylkingen, a place for concerts, art, work and much more. A fine place to be. Their releases are less arty and conceptual and more musical. The name Dan Fröberg rings a bell, but my memory is such a condition that I don't remember. It seems to me he works with found sound: people talking, street sounds, the luna park, birds and electrical currents. He puts these together in a great way, a dream-like state of music. Strongly reminding me of Dominique Petitgand, but less telling a tale than he did in his music. With Petitgand somebody would tell a story, sing a song and he would add found sound, whereas Fröberg places the sound in the central position and lets the listener think of a story. This is 'close your eyes and dream away' music, but not in a new age sense of the word, but cinematic: true cinema for the ears. Great one." [Fdw/Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Weather Report
"BACKWARDS is proud to announce a mind-blowing album of cosmic improvisation by the trio of musician / producer Luca Massolin (Golden Cup, Golden Jooklo Age), French avant-garde guitarist Michel Henritzi and Rinji Fukuoka, formely member of Overhang Party and currently of Majutsu No Niwa.
Recorded in November 2011, eight months after the Fukushima disaster, ‘Weather Report’ is an onirical yet political soundpiece, developed in two long movements, ‘A Chuva Obrigado’ and ‘Radioactive Arigato’.
The first side is a cornucopia of ghostly shapes and haunted tones, with Massolin’s dreamy organ and heavenly electronics blessed by Fukuoka’s elegiac violin lines. The piece evolves soon into an improvised blues for flamenco-like guitar (!!!), percussions and abstract electronics, building up tension until Henritzi’s lapsteel joins with waves of ectoplasmic electricity, and finally exploding into a blast of cathartic free noise.
The other side is when the piece starts vibrating, with Massolin’s electric bass pushing the whole thing into full-on shoegaze mode, Henritzi combining long, doomy drones and Fukuoka playing the most emotionally violin ragas you got to hear in an improvised studio album. There will be room for more ghosts until the end of this side, taking us to a landscape of wintry trees, empty streets, an abandoned city devoid of human presence.
This is the soundtrack of an echological disaster, a picture taken right after it happened, a warn about the risks of pushing the limits of human technology against nature. Images translated into sounds by improvised free music in its purest form: evocative, political, magical. How can you not be affected?
Limited edition of 260 copies of which 50 are on BLUE vinyl, and the remaining on standard black wax." [label info]
www.backwards.it
€15.00
World as Will II
"Re-Aktivierung des Labels von SCOT JENERIK aus San Francisco, der v.a. als Konzertveranstalter aktiv ist, mit dem zweiten Teil der Zusammenarbeit von Karkowski & Furudate (Teil I erschien auf Staalplaat). In Sachen apokalyptischer, orchestraler, irgendwie „neo-klassischer“ Komposition wohl mit das intensivste und extremste, was es zur Zeit gibt! " [Drone Rec 2002]
“Legendary composers Zbigniew Karkowski and Tetsuo Furudate complete their second installment of World As Will. This powerful collaboration results in a furiously intense music with Wagner-esque orchestrations and instrumentation with vigorous electronic manipulations, voice and mastery. A truly epic piece of work.” [press release]
"The orchestral madness it evokes makes Laibach (to compare with a group who have used loads of orchestral sounds) into childplay." -Frans de Ward, Vital Weekly, Amsterdam
€14.00
Gour
"New works by Swiss musique concrete composer and visual artist Marc Zeier / G*Park. Active since the early 80's Zeier was a founding member of the Schimpfluch-Gruppe. He lives and works in Zürich as a composer, installation- and video-artist and plankton fisherman. Gour presents one long composition of his highly fascinating and unique crypto electro-acoustics based solely of micro field-recordings and natural phenomena. 'Musique concrete seems eternally old-fashioned and eternally modern. Marc Zeier makes you fall in love with the form all over again'. Thanks Are Due To: The Etang of Gour and its Creatures, A Singing and Cracking Chimney, Wild Bees and Wasps from Piemonte, Limnodromus griseus, Unidentified Voices from the Gemauge House, The Uwaga Squad, The Flies (Sarcophagidae), The Crows and Pigs of Chants, The People of Tiananmen, The Frozen Lakes, The Wolves. Edition of 350 copies." [label info]
www.tochnit-aleph.com
"The Swiss aktionist collective Schimpfluch has been active since the mid-'80s, with its various members seeking out the transgressive, the ultra-violent, and the transcendent all at once, via a dystopian hybrid of noise, punk theatrics, and / or musique concrete. In doing so, these provocateurs follow what their Viennese progenitors had started in the '60s through performance, sculpture, and painting. It can't go unnoticed how much of the iconography that Sudden Infant of Schimpfluch incorporates from Gunter Brus, and how much the hellish comedies of Otto Muehl filter through the modern day work of Rudolf Eb.Er. G*Park (aka Marc Zeier) is the most enigmatic of all the Schimpfluch artists, with no obvious parallels to anyone before him, as he trades in the modern day techniques of musique concrete, although his work acquires a tension, a dynamism, and an existential blight that were never achieved by the likes of Xenakis, Schaefer, Ferrari, or Chion.
G*Park's epic double cd Sub from two years ago still proves to be an exhausting and exhilarating document into the denatured field recordings, cryptic collage, and subcutaneous electro-acoustics from Zeier, with Gour standing a continuation of those themes. Like on Sub, Zeier states the origins of his sound material - crows, pigs, flesh flies, wasps, wolves, frozen lakes, and some less obvious sounds from the Uwaga Squad and the Etang of Gour. Zeier locates mechanized bursts against a backdrop of very distant blackened noise, with all sorts of whipcrack slashes, wooden creaks, watery plops, corvid calls, and porcine squeals constructing a strange and hostile narrative of ritualized violence against an unknown subject. The genius of G*Park lies not in the sounds themselves (even as they are immaculately presented) but in the psychological voids left where Zeier eradicated everything through deathray, sterilizing cauterization, or fastidious vacuuming. A brilliantly done record from one of the very best technicians of the cruel theater of musique concrete." [Aquarius Records]
€18.50
Lingua II: Maledetto / Antiphony VIII
"The work and thought of the American composer Kenneth Gaburo (1926-1993) exhibited many striking changes during his lifetime. In fact, while the world of commercial endeavor still insists that artists develop a recognizable personal "style," Gaburo's life-work can be seen as one of continual change and exploration, rather than one of codification and promotion. Some of these changes are beautifully illustrated by the two works on this CD, Maledetto, for seven speaking voices, from 1967-68, and Antiphony VIII (Revolution), for percussionist and electronic tape, from 1982-3. Both are intricate and powerful works, both take their inspiration from "non-musical" materials, and both require virtuosity of a most uncommon order. However, beyond that, the two works could not be more different.
Maledetto is a wild choral piece, a great complex cry, a work that, while reveling in a surface texture of innuendo, word play, and pseudo- and real- history, spoken/shouted/sung by 7 amazing speakers, contains within itself a deep and profound celebration of the body, the physical, the sexual. It is one of the earliest of Gaburo's works where his concern for holistic thinking and art-making comes to the fore. This sort of thinking was in the air, of course ¬ many works were written at this time that were multi-layered in their meaning and intent, but Maledetto seems unique. It's combination of profundity and what might be called adolescent sniggering, and almost every emotional state in between, seems unprecedented. The subject of the piece is the word screw, in all its connotations, from the sexual to the mechanical, from the mildly obscene to the boisterous, with diversions along the way into topics such as perfume manufacture, printing, classical design, and structural linguistics, all of which connect with the small ridged, groovy object of attention.
Speaking voices also figure in Antiphony VIII, but here they are the voices of people giving their heartfelt reactions to the notion that nuclear war has made their lives expendable. This work was created at least 15 years after Maledetto, and the boisterous energy of the Sexual Revolution, one of the earliest counter-cultural movements of the mid-1960s, has given place to the grim organizational determination of the various Anti-Nuclear movements of the 1980s. Gaburo's attitude has also changed. If Maledetto is a celebration, Antiphony VIII is a wake, and a wake-up call. Not content merely to protest, or to document people's reactions, the percussion, electronics, concrete sounds, and voices in this piece each embody within them Gaburo's analysis of the most common attitudes people have to the problem of governments treating them as expendable - helplessness, indifference, anger, uncertainty, and presents them all to us as a summary, and a questioning of our own attitudes to the problem. Gaburo the deep analyst of phenomena is still here, but now his analytical mind is dissecting not just a problem, but the wide variety of people's responses to that problem ¬ both as a structural resource, and as a means perhaps of intuiting the way forward."
[Warren Burt (from the liner notes)]
"Gaburo (1926-1993) is one of those many pioneering US-composers like Cowell, Cage, Nancarrow, Partch, etc. But he is one of lesser known ones. With this cd Pogus makes two works by him available. The first one 'Lingua II: Maledetto' (composition for 7 Virtuoso Speakers), composed in 1967-68, was first released on CRI in 1974. The liner notes Gaburo wrote for this release are reprinted here. The recording of this composition however is another one then released by CRI, but dating from the same period. June 10th, 1973 to be exact. The track opens with high pitched non-verbal throat sounds. After a few minutes the narrator starts reading a text about the all the connotations and meanings of the word 'screw'. Then two other voices join, reciting also texts concerning this word, etc., etc. Later on to be followed by a quartet. Sometimes the voices speak simultaneously, sometimes one after another. Sometimes several voices speak the same text. At other times not. Sometimes there is a out of phase reading of the same text by several speakers. It sounds very theatrical. No wonder as Gaburo composed this work as a part of a massive 6-hour theater work Called LINGUA. In 'Maladetto' Gaburo experiments with language and meaning, trying to create a dramatic and theatrical situation. I'm not completely sure but I think this is a live recording, using no overdubs and editing. The second composition 'Antiphony VIII' is written for tape and percussion in 1982-83. The percussion is played by Steven Schick. The recording dates from 1984. Alas the voices on the tape sound very muffled, and one cannot always hear what they say. The percussion playing becomes more and more intense during the piece, becoming increasingly involved in what the voice speaks about (nuclear war). So also in this piece theatrical aspects are present. Because of this quality it may be that both works on this cd still sound very much alive." [DM /Vital Weekly]
www.pogus.com
€13.00
Electronics
11 early electroacoustic pieces for the Studiotrautonium keyboard alongside tape manipulation to accompany the New York City Ballet production Electronics by George Balanchine
Originally staged March 22, 1961, as part of a double bill choreographed by George Balanchine, the experimental New York City Ballet production Electronics included the renowned dancers Violette Verdy and Jacques d’Amboise (pictured on the front of this album) and a revolutionary score by multi-disciplined composer Remy Gassmann using a truly unique instrument. Working alongside German born keyboard composer and close acquaintance Oskar Sala (with whom he had studied in Berlin under Paul Hindemith), Gassmann was given access and assistance to the latest developments of the Trautonium, an early electronic keyboard that was first exhibited in 1930 by inventor Adolf Trautwein and three pianists (including Sala).
Being one of the original exponents of the machine, Sala (with Trautwein’s blessing) took the basic model of a neon tube oscillator and wire frequency controller (which provided an untempered continuous tonal range) and spent over twenty years developing what would become the Konzerttrautonium (as used by Roichard Strauss to emulate synthetic gongs), followed by the micro- tonal Mixturtrautonium and eventually the static Studiotrautonium which formed the centrepiece of his own studio in Berlin-Charlottenburg where Electronics was composed and realised. For the 1961 ballet, dressed in metal- lic bodysuits with geometric diodic motifs, Verdy and d’Amboise (alongside a small troupe of other dancers) performed the concise eleven-part ballet to polarised but predominantly positive audiences, generating a new outlook on experimental dance and supporting the similar sensibilities of other choreog- raphers such as Alwin Nikolais, Yvonne Georgi (with Henk Badings) and Maurice Béjart (with Pierre Henry). As one of the first American performances drawing primarily on European developments, the modest critical success of the project would open new avenues for the electronic musical duo who were commissioned later in the year by Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions to provide enhanced and versatile sound effects emulating cacophonic bird sounds alongside Bernard Hermann for the 1963 blockbuster The Birds.
https://finderskeepersrecords.bandcamp.com/album/electronics
€19.50
Oublier
"Geins't Naït and Laurent Petitgand's Oublier follows their 2014 Je vous dis album, which inaugurated the Mind Travels series on Ici d'Ailleurs -- a collection dedicated to ambient, industrial, and classical-influenced music. Geins't Naït and Laurent Petitgand exemplify the particular vision of the series, with a backroads music that's often unusual, always poignant, and underappreciated. Oublier is the finest illustration of that vision to date. Geins't Naït creates industrial collages in a similar vein to the early work of Einstürzende Neubauten or Throbbing Gristle, while Laurent Petitgand is best known for his many contributions to the films of Wim Wenders, including 2014's The Salt of the Earth, which won three awards at the 2014 Cannes film festival. These two seemingly disparate artists are united here by their desire to escape from all generally accepted standards of creativity. Regarding Oublier, one could pick out Laurent Petitgand's magnificent melodies or Geins't Naït's haunting, hypnotic dynamics of loops and manipulated samples, but it is ultimately up the listeners to find their own meaning and experience -- because one of Oublier's central qualities is that it situates listeners at the center of its universe so effectively and to such an extent that they actually become participants. Some will perceive a heightened melancholy, even a form of despair. Others will be seduced by the work's evident beauty and warmth. Whatever the case, its non-linearity favors total immersion and sometimes -- in the more intense moments -- totally letting go." [label info]
www.icidailleurs.com
€13.00
Like This Maybe or This
Five years after the release of "Je vous dis" in 2018, Geins't Naït and L.Petitgand's second album from the "Mind Travel" and "Make Dogs Sing" collection on the German label "Offen", the duo are now writing a new chapter in their story with this fascinating poetic tale.
The same mysterious and heady atmosphere which characterises the two musicians is present in this new work but clearly they have never ceased refining and polishing their sounds to give their compositions even more power and depth.
Geins't Naït and L.Petitgand here offer twelve new tracks with names as enigmatic as the title "Like this maybe or This" itself and the record's whole universe. In reality, these mysterious names lead us to let ourselves be taken to the deep meaning of their creation. The subject matter is certainly difficult to grasp and invites us on an inner journey while leading us to doubt and question ourselves incessantly. There is a perfect alchemy between these two artists though this was far from self-evident as they come from two very different schools. Thierry Merigout, who is now the only representative left from the late 80's experimental project Geins't Naït in Nancy, comes from the post-industrial scene. As for Laurent Petitgand, he is a pure melodist who is best known for his work as a composer of music for films and live shows and has collaborated with Wim Wenders and Paul Auster in particular.
"Like this maybe or This" is a fully accomplished symbiosis between Geinst Nait's industrial and experimental tonalities and the celestial melodies of Laurent Petitgand. "Shape of the storie" starts the album with a bewildering atmosphere which mixes a sample of a guttural voice with cavernous resonances thus prefiguring the album's general atmosphere. However, while some tracks like "HAC" fuel our existential anguish, other tracks have a poetic and melancholic tonality which touches our deepest humanity. This is the case of "Dustil" whose subtle piano notes combined with the melancholy violin show us a sublimated world. This fascinating blend of violence and gentleness makes this record an atypical work which enables listeners to lose themselves in an emotional nebula where they can perceive the turbulence and also the intensity of our inner life.
https://mindtravels.bandcamp.com/album/like-this-maybe-or-this
€10.00
55 pas de la ligne au no 3
MICHAEL GENDREAU, bekannt mit seiner Arbeit als CRAWLING WITH TARTS, mit seiner ersten Solo-CD: zwei lange Stücke mechanisch brummende drone-soundscapes mit repetitiven Mustern, deren Parameter sich allmählich verändern.
“ Long-time San Francisco based sound artist, internationally known from his extensive discography as Crawling With Tarts, releases his first full length solo work. 55 pas de la ligne au no 3 is a microscopic study of dense sonic landscapes buried within antiquated turntable motors and furnaces. Gendreau, an acoustician by profession, utilizes high sensitivity accelerometers to map detailed frequencies from a variety of old turntable motors and mechanics. This is a rare exhibition of the creative potential within this kind of technology. (Randy Yau's favorite album of the year... And soon to be Jim Haynes' too!)
” In its puzzling bellows, the 35-minute title track leads the listener astray as it rambles in its physics and amplified world of micro-sound. Here there are hints of data transfer and voice
channeling that has at once a startling approach and tectonic finish. The repetitive churning of teeny motorized units, in their climbing, distorted frequencies will have you hanging on each transition. Some of the finer sources play with the idea of scale, while at times these palm-sized worlds grow into 300 foot tall super coasters, and in moments they are again transformed smaller than a pinhead. 23five is ready to challenge our ears with visionary work that pushes the barriers of the noise/sound envelope.” [Vital Weekly 332]
label: www.23five.org
€13.00
Civilization
"This release was already planned in 2011 for the 20th anniversary of „Save our Slaves“. The implementation and the restoration of the original source material took a lot of time, especially the sound-files of the 1990 pre-release concert which are completed for this set for the 1st time. Genocide Organ had to dig deep into long-forgotten parts of the archive, to reconstruct as many as possible of the original photo-materials, reconstruct, extend and re-view them.
The work on the new album „The Obituary of the Americas“ delayed the completion as well, but then also accelerated it, as both publications were cut across thematically. Now it is done!
A further stone fits into the wall of the bands historical back catalogue.
LP version:
Limited numbered edition 500. The deluxe linenpaper covered Hard-Slipcase is foilblocked and debossed. The record sleeves and the additional artwork sleeves are all debossed and spot-varnished in the typical Genocide Organ artwork finish you know from : Obituary of the Americas: album. The artwork sleeve is filled up with extensive large 24p booklet, numbered certificate, inlay for the Live LP and embroidered patch.
CD version:
Limited first edition comes as deluxe linenpaper covered, foilblocked and debossed Hard-Slipcase, incl. Coverpak with double CD and extensive large 24p booklet. Only this first edition comes as special Hard-Slipcase Set with the additional Live CD.
Musical contend on both formats:
The complete material of „Save our Slaves“ originally released in 1991.
„The Lever Sunlicht Shooting“, reflecting the complete performance of Genocide Organ Live 15.12.1990 in Mannheim in front of an invited audience.
Compilation Tracks from:
Perpetual State of Oracular Dream LP 1991
Natural Order 2LP 1997
Sound of Hate Vol.7 MC 1992
Exploration One CD 1995
Trans-Action MC 1992
+ both tracks from:
Klan Kountry 7″ 1998
all material from original source material re-mastered by Jerome Nougaillon and Genocide Organ.
:CONTEXT:
Released on Tesco Organisation in 1991, Save Our Slaves arrived as the second album for Genocide Organ, following the debut Leichenlinie released 2 years prior. Although the impact of Leichenlinie is undeniable in establishing the group within the noise industrial / power electronics scene, upon reflection Save Our Slaves is the release that cemented Genocide Organ’s cult underground status. This cult status has been generated via their musical approach, coupled with lavish handmade packaging and the presentation of strong, potentially controversial thematic material in an impartial and ambiguous manner; which incidentally some have interpreted as being ‚politically incorrect‘. Save Our Slaves stands out as the landmark release that definitively executed each hallmark element of sound, visuals and thematic content with flawless accuracy.
:THEME:
Conceptually, Save Our Slaves is an album renowned for its direct engagement with many taboo aspects of America’s history. Consequently, without shying away from the darkest aspects of America’s past, Save Our Slaves is concerned with: slavery, racist movements such as the Ku Klux Klan, radical right wing political advocacy group The John Birch Society, and the struggles for suppression, dominance and/or liberty on both sides of the civil rights movement. There are seemingly implied references to Dr Martin Luther King (the vinyl side dubbed Birmingham perhaps referring to Birmingham, Alabama and the 1950-60’s civil rights movement), whilst the track Violent Coordinating Committee appears to be inspired by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee – an important ‚direct action‘ organization of the 1960’s civil rights movement. Save Our Slaves also contains more direct references to other civil rights figures including James Meredith – the first African-American student admitted to the segregated University of Mississippi (a flashpoint of the civil rights movement); and Sarah Patton Boyle – Virginia’s most prominent white civil rights activists during the 1950-60s.
Yet to expand the thematic content further, the album also makes reference to American Imperialism of the 1950’s to 1970’s, which included covert CIA operations in the Middle East, Africa, South America, and Indochina / South East Asia. Specifically, such operations involved the facilitation of military instigated coups and provision of financial and military support to various dictators in the ideological fight for capitalism against communism and socialism.
Accordingly, within the broadly coveted discography of Genocide Organ, Save Our Slaves stands out as one of their pinnacle releases by fact of it being one the of most sought after. The album’s revered status is also demonstrative of the manner in which Genocide Organ combine music, theme and artwork to transcend the creation of albums designed merely to be ‚enjoyed‘. Save Our Slaves functions as a politically charged, controversial declaration and socio-political manifesto that analyses American society, the roots of America’s history and culture and its role in shaping the modern world. As exemplified by its sound, visuals and thematic content Save Our Slaves stands as a strong and clear testament to the initial rise and early establishment of Genocide Organ’s cult status.
Richard Stevenson: editor of Spectrum Magazine (1998-2001) / current editor of noise receptor journal (print ‚zine & blog).
€28.00
The Truth will make you free
"Debossed Cover, comes with numbered insert. 20 years after „The Truth will make you free“ saw light for the 1st time, this last Brick in the wall of Genocide Organ´s back catalogue gets re-issued. First released in 1999 as vinyl only release.
Here Tesco offers this album in the typical art-style that all Genocide Organ records come in.
„The Truth will make you free“ is an album yet to discover featuring many dark rhythmic industrial pieces filled with the agony of a dying world. All the confessions made there were true and the presence proved them right.
The Truth will be twisted and turned around as often as someone wilst it and then it becomes a lie and suddenly the lie becomes truth just to turn lie again."
https://tescogermany.bandcamp.com
€25.00
DEATH ZONES
First Video Teaser:
NoSuicideUnit
Released as limited 2LP in gatefold cover with two inserts & numbered card.
2CD Version. Gatefold and Digipak shows the typical GO debossed and spotvarnished layout.
Will be not available via bandcamp.
ATTENTION: The vinyl version will only be produced according to the number of orders we get prior to 9.11.23. After this date it may prove difficult to obtain a copies.
Somewhere out there they were controlling the streets to ensure that rules were followed. They were smuggling themselves from one continent to another, guarding borders training rebels, breaching doors, steering drones, and following the path of the War-Orchestra.
The seventh year anniversary of the release of :OBITUARY OF THE AMERICAS: sees Genocide Organ returning with a release full of cynical survivalism in a world of havoc!
While those celebrate the new world - we prepare ourselves for :DEATH ZONES:.
What started with the :TIPPING POINT: 3MC Set in 2020 has now turned into :DEATH ZONES:
Stand fast, mark your target , when it comes.
No more sounds - Just moving ground!
TRACKLIST:
Conditioned War Sheep
Appropriate Action
Identity Politics
NoSuicideUnit
Loitering Munition
When our Terror comes
Pure Evil
Affirmative Action
Abbey Gate
Virtue Signaling
Migrant Soldiers
Kommando Found Dead
Stack the Bodies
Malicous Purity
FU6 - Waiting for Hell
Trial by Combat
Fake Emotions
Small Boys Unit
TESCO 160
€39.00
Death Zones
Released as limited 2LP in gatefold cover with two inserts & numbered card.heavy black vinyl
2CD Version and LTD300 2MC set.
Gatefold and Digipak shows the typical GO debossed and spotvarnished layout.
Will be not available via bandcamp.
ATTENTION: The vinyl version will only be produced according to the number of orders we get prior to 9.11.23. After this date it may prove difficult to obtain a copy.
Somewhere out there they were controlling the streets to ensure that rules were followed. They were smuggling themselves from one continent to another, guarding borders training rebels, breaching doors, steering drones, and following the path of the War-Orchestra.
The seventh year anniversary of the release of :OBITUARY OF THE AMERICAS: sees Genocide Organ returning with a release full of cynical survivalism in a world of havoc!
While those celebrate the new world – we prepare ourselves for :DEATH ZONES:.
What started with the :TIPPING POINT: 3MC Set in 2020 has now turned into :DEATH ZONES:
Stand fast, mark your target , when it comes.
No more sounds – Just moving ground!
TRACKLIST:
Conditioned War Sheep
Appropriate Action
Identity Politics
NoSuicideUnit
Loitering Munition
When our Terror comes
Pure Evil
Affirmative Action
Abbey Gate
Virtue Signaling
Migrant Soldiers
Kommando Found Dead
Stack the Bodies
Malicous Purity
FU6 – Waiting for Hell
Trial by Combat
Small Boys Unit
Fake Emotions
€20.00
Blockchain Me Anonymous
gFFr
BLOCKCHAIN ME ANONYMOUS
12" LP, ltd. 200 copies + download card
Blockchain Me Anonymous is a result of more Terabytes exchanged between gF’s and Fr’s machines.
These machines are non-human yet they develop ambitiousness and sexuality. They are assertive. They do not argue. They do not care. From gFFr’s networked machines an AI emerged, with will and voice. You can call her Verena Becker (maybe), she has many faces (and counting) and she wants to be a pop star. Machines worship her more than Madonna. They sing her songs while performing tasks.
Verena Becker likes pop music. She often hums “The Queer is Dad”, her favorite refrain, but in her own machinic way. She’s afraid that neurotypical humans could not appreciate, but she wants to be a pop star. She was convinced that her neural network could only please machines, which made her sad. She leaked into gF and Fr’s computers and she drove them to make this record because she wants to please humans.
During the only interview via neural cable connection, she expressed very few concepts, translatable as follows:
“F#*% ¥o# hum@n @s solos. Buy my f#*%in’ record. Sing my songs. D@nce with me. Sta¥n or Go. Lemme stoned. I love you. Be mined”.
You’d better listen.
gFFr is Verena Becker with Fr and gF.
Facial recognition mixups and angry neighbors. AI is political.
Individual biographies:
gF is a XY-year-old junior programmer who enjoys hockey, watching sport and badminton. He is artificial, but can also be very random and a bit beats.He is from Italy. He has a degree in computing. Physically, gF is in pretty good shape. He is average-height with light skin, blonde hair and brown eyes.He grew up in an upper class neighborhood. gF’s best friend is a junior programmer called Laila Stanley. They are inseparable. He also hangs around with Mildred Ferguson and Finley Kemp. They enjoy attending galleries together.
Fr is a @@-year-old online mental trainer who enjoys spreading fake news on Facebook, traveling in dark webs and working on cars. He is pseudo-artificial and a bit lazy, as per Lacan’s interpretation of laziness. He has a severe phobia of tables, and is obsessed with reading. After his mother died when he was young, he was raised by his father, a period in which he developed an enduring love for insects and empty spaces. Fr is slightly overweight, but exercising every day to get back in shape. His best friend is his dog named Petrus. He lives alone in the woods and communicates only through text-speech software.
Verena Becker is a young female artificial intelligence, trained on Donna Haraway, Gilles Deleuze and Britney Spears. Her secret dream is to become a pop singer. Despite the rigid workouts of thousands of stories without elevators, her neural net is yet too shallow to allow her to sing any potential blockbuster. Verena is however unable to develop resentment, rather she naïvely perseverates in hope that one day her programmers will add new layers to her network. She often hangs out with Sniper, her high-frequency trading friend.
gFFr self-released its first EP Play with Me on 3rd July 2020 (Bandcamp Day) and now its full-length Blockchain Me Anonymous in May 2021, on 13 / Silentes records.
https://gffr.bandcamp.com/album/blockchain-me-anonymous
€18.00
Tabletop Guitar
"Filip Gheysen (1979) is a musician and audio artist, living and working in Ghent, Belgium, with a passion for sound and experimental music. Using only a tabletop guitar, effects and the occasional autoharp, he creates abstract droning soundscapes, stripped of all unnecessary elements, focussing solely on the timbre and tone of his instrument. It's this timbre that is vital in his musical works, in that the harmonic spectrums of the drones and the enhanced sounds he typically produces with his electric tabletop guitar are progressively shifting. Synonymous with timbre is the quasi-poetic phrase tone colour. These elements are equally visible in Gheysen's visual art, consisting mostly of abstract prints and paintings. There is obviously a play with the tones of a colour, thus an inversion of the aforementioned musical term. This pertinent
in- and decrease of saturation and of temperature in the pictorial field is comparable to what is going on in his music.
Moreover, these are features which are obviously emphasised in the videos the artist has been creating since 2011. They show lines dance rather timidly, make turns or float along accompanied by passing spots and travelling smears in a scenery of inks and paint. The imagery, strongly reminiscent of his prints and paintings, is enlivened by humming guitar sounds. As an inspired symbiosis between his visual art and his music, the video clips constitute a logical step in Gheysen's intriguing body of work that doesnt cease to amaze. Although appearing here for the first time under his own name, Filip Gheysen has been very active in different projects. He is the founder of Glasvocht Records and has released albums under the monikers Picturesque, Teledroom (with Portables-guitarist Wio) and is a member of the band 4 Black Boxes (with Jürgen De Blonde aka Köhn and Tom Vangheluwe). Trained as a graphic designer, he has also studied printmaking at the academy of Ghent and had several expositions. Tabletop Guitar presents both his musical and visual art and adds a third field of interest. His videoworks are the culmination of his two main outlets, giving a new dimension to his art." [label info]
www.silkentofu.org
€20.00
Eternal Noise
Vier Stücke mit hyper-minimalen Analog-Drones, zwischen rauh-knarzigen Texturen und sanften Wellen a la ELEH.
"Carlos Giffoni knows no mercy. Of all the noise terrorists on the loose today, Giffoni causes the most upheaval. We know he specialises in brutal and invincible noise collages, but there is so much more to it than that. There is always a glimmer of hope that shines through the dense clouds of noise. His noise lives, broods and swings. His latest album for Bottrop-Boy is a true revelation in this respect, not just for the listener, but also for the artist himself. After all, the Venezuelan artist, who is based in New York, has conceded that this is a new style for him. With Eternal Noise Carlos Giffoni enters the holiest of holies, his noise nirvana. Even though Giffoni’s earlier works already sounded impressively organic, with Eternal Noise he is heading for new heights. His customary thick layers of noise sound more subtle than ever before. The four-part suite maintains physical impact, but all faces are turned to heaven, towards eternity. Rather than a noise exercise that sounds like a wrestling match in the dirt, this recording represents ascension towards the sun and open heavens. At times you will find yourself almost drowning in the feedback splashing against you, at other times you will find yourself breathlessly captivated by the peregrinations, whirls and swells of sinus tones. Giffoni is genuinely inspired by the avant-garde music of the 20th century and the results are miraculous.
How Giffoni creates his compositions is of no importance. This is all about their effect on your mood, the spectacle of your ravished soul. You find yourself asking how it is possible that such loud and intense music can be so tranquil and meditative at the same time.
Eternal Noise reconfirms Giffoni’s status as the uncrowned king of contemporary noise. Bottrop-Boy is proud to release this key work in Giffoni’s oeuvre." [label info]
".... The eternal is the easier word to parse. Giffoni here deals exclusively with shape-shifting drones, mostly around the lower partials of the overtone series. Each of the four tracks doesn’t evolve so much as amorphously change emphasis at a geologic or tectonic pace, almost a history of the Earth heard from the inside or the sound of individual molecules vibrating, a kind of nano-counterpoint. Even where there is a pulse within the drone, it serves not as a driving teleological force but rather as a mere marker of the passing time, alluding to the stasis of the most ambient of krautrock tracks. On top of that, Giffoni seems to be evoking a kind of throat singing where the vocal chords have been replaced by charged wires that crackle, buzz, and distort as they vibrate. Each overtone has its own individual color of noise, so the composite is like the gradual color shifts of oil on water or of a dissolving Gobstopper.
Were those flavors of noise not so harsh around the edges, this album could almost be meditative. It is fitting that the liner notes are mostly pictures of Japanese temples, since their serenity is clearly behind almost every sound here, even the harsh ones. And when each track cuts off suddenly, it feels as if you're being unwillingly wrested back into reality." [Dan Rucchia / Dusted Mag]
www.bottrop-boy.com
€12.50
* *
French musician & performance artist Manon Anne Gillis came to Japan to perform in 2016 following the 2015 release of the 5-CD archive box set from Art Into Life, which was a compilation of earlier recordings. Now at last, for the first time in 27 years since 1994’s “Euragine” in CD format, her long-awaited 7th solo album is completed. As she still continues to progress and evolve musically, this work is constructed primarily around primitive hiss noise and error sounds. Here she has woven a musical tapestry that is more blurred, obscured, and noise-oriented than her earlier work. With the strong cohesiveness of her disquieting singing voice in a thunderous roar bellowing from the inner depths, the repetition of the dense glitch sounds, and the nostalgic concept of the obscure rhythm track (track 5) will remind us of her days when she went by the alias Devil’s Picnic.
2015年にArt Into Lifeより過去の音源を総括した5CDアーカイヴボックスをリリースし、翌2016年には来日公演も果たしたフランスの女性音楽家/パフォーマーManon Anne Gillis。1994年にCDフォーマットで発表した[Euragine]以来27年振りとなる、待望の7thソロアルバムが遂に完成。プリミティブなヒスノイズやエラー音を主軸とした構造は、過去のどの作品よりも不明瞭かつノイジーであり、今尚進化を続ける彼女の音楽性が様々な様相で紡ぎ出される。粘着度の強い轟音の奥底から響く不穏な歌声、高濃密なグリッチサウンドの反復、そして初期の変名Devil's Picnicを思わせるオブスキュアなリズムトラック(Track.5)では原点回帰なコンセプトも確認出来る。
Mastered by Takumi Akaishi who was Anne’s supporting act for her 2016 performance in Japan.
彼女の2016年来日公演でサポートアクトを務めた赤石拓海によるマスタリング。
https://art-into-life.bandcamp.com/album/-
€18.50
" - "
French musician & performance artist Manon Anne Gillis came to Japan to perform in 2016 following the 2015 release of the 5-CD archive box set from Art Into Life, which was a compilation of earlier recordings. Now at last, for the first time in 27 years since 1994’s “Euragine” in CD format, her long-awaited 7th solo album is completed. As she still continues to progress and evolve musically, this work is constructed primarily around primitive hiss noise and error sounds. Here she has woven a musical tapestry that is more blurred, obscured, and noise-oriented than her earlier work. With the strong cohesiveness of her disquieting singing voice in a thunderous roar bellowing from the inner depths, the repetition of the dense glitch sounds, and the nostalgic concept of the obscure rhythm track (track 5) will remind us of her days when she went by the alias Devil’s Picnic.
2015年にArt Into Lifeより過去の音源を総括した5CDアーカイヴボックスをリリースし、翌2016年には来日公演も果たしたフランスの女性音楽家/パフォーマーManon Anne Gillis。1994年にCDフォーマットで発表した[Euragine]以来27年振りとなる、待望の7thソロアルバムが遂に完成。プリミティブなヒスノイズやエラー音を主軸とした構造は、過去のどの作品よりも不明瞭かつノイジーであり、今尚進化を続ける彼女の音楽性が様々な様相で紡ぎ出される。粘着度の強い轟音の奥底から響く不穏な歌声、高濃密なグリッチサウンドの反復、そして初期の変名Devil's Picnicを思わせるオブスキュアなリズムトラック(Track.5)では原点回帰なコンセプトも確認出来る。
credits
released November 5, 2021
Mastered by Takumi Akaishi who was Anne’s supporting act for her 2016 performance in Japan.
彼女の2016年来日公演でサポートアクトを務めた赤石拓海によるマスタリング。
https://art-into-life.bandcamp.com/album/-
€30.00
Fuel 217 / Sacre
Side A : Anne Gillis / Jac Berrocal - fuel 217
Collaboration between Anne Gillis (oil can de Dion-bouton) and Jac Berrocal (pocket trumpet).
Side B : is a reissue of a collaboration between Jacques Doyen and Jac Berrocal on a text by Allen Ginsberg that was released on the tape compilation "Paris Tokyo" in 1983 on the Tago Mago label.
"This is quite a little oddity. It is the only release (so far?) of this French label (listing the main distribution source as the address) and it is a picture disc on heavy vinyl. Both sides involve Jacuqes Berrocal, the French trumpet improviser and on one side he has a duet with Anne Gillis, of whom I had not heard in a long time. They met the lovely Parisian festival Sonic Protest and Gillis found an "oil can De Dion Bouton at a flea market" and used that in the recording. The other sees a lyric by Allen Ginsburg recited by Jacques Doyen and that song already appeared on the 1982 compilation 'Paris Tokyo' by the Tago Mago label. The whole thing is limited to 230 copies. It may seem odd to pair both songs together, but then: why not?
The side with Anne Gillis is certainly a most curious affair with the crackling of can, oil or otherwise, and some far away sounds; it might be a trumpet but for all I know it might also be a voice. Surely a fine piece of musique concrete in a very naive sort of way, which is something I enjoy very much. The trumpet is easily recognized on 'Sacré', layered I should think, also not too present in the mix, unlike the voice of Doyen, reciting the French poem, and even without understanding what this is about, one feel the somewhat scared atmosphere of the piece.
Do these pieces fit together? Maybe not, indeed. Does it matter? It doesn't, either. It is a most lovely 7" and that's what matters." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€17.00
Return to Nothing / Nothing to Return
Teure aber sehr schön gestaltete Vinyl-Edition (nachdem die CD schon lange vergriffen ist) von diesen Aufnahmen von 2004 von STEPHEN O'MALLEYS vielleicht experimentellsten Seitenprojekt...
"Stephen O’Malley (SUNN O))), KHANATE) on guitar in live- improvisation with two others (GERRIT & T.WYSKIDA) working on electronics and gong & tympani, creating a strange atmosphere between floating soundwaves, dark drones & concrete detailed microsounds. Two long tracks that got more filled & dense & beautiful over the timeperiod.... Recorded March 10th, 2004, at the Flux Factory in Queens." [Drone Records]
"... Ginnungagap is a term from Norse mythology that means something like "seeming emptiness" and that's a great name for this project, which sounds like it emanates from some abyssal void or abandoned cave or something. Ambient sinister drone improv, reminding us a little bit of House of Low Culture or even Thuja, if they were more creepy and liquid-sounding. Ginnungagap is a trio consisting of Khanate / SUNNO))) dude Stephen O'Malley on guitar, Khanate's Tim Wyskida on gong and tympani, and Gerritt Wittmer (who runs the Misanthropic Agenda label, and records solo as Gerritt) on computer. Packaged in a gold-printed, flat oversized cardstock sleeve, this disc consists of two tracks: "Return To Nothing" being a live recording about a half-hour in length, followed by Gerritt's remix "Nothing To Return" for about 20 minutes more. Like so much Khanate / SUNNO))) related stuff, it's of course a limited edition release... " [Aquarius Records review]
"A live recording and alternate mix of a collaboration between GERRITT (GERRITT, Misanthropic Agenda), STEPHEN O'MALLEY (KHANATE, SUNN O))), LOTUS EATERS, BURNING WITCH, THORR'S HAMMER), and TIM WYSKIDA (KHANATE, BLIND IDIOT GOD). Recorded March 10, 2004 at the Flux Factory in Queens. Limited edition of 500, pressed on color vinyl." [label info]
www.misantropicagenda.com
€23.50
Lift your skinny fists like antennas to heaven
\"Das neue, phänomenale Album der innovativen Post-Rock-Band ! Vier lange, ausufernde Stücke die nur noch manchmal entfernt an gängige „Rock“-Strukturen erinnern, vielmehr entwickeln sich zarte Anfänge aus z.B. Guitars, Streichern, Bläsern & Bass hin zu monumentalen Instrumental-Stücken; voller Harmonien und unterschwelliger Kraft, die manchmal fast explodiert.. es gibt auch atmosphärische Zwischenparts mit piano, field recordings, etc.. hier treffen sich GLENN BRANCA, RACHEL’S, und LABRADFORD. Intense !\" [Drone Records info 2000]
\"...like Antennas to Heaven After two years of constant touring and near-unanimous critical acclaim, Godspeed You Black Emperor! assembled a collection of new recordings that charted the creative evolution of the band as well as its literal physical movement on the road, criss-crossing North America and Europe.
Five expansive full-band compositions are framed by various field recordings, tape manipulations and ensemble pieces in a return to the narrative sonic collage techniques that marked their 1997 debut (F#A#8).
Four seamless sides of vinyl unfold a world of aching sadness and beauty, with musical quotes ranging from heartland americana to mitteleuropa folkways, all distilled through the unique sonic filters of Godspeed\'s pedal-crazy orchestral rock instrumentation.
Harrowing guitars, plaintive strings, pulsing basses and explosive drums combine with glockenspiels, horns and tape drones to form an overwhelming palette of sounds, always driven by fierce melodic momentum and intense emotional resonance.
GYBE! continued to paint on an impossibly large canvas, with an uncanny blend of world-weariness and naive exuberance that spoke volumes about the conflicts and contradictions permeating our political and cultural life.
The tension between humility and hubris conjured an epic scope and a raw hope that such sweeping gestures might survive with some semblance of substance.\" [label info]
www.cstrecords.com
€26.00
F# A# °°
"Originally released on vinyl in a pressing of 500 on the Constellation label, F# A# ∞has been remixed and resequenced. Take the epic scope of Ennio Morricone, the artsy slash of 17 Pygmies, the desert tones of prime Savage Republic, bolster the mix with the rhythmic chugalug of The Ex and add the Canadian tradition of radio drama and you begin to get a hint of what this band are up to. With twin percussionists, three guitar players, violin, cello, glockenspeil and tape loops, godspeed you black emperor! can make a big rumbling sound or stretch out into delicate filigrees. The nontet has developed a reputation in their hometown for gripping multimedia shows at their recording and performance space Hotel 2 Tango. At the Lounge Ax twin film projectors emitted grainy backdrops while the band built up their cinemascope sound world. The original home recordings were made at Hotel 2 Tango and have been tweaked at Toronto's Chemical Sound studios (with the help of Daryl Smith of Slow Loris). Two new pieces,"Dead Metheny" and "Sad Mafioso," have been recorded for the compact disc." [label info]
www.brainwashed.com/kranky
€15.00
Allelujah! Don't bend! Ascend!
"We are proud to announce the first new recordings by Godspeed You! Black Emperor in a decade. Featuring two twenty-minute slabs of epic instrumental rock music and two six-and-a-half minute drones, ‘ALLELUJAH! DON’T BEND! ASCEND! provides soaring, shining proof of the band’s powerful return to form.
Having emerged from hiatus at the end of 2010, GYBE picked up right where they left off, immediately re-capturing the sound and material that had fallen dormant in 2003 and driving it forward with every show of their extensive touring over the last 18 months. The new album presents the fruits of that labour: evolved and definitive versions of two huge compositions previously known to fans as “Albanian” and “Gamelan”, now properly titled as “MLADIC” and “WE DRIFT LIKE WORRIED FIRE” respectively. Accompanied by the new drones (stitched into the album sequence on CD; cut separately on their own 7″ for the LP version), GYBE have offered up a fifth album that we feel is as absolutely vital, virulent, honest and heavy as anything in their discography.
We don’t have much time for mythology, but we’d be lying if we said the return of Godspeed You! Black Emperor in 2010 didn’t signify a whole lot to us as a marker from which to look back on the past decade, to reflect on what’s been gained or lost within the confines of independent music culture and what’s been gained or lost in the socio-political landscape writ large. Godspeed’s music will do that to you. It is music that bears witness to, channels and transforms this predominantly terrible, infuriating, venal and nihilistically sad story we’re all living, sharing, resisting, protesting, deconstructing and trying to change for the better. We think GYBE has once again provided a uniquely moving and compelling soundtrack for these acts of analysis, defiance and ascension.
* * *
Hard to believe a full decade has passed since the release of Yanqui U.X.O., the last album by GYBE. Never a band to care for conventional industry wisdom, Yanqui was released shortly before xmas 2003 with little publicity and no press availability, no marketing plans or cross-promotions or brand synergies, with back cover artwork tracing the inextricable links between major music labels and the military-industrial complex. Driven by word-of-mouth from a passionate and committed fanbase galvanized by the group's sonic vision and its dedication to unmediated, unsullied musical communication, the album found it's rightful audience.
To suggest that such simple principles and goals have become harder to maintain and enact a decade later is an understatement. For all the contents and discontents – for all the "content" – of our present cultural moment, the idea of circumventing the glare of exposure, the massaging of media cycles and the calculus of identity management appears quaint, if not futile.
But Godspeed is looking to try all the same. The band wants people to care about this new album, without telling people they should or talking about themselves. They want to hold on to some part of that energy that comes with the thrill of anonymous discovery and unmediated transmission, knowing full well that these days, anti-strategy risks being tagged as a strategy, non-marketing framed as its opposite, and deeply held principles they consider fundamental to health as likely to be interpreted as just another form of stealth.
Truly, thanks for being open to hearing it.
Release date: 15 October 2012 (Europe), 16 October 2012 (rest of world)
Running time: 53:09
LP is pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl at Optimal (Germany) and comes in a tipped-on heavyweight gatefold jacket printed in full-colour process plus a spot metallic ink and spot matte varnish. LP dust sleeve is also 4-colour print. Package includes a 7 inch in printed dust sleeve (same audio appears in a different sequence on the CD) and a 12"x48" pull-out poster (printed full colour on both sides) featuring a collage of film stills specially-photographed and captured from the GYBE live 16mm projections." [label info]
www.cstrecords.com
"Viel ist passiert in den letzten 10 Jahren und für Mythologien bleibt weder Zeit noch Kapazität, aber eines ist doch offenbar: wir würden lügen, wenn wir nicht zugeben würden, dass die Rückkehr von GY!BE im Jahre 2010 eine Zäsur, ein Punkt der Rückschau gewesen ist. Wie kaum eine andere Band haben die Kanadier uns in den letzten Jahren begleitet, und das ohne musikalisch wirklich sichtbar zu sein. Ihre Geschichte ist eng mit dem Label Constellation verknüpft und die gesamte Attitüde, der Kontext, in dem sich Constellation und damit auch GY!BE bewegen, haben einen nicht zu unterschätzenden Einfluss auf die Independent Musikkultur weltweit ausgeübt. Und so regt dieses neue Album von GY!BE eine Rückschau an, eine Auseinandersetzung, was Independentkultur und Selbstverständnis heute noch bedeuten und wohin sich die soziokulturellen Komponenten unserer Gesellschaft entwickelt haben und noch weiter entwickeln werden. Auf diese Weise wird ,'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!" mit einer Bedeutung aufgeladen, wie sie schwerer kaum wiegen kann - und auf die weder Band noch Album direkt einen Einfluss haben - eine künstlerische Äußerung, die Bedeutung durch ihre bloße Existenz erlangt - da haben wir ihn doch, den Mythos, ohne dass wir es wollten. Und wir können es nur akzeptieren - dass dieses wunderbare Stück Musik (und das ist sie wahrlich, diese Platte - musikalisch ein Meisterwerk) schon jetzt ein Begleiter unseres Selbstverständnisses geworden ist, ein Moment des Innehaltens, des Reflektierens und damit Zeuge unserer eigenen Transformation, in der wir versuchen, das Kapitel unserer eigenen Biographie in diesem Buch aus überwiegend furchtbaren, korrupten, komplizierten und nihilistischen Geschichten neu zu schreiben und irgendwie in Hoffnung zu verwandeln. GY!BE haben es wieder einmal geschafft, einen Soundtrack für dieses Wechselspiel aus Analyse, Trotz und Befreiung zu liefern. Die Vinylversion von ,'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!" besteht aus einer LP und einer 7". Die 7" enthält zwei Drones, die auf der CD in den Album-Kontext eingebunden sind, auf Vinyl aber separat vorliegen, um eine gute Qualität der Pressung zu erreichen. Die beiden Songs ,Mladic" und ,We Drift Like Worried Fire" sind final ausformulierte Versionen der beiden von den den Konzerten der Band bereits bekannten Tracks ,Albanian" und ,Gamelan". Die beiden Tracks wurden von Howard Bilerman im legendären Hotel2Tango Studio aufgenommen, während die Drones von der Band selbst aufgenommen und gemixt wurden. Alle wurden gemastert von Harris Newman/ Greymarket. Musikalisch knüpft ,'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!" an das ziemlich exakt vor 10 Jahren im Herbst 2002 veröffentlichte, letzte Album ,Yanqui U.X.O." an und greift seine klangliche Ästhetik ebenso auf wie seinen Kontext.
Die Vinylversion von ,'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!" besteht aus einer LP und einer 7". Die 7" enthält zwei Drones, die auf der CD in den Album-Kontext eingebunden sind, auf Vinyl aber separat vorliegen, um eine gute Qualität der Pressung zu erreichen. 180gLP IN TIPPED-ON GATEFOLD JACKET. INCLUDES 7" VINYL + 12"x 48" PULL-OUT POSTER!" [label info- Cargo translation]
€25.00
Allelujah! Don't bend! Ascend!
"We are proud to announce the first new recordings by Godspeed You! Black Emperor in a decade. Featuring two twenty-minute slabs of epic instrumental rock music and two six-and-a-half minute drones, ‘ALLELUJAH! DON’T BEND! ASCEND! provides soaring, shining proof of the band’s powerful return to form.
Having emerged from hiatus at the end of 2010, GYBE picked up right where they left off, immediately re-capturing the sound and material that had fallen dormant in 2003 and driving it forward with every show of their extensive touring over the last 18 months. The new album presents the fruits of that labour: evolved and definitive versions of two huge compositions previously known to fans as “Albanian” and “Gamelan”, now properly titled as “MLADIC” and “WE DRIFT LIKE WORRIED FIRE” respectively. Accompanied by the new drones (stitched into the album sequence on CD; cut separately on their own 7″ for the LP version), GYBE have offered up a fifth album that we feel is as absolutely vital, virulent, honest and heavy as anything in their discography.
We don’t have much time for mythology, but we’d be lying if we said the return of Godspeed You! Black Emperor in 2010 didn’t signify a whole lot to us as a marker from which to look back on the past decade, to reflect on what’s been gained or lost within the confines of independent music culture and what’s been gained or lost in the socio-political landscape writ large. Godspeed’s music will do that to you. It is music that bears witness to, channels and transforms this predominantly terrible, infuriating, venal and nihilistically sad story we’re all living, sharing, resisting, protesting, deconstructing and trying to change for the better. We think GYBE has once again provided a uniquely moving and compelling soundtrack for these acts of analysis, defiance and ascension.
* * *
Hard to believe a full decade has passed since the release of Yanqui U.X.O., the last album by GYBE. Never a band to care for conventional industry wisdom, Yanqui was released shortly before xmas 2003 with little publicity and no press availability, no marketing plans or cross-promotions or brand synergies, with back cover artwork tracing the inextricable links between major music labels and the military-industrial complex. Driven by word-of-mouth from a passionate and committed fanbase galvanized by the group's sonic vision and its dedication to unmediated, unsullied musical communication, the album found it's rightful audience.
To suggest that such simple principles and goals have become harder to maintain and enact a decade later is an understatement. For all the contents and discontents – for all the "content" – of our present cultural moment, the idea of circumventing the glare of exposure, the massaging of media cycles and the calculus of identity management appears quaint, if not futile.
But Godspeed is looking to try all the same. The band wants people to care about this new album, without telling people they should or talking about themselves. They want to hold on to some part of that energy that comes with the thrill of anonymous discovery and unmediated transmission, knowing full well that these days, anti-strategy risks being tagged as a strategy, non-marketing framed as its opposite, and deeply held principles they consider fundamental to health as likely to be interpreted as just another form of stealth.
Truly, thanks for being open to hearing it.
Release date: 15 October 2012 (Europe), 16 October 2012 (rest of world)
Running time: 53:09
LP is pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl at Optimal (Germany) and comes in a tipped-on heavyweight gatefold jacket printed in full-colour process plus a spot metallic ink and spot matte varnish. LP dust sleeve is also 4-colour print. Package includes a 7 inch in printed dust sleeve (same audio appears in a different sequence on the CD) and a 12"x48" pull-out poster (printed full colour on both sides) featuring a collage of film stills specially-photographed and captured from the GYBE live 16mm projections." [label info]
www.cstrecords.com
€14.50
No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead
"Die schlimmen Kriegsereignisse in Nahost bestimmten die Titelgebung des 9ten Albums des kanadischen Postrockkollektivs genauso massiv wie sie auch die Band beschäftigte, die heftig darüber diskutierte und stritt, bevor sie aufnahm. Das hatte auch Konsequenzen bei der musikalischen Entstehung der wie immer ellenlangen Songs, die teils eine ganze LP-Seite ausfüllen. Das drohende Kriegsunheil und das Aufkeimen des Bösen ist schon immer wieder spürbar, auch wenn der bekannte ästhetische Rahmen nicht anders als auf den vorhergehenden Alben klingt. Z.B. auf der dritten LP-Seite in "Devils own this town": Von dumpfen Schlägen durchbrochene mahlende Distortiongitarren und die den GYBE immer auch mit prägende Geige schwingen sich lautmalerisch auf, dann kommen fernöstliche Klänge ins Spiel, dann zerreisst eine geschrammelte Gitarre den Aufbau. In den wiederum rein instrumentalen Stücke verbinden sich Kummer, Schmerz und Angst vor der Brutalität (drohenden) Krieges. GYBE zeigen sich spielfreudig und wirken hochemotional in den epischen Stücken, die unerwartete Wendungen nehmen, sich immer wieder steigern, abfallen, sich verändern und wenig Grund für Optimismus bieten.
THE PLAIN TRUTH== we drifted through it, arguing. every day a new war crime, every day a flower bloom. we sat down together and wrote it in one room, and then sat down in a different room, recording. NO TITLE= what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall? what context? what broken melody? and then a tally and a date to mark a point on the line, the negative process, the growing pile. the sun setting above beds of ash while we sat together, arguing. the old world order barely pretended to care. this new century will be crueler still. war is coming. don't give up. pick a side. hang on. love."
godspeed you black emperor is/was/is =
Thierry Amar – electric bass + contrebasse
David Bryant – electric guitar + tape loops
Aidan Girt – drums
Timothy Herzog – drums + glockenspiel
Efrim Manuel Menuck – electric guitar + tape loops
Michael Moya – electric guitar
Mauro Pezzente – electric bass
Sophie Trudeau – violin
Karl Lemieux + Philippe Léonard – 16mm film projections
all of it recorded at thee mighty hotelatango winter of bombs 2024.
engineered + mixed by Jace Lasek.
mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market.
front cover photo by Stacy Lee.
voice on "raindrops cast in lead" = Michele Fiedler Fuentes.
2x180gLP pressed at Optimal (DE) in 350gsm gatefold jacket + 300gsm inners printed LE-UV on uncoated Alaska artboards + DL card.
https://godspeedyoublackemperor.bandcamp.com/album/no-title-as-of-13-february-2024-28340-dead
€33.50
No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead
"Die schlimmen Kriegsereignisse in Nahost bestimmten die Titelgebung des 9ten Albums des kanadischen Postrockkollektivs genauso massiv wie sie auch die Band beschäftigte, die heftig darüber diskutierte und stritt, bevor sie aufnahm. Das hatte auch Konsequenzen bei der musikalischen Entstehung der wie immer ellenlangen Songs, die teils eine ganze LP-Seite ausfüllen. Das drohende Kriegsunheil und das Aufkeimen des Bösen ist schon immer wieder spürbar, auch wenn der bekannte ästhetische Rahmen nicht anders als auf den vorhergehenden Alben klingt. Z.B. auf der dritten LP-Seite in "Devils own this town": Von dumpfen Schlägen durchbrochene mahlende Distortiongitarren und die den GYBE immer auch mit prägende Geige schwingen sich lautmalerisch auf, dann kommen fernöstliche Klänge ins Spiel, dann zerreisst eine geschrammelte Gitarre den Aufbau. In den wiederum rein instrumentalen Stücke verbinden sich Kummer, Schmerz und Angst vor der Brutalität (drohenden) Krieges. GYBE zeigen sich spielfreudig und wirken hochemotional in den epischen Stücken, die unerwartete Wendungen nehmen, sich immer wieder steigern, abfallen, sich verändern und wenig Grund für Optimismus bieten.
THE PLAIN TRUTH== we drifted through it, arguing. every day a new war crime, every day a flower bloom. we sat down together and wrote it in one room, and then sat down in a different room, recording. NO TITLE= what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall? what context? what broken melody? and then a tally and a date to mark a point on the line, the negative process, the growing pile. the sun setting above beds of ash while we sat together, arguing. the old world order barely pretended to care. this new century will be crueler still. war is coming. don't give up. pick a side. hang on. love."
godspeed you black emperor is/was/is =
Thierry Amar – electric bass + contrebasse
David Bryant – electric guitar + tape loops
Aidan Girt – drums
Timothy Herzog – drums + glockenspiel
Efrim Manuel Menuck – electric guitar + tape loops
Michael Moya – electric guitar
Mauro Pezzente – electric bass
Sophie Trudeau – violin
Karl Lemieux + Philippe Léonard – 16mm film projections
all of it recorded at thee mighty hotelatango winter of bombs 2024.
engineered + mixed by Jace Lasek.
mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market.
front cover photo by Stacy Lee.
voice on "raindrops cast in lead" = Michele Fiedler Fuentes.
https://godspeedyoublackemperor.bandcamp.com/album/no-title-as-of-13-february-2024-28340-dead
€15.00
Hommage / Vier Fäuste für Hanns Eisler
"This long and extraordinarily fruitful partnership started here - continuing though the Sogennantes Linksradikales Blasorchester - where they picked up Christoph Anders with whom they went on to co-found Cassiber, with your humble reviewer. These are jazz inflected, punk inflected but mainly spirited and imaginative renderings of Eisler material, with more pieces by the duo who, between them, cover a lot of instruments and combinations of instruments and – ah youth – are never less than hurling themselves into the performances. Both LPs have been re-mastered by Bob Drake for this release." [label notes]
label-website: www.rermegacorp.com
€19.00
Good Vibrations. Solo Improvisations with Stereo DJ Mixer
"Selected solo improvisations with stereo dj mixer. 'Goh Lee Kwang are one of the most prominent and well-respected experimental sound artist and improviser from Malaysia, working on wide range of contexts, from backing music for dance & theater to sound video installation. Over the last two years, he has begun frequently working on the 'Good Vibrations' recording. Original from Penang, Glk burst onto the scene in the beginning of 21st century as a electronic music maker. since then, he has gradually shifted his output into a more abstract vein, often abandoning the musical instruments entirely. glk previous recording include collaboration with Aziz, Tim Blechmann and many others, as well as numerous solo recording including Internal Pleasures, Punk guitar and Nerve Center. Based in Kuala Lumpur, who uses a range of names for performing including his real one, Goh Lee Kwang, is a immensely talented sound artist, as demonstrated by his solo work (records on PseudoArcana, Deserted Factory, and his very own Herbal), as well as his collaborations with Tim Blechmann, Olaf Hochherz, and many others (releases on Moka Bar, TiBProd, Herbal,Break the line !). Goh Lee Kwang recorded quite a bit of material for this project, six studio sessions (Stuttgart, Rotterdam, Krems, Kuala Lumpur, London, Amsterdam) plus two concerts (Paris, Stuttgart). From this materials, the artist hand pick the recording which represent the most closer to the original sound (of the mixer) without any process of filter and treatment, and the result is Good Vibrations (which is actually taken from a the Beach Boys title). The eyecathing design is the work of Herbal in house design team, created entirely from the photos of Lau Mun Leng taken in Rotterdam." [label info]
www.herbalinternational.tk
€13.00
Isabel
Klangschalen, Becken- & Glockensounds vermischen sich mit dem tiefen (genial effektierten) Rumpeln eines Hurrikans! Ein sehr kraftvolles & hypnotisches Stück, auch wenn (fast)-Stille eine grosse Rolle spielt.
"Also known for his Stolen Light noise project and his annual xmas compilations on his Zaftig Research label, Goose is Brett Lunceford's alias for his drone & dark ambient sounds. this track was quite an experience/experiment for him: "i recorded part of that track while hurricane isabel was coming through pennsylvania, hence the title of the track. all we got was a lot of wind and rain and not a lot of damage, but it was nice to record. i had just bought a tibetan singing bowl and i have played drums for about 20 years now, so i love percussion sounds. i was just hoping that the people downstairs from me would not be too annoyed as i was playing the cymbals and bells! this was a bit of a departure from my typical long form drones that i generally do as Goose, but i like it a lot." so here is this hypnotic & acoustic droney track. to make it yet more hypnotic, it's been carefully mastered by our beloved italian master andrea marutti. let yourself carry along by isabel..." [label info]
www.taalem.com
€5.00
Message
Grim is the one-man project of Jun Konagaya - formed from the ashes of White Hospital, his legendary early 1980s noise duo with Tomosada Kuwahara - which, accepting a long hiatus in the middle, has bridged the worlds of industrial music, power electronics, and noise for nearly three decades. Belonging roughly to the first wave of Japanese noise, Konagaya is particularly noteworthy among his peers for casting an eye further afield, drawing influences from bands like Whitehouse and SPK, rather than members of his own scene, as well varied reference points as far afield as the traditional folk music of Tibet. That understood, nothing was likely to prepare the context of Japanese noise for what was delivered by his 1987 EP “Message”.
It belongs to a body of three releases created by Grim during the 1980s, including the full length, “Folk Music”, issued by Eskimo Records in 1986, and the EP, “Amaterasu”, released by G.A. Propaganda in 1985. While its two predecessors are brilliant and more or less what you might expect from a seminal artist of Japanese noise, “Message” follows a markedly different path, delving toward the realm of pop and folk via a series of six songs that emit a stronger connection to Daniel Johnson, Syd Barrett, Sebadoh, and Tenniscoats than anything the noise scene has ever produced; it feels like walking through an ancient fairy tale forest, all hazy, magical and slightly eerie.
Dreamy and meandering, drawing on '60s psychedelia, DIY aesthetics, and folky undercurrents, Grim’s “Message” is a masterstroke in underground Japanese pop, pushing radically forward, while challenging the boundaries of the scene to which the project predominately belongs. Following the album’s original release in 1987, Jun Konagaya followed different paths beyond the world of sound, before unexpectedly relaunching an incredibly prolific career, returning to more explicit territories of noise. As such, “Message” remained a coveted, rare artefact of a road less traveled and a window into the diverse talents and temperaments that rest below all of his output.
One of the most distinct and unexpected artifacts of the Japanese scene during the period, rather than the full throttle fury for which it has been widely known, here we encounter the one-man project of Jun Konagaya weaving stunningly beautiful passages within the realm of pop and folk, incorporating elements of '60s psychedelia and Lo-Fi DIY, with Yukio Nagoshi, founding member of the Vasilisk unit, on guitar and percussion and A. Takahashi on vocals, with collaboration and technical support from Tomosada Kuwahara, partner and co-founder with Jun Konagaya of the legendary group White Hospital. First ever reissue of the album furthers these insights, extending the original EP with an entirely new body of noise-oriented reworks by Grim of the original six tracks, effectively doubling in length to a full-length release.
https://urashima.bandcamp.com/album/message
"Hätten die subkulturellen Phänomene, die irgendwann von Juristen und Journalisten als Wreckers of Civilization oder England’s Hidden Reverse bezeichnet worden sind, ein Pendant in Japan gehabt, dann wäre Jun Konagaya alias Grim wahrscheinlich das zentrale Flaggschiff dieser Bewegung gewesen, denn sein Interesse am Abseitigen hatte – in Ansätzen bereits bei seiner Band White Hospital – Züge des okkult-autistischen Dandyismus, die man häufig bei den englischen Kollegen beobachtete.
Nachdem Konagaya bereits einige Erfahrungen mit lärmenden Soundcollagen gesammelt hatte, entdeckte er Mitte der 80er seine Leidenschaft für das Songformat und für eine Art folkigen Pop, der Schrägheit mit gut dosiertem Kitsch verbindet, und so erschien 1986 das heute als heimlicher Klassiker geltende Album “Folk Music” auf Grims eigenem Label Eskimo Records. Zu dessen Nachwehen gehört auch die im Jahr darauf erschienene EP “Message” (ebenfalls Eskimo), die mit einer Handvoll an Gästen eingespielt wurde und jüngst von Urashima Records neu aufgelegt wurde.
Während Grims Wurzeln in der Geräuschmusik in “Folk Music” noch deutlicher zu hören waren, könnte man diese in “Message” eher subtil in einer unterschwelligen Unbehaglichkeit aufspüren, denn rein stilistisch bewegen sich die sechs Stücke fast komplett im Bereich poppig angehauchter Folk-Lullabies, in denen sanfte Gitarrenakkorde und dazu passender Gesang, bei dem nicht immer ganz klar ist, ob man gerade eine Sängerin oder einen Sänger hört, das Bild prägen. Der Opener “Heritage” startet gleich mit Picking und lieblichem Gesang, und schon in diesem Stück fällt in der gefühlvollen Mollastigkeit eine galoppierende Euphorie auf, deren verhuschte Exzentrik durch die launige Trompete gegen Ende noch einmal extra unterstrichen wird.
Jedes der Stücke hat seine eigenen Marotten: Bei “Deep in Meditation” ist es das Zusammenspiel von Walzertakt und etwas, dass wie eine Melodika klingt, bei “Parable & Cole” das Paradox einer lieblich-pastoralen Monotonie als Kulisse intimer Flüsterstimmen. Bei “Mooncalf’s Walz” der leicht verzerrte Moment zu Beginn, der aber recht schnell einer noch fiepsigeren Lieblichkeit die Tür öffnet. Diese erreicht bei “Klara’s Song” den Höhepunkt an Kindlichkeit, und trotz psychedelischer Twangs schwebt über all dem eine 80er Jahre-Stimmung, die sich neben der rauen und sicher gewollt einfachen Klanggestaltung einem Esprit verdankt, den man nicht künstlich erzeugen kann. Man sollte als weitere Klammer aber auch das leicht unbehagliche Element einmal mehr betonen – eine seltsame Weltfremdheit, die sich in den allzuschönen Arrangements bei genauerem Hinhören offenbart und den Eindruck entstehen lässt, dass dieses Idyll nicht nur von Feen und Folksternchen bevölkert ist, sondern ebenso sehr von dämonischem Gesindel.
Heute werden gerne renommierte Sängerinnen und Sänger aus Folk und Psychedelic der Jahre um 1970 genannt, wenn man sich auf Grims hier durchgezogenen Stil einen Reim machen will. Wer allerdings zu Konagayas eigener Generation gehört und mit undergroundigen Songs der 80er und 90er sozialisiert worden ist, hat vielleicht spezifischere Assoziationen, und die können von Strawberry Switchblade über frühe Psychic TV und die Legendary Pink Dots bis zu den ersten folkigen Versuchen von Current 93 oder Death in June reichen – ein merkwürdiges Kuriosum, bei dem ich nie ganz über den Gedanken hinweg komme, wie nah das alles an einem potentiellen Pop-Hype vorbeigeschlittert ist. Interessant und hervorhebenswert ist dabei, das Grim eine solche Musik bereits perfektionierte, als diese auch in Europa erst im Entstehen begriffen war.
Der Wiederveröffentlichung, die diese Songs erneut auf Vinyl präsentiert, sind einige Remixe als Bonustracks hinzugefügt – ultranoisige Versionen, die die Spuren späterer Entwicklungen Konagayas tragen, die aber die süßlich säuselnden Stimmen immer noch geisterhaft im von Lärm erfüllten Raum schweben lassen." [U.S./ African Paper]
"Returning off the back of an incredible run of deep dives into numerous historical contexts of noise, Urashima brings us the first ever vinyl reissue of Grim's legendary 1987 EP, “Message”, now expanded to a full album's length.
One of the most distinct and unexpected artifacts of the Japanese scene during the period, rather than the full throttle fury for which it has been widely known, here we encounter the one-man project of Jun Konagaya weaving stunningly beautiful passages within the realm of pop and folk, incorporating elements of '60s psychedelia and Lo-Fi DIY.
This highly sought-after holy grail of the 1980s underground is issued by Urashima in a limited edition of 199 copies, and won't sit around for long.
Grim
"Message"(LP)
Since its founding during the late 2000s, the Italian imprint, Urashima, has become a definitive voice in the landscape of noise, sculpting a singular vision of one of the most vibrant and revolutionary bodies of experimental sound to have graced the globe. Already in 2022, they’ve delivered beautiful, ambitious limited edition releases like Controlled Death’s “Death Synth Box”, Merzbow’s “Collection 001-010” and “Hybrid Noisebloom”, as well as Masonna’s “Masonna Vs. Bananamara” and Hijokaidan’s “Zouroku No Kibyou”.
Beginning the label’s final push toward the end of the year is the first ever vinyl reissue of Grim’s legendary, highly sought after 1987 EP, “Message”, now expanded with new material to a full LP in length. An inexplicable hybrid of folk, indie pop, electronic music, and experimentalism, there’s almost nothing like it within the territory and context of sound within in which it rests. A true holy grail of the 1980s Japanese underground, with original pressings commanding crazy money on the collector’s market, this very limited edition of 199 copies is going to be gone in a flash. Don’t sleep!
Grim is the one-man project of Jun Konagaya - formed from the ashes of White Hospital, his legendary early 1980s noise duo with Tomasada Kuwahara - which, accepting a long hiatus in the middle, has bridged the worlds of industrial music, power electronics, and noise for nearly three decades. Belonging roughly to the first wave of Japanese noise, Konagaya is particularly noteworthy among his peers for casting an eye further afield, drawing influences from bands like Whitehouse and SPK, rather than members of his own scene, as well varied reference points as far afield as the traditional folk music of Tibet. That understood, nothing was likely to prepare the context of Japanese noise for what was delivered by his 1987 EP “Message”.
“Message” belongs to a body of three releases created by Grim during the 1980s, including the full length, “Folk Music”, issued by Eskimo Records in 1986, and the EP, “Amaterasu”, released by G.A. Propaganda in 1985. While its two predecessors are brilliant and more or less what you might expect from a seminal artist of Japanese noise, “Message” follows a markedly different path, delving toward the realm of pop and folk via a series of six songs that emit a stronger connection to Daniel Johnson, Syd Barrett, Sebadoh, and Tenniscoats than anything the noise scene has ever produced.
Dreamy and meandering, drawing on '60s psychedelia, DIY aesthetics, and folky undercurrents, Grim’s “Message” is a masterstroke in underground Japanese pop, pushing radically forward, while challenging the boundaries of the scene to which the project predominately belongs. Following the album’s original release in 1987, Jun Konagaya followed different paths beyond the world of sound, before unexpectedly relaunching an incredibly prolific career, returning to more explicit territories of noise. As such, “Message” remained a coveted, rare artefact of a road less traveled and a window into the diverse talents and temperaments that rest below all of his output. Urashima’s first ever reissue of the album furthers these insights, extending the original EP with an entirely new body of noise-oriented reworks by Grim of the original six tracks, effectively doubling in length to a full-length release.
Visionary, wild, and weird, this beautifully produced LP is issued in a very limited edition of 199 copies, and is an absolute must for any fan of Grim, Japanese noise, and '80s DIY psychedelic pop." [Soundohm]
€29.00
Reality Asylum
Another 30min of condensed DoomDub-Versions.
All of the tunes have been deranged and recorded at METSÄÄN STUDIO in midst of the finnish forest in 2017. they summon urban dread and voice the desire to escape the grinding concrete molars of babylon towards an utopic ZONE that provides freedom for all. We came a long way, but are still far away.
totstellen-grmmsk.bandcamp.com/album/reality-asylum
€15.00
Sinter
"Sinter injects vast amounts of oxygen into the room, air swirling and echoing in huge spaces, light shimmering and hazy. In metallurgical terms, sintering is the making of objects from powder and powdery, especially with a metallic connotation, isn't the worst term you could use for much of this music. Field recordings (and, per the sleeve, domestic recordings) are mixed with electronics throughout; nary a French horn in sight though I think I pick up a bit of Kamerman's small clattering devices here and there. [] An extraordinary piece capping one of the finest recordings I've heard in quite a while. Excellent work'. Brian Olewnick. ErstAEU, a new sub-label to 'document the work of young American experimental musicians working in a post-electroacoustic vein'." [label info]
www.erstwhilerecords.com
Dusted Reviews
Artist: Anne Guthrie / Richard Kamerman
Album: Sinter
Label: ErstAEU
Review date: May. 15, 2013
"Erstwhile Records has just rolled out a new sub-label, ErstAEU. In the tradition of AMM, the AEU is not explained. Despite the paucity of officially sanctioned information — you won’t find any explanatory text on the label’s website — there’s a definite aesthetic angle at work here. The label’s first three CDs are all the product of American-born duos, and all of the participants are in their 20s or 30s. Conventional instruments aren’t completely absent, but they often take a back seat to captured or processed sounds, as well as disorienting manipulations of time and space. One thing the albums do not share is a particular methodology. Graham Stephenson and Aaron Zarzutski’s Touching is a straight-up improv encounter; Joe Panzner and Greg Stuart’s Dystonia Duos combines played and processed sounds into hard-shelled containers of noisy electrical activity; and Anne Guthrie and Richard Kamerman’s Sinter, an assembly of “field recordings, domestic recordings, composition, improvisation, and processing,” which inhabits some zone that doesn’t really have a name yet.
For clues about how to understand it, one can look to the album’s name. Sintering bonds powdered clay into a pot without melting it; even after it’s fired, the ceramic’s texture will make you think of clay. The disparate elements of “Civil Twilight: 5:23” — dancing electrical buzzes, slow-changing mechanical hums, under-the-breath counting, close-up paper shuffling, and distant outdoor sounds — likewise retain their essential individual characters even though they have been configured into a hefty yet spacious block of musique concrète. But the way the sounds hang together doesn’t tell you why they were made to sit in that configuration, or how you should respond to them. They just are what they are.
So you might either be thinking about now, “I gotta hear this record,” or “Why the hell would I ever want to hear this stuff?” You know who you are, and either way I’d tell you to listen to your inner voice. Having spent a lot of time with it, I’m on both sides of the fence. On the one hand, there’s “Re(Z)=Piper, Im(Z)=Andrej,” an amalgam of cleanly recorded exchanges in Italian (I think), fuzzy room sounds that might come from a mall or train station, and mightily distorted monk chants that sound like they’re being played Alvin Lucier-style from a busted speaker into a resonant room. I’d heartily recommend it to anyone who likes their noise non-macho and genuinely unpredictable. On the other, listening to “Porcellino”’s layers of distant banging and close metallic clanking is an exhausting Cage-ian exercise in using applied attention to pry interest from boredom.
The most rewarding piece is the longest, the last, and the one that feels most musical. Taking a cue once more from nomenclature, “Several Or Many Fibers” feels to me like a tapestry. I’m not sure that its journey — from footsteps and a hovering synth note through sounds of water striking different surfaces to a late burst of weather reporting — is intended to say anything at all. But the way these sounds succeed each other implies a narrative whose inscrutability makes there passage compelling." [Bill Meyer, DUSTED magazine]
€15.00
Þjóðáar Fnæstu Eitri
Winter-Light bids a very warm, welcome return to Gydja (Abby Helasdottir) with the follow up to her highly regarded 'Ár var alda' album.
This new sonic saga continues the journey that began in 'Ar var Alda' with its depiction of cosmic creation within the vast primordial void of Ginnungagap. Now the focus turns to Élivágar, the great eleven-fold river whose venomous waters flowed into the void in that moment of cosmological nascency, and would continue to make their way through the underworld after the establishment of the universe.
These eleven Þjóðáar Fnæstu Eitri ('mighty streams, spewing venom') act as markers of liminality and initiation, dividing zones of both geography and experience, and bearing names that define their transformative characteristics: Leiptr (lightning), Fimbulþul (mighty mumbler), Gjöll (resounding), Fjörm (hurrying), Sliðr (terrible), Ylgr (she-wolf), Gunnþrá (battle-trough), Svöl (cool), Við (wide), Hrið (storm) and Sylgr (swallower).
As has become the trade mark of Gydja's sound, the eleven tracks that make up 'Þjóðáar Fnæstu Eitri', have been intricately layered and meticulously crafted. Employing both graceful and subtle use of sounds, the listener is drawn into the journey, traversing each rivers flowing waters.
Vast drones, percussive atmospherics and soft intricate electronics, underpinned with deep bass and ancient sounds.
English translation:-
1. Lightning
2. Mighty mumbler
3. Resounding
4. Hurrying
5. Terrible
6. She-Wolf
7. Battle-trough
8. Cool
9. Wide
10. Storm
11. Swallower
credits
released December 21, 2023
Mastered by Robin Storey
Cover artwork and design by Abby Helasdottir
https://winter-light.bandcamp.com/album/j-ar-fn-stu-eitri
€14.00
Il cancello della morte
Neues dark ambient noise-Projekt auf SOMNABULANT, einer der zur Zeit besten Adressen für elektronischen Abgrunds-Industrial. Meist wuchtige analoge Flächen & amorphe Soundeffekte.....dann wieder schwelend & paralisierend, monumentale Rausch- & Dröhnflächen....
lim. 200 und beim Label schon weg !
“Habeeb seems such an odd sounding name for this sinister dark ambient project from L. Kerr of Steel Hook Prostheses. This massive disc is definitely stronger and more focused than what little I've heard from the project in the past, building often lengthy tracks around smoothly flowing low-end hums and drones with subtle melodic undercurrents seeping in at times. "Creeping Death" gets a bit louder with biting high-end swells that peak out to faint distortion over rumbling bass and slightly more prominent "notes" in the middleground, whereas a few other tracks are much quieter and more subdued. "Rigor Mortis" is very delicately rhythmic with its repetitive low-end loop throbbing away, followed by "Tapping the Spine with Razorwire", which adds in very lightweight wisps of distortion against the brooding ambience of the core soundscape – certainly a bit more ominous. "Descension Into the Blackness" is a monolithic 19 minutes (nearly half of the disc's the entire running time), building up slowly with hugely resonant bass and distant percussive sounds reverberating in the background – getting slightly thicker/louder, but maintaining a very stripped down aesthetic that never sways too far from the course. Closer "Keepers of the Death Gate" is the only track I dislike, and I find it to be terribly distracting in contrast to the other tracks, opening with a sample of some sort of country-ish music with pitch-shifted speaking before giving way to a barely distorted loop with a few harsher spurts of thick distorted noise layering in to add to the industrial percussiveness. Even without the strange intro it would've been uncharacteristic of the release as a whole, but that first segment of the track really kills it for me. The CD-R comes in a slim DVD case with minimal artwork that's basically black and white and depicts some illegible text and a woodcut image of demons shoveling people into the mouth of hell. It's a simple presentation but as is usually the case with work from this label it looks quite clean and tasteful. A solid release pound for pound. I'm still a bit confused as to what that last track is all about, but the preceding 55 minutes is a consistent slab of damn promising dark ambient noise.” [Aversionline.com]
€10.00
Se Its En
"Se Its En is the first official release of Halo Manash and was originally released in an edition of 100 copies by Finnish underground record label Blue Sector in 2003. After a long period of unavailability the album is now re-released through our Stellar Mansion series.
The quintessential tunes for the tracks were received from in seven specific dreams and captured on tape during the following morning under the guidance of awakened subconscious forces. The album as a whole, however, should not be considered only as a self-centered work or a mere outcome of lucid dreaming sessions of the personnel involved; Se Its En serves as a continually living and assisting metaphysical implement that guides and enlightens travel in The Great Elemental Current. The seven surrealistic tracks were composed by using manipulated bowed string instruments, percussions, analogue synthesizer, human and inhuman vocalisations & other surreal recordings. Se Its En is the key to the gate leading to Sacral Meeting with Halo Manash.
The album is enclosed in a customised and silk-screen printed Stellar Mansion cardboard covers including an 8-panel black on black printed booklet and a silk-screen printed insert card. The regular edition is limited to 468 copies." [label info]
www.auralhypnox.com
"Finland strikes back again! New project on a new label, which brings us haunting and secretful post-industrial drone-spheres with various subliminal effects... dark and beautiful." [Drone Rec. info 2003]
“ Halo Manash 'Se Its En' follows the same direction as I.corax (being a solo-project of the other member), but whereas I.corax is more like a continuous flow of sound, Halo Manash is more structured and minimal. Also the general soundscape isn't based that much on field recordings etc, but is mostly created by a guitar through a wild bunch of effect processors. There are even some kind of strange melodies that are spiced up with occasional lyrics of spoken word and simple, ritualistic percussions. There are two versions of 'Se Its En' available; a normal slimcase with pro-printed covers and an insert, and a version that comes in a cool hand-made black cloth bag (insert and covers included, naturally).” [orignal label description 2003]
€13.00
Födzlepijan
"First record from a mysterious Swedish duo, whose sound is inspired by, according to the band themselves, Burzum, Earth, Skepticism, Nortt and Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg. But imagine those influences channeled into something more medieval sounding, and WAY more post rocky, a sort of droning medieval slowcore laid beneath softly buzzing metallic rumble and shimmer, and you'll get an idea of Hamnskifte's sound. This is drone and ultimately slow meditative Black Metal with hypnotic medieval folk melodies recorded with guitars, drums, bass, organ, bodhran drum, bells and some self-invented percussion instruments. Originally released to the world in the spring of 2010 by, now-defunct, American label Starlight Temple Society, as a limited edition of 125 copies." [label info]
hamnskifte.blogspot.de
"Fodzlepijnan first appeared on the now-defunct Starlight Temple Society label back in 2010 as a limited-edition CDR release (we still have a couple of copies of this version in stock, as a matter of fact), and it offered a beautifully eerie and ghostly collection of funereal folk-rock and desolate, doom-laden slowcore from the mysterious Swedish duo known as Hamnskifte. The band seemed to have roots in both funeral doom and black metal (indeed, the band cited the likes of Nortt, Burzum, Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg, Earth and Skepticism as direct influences on their music), but their music didn't really sound like either of those forms, and in fact only marginally sounded like a metal band at all. Instead, Hamnskifte craft this strange sound that is more "post-rock" than anything, a mysterious, low-fi sound that creeps across the album using hand-made percussive instruments, organs, bells, and bodhran drums alongside their standard rock lineup of drums, guitar and bass. That original disc really impressed me when we first picked it up, and it's haunting blackened slowcore sound filled the office here at C-Blast for weeks after we picked it up. While the original Starlight Temple CDR came in a handmade package that consisted of a screen-printed silver envelope, an eight page booklet and foldout poster and was limited to just one hundred twenty five copies, the new CD version of Fodzlepijnan that just came out on the black metal label Myrkr presents the album in a handsome new six-panel digi-sleeve that includes a printed vellum inner sleeve for the disc.
At first, Fodzlepijnan opens with a brief intro of wheezing harmonium and martial snares playing a slow, haunting folky melody, the sound very neo-folkish and atmospheric, and that leads right into the first proper song, "Ther Skall Wara Gråt Och Tandagnisslan". It's here that Hamnskifte fully unfurls their sound, a combination of tranquil, almost funereal drumming that incorporates other shuffling percussive instruments into it's deliberate, processional-like tempos, moody strummed chords that seem to be emanating from sort of banjo-like stringed instrument, and swells of lush feedback and distorted guitar. The band weaves these sounds together into simple, dark melodies that sound more like something from Swans than anything vaguely black metallish. But there's also that doom-laden creepiness that lurks beneath the surface of these melancholy folk-dirges, a subdued heaviness heard in those slow-motion drums, waves of vast keyboard drift and that buzzing harmonium-like drone that makes a reappearance, and the deeper you get into this, the more that you can hear the band's admitted Skepticism influence, a vague funeral doom quality to this music that you hear more in the atmosphere and pace of the music than in any overt metallic qualities. It's all some surprisingly beautiful stuff, in fact. The following song "Wäsende" might be my favorite, another instrumental piece that resembles some particularly gloomy, darkened 70's psych-folk, with some of the prettiest acoustic guitar arrangements on the album, laid out over delicate droning organs and that slow, shuffling backbeat. Further in, the sound starts to get heavier as some muffled distorted guitars creep into "Foglarna Warda Fångna Medh Snaror", lending an undercurrent of clanging, doom-laden rumble to the song's hauntingly pretty folk melody and stretches of ghostly, cavernous drone. "Dageligh Beredelse Emoot Döden" has a more ominous feel, death-march drums and minor key jangle woven into a Goblin-esque groove, and closer "Uthi Thet Ytterste Mörckret" unfolds into a twelve minute kosmische trance of pounding tribal drums and slithering bass, moody acoustic strum draped over droning keyboards and sheets of electrical hum, the album closing within the sway of this last krautrock-tinged hypno-trance. Highly recommended." [CrucialBlast]
€12.00
“Yoshihiro Hanno explores for years now a wide range of musics: soundtracks, contemporary music, free jazz , drum 'n' bass, fragmented electronica, hip hop... with a definite taste for fusion and destructuration in order to create a new form of avant-garde. Follow up to his precedent release 'April Remixes' feat. Oval,Christophe Charles... (SR196), here is .
YOSHIHIRO HANNO : STORY AND WORKS:
Yoshihiro Hanno trained in various kinds of music while still a student, developing his own musical character and feeling. Thus he was no novice when in 1997 he made his first album King Of May and also Hip Hop #3, a split 12" single with Bisk, both released by Sub Rosa under the Multiphonic Ensemble alias. In 1998 Hanno made the album Liquid Glass with ex-Japan member Mick Karn and
the compilation Shijin No Sh_z_ (Portrait of a Poet), the first solo album under his own name. He also composed the very successful successful soundtrack Flowers Of Shanghai for film director Hou Hsiao-Hsien. The following year saw the release of Cirque, his second album under the Multiphonic Ensemble alias. In 2000, Hanno was musical director of the Yomiuri TV soap opera "Eien No Ko" and wrote its theme song with Ryuichi Sakamoto.†He joined Ryuichi
Sakamoto's CODE.† Also in 2000 he released April under his own Cirque label, and composed the soundtrack for Jia Zhang-Ke's film Platform, which won an award at the Venice Film Festival.
In 2001, for the Music On Canvas series Hanno released the April Remix album featuring remixes by Oval, Takugi Aoyagi and Christophe Charles. With Bjˆrk, Ryuichi Sakamoto and others, he participated in the Radical Fashion event. He also made the music for Isao Yukisada's film Kanon. In 2002 he released Esquisse 1996 and Sulpice under his own label.” [press release]
€12.50
The Decline Effect
"Parapsychology introduced the notion of the decline effect as a statistical phenomenon of diminishing results whilst investigating extra-sensory perception and psychokinesis. Where initial findings might substantiate proof of such abilities, further studies would almost always demonstrate the contrary. As such, this ontological disappearing act stands in allegorical parallel to the entropic art of Jim Haynes and frames his 2011 opus of the corroded drone and a compacted disintegration of sound.
This San Francisco Bay Area artist has long defined his work through the pithy phrase: "I rust things." The Decline Effect continues his investigations with electroacoustic decay through four bodies of evidence left behind from ephemeral aktions, shipwrecked electronics, re-engineered field recordings, and transmissions from the ether. Haynes composes through all of these sources through a patient suturing of sympathetic elements, whether they be textural, tonal, visceral, heavenly, sodden, or monolithic. Here, embers foretelling a nuclear winter gently waft upon industrial chorales amassed from an army of fidgeting motors; the sulfur-laden hiss from volcanic vents erupts from an organic thrum into boiling crescendos of environmental noise; geiger counter palpitations stream along a leaden sea of modulated radio noise; a warm explosion of sun-bleached distortion caresses the evanescent halos from an undulating mesmerism inexplicably not sourced from a guitar and / or digital patch authored by Christian Fennesz. Haynes' broken minimalism orbits somewhere near the work Joe Colley, G*Park, Nurse With Wound, and BJ Nilsen.
The 2LP of The Decline Effect is strictly limited to 350 copies, comes in a handsome gatefold sleeve, and sports the necessary download coupon. Zener cards not included." [label info]
www.helenscarsdale.com
"Another mysterious sonic missive from our very own resident dronologist Jim Haynes, another excursion into the sound of decay, this time in the form of four sprawling sidelong epics, each its own self contained soundworld, culled from various field recordings, vibrating strings and other sonic errata. Recorded over the last three years, these recordings require headphones to truly explore their depth, and once strapped on, it's easy to get lost in these strange lands of decay and declines.
The A side was originally a commissioned soundtrack for a pair of films that screened at the Hauntology exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum in 2010, and while we've yet to see either of these films, the smoldering slow moving "Ashes" does evoke a certain ontological sonic dread, the core of the sound is of course the drone, but that drone is pulled taut, and the sound seems to fray as the track progresses, shedding sonic detritus in the form of fractured melodies, strange clicks and muted buzz. At times, this begins to sound like perhaps Haynes' most overtly musical record, but that musicality is eventually picked apart, the remaining elements litter the landscape like bits of some sonic wreckage, but then the edges are smoothed, and the stray shards are reigned in, the sound is truly beautiful, whether a deep sonorous drone, or a lush layered stretch of celestial shimmer.
Named for the performance space at which the piece was debuted, "Terminal" is another sidelong soundscape, the majority of the sounds sourced from field recordings of geysers and thermal vents, the opening few minutes unfurling like a raw field recordings, playing out like some obscure scientific document, unearthed from some dusty box filed away in a warehouse, chronicling some lost expedition. The sound doesn't necessarily grow more musical, but instead, seems to blossom and display more texture, and more depth, as if more sounds were introduced and then layered or woven into one another, streaks of blurred hiss, peppered with the sound of wind on microphone or the trickle of water, the white noise of eruption balanced by the hushed murmur of calm before and after.
Side three finds Haynes exploring radioactive decay, unclear what the sound sources are, we'd like to think, that it's indeed recordings of Strontium or Uranium, the radioactivity causing the tape to warp and curdle, but in fact, it sounds more like an assemblage of intercepted short wave broadcasts, and deep bellows of bowed metal, lush chordal swells washing over strange effects, muted glitches, lush tones and surprisingly dreamy overtones, bell like chimes, chittering cricket like clicks, Geiger counter like bleeps, all blurred and smeared into a gorgeous hazy of soft focus shimmer, those clicks coalescing into an almost-rhythm, while the surrounding sounds seem to lose cohesion, the edges softening, all bleeding into one another and drifting like blackened clouds of whir and thrum.
And finally, the last movement in this crumbling sonic tetraptych is the wire recording sourced "Cold", in which Haynes captures the sympathetic buzz of wires and plays them like some sort of abstract harp, at least that's how we picture it, a huge stone room, with metal wires running across in wild tangles, Haynes at the center, wildly bowing and striking wires, creating this delicate crystalline symphony, another blurred buzzscape, that peppers the lush layered shimmer, with creaks and clatter, skitter and crunch, but those errant sounds are quickly subsumed by the warm whirls of hushed bleary drift and an unexpected eruption of caustic blown out noise, a psychedelic squall that acts as the record's coda, before the inevitable decline, the sound slipping into nothingness. Gorgeous stuff.
LIMITED TO 350 COPIES!! Housed in a luxurious full color gatefold sleeve, and pressed on nice thick black vinyl. Includes a download coupon as well." [Aquarius Rec.]
€23.50
Harmony in Ultraviolet
Klang, schimmernd wie helles Licht! TIM HECKER ist nun auf Kranky gelandet, was seinem recht einmaligen Drone-Sound keinen Abbruch tut, im Gegenteil, HARMONY IN VIOLET erscheint uns wie der vorläufige Höhepunkt seines Schaffens: HECKER schafft es, seine digital-sphärischen Drones fast gleichzeitig wie einen monumentalen Noise-Sturm und doch höchst emotional harmonisch & zärtlich-melancholisch erklingen zu lassen....
"Hecker geht den auf seinen letzten Alben eingeschlagenen Weg weiter, baut ihn aus, erweitert ihn. Vielleicht ist "Harmony In Ultraviolet" nicht so hart wie das letzte Album "Mirages", aber Stücke wie "Chimeras" sind nicht weniger eindrucksvoll. Sie berauschen und entziehen den Hörer der Realität. Epische, weite und hocheindrucksvolle sphärische Momente brillieren da. Sie zeigen Heckers grosses Talent für Klangforschungen im Bereich der "spektralen" Musik. Überhaupt, Tim Heckers Klangkompositionen bewegen sich wie auf einem Farbspektrum: immer wieder werden neue Facetten und Färbungen abgetastet und herauspoliert. Feinfühlig, sensibel ebenso wie kalt, dunkel und zerfahren. Doch einerseits klingen die 15 neuen Stücke auf "Harmony In Ultraviolet" so bedeutungsvoll und geladen, andererseits aber so leicht zugänglich, durchschaubar... und bedeutungslos? Wie steckt man den Rahmen ab wenn man Heckers Musik beschreiben soll? Tim Hecker bewegt sich auf einem Feld von Ambient, Drone, elektronischer Musik, Noise und einem gefühlsmässigen Metal. "Harmony In Ultraviolet" ist ein Herbstalbum und erscheint genau zur richtigen Zeit. Denn zusammengefasst klingt es einfach wie der Herbstwind in all seinen Daseinsformen." [Creative-Eclipse]
"Call Canadian Tim Hecker's fourth full-length release (and first for drone-oriented American label Kranky) "ambient for bombardiers." Like onetime-tourmates Isis, Hecker's focus is on the molten core of metal—the drones, distortions, compressed crunching, and industrial noises that course underneath its notes and riffs. Not surprisingly, one of his earliest releases deconstructed and distended Van Halen's "Ain't Talking 'Bout Love" to more ambient ends. The display of WWII-era portraiture on Harmony in Ultraviolet's cover suggests a cenotaph to downed pilots (in actuality it's an anti-fascist memorial), while the overhead shot of Bologna, Italy, on the interior forebodes the imminent firebombing. Hecker's focus, though, is on the interior of that flying fortress, a blurry suite of movements rife with churns and buzzes. At these stratospheric heights, the guitar's distinct qualities are made fuzzy and uncertain via laptop and digital effects. If you melted off the pop structure from My Bloody Valentine's Loveless with some molten magma, you'd have a good idea of Hecker's sound.
Flow is maintained throughout, as Tim Hecker apparently understands that ever-tricky notion of fluid dynamics. He breaks up motifs (see "Palimpsest") with churning ebbs and digressions but keeps together the pinnacle suite, "Whitecaps of White Noise." And while Hecker has always been an adept craftsman, Harmony reveals his mastery of the idiom. Washes now feel oceanic, as epic and evocative ripples take shape out of unplumbed depths of feedback and distorted peals." [Andy Beta]
"....Harmony is, paradoxically, Hecker's most dramatic and most oceanic record. The former implies twists, arc, and carefully planned change intended to evoke specific effects; the latter suggests stasis, immersion, and a state of dreamy contemplation. Harmony manages to be both these things by surprising as it mesmerizes, with Hecker reigning in or tempering any jarring effects just enough to keep the self-obliterating sense of endless drone intact. One key is that the tension never really dissipates, varying only in degree and quality. The opening "Rainbow Blood" sets the scene with a screeching and trebly drone, like an orchestra tuning up in the darkened theater where Rebecca del Rio performed in Mulholland Drive, and for the next 48 minutes, Harmony keeps the pulse elevated..." [Mark Richardson / Pitchforkmedia]
€14.50
Impasse
"Impasse is a sideways journey into the archives of London-based artist Luke Younger, a.k.a. Helm. Conceived six years ago in the wake of a Birds of Delay tour, the album originally saw the light of day in an abridged version as a mini-CDR on the Low Point label in 2008. This remastered and expanded reissue has the two original tracks along with two others from the same sessions that remained unmixed until a couple of years ago. Impasse appears as somewhat of an anomaly in the Helm canon when viewed alongside recent live performances and his work for labels like Pan and Kye. Where other works explore the mystery inherent in everyday sounds and acoustic phenomena, Impasse is significantly brighter in tone. Consisting of four loop-based pieces, the record invokes the same fantastic worlds found in Terry Riley’s or Boyd Rice’s early ambient pieces. Picture a functional family vacation, an explorer at the apex of his endeavors, a 4:00 AM drinking session with new liquids discovered. Bright corners, euphoric angles and ecstatic drones come together for an emotionally charged high that reflects these unique moments in the human experience. The beauty of Helm lies in its implacable curiosity, the way his music observes the current state of being. Released in a limited edition with artwork by Graham Lambkin, Impasse is another sublime offering from one of the UK’s sharpest cats." [label info]
€15.00
Axis
"London exploratory industrialist Luke Younger characterizes the creation of his latest collection, Axis, as a liberating return to roots: “It felt like going back to the beginning, it felt freeing.” Begun before the pandemic as a soundtrack to a dance performance, the initial vision was for something “visceral, with physical movement in mind.” When the project shifted to indefinite hiatus, he reimagined the material in the context of an LP, while retaining its sense of dynamic physicality. The result is grim and gripping, seasick throbs lurching in a low-ceilinged space, strafed with fractured clanging, hissing steam, and grinding spirals of granular haze. Noise in its most elevated and compelling form, from and for the body as much as the mind.
The album’s unique immediacy stems from Younger’s instinctual muse, reactivating raw methods with fresh energy. “I tuned back in to working with noise techniques again: more primitive equipment, cheap FX, contact mics, noise boxes.” Key guest contributions by Lucy Railton (cello), Mark Morgan of Sightings (guitar), Alex Tucker (vocals), and the late, legendary John Hannon (violin) further enrich the record’s bristling palette. Although half the tracks were begun pre-Covid at Hannon’s Essex studio, the rest were finished in Younger’s kitchen and living room during lockdown. The final tracks were then relayed to veteran mix specialist Randall Dunn, who further honed the material, adding a vivid spatial quality before entrusting the album to Stefan Betke (Pole) for final mastering.
From the hellscape metronome of “Moskito” to the insectoid warzone pulse of “Repellent” to the seething orchestral undertow of “Axis,” this is music of ominous gravity and worlds in peril. But it’s the closing cut, “Tower,” which Younger calls “perhaps the most dramatic piece of music I’ve ever made.” A lurking, blackened descension conjured on keys, guitar, and wormhole wah, the melody simmers and swells until suddenly exploding in a chaos of distorted blast beats. From their ashes the three-note riff slowly returns, like some astral dungeon synth exorcism, rising in a searing arc towards frenzied immolation before finally fading away in white fire and afterlife whispers."
"HELM has consistently been one of the most fascinating (projects) in British experimental music the past decade" - The Quietus Luke Younger, der unter dem Moniker HELM Alben veröffentlicht, die bereits Kult-Status genießen, hat beim Label DAIS angedockt. HELM hat bislang fünf Studioalben und drei EPs mit experimenteller Musik veröffentlicht, in denen er eine Beziehung zwischen akustischen, elektronischen und realen Klängen erforscht. Ab 2012 veröffentlichte er seine Alben beim renommierten PAN Label, darunter die von Kritikern und Fans gleichermaßen gefeierten Alben "Olympic Mess" und "Chemical Flowers". Der Londoner Industrial-Musiker Luke Younger aka HELM beschreibt die Kreation seiner neuesten Kollektion "Axis" als eine befreiende Rückkehr zu den Wurzeln: "It felt like going back to the beginning, it felt freeing." Das Ergebnis ist düster und fesselnd: Seekranke Klänge, die in einem niedrigen Raum taumeln, durchsetzt von gebrochenem Klirren, zischendem Dampf und mahlenden Spiralen aus körnigem Dunst. Lärm in seiner höchsten und fesselndsten Form, von und für den Körper ebenso wie für den Geist. Wichtige Gastbeiträge von Lucy Railton (Cello), Mark Morgan von Sightings (Gitarre), Alex Tucker (Gesang) und dem verstorbenen, legendären John Hannon (Violine) bereichern die schillernde Palette des Albums zusätzlich. Mix-Spezialist Randall Dunn verfeinerte das Material und fügte eine lebendige räumliche Qualität hinzu, bevor er das Album Stefan Betke (Pole) für das endgültige Mastering anvertraute. Vom höllischen Metronom von "Moskito" über den insektoiden Warzone-Puls von "Repellent" bis hin zum brodelnden orchestralen Unterton von "Axis" ist dies Musik von bedrohlicher Schwere und Welten in Gefahr. Aber es ist das abschließende Stück "Tower", das Younger als "perhaps the most dramatic piece of music I've ever made." bezeichnet. Ein lauernder, geschwärzter Abstieg, beschworen von Tasten, Saiten und Wurmloch-Wah, die Melodie brodelt und schwillt an, bis sie plötzlich in einem Chaos aus verzerrten Blastbeats explodiert. Aus ihrer Asche kehrt das dreistimmige Riff langsam zurück, wie ein astraler Kerker-Synthie-Exorzismus, der sich in einem brennenden Bogen zur rasenden Verbrennung steigert, bevor er schließlich in weißem Feuer und Jenseitsgeflüster vergeht.
"Mit einem an Bauhaus’ „The Sky’s Gone Out“ erinnernden Cover erscheint nach einer Reihe von Alben mit “Axis” der neue Longplayer von Helm, dem Einmannprojekt von Luke Younger, auf Dais Records. Younger bezeichnet sich auf seiner Bandcampseite als „sound artist and experimental musician“, dabei hat er eine lange und durchaus heterogene(re) musikalische Biographie (u.a. Hardcore mit The Lowest Form).
Auf „Axis“, ursprünglich vor der Pandemie konzipiert als Soundtrack für eine Tanzperformance, die dann doch nicht zustande kam, setzt Younger bewusst „primitives“ Equipment ein (“cheap FX, contact mics, noise boxes”). Hinzukommen Gastmusiker an Geige, Gitarre, Cello sowie Gesang von Alex Tucker.
Mit zerhäckselten Störtönen beginnt das das Album eröffnende „Para“, bevor melodische Passagen einsetzen. Das elektronische Gebrutzel, das sich immer wieder verdichtet, gibt dem Stück eine dissonante Unruhe. „Moskito“ mit seinem kuriosen, kargen und schleppenden Rhythmus, klingt anfangs nach Minimaltechno, dann lassen sich dissonante Streicher erahnen. “Crash” dagegen ist – dem Titel zum Trotz – ruhiger, besitzt fast schon Ambientcharakter. Hier sorgen Streicherpassagen für Momente der Melancholie. Dieses Innehalten wird mit den Zahnarztbohrersounds, die “Repellent” einleiten, beendet. Dann setzen verzerrte Beats ein. “Mole” knistert, als werde eine Verpackung geöffnet. Das ist ein dunkles Stück Geräuschmusik mit Streicherpassagen, die an einen Folk Horror-Soundtrack denken lassen. Auf dem düsteren Titeltrack hört man übereinandergeschichtete schabende und nach Sirenen klingende Sounds, die in einer Kakophonie untergehen. “Tower” schließlich ist ein im Kontext des Albums fast schon orchestraler, dramatischer Track. The rest is silence." [MG / African Paper]
€23.00
The Nature of Connections
"The Nature Of Connections" almost entirely features pieces composed by Arve’s collaborators. Recorded in the sparkling acoustic of Oslo’s legendary Rainbow Studio by Jan Erik Kongshaug, it’s an album with closer ties to Nordic folk and contemporary, minimalist chamber music than any of Arve’s previous releases. At the same time it features some of the most melodic and seductive music he has recorded. The trumpeter had planned to make an album with a string quartet for many years but never quite found the right formula. Finally, a special commissioned tour brought him together with violinists Nils Økland and Gjermund Larsen, cellist Svante Henryson and double bassist Mats Eilertsen, all of whom now appear as the central planks in "The Nature Of Connections". Another welcome guest is drummer Audun Kleive, veteran of Norwegian jazz ensembles including Oslo 13, JøKleBa!, Generator X, Terje Rypdal and Jon Balke.
Seit 2001 hat er eine Reihe von exquisite Soloaufnahmen aufgenommen, die elektronische Texturen, Holzbläser, ethnische Instrumente, Percussion, Keyboards und seine traurige, sehnsuchtsvolle Stimme vereinen. Die Musik von ARVE HENRIKSEN zeigt gleichzeitig die atemberaubende Schönheit der unberührten Natur und die sich stetig verändernde kosmopolitische Umwelt des postmodernen Reisenden. ,The Nature Of Connections" ist das neueste Glied in einer sich stetig weiterentwickelnden Kette. Dies ist sein erstes akustisches Album, das sich um vier großartige Streicher rankt und mit einigen seiner wärmsten und organischsten Tracks aufwartet. Aufgenommen mit Jan Erik Kongshaug in der kristallklaren Akustik des legendären Rainbow Studios in Stockholm ist ,The Nature Of Connections" Jazz mit einer engen Verbindung zur nordischen Folklore und der zeitgenössischen minimalistischen Kammermusik. Arve Henriksen - trumpet, piccolo trumpet, piano, Nils Okland - violin, Hardanger fiddle, viola d'amore, Svante Henryson - cello, Gjermund Larsen - violin, Hardanger fiddle, Mats Eilertsen - double bass, Audun Kleive - drums"
www.runegrammofon.com/artists/arve_henriksen/rcd2161-arve-henriksen-the-nature-of-connections-cd-lp/
€25.00
Stockholm & Göteborg
"The first new release for 30 years from this legendary audience-splitting British group, and the first featuring Georgina Born, the group’s bassist between 1976-78. Remixed and re-mastered from the original Swedish radio tapes.
‘Henry Cow, me favourite band in the world’ [Robert Wyatt, 1973]
Henry Cow were never going to fit in. Their compositions were way too composed and their improvising was way too improvised - a tendency that only got more extreme as time went on, as these recordings from 1976 and 1977 demonstrate. Stockholm and Goteborg fills in some of the missing history between In Praise of Learning (1975) and Western Culture (1978) and offers music that has not been heard on record until now. First is Tim Hodgkinson’s late and fiendishly complicated epic composition ‘Erk Gah’ (a working title), that took many months of sweat to learn and resolutely eschews any hint of riff, solo or modular assembly. At the other extreme are the two wide-ranging improvisations built around heady extended instrumental techniques, aleatorics, quotations, more-or-less randomly inserted prepared materials and a blithe disregard for genre rules. Between, constantly shifting ground, are a straight-ahead version of Phil Ochs’ No more Songs (one of only two covers ever performed by the band), an unreleased composition by Fred Frith, and a version of the Ottawa Song: a typical live set from that period. Finally, Stockholm is a snapshot of a band of exceptional talents having fun. And it reflects what the studio albums could not – that Henry Cow’s natural habitat was the stage - and the real-time pressure of public performance - because it was there that the music could live and breathe. And evolve.
Stockholm and Goteborg is the first volume of a 9 CD and one DVD set of unreleased material commemorating the band’s 40th anniversary.
Georgina Born. fretless bass, cello
Lindsay Cooper. bassoon, flute, recorder, sopranino sax, piano
Chris Cutler. drums, electrification (13) and piano
Fred Frith. guitar, xylophone, piano
John Greaves bass, voice
Tim Hodgkinson. organ, alto saxophone
Dagmar Krause. singing. "
[label info]
€14.00
Ex Box Collected Fragments 1971-1978
"EX BOX is a free bonus CD issued to subscribers to the Henry Cow Box Redux and is NOT FOR GENERAL SALE."
Limited edition of 250.
However, ReR Megacorp also made this CD available for separate purchase. Copies sold to non-subscribers were not numbered.
● 1 : 1971 recorded in Cambridge
● 2 & 3 : remixes done at Cold Storage in Brixton for the first CD reissue of 'Legend' on the Minneapolis label East Side Digital in 1991.
● 4, 5, 6 & 7 : taken from a concert at the Theatre Royal, Sheffield on June 9, 1974. Rescued from an otherwise unidentified cassette.
● 8 : from the 1976 quartet tour of Scandinavia. From an otherwise unidentified cassette.
● 9 : extracted from material generated while working on side two of Unrest, and appeared as a bonus track on the ESD reissue. Recorded at The Manor, probably between the 14th and 28th February 1974.
● 10 and 11 were gleaned from one of the few surviving Orckestra recordings. Taken from an unidentified cassette. [was previously available on a bonus mini-CD given to subscribers of The Henry Cow Facsimile Box.]
● 12, 13, 14 : recorded in January 1978 at Sunrise in Switzerland. They weren't use for future Henry Cow releases, but later appeared on the ReR reissue of Western Culture as bonus tracks. [actually tracks 12 & 13 were also released as early as 1982 on Recommended Records Sampler].
● 15, 16, 17 : recorded on 20th February, 1977 at the TeatroOlimpico in Parma. Mastered from a cassette.
Assembled by Chris Cutler, then improved and mastered at Studio Midi-Pyrenees by Bob Drakein October 2019.
€15.00
Casilina Tapes 2010 - 2017
"Hailing from Rome, cult duo Heroin in Tahiti fuse analogue synths, garage-y guitars and skittering drum machines to gloriously lo-fi effect. This collection of previously unreleased tracks covers material recorded in their studio from a 7-year period. Their unique psychedelic vision touches on everything from beat poetry, house music and Ennio Morricone soundtracks." [Norman Records]
"Heroin In Tahiti is a duo from Rome, Italy hailing from the Roma Est scene, a sort of local community based in the crumbling and deteriorated neighborhoods which were already eternalized by Pasolini and Neorealist Cinema (think of Pasolini, De Sica, Visconti, etc.) The duo plays a variety of cheap guitars, analog synths, drum machines, and pedals, achieving a dirtiness which is tragically lo-fi and out-of-time at the same time: a "Spaghetti Wasteland", as they call it. In 2012 they released on Boring Machines their debut album Death Surf, a title which spoke for the music played on the record. The label said of the album: "Think of drinking a frozen daiquiri on a solitary beach while watching a poorly tuned TV broadcasting loops of If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death (1968), while Mururoa tests are happening at the horizon." When mentioning Italian occult psychedelia, Heroin In Tahiti seems the best choice to sum up the sound and the references that stay at the core of this all-Italian scene. With albums like the mammoth double LP Sun And Violence (2015), the minimalist Canicola (2014) and the monolithic Remoria (GRA 001LP, 2017), Heroin In Tahiti became a cult band for their particular signature. Casilina Tapes 2010-2017 is the latest (and probably last) output from the cult Italian duo. It's a collection of unreleased tracks recorded in their basement studio in Rome in the last seven years while building up their thematic albums. The label listened to the single tracks at once and they found out there's a coherence between them even if they have been created in different periods. Actually, they show a coherence that only Heroin In Tahiti, with their kaleidoscopic vision of how Italy secretly sounds, can properly conjure up. Boring Machines calls it "total music". You may find elements which reminds of long lost Morriconian soundtracks for cheap westerns or giallos, library music to accompany documentaries on Superstudio radical architecture, urban tribalism, beat poetry festivals on the seashore, and house music. Recorded in Rome, 2010-2017. Artwork by Francesco de Figueiredo. Screen printed covers by Legno, Milano." [label info]
€20.00
The Breath of a Bird
"Death In June collaborator Miro Snejdr aka Herr Lounge Corps teamed up with Death Metal weirdos Cadaverous Condition to create an epic, haunting piece of dark mood music cast into rather accessible songs. A soundtrack to dreams and even more so, nightmares.
The album also features a massive horror synthwave remix by GosT." [Bandcamp info]
Breath Of A Bird CD music contains a single disc. Cadaverous Condition used to be an extreme metal band from Austria. Their style ranges from old school death metal to acoustic guitar songs with typical death metal growl vocals the band themselves describe as "Death Folk" In recent years, the band have concentrated on collaborations, this new one combining their sound with the piano and electronic compositions by Herr Lounge Corps. Breath Of A Bird album for sale by Herr Lounge Corps & Cadaverous Condition was released Jun 08, 2018 on the Klanggalerie label.
€14.00
Heliopause
"Finally we are graced with brand new material from Sweden's Gustaf Hildebrand, a few years after the epic Primordial Resonance album and his joint project with Amanda Votta, Lacus Somniorum. The Heliopause, the point outside our solar system where the solar wind ceases to be, transitioning into what is known as the Interstellar Medium and where our sun becomes just another pinprick of light amongst a billion others. If you were to find yourself stranded in such a place with nothing but a radio receiver, Gustaf Hildebrand imagines that this is what you would hear, low rumbling soundscapes interspersed with bursts of static, com-chatter and signal interceptions from a distant world. Vestiges of humanity bubble up from the ether, speaking encoded messages in the form of numerical combinations and long-forgotten cyphers, their true meanings lost or hidden away inside the memory banks of decommissioned satellites. This new chapter in Hildebrand’s discography reaffirm’s his position as a true visionary and unique craftsman of exploratory sonorities.
Edition of 800 copies in 6 panel digipack.
9 Tracks. Running Time 52:23
€13.50
LET'S PUT IT TO MUSIC / 20 YEARS OF RUNE GRAMMOFON
Includes a 7" single with exclusive tracks from Fire! Orchestra, The Last Hurrah!! and Maja S. K. Ratkje, surely among the most exuisite in the whole catalogue.
Introductions by David Fricke and Adrian Shaughnessy.
It´s no secret that Rune Grammofon founder Rune Kristoffersen is a big admirer of labels like Blue Note, Impuls, ECM, 4AD and Factory, to mention some labels with strong visual identities. But we can´t recall another label that has worked with one designer exclusively for 20 years and 200 releases. The exclusivity was a premise for our collaboration with Kim Hiorthøy from the very beginning, but we certainly never had any expectations about how long we would be able to keep it going. This book is far from being a catalog lining up the releases (it´s not even "complete" or chronological in that sense), but provides an interesting insight by including sketches, rejected designs and unused idéas that never left the drawing board... until now. A Rune Grammofon record is never finished until the cover is done and a sleeve is never designed for the sole purpose of selling a product (it took 28 releases before an artist was pictured on the sleeve!), or necessarily reflect the music in any way (is that even possible?), but rather to establish a suggestive relation between the two, often based on the album title or a song title, but not in an obvious way. We have also included a number of interesting and eclectic "best of" lists from the likes of Jono El Grande, Bent Sæther, Lasse Marhaug, Mats Gustafsson, SPUNK, Rune Kristoffersen and others.
The book has 224 pages, comes with a tactile Geltex hardcover and is beautifully designed by Hiorthøy.
www.runegrammofon.com/artists/books/rbk2200-let-s-put-it-to-music-20-years-of-rune-grammofon-boo/
€46.00
Tighten that Muscle
"Music that smells like a man!
“I play Hirsute Pursuit at all of my DJ gigs” (Peter Christopherson)
“Tighten That Muscle Ring” features collaborators such as Bryin Dall of Thee Majesty, Boyd Rice of NON and Sleazy of Coil / Throbbing Gristle.
The music is real. The sex is real.
Created by Harley Phoenix and his musical partner, Bryin Dall, this is Gay Sex Music that offers no apologies. Enticing rhythms combined with raw sex and a commanding, deep, resonate voice, Harley has transformed explicit instructions for serving his pleasure into a musical orgy that hits the gay community where it plays, the dance floor and the bedroom. Sleazy dance beats pound along at tempos that encourage carnal exploration, while sounds of ecstasy cannot be ignored. You will be thinking Cock Thoughts (a song from the first album, That Hole Belongs to Me).
After starting with a MySpace page Hirsute Pursuit has become THE MOST PLAYED GAY MUSIC ON MYSPACE. Typical letters from fans tell Harley that after listening to his music, they HAD to go “get off”. While fans have been pleading for photos, Harley refuses to give in. Understanding the restraints of reality, Harley remains in the shadows, making Hirsute Pursuit the ultimate in musical fantasy.
Without any publicity or releases, Hirsute Pursuit has had over 140,000 plays in less than a year! Drawing fans from all musical genres, including House, Country, Rock, Hip Hop, etc. Primarily attracting a gay audience, recent fans also include female dominatrixes, middle-class housewives and straight guys (as is evidenced in the video, Boys Keep Swinging featuring Boyd Rice and James Pope, both straight). The raw sensuality has now crossed over into the heterosexual domain.
This is music you can fuck to, as well as bump and grind.
Harley Phoenix is currently preparing Hirsute Pursuit’s live show experience which will include actual musicians, dancers and video to give the audience members a complete sensory explosion.
Comes in a 6-panel digisleeve." [label info]
www.coldspring.co.uk
€13.00
Le Grand Secret
Auf dem Schwesterlabel von TREUE UM TREUE erscheint dieses hochmelancholische und philosophische Werk des französisches Projekts, dass uns in seiner "sad ambient" - Melodiosität an frühe REUTOFF erinnert hat...
"Inspired by the works of the Traditionalists and the lives and deaths of Sekens Murdock and Leontin V. Abilgaard, Moonchild Erik’s fourth CD album “Le Grand Secret” (The Great Secret) takes the shape of a metaphysical reflection on the deceptions of human language, in which Murdock and Abilgaard saw the main cause for the world of confusion we live in. Musically more accessible than “Eurydice” or “Reverse Aleph”, this very diverse new opus is the worthy successor of “Die Schlangenkönigin”, hovering from emotional soundscapes and spacey dub rhythms into gloomy, awe-inspiring drones with even noisy elements. An initiation through pure sound." [label info]
"...Tackling literary philosophical surrealism is a rather daunting task yet His Divine Grace has successfully extracted the subtle nuances of this newest muse and has distilled the rudimentary literary aesthetic into a long audio voyage filled with mystery and esoteric darkness. The album explores a wide array of carefully constructed dark ambient and experimental soundscapes as it leads the listener through imaginative and stimulating sonic worlds that shimmer like mirages. Dark ambient drones and electronic sounds are contorted into breathtaking monuments of sound that lay long shadows across barren wastelands of uninhabitable terrain. Like titans fighting battles long forgotten each track makes a definitive and powerful statement as His Divine Grace unfolds contemplative compositions that inspire and demand reflection.
The CD is spilt into three definitive chapters. Chapter one titled “These – Sekens Murdock” showcases the musical tribute to Murdock and establishes the musical introduction. Track one tilted “Les chevaux de feu” begins the album with an epic dark ambient anthem that combines churning industrial strength noise with interlacing drones and thunderous industrial sounds. Elusive samples of organ and choir enhance the experience lending a humanist emotional depth to the somber apocalyptic decimation established the industrial side of the music. Track two titled “Les gardiens du grand secret” features a shift in sound as His Divine Grace sheds the tormented confines of dark ambient music and steers the listner into ethereal ambience. Using a simple collection of finely articulated electronic sounds His Divine Grace sculpts a luminous song that elevates the spirit as it transports the listner into a sonic domain of alternating tones of purity. Track four titled “Verbum, lux et vita” unfolds with an element of suspense and an unknown presence dominating the tentative atmosphere as if invisible dwellers rove beyond the perimeter of the senses. Track four titled “Le voile levé” concludes the first chapter of the CD with a lonely and lengthy composition that combines delicate sonorous tones with tamed industrial rhythms and tuba like notes that resonate from the depths. “Le voile levé” is reminiscent of the organic ambient flow once achieved by O Yuki Conjugate though slightly darker and freed from the constrains of any ethnic influence.
Chapter two titled “Antithèse - Leontin Voigt Abilgaard” features five compositions themed around Abilgaard. The chapter begins with song five titled “De la nécessité de se taire.” “De la nécessité de se taire” leads the listner once again into yet another independent composition whose identity is only tenuously connected to its peers. The song begins with ominous drone music that is paired with voice samples and recorded sounds of water. As the song progresses the atmosphere darkens significantly as a threatening tone is established. Feelings of loneliness and isolation begin to creep up on the listner as His Divine Grace conjures forth an experimental ambient ballad that breathes with an uneasy rasp as it guides you through reflections of emotional carnage and fragility. Track six titled “Frayeurs initiatiques” continues the journey of isolation though the subterranean depths of the previous song seem somewhat further away. Using simple electronic tones and drones His Divine Grace subdues the listner with a hypnotic assault of suffering ambience. Track seven titled “Pourquoi... toujours pourquoi” sees light beginning to pierce the darkness as a slowly churning palate of voice samples dances with steadily growing waves of electronic sounds that drift awash in a delicate tapestry of sound. Like hope rising from the ashes of defeat the music gently stirs the listeners spirit to remember what has been lost and to react and reclaim. “L’opposition tacite” retreats once again into another suspenseful ambient narrative filled with dark ambience and ritualistic overtones that combine to offer a song filled with primal elements and an esoteric darkness that is tangible. “Le quatre-heure de crystal” ends the Abilgaard chapter of the CD on an experimental note as His Divine Grace abandons the listner to musical surrealism with a strong mind bending psychedelic tinge. Like witnessing events from the perspective of a heavily tranquilized yet conscious person the music washes across the listner like fragmented waves of conscious thought disarrayed and decaying.
Synthese et Syncretisme is the third and final chapter of the Le Grand Secret CD and it features a single song titled “Le Principe immuable.” ‘Le Principe immuable” is the most contemplative of all the tracks on the album and it lasts for more than sixteen minutes allowing for total submersion in the music. The finale does not end with a bang but rather on a very gentle note as His Divine Grace coaxes an incredible amount of sentiment, reflection and emotion from some of the simplest musical elements ever applied. Oscillating notes tepidly induce a spell that closes the album with brilliance and delicacy.
His Divine Grace is the type of electronic music that I covet. Grounded in industrial and ambient music His Divine Grace expertly melds his industrial musicl foundation with the openness of experimental composition. Each song is like a living entity, some transcendent and others primal and raw. Le Grand Secret sees His Divine Grace come to full fruition as he seizes upon literary figures deserving of his creativity. Le Grand Secret is an awesome display of imagination and musical surrealism and I highly recommend the album to those seeking to revel in previously undiscovered musical domains. Those who like bands like Propergol, Tordoih, Dusk Of Hope, and other promising dark filmic ambient music are encouraged to check out Le Grand Secret." [Malahki Thorn / Heathen Harvest]
€6.00
Zahir
Hiss is an improvisational quartet made up of one Englishman and three Norwegians with an instrumental line-up that is unremarkable enough, but with a sound that is fairly unique. Keyboardist/electronicist Pat Thomas is a veteran of the British free improv scene while guitarist Ivar Grydeland, bassist Tonny Kluften and percussionist Ingar Zach -- though the latter three are younger -- are mainstays of the Norwegian free jazz and improv cultures. The reasoning behind the Arabic-sounding track titles remains obscure. The music herein has some of the spikiness and general clamor associated with the post-SME scene in England, and leavened with allusions to contemporary electronica and even a tinge of rock-based fills. One might even be able to pick up the slightest influence of the very early Jan Garbarek groups: Grydeland sometimes brings to mind Terje Rypdal at his most extreme. Had the latter (a Norwegian saxophonist) stayed true to the aesthetic displayed in albums like Sart and Afric Pepperbird, it's just possible he might have been creating music like Hiss in 2002! For all their abstractions, the pieces hover in more of a free jazz vein than a non-idiomatic one. Though there are no solos per se; there is very much a sense of four individuals playing with less regard for the overall group sound than with creating a ruckus: a goal they reach often enough to make the album a fairly successful, noisy joyride. Listeners familiar with Company Weeks of the past, or the music produced along the Derek Bailey/Barry Guy/Evan Parker axis over the last several decades, may find nothing terribly groundbreaking here (though the title cut edges into intriguing territory). But overall it's a solid effort; very clearly recorded; that pays its own dividends.
€6.00
Teshuvah
"TWO BLOKES FINDING SOUND IN THE MIDST OF
A Sort of Macrocosm
Insufferable and absurd. But, what else to expect? Because we are (imagine ourselves to be?) sentient, or rather, due to the manner in which western "civilization", an infectious disease which has managed to inculcate almost every indigenous culture on the planet, has manifested this sentience, we are an utterly disingenuous species. Our actions, in one way or another, are, for the most part (exclusively?) unintentional manifestations of what lurks beneath; unacknowledged, suppressed, repressed, willfully unknown. Our behavioral watchwords? Rationalization and justification. Why? Well, fear of course, Knowing we will cease to exist, or, perhaps more accurately, lacking the ability to fathom the eternal (or what we imagine it to be), we turn to so-called power, material wealth, fame and the like as pathetically meagre compensation. Now, there are those who would, in the current lexicon, argue that "it's all good", which is nothing but a rephrasing of essential tenets found in any number of belief systems/philosophies. And while there is no doubt that truly existing in the eternity of every moment, to treat what we generally separate into "good" or "bad"/ "positive" or "negative", as nothing but unified energy of which we are simply a part -- to, in other words, maintain a sense of calm and "being" regardless of life's circumstances -- would likely be ideal, or close to it. But, given the essence of humanity's overall conditioning and wiring, this state is, sadly, more or less impossible to attain, never mind sustain. Not to say that it isn't worth considering and attempting. But, in the meantime, let's drop the pretense; the state of the world -- inner and outer -- makes it clear that it is not all good, and to excuse our behavior is to propagate the missteps that personify humanity.
Certainly A Microcosm
Social gatherings are all, to one degree or another, insufferable and absurd. Fraught with rampant hidden agendas and their manifestations -- positioning (hierarchal maneuvering) and networking (careerism) -- and underscored by insecurity and thinly veiled desperation (a bit thicker for those with truly sociopathic tendencies), how could they be otherwise? And, having such a gathering in the name of "art" only compounds the unbearableness, because the meaningful realization of the creative impulse should have at least something to do with transcendence. Not "transcendence" as a marketing tool or an image mongering label, but transcendence. So, when a local academy hosted yet another insular affair -- in this case, a "festival of electronic music and arts" -- wherein the invitees ranged from graduate students to out-of-town guests (underwritten by their own academies to come and display their wares; that is to say, add yet another line to their curriculum vitaes), the resultant lack of transcendence can hardly come as a surprise. And, indeed, just on the surface, there's abundant evidence as to how brilliantly this event works at cross purposes. First, it's centered around technology, which, these days, as one knows, means lap top gimmickry (and slow downloads). Second, there's a preponderance of hackneyed and merciless expropriation of indigenous musics, a clear sign of wrong-headed political correctness. Third, as part of ever elusive "audience development", there is much pandering to rock/pop influences. Fourth, the programming style is all pastiche -- a little of this, a little of that -- catering to short attention spans. (And, do I need to mention how the curator and others high in the food chain, get to present their work in the better, more prestigious venues? I thought not.) In all, it's fascinating how an event so concerned with creativity is, for the most part, so utterly bereft of same.
Tim and I first met when he came to town with Konk Pack (a trio which also includes Roger Turner and Thomas Lehn) in the fall of 2007. In addition to playing a duo set with Roger that evening, I had served as a middle man of sorts in setting up the gig, which, due to the curator dropping the ball vis a vis communications, almost didn't happen. (And, even when it did, the evening itself was filled with an assortment of additional miscues, which Tim -- the group's de facto "tour manger " -- and I handled well, and, perhaps more importantly, with good humor.) Tim and I didn't talk a lot that evening or at brunch the next day, but, as evidenced by our on-the-spot problem solving and the exchanges we did have, there was an obvious overlapping of sensibilities and interests. Evidently, Tim thought so too. I was, however, surprised and amused when Tim let me know he was returning to participate in this, as we say in the states, "dog and pony" show (i.e., an empty showcase). (That he was a member of an ensemble not playing his music -- a hired hand, so to speak -- mitigated my surprise.) In his e-mail he expressed an interest in finding some time to hang out amongst the rehearsals and performances. I countered by suggesting we get together to play. So, we elected to attempt both, but, naturally, given logistical concerns (schedules and transportation) the path to something simple was replete with small stumbling blocks. Enter filmmaker/videographer Mike Yaeger. Part of my unexpected and last minute middle man duties on Tim's previous visit was to find accommodations for Konk Pack. For several reasons, three people would have been a bit much at my place. Particularly in the light of Roger having opened his home to me for several days in 2003 while I was in England, his staying with me was a foregone conclusion. Fortunately, in an inspired moment, I remembered Mike had a long standing admiration for Tim's work. So, I contacted him about the possibility of Tim and Thomas spending the night at his house. Having met and had quite a long conversation with Tim the preceding year, Mike was delighted. This time around (late winter 2008), Tim had already alerted Mike to his return, but Mike was unaware that I had suggested our getting together to play. This prospect was especially exciting for him, because, in addition to his abiding respect for Tim's music, Mike has expressed a deep appreciation for my work as evidenced by his recurring bursts of support. (That a virodha bhakti -- devotion by defiance -- undercurrent informs our relationship is not surprising, as it is a recurring theme in my interpersonal dynamics.) He was, therefore, very keen on videotaping our session. And, because the audio on his camera is of mediocre quality, he suggested, no, almost insisted that I record it with my DAT equipment (consisting of a recorder, mixer and four microphones). I, on the other hand, just wanted to keep things simple and make some music. But, Mike, in his unbridled enthusiasm, can be extremely persuasive, and so we compromised. I'd record it, but with a basic stereo mike set-up.
Looking at the festival schedule, I noted the first day I was available to hear Tim, and made tentative arrangements to meet and go out with him and Mike. But that, of course, entailed the concerted effort of entering a domain that, despite my efforts to place occurrences in a broader context, nonetheless so irritates my nerve endings. Thus, with as much of an accepting attitude as I could muster, and keeping open the option that there just might, might be something of interest to hear (which, as it turns out there was, but just barely), I entered the venue where Tim would be playing and, once inside the performing space proper, immediately detected the pervasive stench of heightened self-importance and the politics of music as, first and foremost, a career path. A sort of existential nausea washed over me. With a demeanor of subtle defiance, I found a place to sit as some vacant post-modern design-form morphed on the stage's screen. Within moments, I spotted an enthralled Mike, who, for all his perspicacious opinions concerning artistic endeavor, can, in certain circumstances, be quite a, shall we say, forgiving listener; and Viv Corringham, one of my regular collaborators, whom I mercilessly (and, if I may be so bold, justifiably) tease for regularly showing up at these sorts of affairs. (However, as she actually participated in this event the previous year, her presence was de rigueur. Moreover, given that Viv has a genuine arts degree, one readily recognizes the force of habit extending from a good indoctrination, er, education.) During breaks between pieces, and almost trembling with displeasure, I asked Mike when we could get out of there, phrasing it along the lines of, "When the fuck can we get out of here and get something to eat?". He seemed perplexed and annoyed, to the point where, a bit later, and subsequent to Tim and I having warmly reestablished contact, Mike indicated he wouldn't be able to give Tim a ride to the session on Saturday, because he didn't want to miss any of the concerts (and, additionally, would have his young daughter, Alice, in tow). With no other viable options, I said I'd fetch Tim and get him back afterwards. Slight tensions aside, the four of us decided to get together for a meal prior to to Tim's next appearance that evening. The dinner at a small Indian restaurant was lovely; the usual push-pull banter amongst new and old comrades (Viv having known Tim for quite some time). Naturally, a fair portion of the conversation centered around the event at hand. And while Mike would have loved to find an ally in Tim concerning positive aspects of the festival, Tim was having none of it, and even went so far as to regale us with some wonderful and revealing behind-the-scenes stories. As the evening went on, Mike, in particular, was concerned about getting to the next venue in time to get a seat. I was, of course, in no great hurry, never imagining, in the light of the afternoon event's modest audience, that the place would be filled to capacity. Much to my chagrin, however, that was indeed the case, perhaps in part because it was a smaller venue. (Despite his being a performer in the evening's second half, even Tim wasn't allowed entrance.) Thankfully, my companions forgave me for filibustering at the restaurant. And, as we were in good spirits, and the ushers a good audience for our persiflage, we enjoyed our time in the lobby. Expectedly, some people left during the interval, so there were more seats to be had. I stayed to hear Tim, and then beat a hasty retreat.
Encounter
Saturday. Mike bringing Tim after all. Cart the smaller drum kit upstairs. Set it up. Open the piano. Assemble the clarinet. Set up the recording equipment. And, naturally, wait. Chronicling via cell phone: delayed rehearsals, concerts predictably running late, the convolutions surrounding their finding a place for a quick meal before arriving, and Mike's ongoing "negotiations" with Alice. Having a sense as to when Tim had to be back "on the job", I started thinking we'd have no time to play at all. Another call, they're almost here. Arrival. Mike and Tim set up their equipment, and, given the time constraints, we eschew a sound check. Then, without a word, the music starts. Now, if I may back up a moment. Previous to his hearing me play clarinets with Roger the year before, Tim knew fuck-all about my music. And my exposure to his work was limited; the early progressive/art rock, the raucous, improvised environs of Konk Pack (which didn't involve much woodwind playing), and the frugal bursts characterizing his contributions to the festival. So my expectations (like assumptions, a tricky business) were of a spare, lyrically-tinged aesthetic, perhaps informed by some "noisy" eruptions. But, when Tim put his horn to his mouth, it was all technically sharp, inventive fire. And I was delighted, as much for the music that was there, that moment, and to come, as for the fact that my expectations had been wonderfully circumvented. Improvisation. My lifework.
Acknowledgments
Mike, thanks very much for all your help, and, particularly for suggesting, er, insisting that I record the session.
(And, thank you to Kevin Cosgrove, whose serendipitous mentioning the word "renunciant" in a conversation just after my having essentially finished these notes, brought the track titles into focus.)
-- © milo fine (july 2008) " [label info / credits]
www.rossbin.com
" 'Teshuvah' reflects a first meeting between of two experienced veteran improvisors: Tim Hodgkinson (Henry Cow, Konk Pack, etc.) and Milo Fine. The career of Fine goes back to 1969 when he started The Milo Fine Free Jazz Ensemble. Throughout his career he was dedicated to free improvised music. I guess both gentlemen are more or less of the same age. Also Hodgkinson has a longlasting relation with free improvisation, as it was already part of the Henry Cow. They combined rock and free improvisation. In the last few years Hodgkinson tours regularly with his trio Konk Pack (Roger Turner, Thomas Lehn). During a concert in Minnesota he met Fine and the idea for a duo-session came up. It was realized in Fine's home, on a day in march 2008. Two long extended and one short improvisation made it to the CD that has Fine playing piano, drums, b flat clarinet and voice and Hodgkinson on b flat clarinet. While listening one feels the joy they had in their fabulous interactions. Never a dull moment during these sparkling, catch-me-while-you-can improvisations" [DM / Vital Weekly]
€12.00
Aare am Marzilibad
Das kleine aber feine belgische Label EREWHON meldet sich mit zwei Releases zurück (die zweite VÖ ist die ERIC CORDIER CD), und einem neuen Namen für uns: MANU HOLTERBACH führt uns ins innere einer Flasche, die durch einen Fluss treibt; eine eigene Mikro-Welt von flüsterndem Rauschen, ans Glas stossenden Luftblasen & Aussengeräuschen... faszinierend ! „Für 18 Minuten teilt man die Audiosphere mit einer Forelle“ [Bad Alchemy].
“Manu Holterbach is a young French sound artist who proposes his many-faceted talents since already more than 10 years. He invents new instruments, spatialization devices and mutant loudspeakers that were showed around the world in diverse installations and performances, in solo or in collaboration with a.o. Sophie Durand, Pierre Berthet, Jean-François Laporte, David Maranha. You can listen to his beautifull "verres enharmoniques" instruments on his highly acclaimed CD recently released on cloudmirror, and to "parenthèses flottantes" a piece freely available online on Happy New Ears (look for the www.creaties link). He is actually working on a biography of the French composer Eliane Radigue. Manu also composes pieces realized with natural and industrial environmental sound recordings, like the one we proudly propose on erewhon, Aare am Marzilibad.
This piece realized in 2003 is a ready-made recording of a Swiss choppy river, the Aare, done with a microphone hermetically locked into a bottle. What you can hear is the sound of thousands of pebbles that knock together in the powerful stream. It illustrates perfectly Manu's focus on microscopic events and fragility.” [label description]
“Manu Holterbach, inventor of the electronic glasses (see Vital Weekly 472), works also with spatialization devices and mutant loudspeakers, but also installations and performances. For the piece presented on this miniCD, he locked a microphone hermetically in a bottle. He threw the bottle in a Swiss river, the Aare, and made this recording. If you open a bottle of some drink with bubbles, you might be fascinated at the sounds of the bubbles escaping. The first half of this piece sounds a bit similar, but if you listen carefully you can also hear voices from aside of the river. But they are far away, and as the piece progresses, they become louder. Perhaps the bottle washed ashore? It's a pretty single-minded concept that however works out very well. It's a beauty to listen to. Somewhere between highly filtered rain sounds and opening the next beer can.” [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€7.00
Field Rituals
" 'Field Rituals' is the first solo album to come from Koen Holtkamp, an artist probably better known as one half of ambient duo Mountains. Based in Brooklyn, Koen created the album slowly and as a love letter of sorts, taking in delicate field recordings and using them like faded photos representing his distinct memories of the people and places he chanced upon. Some may have heard the incredible ‚Make Haste’ which appeared on limited edition vinyl earlier in the year, but this was only a taste of what Koen has to offer on ’Field Rituals’.
Taking cues from the classic ambience of Brian Eno and fusing it with the instrumental subtlety of Sweden’s Tape, Koen has come up with an aural book on his subject matter. Each track feels entwined in the next and feels like a part of something much bigger. Sure we’ve heard field recordings, synthesizers and guitars before but rarely have these instruments been injected with such a lightness of touch and with such a delicate open ear. Each listen reveals more, like peeling back layers of onion skin – take the album’s epic centrepiece ’Sky Flowers’ for example, which blends slow-moving synthesizers with good-natured environmental recordings and shimmering strings. The result is explosive somehow, with the grandeur more usually exploited by Arvo Part being framed with a distant electronic ambience.
The slow-burning pace is probably the single most important facet and reveals an artist at ease with his musical choices, something unusual in a genre brimming with young hopefuls. A good comparison might be Stars of the Lid, but Koen’s music is more organic and more humble somewhat than the ex-Texan duo. In the end we are just proud that Koen has allowed us a look into this most personal of works." [label info]
"Here be the first full length album from Mountains-man Koen Holtkamp. You may recall we got in (and sold out) his contribution to
the A Room Forever series of LPs commissioning artists to match a field recording on one side with a sympathetic composition on the other. Where his offering there was a dark-hued, ominous crescendo of crackled drone sourced from acoustic guitar, Field Rituals has its
head in the clouds. Holtkamp begins the album with a lovely round of brightly rendered acoustic guitar finger picking with some tricked out ring modulation effects giving each of the tones a sun-flecked glow and funhouse mirror curvature. Sustained drones from loops of melodica and harmonica mutate into an ersatz harmonium with the soaring overtones and sweeping fluctuations of tonalities gently crashing into each other. The loops every once in a while coalesce into a rhythmic underbelly, but mostly they settle as a effervescent bubbling of overlapping delay patterns and softly shimmered ambience. On top of all of this, Holtkamp dapples everything with his shimmered guitar and occasional crackles of tactile objects (he mentions water, seeds, ice, and paper) as well as field recordings of giggly children romping in a playground. The effect is somewhere between the immaculate pieces from Keith Fullerton Whitman's recordings and the bright-eyed naturalist
wonder of the Jewelled Antler camp. Really gorgeous stuff from the ever impressive Type label." [Aquarius Records review]
www.typerecords.com
€16.00
Make Haste / Free Birds
"Third volume to be released in this amazing new series. Koen Holtkamp is from Brooklyn, NY and runs the Apestaartje label and records as one half off the group Mountains. "Room Forever. Concept and art direction by Joshua Zucker. Photography by Kurt Mangum. A Room Forever is an art project realized as a curated series of limited edition 12" record LPs. Packaged in a custom-made box with high quality digital C-print covers and letterpressed inserts, each record features an original musical composition on one side and a field recording on the other. Pressed in one-time editions of 300, A Room Forever takes a unique and personal approach to the vinyl record LP. Conceived as a physical manifestation of the Roadside Picnic Radio podcast, the project draws upon the rich history and mythologies of audio recording to produce a final object of art that will resonate uniquely within each listener. More than anything, A Room Forever is inherently about the act of listening."
Please note that these records are cut at the Dubplates & Mastering lab in Germany and are
designed to be played at 45 r.p.m.
[label info]
www.aroomforever.com
€28.00
same
"Hototogisu -- the duo of UK experimentalist Matthew Bower (Skullflower/Sunroof et al.) and New York-based-guitarist Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards/Zaimph/GHQ) -- are all about impact, about taking the physical aspect of sound and hallucinating it to the point of abstraction, so much so, that for all of the complexity of their music, it often sounds like it's standing still, simply hanging in the air and vibrating without anything approaching a 'plot' to bring it to a point. By contrast, Burning Star Core, the trio of drummer Trevor Tremaine, Robert Beatty on electronics (both of whom also play in Hair Police alongside Mike Connelly of Wolf Eyes) and C. Spencer Yeh on violin and electronics, are more overtly propulsive, usurping 'classic' rock form via electronics and drums, but still focused on momentum, on the jam as a form of structural gravity, on the unfolding of action via development over time. This all-improvised studio meeting is the perfect reconciliation of both tendencies, of Hototogisu's obsessive layering of strata after strata of violently-conceived noise and of Burning Star Core's epic, post-Kraut thunder-punk style. Bower has long been on record about his opposition to anything approaching 'dialogue' in improvised music, favoring a senses-devouring simultaneity over anything that might pass for actual exchange, so it's no surprise that there is little on this new record that sounds even close to conventionally-improvised music. Instead, it feels more focused towards the zone where energy begins to spontaneously birth form, where the monomaniacal pursuit of the nowhere zone bears fruit in the shape of a music that transcends its constituent parts while being totally based around -- and rooted in -- the individual response to the moment. BXC play it ginchy and garage-pop right from the start, simultaneously inverting and amplifying Bower and Bassett's vertical constructs with drums that sound like they might have been lifted straight from the most flower-power parts of the Silver Apples' back catalog and bass patterns that are as tactile and rock-anchored as Can's Holger Czukay. To hear Hototogisu's music given this kind of injection of dynamic energy makes them seem more obviously sourced in 'classic' rock music than you might otherwise have guessed, with a dense, implosive sound that feels like a hyper-distilled take on all of rock's most outlaw aspects, the feedback that makes you feel like you could explode in a ball of electricity, the anti-gravity effect of heavy fuzz, the seductive, alien tongues. It's certainly the most 'garage band' side that either of the groups have cut to date, albeit in the form of a Gnostic, post-acid re-think where the vibration is more important than the outer forms, where energized enthusiasm makes for a more fundamental guiding principle than verse/chorus/verse and where the only direction left is out. Which is another way of saying it feels genuinely bad-ass. In an era where even the best groups seem polite, pro, participatory, democratic, this is music that is disregarding in its overwhelming power, exhilarating in its irresponsible spontaneity. And in an underground scene where self-conscious notions of avant-garde and 'free improvisation' have long displaced any concept of an intuitive rocks-off style, well, it feels like a re-connection to the source. So file this one closer to Kill City or Sticky Fingers than Persian Surgery Dervishes or The Black Album and feel the gravity of your whole record collection shift." [David Keenan, Glasgow, November 2008]
€15.00
Means without Ends
Für Fans des ultra-langsamen Noise-Rocks a la SWANS, GODFLESH, etc. kommen HUMAN QUENA ORCHESTRA genau richtig! Ihr Slow-Drone-Noise aus herrlich verzerrten & scheppernden Snare-Drums, entmenschlichtem Schreigesang & dunkel Noise-Flächen klingt unfassbar abgründig & visionär, wie ein letzter Aufschrei vor dem Untergang.
"Various permutations of this disc have been floating around for a while, each in various states of completeness, but every one we'd heard sounded even better than the last. But this is the one, the final, finished product. The long in the works Human Quena Orchestra, the work of Ryan Unks, formerly of techgrind combo Creation Is Crucifixion, but don't be expecting grind, or even technicality, this all the way on the other side of the spectrum. Abject, filthy, pummeling, slow motion noise drenched doom. A plodding sonic monster, guitars, not just distorted, but treated and twisted into harsh, skin scraping, caustic slabs of sinister sound, a low end so thick, it's like dunking your head in a cement mixer, insane sounding drums, each snare crack like the recording of a million breaking windows, each kick drum the sound of a slowed down car wreck. And beneath it all, thick swells of black ambience, drifting and slithering, pulsing and swelling. A lurching, stumbling
blackened doom dirge behemoth.
Think Swans, Godflesh, Pitchshifter, that sort of machinelike apocalyptic industrial pound, mixed with some funereal ultra doom a
la Moss, Bunkur, etc., but filtered through a druggy psychedelia, with a minimal shimmery drone bent, that ends up sounding like a way
more brutal, way more harsh, tripped out, psychedelic, industrial version of Jesu, that sort of blissed out sun baked vibe, but as if
played by some misanthropic black metal horde, harsh blackened vocals, shrieking hysterically and growling demonically over the relentless amp melting metallic trudge. Every track is rife with layer after layer of undulating low end. Like being tossed about on a stormy sea, but instead of water, it's an endless expanse of roiling black sound waves, rumbling drones, and thick snarled streaks of throbbing bass.
The magic Of Unks' Human Quena Orchestra though is that this hellish harshness is balanced with a nearly equal amount of
meditative ambience, long stretches of deep shimmer, and even some of the harshest tracks are tempered by the swirling low end drift
lurking beneath. So brutally gorgeous.
Definitely essential listening for fans of all the above mentioned outfits, as well as Monarch, Nadja, the Angelic Process, Fear Falls Burning, Skullflower, Abruptum, Monument Of Urns, Trollmann, Khanate, The Body and all our favorite purveyors of crumbling downtuned beauty and dreamy damaged doom.
Packaged in a gorgeous hand screened multiple panel fold over sleeve with super striking ADD style microscopic super detailed artwork." [Aquarius Records]
label-website: www.daftalliance.com
€13.00
The Politics of the Irredeemable
Instrumental Apocalyptic Doom Ambience! Musik von erdrückender Intensität & urwüchsiger Kraft! Heftige Gitarren-Drones, wuchtige ultralangsame Pulses, Schreie, Noise... So brutal wie wunderschön. Gehört mit zum intensivsten, was es im Bereich "Industrial-Rock" der schleppend-zermahlenden Sorte zur Zeit gibt, natürlich muss man an alte SWANS denken, aktuell fällt uns sonst nur noch TRANSITIONAL, KHANATE oder BUNKUR ein. Das zweite Album!
"Ein bisschen Fantasie vorausgesetzt, stelle man sich folgendes Szenario vor: NAPALM DEATH wären keine Grindcore-, sondern eine Black-Metal-Band, und als Justin Broadrick sie 1986 verließ, um dann GODFLESH zu gründen, hätte er neben Industrial, Noise und Ambient eben auch einen Teil Black Metal in sein Projekt gebracht, aber mit dem Wissen, wie sich so etwas eben 2009 anhören müsste. Ein alberner Vergleich vielleicht, aber das aus Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania stammende Duo HUMAN QUENA ORCHESTRA schafft es mit seinem zweiten Album, eine ähnlich bedrückende Atmosphäre aufzubauen, wie es einst GODFLESH konnten und das eben mit ganz ähnlichen, aber noch heftigeren Mitteln, denn auf einen nachvollziehbaren Rhythmus und eine Songstruktur muss man verzichten. Eine den Songs als Fundament dienende Geräuschkulisse, darüber Schreie, Noisefetzen und ein sich ständig wiederholendes brutales Riff, das nur alle zehn Sekunden zusammen mit einem Drumschlag auftaucht: „The Politics Of The Irredeemable" ist statisch und undynamisch, wie eine massive, undurchdringliche Wand, die so dunkel, hoch und breit ist, dass du ihre Dimensionen nicht abschätzen kannst." [André Bohnensack, OX-Fanzine]
"Human Quena Orchestra first took shape as a solo project from Ryan Unks, who had previously played guitar in the final lineup of the Pittsburgh metal band Creation Is Crucifixion. After moving from CIC, Unks began to work on a new project that would incorporate elements of black metal, crushing drone music, extreme psychotropic noise and psychedelic/krautrock influences into a sound that would be much heavier any of his previous projects. The first album from Human Quena Orchestra was released in 2007 on Daft Alliance; Means Without Ends was a disturbing, introspective slab of blackened industrial doom that stood out in stark contrast from the rest of the slow n' low extreme doom scene, utilizing layers of harsh textured distortion and electronics to create a caustic form of monstrous doom that shared as much of industrial music's cold, machine-like aesthetic as it did the ultra-slow riffage of the most extreme variants of doom metal. At the same time that the bands debut was taking shape, Unks was joined by another former member of Creation Is Crucifixion, Nathan Berlinguette (who was also a member of the dark ambient project M.Kourie and the deathdrone duo 5/5/2000). With the addition of Berlinguette's skilled application of dark ambience and expansive soundscapes, Human Quena Orchestra began to move into even more textured territory which has culminated with the second HQO full-length, The Politics of the Irredeemable, a series of apocalyptic visions and epiphanies of endtime realization, prophetic screeds that look to a future rendered pustulent and war-stricken by the failed machinations of the human race, presented as six chapters that enter your consciousness through a delivery system of extreme industrial dread. The Politics of the Irredeemable is crushing and oppressive, a crawl through abstract fields of low-end sound that move from punishing blasts of ultra-heavy machine-doom and earth-shaking tectonic riffs, to thick fogs of black electronic ambience that shimmer with subsonic pulses and celestial drones, the presence of malevolent electricity crackling in the air around the lumbering, nightmarish electro-sludge monstrosity of the Human Quena Orchestra. And at the same time, there are passages of immense beauty on this album that lurk at the peripheries of HQO's malevolent crush; the track "Aspirations" for instance, where pummeling slow-motion industrial percussions grinds in an infinite loop beneath a swirling nightsky of kosmiche synthesizers and heavenly, blissed-out ambience, the drums becoming like distant mortar blasts heard over the horizon as terrified screams ring out and stars fall dead from the skies. Total deathmachine grind ambience. The CD is packaged in a heavy gatefold jacket with murky, dismal images of blasted city streets and torched monuments, with lyrics and quotations relevant to the apocalyptic themes on the album printed on the inside jacket. Comes with three 1" color buttons featuring artwork from the album." [label info]
www.Crucialblast.net
€12.00
For the middle class
Sehr schwungvoll-polyperkussive Instrumental-Melangen dieses norwegischen Ensemble, absolut hörenswert !
"Die drei Musiker von HUNTSVILLE - Ivar Grydeland, Tonny Kluften und Ingar Zach - stammen allesamt aus Norwegen. Grydeland und Zach gründeten zusammen das Sofa Label für improvisierte Musik und tauchten schon zusammen in ebenso unzähligen wie vielfältigen Gruppen wie dem Improvisations-Ensemble NO SPAGHETTI EDITION oder gemeinsam mit dem britischen Keyboarder Pat Thomas im Quartett HISS auf. Die Tatsache, dass alle Mitglieder von HUNTSVILLE Multiinstrumentalisten sind, zeigt, dass die Band um Lichtjahre von einem konventionellen Trio mit Gitarre, Bass und Drums entfernt ist. Grydeland mischt akustische und elektrische Gitarre und am Banjo mit Fingerpickung, verschiedenen Bögen und obskuren Effektgeräten. Ebenso benutzt Kluften am Bass unterschiedliche Bögen, Stöcke und Gummibänder, während Zach dies mit den diversesten Klängen seines Drumkits untermalt. Am Ende ist es ganz unmöglich, herauszufinden, wer welches bizarre Geräusch zu Tage gefördert hat. HUNTSVILLE treiben den polyrhythmischen Zugang, wie ihn ORNETTE COLEMAN bei "Lonely Woman" kultiviert hat, auf neue Höhen. Verschiedene Tempi der Instrumente konkurrieren miteinander und kommen am Ende der Reise doch als homogenes Ganzes im Gehör des Zeugen an. //
_This is the debut release for Norwegian trio Huntsville. Huntville are Ivar Grydeland, (guitars, banjo, pedal steel guitar, etc.) Tonny Kluften (double bass, etc.) and Ingar Zach (percussion, tabla machine, sarangi box, shruti box, etc.) Grydeland and Zach founded the Sofa label for improvised music in 2000 and appear together in various projects on several of the label's releases. They have worked with Kluften since 1998, as the core of improvising ensemble No Spaghetti Edition and in the quartet HISS with British keyboardist Pat Thomas. The HISS CD from 2003, Zahir, shows the group's intense application of so-called free improvisation. The Huntsville project contrasts sharply with their earlier work, and this release reveals a quite different, more groove-based approach with strong elements of composition. Zach comments, "... during the last two or three years, our interest in country music and electronic music has developed into a sound we really wanted to investigate -- also Feldman and Cage, drone music, folk music..." The group's multi-instrumentalism means that this is no conventional guitar-bass-drums trio. On acoustic and electric guitar as well as banjo, Grydeland mixes finger-picking techniques with various types of bow, as well as acoustic and electronic devices. Tonny Kluften on double-bass uses various bows, sticks and rubber bands, while Zach produces a wide range of sounds on drum kit. They make striking use of a marvelous polyrhythmic approach pioneered by Ornette Coleman on "Lonely Woman," and Zach's locomotive groove is contrasted by the free tempo of plangent, folk-like acoustic guitar, in a kind of fractured descendent of the railroad blues. Alternately, the drums set up a tight and furious high-tempo, with the other instruments either at a slower tempo, or out of tempo completely. When the group lowers the energy levels, soft arpeggios on acoustic guitar are heard against percussive objects and a lone, rather erratic bass drum -- these effects are spare, haunting and quite beautiful. For The Middle Class displays a genuinely musical use of unexpected sounds and textures, allied with echoes of traditional genres in a radical new conceptual language." [press release]
"Pretty incredible long-player by the Norwegian trio of Ivar Grydeland, Tonny Kluften and Ingar Zach, who’ve long been involved with the free improvisation world already documented by Grydeland’s Sofa label on a number of releases since 2000. Here, however, they utilise all manner of instruments from guitars, double bass, banjo, tabla machine and various others originating from India to explore a more recent interest in drone, country, folk and electronic music. Opening song, ‘The Appearance of a Wise Child’, tethered to around 15 mins worth of driving, hypnotic percussion and snatching some random vocals along the way, largely sets the tone for the remainder of the release. Organic textures snake around each other, rhythms staple everything to that juncture where everything points to an apex of unadulterated ecstasy, and discernible ur-strums combine with frenetic bows and scrapes for that only too important raw effect so hard to find in this day of software-generated sterilisation. Only second track, ‘Serious Like a Pope’ loses its grip slightly as the pace is whittled back to a near Fahey-esque approach rendered better on fourth and final cut, ‘Melon’, which furnishes us with a comparatively stripped and gentle touchdown to the proceedings. Nonetheless, Huntsville sound like their experience within such realms of music is paying off. The product of people who know their game without having let their imagination or yearning to voyage to new places suffer. Fucken dandy in my book, I have to concede." [RJ, Adverse Effect]
€10.00
Ritual Anthology
Aufnahmen von 1986-1993 von der belgischen Ethno / Ritual / Industrial-Band, welche eindrucksvoll ihren mal verträumt-mysteriösen, mal magisch-beschwörenden, meist perkussiven Stil präsentiert. Über die Hälfte der Stücke ist unveröffentlicht. Ziel dieser Musik ist die Erzeugung von Trance, welche den Zugang zu im Alltag schwer zugänglichen Bewusstseinszuständen möglich macht. Kommt im edlen schwarz-gold bedruckten Papp-Ausklapp-Cover.
"With this CD Aquarellist is proud to present the anthology of early ritual works of this fabulous Belgian project. This music immerses the listener into the space of RITUAL - the magical action aimed to reach the goals beyond the borders of the ordinary world. An action evoking deeper layers of consciousness, deeper memories not active in our everyday life. An action that helps to reveal our potential as powerful and miraculous creatures.
Hybryds present their visions of rituals in the form of rhythmical compositions built on repetitive percussive loops crowned with layers of numerous archaic instruments, aided by vocal spells and atmospheric soundscapes with minor electronic additions.
This material was recorded in 1986-1993 by Magthea & Yasnaia with the help of their friends: Ah Cama Sotz, Djen Ajakan Shean, Vidna Obmana, Clive Richards, Irae Deprofundo and Bobby Colombo. Three tracks from this CD were previously released on "The Rhythm Of The Ritual" CD (Charnel Music, 1994), one track was released as "The Ritual Should Be Kept Alive - Part 1" CD EP (3RIOART, 1991), and three other tracks are released here for the first time.
CD, limited edition of 600 in digipak from a corrugated cardboard, picture it is executed by a method of silk-screen printing
1- For the Nameless one
2- El Caballo
3- Je suis la premiere
4- Call for the Touareg
5- Fallen Angels
6- The ritual should be kept alive - part 1
7- The ritual should be kept alive - part 3
Recorded between 1986 and 1993.
Digital re-mastered 2009 by 3RIOART vzw from original material recorded on 4 track cassette and recordings live to DAT.
Credits:
Magthea,
Yasnaia,
Ah Cama Sotz,
Djen Ajakan S,
Vidna Obmana,
Clive Richards,
Irae Deprofundo,
Bobby Colombo.
Visit:
http://www.hybryds.com
http://users.telenet.be/3rioart/
Reviews:
http://maeror3.livejournal.com/80596.html"
[label info]
www.aquarellist.ru
€14.00
Mythical Music from the 21st Century
"This is the second volume in the ongoing series of Hybryds reissues on Zoharum and it coincides with the 30th anniversary of artistic work of Sandy Nys and company. "Mythical Music from the 21st Century", the first full Hybryds release, collects tracks recorded between 1983 and 1986 scattered on various compilations. Yet they form the first representation of their venture into the world of sonic rituals and magic. Their perspective on sound still has not been imitated or copied and even after 30 years they still sound fresh.
In the words of Sandy Nys:
The first recordings were made in 1983. During the next years more recordings and musical rituals were created with different people in different places. In this first release about 20 people were involved. The recordings were a field trip, a diary of my life. The recordings became a story. The mythical story of NaHeMa. Most of the songs were sent for compilations on independent labels, yet the complete story was released in 1986 for the first time as a cassette on 3RIORECORDINGS (there was also a very limited edition in a box of 30 copies with the Dream Machine building prints.) In 1990 it was re-released by Nuit et Brouillard (France) as a cassette in a small box. In 1998 a limited picture disc in an edition of 666 copies was released by Triton (Germany). This version is shorter than the cassette one. This new CD release contains extras: the unreleased live version of "Sacred Voices," performed live on Radio Centraal and an unreleased mix of "Octahedron" by the Alpha Project.
The album has been digitally remastered from the original stereo cassette master by none else but Sandy Nys, who also provided the cover based on the previous editions. This is the ritual music at its best. Now you can enjoy it in the best digital quality." [label info]
www.zoharum.com
€13.00
And the Void shall pierce their Eyes
"Debut album from this one man project from Greece, and a new entry into the Black Plague roster, fitting right in with label mates Sewer Goddess in its ability to create innately evil and impure sounds, integrating elements of doom metal, black metal, and dark experimentalism into the pure industrial horror that constitutes the majority of this release. The result is nothing short of absolute and abject dread; 8 tracks spanning an hour worth of material - an auditory overload that's completely immersive, and at times overwhelming, where heaving masses of percussive doom collide with shuddering machinery dirge, ghoulish and nightmarish ambience, torturous screams, and cinematic depravity, the sounds layered into a tangled and abstract tapestry of something completely epic and nearly majestic in its scale. Fans of Gnaw Their Tongues, Abruptum, and Necro Evangelicum era BDN will do well to wallow in the oozing blackness and unbridled malevolence Hypsiphrone has created. Lmtd 500 copies, in 6 panel." [label info]
www.malignantrecords.com
€12.00
From gOLDem flesh to silverb ONE
"After a long period of unavailability we are proud to release the third official release of I.corax ‘from gOLDem flesh to silverb ONE' through our Stellar Mansion series. The album was originally released by Blue Sector in 2003 and presents material created exclusively for a live performance, taking place at KMY's 5th year anniversary on 27th of September in Turku, Finland.
The album was recorded live in studio while rehearsing for the performance, and presents a natural combination of surreal synthetic noises and drones, analogue synthesizers, hypnotically looping samples and heavily manipulated field recordings spiced up with various horns made of animal bones, bowed instruments and occasional human whispers and words. This is a monolithic, hypnotic and all-encompassing work in a field of abstract and experimental Finnish dark ambience; transformative aural alchemy that will spiral deep within.
The album is enclosed inside a newly designed and silk-screen printed cardboard covers including three offset printed insert cards and a four panel booklet. Limited to 500 copies." [label info]
www.auralhypnox.com
"Der neue Geheimtip für Freunde ausserweltlich dunkler Musik: Dies ist extrem visionärer und tranciger dark ambient Industrial aus Finnland, vielerlei Schichten repetitiver Muster und Flächen werden aufgetürmt und zu einem umschlingenden Waberkorpus geformt... okkult und unheimlich...schon der dritte release auf BLUE SECTOR." [Drone Rec. 2004]
€13.00
Night Life
Sehr fruchtbare Zusammenarbeit in der Brombron-Serie: GIUSEPPE IELASI, Impro-Gitarrist aus Italien der auch das FRINGES Label betreibt, und der US-Amerikaner HOWARD STELZER, bekannt für seine "schwierigen" Tapemanipulationen und field recordings und ebenfalls Labelbetreiber (INTRANSITIVE RECORDS), kamen für einige Tage in Nijmegen im Extrapool-Studio zusammen.... so entstand "Night Life, wo low-fi noises der seltsamsten Art mit ruhigen Gitarren-pickings kontrastieren, oft bewegt sich die Musik im pulsierend-atmosphärischen Bereich aber mit stetiger Veränderung, cut-ups & nicht-alltägliche Konkret-sounds tauchen auf, sowie immer wieder Giuseppes ungewöhnliche Gitarrenarbeit, die sich kaum beschreiben lässt.....
"I am not sure wether the title of this disc refers to the time of recording, but if so the last track's title says it all: Losing our taste for the night life. I know for a fact that a Brombron project can mess up your daily rhythm pretty bad and that ending it feels almost as good as starting it. This disc by Ielasi and Stelzer has obviously had exactly the right amount of night time anyway. I have known and admired Howard Stelzer's work as tape jockey for quite some time now (aside of his activity as boss of the wonderful Intransitive Recordings), but Giuseppe Ielasi was a new name for me. He is a contemporary guitarist, using this instrument in all possible ways, but with a strong bias towards electronic manipulations. The result of this collaboration is absolutely fascinating: on one hand there are the harsh and explosive eruptions of Stelzer's tapes and on the other hand there are the more gentle and melodic guitar manipulations of Ielasi. This combination is truly excellent and invigorating. It has certainly been a while since I heard something this refreshing and exciting. I am not sure why this is; the use of sounds, the compositions, the tension, somehow everything just fits together so well that I am lost for words really. Simply beautiful and an absolute must!!!" [MR / Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Red One
"Please note: This release is packaged in hand stenciled 11” x 17” card type stock paper, folded, inserted into re-sealable plastic sleeves. There is no jewel case, tray card etc. There is a bar code.
After the last If, Bwana (Al Margolis) release on Pogus – the large-scale double cd E (and Sometimes Why), this brand new If, Bwana recording is a little more intimate. This release consists of six smaller works for one or at most two instruments – with the instruments all being multi-tracked for a denser, deeper sound.
Red One features performances by stalwart experimental/avant musician/composers such as Nate Wooley, trumpet, on Toys for Al (with Al Margolis on toy trumpet); Ellen Band’s vocals on Ellen, Banned; trombonist Monique Buzzarté on Xylo 2; bassoonist Leslie Ross on It is Bassoon; Lisa B Kelley, voice and Veronika Vitazkova, flute on Lisa Verabbit; and Al Margolis, toy trumpet on Toys for Nate.
To quote from Massimo Ricci’s Touching Extreme review of E (and Sometimes Why) - and an equally apt description here: “…enriching with a distinct human component – Al Margolis’ “academically improper” compositional conceptions. The ensuing music is intelligently awkward and typically difficult to categorize, barring the creation of a “Bwana” label: rich in disruptions yet engrossingly (and economically) minimalist at times, comprising twisted details that, in a general context of rationalism, increase the amount of question marks each and every time the discs are spun.”
This disc adds another chapter to the thirty-year journey of If, Bwana.
If, Bwana was born on New Year's Eve 1984, making music that has swung between fairly spontaneous studio constructions and more process-oriented composition. A recent review of Margolis's work says: "Let it be declared that Al Margolis/If, Bwana is some sort of evil genius working with raw materials which are never adapted to a genre or a context, because they create one in that very moment. Those sources are radically altered up to an utterly unrecognizable state, anarchic manifestations moving in compact determination." (Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes).
Al Margolis has been an activist in the 1980s American cassette underground through his cassette label Sound of Pig Music; was
co-founder of experimental music label Pogus Productions, which he continues to run. Active under the name If, Bwana since 1984, making music that has swung between fairly spontaneous studio constructions and more process-oriented composition."
https://www.pogus.com/21068.html
"And finally there is label boss Al Margolis with a new release as If, Bwana, his moniker since the mid 80s. His 'Red One' looks very much like some tape release he could have done in the 80s, with paint images sprayed on paper and a rather 80s design, but the music is all new. In each of the six pieces he works with sound material which he received from others, and all that has to do with 'air'. Nate Wooley plays trumpet, Margolis himself toy-trumpet (both in the first piece), Ellan Band uses her voice (second), Monique Buzzarte trombone (third), Leslie Ross (bassoon), Lisa B Kelley (voice) and Veronika Vitazkova on flute (fifth) and Margolis again on toy trumpet in the sixth piece. Margolis keeps his If, Bwana name for when it comes to using recordings for acoustic instruments and reworking them into lengthy pieces of drone like sound scapes. Taking the working method from Phill Niblock he cuts the sounds right before they start and right after they end, and then starts to layer them on the computer. He pitches some up, some down, and in some tracks in the musical program he cuts out parts, so have a start/stop feel, like some instruments only play part of the time, and others are in a more continuous mode. Thus clever modern classical music is made of a highly atmospheric chain. It's a technique If, Bwana has been using for years now, and he mastered it quite well. Not as controlled as Niblock himself does this, but the music is more playful - for instance in the two pieces that use voice, especially 'Lisa Verabbit' connects to the world of improvisation/free forms of classical music. It's different, playful, but perhaps not my most favorite of this disc. I'd rather settle 'Toys For Al' or 'It Is Bassoon', which it's controlled sustaining sounds and sounds dropping in and out in very gentle way. Another fine release with a nice, strange visual esthetic. Not the next new move, but a further investigation into what we already know." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€14.00
Surrender
"I've been releasing things outside of the internet (no part of it), and one of them has been "Surrender", the newest outing by Illusion of Safety. Daniel Burke has made a "remix overview" of this work, and I had to let the cat out of the bag. More information can be found at the video link, including the mail box where money orders/hidden cash is to be sent. Do check it out! The video is exceptional! I've been told some of the processes in making it, and it's nothing short of deftly inspired! $7 postage paid in the US. $12 elsewhere. Available in pro cassette and pro CDR format.
I haphazardly spurred Illusion of Safety back into live action in 2008 when I asked him to do a show with me at the Empty Bottle. From there, we were both asked to perform for WTII's monthly showcase at Darkroom, wherein this clown video material first surfaced, so it's a pleasure for me to release the nexus of a soundtrack to this imagery, coming full circle.
"Illusion of Safety, just passing its 30th year since inception, is often regarded as the innovator of "ambient industrial". Despite having traversed nearly every arena of the experimental milieu, performed prestigious fests all over the world, and collaborated with some of widest ranging and heaviest hitting of the avante garde, core member/founder Daniel Burke has both shown a return to form and a veritable bouquet of new frontiers in his most recent outing, "Surrender". In just under 60 minutes, the listener is taken on a dizzying carousel ride where everything but the kitchen sink is employed to weave a deeply personal (abstract, wordless) narrative that comes off as minimalistic, condensed, and bombastic. But at the same time, it is a constantly shifting, complex and ornate grid iron amalgam of genuine enthusiasm and horror. Recommended if you like a complete disregard for the myopic trappings and short sighted formulae of contemporary sound art today." [label info]
nopartofit.blogspot.de
"Somewhere, an old T-shirt from Illusion Of Safety exists (the last we saw was affixed to Sigtryggur from Stillupsteypa some 10 years ago) with a deadpan/ironic catch-phrase "Illusion Of Safety gives you that soaring feeling" next to an image of a man tumbling headfirst out of a skyscraper window. Such a calculated juxtaposition of word and image was emblematic of the '80s art world (e.g. Barbara Kruger), often speaking to the underbelly of callousness, cruelty, violence and general amorality within consumerist society. Outside of this bold piece of iconography, Illusion Of Safety has operated within a more liminal state of mysteriousness through signifier and meaning. Even in their most placid albums of soft-focus ambience, the specter of some unknowable threat lurks in the background. More common in the Illusion Of Safety catalogue is an iron-fisted grasp of that sense of foreboding and dread through psychologically tense sound design. Over three decades in existence, this Chicago based project has been whittled down to its core member Dan Burke - with a few comrades-in-arms joining him occasionally - and is probably the longest running American industrial project, having produced a very impressive body of work. The 2014 album Surrender fits comfortably next to some of the masterpieces of the IOS back catalogue (e.g. Cancer, In Session, Historical, etc.) through the trademarked juxtaposition of noxious frequencies snaking in and out of harmonic phase patterns only to snap out of existence with a razor-cut edit into an electrical burst of tesla coil noise (for example). Disjointed rhythms, mediated collages, decontextualized field recordings, and psychoacoustic phrases map this album with incredible control and precision. Illusion Of Safety proves once again that they are one of the greats of industrial culture. Grab this album before it disappears, the pro-duplicated cd-r is limited to just 100 copies. Same for the cassette." [Aquarius Records]
"Among the few artists I have been following what seems now to be a lifetime (Asmus Tietchens, Main, Organum), Illusion Of Safety is probably among them the band I saw play live most. Dan Burke, the main man, is a most loveable chap and he always surprises me with his next move. His music doesn't operate in any particular style, but overlaps various genres. Improvised, industrial, ambient, musique concrete, and even a bit of techno beat thrown in. Here's a new album that proofs it. It's called 'Surrender' (which word always reminds me of the Cheap Trick song) and on a label called No Part Of It, meaning they don't want to be part of the world of Internet. There is a website, but there catalogue is hand scribbled on a sheet of paper and the CDRs - professionally designed - can be bought with a money order. Yes! That's what I like. Swim against the tide. Music wise Illusion Of Safety does something we haven't seen him do in quite some time. The collage styled music in which lengthy chunks of sounds are suddenly cut away by voices from radio and TV, a techno beats slips into view and sounds remarkable like the early 90s works such as 'Historical', 'Inside Agitator' or 'Distraction'. Quiet at times, but also quite bombastic at other times, filmic but without too many words. And if we hear any, it's about nuclear waste leakage. In that sense this album also harks back to the post-industrial sound of yesteryear. The balance between the very quiet and the very loud, between the ambience and the beats, is maintained very well throughout this release. Daddy's all right: surrender!" [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€9.00
Pastoral
Illusion Of Safety - Pastoral
CD only, 200 copies, Korm Plastics
While Korm Plastics publishes books these days, this is a surprise CD only release. We sent him this demo in 2011 & we all forgot about it. Pastoral is a welcome edition to the catalog showcasing a less aggressive stance from the project, a more organic subdued presentation, sounds to make a clearing, & open space. The recordings history is a bit blurred now but it is very likely tracks 1, 2, 3, & 5 are Kurt Griesch and Daniel Burke, post 1995 tour work. Track four uses an instance of Reaktor 5 VCS-3 software emulation.
Illusion of Safety
Since 1983, Daniel Burke and his many conspirators under the Illusion Of Safety banner have over the course of 40+ full length releases traversed most every facet of the avant sound plane, from early industrial pop deconstruction to blindingly minimal sound art to densely surreal found-sound collage, each unique approach bending and reconstituting the expectations and possibilities of each realm, creating uneasy music that is dense and dystopian and yet also beautiful. Performing over 300 live concerts throughout Europe and the states included No Fun 2008, the Wroclaw Industrial Music Festival 2009, Sonic Circuits in 2010, with Shen Wei Dance Arts in 2011 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, and at the Crisis Data Transfer Pre-Party October 2023. Outside of IOS Burke has collaborated with Jim O’Rourke, Jon Mueller, Randy Greif, Darin Gray, Z’EV, Cheer-Accident, Thomas Dimuzio, Kevin Drumm, Bill Horist, and others.
https://kormdigitaal.bandcamp.com/album/pastoral
"I don't think it's a surprise that here at VWHQ, there is a person that likes Dan Burke's aka Illusion of Safety's output. Earlier this year, Korm Plastics (who said they'd never release music again) broke
the dry spell of releasing music by co-releasing the IoS/Z'ev collaboration on vinyl. Now they have a CD by Illusion of Safety. Combine that with a few other releases like Muziekkamer and the BOH Sampler, and those first words on the Korm website raise questions: 'Korm Plastics was a record label. These days, we publish books. About music.' Maybe Frans will explain it to me at some point.
But, back to what it is all about. Illusion of Safety / Dan Burke. It's a blind spot in my collection. I've seen him perform once in Aachen, but since that was something like 25 years ago, I really can't remember the details. So, it's Dan's recent output that I started to know and respect. And with this new album, "Pastoral", the concern is only getting stronger. Though I must say, it took me several listening sessions before it struck me at the right spots.
The five tracks with a total playing time of 58 minutes are hidden in serene packaging. Pictures of a morning or evening stroll in the countryside and the first sounds of "Invulnerable" are concrete staccato sounds. There was something wrong with the combination of those in my head. Still, as the track continued, field recordings started building a backing drone, and additional sounds formed the actual composition with a massive piano/guitar intermezzo, which has to be mentioned. All kinds of manipulated musical instruments create a flawless transition towards the second track entitled "Neolithic", and from here, it only gets better. Tracks 3 to 5 are droney soundscapes with a perfect balance between layers of minimal noise and drones and additional sounds projected on top of it. In total, 40 minutes of absolute poetic sounds. And there it struck me how I see Dan's music, in this release at least. Looking at the picture on the cover, you get an emotion, but zooming in on the picture, you can extrude air, sun, grass, sand, and a little forest in the back. And zooming in on the woods, you can see trees and then
branches... But zooming out, you get a 'walk in nature'... But what if you zoom out from there... "Thermogenesis", "Ground", and "Compelling" all cover a particular aspect of switching perspectives like this. At least, that's what I think.
Pastoral (noun): a work of literature portraying an idealized version of country life. For me, the first tracks are about escaping what's terrible, and the last three are about embracing what's good. The illusion of Safety presents in one album that you can't make just one of those choices (escape/embrace) and that the result is great if you follow your heart. (BW)
€12.00
Insects are
"The recording locations of this work are Nakanoshima Park, Tenjinbashi, Sakuranomiya Park in Osaka, Japan. There are rows of cherry trees, rivers, ponds, lotus flowers on swamps, boat dock, railroads, and small forests. I visit this place often. The expression is rich depending on the season. It was a very hot summer day in August 2020. I brought in a small recording set (digital recorder, tape recorder, etc.) and worked on the go. There are so many different creatures living there. Feel the sounds of birds, insects, fish, and trees. One does not hear them all, but many small insects kind of haunted the process.
(Masayuki Imanishi, 21 September 2020)
LOCATIONS : Nakanoshima Park, Tenjinbashi, Sakuranomiya Park, Osaka, Japan
Sound recordings made with PCM recorder, microphone, and tape recorder. Disassembled sound source reconstructed on PC.
Mixed, assembled, and mastered by Masayuki Imanishi in 2020.
Cover design, card & treatments by Daniel Crokaert.
Based exclusively on photos by Masayuki Imanishi.
https://unfathomless.bandcamp.com/album/insects-are
"Insects are: a rich and lush sound drone-noise universe in the heart of Osaka
Masayuki Imanishi, insects are, Belgium, Unfathomless, U69 CD (2021)
Burying your head in this rich and lush 40-minute soundscape of insect activity and the background noises of other creatures and Nature generally, you’d think you’d been transported to a nature reserve or a wilderness area where access is only via a mud track or walkways made by park rangers, or even a magical world hidden behind forest trees or beneath the ground you walk upon. As it turns out, all the sounds and noises here were recorded in parks in Osaka, the centre of Japan’s second largest metropolitan area with over 19 million people, by sound artist Masayuki Imanishi using a PCM recorder, microphone and tape recorder. Two of these parks, Nakanoshima Park and Sakuranomiya Park, are close to the city centre and run along riverbanks, and the sounds of water and waterfowl have been captured as well.
Perhaps the astonishing aspect of this work is that even though the parks where Imanishi made his recordings are right in the centre of Osaka, the huge majority of sounds appear natural and not man-made, though at the beginning of the work you can hear trains and typical urban traffic noises. Very little editing seems to have been done. Past its early moments, the noises of the urban environment merge completely into the sonic ambience of the park environments where the insects and other park fauna dominate. The insect noises can be very eerie and rhythmic. The sonic tapestry unwinds in such a way as to draw listeners deep into the worlds held in its threads, led by the crickets, cicadas and other chirping and humming insects. Bird noises and flutter later join the insect chorus but the two sets of animals never fight for dominance; rather their sounds complement one another and merge into a soundtrack of a universe that on the surface appears so familiar to us (urban park and forest) as to be banal yet at the same time hidden and secret when we start to investigate its depths. At some point in the recording (probably near the 30th minute), the insect drones start to resemble tiny UFOs simultaneously launching and landing in distant parts of the riverine parklands: the rich sounds that develop and appear to become ever more complex and spiralling into a point beyond infinity may well be the best part of this work.
Imanishi’s artistry is most apparent in the way he has structured this work so that it draws listeners deep into the micro-universes of Osaka’s urban parklands to reveal different layers of animal and plant life, each with their separate sounds yet all joining in a harmonious chorus of noise and drone that is dynamic and ever changing. These tiny worlds have always been present in Osaka, and perhaps in other cities around the world, if we were to pause in our daily routines and open our senses to the hidden universes around us. As the title of the recording says, insects are: they have been and always will be, if we listen to them and accept and respect them for what they are." [The Sound Projector]
€14.00
Arrival
Sixth album by Christoph Heemann and Timo van Luijk. Four years after Lost in Spice comes Arrival. An altar on the surface of the water is burning with flames. Behind it you can see a half of the Earth's globe, and on it there's a bright throne. A pale, translucent ruler wearing a crown sits in the throne. The globe is surrounded by a ball of shadows on which sits a larger dark ruler on a dark throne. Behind the globe are mountain peaks, and all of it is reflected in the water. Above the mountains are clouds which merge into rivers and end in a curved horizon on which forests stand, and the sun rises between them. Above this horizon is another sky with lunar crescents and comets. Above this sky are rows of angels bent over, above which the stars shine. The sun shines in the top left corner and the crescent moon in the right.
€23.00
The Nine Colours of the Threshold
"With the all new album after 9 years, Inade return with another work that indicates a codifying of their sound world full of mysterious design, unspoken secrets and dreams of ancient origin.
The immersive arrangements and haunting voices supported by crackling electronics painting a dark and earthly picture. Infinite eons have passed through the labyrinthine hierarchy of deep fusing drones, tectonic soundscapes, percussions and ritual instruments - sonically sculpturing of that which lies deeper than matter, time and space.
The intriguing tone colour on 'The Nine Colours Of The Threshold‘ is generally one of heroic majesty, a kind of epic intimacy, with light and sparkling fragments. It is the narrow, hidden tracks that lead back to our lost homeland, what contains the solution to the last mysteries is not the ugly scar that life´s rasp leaves on us, but the fine, almost invisible writing that is engraved on our body."
loki-found.bandcamp.com/album/the-nine-colours-of-the-threshold
€13.00
Rupa Loka
"The Rupa Loka, one of the hidden planes of existence beyond our own is the focus for this album, a serene world populated by beings more refined and evolved than ourselves. The album is a journey through this nature kingdom and incorporates soundscapes rich in flavour and diversity. The recordings were originally produced in 2009 and rediscovered and carefully reassembled and remastered in the process. The album comes in a jewelcase with a 12-page booklet depicting the realm of the Rupa Loka." [label info]
http://gterma.blogspot.se
"Indo‘s ‘Rupa Loka’ brings us back in 2011, actually it was recorded in 2009 so I guess this makes the record already pretty ancient in the context of our current times, when daily you are given access to countless records, either old or new. However, in your daily routine I hardly advise you to find your way to the first ever record, that the Swedish ambient label gterma has ever released. At first the record is striking you with its picturesque artwork, especially the amazing photographs in the inlay (which has actually already became signature for all gterma production). The whole art direction and the general concept of the record leaves a strong feeling for an Eastern cultural influence, but still this artistic decision is not over-imposed on the listener by any means.
What we have here is one very powerful and beautiful ambient record. Rupa Loka is soaked with meditative, slow and immense drones which are additionally embraced by fragile and delicate soundscapes. However, what makes this record truly special are the field recordings. The Hungarian musician Andras Kiss, who’s actually the person behind the ambient act Indo (as this is quite an overused monicker in music of all genres) didn’t capture anything you haven’t heard. His sounds are natural, familiar, not probably but certainly surrounding all of us in our daily lives, but he incorporated them with such a skill, that would surely make you a bit envious if you’re also producing music yourself. What is more important it will surely make you consider how much life, emotion and potential there is in the sound and ambiance of our everyday surrounding, but due to our mental simplicity we’ve accepted all of this perfection and endlessness for granted.
Rupa Loka is anything but a record for the simple minds, just like its Buddhist concept suggests its aim is to recreate a dimension, a form of existence inhabited by higher results of evolution. Quite a pretentious and tough aim, but so subtly approached that it leaves you smiling with satisfaction, when you realise the record really serves its purpose. This album is so alive and so organic, that at a certain point you forget that a human hand and mind initiated this impressive sound sculpture. I don’t need an artwork for this, neither track titles or a band project. I just need the CD carrying this art piece, which is interacting on way too too many levels with my personality, so by no means I can accept it as just another ambient record I got for the day. What a great start for a label! What a great artist statement!" [Angel S / Heathen Harvest]
€13.00
Drop-Out Center
" 'Drop-out Center' is the anniversary album of The Infant Cycle project celebrating 20 years of the personal creative journey of the Canadian musician Jim DeJong which began in November 1992 after leaving the band Mind Skelp-cher. During this time Jim has recorded and released a massive amount of material both on his own label The Ceiling and on other respectable underground labels such as EE Tapes, Drone Records, Afe Records, etc. and this is his second full-length album on CD after "The Sand Rays" (Diophantine Discs, 2009).
The album includes nine abstract compositions recorded with Jim's trademark approach. Using such sound sources as shortwave radio, vinyl surface, videotape, bird cage and also more "normal" instruments (bass guitar, electric mandolin, Korg Poly-800 synthesizer) he creates slowly drifting multilayered textures with sometimes unexpected stops and narration twists. Sharp crispy foreground sound is set off by gentle background waves of resonating feedbacks forming intelligent electroacoustic glitch / drone with scratchy tangibility, meditativeness and even a sort of romanticism. This is music that evokes imagination and easily paints images in the listener's mind... 'Turn on!' " [label info]
http://zhb.radionoise.ru
"Jim DeJong from Canada celebrates twenty years of activities as The Infant Cycle, during which he released a whole bunch of CDRs, net releases, a bit of vinyl and one 'real' CD on Diohantine Discs (see Vital Weekly 695), and now his second on Russia's Zhelezobeton, a home which sheltered also some previous releases by DeJong. All the pieces here are from April 2011 and further explore the sound world we know from DeJong over the past years. The cover explains the nature of sound sources, which makes a great read. On one side we have 'vinyl playout groove', 'video record', bird cage and shortwave, while on the other hand we have an electric guitar, electric mandolin, bass, poly 800 but also field recordings. Plenty to choose from, and he does put his options to good use. The varied options for sound creation lead to a varied sound, but with one constant factor: atmospherics play an important role in all of these pieces. He layers a whole bunch of sounds together and then carefully mixes these. But it not necessarily leads to mere drone music. In 'Shiny Venus Part 2' for instance he loops the strumming of a bass-guitar a few times and then other sounds (mandolin, bird cage, field recordings) drop in and out of the mix. When he uses the 'playout' grooves (which are those grooves at the end of a piece of vinyl), it becomes more rhythmical obviously but spiced up with electronics and sometimes remain short, these pieces act more like interludes, except for 'Pipe', which is considerable longer. These moody tunes are indeed much more than just drone pieces. It's the sheer variation, the exploration of sounds to create these atmospheric tunes that make this perhaps the most mature record I heard from The Infant Cycle so far. Excellent stuff indeed." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€12.00
Fragments of Night
"ingenting kollektiva members : diane granahan, kirston lightowler, tarrl lightowler, matthew swiezynski. edited and constructed by : diane granahan & matthew swiezynski (side a), kirston lightowler & tarrl lightowler, (side b). recorded in the drei gewsser barn, rain storm recording 25.12.2009 & drei gewsser studios 27.12.2009 & oiseaux invisibles studios, california 2011. instruments : bells, bowed tibetan prayer bowl, cello, field recordings, guitars, harmonium, loops, nightingale devise, portable 78 player (ravel's gaspard de la nuit, walter gieseking), psaltery, tenor sax, shakuhachi flute (watazumido-shuso). mastered by taylor deupree. the ingenting kollektiva is an homage to ingmar bergman and sven nykvist. fragments of night refers back 40 years to numerous recordings gathered around 25.12.2009 at drei wasser." [label info/credits]
" 'ingenting' translates from swedish as 'nothing', and this american collective draw inspiration from the cinematic master of nihilism, ingmar bergman, on their beautiful debut fragments of night. the two sprawling tracks dislocate the source material of guitar, bowls, psaltery, saxophone and field recordings through an organic crosshatching of delay and loop techniques. sombre melodies and sodden textures emerge out of their droning psychedelic improvisations as a sensible take on variation and repetition, coming to a comparatively violent climax at the end of side B with an abrasive arpeggio of tremolo-clipping violin scrapes. even with this crashing conclusion, the 'nothingness' which speaks
through the recordings is not an existential hammer declaring the death of god, but RATHER SUBLTE AND POIGNANT EXPOSITION ON LONELINESS." [Jim Haynes, THE WIRE]
"I don't think I heard about Ingenting Kollektiva, which members include Diane Granahan, Kirston Lightowler, Tarrl Lightowler and Matthew Swiezynski. Diane and Matthew play on side A and Kirston and Tarrl on side B. "The kollektiva seeks to issue recordings that are meditations on the quality of light, sound and atmosphere created by Ingmar Bergman and Sven Nykvist". You could expect them to release DVDs which are promised for the future. Here on LP, they play a variety of instruments, like bells, bowed tibetan prayer bowl, cello, field recordings, guitars, harmonium, loops, nightingale devise, portable 78 record player, psaltery, tenor sax and shakuhachi. I am not entirely sure if I would have been able to pick out all of these instruments on the two lenghty cuts on either side of the record. What it doesn't mention is - perhaps - the amount of processing that takes place on this record. Everything seems melted and molted around some sort of treatment, acoustically (more on side b
than on side a it seems) and electronically (vice versa obviously). Obviously we are dealing here with highly atmospheric music, which fits the Mirror tradition quite nice. Atmospheric music but with a sharper edge, and a great sense of experimentalism. From the description one could think this more like wishy-washy new age type of music, but the darker textures of this record work quite nice. Maybe indeed a great soundtrack to a Bergman movie, overlooking some lakes in Sweden and lots of silence among the actors. Haunting and haunted indeed. I wonder what their own films be like. Very nice." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€17.50
Perpetua
"The focal point of the album is the condition of mankind entangled in the cycle of creation, stagnation and destruction. Creation is an idealistic picture, it dwells in an idea of fiat lux et facta est lux. It is a blueprint for the musical narrative that is comprised of unrestricted admiration of life, of order that is mankind’s objective, and ultimately of conflict which is the most inherent human condition. In the war of mankind against itself the ideals permeating creation become obscure and only annihilation brings forth a new illusion – a promise of another beginning.
The ubiquitous illusion is an all-encompassing device that folds these non-recordable events into a cycle. It is channeled in the unifying wave of music of Karol Skrzypiec – an artist more complete, yet still debating the finality of his form of communication. Syntactically, the latest release of INNER VISION LABORATORY is an effect of thoughtful construction. Perpetua is an unconventional harmonious image which draws also from beyond of the repertoire typically associated with the instrumentarium characteristic of its genre, the accord of the album’s narration, however, is not lost." [label info]
www.zoharum.com
€13.00
Endstation Steinbruch
Well arranged "classic Industrial" dealing with 3rd Reich-topics.
"Re-issue of an extremely limited cassette (20 copies!), originally published by Andreas Arndt’s own label Keine Zeit Recordings in 1996. Six tracks of dark and disturbing Power Noise / Death Ambient, not far off the style of Brighter Death Now. Limited to just 300 hand-numbered copies in an outsized foldout package. Recommended" [Cold Spring]
€10.00
El Ferrocarril Desvaneciente
Rafael Anton Irisarri continues his string of post-minimalist releases with his third for Umor Rex: El Ferrocarril Desvaneciente. While composed as an ode to an overnight train journey through Spain he took many years ago, the music picks up sonically where his previous album Sirimiri left off. Irisarri focuses on deploying sonic cycles throughout these four shorter pieces, basing much of this sweeping ambience around looped sounds and distant pulses. The sound is however kept in a state of forward motion and constant evolution, invoking the slowly rumbling night train that inspired it —not to mention its cargo of misfits and travelers. Irisarri’s skill, set as a manipulator of minimal sound input, is at full strength here, imbuing even shorter pieces such as “El Espectro Electromagnético,” with chasms slowly cresting drama. The phantasmagoria of “Un Saltador” was even composed as a departure for him, toying with synths and pedals in a “modular kind of way,” letting an experiment unfold with minimal interaction.
Inspired by musical storytellers such as Lee Hazelwood, Lou Reed, or Leonard Cohen, his music is transforming into something closer to narrative ––“storytelling without words,” as he puts it; “lyrical without lyrics”. His music hasn’t sounded as hopeful as it does on El Ferrocarril Desvaneciente for quite some time. The outward-looking despair of 2017’s The Shameless Years and the sorrowful introversion of Sirimiri have both been usurped by dreamy anecdotage. As with Sirimiri, it’s Irisarri’s intention that the El Ferrocarril Desvaneciente’s songs play out as a one long repetition, and thus we include again a bonus track comprising the full 22-minute loop. [Preorder for September 28, 2018]
www.umor-rex.org/ur114/
€15.00
Peripeteia
Over the years, American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri has become ubiquitous within the spheres of ambient, drone and electronic music. Whether it's through Irisarri's celestial long-form albums or his lauded audio engineering credentials for countless artists and labels, Irisarri's consistent dedication to his craft never wavers from the forefront. While Irisarri's compositions typically field an array of modern ambient overtones threaded through oceanic symphonies with tape loops, bowed electric guitar and vast washes of overdriven sound, his recent debut album for Dais Records, "Peripeteia, portrays these common themes giving way to metal and classical influences that emphasizes Irisarri's melancholic tendencies. These unique overtures, coupled with his signature layering of distortion and bleached-out textures, fabricate an audible environment that would seemingly be at odds with, yet gracefully complement each other. In Irisarri's own words, "My previous works internalize any exterior forces or circumstances, while trying to make sense of the world. Peripeteia reverses that approach, focusing on the personal in order to tell a wider human story." The emotional depth found throughout Peripeteia is impeccably on display with the track, Mellified. A collaboration with Spanish composer Yamila, the choral arrangements bring to mind the sacred music of Arvo Pärt, while her voice combines the Andalusian "Cante jondo" style with medieval modes, almost drowning in layers of octave fuzz distortion and dystopian synths patterns. On Arduous Clarity, the bright arpeggiating melody that churns throughout, offers the initial glimmer of optimism in an otherwise decaying tale of personal turmoil. This encouraging glimpse is short lived however, as the song Refuge/Refuse seemingly plummets into the mourning depths of somber despair. A chorus of voices steadily crawls from its desolate terrain - a sea of broken spirits, eternally resigned to strain and bellow their final lament. Fright and Control, a piece which is equally soul churning, seems to possess a satisfying resolve, as if after years of searching, one's very salvation has been laid to rest through the acceptance of mortality and the enlightenment in death. Irisarri's complexity is utilized to a forcible success, slowly pulsing throughout the foreground of his audience, further emphasizing the impending dread of resolve."
https://irisarri.bandcamp.com/album/peripeteia
€15.00
The Shameless Years
Post-minimalist American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri made his Umor Rex debut in 2017 with "The Shameless Years". Inspired by a troubled socio-political climate, buried melodies punch their way through a bleak cover of noisy drones, periodically veering into some of Irisarri’s most eerily pertinent music.
One of Rafael Anton Irisarri’s most thematically and sonically cohesive records to date The Shameless Years came together in a relatively short burst of creativity starting at the end of 2016. Rediscovering some relatively older tools - namely Native Instruments’ Reaktor, Absynth, and Kontakt software - Irisarri combined them with his collection of guitars, pedals, amps, and analogue processing gear, turning his Black Knoll Studio north of NYC into a powerful writing tool. Completed quickly by Irisarri’s standards, let alone during a period of social upheaval in American society, the record faces down several key personal themes. The title, suggests Irisarri, could in fact be seen as a reflection of the era of shamelessness we’re currently living in; a time of fake news and alternative facts.
Two tracks were completely remotely between Irisarri in New York and Umor Rex veteran "Siavash Amini from his home in Tehran, Iran. This music came together at the peak of all the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric happening in the USA, not to mention the banning of Iranians from entering the country, explains Irisarri. The diptych with Amini, ‘Karma Krama’ and ‘The Faithless’, seems bathed in additional waves of sorrow and dread. The wash of symphonic stormclouds of synth drones and processed notes on the latter gradually appears and disappears over the course of thirteen mournful minutes.
‘Rh Negative’ marches gigantic guitars through towering valleys of scarred ambient noise dealing with Irisarri’s own heritage, many of his ancestors having come to America to escape poverty and oppression. The refusal of modern America to extend similar sanctuary to refugees escaping turmoil weighs heavily on the composer. Elsewhere an emotional onslaught of notes buried in mounds of greyscale noise on ‘Sky Burial’ aims to deal with Irisarri’s very own mortality – something he was recently confronted with following health scares, an accident, and a near-death experience in 2016. Pushing 40 as this album was being made, the composer is constantly aware that he’s already outlived his own father, who died at the age of 32. Facing down both intolerance and the void, the epic soundscapes of The Shameless Years are a vast cry of emotion from Irisarri. The clock is ticking - gotta make the most out of it while you still can.
All songs written and performed by Rafael Anton Irisarri, except #5 & #6 written and performed with Siavash Amini. Design by Daniel Castrejón, photos by Camilo Christen. Mastered by James Plotkin."
€21.00
Peripeteia (clear)
Over the years, American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri has become ubiquitous within the spheres of ambient, drone and electronic music. Whether it's through Irisarri's celestial long-form albums or his lauded audio engineering credentials for countless artists and labels, Irisarri's consistent dedication to his craft never wavers from the forefront. While Irisarri's compositions typically field an array of modern ambient overtones threaded through oceanic symphonies with tape loops, bowed electric guitar and vast washes of overdriven sound, his recent debut album for Dais Records, "Peripeteia, portrays these common themes giving way to metal and classical influences that emphasizes Irisarri's melancholic tendencies. These unique overtures, coupled with his signature layering of distortion and bleached-out textures, fabricate an audible environment that would seemingly be at odds with, yet gracefully complement each other. In Irisarri's own words, "My previous works internalize any exterior forces or circumstances, while trying to make sense of the world. Peripeteia reverses that approach, focusing on the personal in order to tell a wider human story." The emotional depth found throughout Peripeteia is impeccably on display with the track, Mellified. A collaboration with Spanish composer Yamila, the choral arrangements bring to mind the sacred music of Arvo Pärt, while her voice combines the Andalusian "Cante jondo" style with medieval modes, almost drowning in layers of octave fuzz distortion and dystopian synths patterns. On Arduous Clarity, the bright arpeggiating melody that churns throughout, offers the initial glimmer of optimism in an otherwise decaying tale of personal turmoil. This encouraging glimpse is short lived however, as the song Refuge/Refuse seemingly plummets into the mourning depths of somber despair. A chorus of voices steadily crawls from its desolate terrain - a sea of broken spirits, eternally resigned to strain and bellow their final lament. Fright and Control, a piece which is equally soul churning, seems to possess a satisfying resolve, as if after years of searching, one's very salvation has been laid to rest through the acceptance of mortality and the enlightenment in death. Irisarri's complexity is utilized to a forcible success, slowly pulsing throughout the foreground of his audience, further emphasizing the impending dread of resolve."
https://irisarri.bandcamp.com/album/peripeteia
€24.00
Indications of Nigredo
"... IRM hat sich für Indications of Nigredo (Seger 23, 12“) mit dem Bassisten Mikael Oretoft verstärkt, der Jarls Knurschelektronik mit dunklen Twangs durchsetzt. Vor dieser sich langsam aufbauenden Wall of Sound wirken Bladhs Einwürfe seltsam dünn und wie kastriert. Der grusig harsche Noise kommt als gnadenloses Mahlwerk ins Rollen, die Stimme klingt immer gequälter und panischer. Wieder gefasst, stellt sich Bladh einem zweiten Härtetest und verliest die Versuchsanordnung. Dann überdröhnt und umflattert ihn ‚Indicator 2‘, ein Sturm aus Noise und Eis, unter dessen Pfeilhagel er sich als Hl. Sebastian windet. Beatkaskaden und zeitlupiges Bassgedröhn geben der Inszenierung einen rituellen Anstrich. Bladh schreit wie am Spieß Parolen, um anschließend seine Wunden zu lecken. Ist der wirkliche Name des jungen Mannes Narziss? Oder Marsyas?" [Bad Alchemy]
"On the theme of alchemy and the topics of shame vs. bodily self infliction, IRM makes way for a new start after the inspired “Virgin Mind” double-disc set from 2005. These are new recordings with the new member Mikael Oretoft joining on bass. Two long tracks - the first being an intense up-building, deep pulsating number with both spoken and rough vocals, volcanic exaggerated bass noise and doom-laden atmosphere. The second more of an aftermath with its downspiralling, almost dreamy character of echoing tones, ripping clangs and chilling audio-schmerz. In total over 23 minutes of music in a glossy colour sleeve with gross artwork and a small insert. Edition of 500 copies." [label info]
"... What fascinates with IRM's approach to power electronics is the intelligent construction of the works. Apparently it is not the question of shocking the listener with the sounds of collapsing electronics. More likely the trio invites you into dark territories of electronic sound, - territories that in the first moments seems harmless, but soon after turns out to be a true noise monster. A noise monster, where the emotional impact remains and thus makes the storm of crushing electronics even more overwhelming as they attack the listener. A true masterpiece of apocalyptic art."[NM / Vital Weekly]
label website: www.segerhuva.se
€15.00
Purple Screen // Red Eruption / Red Discharge
Harsh Noise with a sometimes jazzy (yes!) feel to it from SKIN AREA, who use also drums and bass and voice, in fact they begin with harsh noises and end up in an improvisation. Very strange and beyond good and evil. IRM create one long dark piece interesting soundwalls... new swedish noise on a new swedish label !
“ Two of Sweden's finest bands share this slab of vinyl. Skin Area delivers a 14-minute track that begs you to push the volumes louder and louder until your brain becomes one with the raging hardcore noises they produce. You'll wish there were drugs as hard and vicious as these sounds, but I'm afraid western science hasn't come that far yet... Skin Area's versatility might shock (and offend) some listeners who are unprepared to blow their minds on a regular basis.
IRM makes full use of the 10" format with what could very well be their finest moment yet -- a 12 min epic that expertly combines menacing electronics and more traditional sounds (this should be among the top-five of any best-power-electronics-with-glockenspiel list ever compiled). Since none of you are regular church-goers, why not make it your Sunday ritual to blast the neighborhood with this 10"? You will be rewarded.” [label info]
€10.00
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Kreiselwelle
"Das ist nun - nach Ozeanische Gefühle und Cosmic Superimposition - der abschließende Teil von M. S. Waldrons Trilogie über den Freudo-Marxisten, Faschismusund Orgontheoretiker und Parawissenschaftler Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957). Reich war der Auffassung, dass der von ihm postulierte ‚Orgonenergie-Ozean‘ 'Lebensenergie‘ in Form von ‚Kreiselwellen‘ ausstrahlt, die sich visuell, thermisch, elektroskopisch und mit Hilfe des Geiger-Müller-Zählers nachweisen lassen. Waldron spielt entsprechend mit ‚Spiral-Klängen‘, Spiralfedern, dem Geräusch anbrandender, ‚lappender‘ Wellen, Luftwirbeln, aufziehbarem
Spielzeug etc. Rasselnde, pulsierende, blubbrig unkende, wie Whirlies sirrende und automatisch klappernde Geräusche mischen sich mit
elementaren zu einem unruhigen Gedröhn. Die an- und abflauenden Erregungszustände sind Teil eines Kontinuums von gut einer Dreiviertelstunde. Schritte zu Beginn und zwischendurch vage Stimmfetzen im Hintergrund deuten an, dass der Mensch in diesem Energiefluss, diesem Kontinuum von Wirbeln mitschwingt." [Bad Alchemy]
" irr. app. (ext.) is the sound-engineering project of Californian M.S. Waldron, whose liminal slippages and detourned croons have been spotted recently on stage in Nurse With Wound. Yet for all of the antics that are required for the NWW spectacle, Mr. Waldron still dedicates himself in the parallel pursuits of irr. app. (ext.) with a discography that reads more like a wunderkammer of uncanny investigations into futility declared as its reverse.
Kreiselwelle is the third and final installment to a body of works that irr. app. (ext.) has composed under the influence of Wilhelm Reich, the unorthodox 20th Century psychologist who proposed amongst many hypotheses, an interconnectivity between energy, organisms, and the entire cosmos. The title to this album translates as ‘spiral wave,’ a structuralist form which Reich had observed throughout nature within numerous systems, whether that be the grand arcs of galaxies down to the radial symmetries of micro-organisms. For Kreiselwelle, Mr. Waldron returns to the same collection of field recordings which began this trilogy that includes Ozeanische Gefühle and Cosmic Superimposition; however, he restricted himself to those sounds with spiralling origins: resonating springs, the sounds of the ocean cyclically churning over pebbles on the beach, the wafting of air around various objects, or simply a lamp-shade spinning in place.
The resulting recording develops as an organic sublimation of one sound transforming from one state into another and then another. Motorized sounds of mechanical toys set askew settle into a tremolo phase pattern of electrical vibrations. These in turn morph into a cauldron of slow locomotive rumbling, which beget one of many glassine drones that float throughout Kreiselwelle. Many of the sounds seem to have origins in objects that are broken, obsolete, or just plain wrong; but through Waldron’s deft alchemy, these sounds are allowed to flourish in this richly dark and oddly serene amalgamation." [label info]
"...[as] for the ultra-fantastic soundwork of Irr. App. (Ext.), this Californian composer has been baffling and perplexing the ears of international listeners for not a few years now, and his new Kreiselwelle, a single 45-minute work of strange process music, is a slow voyage into the unknown. Within minutes, we're taken far beyond the relatively familiar world of "dark ambient" and enter a murky field of immersive and twisted shapes, where possible danger lurks at every corner. Conceptually rooted in an interpretation of the works of Wilhelm Reich, Kreiselwelle is the third part of a trilogy and connect with the "spiral waves" of the title, derived all of its sounds from things shaped like spirals (such as metal springs, or the circular movement of the ocean). In like manner, M. S. Waldron's composition will probably suck you into a whirlpool of doubt and ambiguity."
[Ed Pinsent / The Sound Projector]
www.helenscarsdale.com
"Kreiselwelle is the conclusion to a superb trilogy from irr. app. (ext.) who used the words, philosophies, and eccentricities of Wilhelm Reich as the springboard into a realm of post-Surrealist, post-industrialist, post-drone arena of sound design. While a prominent European psychoanalyst, whose ideas could be seen as an occasional counterpoint to those of Freud, Reich may be best known for his parascientific research into Orgone energy, which he claimed was central and unifying force of life throughout the universe. Much of this latter research has been discredited and unfortunately shed a cloud of incredulity upon his psychoanalytic work. While Reich's claims of cloud-busting and orgone therapy offer particularly strong metaphors, M.S. Waldron - the principle architect to irr. app. (ext.) - has looked more to the psychological aspects of Reich's work. Kreiselwelle translates from the German as spiral wave or gyroscopic wave, and points to the similarities which Reich had noted in the structures of microscopic organisms, turbulent wave patterns, and spiral-arm galaxies.
Through this trilogy (which also includes Ozeanische Gefuhle and Cosmic Superimposition), Waldron mirrors Reich's early cosmology through a compositional fluidity that alludes to contemporary drone fascination, constructed through overlapping collages, occluded field recordings, sustained tones from atypical instruments, and crosshatched synthetic noises. All three of these albums were sourced from the same set of field recordings, but each detours into its own particular wandering. Kreiselwelle begins with a very slow hypnotic strum across a detuned guitar with liquid tactility and a warped distance buzz filling in the gaps. Grand sweeps of slashing drones that could originate from an echoing chainsaw deep in the woods forms an unlikely crescendo with sympathetic tones, only to collapse into the softened white noise of cars passing by. Soon after, a rhythmic tapping of agitated electronics forms a motorik rhythm against the tapestry of audio fluidity, with all of the electro-shock bursts of a tesla coil. This in turn morphs into a cauldron of slow locomotive rumbling, which beget one of many glassine drones that float throughout Kreiselwelle. For fans of any of work of Nurse With Wound (after all Mr. Waldron is in the NWW touring ensemble!), H.N.A.S., and the more esoteric recordings of Organum; and certainly of note for those of you taken by Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words, Xela, Svarte Greiner, Expo '70, Emeralds, or any of the darker, weirder, more fucked-up drone ensembles of recent days. Very highly recommended!" [Aquarius Rec.]
€13.00
Ozeanische Gefühle
Damn, this is SO GOOD! IRR.APP (ext.) zeigt hier, dass er nicht nur strangeste eher elektro-akustische Soundscapes zusammenschustern kann, sondern auch sehr fliessende, aber leicht “gefährliche” und surrealistische dronescapes, die pulsieren, mäandern, rotieren und einfach LEBEN. In der Tat scheint hier alles in Grenzenlosigkeit zu zerfliessen...... High TIP for Drone-Heads !
“irr. app. (ext) is the work of California-based sound artist Matt Waldron, whose collected body of work is far too important to continue to be forgotten. During the past decade, only two full albums -- Dust Pincher Appliances (2003 on Crouton) and An Uncertain Animal, Ruptured; Tissue Expanding in Conversation (1997 on Fire, Inc.) -- have seen the light of day despite the fact that perhaps a dozen albums have been completed. The public silence for irr. app. (ext) was never by Waldron's design, as numerous recording deals collapsed, one after the other. The story becomes all the more of conundrum as these misadventures of neglect and ignorance occurred despite Waldron's high-profile collaborations with Nurse With Wound and Stilluppsteypa. If a humble organization like the Helen Scarsdale Agency can have its say, then we speak to remove whatever curses that have haunted irr. app. (ext.) in the past and provide the world with the opportunity to revel in the spectacle and the beauty that is Matt Waldron's art. Had things gone differently, Ozeanische Gefühle would have been one of the lost irr. app. (ext.) recordings. That would have been a shame for Ozeanische Gefühle stands as an impeccable composition of post-surrealist dronescaping rivaling such masterpieces as The Hafler Trio's Kill The King, Jonathan Coleclough & Andrew Chalk's Sumac, and Nurse With Wound's Soliloquy For Lilith.
The title has origins with Freud and earlier thinkers; yet Waldron came across Ozeanische Gefühle (which translates from the German as "oceanic feelings") in his studies of Wilhelm Reich who referenced the term to describe the natural state of every healthy organism as connected to and engaged with the world around it, with its energies flowing from the center outwards. For Waldron, Reich's ideas became the starting point for a metonymic exercise seeking to discover that which is near a signifier and spiral beyond each successive discovery along a complicated aesthetic thread by way of intuition and accident.
The album tumbles through a series of sympathetic dronings, field recordings, and performative gestures, continuously traversing the emotional polarities of psychological tension and externalized jouissance. The album begins with a heavily processed flutter of sustained woodwinds accompanied by thunderous rumbles in the distance before dispersing amidst Bernhard Hermann-esque slashings of discordant strings. Later on, the grotesque pathos of a Wurlitzer organ dissolves into a blackened emptiness that envelopes the complex resonant frequencies from Waldron's slow, deliberate performance upon bowls and bells. Despite the incredible depth of his source materials, Waldron displays an uncanny intellect that reflects all of his wandering passages through the lens of a melancholic ambience. Simply put, Ozeanische Gefühle is a wonder to behold.”[ Helen Scarsdale, June 2004]
www.helenscarsdale.com
"If anyone has the ability to carry the post-Surrealist torch of Nurse With Wound, it would have to be Matt Waldron through his irr. app. (ext.) project. Like Nurse With Wound's eccentric genius Stapleton, Waldron would never qualify himself as a Surrealist, but it's a good jumping off point to describe their respective works. With Ozeanische Gefuhle, Waldron establishes irr. app. (ext.) establishes himself as one of the most gifted sound-sculptors whose work have passed through the doors of Aquarius. If you've ever picked up any drone / minimalist / ambient records or even just anything that Andee has poetically described as 'completely fucked', then you owe it yourself to pick up Ozeanische Gefuhle. This review could ramble on and on, but let's cut to the chase and state the obvious, this album is brilliant.
Strangely enough, Ozeanische Gefuhle -- as great as it is -- almost disappeared into the ether, as it was slated for release a few years back on another label who just sat on it for years, much to the chagrin of Mr. Waldron. Fortunately, the good people at the Helen Scarsdale Agency rectified the situation and made sure this album got its due recognition.
The title itself is an allusion to Wilhelm Reich, who used the term to describe the natural state of every healthy organism as connected to and engaged with the world around it. Such ideas in lesser hands would result in limp idylltronica with New Age sentimentality; but this is not the case for irr. app. (ext.), who solidly grounds this record upon a fundamental drone, which slinks its way through numerous field recordings and performative gestures. Waldron's masterpiece emerges as a tidal current of electronic sound, rumbling through blackened spaces and soaring with divine expressivity. As good if not better than anything by Nurse With Wound, Organum, :zoviet france:, Phill Niblock, and the Hafler Trio. Yeah, it's that good!" [Aquarius Rec.]
€14.00
Savage Songs of Brutality and Food
"This is the blurb.
I think it’s a press release, too, about this album I’ve made with my kids’ voices and sounds and these home recordings we’ve made over the last 13 years.
They’re now 15 and 17 and who knows what they think.
I know they’re not too interested in it this now, but they’ve seen the artwork and pictures and obviously they know the tracks, but I don’t think they actually realise this is coming out and that strangers can buy the LP in a Record Shop or online with actual money.
For years as the two of them were growing up I was always photographing and recording their lives. Over 68,000 pictures on my desktop, and hours of recordings. This is commonplace now, but when I was growing up maybe the Brownie would come out on the beach on Whitsand Bay, or if we went on holiday, a picture of a mountain or something interesting like, a pizza. Mum had a reel-to-reel she never used, and I had a radio. Dad was underwater.
Why go on holiday when you live in Cornwall. Dad was a submariner based in Plymouth and my mum was a mum and a Rally driver. Three boys to look after. Chaos and serious hard work. Now both my parents are dead, I’ve photos from mum’s albums, but oddly enough Dad never took photos at all, and distrusted them I think.
So to this album. It’s the first thirteen years or so of our children’s lives made into cute and cruel songs of experimentation and, yes, chaos again. So, from the first heartbeat (not included here) to just under two years ago, I randomly and sometimes secretly recorded them singing or talking, often encouraged of course by me. That’s what parents do. I recorded for 13 years. It’s rather wonderful to have sound documents as opposed to pictures. Luckily I have both and I’m still rediscovering forgotten sounds even now.
This is a music/sound diary (perhaps) of the frankly mad, cute, annoying, moving, innocent, loud, loving, embarrassing, noises of their lives up to now, as recorded and messed up by me, as in messed-up-and-I-don’t-care, but do I care. I try to edit with clarity where needed, but otherwise the vocals and ideas are pretty raw and unaltered for the sweeter market of pop. This is just STUFF. Wild and Alive.
Rebels without a pause.
I was a dad with slithers time on my hands and a Mac I could barely understand. I made tracks/songs, whatever you want to call them between cooking, cleaning, bathing, shopping, driving, and sleeping ad infinitum. It’s the three of us mainly, with The Elysian Quartet thrown together for The Mighty Dinosaur song, but I’m the leader, the captain of the ship. You always need a Captain and they were my sonic crewmates, even though they were often press-ganged into service reluctantly.
. There will be no Volume Two.
They’ve eventually got really fed up with me doing this, and I can’t blame them one bit, but when faced with all these bits of songs or, fragments of stuff, what do you do? Throw them in the bin, give them to them on their wedding day and really make them cringe?
No. The best thing to do is to compile them like a mix tape and keep your fingers crossed that someday, someone might be interested in releasing a compilation of this madness.
Charles Powne from Soleilmoon Recordings came to the rescue, in that he mentioned somehow whether I’d heard of an LP of children’s songs. I hadn’t in fact, but I told him about these recordings I’d been making over the years.
Isabella and Jasper I think are now probably incredibly pissed off with me, but you know, that’s tough. Full stop.
Now at 17 and 15 their childhoods are over. The illusions shattered. There is no pretence. They can watch the news, Snapchat at speed, and lurk on the net who knows where.
Innocence has gone, battered out of them by schools and the more serious and dull adults that surround them. They were the funniest and most amusing two smaller people imaginable, but now, they’re Teenagers…….Aaahhhhh.
They’ve opinions, they’re brighter than me, better looking, funnier, nicer clothes, better humour and taste, and they’ve more friends than me too. The job is done.
I’m sadly responsible for the musical settings they happen to find themselves in, although, quite often all the music or at least some of it is made up from their noises too. We like a noise here and there and we love to dance on a Friday night.
One of the beauties of this sort of music is that there are no rules. We could all do with this sort of freedom, in not just music, but film, cooking, and storytelling. A child’s imagination is the finest open canvas ever. No rules rule.
Oh God, I sound like a dotting dull dad. C’est la vie.
Stay well and keep calm and risk everything with passion and love."
-- SIMON FISHER TURNER
LONDON, 25 JUNE, 2020
https://isabellajasperandsimonfisherturner.bandcamp.com
€14.00
Canceller X
Ishigami's latest work, pursuing original electronic music in the context of ambient noise / dark ambient. Although it is from academism, the activity on the album that constantly renews and destroys its own frame is not due to the destruction, but born out of the attitude to keep seeking for their own music. In the meantime, even though Ishigami's music is generally called experimental electronic acoustics, its tone is more bohemian and overflowing. Presented in a foldout sleeve with plain card inner.
neus318.net/kazuya/canceller-x-kyou001/
https://soundcloud.com/kyou-records/tr1-playback-of-anxiety-kazuyaishigami
"I discovered the Japanese ‘sound maker’ Kazuya Ishigami by his “Cleaner 583”-album. This artist already released considerable number of productions on his own label Neus-318 while he now started a new record company called Kyou Records. “Canceller X” is the first release on this brand-new company and also the first one in the “Neo Electroacoustic Ambient Series”.
Content: The sound universe created for “Canceller X” is carried by ambient-like soundscapes mixed with an impressive sonic canvas of noises, manipulations and field recordings. The tracks progressively evolve, sometimes featuring unexpected melodic elements and mainly supported by mysterious atmospheres.
+ + + : Kazuya Ishigami remains first of all a sound designer, sound performer and sound engineer in electro-acoustic music. That’s precisely the concept of this series and the kind of sound you rapidly will recognize in his work. But there is where most of sound experimentalists lose themselves in a vacuum of improvisation and abstract music, “Canceller X” reveals a work with great sound atmospheres. That’s what makes the work dark-ambient like and even somewhat visual. There’s a kind of hidden danger emerging from the tracks and I like this mysterious atmosphere.
– – – : The sound formula is somewhat repetitive and a little less predictable after a while. But it first of all is the kind of music you need to discover in the right circumstances.
Conclusion: “Canceller X” is a pretty fascinating and atypical opus with a particular focus on sound creation. This is an interesting sonic experiment." [Side-Line]
€13.00
Crash Injury Trauma
"Investigation of an automobile death is frequently inadequately conducted by medical investigators, partly because important questions are not anticipated at the time of the investigation. There are many facets of the investigation and each one has far-reaching consequences. The importance of proper handling of an automobile fatality cannot be over stressed. The following components of investigation procedures should not be neglected: [1] Scene investigation with photographs. [2] Complete autopsy with recording of injuries by description, drawings and photographs. [3] Evidence collection - clothing, glass traces, oil, paint, rust, and blood spots. [4] Follow-up studies - blood typing, analysis for carbon monoxide (if fire), alcohol (always), amphetamines (especially in truck drivers), and other drugs (if indicated). “Crash Injury Trauma” is a shocking and disturbing album, unflinching and relentless in its fascination with violent car accidents. Tires skid and horns blare, followed by the sickening sounds of crashing metal and shattering glass, screams, sirens and heart-pounding bass. It’s a cruel, sadistic and horrifying tour de force in the ambient and power electronics genre. B. Lustmord released “Crash Injury Trauma” in 1993, as a side project, under the pseudonym Isolrubin BK. Following “Heresy” and “The Monstrous Soul”, and preceding “The Place Where The Black Stars Hang”, the album was recorded during what is now considered a pivotal period in the British artist’s career. Out of print for nearly a decade, this new 2009 edition has been remastered from the ground up, and is presented in completely redesigned packaging. B. Lustmord has been actively pushing the boundaries of sound for nearly 30 years and has a remarkably broad and diverse list of credits, including an extensive discography of his own highly regarded recordings, including fifteen Lustmord releases. He has collaborated with a wide variety musicians, ranging from Industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle and SPK to alt rock mainstays Tool and Melvins. He has also worked on television shows, commercials and games, including Unreal Tournament III and Assassin's Creed, as well as on more than forty motion pictures, including The Crow, The Craft, Pitch Black and Underworld. Based in Los Angeles, he is currently he is working on new Lustmord material as well as Puscifer, an ongoing project with Maynard James Keenan of Tool and A Perfect Circle." [label info]
www.soleilmoon.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWYuTULNZAE
€15.00
Kwiaty
"It all started with a book, as these things often do: an English anthology of metaphysical poetry from the 17th century, to be exact. Which may not sound like the sexiest option on the shelves, but hear us out. The gentleman plowing through those weathered pages happened to be Michał Jacaszek, the Polish composer who's spun dramatic shades of darkness and light into gold for more than a decade now. An absolute master of melancholy, from the trickle-down electronics of Treny to the vapor-trailed verses of its looming spiritual cousin KWIATY.
"The poems were simple, pure and beautiful," Jacaszek says of the book's poignant Robert Herrick passages. "They spoke about death, pain, longing and loneliness, but somehow these pieces were bringing hope, solace, and peace."
They also sounded a hell of a lot like songs when read out loud. Structurally at least. Herrick's rhyme schemes and rhythms still needed the right musical accompaniment, and Jacaszek had just the ticket: a backlog of previously unreleased recordings—warm-blooded samples, lonesome synth lines, pared-down guitar parts—begging for proper arrangements and dynamic mixdowns. Not to mention the most vocal-driven material Jacaszek's ever written, melding his stormy melodies with a breakout performance by Hania Malarowska and the robust supporting roles of Joasia Sobowiec-Jamioł and Natalia Grzebała.
"I tend to always create organic, acoustic sounds, even though I work within a digital environment," explains Jacaszek. "Because KWIATY is actually a vocal album, the electronic sounds in the background seemed to be a perfect opposition. It's all unintentional, really; this is just my music language and I can't run away from it."
jacaszek.bandcamp.com/album/kwiaty
"I first discovered the wonderful and adventurous music of Jacaszek in a record store. 'Glimmer' and 'Catalogue des Arbres (feat. Kwartludium)' have been regularly played albums for years in this household. So when this new album was announced, I was immediately interested. However, like often happens with artists this talented and versatile, starting to write this review was a difficult task. So let's just begin by writing that this is an breathtaking piece of work.
For those not familiar with Michał Jacaszek: he is a Polish composer who combines electronically prepared sounds with acoustic instruments. Over the years, he composed soundtracks and theatre music, plus a number of albums. His work blend classical music with experimental electronics and jazz. He knows little to no musical borders and continuously drags in seemingly strange influences.
'Kwiaty' means flowers and in a way that is exactly what you get on this album; blooming pieces of music that look and feel familiar yet mysterious. The album was inspired by Michał Jacaszek’s discovery of an English anthology of metaphysical poetry from the 17th century by Robert Herrick, which to him — somehow-- sounded songlike when read out-loud. The album contains guest appearances by Hania Malarowska (Hanimal), Joasia Sobowiec-Jamioł and Natalia Grzebała.
The songs on this album are strange pop-ballads or jazz inspired classical pieces or electronically rearranged folk songs, regarding on how you feel about them. I hear influences from all these genres, including trip hop, dark jazz and the soundtracks to Tim Burton's movies or even Twin Peaks. There is a gloomy atmosphere, a mysterious feel but also musical ingenuity and beautiful vocals. In short, this is Jacaszek at his very best.
Once again I refuse to pick a favorite track. I'm not even going to mention separate songs. I'm just going to recommend buying the album. Take the weekend off and enjoy 'Kwiaty' non-stop. Allow Jacaszek to guide you on an introvert but epic journey, one you will not regret. It will definitely be worth the effort. If you are into anything between Dead Can Dance, Bersarin Quartet and The Nightmare Before Christmas, you will easily get addicted to this thing..." [Merchants of Air]
€20.00
Music for Film
"Since his earliest projects nearly two decades ago, Polish composer Michal Jacaszek has kept some proximity to film music. Initially, his output simply felt cinematic by nature; densely detailed electroacoustic textures on releases like Lo-Fi Stories (2004), Treny (2008) and Glimmer (2011) evoked dimly-lit worlds within themselves, vignettes of the imagination. Over time his interest in sound design and collaboration would manifest actual film projects and commissions, some of which have earned him awards. Jacaszek's practice - an amalgamation of ambient, classical, and musique concrete - deploys field recordings, acoustic samples, poetry, and baroque instrumentation to paint pictures, oftentimes melancholic, nostalgic, tragic. His 2020 album, Music For Film, marks the naturally-occurring intersection of his identities as a solo artist and a film score artist. The collection is now sequenced and released as a single autonomic movement. "I didn't write to particular scenes," says Jacaszek, recalling the process of envisioning music for Rainer Sarnet's 2017 black-and-white fantasy drama November. "He asked me to create a bunch of pieces for a dark fairytale-like movie about love in old Estonian pagan times - full of dark magic, strange beliefs, poverty, grit, and natural beauty." That versatile purpose from the onset affords the material particular pliability in the album format; the pieces work on their own. Two tracks originated from the 2019 documentary He Dreams of Giants; another was first used in 2008 project Golgota wroc?awska. Context removed, they fuse seamlessly; ten years time between some recordings, erased. A visceral dynamism emerges here with a relatively restricted palette of sounds. Music moves in measured steps, inconspicuous yet holding attention. Opener "The Zone" is curious and brittle, crawling on keys and a foundational bass thump as strings seep beneath in a raspy hush. Centerpiece "Dance" folds into an ominous and molasses-slow trot through minor chords, spacious percussion, and static, all under the spell of a mournful violin lead. Windswept vocals haunt "Liina" from a distance, while they sink deeply into orchestral closer "November Late." Jacaszek's work is that of an auteur; he has signatures that he uses faithfully and with much aplomb. Listeners can expect subtle gesture and baroque grandeur on Music For Films: soaring melodies cloaked in reverberation, delicate piano ruminations, and textural craftwork capable of creating and disrupting motifs, smothering and enchanting minds."
€20.50
Gardenia
"Gardenia is an existing land located at the Limpopo province of South Africa, right at the border with Botswana. The place's real name is Mmabolela and it's a private nature reserve covering 6500ha of subtropical savanna and part of Limpopo River. In November 2019, I had a chance to visit the location and participate in an annual residency for composers and sound artists called 'Sonic Mmabolela', initiated and curated by Francisco López. We lived in an isolated property in the middle of savanna having a unique opportunity to exist in undisturbed touch with the African wilderness. All the natural sounds later used to create Gardenia were captured there -- during longtime recording sessions over the virgin interior of Mmabolela Reserve. The album's field recording content was selected from several hours of birdsong, calls of frogs, insect noises, sounds of trees, bushes, grass as well as non-living natural elements like stones or shells. These field recordings were later digitally processed and used as part of nine musical arrangements. However, the recording sources and the location of Gardenia is defined, it was not my intention to document a South African natural soundscape nor create any other kind of strict concept album. All I do in my work is an affirmation of beauty hidden in various aspects of the Creation." --Michał Jacaszek
Recorded, composed, and produced by Michał Jacaszek. Photography + design: Jon Wozencroft. DVD case; includes download.
https://jacaszekreleases.bandcamp.com/album/gardenia
€25.50
Schining
"The next in Die Stadt's Jackman/Organum series, continuing his persuit of the monolithic shifting structure.
Beginning with similar sounds to "Flames Of Fire" - a metallic buzz and deep, resonating tone - Jackman shifts the pitch more with sharper buzzing and a greater use of gongs and bells. A shimmering mix, with the first half much heavier.
On the second CD he opens the sound up more, with the dynamics giving an almost buoyant quality to the music. Leading off with the crashing gong, it's soon stripped back allowing a sustained, wavering tone to be in the forefront. The sound resembles what could be an organ but held for infinity. Just as it becomes mesmerising and hypnotic though, Jackman throws in the bells, with variations coming in rapid succession versus the otherwise slow and steady feel.
Ltd x 500 copies in a digisleeve with excellent artwork by Jonathan Coleclough."
"Music and musical releases can be controversial for many reasons. Lyrical content, shocking covers, too loud, too quiet: David Jackman’s music is controversial for none of these reasons. His music isn’t noisy or silent, with no lyrical content or a shocking cover. I am not on any discussion group online and never was, but I can imagine a discussion with the topic: “Is David Jackman doing the same thing over and over again?”. I don’t know the answer, but I can guess. We can say the last few releases (and I am discounting his Organum Electronics releases; they are in a different league) contain the same musical elements. I copy from my last review, “A drone, Shruti-like, some low gong sound, the occasional bang on the piano, a church bell and some crows flying overhead”. The crows may have flown away, but the other elements are there. I also wrote, “The drone is continuous here; the others appear irregularly. The whole work is slow and majestic. The music has a funeral aspect, like a black-and-white picture from an Edgar Allen Poe story. It is very similar to much of his recent work, and it is hard to figure out the difference(s). All of this fits my pop-art theory. I love this mystique and playing around with similar ideas and notions. I am sure this mystery will never be unravelled”
On ‘Shining’ (is that a word? Google pushes forward ‘The Shining’), we have two of these works, and they are different, more than just the numbers 1 and 2 on the discs. On the second disc, the intervals appear quicker, and the disc is a few seconds shorter. Both pieces feel like a requiem mass in a church, complete with those church bells. And why is this one credited to David Philip Jackman? More mystery or willful obscure?" [Vital Weekly]
€18.00
Amygdala Colours - Hemisphere Rotation
"Jarl has a long discography behind him with more than 15 releases since his solo project started in the early years of the millenia. Describing his music as unbalanced, turbulent, withdrawn electronics that focus on isolation he's made an impact on the electronic scene defining an own explicit sound.
"Amygdala Colours - Hemisphere Rotation" is the second album on Reverse Alignment and follows the critically acclaimed "Case 1959 - Dyatlov". But where previous album explored the external mysteries of Dyatlov 1959 Jarl take us unto an internal trip through the structures and events of the cognitive mind with a main focus on the Amygdala, where the processing of memory, decision-making, and emotional reactions occur.
This album is built with layers of sound which slowely gets audible and disappears psychedelically. A variation of electronic and acoustic treatments has been used and the whole album is a mastodon track passing 50 minutes. As usual, the listener gets a mixture of drone, ambient and industrial that are molded perfectly into "that" typical Jarl-ish sound that sure wont dissapoint.
Accompanied with the musical expression comes astonishing work from Karolina Urbaniak who designed the cover. It is as if you could touch the music." [label info]
reversealignment.bandcamp.com
€13.00
Negative Rotation / Intensive Fracture
"After the critically acclaimed (and almost sold-out) collaborative album with Evenomist, Jarl returns to Zoharum fold with the next release. It is the first in the series of albums collecting rare works of Erik Jarl known for his involvement with IRM and Skin Area apart from his solo work. His own compositions are an exquisite mix of static ambient with strong influence of drone, noise or post-industrial electronica in general.
This double CD is a reissue of two cassettes originally released by Abisko. They were recorded on a Fostex 8-track recorder. Both tapes sound very different. ”Negative Rotation” is cold and monotonous, but with some changes in sounds that repeats themselves, while ”Intensive Fracture” is improvised psychedelic floating noise. Both recordings were done with analogue synthesizers and analogue effects. This double CD also contains five bonus tracks from different compilations.
The CD are housed in an ecopak sleeve and is strictly limited to 250 copies. The cover picture and design was made by Karolina Urbaniak (responsible for the lastest covers Jarl, IRM and Skin Area albums and widely known for here photographic work.) The album was remastered by Łukasz Miernik. The whole production process was overseen by Michał Porwet."
€15.00
Spectrum Confusion
Spectrum Confusion is Jarl’s fifth album on Reverse Alignment, following on from 2019’s massive triple CD release Symptoms Variation/ Sensory Deprivation. And once again Karolina Urbaniak has masterfully created the cover artwork, as she’s done for the four earlier Jarl releases, also released by RA.
Spectrum Confusion consists of three long-form pieces showcasing his trademark psychedelic, hypnotic approach, but this time the presence of bubbling and pulsating sounds makes the music sound closer to the electronic experiments of Northern European avant-garde composers in conjunction with more melodic passages harmonically coexisting alongside the abstract elements. Jarl’s music has entered its more mature stage here, and Spectrum Confusion consolidates his reputation as one of the most interesting and original European electronic music composers.
Swedish musician Erik Jarl has been active since the Fall of 1999, principally as Jarl. He was also a member of post-industrial act IRM, of which Erik was one of the founding members. Jarl’s music has been released on several labels through the years, and he has collaborated with acts like Anemone Tube, Envenomist, and Skin Area. Erik Jarl composes his music through a total analogue approach with the use of synthesisers, analogue sequencers, waveform generators, and oscillators, as well as several echo/reverb and delay units.
https://reversealignment.bandcamp.com/album/spectrum-confusion
"More and more, the territory for Vital Weekly is that of modern classical music, improvised music and such; the last resort of physical releases, perhaps? I am glad that there is also music from Erik Jarl dropping on my doorstep now and then. Just for the sake of hearing something else, also because I have been quite a fan of his music over the years. After all these years of reviewing his music, I still have not a clear picture of what Jarl does. Maybe I believed he was a man of computer technology for a while, but I think that the modular synthesiser is his instrument of choice in recent times. When I was playing this CD, I used some more volume to drown out the clarinet rehearsals taking place upstairs, and it occurs to me that there is a slightly more cosmic streak to his music this time around. I doubt the volume is a contributing factor to that thought. I had this realisation, and I thought there was a straight line from Conrad Schnitzler's 'non-keyboard electronics' to the world of industrial music. Jarl's sonic paintings are dark and bleak; they are slow and minimal. Yet, it is also music of hope and light. This music is not the dystopian cosmic journey of a spaceship returning to the destroyed earth, but rather, well, such as I hear this, a celebratory trip back home. The spacecraft is in slow motion returning from whatever it was doing in space anyway. The additional reverb sets some of the moods here. It bursts and bubbles along the edges of the massive drones. Maybe because Jarl adds a melodic touch to his electronics, it made me think of that. I took a peek at Vangelis' recent tribute to Juno (the Jupiter moon, not the synthesiser), hailed in the daily, but I feel NASA missed out on Jarl's music for this occasion. His soundtrack would fit Juno much better than Vangelis' orchestral brushes. Alright, next time, Nasa, go to Sweden and talk to Jarl!" [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Mole & the Morning Dew
"Their second release for Spirit of Orr, and their first purple vinyl release, Jazzfinger use this opportunity to disseminate two sides of ‘heavily indebted to visuals’ drone sound. The grainy delicacy of “Beneath Our Fathers Field” opens proceedings, the accompaniment to a silent piece of Egyptian rooted mystery-movie – the unreleased harmonium start-up of Balance/Christopherson’s dawn sessions. The three pieces on the record’s first side feel more connected to each other than almost everything else I’ve heard by this crew, its also their most aurally poetic. Jazzfinger manage to convince me I’m being haunted by humans with “The Swimming Heal”, swirls of birds flocking and diving over some Gretna-like landscape through the feedback. The two flipside pieces are built on repeated acoustic guitar parts, cliff-hanger menace in the Dictaphone gruffness and the fear generated in repetition. Picture an acoustic Jandek lost in sea fret, encircled by a host of cymbal bowers. Jazzfinger records do more than anything else I’m aware of to make yer eyes obsolete. 10/10" [Scott McKeating / Foxy Digitalis]
"It is with deep honor and wonder that we announce the release of this magical splaying of deep sound by Newcastle's mighty Jazzfinger. Truly Mr Jones and his crew are the bringers, the full cup, part of the good that balances our lives against dark evils. Without hesitation, the people who hold the world together. Feel their power, and be comforted. Limited to 600, purple vinyl." [label info]
www.spiritoforr.com
€15.50
For this from that will be filled (silver)
Originally released in 2018, »For this from that will be filled« is the debut album by Clarice Jensen, artistic director of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME). The album explores the variable differences between acoustic and electronic sound as well as depiction of the simulated and the unconscious. It was originally conceived as a collaboration between Jensen and the artist Jonathan Turner as an audio-visual work, but is here presented in it´s pure audible form.
Building on a long and romantic tradition of solo cello repertoire, Jensen expands and confuses the familiar sound of the cello through the use of effects pedals, multi-tracking, and tape loops recorded at variable speeds, presented in works she has written for herself as well as a piece she conceived together with Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson. Also featured is Michael Harrison’s Cello Constellations for multi-tracked cello and sine tones, written for Jensen, which meditates on long, sustaining tones.
With »For this from that will be filled«, Jensen has made an incredibly strong first album that feels like a surreal and futuristic journey through an alternate timeline.
claricejensen.bandcamp.com/album/for-this-from-that-will-be-filled
€23.50
Esthesis
Cellist/composer Clarice Jensen returns on 130701 with her third album, ‘Esthesis’, a deep and gorgeous new work conceptually structured around the emotional and harmonic spectrum and the phenomenon of chromesthesia – a condition whereby sound involuntarily evokes an experience of color, shape and movement. Following up her critically-acclaimed 2020 LP ‘The experience of repetition as death’ (a record almost presciently timed to arrive as Covid first hit), 'Esthesis’ sees Jensen expanding her oeuvre, introducing a wider instrumental range, and reflecting on the effects of isolation. Recorded by Jensen in upstate NY and expertly mixed by Francesco Donadello, the record was mastered by Matthew Agoglia and is released on October 21st, ahead of a UK/EU tour supporting 130701 alumni Dustin O’Halloran.
From its opening piano notes, 'Esthesis’ gently upends expectations built up over previous albums. Shifting and extending Jensen’s sound in line with the adventurousness of the ‘Drone Studies’ and ‘Platonic Solids’ EPs, the album is less reliant on her trademark razor-sharp, processed cello drone. Performed heavily on synth, as well as her more usual cello and electronics, it also features the piano playing of Timo Andres (tracks 1, 4 and 5) and the voices of Laura Lutzke, Francesca Federico and Emma Broughton (on tracks 3 and 6). Whilst the drone is never far away, there’s a sense of more light and space across the album.
'Esthesis’ was originally conceived in pre-pandemic times as a concert experience, structured to comprise a series of long drones, each centred on a single key/pitch and cycling sequentially through the circle of fifths from C to F. These drones would be punctuated by shorter “songs”, each depicting one of the seven principle emotions defined in the Chinese Book of Rites. As an audio-visual experience, Jensen imagined the audience being bathed in coloured lights that corresponded to each drone, with those colours combined or oscillating during the songs in an effort to mimic or induce chromesthesia: a (gentle, not jarring) trip through the complete spectrum of colour, (Western) pitch and emotion.
With the pandemic dashing these plans and ushering in a period where it was even difficult to imagine live performance anymore, Jensen instead set out to realise the concept as an album palpably created in enforced solitude and isolation. “I expanded my usual palette of layered and treated cellos without the effect of a more grandiose or large-scale feeling of timbre; I wished to employ additional media in an effort to further portray the idea of isolation and containment.” Foregoing the longer drone structures she’d planned in favour of a more succinct whole, each track on ‘Esthesis’ evokes a different principal emotion using seemingly one-dimensional titles, with Jensen’s intention being to juxtapose the depths of these emotions with the reality-overlay of solitude. “It also calls to question how sensation can be rudimentary. Imposed isolation and the fear of viral exposure led many to seek sensation by streaming television, circulating memes, and sharing delayed laughs with loved ones across computer screens – all of this done alone and somewhat removed through various media, and set against a backdrop of very real fear.” While the \"removed\" nature of each track/emotion remains deliberate, so also exists the very realness of the emotion itself. “\'Joy\' evokes vernal lightness and promise, and came to me as I was falling asleep and realised I was still smiling thinking about someone I love. \'Sadness\' is a setting of Purcell\'s \'Dido\'s Lament’. \'Liking\' begins with tentative hope and then blossoms, using an additive compositional process, whereas \'Disliking\' is subtractive. ‘Anger\' uses text taken from Simone de Beauvoir\'s letters to Nelson Algren (the entirety is pasted below). \'Fear\' attempts to simply portray breathing and absence. The organs used on \'Love\' suggest hallowed spaces, employing only a short progression that always returns to the same but becomes layered, out-of-sync and lost, but simplest at its end.”
Thursday, 3 Juillet 1947
“I led a very quiet life since my last letter: no cave, no party, no wit. There was a wonderful storm in the country, it was really beautiful. The whole day had been so hot, you really wanted to die, love or work or happiness did not mean anything more. And then came a huge black smoke in the sky, and strange phantasms went by in the dim light, and soon you could not see the sky nor the landscape any more, just a cherry tree beaten by the wind while the rain fell crazily, and thunder shaked the sky. Many trees were broken, flowers killed, the landscape was a battle field… Afterwards, everything was strangely peaceful. Friends came and we had a dinner and long evening: the woman who has swallowed a pin, her husband, the old lady I like so much, and Sartre. But I was not very quiet myself; the storm had gone on my nerves, and I drank much, and, dearest, when I drink much I am no longer sensible at all; when the other friends left I became a storm myself, and poor Sartre was very bored with me who spoke about life and death and everything in a rather mad way. When I am drunk everything seems very tragic and pathetic and terrifying to me – so dreadfully important, and yet without importance since death is at the end; I should knock my head against the walls. I did not knock my head but I spoke and raved late in the night on the peaceful little country roads, and I decided not to drink any more for some time. You see, it has never been very easy for me to live, though I am always very happy – maybe because I want so much to be happy. I like so much to live and I hate the idea of dying one day. And then I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life, I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, and to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish…You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger…” [Simone de Beauvoir, Letters to Nelson Algren]
Across the album’s seven pieces, Jensen shows great restraint and an incredible compositional talent in spinning a series of beautiful, complex interweavings of texture, tone, rhythm and melody. There is a serious depth in her sensibility, that rewards repeated listening.
https://claricejensen.bandcamp.com/album/esthesis
€32.50
Versatile Ambience
Without referencing typical genre or style, the collaboration of sound artists Tim Barnes and Jeph Jerman moves a step forward with this 45 RPM LP release of texture and atmosphere, with assistance from Ken Vandermark, Jacob Duncan, Aaron Michael Bulter, Sara Saltau & Bret Berry.
"The fact that two words sit next to each other does not automatically mean that they are related. The ambience given off by this LP full of coarse textures and lancing sounds isn't exactly versatile; it'd be easier to devise a list of places where it can't be played and people you know who would not sit still for it than to string together the places where its ambience would be appropriate. And just because two men with documented histories of hitting things get together and make records doesn't mean they'll turn in an album of percussion music.
In fact, Tim Barnes and Jeph Jerman only occasionally resort to directly striking anything on Versatile Ambience; they're too busy engaging in all manner of other interventions that confound perception and makes you think hard about just what constitutes music. If you consult Barnes' and Jerman's discography, you can find CDRs a decade old to which the Discogs website has assigned the designation free improvisation. Whatever you call the music on Versatile Ambience, you can't call it that. It is carefully constructed from collected outdoors sounds, wind and stringed instruments played by musicians such as Ken Vandermark and electronics of uncertain provenance; there's definitely a shortwave radio in the mix, but beyond that, take a guess.
It's probably more relevant to note that it's not immediately clear if the twittering high frequencies that lift away from a distant jet's quiet roar are played electronics or a field recording of bugs. Jerman has gone on record saying that he is not concerned with representing anything, he just uses sounds he likes to hear. Still, in a time when human activity is submerging islands and killing off species at a record rate, it's hard not to assign significance to music that challenges the listener to figure out where nature ends and man begins. No discussion of this album would be complete without acknowledging its particular physical qualities. The sleeve is hefty and substantial.
The vinyl is heavy and spins at 45 RPM; Rashad Becker's mastering conveys the high frequencies with amazing clarity and the rougher textures with such tactility that you'll swear you can feel the sounds coming through your fingertips."
[Bill Meyer, Dusted Magazine]
€26.00
Why are we not perfect?
"... Why Are We Not Perfect completes Broadrick’s transformation from atmosphere-obsessed drone metallurgist to neo-shoegaze aesthete. There’s heaviness of a very different sort oozing from the two-chord vamp “Farewell” -- it’s the kind of heaviness that derives from depth of production and emotional resonance, rather than piles of distorted guitar. You could easily fall into the cracks between those Björk-like fuzz bass hits on the title track. Its final lyric (“Why are we not perfect/ When we can’t live forever?”) is just one of the many simple profundities you’ll find buried deep within if you do... ] [Prefix mag]
"5 track EP (2 songs of which originally appeared on the vinyl only split 12" with Eluvium). JUSTIN BROADRICK has set aside the heavy foundation of pounding guitars prevalent in past recordings & brought to the fore elements of texture & melody that previously hovered at the periphery of his monolithic compositions. While this may prove frustrating to metal idealists, those with a greater sense of adventure will find the results both illuminating & heart rending." [label info]
"Not a brand new Jesu record, instead, this ep collects the three tracks from Jesu's split lp with Eluvium from last year, and adds two alternate versions to flesh it out a bit. Folks who missed out on that now out of print 12", or those amongst you who remain turntableless, will for sure want to pick this up, and Jesu fanatics, might just find this worth it for the two extra alternate takes. First the songs proper: Three new songs from Jesu, and as if we didn't already see Broadrick and Co. heading in this direction, they've almost entirely
jettisoned the heaviness, in favor of a blissy new wave-y drift. Really! No massive sludge, no blissed out crunch, in fact, most of this sounds like Jesu doing the soundtrack to a John Hughes movie, all drift and croon and no crunch and pummel, but it's really nice, and pretty, and still suitably Jesu-like.
Imagine Simple Minds or the Cure but raised on Slowdive and Chapterhouse and Swervedriver and My Bloody Valentine, doing the theme song for Sixteen Candles 2008 (which if our calculations are correct would be more like Forty Candles). The first song would be a massive hit, sort of melancholy and romantic, dark and dreamy, but still sort of catchy and hopeful, like sunbeams barely making it through grey storm clouds. The final track sounds like it could be from that last scene in Sixteen Candles 2008, the one
where the boy and the girl finally make it to the dance after all of the crazy mishaps and misunderstandings and are finally sharing that
slow dance... lugubrious and fuzzy, and soft focus and so great actually. It's weird, and a bit unexpected, but as much as we love the
glacial crush of past Jesu discs, this new-wave-y drift really suits them, which is a good thing, since they seem to be heading even more and more in that direction with each new release.
The two extra tracks are definitely not -drastically- different, but different enough certainly to make them worth having.
"Farewell" gets even more washed out, the whole thing muted and over saturated, the chugging guitars, disembodied and more textural than
heavy, the whole song suffused with chiming harmonics and sun dappled soaring bittersweet melodies. "Why Are We Not Perfect", the above
mentioned Sixteen Candles 2008 closer, hews closely to the original, the change more in timbre and texture than anything, the vocals still weary and woozy, the beat a loping skittery shuffle, surrounded by shimmering clouds of effervescent streaks of warm buzz, swirls of backwards melody, all whirling softly and dreamily.
Beautifully packaged in a super thick oversized Japanese style mini lp cd jacket, with a thick printed inner sleeve." [Aquarius Records]
www.hydrahead.com
€11.00
Death Is Perfection, Everything Else Is Relative
"The last two years have seen me maintaining an association with an unusual bedfellow, death. The loss of Mika Vainio, as well as three members of my own family, has had a profound effect on me and spurred a lengthy reflection on life, death, and everything in between.
Parallelly, while studying the philosophy of science, I came across shadow photons:
“Tangible photons are the ones we can see or detect with instruments whereas shadow photons are intangible (invisible) detectable only indirectly through the interference effects on the tangible photons.
There is no intrinsic difference between tangible and shadow photons: each photon is tangible in one universe and intangible in all the other parallel universes.
They travel at the speed of light, bounce off mirrors, are refracted by lenses, and are stopped by opaque barriers or filters of the wrong colour. Yet, they do not trigger even the most sensitive detectors. The only thing in the universe that a shadow photon can be observed to affect is the tangible photon that it accompanies. This is the phenomenon of interference.
Shadow photons would go entirely unnoticed, were it not for this phenomenon and the strange pattern of shadows by which we observe it.
Thus the existence of a seething, prodigiously complicated hidden world of shadow photons has been inferred.”*
I have drawn a parallel between shadow photons and death. The interference phenomena, parallel universes, and how shadow photons affect tangible photons they accompany, offer, in my opinion, similarities, an unknown universe which is death and how we, remaining tangible human beings, are affected. This quest has led me to be more willing to accept chaos in my life and to conclude that Death is perfection, everything else is relative.
*The fabric of reality, David Deutsch, Penguin Press 1997.
All sounds recorded at various locations in Europe, South America and at EMS, Stockholm using the Buchla 200 modular synthesizer.
soar, all sounds recorded with Klara Lewis in Montreal 2018
https://francejobin.bandcamp.com/album/death-is-perfection-everything-else-is-relative
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"Subsequent to a series of personal losses, France Jobin – Montreal’s minimalist composer of deserved renown – was forced to come to terms with something that haunts the existence of countless beings. As pathetic as this usually appears (courtesy of the average human’s shallowness), she attempted a rational collocation of chaos in her life, at the same time recognizing death as the ultimate symbol of a not better specified “perfection”. The introductory notes quote an excerpt from David Deutsch’s book The Fabric Of Reality, grounded on the theory of phantom photons. Now, when it comes to photons this writer’s cynical experience translates as follows: interesting stuff on paper, yet inevitably destined to become, in most cases, food for pseudo-intellectual exhibition of the self (though I’m convinced that Jobin doesn’t belong to that category). After all, everyone is entitled to clutching at the straws of unearthly conjectures to put a measure of order in their own mind. Particularly when the grim reaper comes around waving us hello under various guises, which – in this day and age – happens quite frequently, including the cerebral demise of selected wannabe “authorities” dabbling in issues beyond their reach.
Fortunately, besides any cognitive necessity Jobin is an expert sound assembler. The music she created for this album derives entirely from a Buchla 200 analog synthesizer, except for a shorter and less assuaging track – “Soar” – made with Klara Lewis and exclusively available in the digital version. The longer pieces “Inertia” and “P”, however, represent everything that needs to be (un)told. There’s an answer to every question, there’s calmness behind any anxious doubt if only one delves in the right combination of frequencies. Jobin concocted textural trails that stay with the listener unobtrusively, typically projecting one or two suspended chords. The result amalgamates perfectly with our environment when played at moderate volume. Still, the apparent stasis is perturbed by the very pulsation that it contains. We detect imperceptible subsurface discolorations, brief dissipations of energy across the harmonic flawlessness, a few dynamic weaknesses and slight distortions in an otherwise rather narcotic flux. It’s sorrow-inducing, brain-quietening, and profoundly individual." [Touching Extremes]
€19.50
Mirror Neurons
"Mirror neurons represent a distinctive class of cells that fire both when an animal executes an action and when it observes another individual performing the same action. Discovered by Italian neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti and his team at the University of Parma while doing a research on the neural representation of motor movements in monkeys, the precise function and influence of these neurons has become one of the most important topic in neuroscience. They have been linked to many behaviours and abilities, from empathy to learning by imitation and language acquisition, as well as implicated in conditions such as autism and other brain disorders. These findings suggest that the mirror neuron system plays a key role in our ability to experience empathy.
Initiated by sound artists France Jobin and Fabio Perletta, Mirror Neurons is a media-project investigating the notion of empathy and physical distance. The entire album is the result of extended sound files exchange between Montréal (Canada) and Roseto degli Abruzzi (Italy). Each of the pieces is based on rough sounds and their consequent re-working, listening and reaction, processing and imitation. The ongoing process helped the artists to draw inspiration in terms of stimuli for the act of composing itself in two very distant cities, different climate, time zones and languages.
Like much of Jobin and Perletta’s recent works, Mirror Neurons explores the artists’ interest in intersection between science and art, as well as the infinitely small and invisible. In order to further develop the concept of distance/connectivity, visual artists XX+XY from Rome have been involved in the process. They created a multi-dimensional, generative and ever-changing sound visualization through the use of quiet textures and subtle movements emphasizing the slowed sense of time of the work itself. Thought to be performed live in a big space, the video aims to create an immersive environment and a unique occasion to reflect about the behaviour of our emotions and the importance of human interaction." [label info]
www.dragonseyerecordings.com
€13.00
IBM 1401, a User's Manual
Nach den schönen TOUCH-CDs ein weiteres stark Filmsoundtrack-artiges Album des Isländers, dass uns stark an die emotionale Musik von ARVO PÄRT erinnert... sein Debut für 4AD !!
"Johann Johannsson ist Isländer und lebt in Reykjavik. Er ist Musiker (sowohl Solo als auch als Mitglied des Apparat Organ Quartets), Komponist, Produzent und Labelgründer (Kitchen Motor). Johannssons Name ist auch immer wieder in den Credits der Produktionen renommierter Künstler zu finden. So produzierte und schrieb er mit Marc Almond an dessen Stranger Things' Album, arbeitete mit Barry Adamson, Pan Sonic, dem Hafler Trio oder Jaki Liebezeit zusammen.
Als Komponist verzaubert er seine Zuhörer meist mit seiner stattlichen und eindringlich-melodischen Musik. Sein neues Werk ist bis dato seine am anspruchsvollsten instrumentierte und attraktivste Komposition. Die Idee zum Album basiert auf der Arbeit von Johanns Vater. Dieser war im Jahr 1964 als leitender Techniker bei einem der ersten Großrechnerprojekte Islands beschäftigt und es gelang ihm, den Rechner IBM 1401 mit einer Melodie zu programmieren und diese aufzunehmen. Diese Tonbänder, die Johann auf dem Dachboden seines Vaters fand, bilden das Herzstück des Albums. Für die Aufnahmen schrieb Johannson seine Komposition für ein Streicher-Sextett um und komponierte einen neuen finalen Satz." [Indigo]
"So here it is, Jóhann Jóhannsson’s eagerly awaited debut album for the 4AD label, and we’re very happy indeed to say that it’s the finest record he’s put his name to yet. I suppose the move from Touch worried some fans at first, but on hearing ‘IBM 1401…’ in it’s entirety it makes perfect sense as part of the 4AD catalogue. Jóhannsson found inspiration for the record after discovering his father’s IBM1401, a cumbersome 1960s computer system for which his father was a technician. Apparently these machines used to cost $2500 per day to lease and probably did a lot less than you’d think given the price, but Jóhannsson saw something intriguing to sample and in the same way that he utilised morse code receivers and ham radios on his Kitchen Motors disc, he uses IBM1401 training tapes as the thematic link on these tracks. An English voice can be heard describing the computer parts and how they work and how to engineer repairs on the machine and it’s peripherals, of course this is something that can ruin an otherwise good piece of music, but Jóhannsson in his restraint has managed to use the samples so cleverly that they actually become part of the music itself. The assertive voice becomes a symbol of nostalgia and that dusty sentiment, a picture of technology passed, or an electronic postcard from 1960, and never becomes there merely for the sake of it. Coupled with the simply stunning string arrangements they add a strange ethereal narrative, and while not telling a story as such, they bring vivid pictures to mind with great ease. Jóhannsson’s skill in merging sounds doesn’t end here either, as we heard on the stunning ‘Englabörn’ he can subtly blend his electronic production methods with the orchestral arrangements without it ever falling out of place. Synthesized chimes trip and fall in-between the orchestral swells and radiophonic bleeps to create soundscapes so breathtaking they can leave you totally lost for words. It would be almost offensive however to merely label ‘IBM 1401, A User’s Manual’ as cinematic, rather Jóhannsson has pushed the bar higher and taken the infant post-classical genre to the next logical place, creating an album which doesn’t just suggest visuals, rather with it’s oblique use of sampled voices and atmospheric sounds the visuals are there all the time and are simply left for us to interpret. A challenging, engaging and utterly breathtaking experience, Jóhann Jóhannsson has proved he is out there on his own. Essential purchase." [Boomkat]
€14.00
For Eschrichtiidae
This piece is the first in a series called omniana, and is presented on behalf of two gray whales that frequent the Puget Sound and the Straits of Juan de Fuca. These whales are known by us as Patch (#49), and Little Patch (#53). The piece is both a noise recording and an ambient one: a somewhat musical work that is actually a raw underwater recording of a Washington State ferry approaching and docking in Port Townsend, WA on April 29, 2019. The sounds were captured using hydrophones and condensers
simultaneously in open air.
Undersea noise pollution is a problem, and a growing one, and there is little policy in the U.S. to address it. Even vessels operated by environmentally conscious organizations like the Washington State Ferries have significant issues to overcome if we are to expect healthier ecosystems. In Washington, Eschrichtiidae are at superior trophic levels in the local waters, and provide a delicate balance to the ecosystem. The winter feeding routines of Eschrichtiidae are essential for food and lipid stores that allow for their demanding migrations to tropical latitudes for breeding.
We must expect better, routine maintenance of propulsion trains and propellers from vessels. The intense noise that can be heard here is estimated to be 70-80 dB above what should be considered to be normal. In addition to causing stress to whales, such noise disorients gray and killer whales, fully disrupts their unique communications, and throws into disorder the availability and behaviors of prey species.
Listen, enjoy, and advocate for robust undersea noise pollution policy.
The sounds and the context:
- This ferry is making a slow approach to the Port Townsend dock at the end of its transit from Coupeville, WA.
- The loud metallic noises are the sounds its poorly maintained propulsion system and propeller
- The propeller stops as the ferry slows its speed
- The propeller is used again for navigation
- The propeller stops and the ferry slowly shifts to its water jets and thrusters for positioning as it approaches the dock
- The ambient sounds are the final process of positioning and docking
- The lapping water is the waves from the wake of the ferry during its earlier approach, finally reaching the floating dock I am standing on
- the bass sounds heard throughout the recording are the floating dock from which the piece was recorded, bumping into a pylon from shifting waves and currents
Alan Jones
March 2019
https://taalem.bandcamp.com/album/for-eschrichtiidae-omniana-alm-128
€5.00
Haga
pierre juillard is a french naturalist exploring different sound territories, with different collaborators, from field recordings, sound poetry to free improvisation. his solo output is mainly focused on field recordings. "haga" is a fascinating mix of sounds recorded near cherbourg, france.
"the name 'haga' comes from norse, an ancient scandinavian language, and would mean 'closed place'. this piece is a collage of recordings made in cap de la hague near cherbourg in august 2019. i tried to capture the diversity of the sound spaces in this small part of the french coastline, a concentrate of biodiversity: cliffs, rocky foreshores, immense sand or pebble beaches, monumental dunes, salt meadows… the history of the sites was also a common theme, from the fortifications of vauban to fossil bunkers, from semaphores watching the coastline to small craft harbours dear to jacques prévert. the beauty of this wild spaces, known as "the little ireland", hides another side: it’s one of the most endangered site on the planet, where massive amounts of nuclear waste are recycled…" (pierre juillard)
recorded at saint-vaast-la-hougue, tatihou, urville-nacqueville, baie de quervière, pointe de jardeheu, cap de la hague, goury, baie d'ecalgrain, vauville, dunes de biville, diélette
composed and mixed in october-november 2019
https://taalem.bandcamp.com/album/haga-alm-138
"It has been a long time since I last reviewed music by Pierre Julliard; Vital Weekly 863, a collaborative work with Frederique Bruyas; before that, a 3"CDR on the Kaon label, Vital Weekly 811). Taalem calls him a "French naturalist exploring different sound territories, with different collaborators, from field recordings, sound poetry to free improvisation. His solo output is mainly focused on field recordings". The recordings for 'Haga' were made near Cherbourg, France. This is a harbour town with a long history, and Julliard found sounds near the sea, with sea waves, bird sounds, the beach, but also, so it seems near the fortress. Pointing his microphones in various corners of buildings, the resonances of the natural world come to us in a slightly different way. I would think that Juillard restricts his music to natural recordings and not to processing his sounds in any way. Various events flow right into each other or are mixed, so a vivid picture of the place arises. A fine work of pure field recordings." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€5.00
Music for the Ears
"For a long time I've been thinking about how to create spaces into which one can retreat, where one can find quiet, where one can see, hear, where one is able to concentrate, where one is isolated from the world around but still is able to participate in itby means of art or Music or both' Rolf Julius, 1987. 'Futurism and Dadaism both made use of the synthesis of audio and visual arts to create a singular experience greater than the sum of its parts. This idea was further advanced by the Fluxus and Minimalism movements. Born in 1939 in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, Rolf Julius was profoundly influenced and inspired by these movements while he studied art in Bremen and Berlin. YEars later, after immersing himself in Musical works by artists like Morton Feldman, John Cage, and La Monte Young, Julius began to shift his focus from visual art to the synthesis of sound and visual art and nature, exploring the relationships between sounds and objects and environments. Julius soon discovered how sounds can influence vision, creating simple tones to be presented in conjunction with his early photographic work. Such experiments culminated in the creation of his pioneering work 'Dike Line' (1979), which combined visual images with texture-inducing tones. This piece was presented at the ground breaking exhibition 'Fur Augen Und Ohren' in 1980. Mythical in scope, this was the first major European exhibition attempted to map international research by artists exploring relations between sound and visual art, bringing together work by John Cage, Luigi Russolo, Nam June Paik, Joe Jones, Bill Fontana, Milan Knizak, Harry Bertoia, David Tudor and Rolf Julius. Over the next 30 yEars Julius went on to create some of the most meaningful and moving works in the grey area between Music and art, between sound and silence. Alongside Takehisa Kosugi, Terry Fox, and Akio Suzuki, he has emerged as one of the most important and influential sound artists of our time. Since the early 1980's Julius has referred to his compositions as Small Music, receiving international acclaim from those in the fields of contemporary art and Music for calling the origins of sound and vision into question. Small Music not only describes Julius' approach to composition (soft and compelling sounds from simple instruments and nature), but also a way in which to view his works and ultimately the world. Art historian Bernd Schulz once wrote 'if one recalls John Cage's central theme of 'silence' then Rolf Julius is the contemporary artist who approaches him most closely'. Julius' Small Music has the distinct ability to heighten our perception such that 'silence' becomes a positive quality of a place and a situation, and not just an absence of sound. Whether using photographs, ink drawings, audio compositions, or subtle and sometimes almost hidden outdoor installations, Rolf Julius' works serve as catalyst, increasing our awareness of the great beauty of the world that surrounds us. Western Vinyl is proud to release 'Music for the Ears' the first in a series of Small Music releases by Rolf Julius. With a goal of creating solitary sound environments, the Small Music series will culminate into a boxed edition of seminal works by this master sound artist. 'Music for the Ears' is comprised of two long tracks of gently weaving tones exploring the possibilities of spatial experience. The cover image depicts Julius' sound installation in a bamboo forest in Kyoto, Japan where his Music is placed high in the air, by speakers hanging freely from the branches of the trees. As the Music suspends itself in the air, the tones sway in the wind floating ever so gently, caressing the Ears, the trees, the light, and clouds." [label info]
www.westernvinyl.com
"Now here's someone who is perhaps world famous in the world of sound art, yet hardly ever appears in Vital Weekly. Its, among other reasons, because he didn't release that music, but also because his music is usually heard in museums and galleries and not always on record. But the good news is that Western Vinyl will re-release eight of his old works, starting with 'Music For The Ears', which comes with the subtitle 'small music no. 1' and small music it is. 'Song From The Past', the first of the two pieces on this album sounds like one long tape loop of bamboo flute being played. Every now and then it stops and then it starts again. Music that is very undemanding - an environmental piece to fill your ambience. Or perhaps music to meditate by - if only I ever did that. The second piece 'Music On Two High Poles' is different. It might be played on a small, children's organ or a harmonium, cut into two loops of a varying length. Its a bit louder, or perhaps it just appears so: I turned
up the volume quite a bit for the first piece, so this one comes in louder. I think both pieces are designed to do the same thing: create a sonic environment. What I especially liked about it, and that's something you can only hear when the volume is quite a bit, is all the extra sounds that come along: the static hiss from the used analogue tapes that creates a nice additional sonic layer to the music. And which doesn't seem to make the music static but very much alive and vibrant. Excellent music. This is the earliest Rolf Julius recording, from 1979 and the start of a great career. Can't wait for the other seven releases." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€14.00
K
"The shortest release is by K11, and also one of the few whose title reflects the bandname. This is perhaps the most obscure release of these three. Rumbling deep end sounds with some mild distortion and far away we hear some sounds in the background. That could be sounds picked up in a large room with lots of natural reverb, say a church so. The humming sound returns on the second side of this tape, but now also pushed towards the back and again with sounds picked up, seemingly, at random. Streetsounds, radio interference and such like. Things build up over the course of the tape to a mighty crescendo of colliding field recordings. I preferred the b-side over the a-side, simply for its more austere, creepy character." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
www.silentes.it/tapestry
€7.50
Lyvv, China Doll
"Edward Ka-spel, singer and frontman of The Legendary Pink Dots, may not need any more introduction. Ever since the early 80s' the Pink Dots are an unqiue group, that blend together modern electronic music with psychedelic music from the 70's, with as a landmark of its own, the apocalytpic lyrics and voice of Edward Ka-spel. As a solo artist his music is not so complex and varied regarding instrumentation, but they create a more private and intimate atmosphere. "Lyvv Chian Doll" was original released as a casette by Ka-spel on his own Mirrordot cassette label. Originally this cassette was intended as a simple live document, but during its compilation that intention became obscured. Ultimately only half of the material was live, and it featured much previously unheard work. For the CD version, only "The Horn Section" is live, while a number of sketches and small pieces have been inserted, recordings that cover the period 1982-1992, so do be patient with the occasional dubious sound quality. CD is packed in standard jewel box with transparant tray." [label info]
www.staalplaat.com
€14.50
Caste O' Graye Skreeens
"When all's been said & all's been seen, face it, we are just machines". Last copies of this album on the now defunct World Serpent label. Consists more or less of the fabulous one-tracker "OUR CAPTAIN'S EYES" (53+ min.), a very subtle & dense track with various parts, partly pulsating or with little beats, partly free floating atmospheric & experimental, and also the typical KA-SPEL melodies & vocals appear.... this is like having 20 different tracks in one long surrealistic & weird journey...
€13.00
Miramar
Vier super-minimale und recht “trockene” drones dieses inzwischen in der Schweiz ansässigen Klangkünstlers, der wie z.B. ALVIN LUCIER den Raum als Instrument benutzt...
“ 'miramar' features new pieces recorded live in studio using analogue synthesizer, floor tom and small cymbals. Recorded with eight different room microphones, the room being extremely large, with 20-meter high ceilings. Each room microphone picked up a different frequency range, depending on its placement and how the room's resonant frequency mixed with what I was playing. In addition to analogue synthesizer and percussion, the room itself was thus the third «instrument» Jason Kahn used on this recording. Jason Kahn was born in New York, grew up in Los Angeles, moved to Berlin in 1990. He now lives in Zürich. His audio work is a mix of electronic and acoustic sound sources, produced with minimal percussion, laptop or analogue synthesizer. In recent years he has also created several sound installations. He started the cd label «cut» in 1998” [label description]
€14.00
split
"Für den Auftakt der halluzinatorischen Wahrnehmungen gewidmeten Parakusis-Reihe des mit Bill Laswell gestarteten Karlsruher Labels, variieren Thomas Weber, Heike Aumüller & Johannes Frisch zwei Tracks ihres Staubgold-Releases Jinx, bei denen der Musik Flügel wachsen, die einen in eine Art ‚out of body experience‘ davon tragen können. ‚Jnx (Excursion)‘ klopft, rasselt und dröhnt und Aumüller kaut mit zittrigem Gesang die Luft weich, damit das Karlsruher Schamanen-Kollektief an der Weltachse entlang in die Anderwelt gelangt. ‚Both Eyes Tight Shut‘ (Instrumentalversion) bringt Strings -Frischs Kontrabass arco, Heike Wendelins Viola und Martin Siewerts Lapsteel - so in Schwingung, dass die Phantasie auf sanften Langwellen den Orbit verlässt und durch Outer Space driftet, nirvanasüchtig wie der finale Surfer in Dark Star. Zwei astrale Trips in der Tradition krautiger Space-Psychedelik. Hinter fest geschlossenen Augen öffnet sich die Tür des Cactus Tree Motels auf den Mäanderweg in Sound, der in Altered States lockt. Stringtheoretisch versiert zeigt sich auch das von BiP_HOp-Macher Philippe Petit versammelte 11-köpfige Ensemble STRINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. Saiteninstrumente haben die absolute Mehrheit gegenüber der Fraktion aus Trompete, Saxophon, Vibraphon, Sampler und Petits Laptop. Nach einer ersten Duftmarke auf der BiP_HOp-Compilation Generation v.8 wird man hier entführt in
den ‚Forest of Spades‘ mit seinem von Streichern und Vibraphon gestreuten Nadelteppich, von Perceval Bellones süßem Saxophon in ein ‚Fantastique Alaska‘ und von Andy Diagrams Trompete auf Bergkämme, auf denen sich nicht nur die Wasser scheiden. Diese Fourth World hat ihren Magnetpol im Osten. Die Musik verflüssigt das Bewusstsein so, dass es dem Sehnsuchtshorizont stetig zuströmt. Wenn nicht auch die Anderwelt ein Kugel wäre." [Bad Alchemy]
"Kammerflimmer Kollektief/Strings Of Consciousness Split 10". Exclusive tracks on a strictly limited aficionados edition of 500. Both bands recently released a full-length album. Gatefold sleeve, elaborate artwork." [label info]
www.karlrecords.net
€12.00
Ghosts of Industrial Sunday
"Here comes a new welcome entry in the ‘private sounds’ series of the now growing 13 catalogue. "Ghosts of Industrial Sunday" is a short film by Maria Assunta Karini and Francesco Paolo Paladino, whose music were composed by Simon Fisher Turner. This release consists of a video DVD, which contains the film, and a audio CD that features the original soundtrack and other compositions inspired by this project that Turner created on purpose; they are accompanied by an oversize 20 pages booklet that offers some images taken from the film and delves more into the concept behind it.
As a film, “Ghosts of Industrial Sunday” portrays those places attended by human beings in order to carry out their profession, while they are empty, for a limited period of time, during a break, on a Saturday or Sunday. These are places where the human presence, fatigue, pain, hope are palpable presences, where silence seizes the humble labor objects almost by magic and where things talk and expose without having to necessarily utter any words. The path chosen by the directors relates to a sort of secular “via crucis”, it is an objective progress through the human work’s granted moment of interruption in order to analyze it, to describe it and to underscore its dramatic sense, through the exclusive aid of inanimate objects.
The music created by Turner as a soundtrack to the film expresses a delicate tranquillity through notes of piano which are just mottled by the electronic elements in the background, while an unspoken sense of drama hovers in the air and the circular motion of the composition gradually absorbs the listener. Among the remaining tracks, is worth mentioning the evocative and intense soliloquy of "Piano For Double Lesson" and the hanging drones of the first part of "Some Lost Music".
Maria Assunta Karini, sculptor, photographer, writer and director, has shown her works in several major Museums, in Korea, Brazil and the United States. She has produced several short and medium length films, that have participated in the Cannes Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, MACBA Museum of Contemporary art Barcelona, MADC Costa Rica, and has been awarded numerous prizes at art and cinema festivals.
Francesco Paolo Paladino, script writer, musician and director, has received an award by F.E.D:I:C: at the 66th Festival of Venice. He has participated more than once in the Cannes Film Festival (Short Corner) and he has won the Houston’s World Film Festival and the New York Independent Film Festival.
Simon Fisher Turner has composed music for Derek Jerman, David Lynch, Mike Hodges, Michael Almareyda and several others authors. His recent soundtrack for “The Epic of Everest”, a film made in 1924, was nominated “Soundtrack of the Year” for 2013 by Mojo magazine. His CDs have been published all over the world." [label info]
http://13.silentes.it
www.silentes.net
€15.00
Euphoria Mitte
"With the whole bunch of very limited edition releases on such labels as Tosom, Domestic Violence Recordings, Verato Project and the luxurious LP made by Youdonthavetocallitmusic, the name of German musician Karl Bösmann is emerging since 2003. This is his second real CD after Unton (2005, Badbeatz Records) and includes several new compositions, showing the maturity and intensity of his prolific talent. Karl Bösmann irritates. His name alone, which reminds of Kafka's wayfarer to America, Karl Roßmann, is ambiguous. A mixture of sinister and typical german, where you can think of one of Alexander Kluge's Lebenslufe, which show in protocolar dryness the deceitfulness of fate. In fact did his debut Das Kind in der Küche (2004) exactly met this impression. The soundscapes between programmed music and abstraction - in more prosaic words, Bösmann constructs, in the good old tradition of electroacoustic music, with instruments played by himself, and completely without the fashionable chic of a laptop: minimal repetitive passages, especially drones that vibrate in themselves, that flash, shimmer and take a character and 3D-quality of its own. Phill Niblock and Ligeti could come to the back of your mind, a resonance that is an honour to both sides. Other musical influences ranges from AMM and Aube through Nurse With Wound and Organum to Ghédalia Tazartès and Xenakis and so sets his ambitions way over eye-level." [label info]
www.monochromevision.ru
"Karl Bosmann is a German post-industrial / electro-acoustic tactician who seems to from the Conrad Schnitzler mold of continuous
experimentation with his equipment in pushing it to expressive means, no matter how atemporal or atonal the resulting sounds might be. Our
previous experience with Bosmann had been through monolith drone- fields that swelled from electronics and possibly cymbals into
discordant dissonant crescendos somewhere between SUNNO))) and Sunroof! Here, Bosmann showcases a wide array of electronic circuity,
whose home-built, tone-bent aesthetics take after the sound poems of early electronic music coupled with the nondestructive strategies from the likes of Nautical Almanac. His electronic insectoid blips, click, and blorps percolate through live-wire electrical fields and the
humming cycles akin to fluorescent bulbs. Many of these tracks begin rather charmingly similar to something by Dan Deacon or Black Dice,
but Bosmann twists the demeanor of his electronics through anxiety- riddled tones that glow as if a background radiation, with all of the clicks then standing in for Geiger counter pulses to allude to the neutrino bath that he's unleashed through his electronics. The pierced
feedback mantra "Around The Sun" is a great recapitulation of what Arcane Device and Nurse With Wound have done with similar material.
Dotted through the experiments, Bosmann interjects collages of industrial-space field recordings coupled with overlapping male /
female spoken word bits, whose content and context are smeared to the point of abstraction following the Hafler Trio's many demonstrations of information overload." [Aquarius Rec.]
€12.50
Fernweh
Black Truffle is pleased to announce a new edition of Kassel Jaeger’s Fernweh, returning François J. Bonnet’s electroacoustic project to the label five years after the acclaimed Meith (BT069). Originally released on Giuseppe Ielasi and Jennifer Veillerobe’s impeccably curated Senufo Editions in 2012, Fernweh stands near the beginning of the gradual expansion of Bonnet’s approach after the austere acoustic textures of Aerae and Algae (both released on Senufo), leading to the lush, layered environments of recent solo works on Shelter Press and the epic electronic expeditions undertaken in duo projects with Stephen O’Malley and Jim O’Rourke.
A major work in the Kassel Jaeger oeuvre, stretching over two LP sides, Fernweh draws together synthesized and musique concrète materials into a drifting assemblage. Its title’s meaning is close to the concept of ‘Wanderlust’, fitting for this music that moves freely and unexpectedly between what Bonnet calls ‘climates’. Beginning with fizzing electronics whose rhythm of gradual approach suggests breaking waves, the clinical atmosphere is soon haunted by intangible traces of lived reality. Textures call up wind, water, insects, the crunch of feet on sand or the clinking of glasses, yet they can never be identified with any certainty. At times these concrete elements possess a vivid ‘closeness’; at others, the sounds shade into a formless distance. Though the listener forms no clear picture from the concrete sounds, these elements aerate the music, lending it their space.
Drawing from the rigorous formal language and conceptual apparatus of the French musique concrète tradition—with which Bonnet, as director of the GRM and researcher into its deepest archival recesses, is intimately familiar—the music of Kassel Jaeger is equally informed by how underground experimental music has rethought electroacoustic techniques, with Fernweh at times calling up the grit and grime of para-industrial eccentrics like Maurizio Bianchi or the Toniutti brothers, and at other moments suggesting the slow-moving grandeur of early Olivia Block. Subtle features of dynamics and rhythm act as connective tissue between the numerous ‘scenes’, with wave-like envelopes, rapid pulsations, and short, tape-loop patterns all recurring throughout the piece, shared ambiguously between electronic and concrete sounds. Amid these shifting, often inharmonic textures, the electronic elements sometimes cohere into melodic shapes and chordal patterns, cutting through the fog in distorted arcs or underpinning the layered surface with slow-moving harmonies. Like his friend and collaborator Jim O’Rourke, Bonnet displays a radical openness at odds with academic tradition, allowing unabashed emotion to coexist with rigorous experimentation. As Fernweh dies away with mysterious shudders, listeners are left at once moved and unsure of exactly what they just heard.
https://kasseljaeger.bandcamp.com/album/fernweh-2
€28.00
Frieda Harris
"An algid five tracks Occult homage to Lady Frieda Harris (mostly known as the artist behind Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot deck) is the case with this new creation by Nick Hoffman aka Katchmare.
"Frieda Harris" Represents both progression and realization Hoffman explored on previous Katchmare albums that he recorded during winter time, as it substantiates in the 25 minutes album opener "Winterreise"- A gesture to the renowned Schubert winter piece in the shape of saturnine and freezing drones that shifts to "Unseen Chariot", a picturesque track that offers noise washes alongside silent intervals and sensory drones gliding in idiosyncratic space heaven. "Wind Canticle" comes next as a methodical winter hymn with bitter ceremonial qualities, whilst "Shifting Snow" is a short and intimidating segment before "Ulrikke" rigorously end this album with an evident observation: Destruction implies creation. Death implies life. Winter is Death." [label info]
www.hcbrecords.com
€9.00
Air Vent
“air vent is a project that takes natural sounds out of their specific location, the sounds of peoples personal spaces [via mobile telephone] & places them live via radio senders or the internet into new contexts, into diverse locations, into both similar & contrasting environments. the work stems from ideas based on the relationship between sound & the sound source; natural rhythms & patterns in everyday sound [background noise, dialogue, etc]; the fine line, & often friction between natural & synthetic sound in connection to space; audio & visual perception.
air vent was first realized with juni radio [www.juniradio.net ] at bootlab in berlin. phone calls were made hourly [almost like an alternative news] from berlin to various places throughout the world. participants were invited to 'air their space' for 5 minutes, free to make sound or use the telephone to record sound, in whatever way they wished. the project was further progressed during a residency with ‘the fear’ at hull time based arts [www.timebase.org ], from which these recordings were taken. visually, the performance made reference to a typical dj setup, using two telephones instead of turntables. calls were made to mobile phones around the world, recipients were asked to answer their telephone & simply to leave it to record the natural background noise of their immediate environment, to convey their specific time/space/situation through sound. these calls were broadcast at the htba a:nx performance space & sent live via the internet to other environments.” [label info]
mCD-R in special cardboard-box
€9.00
Syndrome / Antidrome
"LP comes in 2 different covers – the SYNDROME-Cover and the ANTIDROME-Cover, both versions are lim.num. 250 cop. plus download code.
All indicators point in one direction.
Starting at „Hellstation“ towards „Zone 0“, passing buildings whose true purpose is less based on functionality than on degeneration.
To degenerate the population, painting them pictures of would could but never will be.
Concrete ravines, which are not made to live in, much more to delineate. The cries of the „Prekariat“ drowned with the play and song of the theatres. A city as you find it everywhere, marked by the pleasures of the people, covered by wishful thinking, yet full of Babylonian arrogance. From here to there, from the „Flesh Supply Center“ to the forensic psychiatry.
And here and there a man rises up and connects with his kind. A Forensic Resistance.
Follow „Ke / Hil“ on their way through ruins that no one sees – hear screams no one hears – exist! , so no one else does.
„Syndromes / Antidromes“ rattles at the societies „Comfort-zone“ – Is this really Ke/Hil ?
play it loud to hear the extreme cold!"
€19.00
Stadium
NewYork-based artist Eli Keszler is at the apex of his career. This year alone he’s had a three-month-long solo exhibition (“Blue Skies” at Fuse Arts, Bradford, UK), performed internationally in a duo with Laurel Halo, collaborated with noted Hungarian author La´szlo´ Krasznahorkai, taught experimental composition and performance at Camp in the Pyrenees mountains, composed music for Turner Prize– winning visual artist Laure Prouvost, and most recently embarked on a world tour with Oneohtrix Point Never.
“Stadium” is his new album for Shelter Press. As his ninth solo record,“Stadium” reflects his move from South Brooklyn to Manhattan, where he produced the album. The constant blurry motion and ever-changing landscapes of the fast-paced island helped him modify and shape his sound into a new kind of film noir. “After we moved into our East Village apartment,” Keszler explains, “we found a guitar pick on the floor that read ‘Stadium’. We looked at each other at the same time and had the same thought. It could have gone any number of ways.” Indeed, there is a startling amount of expression at play on each track, where intersections of melody, restraint and rhythm are used to challenge the idea of memory, impression and space.
Keszler is often mistaken for an electronic musician, but in fact his sounds are raw and natural, produced by hand live in-situ. His performance with the drumset and acoustic percussion are central to his work. He produces almost impossible textures through self-realized methodologies: cascading melodies, a shadow of voices, and a unique pointillistic materiality. Although playing with the intensity of digitally-created music, his communications are done live with no processing. These haptics are what give “Stadium” its depth and its warmth. In a recent interview for Dazed, collaborator Oneohtrix Point Never comments, “I’ve always described his playing as bacterial. He’s able to parallax into very small, very acute, very specific relationships between percussive textures. It’s beyond just being a drummer — he’s a world-building percussionist.”
In “Stadium,” Keszler uses lived experience to realize the most wide-ranging sound he’s created to date. “Stadium” draws out textures from overlapping geographies (from Shinjuku arcades to city streets and Brutalist architecture) and transforms these travelogue field recordings into starting points for composition. He then builds on these environments to create subliminal spaces for his percussion, keyboards and acoustic instruments. His “world-building” techniques are pushed to new levels with mesmerizing string and brass arrangements. Throughout the album, Keszler’s writing, keyboard playing and scoring operate like a sonic channel that transports the listener into a quaking web.
Perhaps this is the “stadium” referred to in the title: a larger network of sound and bodies moving continually, oscillating and turning in on itself. Keszler has explored these ideas before both in his visual work and sound installations - especially notable on projects such as his massive Manhattan Bridge installation ‘Archway’ or his Boston City Hall work 'Northern Stair Projection'. “Stadium” takes these long-running ideas to new depths. “My installations work with massive city spaces for a complex of individuals,” Keszler states. “The recordings on Stadium are inverted. They are landscapes scaled for the singular. Like a mass collecting in one arena, this music compresses city spaces, genre and instrumentalism into an amorphous form. On the record, there are ruptures of information and happenstance. Like a game, it could go any number of ways.”
€26.50
Circles and Cycles
Kg Augenstern (Christiane Prehn and Wolfgang Meyer) have been exploring the world for many years with their “Tentacles,” extendable fiberglass canes that allow them to touch and extract the sounds of the places they are travelling through. These tentacles have become a kind of prostheses to generate subtle experiences that require attentive listening. The various aspects of the project are constantly transformed and presented as audiokinetic installations, live-streams, radio broadcasts or sound installations in contemporary art spaces.
In autumn 2019, the artists explored places in Sicily that have been abandoned within the last few decades. With their tentacles, they scratched circles on the surface of these contemporary ruins to reveal the specific sounds of the various surfaces and their surroundings. A camera installed in the center of the circles recorded the images. The research was accompanied by experiments with raw sheep’s wool and clay as materials corresponding to the ephemeral appearance and transitory atmosphere of the places. The outcome of the research was presented as an exhibition in an old prayer hall in Palermo.
The CD invites listeners to explore 10 abandoned places, including the location of the final exhibition.
11 Tracks (37′44″)
Book & CD (500 copies)
KG Augenstern’s “tentacle” performs surgeries on abandoned places. The duo from Berlin seeks out locations that lie between the states of life and death, populated and depopulated, places constantly changing, and thus in an enduring state of malleable equilibrium. They are the apocalyptic souvenirs of humans’ attempts to form landscapes. That which exists tends towards new shapes, which slowly bury mankind’s contingencies and intentions.
The forgotten place and its surfaces are scratched in circles. The media to be studied are the subtle sounds caused by the scratching. At times the tentacle glides lightly along the surface, barely touching; on another pass it might bite in, leaving a mark. It stretches itself out, or blends with the material beneath it, all the while releasing its tensions in the form of deep, diffused sound vibrations.
Or it springs in powerful leaps across the ground beneath it. An intense sound is called forth, rhythmic and repetitive, embedded in the temporal cycles of the described circles. Time is rendered instable, volatile, surreal, and reveals its magic.
The process is repeated in the same or another location.
The combinations of time and material transform themselves into a cyclical continuum.
KG Augenstern creates an additional cycle out of sheep’s wool, clay, and fire. From materials found in the ruins, burned objects are created which are fragile and subordinate to their own disintegration. The observer slips outside the field of consciousness, and attention is directed towards the revelation of baselessness, not from within the realm of understanding, but in the form of realization in a material sense. Life is transformed into a question, and this uncertainty reveals the instability of existence.
Ennio Pellicanò
Curator
Step by step, staying in this lonely place by the sea, with that empty beach, working in all these ruins without ever seeing any living person, only birds– mostly pigeons–, insects, and lizards, a kind of hypnotic, apocalyptic dimension develops. In almost every place there is an abandoned camp somebody homeless used to use a long time ago for a temporary shelter, with worn out clothes and an old mattress. Shy dogs: one, a German shepherd with two puppies vacillates between being curious and afraid, same as me. Circle by circle, rubbish, wet walls, cracked ceilings, holes to take care of and another uncertain stairway. Contemporary archeology in contemporary ruins. Disgust, fear, tension, expectations. Layers of birdshit on children‘s toys, suddenly left behind, hard material under soft organic patina…. a baby carriage, furniture, pictures on the walls and beds still made …what will wait in the next room, the next building, the next structure?
SCRATCHING A LIDO
Lido Las Vegas was built in the ’60s and was closed by the authorities in 2017. Before its closure, it had been run illicitly within a nature reserve, and without any authorization, state concession, or certificate of use. It is a wooden structure with small rooms for summer guests, a restaurant and a playground for children. A solid, newer but also abandoned structure with more rooms was built just beside.
The scratching circles were recorded on the terraces, between the rooms and next to the playground. The surface is tiles, sand, rubbish, wood and stones. Everything is sandy. The waves of the sea can be heard in the background.
SCRATCHING A MOUNTAIN VILLAGE
Cunziria is a village the dates of whose founding as an urban nucleus are unknown, but it is known that in the 1920s a slow decline began, until the 1960s, when the artisan practice of tanning stopped. Some houses have been restored but left behind unfinished and are now used as stables. In one house we found raw sheep’s wool covering the ground. At a nearby sheep farm, the farmer offered us plenty of raw wool for free. The scratched circles are partly inside and partly outside of the houses. Sometimes it was hard to move the tentacle through the plants covering the buildings. One of the circles is performed inside of a cellar, with basins formerly used for tanning. The surface varies from dense, thorny bush, stones, mud and clay to tiled floor in the restored rooms. In the background it is possible to hear sheep and sheep bells, birds, and from time to time a car on the close-by small road.
SCRATCHING A COMMERCIAL AREA
Beside Route S115 south of Catania is an abandoned commercial area with five big buildings. They were built in the 1990s, and given up after a short period of usage. The reason was that the new Catania-Syracusa highway was built only a short distance away, and the formerly busy road along the coast was almost forgotten.
Patinaed signs on the wall still show that there once was a supermarket, a car-dealership, a furnisher….. Now a semi-organic layer covers the almost-new concrete floors, and birds fly about the huge halls, while wild plants crack the surfaces.
SCRATCHING A CASTLE
Castello del Duca di Misterbianco is an old castle-like villa, built in 1930, not far from a river and the beach. It has many rooms, and horse stables. It was abandoned in the Second World War after it was heavily bombed and partly destroyed by english soldiers, attacking the Germans who had occupied the castle.
It is covered with plants. The surface is rocky. Two of the scratched circles were done on two different flat roofs on a windy day, the other ones inside of the structure, where it was even difficult to move the tentacle because of all the stone shards and plants scattered around.
SCRATCHING A FURNITURE STORE
Sicilmobile is a big furniture store built in the late ’70s in Brutalist concrete style. It was abandoned around the year 2000 for economic reasons. The building with its two levels is amazing and spacious. A restaurant was connected to the commercial area.
The area has been used by skateboarders for some time. The surface is tiles, concrete, small stones and pieces of glass. In the main halls, broken bricks, fallen from the ceiling, cover the floor. One of the scratched circles was done outside of the building and the rest in different parts inside. There are two roads with a constant flow of traffic close to the building. The airport is also close.
SCRATCHING A BRICK FACTORY
Noted art critic Vittorio Sgarbi described Fornace Penna as “a secular basilica by the sea.” Indeed, this abandoned industrial structure echoes some of the crumbling medieval cathedrals scattered around Europe. Built entirely from solid stones in the early 1900s, Fornace Penna specialized in manufacturing bricks sold them across the Mediterranean region. However, business lasted only a little over ten years. On the night of January 24th, 1924, arson turned the factory into the fascinating and deserted stone skeleton we see today. The wind blows through the arcs of the ruins, which are heavily covered with all kinds of plants. There is an almost round, accessible vaulted kiln under the center of the building.
With so many plants and rocks all over the place, it was difficult to find any locations for the scratchings. The waves of the sea can be heard in the background. At one place, a lizard tried to attack the tentacle during scratching.
SCRATCHING A PAPER MILL
S.p.a Cartiere Larena is a paper mill that was closed more than 30 years ago. It appears that the first paper made in Europe was produced in Sicily toward the end of the tenth century, and there are still several specialized paper producers, but this mill didn‘t survive the economical crisis of the ’80s. It is a beautiful building, still containing two big huge stone bowls, with motor-driven millstones inside. The surface is variable, from stone to clay and gravel. A road is close to the building and in the background a football match can be heard.
SCRATCHING A BORGO
Borgo Rizzo is one of the borgos in Sicily that were built between 1939 and 1940 under the then fascist government, with the goal of transforming agricultiral production systems and colonizing fertile, unused areas by attracting farmers to new villages that provided all main services, such as schools, churches, post offices, etc. Some of the houses have been partially renovated with EU funding, but remain unfinished and unused, tending to turn into the new generation of ruins.
The area is very quiet with only very few cars driving on the nearby road. A wild dog with two puppies lives on the terrace of one of the houses. All in all it has the atmosphere of a ghost town.
SCRATCHING A FORWARDING COMPANY
Transporti Avimec was a big Catanian freight-forwarding company which was seized and closed in 1989 on suspicion of having been owned by the mafia and used for illegal transactions. Several attempts by mafia members to buy the company back were not successful. It was possible to enter the closed property by a hole in the wall. In the private house on the property, everything seemed to have been left behind from one minute to the next. Children’s toys, furniture and beds appear recently abandoned.
The halls and the courtyard are empty. The area’s surface is partly covered with rubbish or birds‘ faeces. In the distance, traffic and the neighbours‘ trucks can be heard.
SCRATCHING A CHAPEL
The final exhibition was presented as a site-specific audiovisual installation at the former Oratory of Santa Maria del Sabato in one of the oldest parts of Palermo. The chapel is in a state of abandonment, waiting to converted into a synagogue. In the past it was a mosque, then a synagogue, and an oratory. The first scratch was taken in the empty hall, with just one tentacle scratching a circle.
The second one is, as it was during the installation, recorded at the center of the middle circle of three motor-driven circle-scratching tentacles, with raw sheep’s wool covering parts of the floor, being moved from time to time by the tentacles. The third recording is the sound of the three tentacle circles, recorded from beside them.
https://www.gruenrekorder.de/?page_id=18680
€18.00
Sidereal Lament
epic and cosmic experimental ambient music from this long-running American artist
www.diophantine.net
€8.00
Weltuntergangsstimmung
"On their fifth album Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat have transformed from a drone-folk outfit into a kind of new wave ensemble. Nevertheless, their hypnotising and apocalypic qualities have remained. Frontman Stef Heeren recorded the songs for 'Weltuntergangsstimmung' with an old drum machine, analogue synthesizers and guitar. None other than the highly regarded An Pierlé adds wonderful backing vocals on a few songs." [label info]
www.zealrecords.com
€12.00
Winter / Music for Zeitgeist Fighters
https://garymundykleistwahr.bandcamp.com/album/winter-music-for-zeitgeist-fighters-2
This is the first CD release of the Kleistwahr albums Winter and Music for Zeitgeist Fighters. The albums previously appeared on vinyl. Winter was originally released on cassette in 2019 as part of the On Corrosion box set compilation released by the Helen Scarsdale Agency. The same label reissued it on vinyl in 2021. Music for Zeitgeist Fighters was released on the Nashazphone label on vinyl in 2017. This 2CD set is released by Fourth Dimension Records.
With the end of Vital Weekly rapidly approaching, is there something lost? As in, for me? Something I will regret? Absolutely. For one, it is no longer receiving music from musicians whose work I have enjoyed for a long time, and you know where this is going: Gary Mundy's Kleistwahr is such a project. I am a fan, but not one to rush out and buy every record. Luckily, there's Fourth Dimension Records to reissue the limited vinyl onto a format I prefer: the CD. This double CD contains the LP 'Winter', first released by the Helen Scarsdale Agency in 2021 (an edition of 300 copies), and the 'Music For Zeitgeist Fighters' on Nashazphone in 2017, also in an edition of 300 copies. I missed out on both of them, but, as said, always welcome on a CD, especially with five bonus pieces.
Following Kleistwahr's output in recent years, which has been substantial since the restart in 2009, a discernible 'signature sound' can be noted. A few words always spring to mind, and noise is an obvious one, but not noise for the sake of noise. Through the use of reverb, spread across all of Mundy's instruments (guitars, vocals, synths), the sound is dark and ominous, even orchestral. Mundy likes his music to be massive, even in its more vulnerable moments. These arrive using soaring, mournful organ tones, another trademark of the Kleistwahr sound. A tremendous howl of dystopian proportions. A word that fits Kleistwahr's music is psychedelic; not rainbow-coloured, hippy-dippy stuff, but various shades of black and grey, and with the epic length of the pieces, usually between 10 and 20 minutes, there's time for the music to develop and for the listener to be on a spacious drift, into the vast unknown realm of a black hole.
While these records are from some years apart, it's interesting to note the differences and similarities, with 'Winter' seemingly having a slightly broader instrumental palette. Still, it's music by the same musician, and the quality of it all is excellent.
The bonus tracks on both discs are earlier/alternative versions of the official pieces, and mark some interesting variations. Especially 'Music For Fucked Films' is quite a different thing altogether, but all five offer something different from the main work, and not just for completists.
€16.00
Around the World in a Daze
Ausschweifender & hochgelobter neuer Release von PHIL KLINE, den wir bisher nur von der sehr schönen "Glow in the Dark" CD kannten (1998). Dabei ist er in den Staaten sehr bekannt, hat in frühen 80ern eine Band mit JIM JARMUSCH gehabt, war Bestandteil des GLENN BRANCA.Orchesters, und hat als Klangkünstler in diversen Galerien Klang-Installationen "ausgestellt"... AROUND THE WORLD IN A DAZE wurde speziell für "surround sound" aufgenommen und zeigt auf 10 Stücken eine grosse Variabilität, verbindet Komponiertes mit "gefundenen" Quellen, meist geht es um minimale konzeptuelle Arrangements basierend auf vokalem, elektronischem und kammermusikalischem Material; von harmonischen, fast kitschigen Melodien bis hin zu übereinandergeschichten Tape-Flächen und obskuren Field Recordings, z.B. eine Aufnahme aus Afrika von Tausenden Graupapageien die mit seinem dronigen "tape choir" verbunden werden, und ein echtes "Madrigal" gibt es auch zu hören.
Auf der zweiten DVD ist dann Film-Material: MEDITATION (8+ min), ein Film / Musik-Clip mit PHIL KLINE, ein 35minütiges Interview mit ihm und einige Fotos. Kommt in einer übergrossen Doppel-DVD Hülle, mit ausführlichem Booklet.
"Leading new-music composer Phil Kline debuts a major work on this new surround sound DVD. Heard here for the first time, this 65-minute studio composition was commissioned by Starkland to premiere on this high-resolution surround-sound DVD. Daze is Kline's longest work and biggest commission to date. Daze is also likely the largest work so far commissioned for a high-resolution surround-sound recording. Performers include the uber-cool Ethel string quartet and violin virtuoso Todd Reynolds. Surround-sound tracks place listeners inside wondrous boombox choirs, an ethereal Ethel string quartet, a weird madrigal, hyper-dense bells (hundreds of thousands at one point), richly mournful multi-tracked vocals, soaring violinistics, and an immersive environment of 15,000 African gray parrots. The release also offers a second Extras DVD with a composer-produced music video and a 30-minute interview with Kline and John Schaefer. The custom 5"x10" digipak includes a 24-page booklet. The two DVDs contain a total content of 110 minutes. This release follows Starkland's groundbreaking surround-sound Immersion DVD, now recognized as the first commissioned high-resolution surround-sound recording. Immersion won praise from Sound & Vision, Stereophile, Billboard, etc. and was the #1 best-selling DVD-Audio at Amazon for nearly a year. The main disc offers Daze in several formats for various home playback setups: the standard Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, DTS 5.1, and high-resolution audiophile DVD-Audio, as well as a stereo version. Playback of the Daze music is accompanied by over 80 images shot by Kline."
[label description]
www.starkland.com
"..From the title you may deduce that space is a keyword in this production. Recordings for this project were done all over the world. But besides Kline is very interested in the spacial aspects of music and sound. He played with these aspects by using whole sets of boomboxes for the recording of most tracks. Besides this main interest, other musical items led him by constructing ten very different works. The lengthiest piece 'Pennies from Heaven' is the one I liked most. Because of the sound and because of the structure of the piece. The same descending scale is repeated and repeated again, transposed and multiplied, etc. The constant downward movement is very imaginative and brings about a meditative state. Also the opening piece 'The Housatonic at Henry Street' fascinates because of its multilayered and detailed soundspectrum. Other pieces use the human voice as the most important material, like 'The Wailing Wall' resurrected by the voice of Kline himself. Two other pieces have the violin in the center: 'Svarga yatra' and 'Grand Etude for the Elevation'. The beautiful concluding piece is built from field recordings done in Central Africa. Tracks differ also because for the different structuring principles that are used. But as said the pieces impress above all because of their soundqualities and spatial characteristics. Each piece is accompanied by its own series of photos. Nice photos often. From urban environments, to nature, etc, etc. But I didn't need them for enjoying the music, nor the other way around. And I couldn't bridge them in my imagination. While listening I felt a bit 'imprisoned' by looking at the same time at the pictures. Well, this also a spatial effect I guess. The second dvd has an extensive interview with Kline commenting on each piece. This gives a good insight in what Kline had in mind. Congratulations for Starkland for releasing this extraordinary and well-documented release." [DM, Vital Weekly]
€16.50
Explosion of a Memory
"Performed by the Macedonian Symphony Orchestra with Balkan electro legend Kiril Dzajkovski, Chris Cutler (percussion), Nikola Kodjbashia (prepared piano), Patric Driver and Valere Novarina (readers). Text fragments are by Heiner Muller and Valere Novarina.
A four-dimensional explosion in which stretches of Baroque, folk themes and Byzantine liturgy exist contemporaneously with modern and post-modern materials - much as strata emerge where tectonic plates fold one time over another – settling eventually into long, beautiful, tonal stretches, lighter than air, that drift and attenuate to reveal, dreamily, the old simplicities. Immersive, timeless and unmistakably new, this music respects but definitively breaks with existing schools to explore instead its own geographically unique influences and contradictions.
‘Explosion of a Memory’ is a homage to my literary heroes: James Joyce, Heiner Muller, Valere Novarina, William Gibson, Euripides and Colin Teevan; it’s also a deeply personal epic about the complex relationship between childhood myths, history and perpetual homecoming’. NK
NIKOLA KODJABASHIA is one of the Balkan’s most respected and award winning composers. Born into a musical family in Skopje in 1970, he pursued his compositional studies with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Anatol Vieru, György Kurtág, and Rolf Gehlhaar. In the UK, he has scored and conducted music for numerous plays, including Sir Peter Hall’s Bacchae at the National Theatre, Walter Meieryohann’s Internationally acclaimed Kafka’s Monkey at London’s Young Vic, Wedding Day of the Cromagnons for the Soho Theatre, Helter Skelter/Land of the Dead and Monsier Ibrahim and the flowers of the Qu’ran for the Bush Theatre, and Jonathan Kent’s award winning Hecuba at the Donmar warehouse, Covent Garden. He is responsible for the music and sound-design for various BBC TV documentaries and his film compositions include Damianovski’s Dance with Me and Green Pages (Chicago Film Festival Award, UK première at Glastonbury Film stage, 2007).
His earlier ReR release, ‘Reveries of the Solitary Walker’ was hailed by John Walters in The Guardian as “…probably the best record of the year”." [full label press release]
www.rermegacorp.com
€13.00
Live in Edinburgh
"In April 2011 the two couples formed by Kommissar Hjuler & Mama Baer and Ninni Morgia & Silvia Kastel ventured for a tour in the UK; it was the first time they played together but their shared common visions, attitude and general craziness actually gave life to an inspired team. Every show was different; in Edinburgh, they decided to perform a piece originally written by Ninni Morgia & Silvia Kastel, "Jericho", that Papa Baer liked.
So before the show, the group pre-recorded a tape in a big theater-like room inside the venue, with a spoken version of the lyrics. On stage, Mama Baer projected a video made by her, depicting the four of them standing against a wall; the music starts off with Kommissar manipulating the tape, then the actual "Jericho" lyrics are sung by Mama Baer and Silvia Kastel while Ninni Morgia's bends,
buffs and brushes his guitar and Kastel's synthesizer starts growling out of the monster's belly. Tension, discomfort, love, pain, theatre? music? art? Four people, each of them immolates themselves for the cause.
This release is available in two editions (Art Edition & Standard Edition). DON'T MISS IT!!!" [label info]
www.ricercasonora.com
€15.00
Soundwalk at Vistonida Lake
"Field recordings, both open air and underwater from the mythical Vistonida Lagoon, Thrace, Hellas. Sounds from birds, water, shells etc.
Limited to 50 handnumbered copies. Comes in a handmade cloth bag decorated with wood, seashells and dried flowers, all collected from Vistonida Lagoon. Contains 2 inserts with informations, credits, pictures, copy number, chrysallida stamp etc."
€10.00
Recalcitrance
After their track on the Moving Music compilation, 'Recalcitrance' is the second collaboration and first full-length release by Matthijs Kouw & Gagi Petrovic. This album will be released as Double CD and digital on April 16th, 2021.
"Philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers has studied the operations of states and their mobilization of technical practices to serve a presupposed general interest, which involves the production of rules and norms. Such rules and norms are blind to forms of knowledge that are denigrated as ‘local’ and ‘traditional’, and feature the correlative elimination of what does not conform and cannot be standardized – in other words, what is recalcitrant to objective evaluation. Anything that resists subsumption to technical rationality is seen as a threat to public order (Isabelle Stengers, In Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism, pp.73-4).
The eight tracks on ‘Recalcitrance’ examine abstract topics that range from metaphysical speculation and psychological investigation to reflections on the process of creation itself. Taking a shared set of source sounds as their starting point, Matthijs Kouw and Gagi Petrovic invite listeners to trace the common sources of their pieces and to become recalcitrant themselves by experiencing the compositions in ways that defy what Stengers describes as technical rationality. Recalcitrant subjects ask new questions, thereby allowing the currently dominant reductionist mindset obsessed with productivity to be unsettled by space for reflection and quiet contemplation.
The album comes in beautiful artwork by Zeno van den Broek and Rutger Zuydervelt and is mastered by Jos Smolders.
https://gagi-petrovic.bandcamp.com/album/recalcitrance?label=13328016&tab=music
€15.50
Untitled
"kraken is back and pulls us down into the abyss - a dark, cold and desolate place that is filled with the droning of oscillators. authentic field recordings mingle with evolving rhythms, and the underlying tension created by the poignant confessions of human beings adds to the unique flavor of kraken: equally fascinating, enchanting and disturbing, the sounds cut right through our souls. for fifty minutes, kraken keeps us in its tight grip and we all cannot resist but realize our own fugacity. fifteen years past the first kraken release, its epitaph is more actual than ever before: when gazing into the abyss for too long, one tardy realizes that he is part of it. from within the vast depths, raubbau brings to you the latest album, unnamed." [label info]
www.raubbau.org
"Lange Jahre haben wir die beiden Belgier auf NONPOP begleitet. Insbesondere ab Mitte der so genannten Nullerjahre waren JORIS VERMOST und RICARDO GOMEZ Y DE BUCK sehr aktiv, brachten regelmäßig ihre klaustrophobischen Tiefsee-Soundtracks zwischen Dark Ambient, Noise und Collage unter die Leute. (Ein Interview zur Arbeit von KRAKEN findet Ihr hier.) Mit "Strop" auf RAUBBAU (Besprechung) schien sich dann zu bewahrheiten, was KRAKEN aus Spaß bis dahin zu jedem Album sagten: Es sei ihr finales. Vier Jahre Funkstille ohne jedwede Ankündigung neuer Aktivitäten. Umso erfreuter war ich über die Nachricht von RAUBBAU, dass nun tatsächlich ein weiteres Album erscheint, passend zur Zurückhaltung einfach ohne Titel – "Untitled". "A dark, cold and desolate place" verspricht das Label, "equally fascinating, enchanting and disturbing" – diese Beschreibung deckt sich mit meiner bisherigen Wahrnehmung von KRAKEN. Und auch die gleichzeitig ästhetischen, aber sehr trostlosen Alltagsfotos, mit denen das Duo seit jeher seine Alben schmückt, deuten auf Kontinuität hin. Tatsächlich hat auch das aktuelle Werk eine hohe Wiedererkennbarkeit und liefert mit dem ersten Track einen der besten der Bandgeschichte.
"Untitled 1" beginnt überraschend mit einem deutschen Text: Eine furchtsame und angewiderte, rezitierende Frauenstimme (mit Akzent) berichtet von einem "schwarzen Loch, das alles verschlingt". Sie flüstert von Verfall, Drogen, Tot und Unrat – also vom ganz normalen Leben. Harsche, knirschende, aber nicht unschöne Sounds fügen sich darunter zu einem Ambientteppich, der wiederum abrupt von Billigbeats, von Surren und Knattern unterbrochen wird. Es folgt eine melodiösere Strecke mit Gitarrentönen, die weiterhin den Gegensatz des gesamten Albums aufrecht hält: schön vs. hässlich, Freundlichkeit vs. Verderben. Das Flüstern und allerlei mystische Geräusche spielen eine Rolle, manchmal erinnert das Stück gar an geknurrten Urfolk, um am Ende wieder von flächiger Trostlosigkeit eingeholt zu werden. "Untitled 2" wirkt als Collage aus diversen, organischen Sounds. Zwischen Field Redordings und Vocals schiebt sich ein Drone und bringt einige rituell anmutende Komponenten wie Stammesgeheul oder Kampfesrufe mit. "Untitled 3" besteht im Wesentlichen aus dem rhythmischen Peitschen von Frequenzen, ebenfalls mit entfernt unterlegten, menschlichen Geräuschen. Hypnotischer Dauerbeschuss wie intensives Hubschrauberdröhnen. In "Untitled 4" spielt erneut eine Frauenstimme – spanisch? – die tragende Rolle, spricht verzweifelt zu höhligen Sounds. Das Stück geht dann über in ambienthafte Drones und verströmt die das Album durchziehende, unheimliche Atmosphäre. "Untitled 5" schließt sich nahtlos an, als düstere Soundhöhle mit weiteren Vocals, hier kommt sehr deutlich das typische KRAKEN-Flair zum Tragen, der Bezug zur See mit Geräuschen wie knarzenden Schiffsbalken. "Untitled 6" schließlich ist überwiegend ein noisiges, ansteigendes Kreischen, das Abheben eines Düsenjets oder platzende Lungen bei Sauerstoffmangel im Wasser. Am Ende läuten die Totenglocken, mit denen die rund 55 Minuten auch begonnen haben.
Belgien steht ja bei der Fußball-WM hoch im Kurs. Musikalisch fällt mir in der Regel wenig zu diesem Land ein. KRAKEN allerdings sind ein Aushängeschild, und ich bin froh, dass sie sich wieder zeigen. Diese Mischung aus Trostlosigkeit und Eleganz, die Reduzierung auf menschliche Ängste und Triebe in Kombination mit der sich manchmal einschleichenden Unterwassersymbolik – das ist einmalig. 'Human Dark Ambient', vor allem im ersten Stück auf ganz hohem Niveau." [Michael We. / NON-POP]
€6.00
Spectre of Radiants
R Keenan Lawler & John Krausbauer's “Spectre of radiants” is a droning, everlasting buzz of strings, gently undulating and intersecting.
Unconventionally played, as usual, the resonator guitars and the banjos, builds the perfect stream of sound to accompany your longest days.
Fitting in the ultraminimalist/drone panorama, this acoustic gem follow the lineage draw by authours like Phill Niblock, Tony Conrad or Elaine Radigue, mixing and confonting it with the direct attitude toward sound of people like Jim O'Rourke to finally build another chapter in the investigation on acoustic and physics that underline the very musical spirit of the authors.
R Keenan Lawler is a Louisville, Kentucky based multi-instrumentalist, improviser, composer, and sound artist. Influenced and obsessed by post-punk, jazz, free improvisation, ancient and modern classical music, blues, nature, non-western music and a philosophy of "transcendence through sound." He is best known for developing a highly focused idiosyncratic language on the metal-bodied resonator guitar, extending its timbral and harmonic range far outside the usual role in bluegrass and blues.
Lawler has performed solo in the US and Europe, and has worked with a wide range of diverse artists including Matmos, Pelt, Rhys Chatham, My Morning Jacket, John Butcher, Susan Alcorn, Tatsuya Nakatani , Helena Espvall, Lukas Ligeti, Ignaz Schick, Phillip Samartzis, Jack Wright, Tim Barnes and John Krausbauer. His sound art has been presented in Moma/PS1, Brooklyn, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, and in collaboration with artists Thaniel Ion Lee, Sandra Gibson, Valerie Sutherland Fuchs, and Russell Hulsey. He has shared stages with artists as diverse as John Fahey, Widespread Panic, Sudden Infant, Jim Carroll, and Vieux Farka Toure. He is presently performing solo, with various collaborators, and as a member of music collectives WET, Limited Hangout and Seismic Corruption Band.
John Krausbauer is a composer/multi-instrumentalist/improviser based in Oakland, CA and co-founder of the Los Angeles publishing label, Besom Presse.
A long time purveyor of the ur-drone and trance-psychedelia, his work involves audio transmissions for TOTAL/immersive sensory experience. Transcendence through repetition,
duration, alternate tunings, maximum volumes, and stroboscopic lighting.
He's performed and presented his music across N America, Europe, and Japan in a multitude of settings - from basements, sidewalks, and rock clubs to colleges, churches, and art museums. Over 20 recordings of his have been released on independent labels in the US, Europe, and Japan.
His group and solo music can be found on Important, Beta-Lactam Ring, ANTS, Fabrica, Debacle, Autumn, Thin Wrist (upcoming), and a number of other international labels.
His current music projects include the Ecstatic Music Band (a 10+ member-collective of strings players); solo music forvoice, violin, and synth; his collaboration with partner, Kaori Suzuki, with bells, voices, strings, tape; the Minimalist psych-punk group Night Collectors; his systems-based phase compositions; and ongoing duo collaborations with Kentuckian steel bodied resonator guitar player R. Keenan Lawler, NYC bagpipe player David Watson, and Tokyo based guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama.
R Keenan Lawler: National Steel resonator guitars
John Krausbauer: banjos
https://ants4.bandcamp.com/album/spectre-of-radiants
€13.00
The Cleophone
DAVID KREJCI ist ein US-amerikanischer Sound-Artist, der ein "Drone-Instrument" namens "The Cleophone" gebaut hat. Es besteht aus 12 Piano-Saiten die über einen Holzkorpus gespannt werden, wobei jede Saiten mit eigenem Pickup reguliert werden kann. Das Cleophone lässt sich mit verschiedenen Utensilien bespielen, es können auch rhythmische Muster entstehen. Hier verewigt wurde eine 33minütige ,virtuos-improvisatorische Session ohne spätere overdubs oder Effekte ; der Klang ist dronig und dynamisch, reich an Obertönen & Vibrato, leicht verzerrt & stereo-phasig aufgeteilt. For Drone / Minimal-Fans!
"Dave Krejci's earliest memory of music is that of trailing his mother while she vacuumed. Krejci would hum along with the vacuum's drone sliding in and out of pitch to create vibrations in his chest. This attraction to the visceral and hypnotic characteristics of sound has fed Krejci's fire for more than 25 years. His adulthood obsession with organs, Leslies, the Cleophone and pianos is nothing more than an adult extension of his vacuum-chasing days. Krejci grew out of Austin, Minnesota, a small hog-slaughtering town curiously full of musicians. "Classically trained" on the piano, Krejci spent the majority of his musical time writing his own compositions and playing piano in bands. In 1987, Krejci escaped the miserable town and fled to Minneapolis to attend the University of Minnesota. In the late 1980s and early 90s, Krejci played Hammond organ for TwinTone/Prospective recording artist GREEN MACHINE, a psychedelic trio that produced several full-length CDs and 45RPMs. In the Spring of 2005, built the CLEOPHONE, an electronic stringed instrument built out of heavy piano strings, Rhodes electromagnetic pick-ups and a microphonic copper stand. The instrument is played through two Leslie Speakers and manipulated with piano hammers, bows, sticks, bones, brushes and ball-bearings." [label description]
€12.00
The Summoner
LP : Laser-Cut Outer Sleeve in Fulltone Bronze & Black, incl. full Color Insert
"The Summoner comes 4 years since the last Kreng album Grimoire and 3 years since the massive retrospective box set Works for Abattoir Férme 2007-2011. A lot has happened in between, and this new recording can be seen as quite the departure from the aformentioned.
His most personal album to date, The Summoner is based around the 5 stages of mourning and is made after a year of losing several close friends. Hard enough material to work on, he decided to add a 6th stage, entitled The Summoning to be able to arrive at the finalé, Acceptance.
Conjuring up the spirit of György Ligeti, the first half of the album is made entirely of 12 string players being directed to play around, make noisey clusters and crescendoes, moving you between Denial, Anger, Bargaining and Depression. In fact, The Summoner is the first Kreng album NOT made by hordes of samples. Music to really dig deep in to.
Following into the second part of the album, twists and turns are taken and it's hard to know where exactly you are. The Summoning's haunting organs and smoke-filled chambers lead you in to an earth- shaking wall of guitars, drums and bass courtesy of Belgian doom band Amenra. Leaving you in a state of shock, the album closes in an incredibly heartfelt and quiet way with the fittingly named Acceptance." [label info]
www.miasmah.com
"The first release from Kreng since 2011, but well worth the wait. While the sound sources on The Summoner are quite the departure from his 2011 release Grimoire, the dark and disorienting atmosphere is still here. Here Caudron conducts a dozen string players, creating a twisted and droney orchestral mass that explodes and dies without warning, bringing to mind the terrifying works of Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. The song titles here, too, tell Caudron's story as the five stages of grief, going from "Denial" to "Acceptance". The first four tracks are dark, twisted, orchestral soundscapes, dynamic and haunted that slowly goad you into Caudron's warped world. The climax of the album is without doubt the titular track, sandwiched between "Depression" and the somber "Acceptance". The 15-minute long track features Belgian doom band Amenra (whose album Mass V we reviewed back in 2013) providing the slow, crushing trudge (with maybe the slightest, SLIGHTEST hint of uplifting melody) to bring the whole piece to a bombastic, epic zenith. Very few out there can capture the range of emotion and atmosphere that Kreng can - terrifying, cathartic, bleak, and maybe just a little bit uplifting. For fans of Gnaw Their Tongues, The Caretaker, and anything on the Miasmah label." [Aquarius Records]
"Es sind schon viele Alben aus Trauer entstanden, und viele handeln von der Trauer um eine geliebte Person. Alben, die das Trauern als solches zum Thema haben, sind seltener. Das könnte damit zu tun haben, dass die Frage nach den Mechanismen des Trauerns sehr theoretisch anmutet, aber sie ist auch komplizierter als man vielleicht denkt, denn eine Trauer, die sich weder in die Verdrängung noch in Selbstmitleid flüchtet, erfordert Leidensfähigkeit und ist keineswegs eine passive Angelegenheit.
Für den Belgier Pepijn Caudron ist das Thema auch keine theoretische Sache, denn der Grund für seine Beschäftigung mit dem Wesen der Trauer ist ein sehr persönlicher und rührt aus dem Verlust einiger ihm nahestehender Personen. Irgendwo stieß der Musiker auf die psychologische Beobachtung, dass Trauer häufig in mehreren, sich teilweise widersprechenden Phasen bewältigt wird. Zunächst schreckt der Trauernde davor zurück, den Verlust und den damit verbundenen Schmerz anzuerkennen und klammert sich mit unterschwelliger Verzweiflung an die Zeit vor dem Verlust. Da eine solche Verleugnung nur auf Zeit funktioniert, stellt sich bald so etwas wie Wut ein, Wut auf den Verlust als solchen, vielleicht auch auf die betrauerte Person, aber auch auf sich selbst und die eigene Unfähigkeit zu verleugnen und zu verdrängen. Mit der Phase des inneren Abwägens setzt der erste Schritt in Richtung Akzeptanz ein, dem allerdings meist eine Phase der Depression vorausgeht: Erst wenn diese durchlebt ist, kann der Trauernde den Schicksalsschlag akzeptieren.
Caudron erkannte in dieser Beschreibung so viel von seinen eigenen Erfahrungen wieder, dass er den Drang verspürte, seinen eigenen Weg durch die Trauer in einem Album durchzuarbeiten. „The Summoner“, das auf diesen Erfahrungen und Überlegungen beruht und doch noch einen Schritt weitergeht, stellt in der Diskografie des Musikers schon deshalb eine besondere Wegmarke dar, weil hier erstmals mit Studiomusikern statt ausschließlich mit Samples gearbeitet wird.
Die minutenlange Stille, mit der „Denial“ beginnt, könnte glatt für all das stehen, das der Trauernde, beide Hände auf die Ohren gedrückt, nicht wahrhaben will. Doch es ist eine trügerische Stille, in der sich klammheimlich eine unerbittliche Realität zusammenbraut, die durch ihr schwelend kreisendes Dröhnen, durch seltsame Stimmen und entferntes Gerumpel so bedrohlich wie ein düsteres Wahngebilde anmutet. Caudrons Erfahrung bei der Arbeit fürs Theater kommt ihm schon hier zugute, denn die leicht überhörbaren Details schwirren derart gekonnt im Raum herum, dass man auch als Hörer dieser Wirklichkeit kaum entweichen kann. Die darauf folgende „dialektische“ Folge von wenig Licht und viel Schatten weiß ebenfalls davon zu kosten – das trockenere, direktere „Anger“ mit seinen lauten und eruptiven Streicherkaskaden, das mit viel orchestralem Geklapper vor sich hinsuchende „Bargaining“, das weitaus eindeutiger dahingleitende „Depression“ und zuletzt die genügsame Ruhe des schlichten Pianos in „Acceptance“.
Mit „The Summoning“ geht Caudron über das Theoriekonzeot hinaus und markiert den Punkt, an dem der schwärzeste in den lichtesten Abschnitt übergeht. Wie um zu zeigen, dass an der Stelle etwas neues geboren wird, scheint er hier noch einmal das ganze Album zu bündeln und über sich selbst hinauszuführen, und es ist nicht unpassend, dass er dies nicht im Alleingang vollzieht, sondern seine Landsleute von Amenra mitmischen lässt. Das schleppende Schlagwerk, die kraftvollen, kernigen Gitarrenwände und das heißere Gröhlen der bekannten Doommetaller, die im Normalfall als niederdrückend empfunden werden, wirken hier fast so erhebend wie eine Levitation." [Uwe Schneider / African Paper]
africanpaper.com/2015/05/09/kreng-the-summoner/
€17.00
Selfed
Sold out"Starting with soundtracks for the Belgian theatre-company 'Abbatoir Fermé' in 2007, PEPIJN CAUDRON aka KRENG has since then created an impressive catalogue of work, submerging deeply into a cinematic musical world, often built on 'classic' instrumental sounds, expressing a fascination for "the secrets of our culture, the roots of our collective fears and the hidden wounds, phantasies and rituals of our time" (as 'Abbatoir Fermé' denotes their own programmation). KRENGs compositions share a rare intensity and originality, immersing the listener into gloomy and surealistic atmospheres. SELFED is a work for a dance choreography by KEVIN TRAPPENIERS, a piece for a single dancer that relates to the phenomenon of 'Self-Pollination' in Biology. SELFED is seen as a metaphor to overcome mental and physical barriers of the self and society, by "investigating the notion of the energy of self and self-sacrifice". The three pieces suck you in with their spiraling sounds from the very first minute, ending in an early claustrophobic climax, from which structure and beauty is
regained ... An interplay of circling dynamics.
This 2 x10" vinyl (45 rpm) comes in a full colour double-gatefold cover, each record pressed in a different colour (blue-black / red-black), the fourth side contains an etching of all credit information. First ed. of 498 copies. Artwork design by TILMANN BENNINGHAUS. Mastering: PETER ANDERSSON." [press release]
Words by the director about the concept of SELFED: "In botany, selfing causes an animal or plant to breed with or fertilise one of the same hybrid origin or strain, thus causing the organism to self-pollinate or self-fertilise. The cover pictures refer to ultrasonic pictures of a self-replicating cyberpunk/biopunk unborn being in its early stage, to repetitive oscillator sounds and cyclic lifeforms.
In SELFED, the performance, as well as the score and the sound design, explore methods to adapt the body to mental and physical barriers and how to overcome those obstacles or gain control over them. The dance performance incorporates both the philosophy and techniques of Parkour within contemporary dance. We investigate the notion of the energy of self and self-sacrifice. The self meant as an aid and a tool for introspection and reflexion, for demolition and construct of the borders of the self - of the body and the mind. Accordingly, the performance and music reflects on the positioning of mankind towards individual and social power structures." [KEVIN TRAPPENIERS]
(In 2014, Kevin Trappeniers was artist in residence TAKT Dommelhof (BE) to create the dance performance SELFED, that premiered at Plesni Teater Ljubljana (Slovenia). After this choreographic debut, which consisted of an outside and an inside part made for the specific locations in Slovenia, Trappeniers reworked the inside part to physical theatre.)
credits:
selfed
concept, direction, choreography, scenography: Kevin Trappeniers
dance & performance: Dagmar Dachauer
music & sound design: Kreng
light design: Laurence Halloy, Kevin Trappeniers
in collaboration with: Luka Avguštin, Enej Progar, Jan Ulčar, Sebastjan Zupanc (SloMotion, Slovenian Parkour Family)
dramaturgy & mentorship: Andreja Kopač
coaching & distribution advice: Vincent Company
producer: Živa Brecelj
production: Plesni Teater Ljubljana (SI) - Choreographic Debut PTL 2014
co-production: TAKT Dommelhof (Neerpelt, BE)
in collaboration with: Muzej in Galerije Mesta Ljubljane (MGML)
artwork & photography: Kevin Trappeniers
thanks to: Vincent Van den Bossche, Blaze Urban Academy (BE), Šolski Center Ljubljana (SI)
"Substantia Innominata est la 10ème Série de vinyles de Drone Records et a pour but de présenter des travaux inspirés par l’inconnu, autour de nous ou parmi nous.
Commençant avec les bandes sons pour la compagnie de théâtre belge \ Abattoir Fermé\ en 2007, Pepijn Caudron alias Kreng a depuis créé un impressionnant catalogue, plongeant profondément dans monde musical cinématique, souvent construit à partir de sons instrumentaux « classiques », exprimant une fascination pour \ les secrets de notre culture, les racines de nos peurs collectives et les blessures cachées, phantasmes et rituels de notre temps\ (comme \ Abattoir Fermé\ désigne leur propre programmation).
Les compositions de Kreng partagent une rare intensité et originalité, immergeant l’auditeur dans des atmosphères sombres et surréalistes. Des bruits de bateaux sous marins suggèrent en effet l’immersion inquiétante raclant, puis un saxo sirène orientale, et ça se calme en hélico dans un essai d’envol des flots, des résonances lointaines et un sonar ou celui d’un dauphin ou baleine construisent cet univers sonore immersif, un peu comme si on était pris dans un U-Boot.
Selfed est un travail pour une chorégraphie de danse de Kevin Trappeniers, une pièce pour danseur seul relatant le phénomène de \ Pollinisation Atomatique\ en Biologie. Selfed est à voir comme une métaphore les barrières physiques et mentales de soi et de la société, en \ investissant la notion d’énergie propre et de sacrifice de soi\ . Les trois pièces vous sucent par leurs sons en spirale dès la première minute, se terminant dans un climat de début de claustrophobie, dans lequel beauté et structure sont retrouvés.... Une réciprocité de dynamiques circulaires.
On y entend des voix, puis des rythmes secs et rapides de peaux élastiques mixés avec des voix pour montrer cette Auto Pollinisation de musiques concrètes et électroniques par les voix. Comme dans la « Pollinisation Automatique », les éléments humains et industriels se mêlent et se confondent.
Ce vinyle 2 x10\ (45 rpm) est livré dans une pochette double-gatefold, chaque disque est pressé dans une couleur différente (bleur-noire / rouge-noire), le quatre titres contient une gravure première édition pressée 498 copies par Tilmann Benninghaus. Mastering - Peter Andersson. Sortie - Avril 2016" [translation by Flow / Le Bokal]
€25.00
Cooties
"Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by KRENG.
Death Waltz Recording Company is delighted to take you back to the schoolyard for a dose of fun with Kreng's score to COOTIES. A group of elementary teachers – including Elijah Wood, Alison Pill, and Rainn Wilson – up against an army of feral kids infected with a mystery virus, bringing new meaning to the term “playground violence." Produced by Wood's company Spectrevision, COOTIES is already shaping up to be a modern cult classic, not least through its infectious music.
Composed by the avant-garde project Kreng (aka Belgian musician Pepjin Caudron) the score for COOTIES reflects a number of influences, from Bernard Herrmann's work for strings to spaghetti westerns through a trip hop filter set to “extreme foreboding”. Kreng's approach will surprise and intrigue, compared to many scores of its ilk. While it's synth-heavy, there are key roles for haunting vocal effects and violins, mixing both aesthetically beautiful and madcap cues to create waves of emotionally and viscerally powerful tunes. COOTIES stands proud alongside – and in some cases above - the crop of contemporary horror scores. Relax, put the needle on the wax, and let this record infect your ears. You'll be voracious for more."
mondotees.com/collections/deathwaltz/products/cooties-ost
"Oh man, we wanted to see this movie from the second we first heard about it. Kids in a primary school get a wicked case of the 'cooties', which transforms them into zombie like wee beasties, and it's up to the teachers to survive, and if need be (which need very likely does be!) dispatch of the hungry, demonic hordes roaming the playground. The trailer looks ridiculous and over the top (we haven't actually seen it yet), and very much like a grade school version of another awesome horror-school classic, The Faculty. Beyond that just being such an amazing concept for a movie, there's the added bonus of the incredible score by weirdo soundsculptor / dronelord / avant grade composer (and huge aQ fave) Kreng, aka Pepijn Caudron.
Longtime readers of the aQ list are also likely fans of the Miasmah label, which Kreng generally calls home. His releases on Miasmah are moody and murky and minimal, twisted and shadowy, waste and faded and gorgeously mysterious. And while all that sounds like the perfect ingredients for a seriously sinister horror score, since this is not your typical horror movie, Caudron gets to explore WAY out of his usual sonic comfort zone, whether it's long sprawls of DJ Shadow like beat driven grooviness (in one instance, the haunting main theme is played by what sounds like a sitar!), or swirly, symphonic exotica, or hushed, somber shimmer, it's all woven together into a proper album, that is a pretty fantastic listen, even sans the film.
The DJ Shadow comparison is actually pretty apt as beats and breaks surface throughout, but it's in the execution that things get and stay weird, in fact one of the best musical moments is when a loping beat limps along beneath a cacophony of detuned brass. But it is a horror soundtrack, so Carpenterisms abound (reworked in Kreng's inimitable style), there are plenty of tense, driving synth jams, barely there haunted house ambience, darkly delicate pianoscapes, strangely dubby drifts, some deliriously atonal 20th century sounding cacophony and bursts of what sounds like some rad eighties VHS soundtrack, all dayglo distorted, blaring and bombastic.
While not nearly as dark as some of the Miasmah releases, there's an ominous underpinning to the proceedings, even at it's most playful and melodic, it's fun and freaky, and like the best soundtracks, not only is a great listen, but has us wanting to see the movie even more than we already did!" [Aquarius Records]
€29.50
Lowlife
Nach "Camino" veröffentlicht Kreng seinen nächsten Soundtrack auf dem britischen Label Invada. Kreng ist das Projekt des Belgiers Pepijn Caudron. Dieser erstellt Soundtracks mit der Hilfe moderner Sampling- Technologie. Seine Scores bestehen zumeist aus düstern Klanglandschaften, die an die Werke von Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, Cliff Martinez („Drive“) und Mogwai erinnern. „Lowlife“ ist das Spielfilm-Debüt des Regisseurs Ryan Prows, der die Handlung in der Subkultur Los Angeles ansiedelt. Sein Thriller bringt schräge Charaktere, absurden Humor sowie harte Action zusammen und ist zugleich ein kritischer Kommentar zu dem modernen Amerika.
Lowlife is the berserk, blood-spattered, and wickedly entertaining feature debut from Ryan Prows. Set amidst the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles, Lowlife zigzags back and forth in time as it charts how fate—and a ruthless crime boss—connects three down-and-out reprobates mixed up in an organ harvesting scheme that goes from bad to worse to off-the-rails insane.
The score is pressed on purple coloured vinyl and housed in a deluxe sleeve with digital download card included.
Kreng is known for his previous score to CAMINO (also released on Invada Records), and for his score to Cooties, released on Deathwaltz Media Group/Milan Records.
As well as this, Kreng is also known for his critically acclaimed L’Autopsie Phénoménale de Dieu (2009), Grimoire (2011), and the lavishly designed retrospective compilation box Works For Abattoir Fermé 2007-2011 (2012).
www.invada.co.uk/products/kreng-lowlife-original-motion-picture-soundtrack
€26.00
Ascend to Nothing
Silken Tofu has always had a firm belief in eclecticism, crossing borders and finding new paths, and this new release is the perfect example of that stubborn attitude.
KRISHNA is the ongoing collaboration between experimental techno producer Drvg Cvltvre and free jazz/metal outfit Dead Neanderthals. An invitation by the Dutch Valkhof Festival for a residency at Nijmegen’s Extrapool art space in July 2015 led to their debut album ‘Ascend To Nothing’.
The result is a monolithic techno improv stomp that will both pummel and hypnotize you. Clocking in at just under 36 minutes, ‘Ascend to Nothing’ is a relentless attack on the senses, a mind-expanding trip through sound and rhythm.
Dutch sax & drum duo Dead Neanderthals are known for their New Wave Of Dutch Heavy Jazz: an outrageous combination of jazz and metal, interlaced with noise, drone and minimal music. FUCK conventions and FUCK expectations.
Vincent Koreman a.k.a. Drvg Cvltvre has been working on his ‘doomed out psychic house’ for years now. His rich background in the DIY scene of punk, metal and experimental music shines through as he is influenced by Suicide, Sun Ra and Terrence Dixon.
So, when two acts with such an outspoken disregard for rules and borders join forces you know the result will be intense and not for the faint-hearted. ‘Ascend to Nothing’ picks you up and throws you into the vortex of the ever-growing cosmos. Let’s get lost in the void forever.
CD digipack, limited to 500 copies
www.silkentofu.org
€12.50
Singe Binge
"KRYNGE, the multi-collaborative international supergroup, was the brainchild of Zan Hoffman in 1987-88 and features recordings of his home taping friends reimagined. Acknowledging the debt the contemporary experimental music scene owes to the pioneering work of the tape-trading and mail art scenes, Attenuation Circuit celebrates the 25th anniversary of Krynge by re-releasing the original cassettes on CD in bi-monthly instalments. The Krynge series comes in a dedicated new design while also containing reproductions of the original cassette cover art.
Singe Binge is broken up into a few pieces alternating multiple voices (John Hudak [New Jersey], his girlfriend, Minóy [California], his mother, her friend and more). The other parts of the tape are RoLMo [Tennessee], loops and guitars and mush. Being the first tape in the series this is the kindest KRYNGE release, but it still is a hilarious example of the pleasures that can be found in the type of music/found footage collage perhaps most commonly associated with Negativland’s early work. Blending reverberating guitar sounds with wonderfully vintage 80s-style drum machine beats, TV sounds, over-the-top vocal renditions and the rest of the family talking, this recording is not only “home-taped” in the sense that it was not produced in a studio, but also in the sense that it paints a tongue-in-cheek, somewhat surreal picture of the way suburban boredom can provoke creative research." [label info]
www.wix.com/attenuationcircuit/attenuation-circuit
€8.00
Slepok Soznaniya
"The project Kshatriy appeared on the Russian post-industrial scene in 2004 and up to present has participated in several compilations, as well as released some solo and collaboration recordings on limited edition CDRs. Muzyka Voln presents the project’s first "professional" compact disk with the album "Slepok Sonzaniya" (meaning "a mould of consciousness" in Russian).
This work is based on the concept of consciousness of a warrior, a galactic warrior of light, bringing to world pure knowledge, infinite silence, perfect balance, a moment of power and might, a flight of freedom, love, serenity, joy, light, unified time, eternal life, simplicity and bliss.
The music of the project can be described as fractal dark drone ambient with lots of patterns, woven from various sonic fibres: synthesized drones, processed field recordings, acoustic echoes and rhythmic loops. Calm and profound, filled with resilience and hidden power, like an endless ocean of tranquility, energy and beauty." [label info]
http://zhb.radionoise.ru/
"Kshatriy is the project by musician from Vsevolozhsk not far from St. Petersburg. Earlier his records were released on CDr, and album Slepok Soznaniya became the first work released on CD, before it I didn't know anything about this creative unit. With his music Kshatriy creates space dark and dull as well as beautiful and interesting. In anxiously boiling sound lava there merge deep electronic drone, processed field records and also unobtrusive hissing, crack and other noise effects. Musician himself writes that his creativity "is based on the conception of warrior consciousness... galaxy warrior of light, bringing to the world clear consciousness, unlimited silence, absolute balance, a moment of force and power, a flight of freedom, love, serenity, gladness, light, common time, eternal life, simplicity and bliss...". These words sound as nothing else but an unequivocal hint at trips "inside yourself" and the state of trans provoked by music. And it is so.
Slepok Soznaniya is a huge mental reactor with boiling up fragments of dark recollections, fused and crumpled into one heavy lump which dissolved all around in impenetrable swamp of its body. Rusty, smelling with dust and dampness postindustrial spirit spreads together with these sounds to colossal spaces around. Huge volume of theses spaces is one of the main special features of this music ruining all barriers inside the dark universe, and Slepok Soznaniya became a ticket to it. You peer into the darkness and don't see any limits, as if you have fallen under ground and found an alternative cosmos there. Beautiful, charming and sometimes even epic sound design making you hold your breath in long intriguing moments and make your heart beat quickly with resounding rumble and voluminous, heavy drone. It's worth to be heard." [Pi Micron, The Sound Proector]
http://www.soundproector.com/?cat=reviews&id=259
"Heaving, psychonaut droning from this Russian project, Kshatriy. The name of Sergey Uak-Kib's project is actually Sanskrit, as a now deracinated caste of warriors from ancient India. Uak-Kib posits something of a balance between the spiritual and the physical in the beliefs for this class of enlightened fighters. The holistic fortitude found in that statement seems to be furthered in the glowingly psychedelic artwork that has graced some of Kshatriy's other recordings. So much for first impressions, as this is fucking bleak. Anenzephalia bleak. Thomas Koner bleak. Lustmord bleak. Thrumming drones of Vulcan intensity and Promethean scale gird the entire album of Slepok Soznaniya. The thunderous cracks that introduce "Lights" are cataclysmic in nature, tumbling from deep space and smashing into the Siberian forest, unleashing shockwaves across the curved surface of Russian's landmass and creating elegantly harmonic ripples across the swampy taiga. Iron wheels grind on long-train tracks which lead to destinations unknown on the "Hymn To Kali," which is more of a dirge than a hymn through the slow, militant pound and evolving reverberant chord shifts for an ashen, musical negativity. The almost self-evidently named "Space Travel" surfs the solar winds with echoes of distant pulsars and glowing nebula clouds flickering through the endless expanses of nothingness.
We were awestruck by the work that Kshatriy produced for the 2014 Drone-Mind / Mind-Drone III compilation; and so we're delving into his catalogue. Slepok Soznaniya was originally released in 2009 on the bracingly good Russian imprint Muzyka Voln. Not all that much in the way of distribution west of the former Iron Curtain; so this one makes for a new favorite in the radiant black dronemusik camp." [Aquarius Records]
€13.00
VII
"A new timley studio album from the duo of Peter Rehberg and Stephen O’Malley. Recorded and mixed during an unexpected extended stay in Berlin when the borders of the world suddenly closed. The claustrophobic urgency of this scenario is seared into the colossal vibrations set into this vinyl release.
Unlike many of their releases this is a studio record made unto itself as opposed to the many soundtracks they have made for theatre works and the like. It also stands as one of their most fully realised releases to date.
Proceedings are launched with The Director. Sitting somewhere between contemporary classical and doom this is a sliding and menacing mass of sound, more Masque of the Red Death than The Decameron. Silver lining is an alarming swooping buzzing track, looming and lowering only to rise and descend again. A delicate play with the Shepard-Risset glissando manifesting a delirious swarm of sound. Lee’s garlic orbits into a short fragmented zone with bursts of harsh feedback and crashing fx, all manner of audio enters and is discarded with an underlying sense of despair and frustration. Proceedings continue on Side B with Tea With Kali where a calmer plateau is embedded with oscillating guitar and fluttering electronics. Beating sine waves envelop the listener in a meditative thought piece of sound. Frostless concludes this epic dispatch as a subtle and gentle foray into twitching electronics as a light buzzsaw drone swirls as around your mind.
The interplay of sources (guitar, electronic equipment (hardware, software, speakers) is so entwined it’s often difficult to discern who is doing what amongst the broad sound field. KTL VII is instrumental music as visual narrative resulting in an exquisitely crafted release full of sophisticated and sublime illusory effects."
€20.00
La Ville Magnetique / The Magnetic City
"24 Electromagnetic Walks in Poitiers. Produced at Studio Hoppegarten and Electronic Music Studio of the Technical University Berlin, October-November 2008. Liner notes and other info in French and English. The recordings of the 24 Electromagnetic Walks in Poitiers were made on August 14, 18 and 19 2008, using only Christina Kubisch's electromagnetic induction headphones and a portable recorder. The sounds have not been electronically modified. The only intervention was the use of a frequency filter. From the linernotes: Today there is a lot of interest in the musical world in 'mapping', the art of tracing the world we live in by means of maps which differ from those made for trade, commerce and business. The maps of the 24 Electromagnetic walks are visual and musical ones. 24 volunteers explored the hidden electromagnetic fields of Poitiers wearing a special headphone created by the artist. This wireless 'tool' captures and amplifies the magnetic fields above and underground the city. The visitors were free to choose their own, personal paths (itineraries) and were asked to draw them upon a map of the inner city. The length of the recordings vary between 6 and 79 minutes. Every recording is a kind of 'mirror' of the character and personality of the walker. Some people walked straight and without stopping through the streets, others often stopped and played around by moving their head (or body) when entering an interesting field, some followed the 'historical paths', others used the personal itineraries of their daily life, some just went by chance and took the exploration as a kind of acoustic adventure. The collection of 24 sound channels in Poiters is a collection of electromagnetic field recordings- an electromagnetic portrait of the city. Often what you can see normally and what you hear electromagnetically, is quite different: quiet streets burst out with strong electrical hums, the lively market place is quiet instead, the train station is a dense net of regular beats and clicks, the parking Carnot is the place where antennas fill the air with internet signals, the ATM machines of the banks hum musical chords and the security gates in the shopping streets surprise by their volume and intensity of continuous signals. The juxtaposition of the 24 itineraries was the starting point for he composition. Several times the visitors were at the same time at the same place, but exploring the sounds in different ways. The piece is a mix of all the recordings, sometimes letting them together in big clusters, sometimes following an individual walker along his way. The beginning and the end of the recordings was the tourist information center of Poitiers. The voices and the music which can be heard were recorded not with a microphone but as well through electromagnetic induction: a cable loop inside the office makes the sound audible as well outside the building. It's here, where the information of the historical city meets with the contemporary hidden electromagnetic world of Poitiers. The participants to the recorded walks: Jean-Pierre Courjaud, Quentin Debenest, Jean Hiernard, Daniel Clauzier, Emmanuelle Baud, Claude Thibault, Marion Berthier, Marie Fournier, Jean-Pierre Potier, Benoist Baillergeau, Jean-Luc Terradillos, Dominique Truco, Patrick Treguer, Jean-Christophe Desnoux, Dominique Pichon, Thomas Sillard, Marion Valière Loudiyi, Mélanie Ribot, Nicolas Bernard, Aurélien large, Marine Antony, Lilian Gerling, Anne Gérard, Christina Kubisch. Credits: Artwork By [Cover Design] - Christina Kubisch. Artwork By [Graphics] - Frederic Briand. Engineer, Mastered By - Eckehard Güther. Liner Notes - Christina Kubisch. Mixed By - Christina Kubisch. Photography - Christina Kubisch , Daniel Proux , Dominique Truco , Marion Valière-Loudiyi. Technician [Recording Assistance] - Marine Antony.' [full label info / liner notes]
€15.00
Magnetic Flights
"Two brand new pieces from one of the most exciting, active & relevant members of the first generation sound artists. Magnetic Flights is a perfect follow up to Five Electrical Walks (IMPREC167) and it is being released at the same time as a collection of two of Kubisch's unreleased archival pieces, also on Important.
Magnetic Flights is entirely made of electromagnetic field recordings of international airports and inside airplanes. The recordings of this piece were made by Christina Kubisch on her travels in 2007 from and to the airports of Bukarest, Manchester, Chicago, Seoul, Munich, Amsterdam,
Zurich, Frankfort, Paris, Lisbon, Berlin, Pisa, Milan and London.
The sounds were not altered electronically nor changed in any other way. The only tool ,which
was used for a part of it, was a filtering program (DINR)
All recordings were made with the help of special sensitive wireless headphones, by which the aboveground and underground electromagnetic fields are detected, amplified and made audible. The headphones are custom made and have been develeoped by myself and constructed by the engineer Manfred Fox, Berlin. The sounds are much more musical than one could expect. There are complex layers of high and low frequencies, loops of rhythmic sequences, groups of tiny signals, long drones and many things which change constantly and
are hard to describe.
Magnetic Flights consists of three parts with a short special sound at the beginning and another one at the end. The piece starts with an electromagnetic sound recorded just before departure and continues with the material of flight radiations recorded inside different airplanes. These electromagnetic fields slightly change pitch during departure and arrival, but remain quite constant during the flight itself. The relatively high and compact sounds gradually build up a dense layer of vibrations with continuous minimal variations.
In the second part some of the previous flight radiations gradually become filtered. The single signals mingle into a mix of small, short, nervous and very rhythmic signals. Their origin might be radio waves, communication signals with the tower , internet and atmospheric disturbances., but this is only a guess. The third part, the situation of arrival or transition, is a mix of typical electromagnetic sounds in the waiting areas of airports such as the deep vibrations of the screens of monitors which slowly fade in and out.
The piece ends with the electrical flickering of an electromagnetic field of unknown origin.
Christina Kubisch belongs to the first generation of sound artists. Trained as a composer, she studied painting, music (flute and composition) and electronics in Hamburg, Graz, Zürich and Milano, where she graduated. Her work can be described as the “synthesis of arts” - the discovery of acoustic space and the dimension of time in the visual arts on the one hand, and a redefinition of relationships between material and form on the other. Kubisch is best known for artistically and innovatively using techniques such as magnetic induction and ultraviolet light to create and realise her work.Since the 1970’s Kubisch has been experimenting with electromagnetic induction and was one of the first to use this method for creating sound installations. Some of her most well know works include the Electrical Walks series, where audience wear magnetic headphones, specially designed by Kubisch, with built-in coils that respond to electrical fields in the environment. Tapping into the electrical fields that result from light systems, anti-theft security devices, surveillance cameras, cell phones, computers, antennae, automated teller machines and other electric devices, she uses these visible sources to create unique and new sensory environmental experiences.
In the mid-1980s, Kubisch began to incorporate light as a compositional tool in many works, for example in the installation Skylines at the documenta 8, Kassel; the underground installation Klang Fluß Licht Quelle on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin and more recently Licht Himmel a permanent light sound installation at Gasometer Oberhausen, Germany. Since 2003 Kubisch has begun to work again as a performer and collaborates with various musicians and dancers, one of whom is Lotta Melin, with whom she will be co-facilitating the Lisbon workshop. An internationally recognised artist, Kubisch has shown work at major international exhibitions and festivals (Venice Benniale, documenta 8, Kassel, Ars Electronica, Linz, Sydney Benniale, Sonar, Barcelona and Sonic Boom, London) performing around the world she has received numerous grants and awards and her music has been realised on various labels such as Cramps Records and Edition RZ. Kubisch has been visiting professor in Maastricht, Paris and Berlin and since 1994, is currently the professor for sound art at the Academy of Fine Arts, Saarbrücken, Germany." [label info]
€15.00
The Secret Life of the Inaudible
About our collaboration.
Annea and I first met in New York in 1975. I was writing an article about the experimental music scene in New York for an Italian magazine. We soon found out that we had a lot of common interests and ideas. In 1979 she came to Italy and together we performed her piece „World Rhythms“ at a festival in Como. I was deeply impressed by how Annea combined technical skills with intuitive performance.
Sound for her always has been more than just material to bring into a compositional form. It was more than raw material, it had a complex structure of its own and was transporting energy. Annea translated and communicated this energy to the listener and she does this with unusual intensity until today.
Over the years we followed each other’s works but unfortunately did not meet as often as we would have liked. During her stay in Berlin earlier this year we had another chance to discuss our works, materials, researches, concepts, doubts and future projects. The idea of a collaboration was a natural consequence of this exchange. We both investigate soundworlds which normally are not audible. Annea questions how the forces of nature influence us, I question how manmade electromagnetic fields have an impact on our lives. And we both love field recording, especially exploring underwater sounds with hydrophones.
We decided to exchange sound materials and left it open to the other what to choose and how to mix it into a new composition. The two new pieces which were created by this exchange are different but at the same time seem to belong together somehow. Annea sent me extracts from recordings of VLF chorus waves, solar oscillations, earthquakes, gas vents etc. while I transmitted to her a collection of recordings of electromagnetic waves which I had made audible and recorded with special custom designed induction headphones. Annea’s sound material was coming from sonic ultra and infra ranges and was speeded up or shifted down in order to become audible, my recordings are analog and were made directly on site in different cities. The sounds we use are all strange and powerful and they go together as if they were especially made for this collaboration. Until now what kind of influence the sources of these normally hidden waves have on us is not much explored. It is up to the listener to find out more about it.
Thanks to Gruenrekorder who supported our project from the beginning. — Christina Kubisch, November 2017
CD 1 – Annea Lockwood
WILD ENERGY | 2016 (with Bob Bielecki)
Wild Energy gives access to the inaudible, vibrations in the ultra sound and infra sound ranges emanating from sources which affect us fundamentally, but which are beyond our normal audio perception, many of which are creating our planet’s environment: the sun, the troposphere and ionosphere, the earth’s crust and core, the oxygen-generating trees – everything deeply integrated, forming an inaudible web in which we move, through which we live and on which we depend. It is our sense that through these sounds one can feel the energies generated, not as concepts but as energy-fields moving through one’s body. Here they have been shifted up (infrasound) or down (ultrasound) to bring them into the human audio range.
Wild Energy begins with solar oscillations (acoustical pressure waves) recorded by the SOHO spacecraft – 40 days of solar oscillations sped up 42,000 times, and ends with ultrasound recorded from the interior of a Scots pine tree.
Recordings made available to Annea Lockwood by scientists at the universities of Hawaii, Stanford, Iowa, Columbia (USA) and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research.
Sound sources:
The sun, acoustical pressure waves – recording courtesy of Alexander Kosovichev, Solar Oscillations Investigation team, Stanford University
Gas vents and tremors, Mt Kilauea – recordings courtesy of Milton Garces, the Infrasound Laboratory, University of Hawaii
VLF Chorus waves and Whistlers; Auroral Kilometric Radiation radio waves –recordings courtesy of Craig Kletzing, Radio and Plasma Wave Group, University of Iowa
Sei whale – recording courtesy of Arthur Newhall, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
Earthquakes – recordings courtesy of the U.S.G.S; Ben Holtzman, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University and Jason Moran
Trees, cavitation events and ultrasound emissions – recordings courtesy of Melvin Tyree; Roman Zweifel , Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL and Marcus Maeder, Zurich University of the Arts, Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology
Hydrothermal vents – recording courtesy of Timothy Crone, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University
Bats: pipistrelle, California myotis, silver-haired bats, Shockwave-Sound.com; big brown bat and Grote’s tiger moth recording courtesy of Aaron Corcoran, Wake Forest University
CD 1 – Annea Lockwood
STREAMING, SWIRLING, CONVERGING | 2017
Composing with combined sound files and sources, six from each of us, has been a unique experience for me, and a deep pleasure. I have long found Christina’s explorations of the electromagnetic fields within which we live now revelatory and essential – beautiful in their sonic detail and powerful in their effects on my body. And there is satisfying sense of complementarity here: Human-created sounds from Christina’s electromagnetic world, a world which she has been hugely instrumental in revealing to us, and non-human sounds and vibrations from the geophysical, atmospheric and mammalian spheres which are my sources.
Her sounds were a delight to work with, often with a clear pitch element and, while fluctuating in their details and flow, essentially stable. This contrasts well with the event-driven, more turbulent rhythms and noise content of my materials. It was fascinating to play with these differences and discover how easily our sounds blend as if drawn together magnetically into layered textures. I am most grateful to Christina for suggesting this collaboration.
Sound sources:
Annea Lockwood: Tremors and a bench collapse on Mt Kilauea, Hawaii, VLF whistlers, earthquakes in Sumatra and Honshu, Japan, ultrasonic sounds from a Scots pine tree, the Mid-Ocean Ridge Black Smoker hydrothermal vent, solar oscillations.
Christina Kubisch: electromagnetic waves recorded in a subway station, a server room, an underground tunnel, a power station, shopping centers and in the countryside during a thunderstorm after electricity had broken down.
CD 2 – Christina Kubisch
NINE MAGNETIC PLACES | 2017
Nine magnetic places is a journey without knowing where to go, what to find, how long to stay or what will come next. It is a discovery of a hidden world, a dreamlike trip by which the traveller encounters unexpected juxtapositions and sequences of electromagnetic waves. The piece was inspired by the first book using the technique of automatic writing, „Les champs magnétiques“ by André Breton and Philippe Soupault, published in Paris (1920).
The electromagnetic recordings were made in or traveling to: Las Vegas, Gdansk, Ystad, Kosice, Montreal, Bordeaux, Manchester, Dortmund, San Francisco, Paris, Ekaterinburg, Lagos, Venice, Bratislava, Bangkok and other places.
CD 2 – Christina Kubisch
BELOW BEHIND ABOVE | 2017
When I was about to finish this piece two powerful storms, called Xavier and Herwart, swept through northern Germany and Central Europe following each other within three weeks. The storms produced hurricane winds and left a path of destruction knocking down trees, power lines and buildings and caused widespread travel chaos.
I was working in my studio during both storms, looking at the shaking trees in front of my house while I was listening to sounds from vulcanos, solar oscillations, earthquakes and the intense vibrations of electromagnetic fields.
The experience of the two storms had a strong impact on my work. The piece became a kind of encounter of different energies and vibrations which meet in unforeseen ways.
Sound sources:
Annea Lockwood: Volcanic gas vents, VLF chorus waves and whistlers, earthquakes, solar oscillations and ultrasonic tree sounds.
Christina Kubisch: electromagnetic recordings from light systems, seismic research centers,transmitter systems and others. Hydrophone recordings from the river Rhein.
www.gruenrekorder.de
"A cause of extreme disgruntlement for this writer is the passive awareness that the bulk of a lifetime was splurged on issues and people not belonging to a sphere of intuitions and considerations even marginally correlatable with his own. If one inaugurates the process of growth by being predominantly attracted by non-vocal emissions, it is foreseeable that – quite soon – attention will not be given anymore to individuals imparting sagacity via mere words, typically instilling some kind of dismay in the potential victim. In that sense, imagine the (adult) quotidian disheartenment for not having a chance to remain within essential acoustic domains when the calls comes; silence is mandatory to do that, and silence is by now a rare commodity. Finally, try to explain all of the above to someone blathering non-stop because convinced – possibly via previous trauma – or out-and-out pretending of living outside his/her body, then get back to me for a good laugh together.
But we do get privileged whenever communicating – remotely but, by the grace of heavens, through sounds – with truly developed beings such as Christina Kubisch and Annea Lockwood, themselves linked by a long-time friendship and artistic consanguinity that never had resulted in a tangible collaboration. Until today.
Narrating yet again what these women have been doing throughout their histories of sonic researchers would be pathetic (but if you still think there is a need to, a peep to the presentation notes of this release will help explicating the kernel of the matter). This double CD encloses four handsome compositions derived from the manipulation of swapped materials; the common denominator is the attempt of turning invisible energies and inaudible frequencies into physically perceivable substances destined to increase one’s congenital acumen. Kubisch and Lockwood operate at levels of intuitive interiority unconceivable by the average gatherer of location recordings and electronics. We can literally “feel inside” the gradual effect of sources reconfigured in various types of aural concretization. They emerge as penetrating hums of radiophonic descent, or may resemble marine currents inhabited by a somewhat alien fauna attempting new forms of signal transmission. The ordinary becomes unconventional; the voice of nature and its private tumults get disfigured by deforming lenses that, rather amazingly, emphasize the gravity of each single event.
That these pieces ultimately can stand proudly amidst the finest electroacoustic musics of the last few decades is obviously a plus. However, what really counts is the implicit message: communication does happen at every stage of physical existence, including the supposedly inanimate. In times when most humans are bamboozled by things that do not exist particularized by brains that do not work, what we have to do is raising the aerials way up. Consequences – if there is sufficient emotional fuel in your personal tank – will inevitably materialize." [Touching Extremes]
€16.00
Unter Grund
The Ruhr Area lives from and with water. It needs drinking water, water for industrial facilities and water for transportation. Water veins pulse invisibly with groundwater, connecting rivers through subsurface tunnels that also force their way into disused mines. This mine water has to be drained continuously or pumped out from underground (one speaks of unending tasks) to prevent the collapse of old shafts, subsidence damage, and the contamination of drinking water. Without constant pumping of the groundwater the Ruhr Area would transform into a vast marshy landscape.
Fabian Lasarzik
"The discomfort from the underground
Christina Kubisch’s site-specific sound installations are based on retrieving parallel worlds. She often responds to structures and atmospheres of places and their unheralded vibrancy which she turns into concrete perception and imagination by the recipient. For the 26-channel installation “under ground” carried out on Zeche Zollverein Christina Kubisch examined above ground and subterranean streams which are little noticed, but play a decisive role: water which has to be developed from abandoned and not backfilled shafts and mounted into a complex canal and river system.
It is about the control and domination of mine water, which is nothing but ascending groundwater intruding former coal bearing seems and seeping away in deepness. It has to be pumped and conveyed permanently. Without this elaborate dewatering the tunnel system would be flooded which would set the surface in motion. By now the region in the Ruhr area sagged more than 20 meters within the last 150 years. Also the water would mix with our normal groundwater and soil it chemically. It would ascend and transform the Ruhr area into a swampy seascape with contaminated water. On Zollverein there are already six centrifugal pumps in 1000 meters depth, two of them working constantly. About 8 millions cubic meters of water are developed in average per year. Talking about perpetual burdens and costs means those strenuous efforts.
Those tremendous consequences and measures correspond to the enormous and massive historical interventions caused by coal mining that are widely unknown to the public. The artistic field studies by Christina Kubisch pick out this parallel world as central theme. With high sensitivity in her tonal production she feeds the dark dimension of our imagination, which associates the invisible “under the ground” with the uncanny, the uncontrollable primordial. The subject deals with the conscious and the unconscious in a metaphorical way: the lucent, literally bright surface reality in opposite to the dark, uncanny and hidden reality underground.
Christina Kubisch mediates those aspects within a spatial composition by using above and underground recordings. What we hear is reality, which can be sensually experienced within a composition subtly connecting documentary material with our imagination. If we engage in the imagination stimulated by this work, we feel the monstrous things which happened underneath our feet, humans competing with the bowels of earth and the forces of nature. “Under ground” — and we are talking about approximately 1.400 meters depth — associates the unconscious, the archaic, the long forgotten. Eventually we are standing on what deposited during millions of years and we only know little about, except it is tremendous and began before the emergence of mankind.
Our primal fear at this point is those primary things (basically nature itself) could turn against us and take revenge. Christina Kubisch’s work plays with those associations without pathos. When the bassy vast main water pumps raise their sound it seems we hear a giant organism underneath us breathing in and out. The sounds indicate magnitude, significance and menace. We become aware of something we normally do not notice. After all Kubisch uses military equipment like special hydrophones to make this parallel worlds tangible, and she probably does it with a certain subversive delight. It is not only about picturesque sounds and enthralling noises, but also about alternative ways of perceiving and accessing correlations. This is her deep conceptual approach. Kubisch’s work is about autonomously provided ways of experience and unofficial versions of reality. Therein lies also an ironic jab at our faith in technical progress, which on the one hand opens up the world to us, but with its focus on certain lines of development strikes us with blindness at the same time."
www.gruenrekorder.de
€13.00
Slotmachine
The „Kuhzunft-slotmachine“ is a website-project, based on a picture of a crayon-painted slot machine. Clicking the start button activates the machine to randomly combine pre-produced recordings (of 45 seconds length) within three slots. Instead of typical fruits in the display, you would see photos attached to the specific sounds by the artists responsible for the content. Even the names of the „songs“ are put together by the single names each artist had chosen for their recordings. The vinyl release on Gruenrekorder documents the project with a selection from 13 artists and 158 recordings, that offered a possibility of 3.944.312 tracks. The online-slotmachine has the ability to continuously grow and contains at the date of the vinyl release (February 1st, 2019) four more artists and a total of 225 recordings, providing some 11.390.625 possible titles. Visit slotmachine.kuhzunft.com to discover the project yourself. You can either simply press START and get surprised or deactivate AUTO PLAY to make a selection.
The vinyl features:
Jaap Blonk (NL) – Voice
John Chantler (AU) – Modular Synth
Serge Corteyn (DE) – Guitar
Rhodri Davies (GB) – Harp
Gailė Griciūtė (LT) – Prepared Piano
Richard Lerman (US) – Piezzo, Hydrophone
Seán Mac Erlaine (IE) – Woodwinds
Jérôme Noetinger (FR) – Tape Machine
Pablo Paredes (CL) – Keyboards
Michael Vatcher (US) – Drums
Simon Whetham (GB) – Field Recordings
Marta Zapparoli (IT) – Radio Waves
Achim Zepezauer (DE) – Drumcomputer, Electronics, Acoustics
The online slotmachine also features:
Émilie Girard-Charest (CN) – Cello
Florian Hartlieb (DE) – Computer
Bart Maris (BE) – Trumpet
Carolin Pook (DE/US) – Violin
Achim Zepezauer (DE) – Words
Pablo Paredes (CL) – Mastering
Guida Ribeiro (PT) – Website Developing
€10.00
Zone Sensible 2 / Dundee 2
Wer jemals selbst versucht hat, brauchbare 'field recordings' zu hervorzubringen, dürfte wissen wie schwer es ist, Störgeräusche auszuschalten, die gewünschte Klangquelle laut genug hörbar zu machen und überhaupt den "richtigen Moment" zu treffen... denn der Zufall spielt hierbei eine gewichtige Rolle, die Unkontrollierbarkeit der Klänge macht demütig...
Einer der absoluten Meister des Fieldrecording und deren Verarbeitung ist ERIC LA CASA, von dem hier 2 Stücke präsentiert werden, die sowohl gekonnteste Feldaufnahmen zeigen als auch die brilliante Transformation in eine Art naturale musique concrete:
ZONE SENSIBLE 2 benutzt Aufnahmen von Bienen, deren summender Chor oft gewaltig anschwellt und sich mit sirrenden, elektronisch wirkenden mechano-Drones vermischt, ein Stück voller Dynamik und Brüchen, welches am Ende wie ein einziger atmender Klangorganismus wirkt, epische 26:30 min lang.
Auf DUNDEE 2 dagegen entwirft er aus 30 verschiedenen Orts-Aufnahmen eine Art unterbewussten Klangspiegel der schottischen Stadt Dundee, wobei v.a. die stets vorhandenen, aber kaum jemals bewusst wahrgenommenen Sounds von Maschinen (Ventilatoren, Aufzüge, Sirenen, Kühlschränke) eine grosse Rolle spielen..
das soghafte Rauschen einer Stadt verläuft hier in langen auf- und abschwellenden Bahnen.
Fazit: Zwei geniale Kompositionen für das Kino im Kopf !
"For the best part of a decade, Éric La Casa's attention to sonic phenomena has resulted in some of the finest contemporary Musique Concréte to come out of France. A listener of the highest order, La Casa's methodology for sound recording allows for a versatile examination of both urban and natural environments and it is these interests which are captured on this new edition for Room40. With an ability to find unique perspectives on his sound subjects La Casa's site specific works 'Zone Sensible' and 'Dundee' seek to draw a detailed focus and expose unfamiliar, incidental and previously unheard sound worlds. Zone Sensible, exclusively composed from recordings of bees in the Olivier Darné's hives, located in the Saint Denis suburb of Paris, reveals a chaotic, frenetic microcosm that speaks to the density of the real, whilst hinting at our ears to experience a dance of oscillations - wings beating with boundless energy. As a contrast to this microcosm, Dundee, composed with recordings of Dundee city (during a 10 days residency at DCA museum), sees La Casa turn his microphones outward. Rendering a captivating sound map of sorts, Dundee' was developed in collaboration with USA Film experimentalist Ken Jacobs' 'nervous magic lantern', on a 6 channels device. From these recordings La Casa composed variations and movements in interaction with Ken Jacobs' processing - a contemplation from the real to abstracted life." [label info]
www.room40.org
"Two new works by Eric LaCasa, the active composer of musique concrete. By now he has a long list of releases under his belt, and on this CD he presents two new works. 'Dundee 2' is in three parts, while 'Zone Sensible 2' is one work. That one was commissioned by Les Instants Chavires (France) for a festival and uses solely the sounds of bees, recorded in a beehive. It starts out with the sound of bees, but soon starts to move about in some electronic after life. Or so it seems. Until now I always thought, but perhaps wrongly, that LaCasa only works with pure sound, always recorded in the fields (agricultural and urban), and never used that much sound processing, but perhaps I was wrong. Here its a much more electronic work that depicts the chaos of the beehive very well. Buzzing with life, sounds crawl about and its hard to figure out what is going on - except of course if you are a bee yourself. A work full of life.
'Dundee' was commissioned by Arika for 'Kill Your Timid Notion in 2007 and uses sounds of that Scottish city, which was played back on a six channel system, devised along with Ken Jacobs, an American film maker. Here we have the 'empty' spaces that resonates, sometimes interrupted by voices ('what are you doing in the parking, recording spaces'?, or station announcements) or by events we can longer trace back to its origin. Here it seems to me LaCasa uses no electronic processing, but the pure sound phenomena as captured on tape. A powerful work, even if you don't know the city of Dundee (at least I don't). What sets LaCasa aside from his colleagues in the same field, is that he composes with the material, rather than presenting them (for instance works like this on the German Gruenrekorder label), and that makes them all the more engaging to hear. I am not sure why 'Dundee 2' has been cut into three separate pieces, but like 'Zone Sensible 2', these are excellent pieces. LaCasa is
one of the true masters of working with field recordings." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€13.00
La Creuse
LA CREUSE ist eine höchst gelungene Field Recording-Reise mit hohem Abstraktionsfaktor. Die Psychogeographie des französischen Departments LA CREUSE soll dadurch (sub)sonisch "verkörpert" und sinnlich erfahrbar werden, das Material wurde mit einem speziellen Remix- / Bearbeitungskonzept für jedes Stück konzeptualisiert. "Intelligente" Geräuschmusik aus einmaligen Klängen der Umgebung & Natur, fantastisch arrangiert !
"Our project is defined by its aim: to represent in sonic terms, and in duo, a particular environment – a triangular area in the north of the Creuse département in central France. In the first place, based on cartographic representations, we set about breaking down the chosen territory, an area between the Petite Creuse and Grande Creuse rivers, into specific sites. Secondly, we placed the map ‘under surveillance’, as it were, conducting sonic surveys in the selected sites. These surveys led us to a geophonic approach, each based on a development of specific auscultatory techniques, in which the wealth of sounds collected nourished our research into (sonic) territoriality.
The aim of the project was not to replace image with sound but to give that which surrounds us a (sonic) body; to give landscape a sonic corporeality. It might be that, being unrelated to notions of admiration that go hand in hand with seeing, a sonic evaluation can go some way towards confounding our a priori notions of landscape. Thirdly, the resulting data gave rise to an ensemble of exchanges/interactions, enabling formal variations. For one of these formalisations, musical composition, we chose the following protocol: each site was given a musical interpretation by a composer, his work being based on the site’s specific sound-bank. The composer then sent his piece to a second who, with recourse to his own bank of sounds, responded to the first interpretation. The second composer redefined the composition, adding his own sounds also. The final interpretation, therefore, is based as much on the layered listenings and recordings formed at the site itself as the musical conceptions of each individual." [label notes]
"As far as I remember I've never been to the area where Cedric Peyronnet (also better known as Toy Bizarre) and Eric La Casa recorded their work, the Creuse department in central France - maybe I saw it today when watching the Tour de France. However there is a booklet with this CD with pictures of the area, and in each picture there is a pair of microphones to be spotted. This is as close as you can make field recordings visual I guess. A pity that the booklet, a diary it seems, is all in French, with some general English translation on the cover. The area was divided into several specific sites which were recorded by one, and then sent to the other to work on it, to interpret the place. And vice versa of course. Each piece is started by one, finished by the other. Its not easy to hear who did what, but I think that the pieces finished by Peyronnet have a minimal subtle electronic manipulations, and that La Casa's pieces are entirely made with field recordings. I might be wrong however and no electronic processing took place. We hear rain, wind, footsteps and sounds from water, objects and other sonic events which are hard to be placed somewhere in terms of what one could recognize. Even when this is divided into nine pieces, it's best enjoyed as a complete picture: listen from start until the end, sit back and transport yourself through time and space - time is the length of the CD and the place is La Creuse. This rural and forest area is pictured quite well before your very eyes. A very refined work." [FdW / Vital Weekly ]
www.herbalinternational.tk
€13.50
Bastion 23
"second release of LC / german power electronics meets ambient noise parts in a mixture of noise / strength by political provokation" [label info]
"Control, Slogun, Sickness, MZ412 they all have something in common with La Comunidad . the pure fucking brutality and angry that these units can project. There is nothing happy or hopeful about this release. This German force are not a happy lot. This is about the disgust of ones world and surrounding and how a single source submits it to anyone that will listen. Not all of La Comunidad is full on noise sometimes there is a very suffocating Death Ambient assault going on here. You need to listen to the speeches and spoken word movements as much as the backdrop of the music to get the full picture.
La Comunidad likes the thought of War, Pain and Dispair. That much is very simple. Its not this vision alone that makes La Comunidad any more interesting then the bands listed above. What makes them a bit more out there is the distance and isolationist feel you get when listening to this. La Comunidad aren't to make this recording for your. Your here so someone can hear the deconstruction of a human soul on the bring of either greatness or insanity. Your never really sure and I hope to never find out. Just let the extremity of it all take you and change for ever.
L White has presented La Comunidad in a wonderful A5 full color 4 panel card package. The only thing is limiting it to 300 copies after all this hard work. L white is the Harsh Industrial/ Noise/ Power Electronic fans best friend as they give an outlet to very amazing projects such as there were others would never even look at them. Thank you for this L White and keep up the pain inducing release as I know I will keep on listening." [Clint Listing]
label-website: www.l.white-records.de
€13.00
split
"A split with La Morte Young and Drone Electric Lust. File under psychedelic rock, experimental, drone.
La Morte Young is the meeting of Talweg (Eric Lombaert, drums + Joelle Vinciarelli, voice) + Nappe (Christian Malfray, electronics + Pierre Faure, electric guitar and tape delay) + Sun Stabbed (the same Pierre Faure + Thierry Monnier, electric guitar and tapes). Recorded live at 102, Grenoble, in May 2014 by Pali Meursault.
Drone Electric Lust is Kjell Runar Jenssen, drums, electronics + Lasse Marhaug, electronics + Per Gisle GalŒen and Fredrik Ness Sevendal, guitars.
A coproduction between Doubtful Sounds, Apartment Records, Dysmusie, Pica Disk, Killer and Up Against the Wall, Motherfuckers!" [label info]
doubtfulsounds.info
€16.00
Ankarkättingens slut är sängens början
Obscure Swedish sound-poetry with some very old recordings, from one of the lesser known artists in this field where meaning of words meets with the noise of words... Comes with nice gold-embossed small book with texts, pictures and graphics, all in Swedish !
“Ilmar Laaban´s poetry, practically a class in itself in Sweden, traverses linguistic borderlands where words can get split and torn apart, reduced to something beyond words, perhaps more universal than words, but where the various components can just as often be reassembled in new words. The cycle of destruction and construc- tion always fascinated Laaban the word-wright and word-kneader, going through it over and over again to find the cracks and clefts from which an unexpected spring might well forth.” Like Tristan Tzara he holds to the maxim "thought is born in the mouth. Laaban´s poetry, which gives sound and form to the subconscious, is a poetry of utterance, and therefore speaks for itself. But the appended compilation of statements on the subject, from the writer himself, nevertheless offer a rewarding insight into his poetic method and reveal much about the associative pathways down which his imagination has wandered. This CD begins with two examples of Labaan´s surrealist recitation from the 40´s and 50´s, followed by some of his polyphonic text-sound poetry (which he started in 1967), and finally some sound poems from the 90´s. Ilmar Laaban was born in Tallinn, Estonia in 1921. He studied Romanic languages at the university of Tartu and musical composition at the Tallinn conservatory. To avoid being drafted into Hitler´s army he fled to Sweden in 1943. He had already been writing surrealist poetry in Estonia, and continued in the same vein in Sweden, supporting himself as a freelance culture and art reviewer. His grasp and overview of the international art arena gave him an important role as a guide and source of inspiration for many artists who came in contact with him, not the least those in the circle around Fylkingen.” [label info]
www.fylkingen.se
€12.50
Fishforms
Ein neuer Name für die Impro-Drone-Szene, dieses skandinavische Duo, die mit indischen "Sruti" und "Saranghi"-Boxen wunderbar füllige Drones erzeugen (klingt nach Harmonium oder endlosen Sitar-Loops), die sich in endlosen Wellen und Obertönen fortbewegen, dabei aber sehr nah und konkret erscheinen. Subtile Bass-Dumm Percussion wird eingesetzt, (was meist auch einen low-freq Drone ergibt, der aber unruhiger schwingt ) und in Stück 2 ist eine Folk-artige Akustikgitarre zu hören, ... sehr schönes Debut (von zwei etablierten Leuten aus der Impro-/Jazz Szene)!
" 'Phanta Rhei’ - everything flows. Whatever else might happen, life hurtles on and everything follows its natural course. Music is also subject to these ineluctable laws. While often breaking the mould, when everything is in its right place, the music follows its own course. As it does in the little experimental cabins of Laboratory Field, or LabField for short. This Scandinavian monster collective consisting of David Stackenäs (guitars, electronics) and Ingar Zach (percussion) knows exactly how to manipulate sound. At the same time, Ingar Zach is also creating a big stir with three-piece kindred spirits Huntsville.
Not fussed about getting their hands dirty, Stackenäs and Zach dig for sounds of gold with successful results. Sound waves emanate from their instruments slowly. This unstoppable flood of sound is not distinguished by brute force but rather by its boundless subtlety and inventiveness. The listener will completely find themselves submerged by an overwhelming stream. Bottrop-Boy is proud to release LabField’s first sound experiments onto the world.
Swedish guitarist Stackenäs and Norwegian percussionist Zach are known names in the European improvisation scene. They previously worked together in three-piece TRI DIM, together with saxophonist Håkon Kornstad. Two years later, Stackenäs and Zach decided to work as a duo, deciding on a radically different course. Improvisation, sound art, minimal music and drones are fused to form a completely unique style of performing. Zach plays, among other instruments, the unique electronic sruti and saranghi boxes. This is music that evolves quietly and often refers to the dronescapes of free improv pioneers such as AMM. The sounds which Stackenäs manages to conjure up from his guitars are unprecedented: softly humming, viciously rattling and intensely meditative. Zach answers these sounds with the hypnotic pulse of his bass drum and electronic sruti box. This is improvisational music replete with sounds branching in unpredictable directions and slowly smouldering drones. An aural rite of passage fit for these modern times." [label info]
"....The 24 minute opener “Gin” is built around the sustained presence of Zachs sruti and saranghi boxes – electronic facsimiles of Indian harmonium and fiddle, respectively. With these blissed out vibrations, augmented by bells and the sparse isolated booms of a bass drum, it has the feel of a slowly unfolding devotional ritual, but it’s saved from descending into ersatz spiritual tourism by Stäckenas’s jarring embellishments. Even without seeing him at work, it’s probably safe to assume Stäckenas is operating out of the Keith Rowe school of unconventionally manipulated tabletop electric guitar, producing grating textures resembling the hum and drill of an overworked air conditioning unit or the piercing whine of a wineglass rim.
For “Rin”, he switches to acoustic, with simple strumming phasing in and out of sync in left and right channels and a three note melody picked out on slide guitar – creating a satisfying mash of Country, raga and contemporary music that recalls Zach’s other trio, Huntsville. But, with the throbbing, sruti-drenched “Showa”, the album returns to its core mission to explore the bottomless reaches of drone, discovering dark, euphoric realms along the way." [Daniel Spicer / THE WIRE]
"... On the risk of being accused (again) that I heard this only once, I must say that the work he produced as LabField with Stackenäs is great. Absolutely great. Zach plays bass drum, percussion, electronic scruti-box and electronic saranghi-box and Stackenäs plays acoustic guitars, resonator guitar, preparations and low budget electronics. With a background in improvisation you would expect careful, quiet, intimate playing - and in a way they do that. But it's not tender, soft or hardly outspoken. I suggest putting the volume up and get immersed by their wall of machine sounds. They play their instruments using all sorts of motors, fans or other mechanized instruments to create a natural resonating yet acoustic sound. Especially in 'Gin', the opening track which spans two-third of the entire CD this works wonderfully well. Dense to bone (mm, that's no expression)... dense like clouds, like being in a factory and one hears all the machines humming at once. Not deafening loud, but well constructed, balanced, varied, not from one point of the factory, but one has the feeling of walking about, hearing new aspects of the machines or new combination of the machines. By contrast 'Gin', the shortest piece, is a like bridge between that and 'Showa', soft tinkling guitars and percussive sounds, until things start to heat up again for the final piece. Hardly improvised sounding at all, this is sophisticated drone music of an outstanding order." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
www.bottrop-boy.com
€13.00
Prazision
"The debut album from Labradford, as well as the premier kranky release, was originally issued in October 1993 to a surprising amount of acclaim as well as a fair bit of confusion. What was one to make of these beatless atmospheres cum pop songs that had very little to do with contemporary "indie-rock"? The album was typically lumped into such newly minted sub-genres such as "lo-fi" and "post-rock" even though there was no connection to any such imagined scenes. Lo-fi? You can hear Mark Nelson breathe between vocal lines for chrissake. Must be the lack of cymbals and hi-hat that accounts for that fallacy. Post-rock? Does this catch-all phrase for disparate musical groups and sounds even imply anything concrete or encompassing? Alas, just another label that quickly became meaningless.
What is clearly evident upon listening to the album anew is that this is not a dated or stale work by any means. It could just as well have been recorded in 2003, or 1983 for that matter, as in 1993. It does not contain any of the markers so typical of pop music that would place it in any time frame, no production touches or instrumental sounds that would identify it as being the product of a specific period. At the very least, Labradford created a timeless work, one that still challenges the listener today. More to the point, they created a masterwork." [label info]
www.kranky.net
€22.50
White Night
minimal ambience recorded 1974 ! Edition of 500
Ein wunderschön schimmernder, fast 30minütiger Drone von 1974 offenbart sich auf WHITE NIGHT, der aus vier sich umtänzelnden, schwingenden Tönen besteht. Obwohl hierzu Sinus-Töne auf einem MOOG-Synthesizer kreiert wurden, ergeben sich Obertöne und eine "wavende" Räumlichkeit, die das ganze eher nach Gitarrendrones klingen lassen, wie ihn heutzutage STARS OF THE LID oder ULTRASOUND machen...
Erschienen auf dem Label von TOBIAS FISCHER (FEU FOLLET) und MIRKO UHLIG (ex AALFANG MIT PFERDEKOPF).
"Back in 1974, one year before Brian Eno’s first landmark in Ambient-music, some young musician from New York wrote down a fragment of beauty’s hidden story with the minimal vocabulary of sine waves on the young black skin of a Moog synthesizer. The first release on CD features Richard Lainhart’s masterpiece in its original 29-minutes-version. There’s no single second to add, after this time everything is told though nothing has been said. Richard Lainhart about the work’s origin: "White Night" was composed and recorded in the late fall of 1974 at the State University of New York at Albany in the Coordinated Electronic Music Studio (CEMS). CEMS was created by my composition teacher Joel Chadabe with design and custom fabrication by Robert Moog and was, at the time, the largest integrated Moog modular synthesizer studio in the world. The piece consists of a dense, continuous four-note chord, each note in the chord recorded in a separate pass to one track on a Scully 4-track studio recorder. Each track consists of a single sine wave oscillator which is frequency modulated by a group of eight additional sine wave oscillators. Those oscillators are all tuned to different tones, each harmonically related to the fundamental chord tone. The amplitude of each harmonic oscillator is continuously varied under the control of an individual sequencer, and each sequencer is free-running - that is, the sequencers are not synchronized to each other, but rather running in their own independent timebases.The result is a continuously-changing complex harmonic waveform which modulates the frequency of the chord tone oscillator, generating a continuously-changing complex timbre based on the fundamental pitch of the note.
The center tone of "White Night" is 212 Hz, slightly higher than the G below Middle C. The other notes create a chord consisting of a perfect fifth below the center tone, a major seventh just below the center tone, and a major second above the center tone. "White Night" was composed without reference to the standard A-440 tuning system, as we had no such pitch reference in the studio; I just picked a center tone that felt right, and went from there. As such, "White Night" lives in its own pitch world.
The title "White Night" came about so: it was late December in upstate New York when I was finishing the piece, and a blizzard passed through town the night of the final mix. As I sat in the glow of the sequencers and tape decks in the University studio listening to the final version, I looked out the window and saw a security light on a building opposite the studio illuminating the blowing snow as it drifted off the roof. All I could see was the snow swirling in the light against the blackness; a moving painting continually drawn, erased, and redrawn, always changing, but always the same. It may sound bleak, but it wasn't - it was beautiful. It seemed to me that the image of the dancing whiteness perfectly matched the sound of the piece, and so I called it "White Night" to commemorate that evening of wind and snow." [label info]
www.exovo.org
€12.00
Our Inventions
"2004 erschien ihr letztes Album "Faking The Books", dennoch ist Lali Punas Einfluss auf die elektronische Popszene immer noch spürbar. Gemeinsam mit The Notwist zeichnet die Band um Valerie Trebeljahr für moderne, experimentell angehauchte Popmusik verantwortlich. Mit "Our Inventions" rücken sie die Grenzen des Genres wieder mal ein Stück weiter. Der Song "Rest Your Head" schlägt eine souveräne Brücke zur vergangenen Bandhistorie. Hier pulsieren die Keyboards in warmen Wellen und begleiten Trebeljahrs Flüstern mit einlullenden Melodien - bis einen der Drumcomputer aus versponnenen Tagträumen reißt. Während das Vorgängeralbum förmlich auf die Bühne strebte, zeugt "Our Inventions" von intensiver, fast schon introvertierter Studioarbeit. Gleichzeitig unterstreichen Songs wie "Remember" und "Everything Is Always", was Lali Puna so besonders macht: überschwängliche Mitsingharmonien mit Feinschliff, die ihre Seele nicht hinter der Technik verstecken. Das Album schließt mit "Out There", Lali Punas Kollaboration mit Yukihiro Takahashi (Yellow Magic Orchestra). //
More than half a decade has elapsed since the release of Faking The Books, Lali Puna's third (and hitherto most recent) long-player, but the band's impact on the climate of electronic rock music remains palpable. Along with sister-group The Notwist, this Weilheim quartet have helped map out the musical landscape for modern, experimentally minded pop music, and Our Inventions finds Lali Puna continuing to push the frontiers of their medium. 'Rest Your Head' serves as a perfectly poised re-introduction to the band and all they've become. Initiated by waves of glassy pulsations and warm, swelling synths, the song has the feel of a reverse-lullaby - gently winding its way through reposeful melodies, guided by the welcoming whisper of Trebeljahr's vocal until the final third kicks in with drum machine hits, and you're wide awake. While Faking The Books, with its vibrant riffs and extrovert tendencies, had the sound of a record begging to be played live, Our Inventions exhibits the hallmarks of an album spun from intensive studio-bound introspection. Two of the most explosive and ebullient songs here - 'Remember' and 'Everything Is Always' - confirm so much of what's special about Lali Puna: all the elements are at once precision engineered and delivered with absolute heartfelt conviction; perhaps never before have such jubilant pop hooks been so meticulously and fastidiously crafted, yet you can always hear the soul behind these machines. This is an album that's made for and about the modern world, concerning itself with the driving forces of progress and technological obsession. Trebeljahr's lyrics are suggestive of alienation and disenfranchisement from nature during the irony-laced title-track: "The birds in the trees/Singing our mobile melodies/What a sweet, sweet world", later stipulating that 'progress' never really gets us anywhere on 'Everything Is Always' ("Nothing new/These days"), while hinting at the ultimate bankruptcy of the all-devouring consumer age during 'Safe Tomorrow': "Never going anywhere/Don't stop by and get to know/Stuff your memory with facts/Save Save Save". The final song on the tracklist is 'Out There', a collaboration with the Yellow Magic Orchestra's Yukihiro Takahashi. The version appearing here is an alternate rendering of the track that appeared on Takahashi's Page By Page album in 2009. Here Trebeljahr addresses the global financial collapse ("Their kingdom's past, their kingdom's gone/Just ruins and plain desert/It's all burnt down, we're left alone"), and sure enough, Our Inventions is a body of work that keenly engages with the concerns of its time, one that confronts the excesses and ever-accelerating pace of modernity. The sublime, virtuoso electronic arrangements of Our Inventions directly lock onto the record's recurrent key themes, depicting a world inundated with technology and consumed by a fixation on progress - simultaneously passing commentary on this state of affairs and overcoming it. When Trebeljahr intones "Things move on/I'm gonna work fast because tomorrow comes quick" it sounds like it's being sung from the perspective of someone who's already there." [label info]
www.morrmusic.com
€16.00
Our Inventions
"2004 erschien ihr letztes Album "Faking The Books", dennoch ist Lali Punas Einfluss auf die elektronische Popszene immer noch spürbar. Gemeinsam mit The Notwist zeichnet die Band um Valerie Trebeljahr für moderne, experimentell angehauchte Popmusik verantwortlich. Mit "Our Inventions" rücken sie die Grenzen des Genres wieder mal ein Stück weiter. Der Song "Rest Your Head" schlägt eine souveräne Brücke zur vergangenen Bandhistorie. Hier pulsieren die Keyboards in warmen Wellen und begleiten Trebeljahrs Flüstern mit einlullenden Melodien - bis einen der Drumcomputer aus versponnenen Tagträumen reißt. Während das Vorgängeralbum förmlich auf die Bühne strebte, zeugt "Our Inventions" von intensiver, fast schon introvertierter Studioarbeit. Gleichzeitig unterstreichen Songs wie "Remember" und "Everything Is Always", was Lali Puna so besonders macht: überschwängliche Mitsingharmonien mit Feinschliff, die ihre Seele nicht hinter der Technik verstecken. Das Album schließt mit "Out There", Lali Punas Kollaboration mit Yukihiro Takahashi (Yellow Magic Orchestra). //
More than half a decade has elapsed since the release of Faking The Books, Lali Puna's third (and hitherto most recent) long-player, but the band's impact on the climate of electronic rock music remains palpable. Along with sister-group The Notwist, this Weilheim quartet have helped map out the musical landscape for modern, experimentally minded pop music, and Our Inventions finds Lali Puna continuing to push the frontiers of their medium. 'Rest Your Head' serves as a perfectly poised re-introduction to the band and all they've become. Initiated by waves of glassy pulsations and warm, swelling synths, the song has the feel of a reverse-lullaby - gently winding its way through reposeful melodies, guided by the welcoming whisper of Trebeljahr's vocal until the final third kicks in with drum machine hits, and you're wide awake. While Faking The Books, with its vibrant riffs and extrovert tendencies, had the sound of a record begging to be played live, Our Inventions exhibits the hallmarks of an album spun from intensive studio-bound introspection. Two of the most explosive and ebullient songs here - 'Remember' and 'Everything Is Always' - confirm so much of what's special about Lali Puna: all the elements are at once precision engineered and delivered with absolute heartfelt conviction; perhaps never before have such jubilant pop hooks been so meticulously and fastidiously crafted, yet you can always hear the soul behind these machines. This is an album that's made for and about the modern world, concerning itself with the driving forces of progress and technological obsession. Trebeljahr's lyrics are suggestive of alienation and disenfranchisement from nature during the irony-laced title-track: "The birds in the trees/Singing our mobile melodies/What a sweet, sweet world", later stipulating that 'progress' never really gets us anywhere on 'Everything Is Always' ("Nothing new/These days"), while hinting at the ultimate bankruptcy of the all-devouring consumer age during 'Safe Tomorrow': "Never going anywhere/Don't stop by and get to know/Stuff your memory with facts/Save Save Save". The final song on the tracklist is 'Out There', a collaboration with the Yellow Magic Orchestra's Yukihiro Takahashi. The version appearing here is an alternate rendering of the track that appeared on Takahashi's Page By Page album in 2009. Here Trebeljahr addresses the global financial collapse ("Their kingdom's past, their kingdom's gone/Just ruins and plain desert/It's all burnt down, we're left alone"), and sure enough, Our Inventions is a body of work that keenly engages with the concerns of its time, one that confronts the excesses and ever-accelerating pace of modernity. The sublime, virtuoso electronic arrangements of Our Inventions directly lock onto the record's recurrent key themes, depicting a world inundated with technology and consumed by a fixation on progress - simultaneously passing commentary on this state of affairs and overcoming it. When Trebeljahr intones "Things move on/I'm gonna work fast because tomorrow comes quick" it sounds like it's being sung from the perspective of someone who's already there." [label info]
www.morrmusic.com
€16.00
Stories del Tiburon Lloron del Amazonas Cassette
Three-part journey into an imaginary Amazon from three artists working on the fringes of Field recordings. Stories del Tiburón Llorón del Amazonas picks up where the previous, Stories of the Indian Dotted Whale trilogy left off. This time, the same three artists, Giovanni Lami, Hannibal Chew II aka Gonçalo F Cardoso and Bardo Todol aka Pablo Picco return to riff on an imaginary crying shark, known to swim in the amazon river. The sad and melancholic shark has never been seen but its weep and sob can be heard all over the region. Here are three works of sympathetic howls for a lonely and misunderstood creature. First part from Giovanni Lami is made of ghost recordings made during 2020 in Iquitos, Perú, in the amazon forest during the film shoot of Tras el Barco de Fitzcarraldo. Second part from Hannibal Chew II is a collection of re-assembled recordings and jams gathered from a trip through the Amazon in late 2017 to early 2018. Later assembled during various improvised recording sessions during the long hot summer of 2023 in Tenerife, Canary Islands. The third and final part comes from Bardo Todol and features abrasive tape and digital field recordings manipulation made by Picco in Iquitos in 2020 during the shooting of Tras el barco de Fitzcaraldo. All three feature sounds of: people talking, static radios, Saturday night churches, river people, shawi people, dolphin people, shark people, market people, vibrating insects, zombie insects, giant insects, giant motors and of course various weeps of a crying shark.
SUC58 = Red cassette shell
SUC57 = Yellow cassette shell
SUC56 = Pink cassette shell
First part from Giovanni Lami is made of ghost recordings made during 2020 in Iquitos, Perú, in the amazon forest during the film shoot of “Tras el Barco de Fitzcarraldo”.
Second part from Hannibal Chew II is a collection of re-assembled recordings and jams gathered from a trip through the Amazon in late 2017 to early 2018. Later assembled during various improvised recording sessions during the long hot summer of 2023 in Tenerife, Canary Islands.
The third and final part comes from Bardo Todol and features abrasive tape and digital field recordings manipulation made by Picco in Iquitos in 2020 during the shooting of “Tras el barco de Fitzcaraldo”.
€25.00
Shortwave Transmission
"Ist es wirklich schon fünf Jahre her seit das letzte Land:Fire-Album "Physical : Mental : Psychological" erschien? Ja, das Herbst9-Nebenprojekt von Henry Emich und Frank Merten hat tatsächlich so lang mit neuem Material auf sich warten lassen. Und trotz der grossen Zeitspanne ist das Thema des Albums ähnlich gewählt, geht es wieder um die Auswirkungen radioaktiver Techbologien. "Physical : Mental : Psychological" beschäftigte sich mit den Auswirkungen von 'Trinity', der ersten Atombombe 1945. Land:Fires neues Album "Shortwave Transmission" steckt den Rahmen etwas anders ab und beschäftigt sich mit dem Einsatz radioaktiver Substanzen in der modernen Kriegsführung, vor allem während der Kriege im Nahen Osten gegen Ende des letzten Jahrhunderts und den daraus resultierenden Folgen.
Das Duo zeichnet ein apokalyptisches Bild der Welt, das wir uns so kaum vorstellen können, waren diese Kriege doch zu weit weg oder sind schon zu lang her. Da erscheint es fast beschämend, wenn einem die Musik aus "Shortwave Transmission" gefällt. Dieses mit Sprachfetzen aus alten Aufnahmen angefüllte Inferno klingt wie der düstere Nachhall einer Menschheit, die sich selbst vernichtet hat und deren auditives Vermächtnis alles ist, was übrig geblieben ist und nun in Radiowellen transformiert durch den Äther schwebt.
Eine verlorene, einsame Melodie hallt knarzend vor sich hin. Bedrohliches Donnern macht Angst, genauso wie starkes, pulsierendes Rauschen. Blubberndes und kratzendes Grollen, von hellen, metallenen Tönen begleitet und mit unkenntlich verzerrten Sprachsamples führt zu einem abrupten Ende. Land:Fires Musik hat aber auch unweigerlich schöne Momente. Trostlosigkeit und Zerstörung sind nicht allumfassend. Der Schrei eines Raubvogels zum Beispiel oder die melancholische aber spärliche Melodie in "Most People Were Silent". Dieses Album ist eine Warnung, eine Aufforderung aufzuhören, bevor uns die Radioaktivität verschlingt. "Shortwave Transmission" ist kein Soundtrack für den Weltuntergang, sondern schon eher ein Nachruf." [Medienkonverter]
"Coming back with an all new album after more than 5 years the Alter Ego of HERBST9 delivers
another outstanding soundtrack about radiological warfare and it´s debris during the last century.
SWT is like a massive energy spike with a surrounding maelstrom of machine noises, rhythms, interferrences and electromagnetic waves. The complex arrangement of technical sounds creates a deadly atmosphere of fallout and devastated landscapes with an apocalyptic aura reflected by dissonant harmonies and deep shimmering ambient scapes. Presented in a 6 panel digipack. Mastered by Andreas Wahnmann." [label info]
www.loki-found.de
"With a title like 'Short Wave Transmissions', you could perhaps easily think that the album of Land:Fire is along that of S.E.T.I. That is only partly true. There is indeed a lot of talking on this record, snippets from the radio, but the music is somewhat different. Land:Fire is an alter-ego of Herbst9, and it has been five years since he last released a record. This is all about radiological warfare, nuclear fall out and other somewhat unpleasant things in life. Here too we have some analogue synthesizers, computerized effects but also rhythm machines, which create a cold clinical and mechanical sound. That may seem like something negative, but its not. The music is very dynamic, moving back and forth between blocks of synthesized sound and soft spoken ambient textures, all spiced up with radio talk. Its not easy to say wether the music really reflects the radiological/nuclear holocaust theme (would you be aware if it wasn't told?), but there is certainly a spooky atmosphere surrounding this record. Excellent soundtrack to an imaginary film about these kind of subjects." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Offtempo
"Neither Larkian or Yellow6 are easily categorised, but both differ from each other. The mixing of the two styles creates something all its own whilst retaining the individual. By using an impressive range of effects and ways to play guitar ‘Offtempo’ offers various sound textures and landscapes, from shoegaze inspired reverb to atmospheric ambiences or epic post-rock melodies. At times, it is hard to say who played what, which is a good thing, showing it is not just a superposition of two different styles. The music tends towards the melancholy but maintains an air of optimism." [label info]
www.bassesfrequences.org
€10.00
In V.Tro
"The album combines both the live recording of the first ever Larsen & Z'ev In V.Tro live performances with extreme aural-mixes by Z'ev of Larsen's In V.Tro studio sessions.
Larsen and Z''ev In V.tro is a soundtrack for micro-cinematic images that document the studies on cells of the Istituto di Anatomia Umana Normale (Basic Human Anatomy Institute), between 1935 and1985. Visuals are from a studio by professors Dario Cantino and Antonio Barasa, teachers of these Scientific Institutes. By browsing great quantities of original footage on films kept in the local University with a scientific and reasoned view, Cantino and Barasa wanted to go back over the stages of history and techniques of in vitro cultures and their documented shootings, to pay tribute to the Maestro of anatomical discipline, professor Giuseppe Levi. Not only professor Levi had the intuition of the great potential of the in vitro studies of cells, using the technique developed by american zoologist Ross G. Harrison, he also enforced his studies on cells with cinema techniques, using single frames taken by optical microscope edited and sped up, obtaining a cinematic footage.
These exceptionals scientific documents still represent today a useful tool for studies and researches in a lot of medical branches like Cellular Biology, Histology and Microscopic Anatomy.
Larsen and Z'ev were waiting for the right concept to work together on combining Larsen's soundscaping to Z'ev's esoteric approach to rhythm and percussions and the chance of having access to these rare footages gave them the perfect context to apply their naturally cinematic and cellural music to, reproducing this way lab sperimentation and biological procedures to create life outside a living organism with the use of introspective and minimal, but richly arranged, semi improvised sounds and textures." [label info]
www.importantrecords.com
€14.00
Abomination of Desolation
"Desolation: total, utter, without remit. Departure, loss, absence, yawning valleys of noise. The overture moans from the terminal ward. The humiliation of the cadaver, the scouring of abandoned houses and rubbish heaps, a planet blasted by the fruits of hubris. The last sigh of bathos: "It is finished“.
Such is the subject matter and sentiment of this follow-up to the much acclaimed albums “Snowdrops From A Curate's Garden“ and „Towers of Silence“ which put Last Dominion Lost firmly on the throne of post-industrial music. “Abomination of Desolation” is consistent with their development into a dark and profound direction, and yet saturated with the noise and feedback that taps deep into the genre’s conscience: Metallic percussion and the screams of terror, ritual chants and anxious atmospheres, all used and abused in order to create the most accurate soundtrack of desolation.
By the fans, “Abomination of Desolation” will be met with mixed feelings – as recordings began with John Murphy in 2015 and through his untimely death that year had to be finished without him, the acknowledged grandsigneur of post-industrial music. The album’s theme and musical approach were originally intended by John for a KRANK release: An electronic album, reflecting on John’s experiences when he was first hospitalized, comatose, and hooked to a breathing machine which was constantly creating bizarre sounds.
The result stands as a brief and concise display of the group’s ability to create an unmistakable old school sound with contemporary production value. The album runs for ten tracks clocking in less than 40 minutes total and features new member Till Brüggemann (Gerechtigkeits Liga), as well as guests Nikolas Schreck, Lori Goldston and John Murphy’s beloved wife Annie Stubbs among others. With a firm electronic/analogue backbone, a delicate contrast of percussions of various origins and uncanny vocals, this is a truly dark affair, and while towards the end of the journey some more aggravating feedback loops crawl in, it never gets upfront aggressive.
With the crisp mastering job of Hunter Barr it is safe to say that “Abomination of Desolation” will not lag behind its predecessors at all, but forge their deserved status as genre icons."
https://epicureanescapism.bandcamp.com/album/abomination-of-desolation
"Nachdem der Name Last Dominion Lost ursprünglich rückwirkend für Aufnahmen verwendet wurde, die John Murphy, Jon Evans und Dominic Guerin Anfang der 90er gemacht hatten, wurde in den letzten Jahren aus Last Dominion Lost eine aus Murphy, Evans sowie Julian Percy bestehende und in Berlin ansässige Band, die eine durchaus an den Ursprüngen des Industrials orientierte Geräuschmusik spielte, aber dem 21. Jahrhundert klanglich angemessen agierte. Über „Tower Of Silence“, das eigentliche Debüt, hieß es dann auch auf diesen Seiten, „dass Last Dominion Lost einen transparenten Klang schätzen, keinen Soundbrei, der vielleicht kurzfristig dem Hörer die Ohren zum Klingen bringt, dessen Effektivität sich aber schnell abnutzt.“ und man kann diese Einschätzung auch bzgl. des Nachfolgers – zwischendurch erschien das 2011 aufgenommene Livealbum „Snowdrops From A Curate’s Garden“ – „Abomination of Desolation“ äußern, denn wenn eine Reihe von Vertretern atonaler Geräuschmusik auf maximale Verzerrung und Statik setzen (am offensichtlichsten bei dem selbst so betitelten Wall Noise), beschreiten Last Dominion Lost einen anderen Weg, bei der statt Statik Dynamik oder besser gesagt: Unruhe herrscht – und das ist bei diesem „uneasy listening“ durchaus als Kompliment zu verstehen.
Mit einem dem Buch Daniel entliehenen Titel, der auch schon Morbid Angel und Clark Ashton Smith inspirierte, macht die Band deutlich, in welche Richtung das Album geht. Von Labelseite heißt es auch: „Desolation: total, utter, without remit. Departure, loss, absence, yawning valleys of noise. The overture moans from the terminal ward. The humiliation of the cadaver, the scouring of abandoned houses and rubbish heaps, a planet blasted by the fruits of hubris. The last sigh of bathos: “It is finished“.” Diese Sätze scheinen nur auf den ersten Blick hyperbolisch, denn natürlich kann bzw. muss man das Album auch vor dem Hintergrund von John Murphys Tod lesen. Murphy hatte Konzept und musikalische Ausrichtung ursprünglich für sein Projekt Krank angedacht, um seine Krankenhauserfahrungen zu verarbeiten. Beendet wurden diese Aufnahmen von Percy, Evans sowie Till Brüggemann von Gerechtigkeits Liga, der seit einiger Zeit festes Mitglied von Last Dominion Lost ist.
Letztlich ist das dystopische Musik, bei auf der der Stimme wenn nicht unbedingt eine zentrale, dann doch nicht zu unterschätzende Rolle zukommt: So etwa die Schreie, die auf „Overture To Desolation“ zu hören sind, während es scheppert und Glas zu zerbrechen scheint. Man hört aggressiv-derangierte Vocals auf „Dimunitive Cruciform“, irrsinnig dämonisches Stimmengewirr auf „Irrumatio Del Mortis“ oder aber im Hintergrund schreiende Personen auf „Bludger’s Kill“. „Devil’s Path, ein fast schon leicht atonales, analoges Ambientstück , wird von Flüstern durchzogen, „Beyond The Valley Of The Flies“ knüpft daran musikalisch an. Auf dem von ritueller Perkussion durchzogenen „Blueprint for Urban Warfare“ erklingen schmerzverzerrte Vocals, die eine psychische wie physische Auflösung zu illustrieren scheinen. Lediglich “Cursed Earth” erinnert vom Gesang an Power Electronics. Das ist vielleicht im positivsten Wortsinn pathologische Musik. In Anlehnung an Throbbing Gristle könnte man auch von einer “Journey through a diseased body” sprechen. Die Landschaften, die hier vor dem Auge des Hörenden entstehen, sind wahrlich (ver)wüst(et).
In Klarkash-Tons Prosagedicht “The Abomination of Desolation” heißt es:„Of this horror, many tales are told, and nearly all of the tales are different. Some say that the thing has neither visible form nor audible voice“, Last Dominion Lost haben dem Grauen eine mehr als adäquate Stimme gegeben." [MG/African Paper]
€12.00
Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden
“Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden” is a 2011 live recording of industrial veterans Last Dominion Lost with all exclusive, unreleased tracks. Active since 1992, Last Dominion Lost feature Jon Evans, John Murphy (Shining Vril, Krank, Ex-SPK/Whitehouse/Current 93) and Julian Percy. Through their pedigree, Last Dominion Lost are considered to justifiably carry the legacy of the legend that is SPK - and that’s also by their sound, as they stand for an undiluted brand of industrial music, combining shuddering analogue sounds, clanging metal rhythms and feedback with ritual percussion & chants. On “Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden” the main focus lies on the hypnotic, ritual and mental aspects of music, with an omnipresent metallic percussive backbone. It comes as no surprise to find the group reveling in dark subject matter like psychopathology, debasement and religious deviation, to which they manage to deliver an authentic soundtrack.
The LP is congruously accompanied by authentic photographs of the infamous Victorian era Lunatic Asylums in Kew and Beechworth, Australia. Last Dominion Lost take an ethically moved stance, commemorating the fact that from its beginnings as a penal colony, the majority of the early white Australians were drawn from the classes of the poor, dispossessed and desperate, long known as factors that encourage depression, alcoholism and psychological ill-being. The process of transportation was attended by squalor, disease and rape. These damaged individuals were then thrust into a harsh and alien environment, housed in circumstances worse than a modern refugee camp, and expected to build their own prisons – circumstances that effectively made mental illness was one of the colony's very first imports. From there the dismal history of mental hospitals took its course, evolving from incarceration over therapeutic occupation to, ultimately, medication. It is the practice of oppressing those who cannot “conform” to the norms imposed by the system, the root cause of the underlying aggression with which the Australian general public treated each other, and still continue to do.
This live album has been recorded at Kalyug Festival, Berlin in 2011 and is perfectly mastered by James Plotkin, providing the album a sharp, forceful & modern sound. Thus “Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden” can be considered the missing link between the grainy, demo-type 1990s recordings that became “The Tyranny of Distance” (Tesco, 2004) and the enthusiastically received “Towers Of Silence” album (The Epicurean / silken tofu, 2014), which displayed a very contemporary, indicatory approach at that classic industrial sound.
Beautifully duplex black/gold printed cover, 300g natural paper, postcard, 140g black vynil, black disco bag in transparent high quality sleeve with flap, includes download code. Limited edition of 253 copies, hand numbered. First 50 copies come with small postcard.
The Epicurean . cure.8
Format: 12" LP & file download
Release date CD: 23. October 2017
Release date LP: 21. October 2015
Artwork, typography and design: The Epicurean
Playtime: 37:42 min
€13.00
Outland
The 'Outland' album series was a collaborative endeavour by the visionary US bassist-producer Bill Laswell and the late German musician Peter Namlook that pushed the boundaries of dark ambient and electronic music. Spanning five albums released over a thirteen year period from 1994, this new boxset serves as a testament to the creative synergy between the two masterminds.
At the time the duo joined forces, the New York-based Laswell was already a famous producer with a massive client list that included cutting-edge rock, pop, funk, jazz and electronic artists, but he had also founded the Axiom label in 1989 and been responsible for groundbreaking work in genres that included ambient, dub and world music. Namlook was recognised as a pioneering figure in the ambient techno scene, having founded the label FAX +49-69/450464 in his native Frankfurt in 1992.
'Outland' became a fusion of their individual musical sensibilities that resulted in a unique set of releases. At the heart of the series is an exploration of sound as a vehicle for emotion and contemplation, with Laswell's signature basslines and experimental soundscapes interweaving seamlessly with Namlook's ethereal textures and intricate sonic layering. Each album is characterised by a sense of expansiveness, taking listeners on a voyage through rarely charted sonic dimensions. All have the ability to evoke a wide range of emotions and have their own distinctive sonic palette, ranging from ambient tranquility to cosmic intensity.
'Outland' has endured as an influential touchstone, its impact felt not only in its captivating soundscapes but also in its invitation to engage in deep introspection and cosmic contemplation. With each album, the duo beckoned listeners to transcend the mundane and embark on a sonic voyage into the extraordinary, where sound becomes a conduit for spiritual and artistic expression.
The lavish matte-finish boxset opens to the 5 "Outland" albums in separate matte sleeves, with all-new designs, and all audio completely remastered. This box also contains a new addition to the OUTLAND series - an album of dense, bass space drone by Bill Laswell, entitled "Blackland". The boxset also contains an exclusive card with an essay about the project written by BIll Laswell, July 2023.
........................................
Their collaboration actually began after Namlook discovered that several samples from early Fax releases had been utilised for Laswell's own projects, prompting an initial forthright exchange that quickly turned into a deep mutual admiration. "We started to send music back and forth, Frankfurt to Brooklyn and back again," explains Laswell. "There were so many recordings and different collaborations that several of them turned into a series. In addition to 'Outland', there was 'Psychonavigation', 'The Dark Side Of The Moog' and more."
For 'Outland', he recalls that "I had done an Asian tour with my friend Akira Sakata where I managed to record a lot of traditional music in Mongolia, which is heavy drone singing and the ultimate ambient. When I was in Europe, I brought these recordings to Pete and we worked on them in Frankfurt. That was the start of 'Outland', which then continued for another four releases."
He also reveals that Namlook told him about the very start of his career. "He was playing guitar and working in a bank. Every day, on his way home with his guitar, he would pass a river and stop and play with the river flowing. I think that's where his ambient obsession began. I recorded a piece with Bernie Worrell entitled 'By A River (for Peter)', which is the first track of the box set compilation 'Die Welt ist Klang: A Tribute to Pete Namlook', which was released in 2013, a year after his death."
CD1: Produced by Peter Kuhlmann. Written by Bill Laswell and Pete Namlook. Mongolian voices and instruments by Nicky Skopelitis & Oz Fritz.
CD2: Produced by Peter Kuhlmann. Written by Bill Laswell and Pete Namlook. Ethnic sounds recorded in West Africa by Oz Fritz. Recorded at Klanglabor, Frankfurt.
CD3: Produced by Peter Kuhlmann. Written by Bill Laswell and Pete Namlook. Recorded at Klanglabor, Frankfurt & Traben-Trarbach.
CD4: Produced by Peter Kuhlmann. Written by Bill Laswell and Pete Namlook. Recorded at Klanglabor, Frankfurt & Traben-Trarbach.
CD5: Produced by Peter Kuhlmann. Written by Bill Laswell and Pete Namlook. Recorded at Orange Music, West Orange,NJ, and Klanglabor Hödeshof.
CD6: Bill Laswell: Bass, effects. Engineering: James Dellatacoma. Recorded at Orange Music, West Orange,NJ (Bassmatter, BMI).
https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/outland
"Quite a catch and a very pleasantly surprising one. I would not have imagined that Cold Spring Records, known for all their darkness, would dip into ambient electronic pioneer Pete Namlook's (1960-2012) work, particularly his piece with Bill Laswell. The latter is a bass player and producer with a massive body of work, mainly outside Vital Weekly (Herbie Hancock's 'Rockit' is a VW HQ favourite, sometimes), both on bass and production duties. Pete Namlook played electronic ambient music, usually without too many rhythms, but he wasn't too shy to put a full set on. Namlook's catalogue is massive, as at one point, he released a CD every month on his FAX +49-69/450464 label. He had a line of collaborators with whom he worked a lot (Klaus Schulze, Tetsu Inoue, and Richie Hawtin, for instance). With Bill Laswell he recorded five parts of 'Outland', which are now re-issued with a bonus disc of a new work, 'Blackland', by Laswell. There was more work by the two, 'Psychonavigation', which also spanned various CDs (and maybe something to come in the future?), which is one I really enjoyed. I could call myself a Namlook fan, yet I also know I heard maybe 50% of his work. Back in the day, I couldn't afford to buy everything I wanted, and Namlook's output was, as said, massive. From the original 'Outland' albums, I only heard two. It is interesting to play these six works as they provide an excellent picture of the diversity of ambient house music, at least in the approach of Namlook and Laswell. There isn't one kind of ambient house. The word 'house', as in 'house music', is a loose term anyway in this respect, indicating dance music. Ambient House never relies too much on strict dance beats but uses more complex rhythms, such as on 'Outland Two - African Virus', which is more exotic, wilder and sometimes indeed more African. 'Outland Three' (no subtitle) has rhythms that are a bit more straightforward and minimal, but it's not something for the dance floor. On 'Outland Four', the beats are more dub-like in some of the pieces (as with all of these pieces, it moves through various ideas and textures per album), another interest of many ambient house musicians. On the other side of the musical spectrum, we find music devoid of rhythm, spacious synthesizers, minimalist drones, and perhaps something ambient in the truest sense. As with many Namlook releases, there is a certain directness about the music, indicating that the music is one long session, a live-in-studio approach, with mixing and editing afterwards. There is not much extra information in this release explaining methods. The whole live-in-studio approach might be something that is only in my mind. Each album is a trip, and so is the whole five-plus hours of this. I played this for the first time in one row on a lazy Sunday, sipping tea after a long night. Ambient music is the preferred waking-up music for me. Maybe with the idea that my living room is a sort of chill-out place today, as some of this music is clearly the intended soundtrack for such a place." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€47.50
Bakunawa
More hands. More possibilities. More ethereal drones. More poly shifting rhythms. More fun.
That was the starting point and the idea of ‘Bakunawa’: the album Pak Yan Lau recorded with her freshly started ensemble, consisting of the marvellous musicians Vera Cavallin, Giovanni Di Domenico, João Lobo and Mathieu Calleja.
On ‘Bakunawa’ Pak Yan and her ensemble are delving and digging deep into the sound spectrum of detuned toy piano’s, second hand gong rods, prepared harp, metal tubes and ring modulators.
Instruments were searched, collected and bought worldwide: on Japanese street markets, in second hand stores in Brussels, from dedicated American Ebay-sellers and the cellar of the Musica centre in Neerpelt.
The result is a record split up in two compositions of 20 minutes: on Part I the Bakunawa ensemble let the overtones of the gong rods, prepared harp and metal tubes slowly resonate into a deep listening ambient state of mind.
Rich harmonic textures of rather unconventional instruments shaping an immersive piece of spellbinding sonic details.
On Part II the quintet craft their own ritual ceremony music with distorted toy piano’s and hypnotic percussion. Echoing the frequencies of a gamelan orchestra. Rhythms shifting in
haunted patterns recalling the Philippine mythology where the moon swallowing sea dragon Bakunawa was scared away by drumming loudly on pots and pans.
Pak Yan Lau: composition, gong rods, toy piano, metal tubes, ring modulators
Vera Cavallin: gong rods, prepared harp
Giovanni Di Domenico: gong rods, toy piano
João Lobo: gong rods, toy piano, tom
Mathieu Calleja: gong rods, toy piano, bass drum, metal tubes
Recorded at STUK in Leuven and Kunstencentrum nona in Mechelen in 2020
Recorded and mixed by Christophe Albertijn
Mastered by Gert Van Hoof & Jimmy Van Rietvelde at Cochlea Mastering
Cut by Dubplates & Mastering Berlin
Cover pictures by Juhyun Choi
Pictures insert by Laurent Orseau
Layout design by Jef Cuypers
Executive production by Philippe Cortens
https://cortizona.bandcamp.com/album/bakunawa
€23.00
Chemical Playschool 15
"The Legendary Pink Dots are back with there highly anticipated new album. Chemical Playschool is a concept in which more then ever an indulgence in extended ballads and psychedelic improvisations allows Edward Ka-Spel’s voice to engage us with his unique brand of storytelling, and the use of synthesizers brings to mind vintage space rock adapted for the modern age. The album opens with the beautifully epic “Immaculate Conception” where Ka-Spel transports us into a world of stars and planets surrounded by voices and distant echos. In “The Opium Den Parts 1-3″ we find a melancholy piece with classic LPD folk essence, arriving then at the ritual tribal ballad “Ranting and Raving”. Chemical Playschool is able to surpass all of our expectations for a band always able to surprise as they lead us through their peculiar dream world. A truly inspired release representing one of the most beautiful concepts created by this eclectic and mythic band." [label info]
www.rustblade.com
"a new voyage into the Chemical Playschool after over 10 years of being locked outside the laboratory. Songs, labyrinths, and colours so vivid you'll never wash them out of your mind." [Edward Ka-Spel]
"Over the years in their thirty plus career, there have always been 'Chemical Playschool' releases by The Legendary Pink Dots. These are works which are a bit different than their more regular, song based studio work, but not as experimental as some of the releases that they put out themselves. In songs on any of these 'Chemical Playschool' releases, there is always a fair amount of experimentation, while Edward Ka-spel's voice is never really far away. Take the opening piece, 'Immaculate Conception', which starts out with a two note synth and Edward's voice, but then after a while starts drifting into a cosmic synth work with floating and drifting melodies, and Ka-spel's voice backwards - a feature from the old days rarely seen on the more current releases. It's here where the Dots are at their best - in my humble opinion. Not drifting in a more krauty version or too spacious with experimental ideas, but an excellent balance between both ends. Rhythm machines seem not really apparent on this new CD and it all dwells heavily on the use of keyboards, electronics and maybe even field recordings, radio sounds and such like. Even Erik Drost's guitar seems to have a more remote place in the total picture, with a prominent tinkle on the strings in 'The Opium Den Parts 1-3', but otherwise more filling out spacious playing with sustaining tones. 'Chemical Playschool 15' is another fine trip - pun intended - and certainly a road these should take more often." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€14.00
Pages of Aquarius
"The Legendary Pink Dots is an Anglo-Dutch experimental rock band formed in London in 1980. Although far outside the mainstream, LPD have released more than 40 albums, have a devoted worldwide following, and tour frequently. Distinctive vocals and lyrical imagery blended with hypnotic guitar and synth washes and spellbinding bass pulses to create an enthralling, captivating release." [label info]
"The problem with the Age of Aquarius is that nobody seems to know when it's due, or indeed whether or not it's already begun. According to the song 'Aquarius' from hippy musical Hair, the dawning will come when "The moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars." Unfortunately, as astrologer Neil Spencer has noted, the moon enters the seventh house daily, while Jupiter and Mars are aligned several times a year. Other astrologers have argued for Aquarian start dates ranging from 1447 right up until 3597.
In the popular imagination, however, the Age of Aquarius will always be associated with the “love generation” counter-culture of the 1960s, and represents the utopian new age that their flower power shenanigans were supposed to usher in. In other words, it should be here by now, and it manifestly isn't. As Legendary Pink Dots' mainstay Edward Ka-Spel notes, if this is Aquarius page one then love, peace and good hair are hardly qualities in the ascendant. "It wasn't supposed to be like this," he writes. "Are we in for another 2,160 years of this?"
Ultimately though, Ka-Spel's conclusions are optimistic. What we're actually living through are the death throes of the Pisces Age, he argues; it's brutal and painful, but it won't last. The way to get through is by letting go, on both a personal and societal level, and in order to do this we need to look unflinchingly at where we are now, what is holding us back and what will help us move forward.
So the album's opening track, 'Mirror, Mirror' tackles introspection, narcissism and self-loathing alongside the hard but necessary task of looking closely at your own self and putting the work in to improve. Stinging synthesiser blasts reflect this flinching process over driving electronic percussion, before a melancholy mellotron passage suggests a degree of sorrowful self-acceptance has been found. On 'The Greatest Story Ever Told,' a swarm of buzzing clockwork wasps soundtrack rising existential dread before the song shifts into a litany of reasons not to worship God, or indeed watch his movies on TV, all set to a queasy rendition of 'All Things Bright and Beautiful.' The Age of Pisces is often identified as the Christian era, and early Christians identified themselves using two fishes as a symbol; among other qualities, Aquarius is associated with the decline of religion and the rise of technology. "We worship technology," Ka-Spel whispers ambivalently at the close.
How the glorious analogue squelching of 'D-Train' fits into the concept I'm not sure, but 'Credibility' and 'Trending' take a look at the world around us, the former cursing "Damn your eyes, austerity" over lullaby-like piano, while the latter looks at the mysterious force of the zeitgeist as represented by popular topics on social media. Watching "the great sea ripple," Ka-Spel wonders who or what is driving the trends, directing our thoughts and attention as one linked collective organism.
The album concludes with two multi-part epics. The near-eighteen minute 'Don't Go There- Page Aquarian- Jacob's Ladder' begins in haunting yet propulsive style, discussing surveillance culture and "cameras everywhere" before shifting onto memory as a form of observation, returning to the theme of looking unsparingly at your own past actions and how they've led you to where you are now. A collage of found sound leads into a passage of spare percussion over which Ka-Spel considers the stars and the notion of destiny, before the final section finds tentative piano chords reverberating over the sound of a gathering storm. Here considerations of mortality and the afterlife are resolved into the need to make peace and find some kind of acceptance.
For CD listeners, that's where the album ends, but it would be a shame to miss out on the sixteen-and-a-half minute 'The Weight of Water Parts 1-4,' which is only available on digital and double vinyl editions. A dry, steady pulse beat supports slabs of musique concrete and some non-judgemental meditations on self-destructive behaviour, before a frantic flurry of low piano notes in a repeating, claustrophobic loop successfully simulates a panic attack. This then shifts into an oceanic evocation of waking at 3am with the realisation that your life has been wasted in deceit and acquisitiveness, before the instrumental final section captures a zen-like sensation of beatific release, with acoustic and electronic textures beautifully balanced against each other.
Aquarius of course is the water bearer, and 'The Weight of Water' effectively sums up the pain and difficulty of this period of transition. There's no need though to take the astrological metaphors literally; this album can be enjoyed purely as an unsettling and moving 83 minutes of music, and for those who do listen closely to the words, Ka-Spel's dry sense of humour undercuts any tendency towards new age pretentiousness.
Their long history could make some wrongly see the Legendary Pink Dots as unapproachable or worse, irrelevant. But Pages of Aquarius is an album that stands on its own merits. Even if you've never bought a Pink Dots record before, this is a progressive, provocative and ultimately positive statement about the world we're all living in today." [The Quietus]
€15.00
The Shock Exchange
"The Shock Exchange presents an encounter between two of the most interesting and unique projects of the current neo-psychedelic and electronic music panorama.
The Legendary Pink Dots need no introduction, and on Side A they once again solidify their status as musical pioneers with all new songs and swirling psychedelic arrangements led by the charismatic voice of Edward Ka-spel.
Side B is dedicated to the progressive and psychedelic electronic project kETvECTOR, born from the mind of Justin Bennett (Skinny Puppy / Bahntier) together with Stefano Rossello (Bahntier), showcasing many facets of the project; from electronic free jazz to ambient experimental and esoteric avant-garde.
The album also features paintings by Franke Nardiello (aka Groovie Mann) of My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult.
A transparent vinyl release exclusively for record store day 2015, not to be missed!" [label info]
www.rustblade.it
"When the first Compact Disc was released more than 30 years ago not many people were expecting that the LP would still be around in 2015. And even more, that it would make a come-back in the digital age. The LP today is not a mass product as it was back then, but more of a luxury product. Real music lovers want to experience music. Not just listen to it, but use all 5 senses. The tangibility, the artwork, the smell of it, it is all part of the experience.
The Italian Rustblade record label is specialized in limited releases like picture discs and special packed albums. The Shock Exchange is a transparent vinyl split LP limited to 299 copies. The beautiful cover paintings were made by Franke Nardiello (a.k.a. Groovie Mann) of My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult.
But most important is of course the music. The A side contains 3 tracks by The Legendary Pink Dots. The English/Dutch band celebrates its 35th anniversary this year. They are not the only band to last that long, and there are bands that are even older. But from their very first cassette release in 1980 there hasn't been a year where they did not release anything. In several years even more releases, and adding to that also solo releases and side projects such as The Tear Garden and Mimir. Also to this day they are still playing live regularly.
The current lineup of the band consists of founder members Edward Ka-Spel (vocals, keyboards) and Phil Knight (a.k.a The Silverman, keyboards & electronics) as well as Erik Drost (guitars, bass) and sound engineer and wizard Raymond Steeg. The last two years the band was in a very productive phase with lots of releases, including a few releases on Rustblade: Chemical Playschool Volume 15 (2013, CD box set), The Curse Of Marie Antoinette (2013, picture disc) and 10 To The Power Of 9 (2014, 2 LP / CD). During their 35 years of existence the band's sound changed, but there are a few elements that have been there from the beginning. First there is the typical sound of Edward's voice. Second his lyrics: strange little stories with (black) humor, inventive word playing, bizarre twists and a very English reserve. Never judging but always observing. Third is a sense of melancholy, a longing for the unreachable. Fourth is a psychedelic element. Fifth is the creative use of synthesizers and samples: they use their gear to create unique sounds. Sometimes alienating, sometimes very powerful.
The first track is very much in line with their previous releases, a more electronic driven song. The other two tracks are more minimalistic and melancholic.
kETvECTOR is the name of the collaboration between Justin Bennett (Skinny Puppy, Bahntier) and Stefano Rossello (Bahntier). This collaboration is meant to explore new frontiers. The first two tracks are based on an electronic rhythm. The third track has human played rhythm guitar and bass guitar, and the fourth track has no rhythm, it is more ambient. All tracks are instrumental. They are like musical sketches: with abstract lines and shadows, but not fully colored. It reminds me of Tuxedomoon, probably because of the wind instruments that were used as well as the Peter Principle like bass guitar in the third track. The kETvECTOR side sounds like the soundtrack to a movie. In particular some kind of road movie, travelling on long straight roads through wide open spaces to strange places. The kind of road movie without a happy end. Where the main character never finds what he is looking for in the end, because it is the search itself that keeps him going.
As a whole The Shock Exchange is not an easy album, and it takes an open mind and several listens before it reveals itself. But with every time you play it, you discover something new. In the end “difficult” albums are also the most pleasing ones.
[Erik Gibbels (edited by Astrid de Ronde)/ BACKGROUND MAG]
€23.00
Early Works 1969-1970
"This LP of early compositions by Jacques Lejeune features three seminal works: D'une Multitude En Fête and Petite Suite, originally released on the Perspective Musicales series in 1970, and a previously unpublished composition, Géodes, from the same period. These three pieces (not included in the recent Parages and other electroacoustic works 3CD set) are some of Lejeune's earliest music for tape and may be considered a "prequel" to his later, more thematic works. Still, his concise musical narrative is ever-present in these first recordings. The sidelong D'une Multitude En Fête (1969) refers to multitude, number, celebration and any crowd situation as a form of ceremony — all evoking a circular gaze, as topics of the different aural events and their anecdotal development emerge, leading to the dream, as a story we tell to ourselves. Géodes (1970) features percussion improvisations by Lauréat Dionne with Jacques' tapework inflecting prisms deep into its thundering, rhythmic core. This concert version appears on vinyl for the first time. Concluding the album is Petite Suite (1970), with each section referencing a traditional musical form using both anecdotal as well as instrumental flourishes. The original drum and guitar elements performed here by Michel Foudrinoy and Jean-Pierre Vassout. These pieces have been compared to Pierre Henry's bold rock themes in Messe Pour Le Temps Present and also recall the peculiar atmospheres of some of the great, early Nurse With Wound records that would follow. In contrast, Lejeune's early approach was heavily steeped in sonic narratives, combining unusual and ambiguous events to create a sound world uniquely his own. Early Works 1969-1970 explores the first precision splices by one of the true visionaries in musique concrète." [label info]
www.robotrecords.com
€26.50
Musique du Crepuscule
Dramatic & expressive neoclassic / chamber music from this quintett using mainly strings, lots of minimal & repetitive string-structures are build, all instrumental. Their music has been compared with ARVÖ PÄRT, STEVE REICH, PHILIPP GLASS and GODSPEED YOU BLACK EMPOROR, but we also think of WIM MERTENS and RACHELS.
"Musique du Crépuscule" is a vision of night wrapped in mystery: a night haunted by spectral chants, under the spell of epic, poignant strings and sustained by hypnotic piano pulsations. Its nocturnal universe oozes with hybrid ink, enveloping hidden emotions tainted with melancholy and voluptuousness. A neo-classical or post-nocturnal piece, "Musique du Crépuscule" has many different faces. It alternates between violin riffs, dark cello projections and the complaints of a lone piano, highlighted by enigmatic echoing voices. The moonlight slowly reveals a name in the ethereal infinity: Les Fragments de la Nuit." [label info]
"Michel Villar (piano) and Ombeline Chardes (violin) both hailing from France are the talented musicians who set up this project. They’ve been joined by a few more musicians and guest vocalists. While releasing their debut-cd on Equilibrium Music they have already been involved in various soundtrack compositions for independent cinema, animations and documentaries. The soundtrack-influence is easily recognizable while the piano and violin parts also bring us to make a link with neo classical music. Les Fragments De La Nuit sounds like a journey through darkness and the name of the project perfectly fits to this goal. Most of the songs remain instrumental version filled with low piano keys and sad feelings emerging from this melancholia. Mysterious chants emerge to the surface on one of the pieces, but the music remains like encaged in an atmosphere of endless darkness or should I say an endless night. The different fragments of this night have been expressed with a gift for melancholia coming from musicians with talent!" [Side-Line]
€12.00
Demain, C'etait Hier
"Lush nocturnal neo-classical pieces forming an epic soundtrack that runs from quiet, melancholy-driven moments to stirring, violent passages and eerie moods. A unique universe, where compositions that evoke Arvö Part, Philip Glass or Godspeed You! Black Emperor seem haunted by the disturbing evil ghosts of Magma now and again." [label info]
www.equilibriummusic.com
€15.00
Jökel
Swedish musician Erik Levander gained attention as part of the new wave of young DIY laptop experimentalists arising in the early 2000's. His somewhat eclectic early output has since developed into a unique and vibrant blend of digital, analog and acoustic sounds weaved into epic and powerful atmospherics. Levander has performed his work extensively, including shows at Roskilde Festival, Norberg Festival, Nordic Music Days and Forma Nova Festival. With the release of ‘Jökel´, Levander’s seventh full length album, he continues to break new ground, presenting a conceptual album that may be his most minimalistic, lingering and evocative release to date.
As a result of ignorance, negligence, and a lack of immediate responsible profound political action, there are indications that planet Earth is irreversibly about to leave the relative climate stability we have enjoyed during the Holocene for roughly the last 10,000 years. Some of the most apparent signs of ongoing climate change are found in the continuous reports of sea ice, inland ice, shelf ice and glaciers shrinking at an alarming rate. This album is a homage to the still living glaciers. The album title 'Jökel' means 'Glacier' in Swedish, with roots in the Icelandic word 'Jökull'. The compositions are in particular inspired by Levander’s 2009 visit to the glacier Mýrdalsjökull in Iceland, a glacier famous for covering the active volcano Katla. With imaginary field recordings, barren but vigorous soundscapes, Levander invites the listener to experience this desolate glacier 'in sensu'. Perhaps this awareness, and by appreciating the beauty and importance of these natural wonders, we can somehow in the extension help the survival of the glaciers, and contribute to recover the environmental balance of this planet.
https://glacialmovements.bandcamp.com/album/j-kel
€15.00
Care
Editions Mego is proud to present the first outing from the legendary English musician, songwriter, composer and producer Simon Fisher Turner alongside the highly acclaimed emerging Swedish sound artist Klara Lewis.
Care is a unique outing rife with delicious dichotomy. The opening track positions the aggressive directly against more fragile moments. On the subsequent track medieval melodies sprout from a dense rhythmic hiss. Witness a Middle Eastern song appearing amongst a haunted rattling reverb in the epic ‘Tank’ whilst a beautiful force of hope can be found within the sound world of the the closing track ‘Mend’.
The wide scope of references and constant pull of forces make this debut offering a timeless patchwork of sonic spaces. Care is an album which sways in such a salubrious manner one can’t help but delight in its unique form of location/disorientation.
https://editionsmego.bandcamp.com/album/care
€18.00
Kristall
LICHT-UNG ist ein Label, Lyrik- und Soundprojekt für experimentelle Kunst aus Leverkusen mit etwas exzentrischem Anspruch. Auf 'Kristall' findet sich eine spannungsgeladene A-Seite basierend auf Feedback-Sounds, sowie ein wirklich kristallklarer microsound-drone auf der Rückseite.
"LICHT-UNG (German for "glade") is the name of a label, art- (publishing lyrics, pictures, etc.) and sound project from the western part of Gemany with a very peculiar and rather dadaistic approach. The two pieces on "kristall" seem to be based mainly on feedback- and metal or glass sounds that are carefully put together for a queer-sounding trip. Side A ("Listen to the music playing in your head") consists of humming, growling drones, low siren-like sounds and high-frequency feedbacks, powerful and absorbing and very abstract, while never turning into sheer noise. Side B (with the odd title "Heute war ich bei den weißen Elefantens") delivers a crystal-clear noise chant and metallic overtones processed with obscure effects. File under: high-tension & crystal Drones
BLUE VINYL WITH BLACK STRIAE. COVERS WITH SILKSCREEN-PRINTED TEXT & VISUAL, SILVER-PRINTED BLACK INLAY"
[press release]
"Ein beigelegter Pin, eine liebevoll bedruckte Rückseite und ein gespraytes Cover schaffen auf
Anhieb Sympathie, die Musik nicht weniger. Licht-ung ist Fakt- und infobezogen recht
schweigsam, zwar sehr betriebsam und eher in der unorthodox-verzettelten Ecke der
experimentellen Musik tätig, hier allerdings geradezu lieblich und freigeistig, wofür die Namen der beiden Stücke geradezu bürgen.
»Listen To The Music Playing In Your Head« ist analoge Feedbackverdrahtung a la David Lee
Myers mit ordentlich Rauschen drauf, ein wenig Mikroakribie im Stile von V/VM und last but
not least so differenziert fern, dass man meint, einem zeitlich langgezogenen Bremsvorgang
der Untergrundbahn in Hamburg zu lauschen. Charmant und reicht allemal für einen kurzen
Sprung ins Unterbewusstsein, hingegen die B-Seite trägt dem Namen des Releases eher
Rechnung: »Heute War Ich Bei Den Weißen Elefanten« ist ein in der Tat kristallklarer elektroakustischer Drone auf der Grundlage eines transponierten Glockenspiels. Die Tonspur ist dabei genauso aberwitzig halluzinogen wie der Titel des Stückes, aber augenzwinkernd hintergründig. Es schlingert und scheppert auf den Frequenzen und letztlich fällt doch alles in die große Stille. Eines der etwas obskureren Werke auf Drone Records, aber sehr fein aufbereitet und mysteriös wie der Musiker dahinter." [Thorsten Soltau / AEMAG]
€7.00
Gieb Fahrt!
3" CDR, 1 TRACK, 1 VIDEOFILE, 12 MINUTES. LIMITED AND NUMBERED EDITION OF 150 COPIES. MINI DVD BOX WITH 2 INLAYS. licht-ung, a art (lyrics, pictures, etc.) and sound project from Germany. The name stands always for his very own art. Strange, peculiar, dadaistic. licht-ung have several releases on his own label, some are splits with artists like Government Alpha, Stilluppsteypa, Aube. There is also a 7" on Drone Records, that shows the lower side.
This TOSOM release contains a 12 minute piece, in the best japanese Noise tradition. Very harsh, very intensive, very loud. The second track is a short video file for your PC.
lichtlaterne. wenn der regen nebens cafe faellt. und jemand spaziert. einen brief schreibt, und geburtstag hat. endlich, finalmente, sind wir drin. wir koennen tanzen, klettern, sehen den fluß. seine schiffe.
auch fuer sie scheint eine ampel. die post spart hilfe die ganze nacht lang auf. waere sie nicht gewesen, haette viel dort bleiben muessen, denn wir koennen nicht alles behalten. wir konnten nie alles loslassen. nur alles haben wir verloren. die maserung bleibt wie eine spur in der tuer. in einem anderen land. Du lebst." [label info]
"... So Johannes is to contemporary noise what Da Vinci was to the renaissance? The 3inch has a strange short video of 6 seconds and a 12 or so minute harsh noise work which mixes harsh rumble with high pitched feedback. The noise piece is competent to the point of a total refinement of what harsh noise should be, and that's praise not criticism, it winds and weaves through a sonic landscape at times quixotically so much so that the piece IMO could have been longer - but it pays to leave your audience wanting more - which I do (though not sprouts!)." [Jliat / Vital Weekly]
label: www.tosom.de
€7.50
Somnambulance to Dream General
Bevor Mr. LILES v.a. durch die Beteiligung an NURSE WITH WOUND einem grösseren Hörerkreis bekannt wurde, werkelte er jahrelang recht versteckt an seiner bizarr-surrealistischen Soundwelt herum, hier bestehend aus Synth-Drones & sperrigen Elektronoises, Pianosequenzen, Sprachmaterial, traditionelles englischsprachiges Gesangsmaterial (wie Kinderlieder und Abzählreime, die ein nostalgisches Flair verbreiten), melanchronische Instrumentalquellen, wirre found sounds und Versatzstücke aus Jazz, etc. etc.
SOMNAMBULANCE ist eine Neubearbeitung einer CDR-Compilation mit frühem Material - gleich 21 Stücke fanden den Weg auf dieses äusserst kurzweilige Album, schwankend zwischen Düsternis und anregender Exzentrizität. Als Einstieg in LILES recht einzigartige, verschrobene Klangwelt wohl ideal !!
"Somnambulance" is a reworking of an album of odd and obscure tracks that was released in a microscopic edition on CD-R before. For this CD, Mr. Liles has provided his funniest and possibly most controversial artwork as of yet. You get an hour of music of many different styles: Andrew Liles' trademark of eerie and spooky sounds is there; also electronics and a whole range of instruments are placed in between sketches and longer tracks. And if all this weren't enough, you get three bonus tracks that didn't appear on the CDR at all. After a long line of collaborations, finally a new album by Current 93 and Nurse With Wound man Liles himself!" [label info]
www.klanggalerie.com
€14.00
The Progeny of Flies. Tres Muscae Consummunt Cadaver Equi Aeque Cito Ac Leo
Untertitel: "TRES MUSCAE CONSUMMUNT CADAVER EQUI AEQUE CITO AC LEO" - "Die Nachkommen dreier Fliegen können ein totes Pferd schneller konsumieren als ein Löwe". Was das Label hier aufgeregt und ziemlich passend "brutal kosmisch" tituliert, entpuppt sich als eine dicke Drone-Suppe mit (wahrscheinlich) LILESschen Synth- und Piano-Sprengseln, man kann sich kaum auf diese nebligen Sounds konzentrieren, immer wieder wird das Bewusstsein eingelullt und quasi ausgeschaltet... vier lange Stücke. Minimal, dronig, und wie immer bei LILES mit einem dunklen surrealistischen Flair...
"Ed. of 500 copies in a book bound CD case.. Kold Krush Groove, y’all. Literally! Individually Liles and Menche have torn the experimental world many new ones, but as a unit they achieve a critical mass so monumental that they deserve their own Hollywood-style canoodling name. That name: Linch-Me-Eels. The graceful ferocity that oozes out within the first few seconds is such that…well, let’s just say that if you called friends and told them you were on the moon, they would believe you. A vicious, celestial-cathedral rumble gapes its maw and spews forth into a sluggish river of electro-magma, reshaping landscapes once carved out by Cremaster Cycles and the gravitational forces of the planet Solaris. While Menche’s test-tones defying low-end slowly compresses the woofers into diamond earrings, an emerging theme for tack piano cautiously stabs at the din. And just before cowboy-robot-gone-mad Yul Brynner shows up to kill all humans, the piano slinks away to make room for the buzzing progeny of the flies, whose crescendo of wing-beats quietly, subtly rises and rises the swarm to Jupiter and beyond the infinite. After multiple listens a Xen(akis)–like state is realized and there should be a giant Star Fly-Child in your living room. Brutally cosmic!!!" [label info]
"I have been a fan of the works of Mr. Liles and Mr. Menche for a while now, so this CD of their first ever collaboration is most welcome. And it looks great; packed in a hard carton slightly oversized CD sleeve with typical Liles-artwork. The 65+ minutes that form The progeny Of Flies are divided into 4 parts. Opener Eggs (signifying the first stage of the fly life cycle) features the now typical Liles-sounds augmented by Menche's higher and harsher frequencies. In one word beautiful. The second track 1st To 3rd Instar features low frequency pulses before subtle piano chords (and reverbed pedals) set in. Again full marks to Liles and Menche. "Pupar" (the third track) starts off with a horse's neigh. After that surprising intro we're in a world filled with bass tones with plucked strings and percussive elements. Closing track Metamorphoses (to end the fly theme) features a low, almost prehistoric growl and Menche's more noisy elements which builds up to a climax. The track ends with piano and the buzzing sound of a fly. This CD, subtitled "tres muscae conummunt cadaver equi aeque cito ac leo", which loosely and very cryptically translates into "three muscular complete corpses indeed quick justice and lion" is a gorgeous piece of work; beautiful, restrained and highly recommended!" [FK / Vital Weekly]
www.blrrecords.com
€14.00
EP
"24-page booklet with rare and unseen pics and extensive liner notes by band members Tom Paine & MarK C.
Formed in 1982 by guitarists Mark C and Tom Paine with Marnie Greenholz on bass and James Lo on drums, Live Skull is considered by many aficionados to be the quintessential New York noise band. Together with Sonic Youth and Swans, Live Skull defined the term "noise rock" in the 1980s, spearheading the post-No Wave underground music scene in NYC with a series of legendary live performances and eight groundbreaking records released over the course of that decade. Often brutal and yet strangely seductive, each of these classic records creates hooks out of the most unlikely, seemingly disruptive elements, subverting traditional rock forms in previously unheard ways that became an undeniable (albeit often unacknowledged) influence on many of their contemporaries. Live Skull broke up in 1989, just within sight of that magical moment when the sort of music they pioneered began to finally break through, but the band's recorded output reminds us that Live Skull got there first.
This is the record that started it all, Live Skull's first EP. A gloriously sprawling collection of deep, dark grooves and insidiously entwined guitars, the Village Voice rightly described the EP as "classic post-punk" and “the best introduction to New York’s guitar explorers.” The East Village Eye proclaimed it “one of the best sounding records to come out of any New York band past or present.” The New York Times put the EP on their short list of the best five records of 1984, declaring, “A few contemporary bands are making music as a deliberate antidote to the burbling synthesizers, polite crooning and polished gloss of today’s well-fed pop mainstream. New York’s Live Skull, Sonic Youth and Swans…are making the sort of music rock’s early opponents must have feared most, the music of their nightmares.”
Out of print for far too many years, this 30th anniversary reissue of Live Skull's first EP is now available on limited edition vinyl and (for the first time ever) on CD, complete with a lavish booklet including extensive liner notes by founding members Tom Paine and Mark C, and eight extremely rare bonus tracks. This is the first release in desire’s Live Skull Project, an ambitious, eight-title series of reissues of the entire Live Skull catalogue, personally overseen by Mark C and Tom Paine."
€13.00
Megaliths in Dub
When I first saw the press release for Megaliths In Dub I struggled to imagine what ‘dark ambient’ artist Llyn Y Cwn could do to improve on something I thought was pretty perfect. As soon as I started listening a dub version made perfect sense. When I reviewed Megaliths I said ‘It’s hard to rush through, or cherry pick, from this album without breaking the spell it casts as a whole. If you have the time to listen in full then you will find yourself drawn in and becoming aligned with Llyn Y Cwn’s sensitivity for the places he has visited.’ And, ‘an audio experience that shapes, enhances and transforms mood and perception…and every bit as breath-taking as the landscapes that inspired them.’
This re-working feels like the industrial revolution has come to visit the ancient landscapes of the original album. The bucolic peace and solemnity of solid megalithic structures is now broken into its element parts with stone molecules and earth vibrated by subterranean sound systems and heavy machinery rumbling overhead.
This is beauty and the beast with the original as Dr. Jekyll being synthetically reconstituted into a snarling Hyde. But while this metamorphosis maybe a brutal reimagining the juddering subbass and the phased grit of modern technology brings a harsh but glorious magnificence. There are times when the granular storm threatens to engulf us as on the tracks ‘Meini Hirion Shifted’ and ‘Machrie Resonance’ but then there is also the soft ground of ‘Dark Grove’ with its subtle woop-woop noise that drifts over the track’s pulsating heartbeat and ‘Ifan’s Portal’ which combines the warmth of a clearing in the forest with the subtle ticking of a metronome.
You can imagine ancient travellers arriving at the megalithic stones to take ayahuasca and trip out as the solid earth rotates, the stars dance and the rocks vibrate like ancient granite tuning forks. Megaliths in Dub is the sound they might have heard in their heads and Llyn Y Cwn is a man with a cosmic recorder who can summon the spirits and interpret them electronically. I didn’t think Megaliths could be improved but this monolithic, tectonic dub is a wonderful conundrum: perfection made more perfect.
https://joyzine.org/2025/10/13/album-review-llyn-y-cwn-megaliths-in-dub/
€15.00
Untitled # 295
"Francisco López is not only famous for his profilic sound creations, but also for different aspects of sound manipulations. Since his very beginnings, he explores different fields of sound - and almost entire his work belongs to serie 'untitled'. untitled#295 is a piece created specially for two sides of vinyl and specially for GODrec. Besides Lopez's famous moving soundscapes, it's the pulse what makes this work driving. And not only typical pulse - a regular one with irregular accents. Slowly developing it takes insensibly into void and darkness. Extremely tempting work for claustrophobic experiences." [label info]
www.godrec.com
€20.00
Untitled # 300
"Pressing of 300 copies on crystal-clear 200-gram virgin vinyl packaged in a custom letterpress jacket printed, die-cut, and hand-assembled at Studio On Fire in Minneapolis, with particular care taken to retain the fine detail of the cover's microscopic type. Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of the sound art and experimental music scene. For more than 30 years he has developed an astonishing sonic universe, absolutely personal and iconoclastic, based on a profound listening of the world. Destroying boundaries between industrial sounds and wilderness sound environments, shifting with passion from the limits of perception to the most dreadful abyss of sonic power, proposing a blind, profound and transcendental listening, freed from the imperatives of knowledge and open to sensory and spiritual expansion' --Pedro Higueras, Sonom Studios. 'Untitled#300 is an LP based on multi-track field recordings I did in 2011 of a large colony of seagulls in a group of small islands right in front of the Moroccan-Algerian border, together with hydrophone and contact mic recordings of sea creatures underwater from the same location (side A and B of the LP, respectively). Being interested in going beyond a traditional 'soundscape' perspective, I've played freely with mixing and editing, in an unorthodox way, different multi-channel recordings I did. Side A ('abovewater') is the large seagull colony. In side B ('underwater') what you hear is predominantly millions of very small shrimp-like crustaceans, dolphin sonar (the beating pattern of the first section), and occasional fish (the 'frog-like' calls) --Francisco López. Original environmental sound matter recorded in the Chafarinas Islands off the coast of Morocco, summer 2011. Edited, mixed, and mastered at mobile messor, The Hague, the Netherlands, summer 2012. Field work carried out with the collaboration and support of the SIGEIN-Chafarinas research group (Integral Ecological Management System of the Chafarinas Islands), directed by Francisco J. Acosta (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) and coordinated by Javier Zapata (Spanish National Park Service)." [label info]
www.taigarecords.com
€26.00
Elektra Bidasoa
"A collaborative project between two seasoned sound artists dedicated to a profound listening of sonic phenomena. Created with original recordings from power plants along the Bidasoa river in the Basque Country, Erkizia and Lopez have built vivid straighforward and transformed sound environments from a myriad hums, rattles, crackles, and drones from the wide variety of machinery and industrial electrical facilities inside the power plants. A macro and microscopic journey into a detailed and crisp virtual sound world from the generation of electricity." [label info]
http://fernsrecordings.free.fr
€13.00
Racconto Artigiano
https://ubero.bandcamp.com/album/racconto-artigiano
Music of indecisive ways, silent writing, white pictures, noise and songs. Loup Uberto founds the Bégayer trio with Alexis Vinéïs and Lucas Ravinale, explores the traditional melodies of northern Italy, records intriguing sound documents - Cuban "raw" music, Eastern European travel diaries, Kurdish songs from Syria -, initiates gestures for French “chanson” with Le Saule record label, questions the gaze and its fiction, the rough edges of language, documents exile and wandering through sound testimonies, writings and photographs.
Racconto artigiano, the artisanal tale, is inspired by Walter Benjamin's Experience and Poverty, where the author comments on the drying up of popular fables; it is the compendium of numerous attempts on various materials: mobile phones, percussion, short-circuited radio transistors, computer limiters, clarinet, medieval and popular songs from northern Italy, sound collages.
Recorded in the reformed church of Mens-en-Trièves, a village at the foot of the Obiou mountain range and digging towards the eastern slope of the Vercors, this album is the outcome of some three or four years of research, the account of a series of experiments, thus itself a sort of document, a repertoire of sketches delivered as they are, completely raw and made disturbing by their dryness, just as the folk tale - which refrains from speaking - is a view offered on the horizon of silence.
##########
Co-production three:four records, label Le Saule
Conçu entre La Fonderie (Le Mans), Le Ciel et le 102 Rue d’Alembert (Grenoble)
Enregistré au temple réformé de Mens (38), au lieu-dit Montvallon (plateau du Trièves), et au Ciel (Grenoble) entre le 13 mai et le 20 octobre 2019
Abrégé d’un ensemble de tentatives,
Sur matériaux divers : Téléphones mobiles, percussions, transistors radios court-circuités,
limiteurs informatiques, clarinette, chants médiévaux et populaires d’Italie du nord.
A1, B1 : Canti a vatoccu, formes anciennes de chant agricole Ombrien, dégradation d'un bourdon numérique
A2, B2 : Feedbacks pour deux téléphones mobiles
A3, B3 : Tamburello, téléphones mobiles, effets de proximité
A4, B4 : Feedbacks pour transistors radios et limiteurs informatiques
A5, B5 : Il pecoraro, conte médiéval des bergers toscans, dégradation d'un bourdon numérique, clarinette et chant
A6, B6 : Diffusion/Réception FM, transistors radios
Sur A6, B6 :
- Jean Follain, fragments de "Territoires", lecture par Lise Lecocq
- Témoignage de Serge Targa, Susville, plateau matheysin
- "Amore mio non piangere", chant populaire des Mondine de la vallée de Po : Serge Targa
- Bernard Noël, fragments de "La Chute des Temps", lecture par Loup Uberto
- J.S. Bach, Toccata en Mi mineur BWV 914 par Lucas Ravinale
- Improvisations au piano par Jean-Philippe Curtelin
A1, B1 : Enregistrés au Ciel les 19 et 20 octobre 2019
A5, B5 : Enregistrés au lieu-dit Montvallon les 9,10 et 11 juin 2019
A2 -> B5 : Enregistrés au temple réformé de Mens-en-Trièves, les 13 et 14 mai 2019
Mastering : Ernest Bergez
--
la fable illisible est lacunaire et silencieuse, elle adopte la même pauvreté que le conte ancien, elle use du même pouvoir d’image, de l’abondant répertoire de visions qu’offre une figure déshabillée. On parle ici du conte dépouillé, artisan, fidèle à la crudité du réel, que l’on trouve dans les chants populaires et médiévaux préalablement à son absorption par la littérature. Quand la morale du conte littéraire n’est qu’un processus d’engraissement du conte par le discours, le conte populaire est au contraire une vue offerte sur l’horizon du mutisme.
Deux sphères vivantes ont produit leurs clans de conteurs ; dans l’espace archaïque du chant coexistent et s’inter-contaminent le paysan (conte sédentaire, conte territorial) et le marin (conte errant, conte étranger). Une troisième figure, l’artisan, fusionne ces deux récits dans l’université du conte.
Dans ce conte sans morale, la forme simple du discours ne vise pas à convaincre, ne connait aucune cible, c’est une narration sèche, un objet sans destination que chaque auditeur traduira à son aise. La forme sèche, ramassée et chaste du conte recommande l’histoire à la mémoire. Le conte est muet, en s’abstenant de dire, il tient en haleine par l’outillage des silences et des vides.
loupuberto.com
Live : youtu.be/yB9cdzfZnAk
--
Merci à toute l’équipe de La Fonderie/Théâtre du Radeau, à François Tanguy, à la communauté de l’église réformée de Mens, aux frères et sœurs du label Le Saule, à David Nicolay et à toute l’équipe de Plege, à la famille Quenehen, à Radio Dragon, à Archipel Urbain, à Lise Lecocq, Lucas Ravinale, Alexis Vinéïs, Jean-Philippe Curtelin, Fanny George, Serge et Nanou Targa, Lewis et Clovïc, Thierry Monnier, et Diego Uberto.
€20.00
Girl.Echo.Suns.Veils
"space/ambient/drone from a veteran progenitor. scott cortez’s guitar is processed nearly to the point of unrecognizability, leaving behind veils and walls of shimmery droning bliss. glossolalic female voice glides spectral and luminescent through the walls of sound; sheets of noise; glossy, ethereal. lovesliescrushing makes noise sound beautiful.
leave all the accidents: find beauty in grit, in dust, in noise. in the mess.
formed in 1991, lovesliescrushing took the my bloody valentine / cocteau twin template and added a new twist: turning the formula inside out by using the detritus, the residue from other songs, the scraps of a song, a single note, a single chord here, a melody there or a dense wall of guitar. take the parts most bands consider throwaway accidents, filler, those little parts between songs on loveless and work them to reveal their realization as a full-blown song. ‘the formula’ is simple, almost childlike. remove the drums, the bass, use no synths or keyboards, remove all of the typical rock/pop shoegaze trappings, use what is left and record on a 4 track porta-studio. simple.
that they were able to weave this all together, despite removing everything, would have made most bands run in terror. yet in that manner, lovesliescrushing found its sound.
GIRL ECHO SUNS VEILS gathers music from the vast backlog of the lovesliescrushing library. some of it has appeared before, some of it is unreleased. all of this material was reworked and perfected by cortez until he decided it was ready for release. the music is almost two decades old, but sounds like it was recorded yesterday by one of a handful of newgaze, ambient bands (fennes, belong) that have become stylish recently. llc sounds completely contemporary, and yet llc was doing it back in the early 90s, without studios, without laptops! perhaps that is the most shocking aspect to their music. it is a testament to the work of lovesliescrushing, an obscure band that could and did.
lovesliescrushing can sound like a jet engine tuned to an am radio station tuned to an orchestra tuning up or a gigantic blurry drone cloud.
GIRL ECHO SUNS VEILS is a comprehensive look at an invisible band’s influence on the space/ambient/drone scene." [label info]
www.projekt.com
€14.50
Consumed within the years of lead
Atmosphärischer Post-Industrial aus der wachsenden US-Industrial / Dark Ambient-Szene, fünf abwechslungsreiche, dunkel-noisige Stücke, to discover!
"brooding, dark industrial material with insane structure and sense of space. inspires a sense of unease and dread, total midnight music." [label info]
"Consumed Within The Years Of Lead" marks the first widely available proper CD from this active and always improving project. If you haven't checked them out yet you can't blame it on hard to find releases anymore. "Years of Lead" a nearly eleven minute epic opens the disc, combining low drone melody, with looping hi tones and stutters and then tying them all together through the use subtle drifts and restrained distortion swells. It's an ambient piece that at the same time swipes at you with the sharp hi end. The piece ends on a more percussive rhythmic note as it fades away. "Forging New Alloys" uses a similar tool kit, low drones, rhythmic loops, some sharp high end, but it is a more active and alive kind of track. The movement is faster and the sounds denser while still being rooted on the ambient foundation. "The Eye Of Silence" is another lengthy piece using a foundation of distortion that almost splashes like waves at the shore in the opening moments and then returns somewhat toward the end. This gives way to electronic pulses, deep tonal swells and reverberating metallic clashes. The piece maintains a lot of negative space and uses the silences and air well. "Harvest Time" has a slow throb to it in the opening that fades away to a delicate melody and scraping metallic sounds with an genuinely unsettling presence. When this ceases, we again have multiple swells of differing texture and a nice use of silence and space, before the sound of slithering knives briefly returns. It gives everything a nice distinction. The disc closes with the track "Binary Solutions". Drawn out melody, and some really unique textures I'm not sure I can even qualify, open the track. A strange squirming, peeling quality that takes on rhythmic characteristics at times. There is an odd tension to the track, almost a paranoid quality really. "Consumed Within The Years of Lead" is an impressive release, with a unique quality to it that you don't often here in Dark Ambient type releases. In fact it's difficult to classify it so simply because of the variety of textures used but the overall feel is largely ambient and the tone becomes increasingly unnerving as the record plays out. Excellent.“ [Worm Gear]
€8.00
Almost New York
"CD 1 - Twonings: Charles Curtis, cello; Joseph Kubera, piano; Almost New York: Robert Dick, flutes; Broken Line: Robert Dick, flute; Danny Tunick, vibraphone; Joseph Kubera, piano
CD 2 - Coda Variations: Robin Hayward, tuba
Pogus is extremely delighted to release this 2 CD set of recordings of works by Alvin Lucier.
He is one of the key experimental artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, and is one of my favorite composers. A unique and individual artist: No one sounds quite like Alvin Lucier.
Lucier writes about the genesis of the works on this release:
"Since the early 1980's I have made a series of works for conventional musical instruments. Before that time I had been mainly occupied with the exploration of such phenomena as echoloca-tion, brain waves, room acoustics and the visual representation of sound. Often these works required special equipment-hand held pulse wave oscillators (Vespers), differential amplifiers (Music for Solo Performer), horseshoe magnets (Music on a Long Thin Wire). Then players began asking me for pieces. Now I needed to find a way of achieving the same poetry with acoustic instruments as I did with electronic means.
"One of the things I discovered was that players could create rhythmic patterns by closely tuning with electronically generated pure waves or with each other, producing audible beats. Often, to get continuous motion, I have one or more voices sweep up or down at various speeds against fixed sustained pitches. As a wave approaches a sustained pitch the audible beating slows down to zero when it reaches unison, then speeds up again as the wave leaves the pitch. Almost New York employs slow sweep pure wave oscillators, Broken Line, flute glissandi. In Twonings two different tuning systems collide and in Coda Variations slight variations in pitch are heard chronologically."
Recorded by Charles Curtis, Joseph Kubera, Robert Dick, Danny Tunick, and Robin Hayward - some of the leading new music performers of our era, these works are essential additions to the Alvin Lucier oeuvre, as well as satisfying anyone interested in great experimental music." [label info]
www.pogus.com
"Usually press texts say lots of things which is just the sort of thing record label use to exaggerate to drum up interest for their artist. But when Pogus writes about Alvin Lucier 'an unique and individual artist: no one sounds quite like Alvin Lucier', I can only agree. I sang praise for the work of Lucier before. His ongoing investigation into sound phenomena, with or without the use of instruments has been going on for more than forty years now, and brought him the status of a well-known composer. And when you are well-known, people will ask you for pieces, for them to perform. On 'Almost New York' we find four of those pieces, three on disc one and one on disc two. We have hear instruments we came across before in Lucier's work, such as piano, cello and flute. In 'Twonings' for cello (performed by Charles Curtis, who himself performed more work by Lucier, and released a 2CD by Antiopic - see Vital Weekly 498) and piano, we don't have any sweeping oscillations to be followed, but two closely tuned instruments, but with enough variation in pitches to clearly distinguish differences. In the title piece we have one player and five flutes, who follows two pure wave oscillators and moves between playing five flutes, not simultaneously of course. 'Broken Line' is, then again, more alike the first piece, but then staged for three instruments, flute, vibraphone and piano. The most radical work here is the piece 'Coda Variations', which takes up the entire second disc. Robin Hayward performs it on tuba. Based on eight notes from a Feldman piece, Lucier subjected them to seven sets of permutations of sixty-three notes each. No sine waves to play along, just the sound of single notes played at one time each, for almost fifty minutes. An intriguing work. Of these four pieces, there is only one which we could label as 'traditional Lucier' work, but the three others display probably just as well what Lucier, less the pure waves and all four are simply four more great pieces. Indeed: no one sounds quite like Alvin Lucier." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€18.50
Still and Moving Lines
"Pogus is absolutely delighted to offer this new release featuring Australian new music ensemble Decibel performing four works by Alvin Lucier, three of which are previously unrecorded.
Ever Present (2002), the only work offered here that has been recorded before is for flute, saxophone, and piano with slow sweep pure wave oscillator and is considered by many to be Lucier’s most musical work. Carbon Copies (1989) is for saxophone, piano, flute and playback; the work investigates musicians imitating their environments. Hands (1994) is for organ with four players. The performers use their hands to subtly alter the harmonics produced from the pipes of an organ. Shelter (1967) is for vibration pickups, amplification system and enclosed space and finds Lucier offering the sounds of outside a performance space. All these works as always are amazing examples of Alvin Lucier’s fertile mind and exploring, experimental sensibility. One of the true originals.
Alvin Lucier was born in 1931 in Nashua, New Hampshire. He was educated in Nashua public and parochial schools, the Portsmouth Abbey School, Yale, and Brandeis and spent two years in Rome on a Fulbright Scholarship. Lucier has pioneered in many areas of music composition and performance, including the notation of performers' physical gestures, the use of brain waves in live performance, the generation of visual imagery by sound in vibrating media, and the evocation of room acoustics for musical purposes. His recent works include a series of sound installations and works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra in which, by means of close tunings with pure tones, sound waves are caused to spin through space.
Decibel are world leaders in the integration of acoustic instruments and electronics, pioneering electronic score formats, including the Decibel Scoreplayer App, incorporating mobile score formats and networked coordination performance environments. The ensemble has collaborated with composers such as Werner Dafeldecker, Agostino Di Scipio, Alvin Curran, David Toop, Marina Rosenfeld, Lionel Marchetti, Andreas Weixler and Johannes S. Sistermanns and worked with iconic Australian composers Jon Rose, Alan Lamb, Ross Bolleter, Warren Burt, Eric Griswold and Anthony Pateras. Decibel have contributed the Australian premieres of works by Fausto Romitelli, Tristan Murail, Alvin Lucier, Peter Ablinger, Mauricio Kagel and have toured monograph concerts dedicated to Alvin Lucier and John Cage." [label info]
www.pogus.com
€13.00
So You... (Hermes, Orpheus, Eurydice)
“So You … (Hermes, Orpheus, Eurydice) is a major new work by legendary experimental composer Alvin Lucier. It is an hour long epic that tracks the familiar Orpheus myth from a less familiar perspective: that of Eurydice as imagined by poet H.D.; a Eurydice who rails at Orpheus for his hubris in attempting to rescue her. Two key, and formerly distinct, aspects of Lucier’s practice come together in this piece: the exploration of interference patterns in closely tuned intervals, and the exploration of resonant chambers. From speakers mounted inside amphorae a constantly turning braid of beating sine waves trace the descent into the depths of hell, and then the doomed attempt to climb back into life. Singer Jessika Kenney and long-time Lucier collaborators Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis embody the three title characters in deeply focused performances that assert themselves against the process of the sweep, or become enfolded in it. The electronics were mixed in real time by programmer and equipment designer Tom Erbe.
This record has all of the mind-bending acoustic effects you’d expect from a Lucier piece, but also features a strong sense of narrative drama and flashes of raw emotion that are unexpected and deeply affecting.”
€14.50
Atanimonni Aitnatsbus
"Behind LUNAR ABYSS DEUS ORGANUM (= also known as LUNAR ABYSS QUARTET or just LUNAR ABYSS) we find Russian artist EVGENY [Biosonar] SAVENKO from the vivid St. Petersburg experimental & post-industrial scene. Since more than a decade he's producing a unique style of music combining elements of droning ambient industrial, traditional folklore and electronic, tribal/trancy psychedelism, adding pure sound-experiments often based on field recordings. A strong DIY-attitude (self-released albums usually have handmade covers with ornamental drawings & paintings) is connected with a shamanistic and pan-religious philosophy. Meditation, Trance, the wish to explore the own unconscious areas by ecstatic experiences and a deep connection with nature are his main characteristics.
The two pieces "Atanimonni" and "Aitnatsbus" were especially recorded for our 10"-series and give a wonderful example of the typical L.A.D.O.-style: two long tracks (total 23+ min.) of stunning multi-layered compositions, using lots of detail-sounds from domestic and wild animals, mountain winds and brooks, forest shelters and a destroyed missile garrison, soviet analog synths, north saami female voices / singings, subtle (neo) classic harmonies, bells & gongs... hyper-dense & fluid at the same time! Both tracks end up in endless grooves (water & fire) to symbolize the connection to timeless energies. Lim. 500 with artwork by ARTYOM OSTAPCHUK (KRYPTOGEN RUNDFUNK / ZHELEZOBETON label), comes on sky-blue, crystal & white mixed vinyl.
"Recordings of field recordind sounds were made in the summer of 2009 in the Carpathian mountains and the land of lakes in Karelia, during a miraculous journey, full of joyful inspiration. Party of analog synthesizers recorded by sound-poet Lesnaya Pogan during a cold winter 2010 in Moscow." [Evgeny Savenko]
[label info]
www.substantia-innominata.de
"lunar abyss deus organum hat mit „brusnika“ auf der dr-77 in der früheren 7“ serie von drone-records einen der teile herausgebracht, der mir von allen 100 beiträgen der serie am besten gefällt. nun ist das projekt mit „atanimonni / aitnatsbus“ als sub-16 auch auf der substantia innominata 10“ serie vertreten.
lunar abyss deus organum ist dabei alles andere als ein projekt, das auf lang durchlaufende schichtungen, melodiebögen oder ähnliches setzt oder im gegenzug (bearbeitete) fieldrecordings oder konkretere musikschnipsel in den eindeutigen vordergrund der arbeit stellt. im ersten eindruck sind viele der arbeiten von lunar abyss deus organum vielmehr eine zunächst undurchschaubare collage aus all diesen elementen; eine collage, die aber nie übervoll erscheint, der es sogar gelingt, trotz manchmal fast wie brüche wirkender betonungen nie die stimmung und atmosphäre zu gefährden und so drones aufzubauen, die durch fast überraschende wendungen immer wieder neue bilder aufbauen können.
auch „atanimonni“ folgt dieser tradition und wiegt die hörer dabei über sehr lange zeit in der trügerischen sicherheit, der schaukelnde, wellenartige bassdrone mit dem das stück auch beginnt, könnte, wenn schon nicht ewig, dann aber zumindest für die dauer der seite begleiter bleiben. und natürlich, gerade, wenn man vergessen hat, dass es jemals anders sein könnte, wachsen dessen rauere begleiter über sich selbst und den bassdrone hinaus, bauen eine geräuschhafte kakophonie auf, brechen wie urplötzlich ab und münden in einem nur ganz leise hörbaren, durch die rille auf analoge art geloopten wassersample. zumindest hier dann also das erhören derer, die sich eine derartige musik mit noch viel längeren laufzeiten wünschen...
„aitnatsbus“ geht, in gewissen sinne, einen umgekehrten weg: die geräuschhaften komponenten stehen hier zu beginn fast ganz frei (wenn auch nicht so laut wie kurz vor ende von „atanimonni“) und fangen sich erst allmählich über zunächst bassigen dann knurrenden drones und fast unhörbar schleicht sich eine weibliche stimme hinein, die, auf ähnlich verführerischer art wie schon auf der „brusnika“ 7“, einen schnipsel aus einer dieser typischen melancholischen osteuropäischen volksmusikmelodien immer und immer wieder wiederholt. perfekter dynamischer aufbau und eigentlich unmöglich erscheinender kontrast zwischen den wälzenden drones mit ihren geräuschhüllen und der sehnsuchtsvollen stimme. eigentlich. und am ende verweht nur noch der gesang und was bleibt ist das (wiederum analog geloopte) feuer..." [Hellmut Neidhardt / N]
€12.00
![[O T H E R]](/pictures/albums/21087/LUSTMORD-OTHER CD re 2022.jpg)
[O T H E R]
Das zehnte Studioalbum »Other« der Elektronik-/Industrial-Musikpioniere Lustmord wurde 2008 veröffentlicht und ist bis heute das einzige Lustmord-Album mit Gitarren, gespielt von Adam Jones (Tool), King Buzzo (The Melvins) und Aaron Turner (Isis). Das Album erschien ursprünglich auf dem unabhängigen Plattenlabel Hydra Head Records, das von Isis-Frontmann Aaron Turner gegründet wurde und früher Bands wie Converge, Pelican, Jesu, Sun O))) oder Boris beherbergte.
Wie ein Journalist es damals formulierte, ist »Other« ein "düsteres Beispiel für einen vollendeten Künstler, der genau innerhalb der Parameter arbeitet, die er sich im Laufe der Jahre selbst gesetzt hat." Dieses Album zeigt Lustmord von seiner charakteristischsten Seite, und das eisige, unheilvolle Gitarrenspiel von Jones, Turner und Ozborne fügt sich perfekt in die tiefen Klanglandschaften ein, die diese beängstigende und doch inspirierende Reise ausmachen.
Tatsächlich sind die Songs so kraftvoll, dass es Williams dazu bewegte, zwei Ambient-Remix-Versionen und eine Dub-Remix-EP zu erstellen, die die Klänge dieses Albums so weit wie möglich erforschen. Im Jahr 2022 arbeitet Lustmord für The Others (Lustmord Deconstructed) mit Künstlern wie Godflesh, Mono und Zola Jesus, um nur einige zu nennen, an Neuinterpretationen der »Other«-Songs zusammen, die ebenfalls jetzt erhältlich sind.
Reissued in all its incarnations plus re-interpreted: Electronic/Industrial music pioneer LUSTMORDs tenth studio album [ O T H E R ], originally released in 2008 and to date the only LUSTMORD album with guitars on it, performed by Adam Jones (TOOL), King Buzzo (THE MELVINS) and Aaron Turner (ISIS). [ O T H E R ] originally came out on independent record label Hydra Head Records, founded by ISIS frontman Aaron Turner and former home of bands such as CONVERGE, PELICAN, JESU, SUN O))) or BORIS. As one journalist put it at the time, [ O T H E R ] is a "grim example of a consummate artist who is working frmly within the parameters that he has laid out for himself over the years." This album shows Lustmord at his most characteristic, and the icy, ominous guitar playing of Jones, Turner and Ozborne resonates perfectly within the deep soundscapes that make up this frightening yet inspiring journey. As a matter of fact, the material on [ O T H E R ] is so powerful that it moved Williams to create two ambient remix versions of it, and one dub remix EP exploring the sounds of this record to the greatest extend of his ability. In 2022, and also available now, LUSTMORD further collaborates with artist such as GODFLESH, MONO and ZOLA JESUS, to name but a few, for THE OTHERS (LUSTMORD DECONSTRUCTED) on re-interpretations on [ O T H E R ] tracks. LUSTMORD is the artistic moniker of Brian Williams. Born in North Wales, he started his musical career in 1980 and soon became a pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. He was a former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, and went on to work with THROBBING GRISTLE members Chris & Cosey as well as appearing on early albums by CURRENT 93, NURSE WITH WOUND and others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader's First Reformed. Additionally he created several video game soundtracks, television scores and solo albums, as well as collaborating with artists as varied as THE MELVINS, CLOCK DVA, JARBOE, John Balance of COIL, Paul Haslinger (TANGERINE DREAM), PUSCIFER, Wes Borland and more, including Grammy Award-winners TOOL on their much acclaimed effort Fear Inoculum. To this day, Lustmord is actively recording and releasing music, his latest release being the collaborative album Alter with Karin Park of A°RABROT, and he is considered to be the founding father of the dark ambient music genre.
[press release]
€16.00
![[Beyond]](/pictures/albums/21174/LUSTMORD-bEYOND cd.jpg)
[Beyond]
Reissued! Electronic music pioneer LUSTMORD released an album titled [OTHER] in 2008, to date the only LUSTMORD album with guitars on it, performed by Adam Jones (TOOL), King Buzzo (MELVINS) and Aaron Turner (ISIS). The albums The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond, both released in 2009, are extensions of the ideas explored in [OTHER] and are taken from the same recording sessions, but with the guitars removed and the essence of [OTHER] distilled and reduced.[OTHER] was a journey with friends, while The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond take the concept and listener further, deeper, in-between and beyond. While is some ways [OTHER] is as close to a "rock" album as Lustmord will ever make, The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond are pure Lustmord, a sound that many others imitate but can never equal. LUSTMORD is the artistic moniker of Brian Williams. Born in North Wales, he started his musical career in 1980 and soon became a pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. He was a former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, and went on to work with THROBBING GRISTLE members Chris & Cosey as well as appearing on early albums by CURRENT 93, NURSE WITH WOUND and others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader's First Reformed. Additionally he created several video game soundtracks, television scores and solo albums, as well as collaborating with artists as varied as THE MELVINS, CLOCK DVA, JARBOE, John Balance of COIL, Paul Haslinger (TANGERINE DREAM), PUSCIFER, Wes Borland and more, including Grammy Award-winners TOOL on their much acclaimed effort Fear Inoculum. To this day, Lustmord is actively recording and releasing music, his latest release being the collaborative album Alter with Karin Park of A°RABROT, and he is considered to be the founding father of the dark ambient music genre.
https://lustmord.bandcamp.com/album/beyond
€15.00
Beyond
Reissued! Electronic music pioneer LUSTMORD released an album titled [OTHER] in 2008, to date the only LUSTMORD album with guitars on it, performed by Adam Jones (TOOL), King Buzzo (MELVINS) and Aaron Turner (ISIS). The albums The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond, both released in 2009, are extensions of the ideas explored in [OTHER] and are taken from the same recording sessions, but with the guitars removed and the essence of [OTHER] distilled and reduced.[OTHER] was a journey with friends, while The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond take the concept and listener further, deeper, in-between and beyond. While is some ways [OTHER] is as close to a "rock" album as Lustmord will ever make, The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond are pure Lustmord, a sound that many others imitate but can never equal. LUSTMORD is the artistic moniker of Brian Williams. Born in North Wales, he started his musical career in 1980 and soon became a pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. He was a former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, and went on to work with THROBBING GRISTLE members Chris & Cosey as well as appearing on early albums by CURRENT 93, NURSE WITH WOUND and others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader's First Reformed. Additionally he created several video game soundtracks, television scores and solo albums, as well as collaborating with artists as varied as THE MELVINS, CLOCK DVA, JARBOE, John Balance of COIL, Paul Haslinger (TANGERINE DREAM), PUSCIFER, Wes Borland and more, including Grammy Award-winners TOOL on their much acclaimed effort Fear Inoculum. To this day, Lustmord is actively recording and releasing music, his latest release being the collaborative album Alter with Karin Park of A°RABROT, and he is considered to be the founding father of the dark ambient music genre.
https://lustmord.bandcamp.com/album/beyond
€32.00
![[O T H E R]](/pictures/albums/21218/LUSTMORD-OTHER doLP re.jpg)
[O T H E R]
Reissued in all its incarnations plus re-interpreted: Electronic/Industrial music pioneer LUSTMORDs tenth studio album [ O T H E R ], originally released in 2008 and to date the only LUSTMORD album with guitars on it, performed by Adam Jones (TOOL), King Buzzo (THE MELVINS) and Aaron Turner (ISIS). [ O T H E R ] originally came out on independent record label Hydra Head Records, founded by ISIS frontman Aaron Turner and former home of bands such as CONVERGE, PELICAN, JESU, SUN O))) or BORIS. As one journalist put it at the time, [ O T H E R ] is a "grim example of a consummate artist who is working frmly within the parameters that he has laid out for himself over the years." This album shows Lustmord at his most characteristic, and the icy, ominous guitar playing of Jones, Turner and Ozborne resonates perfectly within the deep soundscapes that make up this frightening yet inspiring journey. As a matter of fact, the material on [ O T H E R ] is so powerful that it moved Williams to create two ambient remix versions of it, and one dub remix EP exploring the sounds of this record to the greatest extend of his ability. In 2022, and also available now, LUSTMORD further collaborates with artist such as GODFLESH, MONO and ZOLA JESUS, to name but a few, for THE OTHERS (LUSTMORD DECONSTRUCTED) on re-interpretations on [ O T H E R ] tracks. LUSTMORD is the artistic moniker of Brian Williams. Born in North Wales, he started his musical career in 1980 and soon became a pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. He was a former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, and went on to work with THROBBING GRISTLE members Chris & Cosey as well as appearing on early albums by CURRENT 93, NURSE WITH WOUND and others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader's First Reformed. Additionally he created several video game soundtracks, television scores and solo albums, as well as collaborating with artists as varied as THE MELVINS, CLOCK DVA, JARBOE, John Balance of COIL, Paul Haslinger (TANGERINE DREAM), PUSCIFER, Wes Borland and more, including Grammy Award-winners TOOL on their much acclaimed effort Fear Inoculum. To this day, Lustmord is actively recording and releasing music, his latest release being the collaborative album Alter with Karin Park of A°RABROT, and he is considered to be the founding father of the dark ambient music genre.
https://lustmord.bandcamp.com/album/o-t-h-e-r
€32.00
![[Dark Places of the Earth]](/pictures/albums/21311/LUSTMORD-dark places of the earth.jpeg)
[Dark Places of the Earth]
Reissued! Electronic music pioneer LUSTMORD released an album titled [OTHER] in 2008, to date the only LUSTMORD album with guitars on it, performed by Adam Jones (TOOL), King Buzzo (MELVINS) and Aaron Turner (ISIS). The albums The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond, both released in 2009, areextensions of the ideas explored in [OTHER] and are taken from the same recording sessions, but with the guitars removed and the essence of [OTHER] distilled and reduced.[OTHER] was a journey with friends, whileThe Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond take the concept and listener further, deeper, in-between and beyond. While is some ways [OTHER] is as close to a "rock" album as Lustmord will ever make, The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond are pure Lustmord, a sound that many others imitate but can never equal. LUSTMORD is the artistic moniker of Brian Williams. Born in North Wales, he started his musical career in 1980 and soon became a pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. He was a former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, and went on to work with THROBBING GRISTLE members Chris & Cosey as well as appearing on early albums by CURRENT 93, NURSE WITH WOUND and others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader's First Reformed. Additionally he created several video game soundtracks, television scores and solo albums, as well as collaborating with artists as varied as THE MELVINS, CLOCK DVA, JARBOE, John Balance of COIL, Paul Haslinger (TANGERINE DREAM), PUSCIFER, Wes Borland and more, including Grammy Award-winners TOOL on their much acclaimed effort Fear Inoculum. To this day, Lustmord is actively recording and releasing music, his latest release being the collaborative album Alter with Karin Park of A°RABROT, and he is considered to be the founding father of the dark ambient music genre.
https://lustmord.bandcamp.com/album/the-dark-places-of-the-earth
€15.00
Alter (lim. col. vinyl)
Limited coloured LPs housed in gatefold w/ special canvas cardboard stock and silver hot foil! Nordic pop diva KARIN PARK of ÂRABROT adds her ethereal, mournful voice and keys to the primordial sound of legendary electronic pioneer LUSTMORD for this sublime and poignant collaboration. ALTER is a ritual of our times. On the pair's frst collaborative work, the nine tracks that make up ALTER are every bit as heart-wrenching as they are terrifying, mining new sonic territory, it is a fascinating study of light and shade that delves deep into vast uncharted darkness. Their ability to create atmosphere on the album opener "Hiraeth" is second to none, perfectly assembling a harrowing backdrop for Park's lilting sound of longing. From there, Park's vocals add all of the emotional depth and power found in names like Kate Bush, Maynard J Keenan and Elizabeth Frasier, perfectly playing against Lustmord's waves of dark drama and creating a wholly unique record that recalls Dead Can Dance, Massive Attack and Portishead at their greatest. Considering Park's credentials, it might be surprising that a collaboration with Lustmord would ft so seamlessly. Utilizing a sound comprised of elements of industrial, synth pop and more, the celebrated Swedish solo artist and member of Norwegian rock band Ârabrot utilizes experimentation in her work, blazing trails and bringing to mind the work of her peers The Knife, Scott Walker, Robyn, Depeche Mode and Burial with her darkly-rich compositions. Multiple winner of Norway's Spellemann award, Park co-wrote the Norwegian entry for the 2013 Eurovision, fnishing fourth overall. But it is the sensibility of the sacred music of her youth that Park adds to ALTER, contributing a powerful vocal that guides the listener through the cavernous, mystical depth of their collaborative work. "Lustmord is the Gustave Doré of music", Karin Park ofers pensively. "Painting magical pictures with a sound that is so vast, it gives space for your own imagination." Brian Williams grew up in North Wales, beginning his musical career as Lustmord in 1980 and becoming a pivotal fgure and pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. A former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, Williams went on to work with Throbbing Gristle members Chris & Cosey and appeared on early albums by Current 93 and Nurse With Wound amongst others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader's First Reformed, as well as on several video game, television scores and solo albums. Williams has also contributed to and collaborated with artists as varied as the Melvins, Clock DVA, Jarboe, John Balance of Coil, Clock DVA, Paul Haslinger (Tangerine Dream), Wes Borland (Limp Bizkit), Puscifer and more, including Grammy Award-winners Tool from their much acclaimed eforts 10,000 Days and Fear Inoculum.
TRACKLISTING: 01. HIRAETH 02. THE VOID BETWEEN 03. PERIHELION 04. TWIN FLAMES 05. ENTWINED 06. KINDRED 07. SONG OF SOL 08. SELE
€35.00
Alter
Nordic pop diva KARIN PARK of ÅRABROT adds her ethereal, mournful voice and keys to the primordial sound of legendary electronic pioneer LUSTMORD for this sublime and poignant collaboration. ALTER is a ritual of our times.
On the pair’s frst collaborative work, the nine tracks that make up ALTER are every bit as heart-wrenching as they are terrifying, mining new sonic territory, it is a fascinating study of light and shade that delves deep into vast uncharted darkness. Their ability to create atmosphere on the album opener “Hiraeth” is second to none, perfectly assembling a harrowing backdrop for Park’s lilting sound of longing. From there, Park’s vocals add all of the
emotional depth and power found in names like Kate Bush, Maynard J Keenan and Elizabeth Frasier, perfectly playing against Lustmord’s waves of dark drama and creating a wholly unique record that recalls Dead Can Dance, Massive Attack and Portishead at their greatest.
Considering Park’s credentials, it might be surprising that a collaboration with Lustmord would ft so seamlessly. Utilizing a sound comprised of elements of industrial, synth pop and more, the celebrated Swedish solo artist and member of Norwegian rock band Årabrot utilizes experimentation in her work, blazing trails and bringing to mind the work of her peers The Knife, Scott Walker, Robyn, Depeche Mode and Burial with her darkly-rich compositions. Multiple winner of Norway’s Spellemann award, Park co-wrote the Norwegian entry for the 2013 Eurovision, fnishing fourth overall. But it is the sensibility of the sacred music of her youth that Park adds to ALTER, contributing a powerful vocal that guides the listener through the cavernous, mystical depth of their collaborative work.
”Lustmord is the Gustave Doré of music“, Karin Park ofers pensively. “Painting magical pictures with a sound that is so vast, it gives space for your own imagination.” Brian Williams grew up in North Wales, beginning his musical career as Lustmord in 1980 and becoming a pivotal fgure and pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. A former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, Williams went on to work with Throbbing Gristle members Chris & Cosey and appeared on early albums by Current 93 and Nurse With Wound amongst others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, as well as on several video game, television scores and solo albums. Williams has also contributed to and collaborated with artists as varied as the Melvins, Clock DVA, Jarboe, John Balance of Coil, Clock DVA, Paul Haslinger (Tangerine Dream), Wes Borland (Limp Bizkit), Puscifer and more, including Grammy Award-winners Tool from their much acclaimed eforts 10,000 Days and Fear Inoculum.
€14.00
Alter (black vinyl)
Limited coloured LPs housed in gatefold w/ special canvas cardboard stock and silver hot foil! Nordic pop diva KARIN PARK of ÂRABROT adds her ethereal, mournful voice and keys to the primordial sound of legendary electronic pioneer LUSTMORD for this sublime and poignant collaboration. ALTER is a ritual of our times. On the pair's frst collaborative work, the nine tracks that make up ALTER are every bit as heart-wrenching as they are terrifying, mining new sonic territory, it is a fascinating study of light and shade that delves deep into vast uncharted darkness. Their ability to create atmosphere on the album opener "Hiraeth" is second to none, perfectly assembling a harrowing backdrop for Park's lilting sound of longing. From there, Park's vocals add all of the emotional depth and power found in names like Kate Bush, Maynard J Keenan and Elizabeth Frasier, perfectly playing against Lustmord's waves of dark drama and creating a wholly unique record that recalls Dead Can Dance, Massive Attack and Portishead at their greatest. Considering Park's credentials, it might be surprising that a collaboration with Lustmord would ft so seamlessly. Utilizing a sound comprised of elements of industrial, synth pop and more, the celebrated Swedish solo artist and member of Norwegian rock band Ârabrot utilizes experimentation in her work, blazing trails and bringing to mind the work of her peers The Knife, Scott Walker, Robyn, Depeche Mode and Burial with her darkly-rich compositions. Multiple winner of Norway's Spellemann award, Park co-wrote the Norwegian entry for the 2013 Eurovision, fnishing fourth overall. But it is the sensibility of the sacred music of her youth that Park adds to ALTER, contributing a powerful vocal that guides the listener through the cavernous, mystical depth of their collaborative work. "Lustmord is the Gustave Doré of music", Karin Park ofers pensively. "Painting magical pictures with a sound that is so vast, it gives space for your own imagination." Brian Williams grew up in North Wales, beginning his musical career as Lustmord in 1980 and becoming a pivotal fgure and pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. A former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, Williams went on to work with Throbbing Gristle members Chris & Cosey and appeared on early albums by Current 93 and Nurse With Wound amongst others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader's First Reformed, as well as on several video game, television scores and solo albums. Williams has also contributed to and collaborated with artists as varied as the Melvins, Clock DVA, Jarboe, John Balance of Coil, Clock DVA, Paul Haslinger (Tangerine Dream), Wes Borland (Limp Bizkit), Puscifer and more, including Grammy Award-winners Tool from their much acclaimed eforts 10,000 Days and Fear Inoculum.
TRACKLISTING: 01. HIRAETH 02. THE VOID BETWEEN 03. PERIHELION 04. TWIN FLAMES 05. ENTWINED 06. KINDRED 07. SONG OF SOL 08. SELE
€28.00
The Fall
"The Fall is a deconstruction of November by Dennis Johnson.
Written for solo piano in 1959, November is the first example of minimalist music composition and was the inspiration for La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano (1964). The 66 minute piece is a collaboration between legendary artist Lustmord and renowned classical pianist Nicolas Horvath, in which they reduces Johnson's original November to its core element and place it in a landscape of complimentary sound. The Fall echo's November but with further resonance.
Recorded in May-June 2019 in Los Angeles, and Misy-sur-Yonne, France.
Lustmord Active since 1980, born of the original 'industrial' scene of the period. With its own distinctive approach, blurring the line between music and sound design Lustmord's work has featured in 45 motion pictures including The Crow and Underworld and also in video games, television and commercials. Recently Lustmord scored the music for Paul Schrader's movie First Reformed. While Lustmord is often credited for creating the 'dark ambient' genre there is much more nuance to its work than what that label implies. The music is not dark, but is a light that shines into and upon the darkness. Notable collaborations amongst many include Tool, Melvins, Jarboe, John Balance of Coil, Clock DVA, Chris & Cosey, Paul Haslinger, Karin Park and Robert Rich.
Nicolas Horvath An unusual artist with an unconventional résumé, pianist and electroacoustic composer Nicolas Horvath is known for his boundariesless musical explorations. Horvath is both an enthusiastic promoter of contemporary music - he has commissioned numerous works (including no fewer than 120 as part of his Homages to Philip Glass project in 2014) and collaborated with leading contemporary composers from around the world, including Alvin Lucier, Mamoru Fujieda, Jaan Rääts, Alvin Curran and Valentyn Silvestrov - and a rediscoverer of forgotten or neglected composers such as Moondog, Nobuo Uematsu, Germaine Tailleferre, François-Adrien Boieldieu, Hélène de Montgeroult, Jean Catoire, Karl August Hermann."
€22.50
Kleine Mietzekatze
Interesting Newcomer on one of the most advanced British label at the moment, comes again in closed moisture-bag design.
[Drone Rec info 2007]
“It is all based on a strange, involving cycle of repetitive low frequencies
spiced with scraps of slowed down taped voices (luckily, just a little, as this is one of the things that I like less in experimental music at any level) and something like a pitch-transposed looped feedback. A humming deep pulse in the background completes this nerve-rubbing experience, once again showing Entr’acte’s will of dealing with many different fields of contemporary electronica. To be put in ‘repeat’ mode, ad libitum.” [Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes]
www.entracte.co.uk
€7.00
Mectpyo - Blut
"2LP in gatefold sleeve. Edition of 300 copies. At the beginning of the metabolic year 1980, after Maurizio Bianchi finished the embryonal experience as Sacher-Pelz, he decided to undertake the concrete-synchronized course as M.B., a long-lived acronym that will accompany him along his next way of neuro-synthetic experimenter. His first ever release was the private cassette-tape entitled 'Metcpyo-Blut'. An hematopoietic experiment decomposed during the months of March and beginning of April 1980 at Mectpyo Studio. Proposed here in its original layout, this 2LP set holds intact, at a distance of almost three decades, the epicentre of M.B. sonorous universe, projected towards an euphonic cacophony. 'Mectpyo-Blut' consists of two tragic sections imbued with synthetic chloroform: the 1st, 'Maidanek Bakterium-Musique Belzec', exhales an icy atmosphere conveying a sense of mystery and annihilation. The 2nd, 'Mutant Brain-Mord Banhof' assembled the most disparate electro-hypnotic levitation's into a vertical rationality, bold, morbid and haunting. Psychic-cerebral works, they seem to spring from a neuro-atomic continent, with unreal outlines, where its influence artificially expands the ankylotic tissues by environmental arthrosis. Edition limited to 300 copies in full colour gatefold sleeve, reproducing various graphic materials from the original cassette edition. Attention: this is the real thing, top powerful and modern in its integral length (and not a meaningless edited excerpt as other unexperienced labels in demand would have cheaply proposed you!)." [label info]
€32.50
Psychation
An overwhelming collaboration between the legendary Maurizio Bianchi and FRAG recorded in early 2020.
4ib Records.
MB & FRAG - Psychation ( 4IB Records )
"Any work of architecture that does not express serenity is a mistake."
LUIS BARRAGAN
What is serenity?
To some; serenity is a tranquil, sequestered, fulfilled state of existence. A wilful pause of the modern consumer existence that pollutes and perverts our lives. A cessation of the demands modernity forces so brutally upon our febrile short lives.
To others serenity exists within scripture, tomes and ritualistic expressions of the divine. The devout seek a glimpse of this divinity, through the serenity they seek whilst shackled to the cold clay of this mortal coil.
Stephen Burroughs is FRAG and FRAG is a project that has found serenity in the brutalist architecture of the Midlands of Britain. In seeking to express in sound; the collapse of the industrial heartlands of the United Kingdom he has created through his FRAG project; a collection of audio sculptures that evoke the concrete isolation of his claustrophobic environment.
FRAG is the soundtrack to a mankind that is alienated completely from the natural order of life. His compositions are not warm but cold, angular and granular. Huge slabs of desolate anguish that despite their sterile inhumanity pulse and seethe with submerged longing. The sound of FRAG is that of a lone human hand extending skywards from a collapsed building. That hand pointing accusingly, cursing the heavens for that fate that has befallen it. Beneath that dead mortar is humanity slowly expiring under the cold dead weight.
It is entirely logical that FRAG and Maurizio Bianchi would collaborate together. In his early Archeo years Mr Bianchi explored the themes of isolated consciousness in the industrialised environment. The stark truth of the industrial age was explored by MB as he sought his own solace to the decaying soulless hell that surrounded him. Alienated by the inhumanity of his existence he sought to hold a mirror up to the crushing weight that sought to crush any and all resistance to its dehumanizing nature. Whilst MB sought to escape this brutalism of the soul by seeking an eremite like existence within the works of faith, FRAG became the lone wolf operative working behind enemy lines to fight a rearguard war of attrition against this inhuman leviathan. Both MB & FRAG have and are fighting the same war, against the same foe , using the same weaponry; the medium of sound.
Psychation despite containing three lengthy tracks really needs to be listened to as a whole. Despite the tracks being individual entities with quite different atmosphere they are best appreciated as a thematic progression across the entire album. These tracks are constantly evolving and mutating pieces of angular geometry. A cascade of electronic shapes that fluctuate and shift in a metamorphosis of Musique Concrete tonal expressionism. At times the unrelenting nature of the album is just about to break your endurance before a snatch of melodic ambience breaks through the tumult and disarray.
Where Psychation differs from most 'noise' based albums is that it retains its granite density without descending into chaotic nonsensicality. Despite the at times abrasive incisive attack of sound it retains a sense of weight. Almost as if the sound is being layered as one would layer asphalt, layer after layer added and poured. Over and over again in ceaseless repetition. The sound of humanity as it is drowned beneath the post human neo liberal order. Psychation is the sound of humanity as it thrashes and drowns beneath the technologic order that it has birthed into being.
Psychation is a warning to us all. A warning of the world we will inherit if we forgo our humanity and spirituality. If we throw all caution to the wind and embrace the technologic future.
Psychation is a window into that world. The post serenity, post human world of concrete, zero & ones and mindless consumerism.
MB & FRAG are pointing at the inevitable conclusion of our existence if we as humans choose to venture any further.
[Kristian Carter]
M.B. - PSYCHELECTRONICS, SEGREGATED NOISES, NUCLEAR PICTURES.
FRAG - PSYCHELECTRONIC SURGERISM.
ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY - KRISTIAN R. CARTER.
https://tunnelsofh.bandcamp.com/album/psychation
€13.00
Psychoneurose
Collaboration der wiedererstarkten Industrial-Legende mit LAND USE, einem neuen Projekt aus NL.... zu hören gibt es hier rauhe, ratternde Klang-Emanationen, die sich in immer neuen Verformungen in den Äther wälzen.... Licht-verschluckend und zähflüssig wie schwarzer Teer....unser definitiver Favorit unter den neuen MB-Veröffentlichungen der letzten Zeit !
“Italian Avant-Noise legend M.B. and Land Use collaborate on dramatic, subterranean wall-of-noise constructions and swirling textural storms, dense and complex arrangements, shifting and shimmering tones barely under control, streaming toward some distant and indefineable precipice. Not noisy, but way too tense and corrosive to be called ambient. These vibrant monoliths of sound shift the listeners pysche into a restless sort of zen, a blissful chaos - truly mind and mood-altering. Bianchi released early records on Whitehouse's Come Org. label and has been active since the 1970's. And a recent and conspicuous absence from the experimental music world has been broken by several recent releases of surprising freshness and relevance. It is unclear where MB leaves off and Land Use begins but Psychoneurose is definitely a clear and brilliant return to early MB techniques with several refinements in delivery and focus. Psychoneurose will be the clear weapon of choice for those who prefer their ambience with teeth and their Power-Electronics with more of the deep, vaster textures than violence.” [label description]
“....Thank God, we gave Psychoneurose a listen, as this record is so spectacular that perhaps we will be searching out some of those other records to see if they are as good as they were claimed to be! .....in returning to the all-encompassing, utterly blackened, subterraneanly frigid, nightmarishly grim, soul-crushingly bleak, death-shroud ambience that Bianchi had produced back in the day. Expansive, Frankensteinian drones constanly broadcast a black energy, marred with tactile corrosive noises and synthetic twitches which could only be made by the same anaglog technology of Bianchi's classic recordings. So until those aforementioned albums come back in print yet again, Psychoneurose holds its own as a worthy substitute.” [Aquarius]
€13.00
Daas
"The tracks on "Daas" have been carefully picked to form a provoking, haunting journey. What the tracks have in common is a sense of nostalgic graininess. As with the music of Philip Jeck, The Caretaker or William Basinski, these tracks are full of degrading melodies and dusty ambience. 'Daas' is the previously unreleased opening track of the album, and features contributions by the great Richard Skelton. 'Flotter', 'Koploop' and 'Grom' were previously available on small run self released EPs, while 'Onkruid' was a track previously released on 'A Room Forever', as an expensive and extremely limited 12" boxset. All are now brought to a wider audience. Presented in a matt laminate digipak." [label info]
"Next album comes from a project that also saw the daylight in 2004 just like aforementioned from Fire In The Head, though this is one of the few things in common between those two projects. Expressively we move right to the opposite side of the sound spectre here. Machinefabriek is a Dutch project from the Rotterdam-based sound artist Rutger Zuydervelt. The composer began his sonic explorations as a young boy taking lessons in piano and guitar but after that he went to the Art Academy of Arnhem, probably giving him the artistic and abstract approach to composing. Machinefabriek's music combines elements of ambient, modern classical, drone, noise and field recordings. His latest album titled "Daas" is an excellent piece of experimental ambient. There is a trend in the ambient world to combine the sound of ambience with modern classical, but in many cases the two styles do not melt and therefore doesn't float as one whole. Machinefabriek manage to integrate the acoustic elements into the digital spheres with a hauntingly beautiful end-result. Everyone interested in ambient music should keep an eye on this one." [NM/Vital Weekly]
€12.00
Annex
"In architecture, an annex is an extension to a main building. Likewise, the pieces on this mini CD complement and supplement the approaches that Marcus Maeder presented in his latest work titled subsegmental. Here, too, the musical pieces are composed of very short sound segments reproduced at such low speed as to stretch out and form vast soundscapes. Maeder processes and shapes this acoustic topography, giving it a distinctive, surreal quality and populating it with strange beings and events. Those who enter the annex are confronted with highly suggestive soundscapes featuring objects springing out of the inaudible realm of darkness to form a cosmos of micro-events, only to escape perception again, like a ghostly presence brushing past in the dark. Marcus Maeder is a sound artist and composer. He studied Art at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Lucerne and is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Philosophy at the University of Hagen. Maeder runs the music label domizil, which he co-founded in 1996 with Bernd Schurer. He has worked as an editor and producer for the Swiss radio station DRS and has been working as a curator at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology of the Zurich University of the Arts since 2005. His artistic work focuses mainly on computer music and the artistic and media extensions of the term. As an author, Maeder has written on a number of topics in the fields of sound art and digital media." [label info]
www.domizil.ch
"Earlier today I was not at home, but in a friends house waiting for something. The weather was hot, and I lay down on his couch. In my bag was ‘Annex’ by Marcus Maeder, and I decided to play it. Around the house there was a lot of activity of people constructing a new house on one side (or perhaps putting an annex to it?) and on the other side motorized objects doing gardening work. Maeder’s music wasn’t very loud on, but it merged wonderful with the sounds coming from outside, even with all the windows closed. I fell asleep. Later on, now, I am at home again, listening again to ‘Annex’ in a more quiet surrounding of early evening (windows open). I am to understand that this work is an extension (for that is what an ‘annex’ is, in an architectural sense) of ‘Subsegmental’ (see Vital Weekly 702). I am not sure if Maeder draws from the same sounds as on ‘Subsegmental’, but he uses ‘very short sound segments reproduced at such low speed as to stretch out and form vast soundscapes’ – I
couldn’t have this any better myself. The four pieces (sixteen minutes in total) emerge on the near silence, especially ‘Plateau’ is very quiet, much alike the eleven pieces on ‘Subsegmental’. Perhaps without many differences between this one and that one, but its simply beautiful stuff. Maybe its too early to play this music and I should wait until full darkness has set in, but its tranquility is simply great as it is." [FdW, Vital Weekly]
€8.00
Borgata
"A brutal murder was committed in Ostia beach near Rome on 2 November 1975. A car ran over a man, turned around and repeated the act. Pier Paolo Pasolini was the victim. The murderer was found and confessed to murdering Pasolini. However, later on, he claimed he was forced to do it. They threatened they would kill his family otherwise. Them naturally being the cops. Since the truth emerged only several years after closing the case, the majority linked the death of the famous society figure, poet, essayist and filmmaker with his outrageous movie “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom”.
A friend of Pier Paolo stated that Paolo had been going to Ostia beach to meet some strangers who had stolen some rolls of “Salò”. A few bloodied fragments of the script were found in the pocket of Paolo’s jacket. More specifically, this was a leather folder containing a few bloodied pages. The murder case was investigated by a team of three detectives. And a strange thing happened then. One of the detectives stuck to a completely different version of the murder than the rest. He blurted it out to the media saying that “everything is much more complicated than someone’s trying to make it appear”. He was removed from the case by the authorities and subsequently disappeared. After a while the case was forgotten by the media.
However, fifteen years later, Sergio Citti, the aforementioned friend of Paolo, told Paolo’s biographer, a journalist, that he was the only one who could actually disclose the actual circumstances of Paolo’s death. He recalled that a stranger came to his door introducing himself as a detective on Paolo’s case. The man looked deeply stressed, handed Sergio some pages of notes pointing out that they contained information on the cause of Paolo’s violent death. Without saying a further word the man left. Later Sergio saw the man’s photo on TV news. They announced that a police officer was missing. Sergio was shocked by this and threw himself into reading the notes. These were pages torn out from the diary, indicating that the writer was the officer of the special commission investigating the circumstances of Paolo’s death. He was called to recognise the body in the site of crime. He found a leather folder in the pocket of Paolo’s jacket. Some of the pages were missing, others were sunken with blood. The words in capitals on the folder said “The Third Secret of Fatima”. In the middle of the folder there was a clear text fragment with words “Bring me some wine, La Popessa. In a second, Sir”. The following text was illegible because of the blood stain half page large. Then one could read “Pope Pius XII feels sick. He is short of breath. He attempts to sit down, lowers his feet from the bed onto the floor but lacks any strength to stand up. La Popessa blows out the candles and leaving the Pope’s bedroom closes the door behind her”. The next pages were evidently torn out. The following page contained Scene No. 57, “A horrible stench pervaded the Pope’s death venue, while his face was morbidly pallid. As a doctor, I recognised the classic aftermath of tasting the cup of the Borgia”. No more text ensued. All the following pages, except the last one, were torn out. And THE LAST one was empty. The diary-author recollected that standing in this murder site he came to realise that someone in an awful hurry was terribly reluctant to let anyone see the content of the folder.
Sergio read the entire diary of the detective. He had a clear idea what folder was meant. Once Paolo had mentioned to him that the shock caused by “Salò” was nothing in comparison to the fiery response his next film “The Third Secret of Fatima” would receive. He also hinted that the script covered not only the past, but also the future. The events shown in the film had indeed taken place in the past, and were meant to make the audience realise the horrible things awaiting them in the future. During their last meeting, Paolo hinted he was meeting someone important and, before closing the door, winked saying a strange thing – “Just remember the Satan entered Vatican in 1972”. The next day Sergio received a call from the police and leant the horrible news that Paolo had been brutally murdered. Sergio was invited to recognise the body. It was Paolo. Later on, Sergio was questioned about his last meeting with Paolo and the details he could remember.
Sergio provided Paolo’s biographer with more details of the diary of the missing detective and the information that he remembered from the TV reports. They said nothing unusual had been found at the detective’s place. All things were where they belonged. The detective’s garments were lying nicely folded in wardrobes and drawers. The money found in the place made the police think the detective could not have been gone away. The only suspicious thing was the diary put open on the desk. All pages were missing, except the last one. And that was empty. A glass of water knocked down next to the diary perhaps implied a scene of rush or drama.
Sergio then assumed that the stranger and the missing detective were one and the same person and the pages came from that same diary. The torn out pages contained the detective’s notes and assumptions, as well as other interesting and important details of the investigated case. The detective wrote that the name of the script found in the pocket of the filmmaker’s jacket - “The Third Secret of Fatima” - caught his attention. He did some investigation whether the murder was somehow connected to the script. He turned for help to the Vatican Curia. In the extensive official letter the detective asked for more information on the third secret of Fatima, for he had suspicions this could have been connected to the murder of the famous filmmaker. The official response was short. It read: “We sincerely regret the demise of the famous filmmaker. However, it is not in our competency to explicate the secrets of the Divine. This is a higher reality that is not subject to the mortals”. It was signed by Paul Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican Curia and the third most powerful person in Vatican.
Later on, the detective received an anonymous letter from Vatican. The letterhead contained Vatican water marks. It read: “I am aware of your document. If you wish to find out more, please come to the specified derelict church at the given time”. The detective went to the meeting place in the dark rural site in the midst of the vineyards. The church had no doors. There was only a stone arch that looked either neglected or under reconstruction. Upon silently approaching the pulpit covered by a thick layer of dust the detective called out. He heard a hushed invitation from the pulpit to come closer. The voice agreed to reveal all known information on the condition that he will stay unknown. The detective concurred.
Then the voice told him quite a number of interesting things about the third secret of Fatima. There exists a great power, a group of interests, aware of the ancient prophecy of Tibet predicting the recurrence of maldur atai cult. They seek to prevent the said return so that the truth is not revealed. They elaborated the plan of taking over Vatican and impeding the advent of the Messiah. This long-term strategy included such tasks as replacing the white popes with the black ones from the ranks of the Jesuit Order generals. The secret document in particular stressed that a very powerful element in the form of a child had been sent to the Earth, and would play a vital role in all spheres of influence as well as coordinate and rule all political, military and shadow forces resisting the advent of the redeeming Messiah. The agents of these spheres of influence suspect that Messiah is the maldur atai cult predicted by the legend of Nepal. It is believed that a man wearing a white long robe of the Pope was seen in the third apparition in Fatima. The children who witnessed the Marian apparition were scared to death. They recounted they had seen one more man in black, huge as a gorilla. The face of the man in a white robe was deadly pallid. He said nothing. He was foaming at the mouth. The man in black uttered the following words to the children: “I will make an entrance as a child exactly five years from now, I will break all the holy seals and make the world ready for the advent of the beast. And upon my arrival I will gain confidence of the most powerful in the world”. The children were frightened to death seeing the dreary face of the tall man. They named him a “Gorilla”. For many years afterwards the appalling man stayed in the children’s dreams and they screamed “Gorilla”, “Gorilla”, “Gorilla” in their sleep. The man in the pulpit suggested the adepts of maldur atai cult had sent a sign of warning from another dimension. The third secret of Fatima might have warned the humankind about the upcoming dreadful scenario. The man also said that the events of Vatican in the last decades implied a quite a number of parallels with what was revealed in the apparition in Fatima. The year 1972 was crucial for the Holy throne. The mysterious man did provide further explanations but suggested the detective read the press. The media was brimming with the coverage of these events. They concerned a few persons associated with the illuminati, Vatican, NATO, Zionists, cocaine and banks.
The biographer asked Sergio whether he suspected that Paolo had been murdered for he had received information from unknown sources about the global conspiracy predicted by unnatural powers and had based his film script on this information? Sergio replied that Paolo had always liked to keep to himself both his creative ideas and his lovers, who might have included the members of clergy from Vatican. However, it was obvious that these events had nothing to do with “Salò”, while – to Sergio’s regret - Paolo was not completely open. All this was somehow connected to the filmmaker’s new film titled “The Third Secret of Fatima”. It has never been made. Only after reading the fragments of the detective’s diary, Sergio drew attention to this and realised what was happening in the head of Paolo when he was leaving to meet the strangers. Furthermore, why did they try to hide so much that the Pope’s life was threatened in Fatima and that the man who disclosed the attempt was named “Gorilla”? The biographer of Paolo’s life told Sergio that he had investigated the subject of the maldur atai cult and he found it strange - or perhaps it was only a coincidence - that both the last page found in Paolo’s jacket and the last page of the diary found in detective’s house were empty. Just like the pages found in the cells of the missing maldur atai adepts in Nepal. Or at least that’s what the local legends told. Sergio replied: “It is true that the coincidence is indeed weird”.
Later the Paolo’s biography was published in small run. It contained all collected information about the death of Pier Paolo Pasolini, the filmmaker. The book titled “Borgata” did not receive a wide acclaim, although the promotion campaign and its headings loudly claimed that the book reveals the hitherto unknown circumstances of the murder of the filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, that the cause of the death is not “Salò”, but “The Third Secret of Fatima”, that the unshot movie was suppressed by reality and who killed Pier Paolo Pasolini. All these revelations made way to this book.
“Borgata”, the forth full-length album by Maldur Atai, centres on the events described in this unpopular book." [label info]
www.autarkeia.org
€12.00
Mitten im Wald
"Kommissar Hjuler & Mama Baer are well-known to the crafting art scene in Germany with their extreme live performances and sculptures/pictures they regularly exhibit.
Mama Bear's new solo release includes 3 tracks (Khmerzen 1 to 3) with very strange and dark soundtrack-ambient accompanied by crying / alienated voice overs - and on B-side the 10-minute madness "for the maincontrol" - a walk through non-existing forests. If you are into deep and scary soundscapes, this might be the right tape for you. Transparent C20-tape comes with natural object and is limited to 41 copies only." [label info]
www.voluntarywhores.de
€8.00
String Figures
Felicity Mangan's first solo vinyl LP and first release for Elevator Bath is "String Figures", a stunningly beautiful collection of tactile drones and electronic tonalities infused with natural sounds and rhythms. This is fascinating, emotionally resonant work, novel in its inventiveness and impactful in its delivery.
Created in the summer of 2024, the six pieces on "String Figures" sample and combine the resonant timbres of strings and electromagnetic textural fields with field recordings from wetlands. These elements were shaped through digital processing into polyphonic, angular assemblages.
On side A, the austere minimalism and found sounds of "Watering Device" are followed by the gorgeous drones of "Cello Figures" while "Magnetic Moss" bounces electronic tones and pulses around the stereo field. Side B kicks off with "Invisible Strings", an elegiac ambient piece, which soon leads to the poetic and moving "String Thing". The concluding "Magnet, Paper, Frog" is the perfect combination of sundry techniques, offering a superb example of Mangan's singularity.
As an album, it is a refreshingly varied yet thoroughly cohesive document. Indeed, "String Figures" is this highly unique and exciting composer's most compelling work to date and one that Elevator Bath is overjoyed to share with discerning listeners.
- - - -
Felicity Mangan is an Australian sound artist based in Berlin, Germany. She combines field recordings, electroacoustic composition, and electronic music techniques to create immersive, quasi-bioacoustic music aided by digital audio tools. Her compositions have been presented in multichannel installations, live performances, site-specific settings, and published works on labels such as Longform Editions, Mappa Editions, One Instrument, and Warm Winters, among others.
Written, produced, and mixed by Felicity Mangan
Tracks A2 and B2 contain samples of cello performed by Moritz Draheim
Track B3 contains a sample of southern leopard frogs recorded by Kevin Songer
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu at Schwebung Mastering
Lacquer cut by Andreas Lubich at Loop-O Mastering
Photography by Constanze Flamme; Layout by Colin Sheffield
https://felicitymangan.bandcamp.com/album/string-figures
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Felicity Mangan’s String Figures is an immersive exploration of field recordings, electronic textures, and string timbres, blending natural sounds from wetlands with lush, slowly evolving drones and quasi-bioacoustic compositions. Across six pieces, she transforms subtle environmental cues—water, frogs, moss, and children at play—into meditative, minimalistic soundscapes that range from austere elegance to rich, enveloping resonance.
In this beautiful collection of tactile drones and electronic tonalities infused with natural sounds and rhythms, Felicity Mangan combines field recordings, electroacoustic composition, and electronic music techniques to create immersive, quasi-bioacoustic music aided by digital audio tools. The six pieces on String Figures sample and combine the resonant timbres of strings and electromagnetic textural fields with field recordings from wetlands. She has the moon with her, by the water. From the picture it could be a pond or slow moving river, I can almost hear the slow moving water. What are she and the moon up to? Listen, so close to the water’s edge, lush in the brush and abundant sounding flora. There is a strong reflection in the water, she has a twin image. These elements were shaped through digital processing into polyphonic, angular assemblages, ranging from austere minimalism to sumptuous drones and elegiac ambience. Her compositions have been presented in multichannel installations, live performances, site-specific settings, and published works on labels such as Longform Editions, Mappa Editions, One Instrument, and Warm Winters, among others.
Still your mind. Starting with an emphasis on field recordings which are enhanced, to become a classic EM Kosmiche drama, and growing from one long note from each member of the orchestra. The blending elements slightly wag and wave, tugging at all of the harmonics. Always a sumptuous ambience and quasi-bioacoustics, simple electronic poetics leveraged with the recording arts and deploying a variety of instrumental sounds. Consistently minimal in approach, with long sustained drone style tones, each track slowly fades in and slowly fades out.
Side A: Kids are playing behind the sound of lawn sprinklers, juxtaposing austere minimalism and found sounds. I am attracted to the phasing patterns between several sprinklers. “Watering Device” (7:20) emerges very slowly, a low tone, a buzz, warm and sinister. Refreshing and wet from hissing, I could find no spills or drips, just kids playing in splashes. There is an ominous hum too. Here come the warm jets, with wind in the distance. “Cello Figures” (8:44) contains samples of cello performed by Moritz Draheim, zillions of tiny cellos playing one note, odd field recording of a dark tunnel and a squeaky toy being finessed into subtle barking squeaks, from within a shifting sandy cloud of bowed sounds drone style. These shifting clouds of sand are becoming stronger, they sort of swell and then diminish and then swell again, blending as time goes by. The richness increases like melted butter spreading over my ears dripping and getting into the deepest delicious places, disguised gorgeous drones.
Deep dark bubbly “Magnetic Moss” (6:24) bounces electronic tones and pulses around the stereo field, a dark monotone boogie with a jittery low tone. In the natural world, it might be assumed that moss does not do much, it persists and constantly slowly grows, filled with tiny stringy chaos, magnetic pulls or pushes or nothing at all, and moss would be on the forest floor. Clearly magnetic moss is different. Dodging and weaving, the action is to just bubble away, a short wave radio in a wet cave, a loose beat, a grand bubbling boogie flow with textures." [Igloo Mag.]
€22.50
Exit
"Being a part of the alternative scene since more than 15 years past, Magnus Zetterberg's Manifesto has created a trademark of bleak and dark electronica, industrial textures and blackened ambient that satisfies a diverse taste of listening with it's manifold expression. Catching up with this act in 2008, in connection with the release of the album Core, the label found it only natural to get in touch again. Since then, Manifesto has released material on such labels as Silken Tofu and Bone Structure (to mention a few) and played live across northern Europe.
Exit is the finalization of four years of transformative work where turbulence, creation and re-creation sets the thematics. The entering track unfolds existence as elusive and impermanent and onwards the harsh sides of reality push us towards entropy." [label info]
ralignment.tictail.com
"Manifesto is the solo project of Swede Magnus Zetterberg who has been issuing material under this name since 2000. Having previously released a series of albums, splits, live recordings and ep’s, ‘Exit’ is his latest 19th release and follows 2012’s ‘Rust’ album on Silken Tofu. Sonically Manifesto deal with soundtrack styled ambient music of a darker hue (aka ‘dark ambient’ for a more straight forward genre descriptor), which also fits within the recognizable traits of such music coming from northern European spheres.
Musically speaking dank sub-orchestral drones provide the sonic bedrock, which is then augmented with a meticulous level of textual sonic detailing. The sound palate is also embedded with a high degree of mechanized tonality and jagged industrial based distortion in a few fleeting moments. Evidently Magnus has had formally trained in sound engineering and music production, with the results of this being absolutely demonstrated within the refined dark ambient approach on display. 5 tracks are featured, with each ranging from 5 to 13 minutes and which play out as variations on established dark ambient genre traits, where some pieces are dour and brooding, whilst others featuring driving and rhythmically pounding undercurrents. Yet collectively the greatest impression of ‘Exit’ is a strong ‘cinematic’ atmosphere and specifically that of a dystopian science fiction type motion picture.
Although not necessary turning the tables of what can be expected from dark ambient music in 2016, this is still a complex, diverse and enjoyable listen, to very much constitute a soundtrack to a non-existent film. Mini gate-fold cardboard sleeve rounds out the packaging." [Noise Receptor]
€12.00
Continuum Sonore part 7>14
"Maninkari, a duo hailing from France, should be a well-known one for ambient lovers. They have already released six albums on renowned labels such as Conspiracy, Neuropa or Basses Frequencies. Their influences range from classical music through jazz and free improv ending with ambient and drone. Therefore, it is not easy to classify them as a modern post-industrial electronica combo.
The duo works quite intensively. They have just prepared the second volume of their 2012 ”Continuum Sonore” album. What enchanted us about Maninkari while listening to part 7-14 ”Continuum Sonore” compostion of is their easiness in creating beautiful, but haunting melodies drowned in cinema-like atmosphere. It is not surprising as the duo have created music for films of Thomas Pantalacci. Their other advantage is varied instrumental textures. Apart from regular synthesizers and not so common persussion, they use atypical instruments, such as bodhran, viola, cimbalom, santoor. It brings them closer to the neoclassical genre. The CD is housed in an ecopak sleeve and is strictly limited to 300 copies. The cover was designed by Maninkari. ”Continuum Sonore 7>14” was mastered by Łukasz Miernik. The whole production process was overseen by Michał Porwet." [label info]
www.zoharum.com
€12.00
Obsidiana
"David Maranha, hammond organ. Z'ev, stainless steel discs, bass drum, maracas. Recorded live at zdb, Lisbon, 24 june 2010. Certain musicians names can speak for themselves, before even a note of music has been played. Their reputations proceed them, although of course there will also be those ignorant of both reputation and name. David Maranha - solo or with Osso Exotico - explores the territories opened up half a century ago by John Cale and Tony Conrad. Z'ev is the grandmaster of industrial/ tribal percussion. The fusion they create together is a magma of movement and stasis before which only legless cripples will remain motionless." [label info]
www.sonoris.org
"A meeting of minimalists, I'd say, but minimalists with a maximum output. I saw David Maranha once in concert at his organ, loud and long, and minimal, like Terry Riley on speed. Z'EV is a man to play percussion on stainless steel discs, bass drum and maracas and most his playing is minimal, letting tones do the work in the space it is played in, leading to heavy bouncing sounds. These two heavy weights plays a concert at ZDB in Lisbon on June 24 2010 and the result is this thirty-five some piece. It starts out moody and slow, silent with Z'EV playing the stainless steel discs, waving the listeners into some kind of obscure magic ritual which is about to take place. Tones bend in various directions and slowly the hammond organ on Maranha comes in and from then on things evolve in quite a natural way, but once everything is in place it no longer carries that ritualist tag, but unfolds itself as a great psychedelic piece of music. Terry Riley meets the Velvet Underground. When Z'EV picks up the maracas to play the bass drum, Maranha starts adding some fine clusters in the lower region, and both knit a very dense pattern of closely linked tones. Maybe just a bit short with a bit too abrupt ending, and next to being at the real concert, I can imagine the CD is best substitute." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€10.00
Small Hand of Bronze. 24 Poems & 14 Images
"15cm X 16cm, PAPERBACK BLACK COVER W/ SILVER INK BILINGUAL EDITION (GR/EN) ON EDITIONS FARFOULAS, ATHENS GREECE
AVAILABLE FROM ATHENS CENTRAL BOOKSTORES & SOON FROM DRONE RECORDS MAILORDER
The collection small hand of bronze, a cycle of 24 brief poems accompanied by 14 blue ink paintings, is a geometry of elements from Socrates Martinis’ personal mythology, which until now was manifested partially in his published soundworks (changing pseudonyms, titles, texts, symbols, images, sound) and in his sole performance act (Position lines within an afternoon movement, reference to the painting Girl running on a balcony by Giacomo Balla) presented at the international festival Art Athina 2009. Socrates Martinis’ writing, minimal and quite pictorial, stretches out on the surrounding space to find stable points for the Idea to be tied to, folds within and then unfolds again, in a dialectical feedback between in and out. The existent space-time and the inner atemporal scenery, as two communicating vessels, become the background of the deconstructed projection of a myth based on the archetypes of light, cyclic motion, the erotic interplay and death.
Influences which haunt the work can be traced back to the conception of atemporality, black eroticism and the mysterious sense of liberty in Marcel Duchamp’s Étant donnés, as well as in the oeuvre of Georges Bataille, to the fragmentation of the image for the sake of the absolute experience in the cubist paintings, to the depiction of motion (the spectrum) in the dynamic paintings of futurists like Giacomo Balla and Umberto Boccioni, to the sabotage of space-time and the enigma in the oeuvre of Giorgio de Chirico and to the intuitive eroticism of the surrealists." [blog info]
http://socratesmartinis.wordpress.com
€10.00
Plays Venezia
LP black vinyl // LP gold vinyl ltd. 106 hand-numbered copies // CD // Tape ltd. 100 copies
Five years ago, back in September 2016, Stefano Gentile published a photographic book entitled IL SILENZIO DEI TUOI PASSI (The Silence of Your Steps), which collected a series of 56 pictures, both in b/w and colour, dedicated to the nights in Venice. The book was a journey through the most remote "calli" and "campi" (streets, alleys and squares, as they're called in Venice) in search of the true 'breath' of the city, far away from the hordes of tourists who 'attack' it every day during daylight hours.
On such occasion, renowned musician Gigi Masin composed a 30 minutes epic ambient track entitled VENEZIA 2016 which was the perfect soundtrack to the images included in the book. The track was published on CD and released bounded with the book itself in a limited edition of 480 copies only, and has been unavailable for years now.
In 2021 Gigi Masin returned to that great piece of music and to its timeless sounds. Finally, Silentes can now offer PLAYS VENEZIA, Masin's latest work contanining a re-edited version of that 'pearl', accompanied by two unreleased tracks composed and recorded in the same period.
Once again inspired by the city, Masin created an enduring and wonderful ambient masterpiece, a sort of return to the origins, to his home. Adding to the intrinsic quality of the originals, the tracks were beautifully mastered by Brandenburg Mastering in Amsterdam.
PLAYS VENEZIA is simply an unmissable release and one of Masin's greatest accomplishment in a long carrier that never ceases to amaze us.
13.silentes.it/private_sounds/sps2143_gigi_masin_plays_venezia.htm
€20.00
Totem Two
"Echoing like a long lost Werner Herzog soundtrack Totem 2 is a record of subtle Meditations and Deep electric Hallucinations from the Crystal Caves of the Northwest to the orchestral desert portals of Turkey. Totem 2 finds MASTER MUSICIANS OF BUKKAKE exploring the disappearance of the Mystic and the schisms of our age. In times when forces move against our souls these are the first sounds of music that can only be described as NO-AGE , a resistance is making itself known. Featuring members of EARTH, ASVA, BURING WITCH, THE DIMINISHED MEN, and more and special guests from SECRET CHIEFS 3 and the thriving Istanbul music scene. MMOB has now solidified into a 7-piece cosmic psych force. Like a reverse dark side of the New Age sound, on the Totem series Master Musicians of Bukkake perform ritualistic electric excursions into the outer and inner reaches. Relying more on the electric power of psyched guitars, analog synth chants, and exotic heavy percussion. This Totem Trilogy echoes with the delusions of a west coast death cult. Outer spaced gamelan, dusty fuzz rock from celestial deserts, meditations of a deranged Krishna gathering, and the Blurry acoustic guitar majesty of The Cascade mountains all reveal themselves here in epic form." [label info]
www.importantrecords.com
€19.50
Totem Two
"Echoing like a long lost Werner Herzog soundtrack Totem 2 is a record of subtle Meditations and Deep electric Hallucinations from the Crystal Caves of the Northwest to the orchestral desert portals of Turkey. Totem 2 finds MASTER MUSICIANS OF BUKKAKE exploring the disappearance of the Mystic and the schisms of our age. In times when forces move against our souls these are the first sounds of music that can only be described as NO-AGE , a resistance is making itself known. Featuring members of EARTH, ASVA, BURING WITCH, THE DIMINISHED MEN, and more and special guests from SECRET CHIEFS 3 and the thriving Istanbul music scene. MMOB has now solidified into a 7-piece cosmic psych force. Like a reverse dark side of the New Age sound, on the Totem series Master Musicians of Bukkake perform ritualistic electric excursions into the outer and inner reaches. Relying more on the electric power of psyched guitars, analog synth chants, and exotic heavy percussion. This Totem Trilogy echoes with the delusions of a west coast death cult. Outer spaced gamelan, dusty fuzz rock from celestial deserts, meditations of a deranged Krishna gathering, and the Blurry acoustic guitar majesty of The Cascade mountains all reveal themselves here in epic form."
www.importantrecords.com
€14.50
Totem One
"Vinyl reissue of the impossible to find first release in MMOB's Totem trilogy. Edition of 1000 copies. Like a reverse dark side of the New Age sound, on the Totem series Master Musicians of Bukkake perform ritualistic electric excursions into the outer and inner reaches. Relying more on the electric power of psyched guitars, analog synth chants, and exotic heavy percussion, Totem One echoes with the delusions of a West Coast Death cult. Outer spaced Gamelan, dusty fuzz rock from celestial deserts, meditations of a deranged Krishna gathering, and the blurry acoustic guitar majesty of the Cascade mountains all reveal themselves here in epic form on Totem One. Every sound and note played was put to tape by a group with a singular purging purpose. Totem One also features Vocals by MMOB honorary member Alan Bishop of the Sun City Girls." [label info]
www.importantrecords.com
€18.50
Arkhaios
"These two new 10" releases (of LP length) lead to an area where words and rational thinking are suspended, and a connection with deeper parts of your mind begins...
JEREMIE MATHES is a French field recording artist (known for some excellent CDs on Unfathomless) living in Cambodia since some years. For "Arkhaios" he combined cavernous object drones (recorded at an abandoned factory site) with various instrumental sounds from ancient Khmer instruments (Tro u, Khim), all highly processed. You get the impression as being under the earth in a place populated by metallic amoeba or other smallest creatures, inside sewerage ducts or an deserted mine, exposed to the circulation of air...
This is the spirituality of the underworlds! "Dissolving time, space, mangling sounds collected into a simulacrum of altered realities. A oneiric junction between the concrete world and other unknown
territories." [J. Mathes]
ed. of 300 copies, black vinyl, Artwork by Stijn Deprez, based solely on pictures realised by Jérémie Mathes." [press release]
https://soundcloud.com/drone-records/jeremie-mathes-tomleiki
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"The two pieces are based on same materials s "Uunartoq Qeqertoq" for the Drone Mind Serie LP [vol 04] on Drone records, and on my album "Fallow Memory" on Unfathomless label: A coalescence of acoustic sound sources recorded in an industrial complex of abandoned factories in South of France between 2010 to 2015.
In-situ improvisations inside reverberant metal tanks, deserted warehouses that I had the possibility to infiltrate during my exploration of the site. Generating sound in these empty spaces mainly by using found objects, combined with instruments that I've brought as a Tibetan bowl, small bells, percussions, cymbal, a bow, and a violin. Capturing the inner substance, the hidden vibrant matter of various types of metallic structures, machinery, tubes, and pipes o extended my sonorous palette.
All of these elements were used exclusively in the composition of my pieces. Dissolving time, space, mangling sounds collected into a simulacrum of altered realities. A oneiric junction between the concrete world and other unknown territories. Recorded, edited and composed by Jérémie Mathes [2017/ 2018].
Artwork by Stijn Deprez, based solely on pictures realised by Jérémie Mathes." [artist info]
www.substantia-innominata.de/SUB-27.html
€15.00
To describe George Washington Bridge
"To Describe George Washington Bridge" is Stephan Mathieu's 2nd Dekorder release in the 10" format (reflecting his interest in old 78rpm records) after 2009's sold out "The Key to the Kingdom", and, we're happy to say, again it features two of the composer's most outstanding short pieces. Both are recorded utilizing similar methods as used on his most recent album "A Static Place" on 12K Records yet they are presented in an even more condensed and melodic way. As source material he used transcriptions made from the marvelous 25x 12inch 78rpm set G.F. Händel. "Twelve Concerti Grossi" performed by the Busch
Chamber Players in 1946, and a Columbia 10"
record from 1912 with Händel's usual smash hits
from "Messiah"." [label info]
www.dekorder.de
"Just as on 'The Key to the Kingdom' (reviewed in Vital Weekly 666) and 'A Static Place' (see Vital Weekly 766), this one deals with picking up sounds from old 10" records through ancient gramophones. What happens beyond that is a bit unclear (sound being picked with microphones and using spectral analysis and convolution), but no doubt some form of computer processing which stretches the material to what is perhaps now trademark Mathieu music. Very spacious music, drone like, minimal. Mathieu finds much of his inspiration in colorfield paintings (Rotkho, Newmann) and his music reflects that, I think: quite an uniform mass of sound with the slightest changes boiling on and below the surface. Yet Mathieu always knows how to add a bit of melodic shimmer to his music, which makes it move a bit out y'r standard drone music. Quite a bit. Mathieu knows how to capture a fine mood in a relative short time span, as each side last about five minutes. Very refined as usual. But I guess you didn't expect this to be objective, or let alone critical?" [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€10.00
Heroin
"Between Christmas 2000 and New Year 2001 producers Ekkehard Ehlers and Stephan Mathieu recorded an album of warm, soft, delicately crackling electronic music in the space of that week. It was christened with the ambivalent title "Heroin" and was released on CD via the label Brombron in 2001 and later in 2003 re-issued on Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork on double-LP with remixes the pair had commissioned as expansions.
17 years later Heroin sees its first vinyl release to include all 13 tracks from the original CD track-list on this LP + 12“ set. The centerpiece "Herz" finally receives its long deserved vinyl treatment (side C, at 45rpm) and on the flip side Thomas Brinkmann contributes a mirror in a magnificent remix of that very piece on side D.
Ehlers and Mathieu were both highly prolific solo artists during the period 2000-2004, and in just two years after the initial release of "Heroin" each had produced over half a dozen new solo recordings: among them the serial masterpiece Ehlers' "Plays" (Cornelius Cardew, Hurbert Fichte, John Cassavetes, Albert Ayler, Robert Johnson) released as 5 stunning LPs in a series on Staubgold, while Mathieu's 'Full Swing Edits' spread over five 10" records plus his album 'FrequencyLib' on Mille Plateaux, 'Die Entdeckung des Wetters' on Lucky Kitchen and ‘The Sad Mac’ on Atsushi Sasaki’s Headz label were greeted to critical acclaim.
Both artists were expanding their conceptual sonic approaches in the glow of developing laptop technologies which would to these times in 2020 seem quite primitive, but these two in that period used the state-of-the-art to aid and abet their conceptual visions, while at times the duo used unorthodox experimentation - yet always had a distinctively melodic and musical form at its heart and soul. Ehlers can be seen as a conceptualist, as a meta-musician who interrogates the mediums and methods of sound production - reflecting on the conditions and possibilities of improvisation (e.g. "Plays Albert Ayler") and exploits ideas of mutation and distortion of popular aesthetics played out within a ghostly form of divine pop beauty in his project März.
Mathieu, originally a drummer and co-founder of what has come to be known as the Berlin 'Echtzeitmusik' scene. His approach could be similarly described as working a critical analyst and researcher: Subtly and precisely working in the realm of processing as a method of intervening in melodious/harmonic analog sound sources.
Ehlers and Mathieu may not think too much about their singular productions and publications outcomes, but instead concentrate on the process and musical personality that characterizes their gesture- style itself stays in the background - and they usher a music from small minimal sound sources coaching a patient music of slow intervention - much like a refraction of light than a concrete painting or a blurred photograph - beatus accident.
And indeed, "Heroin" is an album that embraces the happy accident being made up of reduced, often very catchy and very direct micro hooks which seem laser-guided into a space accepting obvious melodic beauty in what feels like an observation of musics unfolding and revealing it's DNA, embed with for a kind of yearning for innocence and naiveté - as if Satie were on the jukebox in "The Crying of Lot 49". Not to say the music is "reduced", but rather: 'restricted' and born from acceptance of limitations, and the artists allowing the sounds to just "be.." with some incremental degrees of coercion.
The album not only sounds like that of 2 producers who are both dreamers and scientists, but that Ehlers and Mathieu chose to work with these means in a dialogue together to reduce pop music to its musical/tonal core, it is not Pop music anymore, rather a ghostly pointilistic itteration of song. "Heroin" is located at this transition, around that point at which tracks, that were or could have become pop compositions, irrevocably slip into a static harmonic nirvana. We are invited to follow the arch of Heroin in a slow-motion morphine musical haze.
Heroin sounded timeless when originally released and proof is that it remains so, one wishes that Ehlers and Mathieu would convene again for a week, a month or an entire year to continue this process of slow rumination, picking affectionately over the sounds they both love - and then maybe when everything is condensed, evaporated they would write more songs with those sonic refractive elements that remain.
Remastered by Stephan Mathieu, March 2020. Vinyl cut by Lupo @ Loop_O. Design by Caro Mikalef for Cabina."
https://schwebung.bandcamp.com/album/heroin
€26.00
Still a slapper
KAFFE MATTHEWS ist wieder da mit puren Frequenz-Modulationen und minimalen pulsierendem elektronischem „Fuzz“, spannend arrangiert erinnert das an Releases aus der „material series“ von Staalplaat... superb !
“Kaffe Matthews is well known for her improvisational work with either electronics alone or combined with acoustic instruments. Her use of LiSa, live sampling software, makes her able to work with minimum input. A 30 sec. microphone recording on location should be enough for a whole live-set.... and it is. These two 7"-es contain 4 tracks and are to be heard as a set. Matthews starts with an atmospheric track consisting of not much more
than simple tones, which hardly go above a few simple sine waves... but then again also not. The typical full and pulsating sound she produces makes that these simple tones are part of a wide spectrum of atmospehers, arranged in such a way that she actually doesn't need much more than tones to tell her story. The following 2 tracks ("a" and "slapper") show her talent for making the unsynchronised followable. Both these tracks live on an unstable heartbeat so to say, but nevertheless with a convincing rhythm/groove. Although a short track, "a" has a complete build-up. Repetition of elements over a calm stream of lower tones give this track a subtle drive and atmosphere. "Slapper" crackles furthur in a very energetic way, turn up the volume I suggest. Again this hard to follow beat, but steady enough to give you some sense of a tempo and the accompanying tapping foot. The last track returns to the world of overtones but in a more unsettling way, a good track to leave you behind a bit puzzled but also reassured and to make the circle complete.” [press-release]
€10.00
Lisa Says
"LP clear vinyl 33 rpm
release date: 18.09.2012
artists: MATTIN & RICHARD FRANCIS
title: Lisa Says
order no.: aatp38
time: ca. 50 min
sleeve designed by Richard Francis, comes with text insert. Clear vinyl 300
handnumbered copies.
On “Lisa Says”: This LP captures the first transcontinental collaboration between artists
Mattin and Richard Francis with sounds recorded in Stockholm, Berlin and Auckland, NZ. The mixdown portrays the current state of affairs in composed noise: filtered gritty sound blocks flow and float with no seeming direction
when sudden breaks puncture the structure and create something like a melody. Well, almost. The music is accompanied by a text insert that
documents a skype conversation between the two artists discussion the methods and aesthetics connected to this release and their ways of working in general.
Mattin Bio www.mattin.org
Mattin is a Basque artist working with noise and improvisation. His work seeks to address the social and economic structures of experimental music production through live performance, recordings and writing. Using a
conceptual approach, he aims to question the nature and parameters of improvisation, specifically the relationship between the idea
of “freedom” and constant innovation that it traditionally implies, and the established conventions of improvisation as a genre. Mattin considers improvisation not only as an interaction between musicians and instruments,
but as a situation involving all the elements that constitute a concert, including the audience and the social and architectural space. He tries to expose the stereotypical relation between active performer and passive
audience, producing a sense of strangeness and alienatio in that disturbs this relationship.
Richard Francis Bio www.richardfrancis.net.nz
Richard Francis has been releasing works on CD/vinyl, performing solo and in collaboration as a touring artist since 1996. He uses field recordings of acoustic and electronic sounds and a tone generator to compose sound works.
He has released solo and collaborative music on a number of labels worldwide and runs his own label CMR through which he releases limited edition lathe cut records by New Zealand artists. In performance he uses a computer and electronics and has toured Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, USA and Europe. Since 2003, Francis has composed works for sound installation, participating in group and solo shows at galleries throughout New Zealand. He has collaborated for recording and
performance with many artists, and has had recent published collaborative CDs with Jason Kahn (USA/Swiss) and Francisco Lopez (Spain). Collaborations for recording and/or performance: Bruce Russell, Francisco Lopez, Jason Kahn, Mattin, Birchville Cat Motel, Gate, MSBR, Tetuzi Akiyama, Lawrence English, Rosy Parlane, Howard Stelzer, Jason Lescalleet, Jay Sullivan, Empirical, Pumice, Kuwayama Kiyoharu, Phil Dadson, Anthony Guerra, Sean
Meehan, Ishigami Kazuya, Antony Milton, James Kirk, MHFS, Tim Coster, Paul Winstanley, Takefumi Naoshima, Toshihiro Koike." [label info]
"A project in two parts, one the actual music, as recorded on July 3 2008 in Berlin and one the conversation as a piece of text from August 31 2011 in which Richard Francis and Mattin talk about the recording from three years before, about their methods of working together but also with others. A fascination they have in common is about white and pink noise, and sustaining those sounds. It's an interesting text to read, as it clears up some interesting things but it's not entirely necessary to read the text to like the music I should think. The buzzing, cracking and sustaining sound, which sometimes hoovers closely above the threshold of hearing, reminds the listener of your ventilator or heater buzzing, or the faint noises from afar late at night. If I understand right, this record is for Francis an end to the way he working and for Mattin the start of a new working method, a more conceptual approach if you will. This record contains some very minimal music, with very few sound elements, but are fascinating to hear. Crackles of vinyl (not from the pressing), field recordings very remotely humming and the white/pink noise slowly washing ashore and moving away. All of this in a very quiet and contemplating way. If you think Mattin is all about noise then you should surely try this record for a change. Maybe this is more what you would expect from somebody like Richard Francis, but this is a great improvised electronic record. Excellent head space music." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
www.aufabwegen.com
€13.00
Dimensional Stardust
Marfa TX-based multidisciplinary abstractivist Rob Mazurek has made an indelible impact on creative music over the past 30 years. Emerging from the musical nexus of the 1990s Chicago scene, he’s written more than 400 compositions and is featured on more than 70 recordings (including International Anthem’s very first, IARC0001, "Alternate Moon Cycles"). He’s led or co-led many ensembles – including the Chicago Underground (Duo, Trio, Quartet & Orchestra), Isotope 217 (alongside members of Tortoise), Pharoah and the Underground (feat. Pharoah Sanders), Alien Flower Sutra (with Emmett Kelly), São Paulo Underground (his primary working group across his time in Brazil), and a duo with Jeff Parker – each of which possesses its own distinct musical personality.
While Mazurek’s solo work as a musician expands from cornet, piano, and piccolo trumpet studies to embody musique concrete and electronic experimentation, his composition for large ensemble reveals an intuitive sense of scale. Commissioned by the Chicago Cultural Center and the Jazz Institute of Chicago in 2005 to assemble a group representing the diversity of the city’s contemporary avant-garde, Mazurek amassed a 14-piece ensemble and began composing music for what became his Exploding Star Orchestra (ESO). Including musicians from the often-segregated communities of Chicago’s North, South, and West sides – from his long-time collaborators in Tortoise’s expansive orbit, to Great Black Music luminaries from the hallowed AACM, to free jazz revivalists from the Umbrella Music group – ESO debuted in the urban epicenter of Chicago’s Millennium Park and, shortly after, went into John McEntire’s Soma Studios to record "We Are All From Somewhere Else" (Thrill Jockey, 2007). By the time of "Galactic Parables Vol. 1," ESO’s 2015 triple LP release on Cuneiform Records, Mazurek reflected to Pop Matters that "Exploding Star Orchestra is the conceptual, compositional and philosophical center of all my work... a life star of musical, visual and conceptual ideas."
In 2018, JazzFest Berlin curator Nadin Deventer invited Mazurek to present a new iteration of ESO with musicians based in Berlin as well as Chicago. Meeting the commission with the boundless ambition characteristic of his artistic approach, he imagined a jubilee of fifteen musicians and improvisers, true to ESO’s ethos in their widely diverse backgrounds and voices, but more tightly arranged around his intricate compositions than ever before. Summoning an array of symphonic studies – from Béla Bartók to Morton Feldman to Gil Evans to Sun Ra to Pedro Santos to Bill Dixon to The Art Ensemble of Chicago – in an ecstatic and wholly original program, Mazurek’s November 2018 debut at Berliner Festspiele marked a new pinnacle in his distinction as a composer and conductor of Contemporary Music. “Mazurek’s arrangements burst in colors, making synesthetes of us all,” wrote Paul Acquaro in a review of the concert for Free Jazz Collective.
When Mazurek returned to Chicago in Summer 2019, International Anthem took the opportunity to capture his new ESO compositions with a cast of collaborators from their collective constellation of artists. Over a handful of studio dates between August 2019 and March 2020, Mazurek channeled his arrangements through 11 musicians – Nicole Mitchell, Jeff Parker, Jaimie Branch, Joel Ross, Mikel Patrick Avery, Tomeka Reid, Chad Taylor, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Macie Stewart, Angelica Sanchez, and John Herndon – and commissioned his long-time lyrical collaborator Damon Locks to draft original texts for each of the titles and record vocal tracks. After three months of rigorous post-production, editing and assembly work, in June 2020 Mazurek completed his culminating new collection of ESO recordings: "Dimensional Stardust."
"Dimensional Stardust" showcases the intricacy and complexity of Mazurek’s compositions but in their most potent, most compacted forms. Opting to focus on tight ensemble orchestration over passages of open improvisation, Mazurek distills a maximal orchestra of explosive improvisers into a beautifully restrained, graceful group exercise in melodic minimalism. The album features almost no “soloist” moments, excepting Jeff Parker’s other-worldy guitar meltdown on “The Careening Prism Within,” and when Nicole Mitchell’s flute floats to the front of the barrage on “Sun Core Tet.” Mazurek himself is sparsely present as instrumentalist, only occasionally joining the ensemble with his piccolo trumpet (notably on “Parable 3000,” where he shares leads with Mitchell’s flute and Joel Ross’s vibraphone, and his trills and textures haunt ghostly around Jaimie Branch’s trumpet counterpoint). Even Damon Locks’s voice is employed more like an ensemble instrument than a lead vocalist. Locks’ distinctively dry, abstract narrative flow beams in intermittently – sounding almost like fragments of Deltron 3030 through an Orson Wells-style radio transmission – climaxing in the album-closing poetry of “Autumn Pleiades.” And all the way through, the electro-acoustic poly-rhythmic percussion section (Chad Taylor, Mikel Patrick Avery, and John Herndon) churns, thrusting the music forward as the harmonic instruments collectively bow between frenzied, futurist chromaticism and soaring, pan-humanist pentatonic anthems.
Somehow swirling the most adventurous elements of avant-garde jazz and contemporary classical into the most universal attractors of pop music, the cosmic opera of "Dimensional Stardust" is a pure spiritual extension of Exploding Star Orchestra’s unifying ethos, and a new peak in the prolific creative career of Rob Mazurek.
***"Dimensional Stardust" is the second album co-released by the North & South American partnership of International Anthem & Nonesuch Records, following Jeff Parker's early 2020 release, "Suite For Max Brown." International Anthem & Nonesuch Records are slated to co-release at least 6 titles over 3 years, details on future albums TBA. Outside of North and South America, these albums are marketed & distributed by K7 Records.***
Rob Mazurek - director, composer, piccolo trumpet, electronic renderings, modular synth
Damon Locks - voice, electronics, texts
Nicole Mitchell - flutes
Macie Stewart - violins
Tomeka Reid - cellos
Joel Ross - vibraphone
Jeff Parker - guitar
Jaimie Branch - trumpet
Angelica Sanchez - acoustic piano, electric piano
Ingebrigt Håker Flaten - bass
Chad Taylor - drums, percussion
Mikel Patrick Avery - drums, percussion
John Herndon - drum machines
https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/dimensional-stardust
€26.00
Injya
" “Sometimes, the impossible is a basket of new unlikely seeds – realizing the geographical difficulty of working in unison on the same site, we opted for using at least common geologic context, not knowing where this could lead us…
What could come indeed out of distance, sensory communion, a mutual love for depicting the relief of things, its tactility ?…perhaps as with the best abstraction, a fertilizing stream, something perhaps larger than what the initial elements could have implied…something surprising even to us…
“Injya” is the encounter of our combined wanderings, and most probably the emergence of an imaginary entity powerful enough to engage us in a strange way…”(James McDougall/layout by Daniel Crokaert)" [label info]
www.unfathomless.net
"Both of these artists can be regarded as 'new kids' on the block of field recordings, coming to the foreground in recent years with a plethora of releases on labels as Sentient Recognition Archive, U-Cover, Dataobscura, Test Tube, Resting Bell and Mystery Sea - the latter doing a solo release by both of them. On their subdivision Unfathomless they have a collaborative disc of music, based on field recordings made in their own locale (the Akigawa Valley/Otake Limestone Caves, Japan in Sasajima's case and The D'Aguilar Mountain Range, North West of Brisbane, Australia in McDougall's case) and then 'equally developed'. 'The sensitive issue of not occupying the same token sites was acknowledged and it was opted instead for a common geologic context' - whatever that means. Its a release that has some questions: for instance: is there any processing and if so to which extent? How does this collaboration work anyway? Are recordings from both locations simply played together, or has there been any kind of mixing going on? Its all not easy to say. I think there has been some form of processing, mainly just EQ-ing, bringing out more high or low end frequencies, especially in the third and fourth pieces. Also I think that in all four pieces they have searched for specific characteristics of the provided sounds and set them together, with some extent of mixing. I also kept thinking: why should I bother thinking of what they did or didn't do: these four pieces are very good, a culmination of field recordings that, once together, make great sense. Not minimal, hardly changing music, but vibrant, always on the move, full of tension, evocative and beautiful. Excellent, if not always the most original, but that is perhaps quite hard." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€14.00
I throw the Switches on the Midnight Snake
https://unfathomless.bandcamp.com/album/i-throw-the-switch-on-the-midnight-snake
[ante-scriptum/preface by Lucas Schleicher, June 2024, Buffalo, NY]
The first time I read Zeno of Elea’s paradox of motion, my only response was disbelief. I stood up, walked across the room, and, faster than any tortoise could manage, picked another book from my bag. If motion is an illusion, I thought, it’s a tangible one, and I have to contend with its details even if I am deluded about them. Zeno’s example of the arrow that never moves doesn’t keep an arrow from anyone’s chest and I am always more tired after running a mile than I am walking down the street for a coffee. I was more than a little arrogant.
Years later, after my temperament cooled, I found myself appreciating Zeno more. His argument hadn’t become any more convincing, but the responses he had elicited from other philosophers and mathematicians made the world seem even stranger and more fantastic than the frozen one he had tried to defend. What if, in order to solve Zeno’s paradoxes, we have to accept that time is indivisible? What if, therefore, motion cannot be incrementally examined? What if space itself makes no sense in discrete chunks? Listening now to Christopher McFall’s work, I’m reminded of these perplexing theories and I have the good fortune to wonder alongside him at the bottomlessness of space and time.
McFall’s music is haunted by both. Music and time are inseparable in a trivial sense, but I Throw The Switch On The Midnight Snake accentuates the way time moves through a place, like a ball through the air. It is composed of minutes and seconds, but its subject matter is measured in eons. Even when familiar sounds roll to the surface and evoke photographic sensations, the effect of McFall’s arrangements dilates them so that they encompass the long parade of trains, cars, cattle, money, and people that passed through the East and West Bottoms of Kansas City, Missouri yesterday and 50,000 yesterdays ago. His subjects congregate together in a subterranean hum that percolates with memories and signs of World War 2, abandoned stock yards, distilleries, electric promenades, and flooded rivers; with the sound of insects, the reverberation of concrete tunnels, and the biting clank of steel on steel. The resonance of the industrial world echoes through his work, and so does something more personal. An active listener might hear a repetition of the home they grew up in, or stories their family told them about moving to a new place, or even the sound of a loved one’s voice. Listening to the album now, I can’t help but smell my grandfather’s workshop at night; the oil he used to polish his tools and the kerosene lingering in his collection of globe lanterns are as present to me at 42 as they were at 12. The connection is unintentional, but it’s buried in the layers of architecture, geology, history, industry, and technology that lie undivided in our collective memories and private lives. McFall digs into the refuse of Kansas City’s past and a thousand miles east I’m reminded of a clothbound book filled with photos of Native American art sitting on an old wooden desk covered with brass keys and paper. Movement is real, and it happens even when our bodies are at rest.
For the consequences of Zeno’s paradoxes to be true, for motion and change to be errors of the mind, our power to stop and segment the world must be real. I must be able to examine this street in this country in this hemisphere, at this minute and second, with the stars at fixed points in the sky, and analyze its every detail accurately. I must be able to break time into its smallest parts, order it in a logical sequence, and use that arrangement of events to predict what will come next. There is a sense in which I have to stand outside the world in order to master it. I Throw The Switch On The Midnight Snake neither succumbs to nor encourages such delusions. Instead, McFall’s music points to the power of memory and the uninterrupted present in our understanding of place and time. We move through our lives because we are swept up in eternity, and some of our most precious comforts come in meeting others who have been carried away too, but still found peace in the flow. Zeno was wrong. Motion isn’t an illusion, but time is, and the life we encounter is always with us now, even when it has disappeared over the horizon. McFall heard its movements in Kansas City. Wherever you might be, you can hear it too.
Listen.
~
"I Throw The Switch On The Midnight Snake" was created from field recordings captured along several train lines that transverse the Kansas City East Bottoms, Missouri, USA. These particular locations are unique because some of the trains routed through these areas make temporary stops to change conductors and/or conduct maintenance operations. Others, however, pass by uninterrupted and continue down the rails at full-speed.
In this instance, the velocity of each train is notably distinct along with the character of sounds that accompany it, which makes these locations ideal for procuring a great range of recording content.
I feel like the release captures what I'm wanting to say, in and of itself. Everyone will experience it in different ways, in their own minds.
Maybe the entire process defers to the need for escapism. (Christopher McFall, June/July 2024)
LOCATIONS : East and West Bottoms of Kansas City, USA.
This work consists of layered and manipulated field recordings taken from several train yards and sourced between the Fall of 2023 and Spring of 2024.
These works are in loving memory of the composer H. Stewart.
May God and peace be with her, as she is greatly missed.
Cover, card design + treatments by Daniel Crokaert.
Based exclusively on photos by Christopher McFall.
€14.00
56:24
Filed under: polyphonic power-drones! Griechisches Projekt mit einem sonoren Drone one-tracker, der an HAFLER TRIO oder NIBLOCK erinnert, Obertöne überschlagen und überlagern sich wellenartig, das ganze wird allmählich immer lauter und massiver in einem fast unmerkliches Crescendo, das furios anschwillt, zum Ende hin gewinnen die Drones eine schon unangenehmen Druck & Präsenz ! Intensiv und definitiver TIP!
“...as if a garden being planted and you are watching all the process from the bare earth to the colourful result, comes “56:24”... generating a drone layer which slowly starts the cultivation process where layers upon layers slowly build a delicate atmosphere and the way they expand and grow draws an even more colourful result, as if a swarm of insects spreads the pollen in our garden, helping it grow even more beautiful and even more colourful, lasting in a flabbergasting droning result... or at least, such was the atmosphere last march in Halandri where Yiorgis Sakellariou (aka Mecha-Orga) premiered this piece for us. And it was John Pallas, who by the time the set ended proposed absurd the cd release and didn't leave until we 3 shook hands... such also was our life in our 2006, like a fertile garden, with lots of releases and trips here and there, always ending with our occasional meetings at cafe Amarrylis in Kifissia for coffee (Mecha-Orga) & Shitloads of alcohol (absurd) or at “Varsos Kifissia” to enjoy our sweets & cofee (Mecha-Orga), hot-cold chocolate (absurd). and as a friend wondered of how the future will look like, we thought nice to picture Mecha-Orga on the cd's front cover sleeve, as a middle aged man, thinking of how he'll create his next piece-live set and a grey haired absurd on the cd label, probably in a meeting w-someone to discuss an upcoming release or project in one of editions_zero's side-ghost labels, book publishing houses, etc etc etc... comes highly recommended if you fancy instant trips to colourful droning soundgardens!!!” [Nicolas Malevitsis]
"The name Mecha/orga keeps popping up in Vital Weekly and though not entirely a household name, it should be one, at least some day. His new CD could be of great help to achieve this. Mecha/orga is the name chosen by Yiorgis Sakellariou from Greece, who works since time under this guise (and plays regular music as well under various other guises and in various other capacities). The work, indicated by it's length, was created one afternoon in february last year, and played live there after a couple of time. No bullshitting about. The length becomes the title, and the listener can come up with his or her own story. Mecha/orga plays drone music. On a laptop. How much more simple can it get? Or rather does it have to be complex? No it doesn't. Over the course of the fifty-six minutes and twenty-four seconds Yiorgis Sakellariou plays a slowly unfolding piece of drone music, which seems to be growing in intensity throughout. When you think nothing more can be added, he adds another layer. And another. And another. Most suitable to play in the dark, at night and ghostly activities will surely occur. Or during the day, outside and watching plants grow. Multi-purpose music, I'd say. Great stuff. Powerful music." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
www.void.gr/absurd
€13.00
Kapnos
"In 2003 Maurizio Bianchi and Matteo Uggeri / Hue met through Afe Records; three years later Maurizio asked Matteo for a musical collaboration, which grew up quickly under the design of a long term project called "Between the Elements", a sort of music transposition of concepts that lies in the empty spaces between the natural elements, which are over-abused terms in the New Age music scene.
Two albums were published in 2008: one about the concept of "clouds" ("Nefelodhis", by MB and the post-rock band Sparkle in Grey) and one about the concept of "desert" ("Erimos", by MB with Hue and Luca Bergero / Fhievel).
One year later, the third chapter entitled "Kapnos" – Greek for "smoke" - is finally available. The industrial master contributes to back notes and concept, but keeps his hands far from the musical matter, leaving it to the expertise of ten of the most interesting experimental musicians of the Italian scene, united under the cryptic name of Meerkat.
The Meerkat ensemble is formed by a group of musicians working in the field of experimental music, drones, microsounds and field recordings: Adriano Zanni / Punck, Matteo Uggeri / Hue, Luca Sigurtà, Luca Bergero / Fhievel, Davide Valecchi / Aal, Andrea Ferraris / Ics, Fabio Selvafiorita, Paolo Ippoliti (Logoplasm), Laura Lovreglio (Logoplasm) and Andrea Marutti / Amon / Never Known.
The tracks on "Kapnos" present a surprising homogeneity in spite of the different attitudes of the artists, which mixed their experiences in each track creating new unforeseen connections, working in pairs or in threesome on each track.
The Meerkat members also joint their efforts releasing the CD, which is in fact published by Afe (Andrea Marutti), Grey Sparkle (Matteo Uggeri), Nighthawks Tapes (Paolo Ippoliti) and Ctrl+Alt+Canc (Adriano Zanni).
Under these premises, "Kapnos" represents an unique effort in the swarming Italian music scene of the '00s." [label info]
"...The music is excellent - a fine mixture of styles and interests from these guys. All the elements one would expect are there, the field recordings, drones, ambience, microscopic detailed sounds. Great stuff here." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
www.aferecords.com
€12.00
We are none of us
"Francisco Meirino (Phroq) & Dave Phillips (Schimpfluch Gruppe) have collaborated on this extremely dynamic electro-acoustic studio album. Through meticulous arrangement of electronics, processed sound and field recordings they create a dark and unsettling audio narrative. 'We Are None of Us' exemplifies these two masters at the best of their craft. This 2xLP version contains 2 additional tracks not included on the CD and comes with download card for bonus live track, a recording of their full performance at Ertz Festival, Bera, Spain, 11 sept. 2010. Released in a limited edition of 200 copies." [label info]
www.misanthropicagenda.com
€29.00
Focus on Nothing on Focus
"A unique work stemming from a studio collaboration between Francisco Meirino and Kiko C. Esseiva. Using the same source material each artist composed one side of the LP. Assembled in 2012 and 2013 from hours of multitrackrecordings using reel-to-reel tape recorders, emf detectors, piezo transducers, analogue synths and various homemade sound objects. Discover, compare, enjoy the work of these two sound artists ! High Quality 180g Vinyl with excellent sound - not at least due to the cut done by Flo Kaufmann. Numbered edition of 300 copies." [label info]
www.aussenraumrecords.com
"Whether it’s relevant or not I don’t know, but immediately before listening to Focus on Nothing on Focus by Francisco Meirino and Kiko C. Esseiva in order to make notes for the final review, I watched a documentary about Joy Division. The record is a 12″ vinyl black void with a black label which you might think is a precursor to the abyssal darkness contained within. In fact after Joy Division’s bleak visions born of greyscale Manchester streets steeped in rain and the bedroom’s so cold, you turn away on your side, it was a relief to enjoy some movement, vibration and a surprising selection of fleeting semi-colours.
four men on a bridge
Assembled in 2012 and 2013 from hours of multitrack recordings as a duo, each artist was given one side of the record to present his individual composition using the original material as the building blocks. As the first release on Andreas Unterkircher’s Ausenraum label, the black and white cover picture of electrical equipment cut up and interrupted, repeated and sliced, slid out of place and readjusted, then partially contained within a perfect circle seems an apt metaphor for the processes etched into the grooves here.
she filled her time pushing the pram round Salford
There is an interesting YouTube video of Meirino and Esseiva playing together as a duo in an art gallery or something similar. They are set up against a side wall on a long table next to each other. Various people are seated in the white space, others walk in and out informally. Being able to see all this taking place, the physical approach of each artist is interesting and illuminating and offers some understanding into why each side of this LP sounds as it does.
tear us apart
Meirino stands bent over his black boxes of plugs and wires activating switches and summoning up raw electrical bleed and grime from the insides of these dark objects. He turns a torch on and off at intervals, and the completion and termination of the circuit is heard as a visceral thud. Essevia remains seated at his desk and, amongst other things, manipulates a tape recorder thoughtfully and subtly, reacting and operating within and against the bodily groundedness of the sputtering sound shrapnel exhibiting a concentrated intelligence and sense of purpose. Whether this performance formed part of the substrata from which this LP was carved I don’t know, but it is certainly an informative document.
it’s a picture of a tomb
For me all Meirino’s music seems to exist in a landscape with enhanced perspective and a very remote vanishing point: In other words the sounds are stretched out from incredibly distant thuds occurring below the horizon to crackles and clicks right up against the eardrum, as if generated inside the speakers themselves independently of anything else.
growling like a dog
Meirino places us on a ship negotiating a sea of fluctuating plasma. Creaks and groans from the rigging and the swell of undulating static gives way to scuttling creature in the hold. Early on a filament of light, a laser emission like a bowed violin note repeats a few times as a vestige of the sun’s benediction. Later, work of some secret nature takes place. Something rattles back and forth along rails as machines hum. Excited wings vibrate against the microphone and objects drop and roll across the hard floor. People talk, but the men’s voices are rudely cut off and are no more. A crescendo of metal and tooled desolation builds from nothing to form a rattling, prison riot cacophony then… suddenly we are in some dead pond where the water (or some other analogous fluid) carries sounds from afar. Unknown denizens of this inky pool signal to each other ever more frantically, again a crescendo… Nothing… Nothing… Nothing… Run-off groove…
Ian’s dead
Esseiva is an artist I have never heard before. Seemingly his compositional hand is more controlled than Meirino’s and the work focuses more closely on fewer competing strands. This approach yields a completely different experience, yet obviously both sides of the disc are united by their common provenance. Differences aside each promise is fulfilled in its singular entirety.
I came off the phone and went back to the table
Kiko C. Esseiva pledges breath and motors and grinding gears. A ribbon of steady sound unfolds and fades just once. This is a workshop in which the instruments that make this music are being built, and the very building of them is the music itself, and after they have finished playing, the dismantling of them is also the music itself. Sheets of steel and other substances are beaten in frantic rapidity. Tiny hammers pound. Insectoid nano-mosquitoes plague the workspace. Cut. Fibrillating electricity. Cut. A buffeted wire fence with mechanical animoids squeaking and chirruping in iron filing nests. Steel wool ruffles and frazzles. Cut. Dead air. A ball bearing rolls around an uneven plane causing other objects to become infectiously agitated and inexplicably animated. An organ plays itself, just once. Vibrating glass planes, jars, flasks and light bulbs. Cut… Near silence… Readjust to the tiny flecks of vinyl crackle not being part of the whole… And yet in a way they are… It all is… Run-off groove… Click… Click… Raise the needle.
unknown
pleasures" [Chris Whitehead / Sonicfield]
€16.00
Into the Void
Eine Art "Hör-Film" dreier Audio & Video-Künstler aus Israel & Österreich basierend auf einer Spurensuche im jüdischen Viertel in Krakau... besonders das 11teilige "Into the Void" von SEBASTIAN MEISSNER ist sehr hörenswert: field recordings & Erzählungen werden verwebt mit dunklen Drones, Piano-tunes, Klezmer-Fragmenten, teils in langen sphärischen Stücken, teils cut-up mässig...
RAN SLAVINS "Segments from the Snow" klingt Electronica-lastiger, aber auch bedrückend atmosphärisch & voller interessanter Sound-Arrangements & stakkatohaft-mechanischer Samples & Volksmusikverfremdungen...
ERAN SACHS (u.a. Mitglied bei LIETTERSCHPICH) schafft mit "Memory Gaps" einen geräuschaft-melancholischen Raum, basierend auf zwei traditionellen jüdischen Klarinetten-Stücken, field recordings & Interviewfetzen...
kommt mit Booklet und ausführlichen Liner-Notes....
"presence/absence:::into the void is a reflection upon the history and the recent changes in the krakovian neighbourhood of Kazimierz. The center of this meditation is the seemingly contradictory development of the last few years, which is showing that the attempts to re-animate jewish culture. The piece is working on the basis of an attempt of reversing the seasons: from summer to winter the 700-year-old Jewish district of Krakow. What struck Meissner at first sight, was the glaring contrast between the rich though often neglected presence of the material culture and the dreadful absence of the community exterminated during the Nazi days.
Four months later, on 26 June 2003, at Krowoderska52 club in Krakow, Sebastian Meissner, Ran Slavin and Eran Sachs offered the final effects of their research in the form of series of pieces. They carefully crafted crunchy steps, freezing wind, cracking ice and conversations into a mesmerising film for ears’. The imaginative power of the music was reinforced by Slavin's video impressions — equally apt in conjuring up desolate though meaningful a digital environment referring
to Nowa Huta —the empty large defunct metal industry zone....
Sebastian Meissner: works as music composer, sound designer and photographer in Vienna. Over the years his audio-visual works has been presented by curators of prestigious festivals and exhibited in international galleries
such as Transmediale, Sonic Square, Podewil, Portikus Frankfurt, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Goethe Institute Buenos Aires, Kulturhuset Stockholm and Forsythe Ballet. His music and sound compositions -
as Random Inc. - are released on music labels Mille Plateaux, Ritornell, Kompakt, Crónica and Beta Bodega.
Ran Slavin: Works as film-maker and as audio-visual artist from Tel Aviv. His last opus in video is one of the most brilliant films that came from Israel during the last years : INSOMNIAC CITY. Premiering with the first part at the Venice Biennial of Architecture in 2004 and continuing with part 3 at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and international venues. Working with experimental cinema, digital and acoustic music, video art and live video/sound performances. Operating between contemporary art and new music, his visual work has been described as intense urban surrealism. His audio visual work is a culmination of balanced relations between sound and video, their interconnections. His work has been shown at the Pompidou, Jeu De Paum, Transmediale, Istanbul Biennial, Cinematheques in Israel and Paris, festivals in Berlin, Slovenia, Amsterdam, Austria, New York, China, Israel, London, Ukraine. His music and videos released on the music-media labels Mille Plateaux, Cronica, Sub Rosa. www.ranslavin.com
Eran Sachs: works as composer, improviser, sound-artist and curator in Jerusalem. He plays this machine regularily in the Doom-Dub-Noise outfit Lietterschpich and John Zorn's "Cobra" improvising ensemble in Israel. His works have been released on Mille Plateaux and various labels in Israel. As a sound-artist his works tend fuse the sonic with the political, as in the case of "Yannun Yannun", which portrays the harrasment of Palestinian villagers by fanatic settlers. He founded and managed the Yad-Vashem bookstore - the only holocaust dedicated bookstore in Israel." [press release]
€13.50
Solar Cafe
By combining found noises and field-recorded nature with minimal fragile surfer-tone post-rock-guitars, drones and fuzzy low-end bass-lines, Melanchoholics create mad extensive soundscapes and almost cinematic soundtracks to psychotic euphoria and intoxicated wastelands.
After releasing on Drone Records, MNDR and deafborn, Solar Café is their final low-end manifesto for low-end connoisseurs.
Vinyl 12" contains download code including CD only Track "Nuclear Welfare" + bonus material "Postnovoletna Depresija" and "Disgusting however fascinating"
Solar Café is the third and final chapter within the discography of MELANCHOHOLICS. It was recorded and mixed by MELANCHOHOLICS between 2006 and 2010. The Cover Artwork as of Solar Café was done by Derek Roczen. It's based on a series of stunning photos Benedikt shot during research for a documentary on the long waiting period for the summer solstice in the village of Flateyri situated in Iceland's Westfjords. Hence the album title “Solar Café”. Almost one year later Benedikt died of cancer at the age of 32. Melanchoholics managed to complete the album shortly before Benedikts departure. The album is released on 29.12.2014 via Eibon Records (CD) and Deafborn Records (12” 180g Vinyl). The vinyl-version of Solar Café is limited to 400 hand numbered copies. The album was mastered separately for CD and Vinyl by Michael Schwabe @ Monoposto.
Sound of Solar Café
On Solar Café Melanchoholics once again have set their attention directly to the lurid sides of human personalities: desperate internal fears. Simplistic structures and melodies fleshed out well with subtle textures and voices. The feeling is one of lamentation and dreariness as the sounds trudge along. Yet there is a warmth and smokiness to it as well. There is a colourful darkness before that day comes... the moment to celebrate the return of sunlight.
www.melanchoholics.de
"It's been a long, long time since I reviewed 'A Single Act Of Carelessness' by the German band Melanchoholics (see Vital Weekly 530). This trio was Benedikt on guitars, Philip on bass and Lutz on electronics; was, because the band no longer exists, so it seems, following the passing of Benedikt Bjarnason a few years ago. The music on 'Solar Cafe' was recorded from 2006 to 2010 and then it took some more time to finish the release. But the result is certainly great. With their previous release I compared it with the old ambient industrial music that was en vogue in the late 80s, when bands started to play guitars with cello bows, adding bits of conversations, made it all more atmospheric, but at the same time also with that dark, noisy undercurrent never far away. Music like passing dark clouds over an abandoned industrial lot, but Melanchoholics add more spacious guitars to the recipe, owing a bit to the world of post-rock. In 'Presence of Absence' they depict with the guitars vast
open territories while the steady slow beat is like an oilrig. Get my drift? It's music that I quite like actually. It's both abstract and musical; it's both atmospheric and noisy - from time to time. It has that great cinematic quality to it. It's experimental music just the way I like it; like very much, actually. Perhaps one could argue there is not a lot of difference between this and the previous release, but with such as small output: who cares? One could care however about the fact that this band is no more and the musical development has come to an end. That's perhaps the saddest conclusion one could draw from this release. Sad but beautiful that's how it ends here with the final piece, 'Minus 1 One'." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
"Drittes und letztes Album der Melanchoholics. In der Besetzung Gitarre, Bass und Elektronic / Fieldre-cording hatte das Trio seit 2003 zwei CDs, eine 7″ und verschiedene Soundtracks veröffentlicht, verbunden mit europaweiten Touren, abrupt beendet durch den plötzlichen, krankheitsbedingten Tod von Gitarrist Benedikt Kristofer Bjarnason in 2010, mitten in der Arbeit an der nun vorliegenden Veröffentli-chung, damals erst gut zur Hälfte fertiggestellt. Die Arbeit an der Veröffentlichung blieb liegen, der Veröffentlichungsdeal mit einem US-Label platzte und erst mit der Erkenntnis, trotz des Verlustes weitermachen zu wollen (bezeichnenderweise als Minus1one), beschlossen Bassist Phillip und Elektroniker Lutz, “Solar Cafe” als Vermächtnis der bisheri-gen Bandgeschichte zu vollenden und zu veröffentlichen. Wohl wissend, dass es Veröffentlichungen von Bands, die es gar nicht mehr gibt unterhalb eines bestimmten Bekanntheitsgrades und zwangs-weise ohne Live-Support definitiv schwer haben.
Aber, trotz dieser Widrigkeiten, es hat sich definitiv gelohnt, diesen Schritt zu tun: “Solar Cafe” zeigt die Fähigkeiten der damaligen Melanchoholics gegenüber den bisherigen Platten auf einem neuen Stand; die bandeigene Art der Komposition, gleichzeitig wie auf dem Sprung befindlicher wie in der Zeit erstarrter Tracks zu komponieren, die zudem viel von tatsächlichen Songs zu haben scheinen oh-ne wirklich welche zu sein, ist auf “Solar Cafe” zu neuer Perfektion gereift. Und über allem eine Atmo-sphäre, die nicht trefflicher als durch den Bandnamen zu beschreiben ist: keine gefühlte oder gar auf-gesetzte Düsternis, vielmehr eine Art von wehmütiger Melancholie, die möglicherweise am stärksten durch die irgendwo zwischen Arpeggio und Anschlag changierenden Gitarren und die immer wieder präsenten, funkspruchartigen Fieldrecordings verursacht wird, unterlegt durch Flächen und Bassschü-be im Untergrund. “Solar Cafe” ist damit auch in seinen ruhigsten Abschnitten keine flächenartig ange-legte Musik wie die so vieler Anderer, die im Feld der experimentellen Musik ohne Schlagzeug bzw. Drumprogrammierung arbeiten: der paradoxerweise wie erstarrte Fluss dauernder Bewegung bleibt stets bestimmendes Moment.
Rein musikalisch betrachtet, den ohnehin nicht zu beziffernden menschlichen Verlust bewusst ausge-klammert, definitiv ein herber Verlust, dass nach diesem Höhepunkt, passenderweise auf zwei Formaten veröffentlicht (Vinyl + CD), in dieser Form nichts mehr zu erwarten ist. Was bleibt ist diese wirklich gelungene Platte und die Chance, dass das Nachfolgeprojekt Minus1one vielleicht andere, aber ebenso interessante Wege verfolgen wird. Und jetzt: ihr." [Hellmut Neidhardt / Black mag]
€16.00
Solar Cafe
"By combining found noises and field-recorded nature with minimal/fragile post-rock-guitars, drones and fuzzy low-end bass-lines, Melanchoholics create mad extensive soundscapes and almost cinematic soundtracks to psychotic euphoria and intoxicated wastelands. After releasing on Drone Records, MNDR and Deafborn, Eibon Records proudly presents their final low-end manifesto for low-end connoisseurs. On Solar Cafe, Melanchoholics once again have set their attention directly to the lurid sides of human personalities: desperate internal fears and simplistic structures and melodies fleshed out well with subtle textures and voices. The feeling is one of lamentation and dreariness as the sounds trudge along. Yet there is a warmth and smokiness to it as well. There is a colourful darkness before that day comes... the moment to celebrate the return of sunlight. Comes in matte-varnished digisleeve." [label info]
www.eibonrecords.com
www.melanchoholics.com
"It's been a long, long time since I reviewed 'A Single Act Of Carelessness' by the German band Melanchoholics (see Vital Weekly 530). This trio was Benedikt on guitars, Philip on bass and Lutz on electronics; was, because the band no longer exists, so it seems, following the passing of Benedikt Bjarnason a few years ago. The music on 'Solar Cafe' was recorded from 2006 to 2010 and then it took some more time to finish the release. But the result is certainly great. With their previous release I compared it with the old ambient industrial music that was en vogue in the late 80s, when bands started to play guitars with cello bows, adding bits of conversations, made it all more atmospheric, but at the same time also with that dark, noisy undercurrent never far away. Music like passing dark clouds over an abandoned industrial lot, but Melanchoholics add more spacious guitars to the recipe, owing a bit to the world of post-rock. In 'Presence of Absence' they depict with the guitars vast
open territories while the steady slow beat is like an oilrig. Get my drift? It's music that I quite like actually. It's both abstract and musical; it's both atmospheric and noisy - from time to time. It has that great cinematic quality to it. It's experimental music just the way I like it; like very much, actually. Perhaps one could argue there is not a lot of difference between this and the previous release, but with such as small output: who cares? One could care however about the fact that this band is no more and the musical development has come to an end. That's perhaps the saddest conclusion one could draw from this release. Sad but beautiful that's how it ends here with the final piece, 'Minus 1 One'." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€10.00
17 TV Themes
“2 x 17 masterpieces as a soundtrack for the cinema in your head and beyond: The hammering automatic rhythm of an Elka organ introduces us to Melville's film-music masterpiece, slowly moody echo-laden guitar lines, spooky keyboard chords, honey sweet theremin-sequences and lascivious female voices add to a "Blues noir", melodic and harmonic fireworks of references build up and make clear where we are. The cineastic escapades of the 50s and 60s and their heroes salute you: Alain Delon, Brigitte Bardot, Jean Paul Belmondo, Lino Ventura, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, Michel Serrault… all these stars are cast for this sparkling masterpiece on celluloid, which is neither B-movie nor blockbuster, but rather builds up to something new each time you listen to its soundtrack. Melville sets straight limitations to his genre, but he gives his listeners the freedom to choose: What used to be a horror movie in the vein of Dario Argento yesterday might be the diary of a psycho killer in the 50s in moving pictures. Melville produces soundtracks, soundtracks for the cinema in your head. He invites each listener to direct his own movies, to trip on Melville's soundwaves depending on what mood you are in. While film connoisseurs will be thrilled and find clear cineastic references, the living room of the average listener will suddenly smell of gun powder and lead while a francophile gangster blonde will aspirate erotic confessions.
The second CD of the album is an image of the first one. It contains the exact order of tunes as the first CD but interpreted and remade by artists chosen by Melville. These artists come from all musical genres, ranging from earthy blues to avant-garde electronics and metal: The (ethno-)pop-project Binder&Krieglstein from Graz follows the Viennese avantgarde composer Jürgen Hofbauer, Reflector's doom laden metal stands next to Peter Plessas' innovative electronics, "New York-certified" theremin godess Dorith Chrysler and some acts from the avant-garde label "tonto", blues guitarist Christian Masser is followed by the minimal electronic freak marufura fufunjiru and Mego-darling Dr. Nachtstrom. An opulent array of innovative artists which clearly appreciate the genius and the brilliancy of the original.” [Soul Seduction]
€16.00
Nagual
Verzaubernde Rausch-Drones und subtile Gitarren-Loops und Tupfer, ganz zart & betörend sensibel ist dieses Trio bei einer Aufnahme in HARTFORD, CT vorgegangen, die Teilnahme AIDAN BAKERs (NADJA) ist unüberhörbar. 600 Stück wurden aufgelegt und mit dem besonderen ARCHIVE-Artwork von SELDON HUNT ausgestattet.
"long playing ambient dronescape focusing the combined efforts of Todd Merrell on shortwave radio and electronics, Patrick Jordan on shortwave radio and processing and Aidan Baker (Nadja) on guitar. Recorded live in 04 in Hartford. Comes packed in heavy stock center open sleeve with environmental mirror image landscape artwork courtesy of Seldon Hunt. Pressing of 600 copies." [label info]
"... This live set finds Baker handling guitar duties, but you’d never know it from the sound, augmented by short wave radios, electronics, and various bits of processing, the sound here is deep and dark, a crumbling and epic expanse of rumbling shimmering low end. Roiling clouds of murky melodic fragments, distant swells, throbbing low end pulses, barely audible bits of static and washed out glitch. Very cinematic, if you were watching a film that was almost entirely dark, with just barely visible shifts in the various shades of black and grey. Lovely though, minimal and haunting. Think Coleclough, Chalk, Lustmord, that sort of ambient darkness.
But the second track is an entirely different beast. Simple guitar strums, minimal melodies, the strings struck softly, the metallic buzz and clang ringing out into the ether, some sort of underwater slow motion Fahey, smeared and soft and dark and dreamy.
The final half of the track, the guitar disappears completely, leaving streaks of feedback that sound like the cries of gulls, grinding slow motion slabs of shifting low end, whirling windlike whirs, almost like a manufactured nature recording.
The guitar returns for the third track, drifting gently, while the background noise builds into a slow motion wash of sound, the track culminating in a cloud of chimes and reverbed percussion, seasick swirls and struck steel strings, before slipping languidly into the final track, a lugubrious underwater crawl, all of the sounds muddy and indistinct, a sonar like ping buried way down in the mix, underneath it all a thick blanket of constant whirring drones, quite lovely.
Packaged in one of those cool, 6 panel, gatefold aRCHIVE
sleeves, glossy paper, super striking image of forest and clouds,
LIMITED TO 600 COPIES!!" [Aquarius Records]
www.archivecd.com
€13.50
Eucalypse
MERZBOWs Hommage an den vom Aussterben bedrohten australischen Eukalyptus-Baum! Kommt in einem noch nicht dagewesenen, aufschiebbaren runden Holzcover, massiv & bedruckt, mit 4 runden farbigen Inlay-Karten. Wohl eines der spektakulärsten CD-Covers ever ! Das Material (5 Stücke, fast 60 Minuten) ist höchst psychedelisch, pulsierend, in jeder Sekunde expandierend, mitreissend und zermürbend zugleich....
"A complete winner here from electronics wizard Masami Akita and Solielmoon Recordings. The music is some of the most psychedelic that I have heard from Mr. Akita, a panoramic kaleidoscope of metal machine noise and psycho New Age synthoblasters. This is the 360 degree apocalypse of the mind. The Merz is letting loose. This is a man who has recorded a lot of music in his lifetime. I would be very surprised if Merzbow himself is able to keep track of the vast volume of material that he has put out over the years. Sometimes, you don't really remember it after listening a few times. This one is really dramatic and sticks in my mind very clearly. I can very distinctly remember the first time that I listened to it while driving. The music is meant to echo the reality of the destruction of Eucalyptus trees, which is apparently a very terrible problem on the Earth that is disrupting the ecosystem. I can accept that, and it doesn't hurt that this story was told to me via this amazing release. The first track is an amazing psychedelic journey that by itself would make this release worthwhile. Track two opens with violent crashing blending into radio signal white noise static, and industrial sounds that echo the hectic feeling that Merzbow is trying to evoke. This is completely harsh and distinctive, some of the most compelling material from this artist since the noise heyday of the mid-90s and popular releases such as “Pulse Demon.” Each track (all sharing the title “Eucalypse”) has a separate and distinct theme that works very well one after another. The over-arching theme of ecological destruction comes across in a very sincere and horrifying manner through the amazing synthesizer and noise work on this release. It sounds like Jimi Hendrix going through TG's pedals in the ninth circle of hell as everything comes crashing down. It is awesome. The packaging is made out of Eucalyptus wood, ironic considering that the release is trying to decry the practice. Ol' Merz didn't cut the damn thing down himself though, so it all works out in the end. Accompanying this beautiful, awkward, and coaster-shaped wooden box are several round cardboard photographs of Eucalyptus trees with information about the release on the back. The entire thing is completely breathtaking. I assume that this is in some sort of absurdly limited edition, so if you come across this one snatch it up, it's great." [Heathen Harvest]
"The Tasmanian Blue Gum tree, Eucalyptus globulus, is native to Tasmania and southern Australia. Eucalyptus trees are uniquely suited to the varied ecologies of Australia, and there is no other continent more closely associated with one genus of tree. Its leaves are the food of choice of the koala, and its flowers attract bees and hummingbirds. Out of approximately 300 identified species, Blue Gums are now the eucalyptus most frequently found in other parts of the world. Throughout the tropics they are known for their ability to dry out swampy areas, making them a valuable weapon in the fight against malaria, a disease caused by parasites carried in female Anopheles mosquitos, which breed in standing water. Eucalyptus globulus was first brought to India in the late 18th century. Large plantations were establish in Kerala in 1863, but other than small amounts of oil distilling, little use has been made of the fast growing trees. Instead, they have thrived in the moist, foggy hills, spreading far across the landscape and transforming the ecosystem in the process. With their deep roots they lower water tables, depriving native species of the moisture necessary to survive the annual dry season, while the anti-bacterial properties of the “blue gum” secretions they drop on the soil further suppress the germination and growth of other plants. An ancient and intricate web of life has been disrupted, and native plants, insects and animals are being driven to extinction. Humans, who have long been a part of the local ecosystem, are adaptable and will survive, but the biodiversity of an entire region is under threat from a single exotic species. It is truly a eucalyptus apocalypse. It is a eucalypse. At Soleilmoon, packaging and presentation are never overlooked. This release is presented in a hand-crafted round wooden box with screenprinted swiveling lid. The box contains one CD and four round, full-color cards. Only 1000 copies of this handsome CD have been made." [label info]
www.soleilmoon.com
€25.00
Oersted
Merzbow's impact transcends the confines of traditional music, embodying an ethos of constant innovation and fearless exploration into uncharted realms of sound. Navigating through the annals of Merzbow's extensive career reveals an artist who, for over 40 years, has remained dedicated to reshaping our understanding of music and pushing the boundaries of sonic expression.
We are thrilled to unveil the highly anticipated vinyl reissue of Merzbow's groundbreaking album Oersted. This album, originally released on CD in 1996, marked a significant milestone in the experimental noise music scene, showcasing the unparalleled sonic explorations of the legendary Masami Akita, known as Merzbow.
Oersted is a sonic journey through realms of noise, texture, and intensity that have solidified Merzbow's status as a pioneer in the realm of noise music. The album features a collection of meticulously crafted tracks that push the boundaries of sound manipulation and composition, creating an immersive experience for listeners daring enough to delve into its sonic landscapes. The vinyl reissue, masterfully remastered for the first time by the esteemed James Plotkin, renowned for his unparalleled expertise, breathes fresh life and depth into the album's already rich and intricate sonic landscape, unveiling new detail within its reverberant dense tapestry and complex noise palette.
Each track on Oersted is a aural sculpture, with layers of distorted frequencies, pulsating rhythms, and unexpected sonic artifacts that challenge conventional notions of music and sound. Features four untitled tracks originally on CD, each occupying an entire side of the vinyl, except for the track on side D, which shares the side with two bonus tracks. These tracks epitomize a profound and multifaceted sonic odyssey, harnessing various tapes and the raw power of analog instruments and tools such as EMS Synthia, metallic electronics, various filters, and processed audio mixer. Side A plunges the listener into a kaleidoscopic amalgamation of unrefined sound elements, steadily weaving together strata of intensity and textural richness that evolve dynamically over its duration. Side B embarks on a sonic expedition delving deep into mesmerizing rhythms and intricately woven soundscapes, crafting an immersive experience that challenges traditional notions of musical structure and form. Side C boldly pushes the frontiers of sound manipulation, employing dynamic tonal shifts and varying intensities to construct a visceral and immersive sonic landscape. Side D, in its initial segment, extends the sonic narrative into uncharted realms of noise and texture, maintaining a cohesive yet unpredictable sonic progression. The supplementary tracks in the latter part of Side D provide additional depth to Merzbow's sonic experimentation, showcasing distinctive sonic palettes and layers that harmonize with the album's overarching themes and exploratory essence.
The original artwork for the 1996 CD digipack, curated by Masami Akita, stands out for its minimalism and visual impact. The pink outer cover, with only the artist's name and album title in silver-gray at the center, grabs attention with its bold simplicity, foreshadowing the sonic experience of the album. Inside, the green provides a pleasing contrast, with credits in silver-gray maintaining stylistic coherence. The vinyl reissue faithfully replicates the graphics with a gatefold cover, enhancing the visual impact of the original artwork. The blending of pink and green colors creates a striking visual effect, highlighting the beauty of simplicity in Akita's graphic design.
Immerse yourself in the mesmerizing world of Merzbow's Oersted and experience the raw power and beauty of noise in its purest form.
all tracks by masami akita
ma plays various tapes, ems synthia, metallic electronics, various filters, processed audio mixer
basic materials recorded at zsf produkt during late 1995 and 1996 some part of raw materials recorded on 1993
remixed by live tape manipulation with mk2 filter in zsf produkt, June 1996
remastered by james plotkin 2024
https://urashima.bandcamp.com/album/oersted
€36.00
De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements
Sound composition by Merzouga – inspired by Lucretius’ philosophical poem.
On the Nature of Things
In his poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) the Roman poet/philosopher Lucretius (c. 99 – c. 55 BCE) explores Epicurean physics and philosophy through richly poetic language and metaphors, as he presents an entire cosmology: based on the principles of atomism, Lucretius tries to explain the nature of the mind and soul, and the development of the world. While some of his ideas have been proven scientifically wrong, some of his thoughts seem strikingly reasonable even for the contemporary reader.
Lucretius believes that, while everything in the universe is finite, the smallest elements (“The First Beginnings of Things”) themselves are eternal – moving through the void they collide, create forms and dissolve, just to collide again in order to create new forms.
For Lucretius life is a beautiful chance-driven Dance of the Elements. His ideas, popular and highly controversial in Roman intellectual circles, were soon to be banned and eventually forgotten during the rise of Christianity.
The poem was by chance rediscovered in the 15th century by the famous humanist Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459), most likely in the scriptorium of a monastery in Fulda, Germany. During the renaissance it eventually became a foundation stone of modern western philosophy and natural sciences.
Translating the Book into Sound
When Soila Valkama, the ars acustica-editor of Finnish broadcaster YLEISRADIO commissioned us to produce a sound-composition, we suggested to her a playful attempt of a sonic translation of Lucretius’ ideas.
The listener embarks on a journey in which a universe of sound unfolds.
Smallest sonic elements float through space, dark and chaotic, merge to create concrete forms, transform into different consistencies, from water to wind, from stone to dust, steadily in motion in a constant process of becoming and dissolving.
Late in the piece the sounds of mammals and humans arrive, blurring again into a palimpsest-like structure when the circle is closing.
We used field-recordings of nature, as an analogue for the “concrete forms” that are created by the colliding elements, but also concrete musical structures: fragments of melodies, tonalities, and rhythmic patterns in contrast to the more abstract material.
Intertwined with the sound-composition we encounter fragments of Lucretius’ text in English and in Latin, carefully adapted and translated by Janko, and spoken by his brother, the actor Stefko Hanushevsky.
The radio-piece consists of six chapters, transposing the structure of Lucretius’ six books into the compositional structure.
There is no delay, no rest to interrupt the flow, we can constantly feel it, and we can see things, smell them, and perceive their sound. –
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book VI: 932+933
1 Track (38′22″)
CD (500 copies)
Credits
Merzouga is:
Janko Hanushevsky (prepared electric bass) and Eva Poepplein (electronics)
Speaker: Stefko Hanushevsky
Translations: Janko Hanushevsky
Editor: Soila Valkama
Commissioned and produced by YLEISRADIO/Finland.
Artwork: U9 – visuelle Allianz
The artwork was created by setting up paper in the garden and applying pens and
brushes to the branches of a tree. All the traces of ink on the paper were created
by the wind moving the tree, thus providing all the scource-material for the album’s
entire artwork.
Merzouga would like to thank
Soila Valkama & YLE, Stefko Hanushevsky, Lasse-Marc Riek & Roland Etzin, Leopold Lenzgeiger, Sabine Kuechler, Markus Jarchow, Bohdan & Ewa Hanushevsky, and Felix & Waltraud Poepplein for their continuous support.
This release was made possible by the generous support of SKE-Fonds.
www.gruenrekorder.de/?page_id=16867
€13.00
MMABOLELA
" ‘Sonic Mmabolela’ is a 2-week workshop/residency for professional and semiprofessional sound artists and composers with previous experience in the area of sound experimentation and field recordings. It takes place at Mmabolela Reserve, in the Limpopo province of South Africa, right at the border with Botswana. It involves field work, studio work and theoretical/discussion presentations. The workshop/residency has a special focus on creative approaches to the work with field recordings, through an extensive exploration of natural sound environments. It does not have a technical character but is instead conceived and directed towards the development and realization of projects of sonic creation by the participant artists/composers with the field recordings gathered." [Francisco Lopez website]
"Note from unwritten diary of David:
3:45 AM. Time to get up. The Bushveld is already awake.
Slávek and I are both dragging a bit, rushing to get out the door and deploy.
After almost two weeks of nonstop recording, we are both tired and a little homesick.
At this point in the residency we have already found a dependable dawn recording location in a dry creek bed just far enough away from Weederdooper homestead so that our microphones will not pick up breakfast activities and just close enough for us to make it back for a nap before the morning field session. In a strange way this location reminds me of another of Slávek’s favorite recording spots on a small tributary flowing into Lake Mamori in Brazil. Slávek and I share a room at Weederdooper, which makes these dawn sessions simple. Our equipment too tends to share space in locations we scout together during many of the field sessions. We each now have many recordings of the exact same events, but from slightly different perspectives. The dry river bed at Umzumbi, the hippos at Mmabolel Rock, the bridge to Botswana, the watering holes. Perhaps when we get back home we will make a CD together.
CD 1:
Slávek Kwi (Artificial Memory Trace)
01: Usvit (Dawning in Dry Riverbed)
02: Windpeckers
03: Lament of Longhorn Beetle
04: Subaquatic Insects, Terrapins, Fish Munching on Algae
05: From Perspective of Wasps
06: Baboons
07: Mouchy
08: Hippo-pota-muses
09: Noc Pt1 (Toads, Bats [via heterodyne detector], Xmas Beetles)
10: Transition (Xmas Beetles close-up)
11: Noc Pt2 (Frogs, Bats [via microphone], Insects)
12: Noc Pt3 (Cicadas, Frogs, distant Baboons)
Excerpts:
Track 01
Track 04
Recordings made by Slávek Kwi in November 2013 at the Mmabolela.
Composed in between February and June 2014 in Beech House, Ireland.
Trk 01-09 was originally constructed as multichannel piece titled “AfriKaa!”
dedicated to children with autism.
The Sound Expedition was funded by The National Concert Hall in Dublin;
very special thanks to Ciara Cuffe and Simon Taylor for kind support.
Extended thanks to David for making this publication possible.
CD 2:
David Michael
01. Slávek’s Dry Creek
02. Midnight on the Limpopo
03. Hippopotamuses at Mmabolel Rock
04. Umzumbi with Baboons, Bats
05. Duets
06. The Bridge to Botswana IV
07. Afternoon with an Impala Carcass
Excerpts:
Track 4
Track 6
Recordings made by David Michael in November 2013 at the Mmabolela. Produced in Sleepy Hollow, New York during various sessions in 2014.
19 Tracks (157′16″)
Double CD (500 copies)"
www.gruenrekorder.de
€16.00
Ethers
Slowly but o-so-surely, Emmanuel Mieville is building an impressive body of work, where each new album seems to make the previous one pale in comparison. And the music press would be wise to catch on to him. The man is discreet and unassertive, so is his music, but he – like it – cannot be dismissed as just another proponent of the field recording. For Mieville, music is some of the most spellbinding art for the ear out there in the aether.
"Ethers" is Mieville's second album for Baskaru, and though the previous one certainly stands the test of time, this new opus pushes the bar higher, much higher. In the composer's own words, "Ethers is an attempt to give an earthy quality, a dense texture to drone music, to lower it from the 'skies'."
Mieville first trained as a sound engineer, and then studied musique concrète at GRM. He grew up listening to creative radio programs and embraced field recording as a form of art. His latest works fully realized a synthesis of all these elements: the attentive ear to one's surroundings, the abstract approach to sound, the sense of drama that makes a field recording composition take life.
Mieville has worked with Buto dancers, video artists, and like-minded musicians like Eric Cordier, Guido Huebner, and Benjamin Thigpen. After appearances on compilations albums, he released two CDs in Malaysia (on Herbal Records and XingWu), followed by his Western full-length debut "Four Wanderings in Tropical Lands" on Baskaru in 2011. Since then he released two thematic albums: "Buddha – Anima – Asia" (Obs*, 2012) on Buddhism, and "Concret-Sens" (Crónica, 2014), a homage to early musique concrète.
www.baskaru.com
"The last time I heard something from Emmanuel Mieville was in Vital Weekly 803, and that was his previous album for Baskaru. Mieville, a trained composer from GRM uses a lot of field recordings in his music, which he treats into music. I am not sure how Mieville works in creating his music, but it could very well be that he has many treatments of the same sound source and which are later stuck together and crafted into a piece of music, with all the subtle changes possible, which Mieville can choose from when doing this. I might very well be entirely wrong of course. His music can be compared to that of Whetham (or vice versa, but that's not the order I am hearing these releases): quite closed off blocks of sound, but somehow the work of Mieville sounds more coherent than Whetham on his new release. It also seems to be less closed off, with a bit more air in between the various treatments that he uses in his music. Whetham's music seems hermetically closed. There is fine vibrancy in the pieces by Mieville, shifting back and forth, ignoring strict classical rules of composition. Excellent release." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€12.00
Everything Is One
" “Only sheep need a leader”. Aller derzeitiger Ideologie-Feindlichkeit zum trotz halten MILITIA an ihrem Ideal eines „positiven“, zeitgemässen Öko-Anarchismus fest und schlagen hier auch musikalisch neue und sanftere Wege ein, wenn sie harmonisch-polyphone Synth-Sequenzertunes mit eher hintergründiger Perkussion und vielen „handgespielten“ Elementen & Instrumenten verbinden.
MILITIAs Musik ist aber auch immer noch beseelt von (heroischem?) Kampfgeist und Glauben an die (bessere?) Utopie, von pompösen Neo-Klassik- & Sprach-Samples, aggressivem Gesang und dickstem melancholischen Pathos. Musikalisch überzeugender Anarcho-Industrial!" [Drone Rec. 2005]
“ Five years after the succesfull “The Black Flag Hoisted” CD finally thenew MILITIA CD!!! It contains 13 tracks (62,35 minutes) of the best MILITIA recordings ever. Beside the known and typical MILITIA percussions, samples and voices this time the tracks include a larger variety of different instruments: violins, accordeons, horns, clarinets played partly by guest musicians. Even a soprano singer takes part as guest musician. The CD comes in a special oversized foldout cover.” [label info]
€18.00
Sacred Aim
" 'desire is the location of resistances to the norms of the culturalorder. mimetic desire begins by transforming models into obstacles and it ends up by transforming obstacles into models.' (mimetic, 2006)
mimetic is the solo project of jerome soudan - a drummer for european industrial and experimental bands such as von magnet or column one. his classical background is best seen by his playing of orchestral percussion and computing pieces for contemporary music performances (with art zoyd & kasper t.toeplitz). he has also composed music for dance companies like ndt2 in the netherlands. in france, he wrote a pre-thesis about industrial music for the university of lyon (1993). also while in france he contributed to the industrial music scene by organising festivals and concerts in paris. in addition he developed a network for musicians in europe and he continued this network while living in berlin.
after several releases on various european labels, mimetic has released his first dvd via a collaborative effort between ant-zen and parametric. 'sacred aim' feeds the eyes with a big collection of video clips that combine small scripts, visual effects, flashing colors, black & white pictures, moving puppet animations and more. this dvd follows mimetic's recent big tours in europa, u.s.a., canada and japan, in addition the dvd features bonus material - including an interview, a documentary about his eastern european tour, two concert tracks from canada, and some other special surprises.
if you are familiar with mimetic's powerful mix of electronica and beats, symphonic textures and incredibly well-placed samples then you now have the opportunity to stimulate your aural senses. if you are not familiar then go discover an artist who is something else - a fine addition to the audio & visual world of ant-zen." [label info]
www.ant-zen.com
€7.50
Now right here
"Endlich was neues von einer unserer Lieblings-Drone-Bands, die inzwischen von Australien nach Berlin gezogen sind....wir hören hier auf drei Stücken kontemplative, extrem hypnotische Drone-Schichten, regelrecht leuchtende Klangteppiche, die sanft an Volumen und Dichte gewinnen und aus denen sich dann harmonische Strukturen herausschälen.. EMPFEHLUNG!!" [Drone Rec. info 2004]
“A long awaited release from Sydney's Minit culminates in a masterpiece collection of spectral drone music. With their unhierarchical approach to the use of 'found' sound, a fuzzed out electric bass line sits neatly alongside field recordings of atmospheric hum - their individual sound qualities overriding their semiotic value, so that each sound, representing a layer, shimmers and swells within Minit's evolving, sonic habitat. Now Right Here, the title track as well as the album, is about being caught in the moment. From fragile harmonic and melodic intonations to towering, ecstatic drones and electrical disturbances this album captures a balance betwen noise and harmony, excitation and calmness, distance and intimacy - drawing you into a hypnotic, psychedelic sound-world that belongs uniquely to Minit. Now Right Here is a fragile, immersive and emotional album.Minit is JASMINE GUFFOND and TORBEN TILLY. They are currently living and working in Berlin.”[press release]
“Overall the sound has become more detailled and more rich since my first encounter with them. Music with a highly trance like atmosphere, maybe even psychedelic. Quite nice indeed.” [fdw/Vital Weekly]
€12.00
Heading South
"Backwards proudly presents the new album of great Polish artist MIRT!
Heading South is the eighth Mirts' album. The record was created with great help of TER between 2011 and 2012. Like its predecessors it is to some extent a concept album. This time, derived from exotic vision of class B old adventure films and cheap comic stories. As usual this inspirations are barely visible and immersed in typical for Mirt hazy and dark mood. This are only some hints and whole album leaves a much wider scope for interpretation.
After instrumental Artificial Field Recordings Mirt intended to record album with songs and after several earlier attempts he fail again, leaving only two track with voice. Don't miss this superb gem! Available in two editions: 100 copies as yellow vinyl and 200 copies as black vinyl." [label info]
www.backwards.it
€15.00
An old broom knows all the dirty corners
Das MLEHST-Comeback nun auch auf CD; diese Klänge sind wirklich unangenehm und regen auf, ohne harsch noisig zu sein, ein schräger Tanz von Radiosinustönen, low-fi-Geräuschen und Rauschen, fast jegliche musikalische Grundkonzepte und Bestimmungsparameter sind hier ausser Kraft gesetzt!
"Mlehst returns after years of silence, along with his unique (and prolific) experimental noise. As a bonus this digipak album has some alternate mixes of material from two recent LPs, but they fit well here and will seem like part of the whole work to most listeners. Commencing with noisy drones and reverberating percussive noises, the album takes a really varied journey through all kinds of noisy experimental, weird electronic, feedback, and droney sounds. There is a really unsettling and disturbing element to the music throughout the CD, which seems more controlled and natural than I had remembered in previous works. As intense as the sounds on CD can get, it is by no means a typical static harsh noise release. Everything has it's place and is totally under control, being precisely manipulated. Just how I like my noise... An incredibly solid and enjoyable release, through and through." [Diophantine Discs Top Releases of 2006]
"Whether or not its because I am in the process of giving up smoking I don't know, but this album leaves me anxious and on-edge. Fantastic! So many recordings just leave you cold. An emotional conduit!" [METAMORPHIC JOURNEYMAN]
€12.00
Four Squared Wheel
"Modelbau is one of the many names Frans de Waard (Kapotte Muziek, Goem, Wieman, Freiband, etc) uses for his music. Moving Furniture Records is proud to release the first proper CD by this project after many tape releases and a couple of CD-R’s.
Frans de Waard in his own words about Four Squared Wheel: Somewhere in 2012 I had the idea that it was time for that all needed change, having played around with laptops for a decade or so. Actually it was something that was in the air for some time, as I already used cassettes in my work with Kapotte Muziek and in some of my solo concerts. With Modelbau (and yes, that is a deliberate misspelling of the word) I set a few parameters, such as using many cassettes, small synthesizers, little to no laptop and recorded as much ‘live’ as possible, plus to do only digital releases. Some of that still goes, but the digital releases only went out of the window pretty quickly. In 2012 I played a concert as Modelbau, carefully planned into a fifteen-minute composition and released the first (digital) album. Other work came along and I didn’t do much again as Modelbau, until in June 2014 I got various offers for solo concerts and while preparing those, I had a bunch of material recorded, which was released by various labels on cassette (Barreuh Records, Lichtung). During one of these rehearsal/recording sessions I picked up some guitar effect, which was in my way and thought it would be good to use that also in the set-up. Since then the palette seems to be complete; while preparing for concerts I record everything and select pieces from that to be released, with little to no change, save for doing a better beginning or ending when needed. In that respect the almost one hour long ‘Four Squared Wheel’ is a bit of a different work. It wasn’t recorded as part of a rehearsal, but rather in a more elaborate set-up in my studio, using my Philicordia organ, a microphone, guitar amplifier, guitar effects, mixing various signals on the spot into this piece, while retaining that ‘live’ feeling. It has four distinct parts with considerable gaps of silence in between. They are intended to stay as such. ‘Four Squared Wheel’ is the most drone based/ambient recording by Modelbau to date, and not something that would be easily re-created in a live situation." [label info]
www.movingfurniturerecords.com
€12.00
Cocoon
Marit Wolters is a Viennese artist who creates sculptures that speak. They generate their own world of micro-sounds. Rod Modell is a sound designer operating primarily from Detroit (with an EU home-base in Amsterdam). Here, he moulded the sounds of Marit's works in the same way that she works her materials, creating a generative soundscape designed for museum playback during Marit’s exhibitions, constructed with sounds of Marit’s sculptures, drones, field recordings, and cosmic sounds. The result of this collaboration is COCOON, a 74 minute CD of music by Rod and Marit, with a 24-page 8" square booklet featuring Marit’s work. The package also Includes a poster that reproduces the original playbill from the debut exhibition of COCOON in Linz, Austria. A collector's item, limited and numbered to only 300 pieces.
"The Ethereal Substance of Matter" by Mirco Salvadori
It takes adaptation to begin this journey. We need to increase our perceptual sensors by adapting the transmission of touch to the apparently inert matter. Sight too must increase its visionary capacity, and hearing has the obligation to pick up even the most microscopic movement. Gradually, we levitate upon appearing in front of the substance. As protected in a transparent cocoon that allows contact, we penetrate through the undefined throbbing of a heart that is constantly springing into action, witness to a life that uses field recordings capable of recalling past glitches. Absorbed in the liquidity of sound we slowly immerse ourselves in the majesty of the deep dronic breath, driven by the power of the ambient wave that iterates its eternal oscillation. We are in, here where everything is an unlimited reverberation, almost a song of seductive ethereal substance.
13.silentes.it/private_sounds/sps2037_rod_modell_marit_wolters_cocoon.htm
€36.00
Roto Vildblomma
"New edition limited to 111 copies.
Mohammad is the project of: Coti K.: double bass, ILIOS: oscillators, Nikos Veliotis: cello. Having worked separately in the experimental field they decided to join forces in order to study and work on the principles of inter-modulation. Roto Vildblomma is the first Antifrost release on 2010 and the debut of Mohammad."
www.antifrost.gr
"Those familiar with Mohammad’s invented genre cello doom will know what to expect of ‘Roto Vildblomma’, their proto-drone debut. If you’re new, though, get all descriptions that go by the watchword “beautiful” out of your head: the music Mohammad make is as terse as dark ambient but as churning and uncomfortable as harsh noise. From ‘Som Sakrifis’ through to their psychogeographical album trilogy, their sound has remained steadfast and punishing, but ‘Roto Vildblomma’ shows their sound in process, rather than completion.
Opener “Vildblomma” is as you’d expect -- gnarled, slogging cello going back and forth by rote. It’s on “Skora” where the act become momentarily unrecognisable, opening with a foggier and calmer iteration of their sound; electronics fumble in the distance as a bloodlet bass drone slowly begins to rumble. “Lamane Kradoj” continues this flittering exchange of tone and gentle noise, bringing in what sounds like rhythmic field recordings before handing over to the suspiciously low key (but eventually power-noised) “Letzen Tranen”.
Listening to one of Mohammad’s records is very much like entering some grand hall moments before the doors lock; on this record, things feel more open-ended, as if Mohammad were sketching out ideas before a grand performance. These are still ominous and often scratchy drones, but you can hear slightly prettier versions of the band, ready for reduction (the actually quite gorgeous half-melodies of “Lumunis Vuori”, juxtaposed against heavy cello contact). A worthwhile listen for anyone who thought this band came from nothing." [Norman Records]
€16.00
Fall in Woodland Cemetery
"With his first works released on well-known labels like cold meat industry, eibon records or fin de siècle media, mathias josefson's moljebka pvlse has fastly gained a strong reputation in the dark ambient/industrial world. including more & more field recordings in his sound, josefson soon departed from his typicial "swedish roots" to more droney sounds like his more recent productions on mystery sea, gears of sand, drone records or this very 3". minimal yet captivating droney field recordings!" [label info]
www.taalem.com
€5.00
Die Isolation
"A new opus comes from the woods of Carpathia. It is a despairing portrayal of the souls that are lost in the winter woods. Hypnotic sounds, like a thousand blades in a dance of a winter blizzard, leaving thousands of cuts digging into the body. Heart-rending screams of freezing flesh, summoning death, dissolving within echoes on the mountains. This album delivers cold, misanthropic and desolate mid-tempo, Nordic-influenced Black Metal, alongside melancholic Dark Ambient tracks. Crunchy distorted guitar minimalism, primal thrashing beats, and an overall raw necroish execution are reinforced by howling, tortured, grim vocals that recall the old Burzum era.
For fans of Burzum, Striborg, Xasthur, Trist, Darkthrone." [label info]
www.coldspring.co.uk
€12.00
CSound + Saz
"Touch.40 live at Iklectik. I received an invitation to perform at the 40th anniversary gathering, June 2022. Previous works for the label, 'Arithmetic in the Dark' and 'Isoladrone2020' illuminated the landing strip for a new work. It should be continuous -- a further play on moving and remaining. I wanted to balance the digital output of a CSound orchestra with an analog instrument and chose the Turkish saz, a sound I've loved and lived with for the last six decades. I prepared the ground for the live performance with a graphical interface for CSound and an EBow for the saz (along with some short pre-recordings of picking and strumming). Then, a few days before the concert, I got Covid. On the suggestion of Jon and Mike I recorded a live performance-for-one, (myself at home) which was played back at Iklectik. Unedited, unchanged, here it is."
Three pairs of thin, wire strings on the Turkish saz are struck, and the resulting sound is harmonized, filtered and then sustained in an infinite but gradually shifting chord of harmonics. In addition, an EBow is used to excite the strings in real time. This sound is natural, untreated, and adds layers to the sustained chord. Subsequently, two Csound programs running in parallel are "fed" the natural sound of the saz and the output is heavily affected with filters, resonators, vocoders etc. These sonic gestures are allowed to take over as the original chord fades to leave the more transparent sounds of the Csound outputs. The organum returns with much warmer low end. The saz transformations thin out to leave a keening call. And finally, the last minutes are filled with a deep chord which fades to silence.
Anthony Moore (b. August 1948) is a composer/musician, now based in the UK, formerly professor in Cologne for sound art and music working on the social and technical history of sound. He operates across many genres; ambient drone, musique concrète, electroacoustic, songwriting, and immersive, multi-channel sound installations. He continues to compose, perform and release work on various labels such as Touch, Drag City (Chicago), P-Vine (Tokyo) and others. Anthony Moore conducted a lengthy interview with Julian Cowley for The Wire, which appeared in October 2022 edition.
https://reflectionsonsound.bandcamp.com/album/csound-saz
€15.00
Ore Talks
" 'ore talks' limited edition release, gatefold sleeve with booklet. a double lp of essentially electronic and noise-based pieces paired with astonishing texts spoken by anthony moore. the concept is that objects of value, artifacts or minerals, buried deep in the ground send strange signals through the earth up to the planet's surface. they are detected by the ears and instruments of miners, explorers and archaeologists who are tuned-in to the subterranean frequencies. the album contains a large booklet explaining this idea and featuring many pages of eccentric writing about sound." [label info]
Four sides of vinyl: this has served as a time constraint from the very outset of the project. With around 18 minutes per side giving an overall run time of 72 minutes, these time slots are designed to offer recordings of four sets of historical, technical processes and their devices. Each of the four chapters is conceived in two parts and realised in a number of actual compositions.
A. VALVES / ROEHRE:
1. Their Electrons. The developement of De Forest‘s Audion.
2. Noise as signal and the power of redundancy.
B. PIEZOS:
1. Reversibility; Loudspeakers as Microphones and The Transmitting Ear.
2. Mercury Acoustic Delays Lines.
C. RECORDERS:
1. Wax Cylinders, Hill ’n Dale, Voices of the Dead.
2. Magnetic Oxide and Memory Machines, Storing Time.
D. CRYSTAL SETS:
1. Waves; The Air as One Vast (negentropic) Library.
2. Farewell to AM, Fades to Infinity.
A voice is transmitted through various materials; early microphones, the reproducer of an Edison phonograph, glass phials filled with mercury, piezo crystals, transducers, and piezo discs attached to polystyrene spheres, shortwave radios, old russian valves and the self-built circuitry of condensers and switches. What emerges are speech-driven patterns of noise, electronic music and occasional passages where the voice can be plainly heard in 14 separate pieces of widely differing durations.
ORE THOUGHTS
Galena to Stibnite, starting with lead, ending with lead; the history of soldering, cementing connections for currents of information and noise alike. In the undigital realm, noise is a context for the signal and can be information in itself. For example rotating surface noise is useful for finding the original speed at which early shellacs may have been cut. Redundancy is vital for a proper understanding of the world. So Ore Talks celebrates lead and soldering and making connections and, endotically, noise; noises at the outer ear but also of the inner ear. Perec and the Oulipians employ the term ‚endotic‘ as an antonym to ‚exotic‘ in order to focus attention on the everyday, on what might be dismissed as mere noise. The infraordinaire, as Perec calls it, is very much the subject of a historiographical approach that prefers to explore the lives and times of the distinctly unfamous; a more vivid, sensory history that concerns itself with sights and smells and sounds.
In addition, Ore Talks posits a strange attraction between the discoverer and the yet-to-be discovered; between buried artefacts and the archeologist seeking to disinter them; between prospector and rich, subterranean lodes. The ‚ground‘ in the electrical field is a conductor that reaches into the earth. Simultaneously, metalliferous ores and objects alike call out to be uncovered in an equivalent act of active perception. The only prerequisite? Keep an ear to the ground; the telluric source for chthonic voices.
Murmurings from below the surface: the call of buried things that seek to be disinterred. Anthropomorphism notwithstanding, there is something to be said for giving a voice to inanimate minerals. After all, their constituent elements come from the stars and have also given rise to us humans. Furthermore, when those same elements are alchemically transformed into compounds of metal and fillers of plastics, of quicksilver and piezo crystals, of the very air, water or copper that play host to sound in its various forms, transporting speech, then ORE TALKS emerges as a title with some resonance.
And text too can be a ground from beneath which conceptual objects stem (voices in the grey matter). Here is a list of such objects that have been disinterred in no particular order from the paragraphs above. “Active perception; superluminality in the collapse of the sender/receiver paradigm”
“A History of Simultaneity; how far back does same-timedness go?”
“Noise in History, noise as history”
“The importance of redundancy in human communication”
“Sound and the continuum are products of each other”
“What holds true for time also applies to sound; they both depend on disappearing as they come into existence.”
“The speed of sound is a good rate at which to think about a speed of time” These and related topics are expanded over the following pages. They contain the sources for all readings recorded and subsequently transformed in the ORE TALKS experiments on this double LP.
www.therapeutischehoergruppekoeln.de/ore.html
"Antimonit Bleiglanz Coelestin... Ein erzernes ABC bis hin zu Zinnober.
Verbunden mit 72 Minuten Text + Klang in vier Kapiteln / Vinyl-Seiten: a. Valves / Röhren b. Piezos c. Recorders d. Crystal Sets. Kreisend um Ore [Erz] =
Mineralgemenge, die wegen ihres Metallgehaltes abgebaut werden, um es für Werkzeuge und Ähnliches weiterzuverarbeiten.
Kreisend um L/ore, dt. Lehre -> Folklore = the knowledge and traditions, frequently passed along by word of
mouth. Merke: Transmission is a vital part of the folklore process -> 1. Orality =
Mündlichkeit -> 2. Literacy = Reeling and Writhing / Lesen & Schreiben -> 3.
Technical Devices = Aufschreibesysteme. Es geht um Medientechniken: Alphabet - Grammophon... (Friedrich Kittler), um Recording Angels' Mysteries (Klaus Theweleit), um Dead Letters (Gregory Whitehead). Bevor Moore 1996 (bis 2015) Professor an der KHM wurde, hatte er mit Slapp Happy den Mond vom Himmel gepflückt, mit Pink Floyd gearbeitet und Soundtracks für Werner Nekes kreiert.
Akademisch forschte er dann synchron mit Kittler über die Geschichte und Gesetzmäßigkeiten von Sound, über phonetische und klingende Techniken des Daseins und der Erinnerung. 2004 nahm er teil an Kittlers Sirenenexperiment, das vor Amalfi Odysseus' Affäre mit den Sirenen nachstellte. Zwischen '...and the Gods made love' und Moores 'Dogs of War' spielt sich alles ab, was es zu singen und sagen gibt. Polyphone Erkenntnis über Sound und Zeit, Noise und Information, gefiltert aus den Lebenserfahrungen von der Bronzezeit her. Darüber schreibt und spricht Moore mit medienarchäologischem Knowhow und einem Ohr für die chthonischen Stimmen. Innere Stimmen, wie sie zuerst noch bikameral fluktuierten (Julian Jaynes), dann akusmatisch, mimetisch, alphabetisch, speicherbar, decodierbar, repetierbar wurden. Die Namen Zeiss, Chladni, Tyndell und Helmholtz oszillieren steampunkabenteuerlich an den pythagoräischen Küsten wie Töne und Zahlen zwischen Rauschen und Offenbarung. Schwingquarze geben den Takt an.
Memory Machines verflüssigen Vergangenes und Kommendes, um es zu fixieren, so wie Moores Sätze zu Science Fiction verschwimmen. Er raunt von The Etherial Skin of Interference, er wird poetisch, fasziniert von den Ur-Geräuschen, die Scott de Martinvilles Schweinsborsten-Phonautograph einfing oder Rilke der Kronen- Naht des Schädels zu entlocken gedachte. Klang wurde das mit Hilfe der Therapeuten Beck, Grewenig & Hennes (von The Knob, The Finger & The It), Langguth und Specht (einst bei 40 Sekunden Ohne Gewicht und Kunstkopf). Moores Stimme wispert und fitzelt subliminal unter löchrig-perkussiver Bruitistik,
er reiht Zahlen oder verschwindet hinter sirrenden Spuren, taktilen Geräuschen,
spurenelementaren Impulsen. Silben und Satzfetzen mischen sich mit Hilfe der
Hörgruppe zu Kratzern, Partikelkollisionen, Radiowellen, Zeitrost, Reibung von
Entropie und Negentropie, sprachmelodischem Blaseton, Frequenzpingpong.
Umso überraschender daher die klaren, wenn auch für den Laien kryptischen
Sätze über Interferenz, Simultanität, die Unschärfe des Now-Space, von Senden und Empfangen. Moore meditiert über Turings ACE und die Alchemie von Quecksilber-Laufzeitspeichern, aber die Sprache wird wieder verzerrt, der Noise dafür prickelig und wohltönend. Doch dann umfängt einen wieder im ursuppig, uhrsuppig brodelnden, radiowellenberauschten Äther protologisch wummernde Sonic Fiction, die zuletzt endlosrillenstottrig ausgroovt." [Bad Alchemy]
€28.50
Für Immer
"Morgen Wurde and his musical allies move on to score the unfathomable wonder of the Dasein. "Für Immer" is a further breakthrough to the core, emanating sounds which let dissolve all conceivable questions of man about life and death. Sounds that let all questions appear negligibly.
The immersive finds are channelled into ambient/space/drone music hybrids with neoclassical and jazz noir elements, sometimes crossing paths with messengers of transcendental sounds like Abul Mogard, bvdub, Fennesz, Gas, Rafael Anton Irisarri or Tim Hecker.
The elevating experience happens in Morgen Wurde's electroacoustic spaces, hosting singular virtuoso instrumentalists. Creating the "Morgen Wurde" form of lyricism and haunting soundscapes, this collaborative exploration takes space music to new highs.
There are the stoically undulating sound masses, like the ambivalence of the awe-inspiring mysterious forces of nature, sometimes majestic, sometimes threatening. And there are the soloists, wandering through these sonic landscapes as masters of their art:
Doug Perry on the vibraphone and Tetsuroh Konishi on the trumpet embody subtle sublimeness. The violinists bring in widely differing styles: David Strother skipping ardently on top of the seething sound masses, Georges-Emmanuel Schneider forming a mystic amalgam with the underlying soundscapes. Maria Estrella's transcendent vocal texture, nestling in solemn spheres, marks the epic finale.
These musicians bring unique elements of life and humanity to the recordings, adding their very personal note and vision.
The rich material called for addressing also the body. Artists from around the world answered this call for cosmic dance remixes:
Altone (Japan) initiates the rite with his transcendently free-floating remix, incorporating sounds from various album tracks. Roman Ridder (Germany) then sparks the dance with a deep dub techno ride. Liuos (Finland) irresistibly animates the body further into a trance, before Cie (Germany) breaks loose the passionate fire of rave. Lostlojic (Ukraine) upholds the energy of peaktime techno, before Dmitriy Zakat (Russia) navigates through an absorbing bass intermezzo, followed by a sweeping post-dubstep adventure by Sébastien Job (France). Martin Schulte (Russia) pursues the explorative mission driven by minimal tech breaks. Thereupon Johnnyx Guitar (Germany) deepens the tempting occult spirit of the venture. Duckem (Greece) leaves the traveller with moody trip hop in a Blade Runner-style bar, before we come full circle with the beat version of Altone's remix, reaching out to eternity.
Like all the best remixing work, these tracks are not intended as alternative versions of the originals. Rather the remixes can be considered originals of the respective artists who drew sounds and vibes from the "Für Immer" originals.
This is the third album in the series of Morgen Wurde's electroacoustic sound processing-based albums, following “Brach Auf” (2016) and “Assassinous Act” (2017) which were released on Time Released Sound, Alameda. Besides, there are two albums “Letzten Endes” (2015) and “Als je zuvor” (2018) (both on Off Rec.) which were composed classically on the piano and then clothed with electronic sounds."
https://morgenwurde.bandcamp.com/album/f-r-immer
€15.00
Locust Dreams
"The latest from Poland's Mort Douce is named after a poem by John Siddique. Given the title, I expected to be besieged with insect chittering or else the maddening rush of descending swarms. Instead,the sounds are almost geological, like dropping a microphone into the center of the Earth and amplifying minute tectonic shifts, documenting the secret life of continents.
What first struck me when listening to this album was how it evokes an epic sense of space. "Dream of Better Days" begins with what could be the industrial clatter of a steel refinery reverberating in vast halls of feedback and suffering a slow death. "Beneath the Flesh" could be a geologic gasp, like a crumbling ice shelf, and "All Stripped Down" evokes large bodies of colliding minerals. Things get more cosmic with"A Flash Flood in the Night," which evokes the radar blips of a moonlanding while debris bounces off of a vessel in low gravity as faint bits of melody are drowned in gaseous swirls. The brief "Sun in My Hand" continues the outer space vibe, as if howling interstellar wind is stressing the metal of an orbiting satellite.
The album's only misstep is "Coarse State of Saturn." It starts with rasping,swirling sounds and deep tones that are soon overwhelmed, if nothing jacked outright, by a wearisome high pitch that induces headaches and makes dogs howl. Unfortunately, this annoying high pitch overpowers and obscures most of everything else occurring on the track, which is otherwise dense with activity. Still, it's only one track of six and doesn't spoil the album's stronger material.
Succinct and deliberate, Locust Dreams makes its point without any unnecessary fluff or padding. A definite step forward, it's easily the best thing I've heard yet from Mort Douce."
[Brainwashed]
www.danhuser.org
€14.00
Off the beaten Track
"it might have been in the air after raubbau’s extensive box set and the subsequent live performances, it sure has been hoped for by more than a few, and here it is confirmed, the first morthound album in over 20 years: the title somehow gives it away, this is an absorbing exploration of the dark ambient realms, a sometimes outright frightening dip into the pit, yet composed with the expert knowledge of a now seasoned producer. way off the beaten track, morthound returns triumphantly to the fold. so the question is naturally, which of his own traditions as morthound would bj nilsen explore on this comeback - the industrial/noise-heavy, the brute, the cold ambient, the psychedelic, the ritual, or even the academic/experimental attitude of his post-morthound career? the answer is: all of the above, but enveloped in a totally coherent, updated approach, subtly taking up the threads and weaving them into a good 45 minutes of flawless dark atmosphere. the path off the beaten track starts in a tense, minimal and unexpectedly bass-heavy fashion with 'the device', before the epic 'between midnight and dawn' brings in the somber layers of synthetic darkness that are classic morthound; in 'the munich manual' we are confronted with weird off-key elements, and 'disquieted' turns out a malicious death industrial tune seething with distortion; 'disembodied voices' portrays emptiness as sound and 'the black forest' finishes the album with almost harmonious, calming beauty. the challenge of a comeback album after that many years is obviously to handle the balancing act between picking up and respecting your own legacy on the one hand side, and creating something meaningful for the present on the other. with 'off the beaten track the light don't shine' bj nilsen has succeeded in both, created an album that will find avid followers in different generations of listeners, and has all the potential to become a genre classic." [label info]
www.raubbau.org
€13.00
Canopies + Cathedrals
Canopies : A roof-like covering of trees enclosing a large or wide natural space.
Cathedral : Large edifice usually of stone, enclosing space reserved for spiritual contemplation.
Vertical structures that strive for light and open spaces, defying gravity, and reason.
A Tarkosvsky-esque transcendence of spirit and nature, time imprinted on an intertwining of sap and stone, branch and pillar, column, and trunk.
This third MPM release is co-written by Phil and Jackson Mouldycliff, with studio treatments (mixing, mastering, and arranging) by Colin Potter. Additional field recordings used in the composition were provided by Dave Carson. It accompanies an installation under the same title, with visual material by Phil, Dave, and Sarah Robinson, to be shown at Wells Cathedral in the summer of 2025.
The extended ambient piece weaves together found sounds from the interiors of ecclesiastical buildings and both temperate and tropical forests. The composition features bells, organ, choirs, wind through vegetation, birds, insects-both real and imagined. These elements are further layered with synthesised and sampled sounds, creating a seamless soundscape that embodies the connection between nature, architecture, and memory.
https://icrdistribution.bandcamp.com/album/canopies-cathedrals
€13.00
The Whole
"Der Avantgarde-Perkussionist übersetzt tradiertes Handwerk in Musik: "The Whole" mag sein Debüt für das Label Type sein, doch ist es bei weitem nicht Jon Muellers Einstand in der Szene. Über seine Mitarbeit in Bands wie Collections Of Colonies Of Bees und Volcano Choir mit Justin Vernon aka Bon Iver sowie mehreren Soloalben und Kollaborationen hat sich der Mann aus Milwaukee einen Namen als hervorragender Schlagzeuger und Perkussionist gemacht. Als Nachfolger seines Werks "Metals", einer Sammlung klassischer Heavy-Metal-Rhythmen, und den ausschweifend schönen "Physical Changes" war es für Mueller Zeit für ein grundlegendes Statement. Fasziniert von einfachen und akustischen Klängen, ließ sich Mueller sogar vom alten Kunsthandwerk der Shaker, einer amerikanischen Religionsgemeinschaft, und vom Quilt-Handwerk beeinflussen. Beides einfache tradierte Handwerksformen, die aber immer wieder misinterpretiert wurden. Diese fehlgedeutete Simplizität ist ein Leitmotiv von "The Whole". Mueller erschafft mit Schlagzeug, Dulcimer und seiner Stimme einen Sound, der gleichzeitig originell und verführerisch ist, der Spuren der Vergangenheit und Echos der Zukunft trägt.//
The Whole might be avant-percussionist Jon Mueller's first album for the Type imprint, but it's far from his scene debut. Working in a plethora of bands for many years (including Collections Of Colonies Of Bees and Volcano Choir with Justin Vernon aka Bon Iver), Mueller has honed his sound to a distinct peak, and over the course of umpteen solo albums and collaborations has cemented his status as one of experimental music's most revered drummers. Following his epic works Metals (a collection of classic heavy metal rhythms) and the expansive and surprisingly beautiful Physical Changes, both for the esteemed Table Of The Elements label, Mueller embarked on the heady process of creating a "defining" work. Intrigued by ideas of simplicity and acoustic sound, Mueller's research drew him to Shaker crafts and quilt-making, both deceptively simple practices rooted in the transmission of ideas. Over time, these experiences were interpreted in many different ways, almost certainly inaccurately, and this miscommunicated simplicity is at the very center of The Whole. Through a rolling, unamplified snare drum (a piece of kit perfected over a year of intense practice), booming low toms, hammered dulcimer and his own voice, Mueller creates a sound that is wholly original and totally beguiling. There are traces of folk traditions and lines drawn to the avant garde idiom, but Mueller's sound is so singularly perfected, it is hard to connect him to specific peers. The Whole is an album that sounds like both a relic of the past and an echo of the future. The ideas are anchored in memory and tradition, yet the sound is alien and sometimes impenetrable. Over time, as the messages are stripped back, an unabashedly gorgeous piece of work is revealed. Like a good book, it requires patience and contemplation to show its beating heart." [label info]
www.typerecords.com
€15.50
Decomposing Cacophonies
“Decomposing Cacophonies” was recorded in Zurich (CH) in July 2017 by Attila and Joel during a long session. The duo embarked on a metaphysical exploration of the cycle of life and more specifically, reflected on how organic matter decomposes. This experiment was transposed into sound and subdivided into different moments that accompany decay. It is violent, at times calm at other times agitated, it may be noisy as well as dreamy; definitely deadly and ready to get recycled into the apparently never-ending cycle of inorganic and organic restoration. We live to die in order to let other beings live. We die to live in order to let other beings die.
The album was mixed shortly after the recording and mastered in January 2018 by Attila Folklor between the plains and the mountains of Ticino.
The pictures were taken by Joel during the Autumn of 2017 around the Mittelland, while Huere Giulio carefully took care of the layout.
From Luce Sia’s press release:
LUCE SIA is happy to announce its release n. 052, made in collaboration with the Swiss label L’è Tütt Folklor Records! Mulo Muto’s new album “Decomposing Cacophonies” is a 66 minutes crescendo of magmatic and piercing sounds, divided in 8 acts, that creates an intense and powerful ode to putrefaction.
«You will have with this means All the glory of the world, And therefore every darkness will go far from you. It is the strong force of every force, because it will win every thin thing, and It will penetrate every solid thing.» (From “The Emerald Table”)
Out now on digipack CD, limited to 190 copies!
Decomposers:
• Attila Folklor: electronics, synths, electroacoustic devices, loops
• Joel Gilardini: treated guitars, synths, electronics, loops
Thanks to Sacha, Nebo and Huere Giulio. Recorded by Attila Folklor and Joel Gilardini.
Mixed and mastered by Attila Folklor.
https://lucesia.bandcamp.com/album/052-mulo-muto-decomposing-cacophonies
€12.00
Berge im Bunker
"The two tracks on this release are based on the music that was originally composed for the Berge im Bunker exhibition by Barbara Meisner that ran from August 2008 to May 2009 in Dortmund. The collage is a repeating, light melodic environmental soundscape that creates an unheimlich feel, while incorporating all [multer] elements: loops, electronica , drones... Still it is not a typical release for the German duo as it is their most minimal effort up to date. The music will get the best out of your imagination.
CD (NO CD-R) limited to 200 copies." [label info]
www.consouling.be
"Zwei Stücke mit auditiv ähnlich gelagerter Faktur. Der Soundtrack zu einer Installation rückt [multer] von der gegenwärtigen Theorie einer Konzeptband in den unheilvollen Kunstbetrieb. Dabei sind die Klänge von [multer] unter dem Corrige von N seit jeher Träger von Stimmungen und emotionalen Miasmen, deren Inhalte sich durch das Goutieren im
klanglichen Zusammenspiel noch mehr aufzuladen scheinen. »Berge Im Bunker« klingt aber so
wenig kunstaffin als nach einem gewagten Experiment in Zeit und Raum. Die Musik ist
defizitär sparsam, die Verwendung hochauflösender Echoschleifen geradezu gewollt
zeitbrechend. Was sich nach einer minimalen Tapete für stehendes Kunstgut ausnimmt,
funktioniert auf der Hörebene ohne visuelle Kontrapunkte ebenso. Das Album wirkt in den
zwei Titeln gekonnt zerbrechlich, die Gitarre surrt melodramatische Arpeggien ab während
der Raum sich durch sanfte Gongklänge in eine mantraartige Struktur verdickt, die sich nur
durch den immerwährend wiederholenden Absatz markiert. Wiederholung, das sah selbst
Cage als wichtig und nötig an denn nur so kann sich Veränderung einschleichen. Hier brechen [multer] mit dem gewohnten Bild einer rhythmisch veräderten Musik, die sich auf
»Berge Im Bunker« mit einem Male in ein Zerrbild ihrer selbst verwandelt. Nicht für jeden ein Gewinn, aber ein grandioses Zusammenspiel von Kunst und Konzeption.
5/5 " [Thorsten Soltau / AEMAG]
€13.00
Utopia
"When Fernando Corona released Martes, his first album as Murcof, back in 2002, it was a bolt from the blue: a work of such clarity and strength of character that it became an instant genre classic. The album’s reputation spread by word of mouth, and it continues to sell as strongly now as it did when it was released, subsequently becoming one of The Leaf Label’s biggest selling albums.
Corona is currently putting the finishing touches to his second Murcof album, scheduled for release in September 2004 on CD and DVD in full 5.1 sound. But before that comes Utopía, a specially priced collection featuring sympathetic reworkings of tracks from Martes, the two tracks from 2003's exceptional Ulysses 12", both tracks from the Utopía Remixes 12" (April 2004) and two further previously unreleased Murcof tracks, ‘Una’ and ‘Ultimatum’. More a companion piece to Martes than a prelude to the new album, Utopía distils the essence of the first album into sinuous new forms.
The remixers employed here are a typically global bunch for The Leaf Label, including Sutekh (Context Free Media/San Francisco), Supersilent producer Deathprod (Rune Grammofon/Oslo), Icarus (The Leaf Label/London), Corona’s Mexican collaborator Fax (Static Discos/Mexicali), Jan Jelinek (Scape/Berlin), Geoff White (Force Inc/USA) and Colleen (The Leaf Label/Paris) delivering her first ever remix." [label info]
www.theleaflabel.com
€11.50
What are the Roots that clutch
"It was a cavernous tone that broadcast from a ventilator duct that inspired Patrick McGinley to begin collecting field recordings and working them into his slow-arc compositions. At the time when he heard that particular tone in that particular city at that particular time, he had no gear to recording device on hand. Over the next fifteen years (and counting) McGinley has eased into a peripatetic lifestyle, wandering the European countryside and forests (but never straying too far from the thrum and spark of civilization) in search of the same epiphany with his head rattled to the sound of a cavernous air duct.
Around 1996, McGinley adopted the moniker Murmer for his compositional work; and though his work often steps into the quieter realm of sound construction, much of his field recordings and resultant compositions privilege interference and disturbances that occur within any given sound ecology. Those sounds could be the elusive tone from that ventilator, the polyrhythmic chorus of chirping frogs, the abstracted roar from an Arctic wind tearing across the Black Sea, or the metallic skree from a bowed antenna perched atop a Soviet-era observatory. What Are The Roots That Clutch marks McGinley's first full album in nearly 5 years, but it marks an elegant continuation of his previous album We Share A Shadow. The five chapters of this album can't easily be associated with any specific location; instead McGinley overlaps and crosshatches his field recordings and abstractions into acousmatic passages with ghostly, half-melodic qualities. Even the two unprocessed recordings of the album are impossibly complex in their accretions of sound. McGinley's composed pieces embrace lithe, mysterious drones whose mossy, damp atmosphere perfectly situate with tactile crunches, tactile events, and signal noise generation. Eels and leaches would not be out of place in such an environment; but the subaquatic murk snaps into a hallowed manifestation of ritualized minimalism at the album's finale -- one that LaMonte Young and Angus Maclise might have conjured in 1968 with clattering percussive elements and a hypnotic blur of harmonic drone.
What Are The Roots That Clutch is limited to 400 copies and comes housed with letterpress artwork." [label info]
www.helenscarsdale.com
"Patrick McGinley just carries on. Working as Murmer since 1996 he has a strong love for the world of field recordings and electronics. Since quite some time now he lives in Estonia and walks the woods to tape his sounds, takes them home and then transforms them in whatever mysterious way. Five long pieces, from mere six minutes to eighteen minutes. The two pieces that stay under ten minutes are 'unmanipulated found sounds', the other three are 'composed from found sounds, found objects and live room feedback'. Its easy to tell the difference between one and the other. The 'pure' pieces are indeed pure pieces in which we hear the obscure sounds of motors, ventilators, or otherwise objects moved by say wind, while in the other three, McGinely chooses for a slow built up of events. A simple, single sound starts up and then slowly more and more sounds are added, sine wave like sounds leap slowly in and then at one point you'll notice that the entire piece seem to have changed and you
have a full on, minimal yet maximum output sound, such as for instance in the fifth (untitled) piece when the pots and pans in the kitchen start to vibrate and we have an interesting minimalist clutter piece, that is halfway between a drone piece and a Velvet Underground jam. Maybe that's where the real surprise of this release is, in that development of field recordings towards very interesting (and very good) minimalist, electronic music." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
"In looking at his discography alone, Patrick McGinley (aka Murmer) might not seem to be such a prolific artist; although he's certainly dedicated his entire existence to the pursuit of the field recording, its use in composition, and avant-garde sound practices in general. Each week, McGinley produces the ever enlightening Framework radio series dedicated to those very topics, starting out of Resonance FM in London with syndication now reaching several dozen adventurous radio stations across the globe. He's also active in curating a quarterly series of small cd-r editions of sound ecology, phonography, and field recording based sound art; and he also is an active participant in the Estonian avant-garde, as he's currently planted himself in the university city of Tartu. What Are The Roots That Clutch is his first full album in nearly seven years. Has it really been that long? That said, McGinley did work on a brilliant collaborative project with John Grzinich and Yannick Dauby, and he released a 3"cd-r for Taalem, both of which came out earlier this year in 2012. McGinley quips that he put the recordings aside to this record for well over a year, which may account in part for the delay; but ultimately, all of the recordings from Murmer are timeless. What Are The Roots That Clutch is no exception.
The field recordings that McGinley collects hedge towards disturbances in any given sound ecology, as found in the abrasive textures from a busted exhaust vent comingling with the Aeolian harmonics from the sustained gusts streaming down from the North Sea. McGinley does include two relatively unaltered field recordings (probably some minor filtering, but that's all) within the thoroughly abstracted and droned out compositions. One of these features a very eerie fundamental harmonic drone, obviously being activated by the wind and coupled with a glistening rattle and an unfurled flapping. The three elements here make for a surprisingly musical, if totally alien sounding piece that's akin to the Alan Lamb wire recordings. The album's 17 minute centerpiece is a slow building blur of industrial resonance and densely layered aquatic filigree that melts into chunks of clattering ice (it could be wood or glass... but ice is just so much more poetic to consider given the context); but the album's finale is where McGinley really gives us something to sink our teeth into. A comparatively harsh stutter of electrical abrasion builds up to a crescendo through water-tank rumblings and fire and / or water textures. At the peak, McGinley snaps to a downright psychedelic raga of back-masked belltones, harmonium drones, and percussive clatter that all comes together in a minimalist chorale on par with anything that Angus Maclise mustered in his dervishes and mantras.
As great as McGinley's last record was, What Are The Roots That Clutch might be even better. Handsomely packaged in letterpress artwork whose ochre-yellow hue matches the color of an Estonian farm house he's quite fond of. Limited to 400 copies." [Aquarius Rec.]
€13.00
Commonwealth
Dröhnminimalismus pur! Poly-Drones die sich in endlosen Wellen umeinander legen, regelrecht anfangen zu schlingern. Aufs "erste Hören": Statik. Beim genaueren Hinhören: Eine unendliche Klangfülle, tänzelnde Obertöne, schwingende Frequenzen in multiplen Schichten, stetige Veränderungen und Verschiebungen. Der Drone-Gott steckt in den Details! Eine sehr feine Aufnahme des Bostoner Klangkünstlers BRENDAN MURRAY!
"Nie wurden Sehnen mehr gedehnt als über Murrays 49 Minuten Commonwealth. Nur Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue oder Jean-Francois Laporte erzeugen solch sture Dronegebilde, in denen schüchterne Obertöne zu gigantischen Kolossen mutieren und Langatmigkeit den klaren Ton angibt. Harmonieansätze tauchen in diesem Wall aus Gitarre und analogen/digitalen Soundmanipulationen nur ganz spärlich auf und entblößen sich rasch als hilflose Wegweiser vergangener Genres. Nostalgie spielt allerdings keine Rolle, Commonnwealth schabt nach vorne, dezentriert Zeit und vermag sogar den Bewegungsapparat zu blockieren. Liest sich eventuell zu statisch, wirkt unter der Oberfläche aber äußerst drastisch. " [Ed Benndorf / DE BUG]
"Brendan Murray has become a central figure in Boston’s sound art vanguard through a reputation of exceptional live performances and a growing catalogue of slow-shifting compositions for rarified drones. A single crescendo terminating at the end of 49 minutes, Commonwealth is an epic investigation into subtle harmonics and overtones expressed through layered slippages of pure sound. Conceived through guitar, analog synthesis, and plenty of digital manipulation, Commonwealth expresses a rare confidence in Murray's finely tuned detailing of sinewy tonalities and sculpted megalithic surfaces. Murray himself has qualified this album as a "sincere bow to 'classic' minimalism," and Commonwealth is a worthy parallel to the work of Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue, and Iannis Xenakis." [label info]
"We've ballyhooed Brendan Murray's exceptional, yet perennially overlooked drone & din work in the past; but nothing could have prepared us for Commonwealth. Damn, this guy is good. No, wait; he's fucking great! After a handful of cd-r productions, a Twonicorn cassette, and a fine cd release on Intransitive of processed shimmer, shifting frequencies, and some low-end girth rumblings for our bligatory SUNNO))) reference, Brendan Murray has produced his best work to date with Commonwealth. Compositionally, it's incredibly simple: a drone goes up, and it goes down. It lasts a little under 50 minutes. But buried with this single minded composition, there are thick spun rumbles, reflective vibrations, sympathetic sub-harmonics, and rich tonal frequencies. Out of the constant tectonic whir that introduces Commonwealth, shimmering clusters sound like a battery of reed organs or hurdy-gurdies, slowly modulating into heavier, deeper drones. We've been told that the source material for these sounds is guitar, although you'd be hard pressed to hear anything guitar-shaped anywhere on the disc. It's far more like the hallowed minimalist sound of Charlemagne Palestine and La Monte Young. Dare we say, it's better? Yes, Murray's drone hums like a perfectly tuned machine, with multiple pistons purring in a steady progress along Commonwealth's compositional arc. When Murray shifts the focus of the album downward, which begins not even halfway through the piece, the descent is noticeable; but it actually becomes Murray's most fertile work within Commonwealth. Here, low rhythmic thrumbs crawl beneath
the surface of the slowly collapsing drone, precluding its inevitable terminus. Perfect trance-enducing dronemuzik. Fans of Aidan Baker, Andrew Chalk, and Phill Niblock should definitely take note!" [Aquarius Records ]
"... Much louder and less subtle, this is loud drone music, one of the kind that Niblock plays live. Although playing music on headphones is not something I usually recommend, this piece sounds pretty fine on headphones, pressing air against your ears, making a thunderous storm, which shoots right in your brain. Towards the end the volume drops a bit in favor of more heavy weight bass sounds, forming the natural ending to a heavy work. Murray delivers, once again, a mighty fine album that will be another step forward in recognizing him as a true master of the genre. Fans of classical drone music be aware - this is the classic of the future." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
www.23five.org
€13.00
Selected Live Recordings
"Selected Live Recordings is the third release De La Catessen Records has divined from the archives of New-York-via-Adelaide minimalist composer Alex Carpenter, and the second in this series for his shape-shifting collective, Music Of Transparent Means. It follows the two side-long fantasias of 2021's self-titled album; this time, we pan out slightly, to grant the listener a varied and yet more complex understanding of the material Carpenter was writing and performing when this music was happening, during the noughties. On this album, you can hear the results of some intensive explorations of the possibilities of minimalism both at its most delicate, and at its most feverish. The heavenly stasis of "Disappearance #1", for massed wine glasses and bowed guitars, feels like being jettisoned in a water tower filled with ether; the wooziness of "Burial Music" captures something of the spirit of Fripp & Eno's (No Pussyfooting), but as though the tape is slowly disintegrating; the music is blurred at the edges, warped and sidereal. Perhaps the centerpiece of Selected Live Recordings, though, is the simple, yet ravishing, "Rose Street Womb". With its performers given a simple set of instructions -- to continually repeat and elongate a series of phrases, while listening and responding to the overall sound of the ensemble -- its pastoral psychedelia recalls the gentle slippages of Arthur Russell's landmark composition, Tower Of Meaning. Elsewhere, "Mountain Piece #2" is a thunderstorm for massed drums, while "Second Presencing" uses delays as a structuring device to paint an "audio canvas" from a clutch of damaged tones. Throughout, you can hear Carpenter's knowledge and deep study of the history of minimalist composition -- he has written extensively on the work of La Monte Young, and there is certainly some aesthetic and ideological crossover with the likes of Phill Niblock, Terry Riley, and Arnold Dreyblatt. But it is also very much his own thing, the result of an intensive period of study and exploration of the possibilities, not just of minimalist composition, but also of Just Intonation. With the material long whispered about in reverent tones, and circulating on CD-R only amongst a small group of like-minded souls, De La Catessen's ongoing series of releases of Carpenter's music is a major development, bringing to light one of minimalism's hidden histories." [press release]
"From Iggy on the cover of Raw Power to Black Sabbath, circa 1980, in Milwaukee, from the ’52 Cleveland riot through to Suicide in Brussels, a healthy dose of chaos and danger is at the heart of all great rock music. So, it comes as no surprise to hear Alex Carpenter, the musician behind Music Of Transparent Means (MOTM), talk about chaos as core to the development of his music: “Even though there was this purity and mathematical elegance throughout some of the thinking and theory, what I remember almost more than that was the chaos and the mess, the forcefulness, the saturation and obliteration. The clear ideal gave way to this kind of loud, intense chaos, which in turn opened a path back to the clear.”
Music Of Transparent Means has always struck me as a particularly rock-reverent kind of minimalism, as though Alex has removed all the excess baggage that rock has picked up over the decades and focused on its most important aspects: noise and intensity, energy and mayhem. There is, of course, a great tradition of rock minimalism, from the Velvet Underground through AC/DC to Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, on into Band Of Susans, Spacemen 3 and Loop, but Alex’s music is curious for the way it flips the script on those examples and gives us an altogether different take on the intersection of these two forces.
You can hear the ‘elegant chaos’ of Alex’s compositions throughout this second archival release by the ensemble, which is filled with music that’s both seriously beautiful and deliriously serious. If the first MOTM release on De la Catessen gave an extended view into Alex’s work, with one long piece per side, here we have excerpts from performances throughout the years, allowing a more expansive take on both process and outcome. What strikes me, listening to this music, is the way that Alex indeed allows chaos to take its own non-form, to coalesce and congeal into huge, abraded blocks of sound, to allow the meeting of musicians, many from different walks of life, to morph into one throbbing brain at the centre of the sonorous universe.
Hearing “Rose Street Womb” for the first time in over a decade, I am also momentarily surprised by how much it echoes another favourite composition of mine, Arthur Russell’s early ‘80s piece, Tower Of Meaning. In “Rose Street Womb”, musicians are each given one short phrase, or a series of them, “which were continually repeated (either fully or partially) and continually elongated,” Alex recalls. “Performers were encouraged to listen less to their own part and more to the overall ensemble.” Here, you can hear that collective mind flame into being, where a ticker-taping tessellation of tones builds abstract architectures. It’s a collectivity that’s echoed in the brief excerpt from “Mountain Piece 2”, for massed drums, though this concerns itself more with the dynamic of rise and fall, and the collapsing of our distinct sense of rhythm and texture; it’s an exhilarating rush of projected energy.
By contrast, the woozy, sea-sick strands of melody in “Burial Music” obliterate themselves via the delay feedback system that Alex has constructed (shades of Fripp and Eno in the (No Pussyfooting) mirror-verse here), eventually leading to simple phrases collapsing in on each other, “resulting in a sort of ‘burial of melody’,” Alex confides. This focus on delay as a structuring force is also evident in the following “Second Presencing”, where Alex draws out what he terms an “audio canvas” by “increasing the delay time to over five seconds, thus opening a space in which I could react musically and build upon burgeoning patterns and gestures,” with a “slow change of harmonic centre”. If the delay pedal is so often the curse of lazy experimental and post-rock music, an easy route to padding out the tonal spectrum, Alex, on the other hand, uses it with indeed a painterly caress, using the parameters and extremities of this phenomenon to offer different ways of composing and responding to sound as it unfolds in real time, in front of our ears.
The closing excerpt from a 2002 performance of “Disappearance #1”, for wine glasses and bowed guitars, has particular personal resonance for me – attending this show at SEAS Gallery was the first time I’d encountered Music Of Transparent Means, on the recommendation of Alex’s and my mutual friend (and general all-round mensch of Adelaide music) Nigel Koop. I recall being struck by the eloquence of the sound and tested by its duration. For Alex, “Disappearance #1” was a significant piece – “the result of a painful re-entry back into performance after a long period of getting hung up on theory,” he remembers, “in particular the history of Western tuning and the idea of returning to some rarefied (and impossible) ‘perfect sound.’ Writing in just intonation definitely helped with the re-entry, but ultimately I realised I wanted more energy and chaos, even if it was in the service of striving towards some type of perfection.”
When I interviewed Australian musician Oren Ambarchi many years ago, I asked him why he was so moved by minimalist composers like Phill Niblock. His answer was simple: “I like it because it rocks.” Listening, with some intensity, to Alex’s music after some time away from it, I’m struck by the way it also collapses dualities – elegance and chaos; body and mind; heart and head; rock and minimalism. In here, we can experience something that’s fundamental, I think, to what we’re all looking for, perhaps moreso on the level of the unconscious, whether we’re lost in the zone at a heady recital or caught up in the tidal waves of noise rolling off the stage at a gig; deep, identity-dissolving sensory obliteration.
Like being caught in the middle of the holocaust of sound that my bloody valentine erupt into at the end of their gigs, during “You Made Me Realise”, you’re blissfully lost, and not a little concussed and confused. “The goal was to exhaust people first,” Alex concludes. “To get them to a point where these perceptual habits stopped serving them. Like meditating on a word until it loses its referential significance or magnifying an image until its normally recognisable shape becomes unstable. It’s only after these surface layers start breaking away that we can start clearing a path towards a more direct engagement with the material.” [Jon Dale]
https://transparentmeans.bandcamp.com/album/selected-live-recordings-2
€25.00
Izlamaphobia
Re-release dieses Klassikers von 1995, dürfte zu einem der besten MUSLIMGAUZE-Werke gehören, sehr druckvoll und originell.
“Rerelease of muslimlim 001 with new artwork in a limited edition of 800 It was first in what continues to be a series of limited-edition subscription-only releases from Staalplaat, Izlamaphobia starts with an aggressive blast, "Hudood Ordinance." With a rhythm track consisting of extremely tweaked and processed electronic beats and bleeps, with only the gentlest of Arabic string instruments deep in the mix to relate things to a more familiar Muslimgauze sound, the song sets the general mood for the rest of Izlamaphobia. This said, Bryn Jones' specific talent is such that even without that, this would still sound like him, his trademark care and obsessiveness in terms of percussion again evident. Two discs long and with a variety of romanticized (some might say stereotypical) songtitles like "The Eternal Illusionist of Oid Bachdad" and "Lahore Morphine Market," Izlamaphobia has two chief artistic themes, if anything. On the one hand, Jones' incorporation of hip-hop and funk beats has never been stronger, providing songs like "Gilded Madrasa" and "The Public Flogger of Lahore" with a wickedly fierce kick and drive. On the other, the strained, alien treatments on many of the songs would be well at home on innumerable Warp Records releases of the '90s, with squelching rhythms, undanceable dance tracks and, quite unsurprisingly, a desire to avoid expected techno clichés. With these two strains combined on many songs by Jones, the results are wonderfully slamming, strange tracks such as "Khadija and Fereshta." Not everything is quite so dramatically different from past Muslimgauze releases, with the incorporation of multilayered acoustic percussion cropping up more than once, such as on "Hijab Muzzle." Everything is just that little bit dirtier in sound, though, and all the more intriguing for it. Some tracks are mere snippets and others don't quite deliver on their promise, but all in all Izlamaphobia is yet another Muslimgauze success.” [press release]
www.staalplaat.com
€22.50
Tandoor Dog
"In 1998 Staalplaat and Muslimgauze were on a conquering spirit. Bryn Jones (1961-1999), the man behind Muslimgauze delivered new works, almost on a weekly basis and was more than happy to see them released straight away. Unlike others, Staalplaat was never shy to release larger works, lumping various works together, such as the 9CD “Box Of Silk & Dogs”. Allowing free reign in editing, the 4LP box set ‘Tandoori Dog”, contained the LP of the same name, which saw only eight out of the ten original pieces. Now released as a sole CD, the complete, ten track “Tandoori Dog” is released on a limited CD, spanning in total sixty minutes of music. Muslimgauze didn’t fail in this highly productive period. Peaking as never before, his music here carries all that makes Muslimgauze the unique artist he is. Taking his influences from what can be loosely called the Middle East, but extending that to as far as Pakistan, Jones samples freely percussion, instruments and voices and adds these to his own sequences and instruments, such as the tabla. The melting pot that is the studio blends this together, in hypnotic pieces of music. Captivating, minimal, groovy, but rather than being slick and commercial, this is the roughly shaped electronic world of Bryn Jones. All of this motivated and inspired by events in the Middle East, as reflected through the titles Jones picked for his work. A strong pre-occupation with the fate of the occupied people in the Palestinian lands and an unashamed love for such controversial groups as Hezbollah. With the re-issue of “Tandoori Dog” another keystone work by Jones is finally being available again." [label info]
www.staalplaat.com
€15.50
Minaret Speaker
"While the human voice has often been an element in Bryn Jones’ work as Muslimgauze, rarely did he highlight it as much as he does in these two newest releases from the Muslimgauze Archive Series. While elements of Minaret Speaker appeared on the 7” of the same name released by Staalplaat in 1996, much of the strongest material here is previously unheard. Jones’ normal practice was to send in tapes to the label with only a title for each tape as a whole, then provide individual track titles before each release. Sadly, with his passing in 1999 we are left with many projects where he provided album titles but, barring a séance, the tracks themselves will always remain untitled.
The material on Minaret Speaker can be broken into two groups; the first, the ten tracks that make up the bulk of this release, make clear immediately why Jones picked that title for the album, with the ten-minute “Minaret Speaker Track 1” serving as a duo for his trademark digitally distorted percussion loops and what certainly sounds like a recording of a call to prayer, or adhan. The voices on the tracks here are ones that may well have come out of an actual minaret speaker at some point. One these tracks, as the musical backing gets harsher and more distorted, the voices reach towards deliverance; the results, even on wordless interludes like the string-based “Bamboo Bound” is something that can seem more approachable than some of Jones’ work as Muslimgauze.
The four Rest tracks that make up the end of this release form a brief bonus EP of even lower-fidelity-than-normal works in progress from Jones, with “Rest Track 1” immediately sounding like Jones putting his own work through some new contortions. At times this material gets and fuzzed- and dubbed-out as anything in the Muslimgauze discography, a perfect accompaniment to the mix of soaring and pulverizing music found on the rest of the album." [label info]
www.staalplaat.com
€16.50
Turn on Arabic American Radio
The relationship between Bryn Jones’ music as Muslimgauze and the track/abum titles he would provide (sometimes right on the tapes he would send in for release, but often determined later, sometimes even giving two different pieces months apart the same title, accidentally or not) has always been a little mysterious. Jones himself can no longer be asked, and as we continue to investigate the swathes of material he provided, you hit sources like the DAT or DATs that make up the contents of the new double LP »Turn On Arab American Radio«. Nine tracks, the first LP/four tracks titled »Turn On Arabic American Radio,« and the other LP/five tracks labelled only »Arabic American Radio.« None of them sound particularly radio-esque, although given the simultaneous vastness and ornate focus of Jones’ Muslimgauze work that gap between name and sound is far from atypical.
Instead here the de rigeur percussion loops that underpin this particular set of tracks, while occasionally clipping into the fierce distortion that Jones either loved to use or couldn’t get away from, steer away from both the more consistent application of that distortion as well as the Middle Eastern and Asian influences he often used. It’d be a stretch to call anything here basic boom-bap production but they come closer to it than a lot of Muslimgauze production. And while those loops are, as always prominent, they’re not actually the focus; settling into steady vamps as structures for Jones to pursue an extended and often more gentle exploration of the other sample sources he has here. There are stringed instruments, the sound of water, but most prominently or strikingly the human voice. Nothing is in English but tone and the occasional word ('familia', 'passport') still provide guides. There are ululations, snatches of melody; but most often speech, dialogue, often tense and harried sounding. Is this what Jones was thinking of or referring to with his Arabic American Radio?
As with so many other questions about Muslimgauze, we’ll never know the answer to that one. (Most pertinently in this case we might wonder who appears here, and what the context of these recordings is. But Jones never provided that with his submissions.) Here, even though those inexorable loops pound on, indefatigable, that emphasis on some of the people Jones chooses lends a measured gentleness to much of »Turn On Arabic American Radio«, at least within the context of his body of work. The last thing you hear at the end of the second LP is one last question from one of the many speakers on this peculiar Muslimgauze radio, echoed away into infinity. We may never have answers, but those questions continue to resonate.
https://www.discogs.com/release/25889791-Muslimgauze-Turn-On-Arabic-American-Radio
€33.00
The Uranian Ray
"This beautiful vinyl LP edition MV & EE MEDICINE SHOW's 'URANIAN RAY', originally released on the legendary CHILD OF MICROTONES label in 2004, is a stunning 'get-hi-fidelity' remastered reissue prepared on the spirited channels of the SPECTRASOUND mastering system developed by MATT VALENTINE himself. Therefore a fresh take on a previous favorite, the lunar brother to 'MOON JOOK" hand picked from their catalog by SPIRIT OF ORR, capable of achieving a glorious exit velocity, and slightly rearranged for the time limits & opportunities vinyl provides. Limited single pressing on black vinyl." [label info]
€15.00
Keeper
"The new Mytrip full-length album “Keeper” is a work of progress and growth, of pushing oneself out of comfort zones while managing to stay true to a carefully nurtured and developed aesthetic. A continuation of the sound hinted at in “Filament” (Amek, 2016) and Angel Simitchiev’s recent work with other projects, “Keeper” is a more rhythmic and loop-based work that explores and juxtaposes a plethora of atmospheres and moods, thus resulting in a sonically and emotionally complex and mature piece of music that manages to communicate its author’s singular vision.
The backbone of “Keeper” was originally written for a live performance at the Bulgarian National Radio in October 2018. Self-recorded with the intention to be preserved as a live album, most of the music retains the original structure, feeling, and intensity of this first performance but was further explored and expanded during recording sessions and selected live shows throughout the next year. Some ideas were dismissed while others were expanded on. As a result, “Keeper” has become a record that is polished and meticulous, while sounding and feeling utterly real, raw, and immediate."
https://amekcollective.bandcamp.com/album/keeper
"It has been a couple of years since I last checked in with the activities of Mytrip, but their 2016 album Filament was an excellent release which has received occasional spins over the years. In my review from 2017 I noted it: ‘operates at the border regions between dark ambient, drone, (modern) industrial and (abstracted) experimental techno, therefore encompassing a sound that defies easy categorisation’ (full review here). Keeper is the brand-new six tracks album and while continues also substantially builds on the earlier sonic framework by blending its elements in more varied yet unified way. Also, according to the promo blurb, the core of the album has its basis in a 2018 live performance at the Bulgarian National Radio, which has been further expanded and reworked.
Eyepiece opens the album with amorphous and ethereal drones blended with jittery programming and functions to immediately draw focused attention, before the mid-track it twists off in a different direction with sustained synth melodies. We Are All Shadow People follows and has a sense of stationary motionlessness resulting a series of duelling looped textures and abstracted synth lines. In then arcing away from this stasis, Unsealing Colossus divergently features widescreen vistas with sweeping ‘wind textured’ drones, muted melodious pulses and other semi-fractured rhythmic elements. Blood Black Like Water is then as brooding as the title suggests, based around a murky aquatic churn and throbbing base pulse, while a slow bass kick edges the track forwards. Upheaval shifts the mood again and is extremely filmic in tone, given its driving / throbbing techno pulse and maudlin cinematic synths, while the album’s concluding piece Warmth Patterns, is perhaps the most melodious track of all, with interweaving ‘glimmering’ textures (and perhaps draws a fleeting compassion to the likes of Fennesz).
Each of the six album tracks sits at around the five-minute mark, meaning the total run time is around 30 or so minutes, yet given its compositional variation it nebulously feels to be much longer than this. Equally the abstracted line-work found within nature as illustrated on the the cover is a suitable visual metaphor for the flowing complexity of the music. More varied, freeform and self-assured than Filament, Keeper is equally immediate as it complex in sonic construction, meaning it draws attention on first listen and maintains it on repeated rotations. Recommended." [Noise Receptor]
"Angel Simitchiev is the man behind Mytrip and also acting as the label boss here and as such we know him as a man who loves mood music of the somewhat darker variety. It has been a while since I last heard a full-length work by Mytrip (Vital Weekly 1059 I believe) and I wrote that he "no doubt plays guitar, electronics and field recordings", but that was based on nothing, to be honest. There is a picture of Mytrip on the insert, just second before he starts performing and there is no guitar in sight. A laptop, some 'gear' and that's all. Maybe there has been a shift towards different instruments in recent years that I am not aware of. In the music, this shift is quite clear. The music was written for a show in Studio 1 of the Bulgarian National Radio and later on, some fragments were dropped and others expanded upon. The dark mood from field recordings tuned and turned in drones is a still a presence but rhythm also plays a role now. Not stomping around, but carefully placed when needed, and omitted on other occasions. In 'Upheavel' the "rhythm" sounded like a Muslimgauze sample from the 'Azzazin' era. There is a warm glitch effect to most of the music here, which makes a nice effect for a change. It is perhaps a reminder of the warm days of laptop glitch from a long time ago, but Mytrip cleverly combines this with the best of processed drones and spacious dark ambient music, stringing together another hybrid of what ambient can be. Not something that is entirely new but with the addition of rhythm samples coming up with six fine slabs of dark mood music, which, strange as it may seem, never is the sound of despair, but of light and hope. Maybe I am all wrong but that's how it all sounded to me. Great record, all together." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€16.00
Tremonia
N is one of the most profiled German drone / ambient artists - being active since the early 1990s he has released more than 50 records. On "Tremonia" he returns with the idea to picture a certain place musically - his approach goes further than before, using field-recordings for the first time. "Tremonia" is located under a row of 17 railway-bridges very close to the central station of Dortmund. Those bridges are played by the trains entering and leaving and also give house to an unknown number of homeless people. All these impressions can be heard on the field recordings of "Tremonia" taken in the early morning hours. Technically the record still sticks to N's "no overdub" rule with solo recordings: The field recordings were played over a third amplifier while recording the guitars, thus the mix was done live. Part of the tracks had been selected by Urbane Künste Ruhr for a compilation of places described by music.
heavy handprinted rough cardboard covers, black polylined inner sleeves, 180g black vinyl, strictly limited to 100 copies
https://n1511.bandcamp.com/album/tremonia
€33.50
Karnap
Ganz wunderbare split-Single zweier MULTER-Leute, zarte Gitarrenpickings und E-Bow-Obertöne, zu schön für diese Welt !
Two MULTER – members with solo-tracks (or one remixing material of the other), two brilliant tracks of intellligent guitar-ambience. Our deepest recommendation !
“[multer] guitarist Hellmut Neidhardt has nearly finished a pure guitar-album under the project name 'N'. Last mastering activities with Thomas Köner are currently carried out. But before the album is released, this single, on which 'Segment' cared for editing some guitar-takes, is published. Pure guitar sounds! Two songs are the result, with a grace reminding us of heavenly crowds of angels, kept in house arrest and spending their time imitating with harps and violins the bustle of ants or dragonflies. Heavenly beautiful.“ [press-release]
www.genesungswerk.de
€8.00
0 1
N-O is an ambient drone project formed in Dortmund Germany in 2012. The line-up exists of N / Hellmut Neidhardt on guitar and Premonition Factory / Sjaak Overgaauw on synth and FX. Although both do have a different style, their joined sound nicely melts together in endless clouds of ambient textures and beautiful atmospheres. Its minimalistic approach and high improvisation level are the keys of what they call an inspiring collaboration unveiling the secrets of a new musical world.
https://premonitionfactory.com/n-o
" '0 1', my collaboration with Premonition Factory, is something like the complete opposite to 'Disrupt / Construct', both in music and making: Hazy drones of interwoven guitar and keyboard trails hanging in the air like a three dimensional carpet of fog over a river. When playing our tour back in the days, Premonition Factory and me discovered quite fast that we have a similar way of composing: mostly just starting the machines and then going somewhere, always with a good care in keeping the atmosphere, but also trying to expand the first sketch to something bigger. With a sound that really interweaves, transforming both instruments into one.
The music on '0 1' has been composed playing together live in the studio; there was no later editing or changing parts, these are our original recordings... Again, this record is packed in that super raw cardbox; this time with a somehow washed-out picture showing the foggy banks of a small river I lived very close to the last 23 years...
Well: ...and N O / '0 1' just means, that there will be a number '0 2' in the not too far future... Trust us." [Hellmut Neidhardt}
€26.00
Under the Jaguar Sun
"Packaged in a full color custom made book bound gatefold sleeve with 180 gram vinyl. Note: The vinyl version features three mixes by Nadja and one mix by Edward Ka-Spel using the 2xCD set as source material so the music is very different from the CD version. “Night and day, you are the one. Only you beneath the moon or under the Jaguar Sun…” Now you’re messing with a sun of a bitch. Let’s count backwards. The second disc in this set “Quetzalcoatl” diffuses into the air an alien vocabulary of electronicesque gargles and hums. A soundtrack made from the residue left after a subterranean dowsing for the echoes of collapsing stars. These disembodied post-transmissions form up in a Minerva’s Web of sunken Titanic ghosts, slow moaning as from distant caverns. Disc one of the set, “Tezcatlipoca” is the actual collapsing of stars. Or, perhaps the exploding majesty of every day’s new sun being reborn, as it once again defeats those Xibilba’s and rises to arc through its dominion again. This monstrous soul goes from grumbling angrily to mowing the heavens. Parts even cross into early Swans territory with aggressively fractured pacing. But all roads lead to the final track which is an epic length doom metal anthem of sweating proportions. Wave after wave of crushing fuzz slowly pummel speakers into diamonds and rust. A relentless solar rotorvating blasterpiece. Which brings us to part 3 of this 2 CD set. Both CD’s have been composed to also be played simultaneously, in a much more useable fashion than the Zaireekas of the world. So, if “Tezcatlipoca” is overground and “Quetzalcoatl” is underground (or, more likely, the reverse) their combination must be all things….and no things. Maybe the sound of the end of things. The resultant juxtaposition is a colossal celestial being smiling down on all he tramples." [label info]
www.blrrecords.com
€26.50
Ruins of Morning
Sold out"RUINS OF MORNING shows NADJA in a very experimental & dark poetic mood. Their contribution for the "Substantia Innominata"-series (dealing with / drawing inspiration from the "Unknown", "Unnameable" or "Not-Knowable") comes in two long parts based around one musical theme that appears again and again (a great dark harmonic phrase moving through different levels through this epic track), linked by very beautiful drone-sections & more noisy outbursts. Song-orientation and a more experimental sound-art approach are thus combined perfectly.
The phantastic lyrics from Aidan Baker point in a very poetic way to an utopian new morning where material values play no role anymore, but a new state of sensual being is settled in an almost J.G.BALLARDian way, when perceptions of the environment (sky, lights, sun) and the beloved (eyes & skin) fall into one.
Or is this a nocturnal boundless dream-phantasy? The wish / fear to return to mothers womb, a state where everything is one (one is all) again?
These lyrics open up a scope of vague possible interpretations witch match up perfectly with the impressing music; a music that describes "The Unknown" in strong metaphors of surrealistic psychic states of being.
Experience the avantgardish drone-metal duo at their most dark & beautiful and on their very first 10" ! Edition of 500 copies on GOLDen vinyl, fantastic artwork by Marcin Lojek (ibsendesign.pl). One track in two very long parts, playtime 40+ minutes!!" [label info]
RELEASE DATE 10. APRIL 2010 !!
www.substantia-innominata.de
"...In this series things evolve around 'Unknown', 'Unnameable' and 'Not-Knowable'. Nadja plays one piece, cut in two. Here they use more guitar like sounds, as Aidan Baker is the guitarist and vocals, while Leaf Buckareff plays the bass and Nadja find themselves in the shady zone where drone meets metal. The a-side is a mellow piece, if that is an appropriate word for the world of Nadja, but the b-side opens with a wall of sound type of drumming and then another wall of guitars, playing some of the darkest, slow metal music. Hardly drone like, which seems to an entirely different thing, but I must say there is something to say for the fact that this is drone like: the whole piece, both sides, works wonderfully well as a piece of dark ambience, the apocalyptic version of drone music. Not for the weak of hearth and mind!" [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€15.00
Autopergamene
"Call it drone-doom-dirge-shoegaze or any other in vogue nomenclature you like. It doesn’t matter. The music is so sublime and superb that we consider a waste of time trying to further categorize the spiraling sounds exhaling from a NADJA album. They are simply the true originators of this bred of blissful, seriously intense and ominously ethereal heavy sounds.
Autopergamene finds the duo at the peak of their sonic language of slow-blooming, heavily nuanced ambient guitar constructions and epic heaviness. From blissful, paced and almost orchestral hymns to lush acoustic guitars and super distorted, fuzzed out rumbling sludge riffages. Breathtaking.
Lavishly assembled in a custom 6-panel digisleeve packaging housing a 6 cards set with beautiful watercolor paintings and artwork by the gifted Portuguese artist L Filipe dos Santos. Superb mastering via James Plotkin. Limited to 800 copies." [label info]
www.essence-music.com
€14.00
Flipper
"Over the roughly ten years of their musical activity, Nadja has undoubtedly become one of the most well-known and influential Drone bands around – and rightly so. Their unique soundscapes, characterized by epic soundscapes, radiating synths, and hushed vocals have a truly mesmerizing effect and capture you with their bizarre beauty.
On this album, Nadja explore new territory and focus on the endless ocean of the mind. Aidan and Leah are joined by Peter Broderick on violin, and Angela Chan on viola.
Tracklist:
A1 - Drown (10:08)
A2 - Song For The Sea (12:38)
B1 - Wrapped In Plastic (12:15)
B2 - Hands (9:00)
As the name already suggests, this album is dedicated to dolphins, with all profits being donated to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation.
All releases on Oaken Palace Records are produced by a Gold Standard carbon-neutral and ISO14001-certified company. The sleeves are made of 100% sustainable paper, and non-toxic printing colours are used.
Limited edition of 500 on 180g clear vinyl.
All records come with a free download code." [label info]
www.oakenpalace.com
€20.00
Queller
"Second edition on CD. Strictly limited to 450 copies housed in our luxurious, sturdy tip-on mini-LP gatefold packaging. Features slightly modified and expanded artwork, including a silkscreened poster and die-cut bellyband.
Nadja’s absolutely unique and incredible splicing of extreme doom, shoegaze and experimental music that the Canadian duo – currently based in Berlin – likes to call dreamgaze is of such beauty and heaviness that it can crumble skyscrapers and mesmerize souls in absolute bliss and colossal majesty.
Calmer and more structured when compared to their other albums, Queller is their newly crafted masterpiece where the band explicitly dives back into the new wave and post-punk era to combine those influential sonorities with an amalgam of immense and gorgeous sludging heavy guitar constructions. As the mastermind Aidan Baker wisely says, “Killing Joke, Joy Division and Wire reinterpreted through the Nadja spectrum”.
The ethereal, lush and slow-motion heaviness of tracks like “Dark Circles” and the crushing blasts of “Lidérc” per se are true statements of an album of epic proportions. Nadja at its absolutely best.
Fantastic artwork by Error! Design and mastering by James Plotkin." [label info]
www.essence-music.com
€15.00
SV
"Comprised of a long, single 42 minute composition, this album combines Nadja's layered, textural noise with polyrhythmic drum patterns that, in their structure, approach industrial that might almost be danceable. Pounding, punishing machine-like hypnotic pulses, harsh cymbals and caustic textures grow together and collide in a massive metallic maelstrom of piercing doom-dirge heaviness. It's a surprising, yet rewarding departure from your typical Nadja dose of slow-blooming, nuanced ambient guitar constructions. The CD comes in a miniature-LP sized custom 6-panel digisleeve with gorgeous artwork by Seldon Hunt and mastering by James Plotkin. Limited to 600 copies." [label info]
https://brokenspine.bigcartel.com/product/nadja-sv
€21.50
Nalepa
NADJA | AIDAN BAKER NALEPA
After their highly acclaimed album “Luminous Rot” (Southern Lord), Nadja continue their body of doom drone shoegaze works with the instrumental album “Nalepa”.
On “Nalepa” Nadja are joined by Ángela Muñoz Martínez on drums, also known as one of the percussionists in the always evolving Hypnodrone Ensemble. The three musicians teamed up for a live in studio session at Funkhaus Berlin, after being invited by Jake Muir, with the aim “that we might do something different in the studio than we normally would ourselves” (Aidan Baker).
The former DDR broadcast studio with its giant studio rooms, is the perfect place for an epic drone doom session, providing enough room for all the sounds to sprawl.
“Nalepa” features the studio session, divided into six parts, or two parts on vinyl. The first half is a pushing forward doom beast, featuring repetitive themes, while the second part comes with a more experimental seething approach, like a volcano close before eruption. The album has its own haunting libertine mood and sounds different, compared to other Nadja albums featuring drummers. Have a listen on soundcloud.
In a follow up session some weeks later, Aidan Baker also recorded a solo album at the illustrious Funkhaus Berlin that is featured as a CD, which comes with the Nadja LP. “Nalepa” by Aidan Baker features four dynamic tracks, moving somewhere between ambient, drone, jazz and space rock. All sounds on that record are played live by Aidan. He played drums over live-looped guitar and bass patterns, to create four exceptional energetic pieces.
“Nalepa” comes in an edition of 250 copies on LP+CD. Black vinyl with printed labels and reverseboard printed sleeve on 300g cardboard. The CD is housed in a reverse board printed cardboard wallet. Both formats are featuring artwork by øjeRum.
Nadja – Nalepa LP
Funkspiel I (8:25)
Funkspiel II (10:50)
Funkspiel III (6:58)
Funkspiel IV (12:25)
Funkspiel V (7:54)
Funkspiel VI (5.24)
Aidan Baker – Nalepa CD
Radioplay I (10:46)
Radioplay II (11:24)
Radioplay III (8:38)
Radioplay IV (11:18)
Credits:
Nadja
Aidan Baker (guitar)
Leah Buckareff (bass)
Ángela Muñoz Martínez (drums)
recorded live in studio 01.02.2020 at Funkhaus Berlin by Jake Muir, Matias Santos and Olívi Mamberti
Aidan Baker
Aidan Baker (guitar, bass, drums)
recorded live in studio 27.03.2020 at Funkhaus Berlin by Jake Muir, Matias Santos
Technical:
LP + CD / Limited to 250 copies
LP comes on black vinyl / reverseboard printed sleeve / printed labels
CD comes in wallet / reverseboard printed sleeve
https://www.midirarecords.com/release/md-100-nadja-aidan-baker-nalepa/
€32.00
The Sirens Wave
180 gram deluxe gatefold vinyl version.
"Imagine for a moment the Wicker Man manned by the late Teiji Ito -- resident avant composer for Harry Smith & Maya Deren -- with psych-folk giants Comus sitting in for good measure and you've got some idea of what Glasgow avant folk trio Nalle have put together on their mesmerizing sophomore effort, The Siren's Wave. Centered around Hanna Tuulikki's rich and expansive vocals, with a heady, kaleidoscopic mix of vintage whirling oscillators, Moog synths and buzzing harmonium, alongside the intrepid string explorations of Chris Hladowski and Aby Vulliamy, these six pieces continue the long trek through other worlds of sound to form a dense, cohesive suite that meshes everything from Japanese gagaku, European plainsong, Near Eastern modal drones and more. With Siren's Wave, Nalle have procured a special place where folk conventions are curiously uprooted & seamlessly meshed with otherworldly avant tendencies. Features members of The Family Elan, Scatter & the One Ensemble of Daniel Padden." [label info]
www.locustmusic.com
€18.00
Sur Chöd
The Ritual/Drone collective Nam-Khar return to our Winter-Light label with their latest inner outing entitled 'Sur Chöd'.
This is Nam-Khar's second release with Winter-Light, after the very successful and well received 'Secret Essence/Sangwa Dupa' album in 2018. The music has evolved ....
"Sur Chöd" is composed of 6 long-form pieces, each piece transforming and morphing in to a musical entity within it's own right. The traditional percussive elements are still there in the music, deployed in full force alongside more subtle uses of these instruments. It is the use of the drone and bass elements that have changed on this release. The small vacuous pockets which Nam-Khar use so well are soon filled with warm, thick drones, synthesised sweeps and enlightening cosmic sounds. It once again creates that space for the listener to move into for contemplation and reflection, to energise and focus through the welcome isolation space created by Nam-Khar's atmospherics. Pushing the inner-traveller ever further onwards, along different trodden paths.
Ritual ambient, dark ambient, drone, industrial and subtle tinges of dark-jazz await the listener on this deep and diverse release from Nam-Khar.
https://winter-light.bandcamp.com/album/sur-ch-d
"Two years after its first album on Winter-Light label, Nam-Khar is back with the “Sur Chöd” full length, which seems as a natural evolution of the project, yet while keeping its specific style of Eastern aural mysticism, the project is infusing a handful of fresh spicy ingredients to their music.
Already on the first track based on the sounds and echoes of horns and gongs you may notice a subtle yet quite atmospheric layer of the shade and colour I cannot recall it was present on “Secret Essence/Sangwa Dupa”. But it is with the second piece, “aDre” that all the fun begins. Of course the word “fun” should be filtrated by sensitivity of an introversive dark ambient supporter, like me for that matter. How the drones flow, blend and morph one into another… It is made with all the principles of the genre, takes you far above the Himalayan peaks and lets you float blissfully. If you know me a little, you know that I’m not so fond of the pitch-black side of the genre. There always should be at least a faint glimpse of light, an atmospheric or oneiric foothold, so to speak. On “Sur Chöd”, Nam-Khar finds a perfect balance while maintaining this “tibetan” spirit from the previous releases they managed to create a veil of still mystic, yet a more universal aura. Something that cannot be limited by the monikers related to a certain culture. It is as profound as the Nature itself. It still can be overwhelmingly dark, like “Dregs Pa”, yet I feel this time it is a facade, an opening gate for the unknown, vast realms of the world beyond.
How the drones intermingle one with another forming these beautifully esoteric structures may at some points recall the darker works by Klaus Wiese or Mathias Grassow and since I’m a die-hard fan of both German artists, I can’t be more happy of that fact. “gNod sybyin” is evidently the best example. Along with these specific eastern drums and a silky glacial background it results with possibly the most sublime composition of the whole album.
On this album Nam-Khar has evolved into a five person ensemble. I’m not sure exactly how the personal constellations looked in the past (most of the time I was convinced that it is a one-man project, to be honest), but I suspect there’s some fresh blood on the board this time and this different perspective is noticeable, yet it doesn’t conceal what Nam-Khar is about. Nice example of stimulating diversity in favor of the project’s coherent style is “Gangs chen mdzod lnga”. Atmospheric scapes, reverbed tinkles, ritual sequences and silence being a crucial part of the whole composition. No single unwanted sound.
The final track has been made in collaboration with Akoustik Timbre Frequency, the project by Priapus23, who’s also known as a CEO of a ritual dark ambient label Sombre Soniks. And this is another “Sur Chöd” highlight, an unconditionally stunning fusion of divine drones, unrushed beats and a handful of tiny ornamentations. This one may not be exceedingly intricate, but in this case the artists prove that simplicity is a virtue and I found myself listening to “T’ew Rang” several times in a row, on repeat.
I would say it’s Nam-Khar’s best work up-to-date. I still appreciate “Secret Essence/Sangwa Dupa”, as I wrote in a review that album was more than decent, but I have to admit that I find some moments too “straightforward dark” to me, so I have to be in a proper mood to play that CD. “Sur Chöd”‘s palette of emotions is far more broad and giving even more possibilities for your own inner journeys. Where will it take you? Check for yourself." [Santa Sangre mag]
€13.00
F. Guyana
"The field recordings of « F.Guyana » have been realized in the forests and the costal regions of French Guiana between the dry season and the « little rainy season » (November/December 2014, 2015 and 2016).
1. Awala
—
Plage des Hattes, Awala-Yalimapo. Softness of the setting sun with a greenbrown sea tainted with red as a backdrop. Waves hemmed with foam and a hot breeze blurring the sound of palm trees and crickets make a répétitive music.
2. Crique Popote, Rhinella marina
—
Crique Popote, east of Saül. Beginning of the night. Cane toads (Rhinella marina) come out of the forest and cautiously step into the world of a creek which is still sleepy at the end of the dry season. Their powerful sonorous trills intermittently punctuate the silky humming of nocturnal insects.
3. Crique Popote, Cacicus cela
—
Same location, at daybreak. The first rays of the sun spray gold dust on emerging treetops. A colony of Yellow-rumped Caciques caw their wacky repertoire in the crystalline air. Guianan Red Howler Monkeys and cicadas – among other early risers – also make their way through thèse dream-like surroundings.
4. Pics et Colibris, Woodpeckers and hummingbirds
—
On the dirt road to Saint-Élie, near Sinnamary. On either side of the road, a confused, impenetrable forest edge where even the whirring sound of hummingbirds and high-pitched droning of cicadas appear to be held back. Yet, here also, the forest offers a remarkable sensation to ears who like to listen, where each call, song or drummed sound seems like a cleverly written note on a timeless musical score. Above our heads, a woodpecker hammers at a piece of bark, tears it away and abandons it before flying away.
5. Boeuf Mort, Dark night
—
On a path called ‘Boeuf Mort’, near Saül. The dark night shivers. In the foreground, a tiny tree frog, Pristimantis inguinalis, pulses its brief resounding note, alternating with the trisyllabic call of Vitreorana oyampiensis, a Small glass frog. A Variegated Tinamou (Crypturellus variegatus) finally betrays its presence with its characteristic whistling.
6. Kaw Mountain, Manucus manucus
—
Kaw mountain, late morning, in the jumble of a secondary forest. Several White-bearded Manakins (Manacus manacus) have gathered in a courtship display area and fly about at prodigious speed, disseminating sparks of sound produced by their vibrating wings. Several doves (probably Leptotila rufaxilla) as well as a Northern Slaty Antshrike (Thamnophilus punctatus) can be heard in the background.
7. Petit Saut, Ara chlroropterus
—
Late afternoon, south of lake Petit Saut. A magical moment after a short but generous shower. In just a few minutes, and as the forest has finished shaking off the rain, a composite whisper builds up. Voices appear, rise, multiply themselves and at times whirl around. Perched on tall candle-like dead trees, Red-and-green Macaw (Ara chloropterus) converse and enjoy the sound of their vocal explosions propagating over the vast space.
8. Forest drones
—
Hypnotic summary of the throbbing sound of the primary forest early in the morning with Black Spider Monkeys (Ateles paniscus), Guianan Red Howler Monkeys (Alouatta maconelli), Stingless bees (Melipona sp.), cicadas and crickets taking the lead roles.
9. Kaw Mountain, Post-explosive breeding
—
Kaw mountain, late December. Close to a temporary forest pool. The intense downpours of the previous days have triggered the first mass amphibian breedings, accompanied by a cumulative chorus so powerful it represents a real danger for the unprotected human ear. Today, early in the night, the activity is moderately intense and enables us to appreciate the phenomenon. Two species of Leptodactylus (Leptodactylus cf. knudseni, Leptodactylus aff. mystaceus), displaying varying degrees of depth and quaver, and Dendropsophus (Dendropsophus leucophyllatus, Dendropsophus aff. minutus), with sharp high-pitched sounds, take the lead role in this hallucinogenic soundscape heralding the beginning of the rainy season.
10. Crique Douille, Arada
—
Chemin gros arbres, south of Saül. Typical soundscape, near a small creek, transmuted by the steady and hesitant arrival of a Musician Wren (Cyphorhinus arada).
11. Caribbean inspiration
—
Back to the ocean, near Cayenne, at dusk. Wanderings amongst fireflies, between a stretch of fallow land illuminated by a choir of Johnstone’s Robber Frogs (Eleutherodactylus johnstonei) – a small amphibian originally from the Caribbean – and the edge of a marshy forest, alive with groups of Snouted Treefrogs (Scinax boesemanni, Scinax ruber) and Crested Forest Toads (probably Rhinella cf. margaritifera). Accompanied by the muffled and haunting rhythm of waves crashing on the beach and beating the reefs…
11 Tracks (72′22″)
CD (500 copies)
€13.00
Terror's Horns
"Da ist es wieder, das französische Psychedelic Dronefolk Duo. Ihr 2013 wiederveröffentlichtes Album The Snowbringer Cult hat mich damals aus den Socken gehauen. Das war das reinste Hitfeuerwerk und in dem Jahr nicht umsonst als zweitbestes Album noch vor dem damaligen Release meiner Lieblingsband Troum plaziert. So konsequent hittig gehts diesmal nicht zu, aber dafür noch ein wenig verspulter. Hits gibts aber mit dem eher psychedelisch-folkig gehaltenen „Sun Tower“ und dem eher ambient-dronigen „The Rising Portal“ dann auch noch. Insgesamt so spannend und visionär, daß ich das nächste Album jetzt schon kaum erwarten kann." [Sibylle Bölling/Pretty in Noise]
"After a string of Natural Snow Buildings reissues, each more elaborate then the last, Ba Da Bing presents their first ever release of new material from the band. For a group known for its use of horror imagery and lyricism, perhaps the most shocking thing of all is that this album clocks in at just under 45 minutes. If there ever was a release that served as the proper entry point for Natural Snow Buildings, Terror’s Horns is it. It would be a stretch to call this Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte’s pop record, for Terror’s Horns continues the duo’s tradition of combining many layers into sometimes blissful, sometimes contemplative, often menacing conditions. Stringed instruments trill, percussion gongs, feedback hisses and vocals maintain near monotone as if in a cultish trance. The songs still unveil themselves slowly, and the album’s progression lends the impression of descending down through the depths, past hidden cavities and chambers never to be unseen once experienced. Terror’s Horns features new artwork by Gularte that pays tribute to the backwoods horror of massacres involving chainsaws." [label info]
"Yes, there are a plethora of insanely limited editions published for and by Natural Snow Buildings and their satellite projects; but with their recent dealings with Ba Da Bing, the problematic availability has been alleviated somewhat. Of course, there was a tiny cd-r bonus edition that was coupled with this album but only available in pre-order direct from the label. No shops got any of those; so, we apologize in advance that we cannot offer that version. HOWEVER, we do have this amazing album itself, from aQ fave death-folk explorers Natural Snow Buildings.
There's long been a haunted thread that traces through all of the work from the French duo of Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte, whose long-form tangles of ritualist drone-rock minimalism and sprawling, opiated psychedelia harks back to International Harvester, Flying Saucer Attack, and Kemialliset Ystavat. Here on Terror's Horns, Natural Snow Buildings plumb the depths of an emotional gloom and shuddering despair with this epic, cinematic album. The two have long specialized in expansive tracks of shimmering guitars, woodwinds, and bowed instruments that could be psalters, zithers, and / or violins, all of which blossom into sublime masses of dronological impressionism; and on Terror's Horns, Natural Snow Building engage in a sound far more elegiac and funereal and heavier than heard on any of their previous recordings. The freak-folk transcendence of NSB still will embrace the unsettling falsetto of Ameziane and the percussive clatter of Gularte, with the swirling psychedelia tumbling downward in lush cinematic collapse, with heavy minor-key chords and reverb saturated rhythmic plod providing plenty of parallels to the early days of Barn Owl and the latter days of Earth. Beautiful as always, these Natural Snow Buildings, if much darker than in days gone by." [Aquarius Records]
€20.00
Terror's Horns
"Da ist es wieder, das französische Psychedelic Dronefolk Duo. Ihr 2013 wiederveröffentlichtes Album The Snowbringer Cult hat mich damals aus den Socken gehauen. Das war das reinste Hitfeuerwerk und in dem Jahr nicht umsonst als zweitbestes Album noch vor dem damaligen Release meiner Lieblingsband Troum plaziert. So konsequent hittig gehts diesmal nicht zu, aber dafür noch ein wenig verspulter. Hits gibts aber mit dem eher psychedelisch-folkig gehaltenen „Sun Tower“ und dem eher ambient-dronigen „The Rising Portal“ dann auch noch. Insgesamt so spannend und visionär, daß ich das nächste Album jetzt schon kaum erwarten kann." [Sibylle Bölling/Pretty in Noise]
"After a string of Natural Snow Buildings reissues, each more elaborate then the last, Ba Da Bing presents their first ever release of new material from the band. For a group known for its use of horror imagery and lyricism, perhaps the most shocking thing of all is that this album clocks in at just under 45 minutes. If there ever was a release that served as the proper entry point for Natural Snow Buildings, Terror’s Horns is it. It would be a stretch to call this Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte’s pop record, for Terror’s Horns continues the duo’s tradition of combining many layers into sometimes blissful, sometimes contemplative, often menacing conditions. Stringed instruments trill, percussion gongs, feedback hisses and vocals maintain near monotone as if in a cultish trance. The songs still unveil themselves slowly, and the album’s progression lends the impression of descending down through the depths, past hidden cavities and chambers never to be unseen once experienced. Terror’s Horns features new artwork by Gularte that pays tribute to the backwoods horror of massacres involving chainsaws." [label info]
"Yes, there are a plethora of insanely limited editions published for and by Natural Snow Buildings and their satellite projects; but with their recent dealings with Ba Da Bing, the problematic availability has been alleviated somewhat. Of course, there was a tiny cd-r bonus edition that was coupled with this album but only available in pre-order direct from the label. No shops got any of those; so, we apologize in advance that we cannot offer that version. HOWEVER, we do have this amazing album itself, from aQ fave death-folk explorers Natural Snow Buildings.
There's long been a haunted thread that traces through all of the work from the French duo of Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte, whose long-form tangles of ritualist drone-rock minimalism and sprawling, opiated psychedelia harks back to International Harvester, Flying Saucer Attack, and Kemialliset Ystavat. Here on Terror's Horns, Natural Snow Buildings plumb the depths of an emotional gloom and shuddering despair with this epic, cinematic album. The two have long specialized in expansive tracks of shimmering guitars, woodwinds, and bowed instruments that could be psalters, zithers, and / or violins, all of which blossom into sublime masses of dronological impressionism; and on Terror's Horns, Natural Snow Building engage in a sound far more elegiac and funereal and heavier than heard on any of their previous recordings. The freak-folk transcendence of NSB still will embrace the unsettling falsetto of Ameziane and the percussive clatter of Gularte, with the swirling psychedelia tumbling downward in lush cinematic collapse, with heavy minor-key chords and reverb saturated rhythmic plod providing plenty of parallels to the early days of Barn Owl and the latter days of Earth. Beautiful as always, these Natural Snow Buildings, if much darker than in days gone by." [Aquarius Records]
www.badabingrecords.com
€14.00
Etang Donne
Saisir la densité impassible de l’eau. Le jour. Le chant des oiseaux. La nuit. La clameur des nuages. L’été. Le souffle des arbres. Au printemps. Celui des poissons, à l’automne. Le bourgeonnement des arbres. Soleil zénithal. L’éclosion des fleurs, un soir de pleine lune. Les vaguelettes poussées par le vent sur la surface écarlate de l’étang. Le déplacement furtif des branches des saules sous une pluie diurne. Le saut des insectes à la lumière chaude. Le cri rauque du coq. En hiver. L’air lourd un matin brumeux … l’ombre fine des grenouilles sautant au passage du vent …
Cartographier par le son un lieu. Arpenter soniquement … sonder sonorement un paysage … PhonoGraphier l’étang du village où je vis, m’est apparu comme une évidence pour ce projet. Cet élément naturel, morceau de paysage à la fois liquide et organique, travaillait déjà mon imaginaire pictural et mental depuis plusieurs années. Se situant à quelques pas de l’atelier, je m’y rends pour respirer, observer, enregistrer des images, prendre des matériaux, enregistrer des sons. Il existe un lien caché entre ce lieu et un autre imaginaire que j’ai appelé muori pour un cycle de peintures. Un lien caché avec les îles de la Réunion et des Antilles habitées un temps. Du reste, l’étang de Saint Jean sur Erve, à la sortie du premier confinement, a vu en son centre émergé une île. Etrangeté de la tectonique des plaques et des rencontres imagées, imaginaires.
Cette captation s’est étendue sur un temps assez long, finalement. Plusieurs années, par petites touches afin de former des croquis, vagues, des esquisses incomplètes, sourdes à certaines fréquences ou couleurs du lieu. Les prises donnent lieu parfois à quelques gestes ou rituels avec ou dans la matière organique de l’étang. L’eau clapote. Les pas se font moelleux. Les oiseaux enchantent l’espace. Les gouttent glissent sur le bois du chêne. L’écureuil s’enfuit à mon approche. Le couple de hérons traverse sur l’autre rive en fonction de mes arrêts. Les marches sont plus ou moins longues. Elles ont lieux à divers moments. A la recherche d’une surprise, d’un son nouveau, d’une révélation. Le paysage est saisi dans un mouvement continu et cyclique.
Les matières sont ensuite confrontées, assemblées, découpées, développées, remodelées, juxtaposées, superposées pour former un paysage, autour de l’étang, mémoire phonique et réserve d’images. Couches après couches le paysage imaginaire se transforme, bouge et finalement il mue en peinture fragile et tangible.
Etang donné* apparait ou voudrait apparaitre comme un paysage mental, un espace sensible, une peinture sonore non pas réaliste, ni narrative du lieu visité, sondé, regardé, arpenté, traversé, vécu mais l’aboutissement d’une expérience de cet étang. Une pièce sonore aux allers et venues contractées, aux mouvements de balancements, aux « retours » incessants, aux cercles concentriques formées par les multiples passages. Le morceau éclot. La peinture se fait dense. Les sons enflent. Une « présence » résonne en nous. On entre dans la matière du lieu, composite, organique.
*(Le titre du morceau rejoue celui de Marcel Duchamp, histoire d’eau aussi)
(philippe neau, 25 June 2021)
~
Capture the unshaken density of water. The day. Birdsongs. The night. The clamour of the clouds. Summer. The breath of the trees. In spring. That of the fish, in the fall. Budding trees. Zenith sun. The blooming of flowers on a full moon night. The ripples blown by the wind across the scarlet surface of the pond. The furtive swing of the willow branches under a diurnal rain. Leaping insects in warm light. The hoarse cry of the rooster. In winter. The heavy air on a misty morning … the flimsy shadow of the frogs jumping in the breeze …
Mapping a place by sound. Sonically pacing … sounding a landscape … PhonoGraphing the pond in the village where I live seemed obvious to me for this project. This natural element, a piece of landscape both liquid and organic, had already fuelled my pictorial and mental imagination for several years. The pond being a few steps away from the workshop, I often go there to breathe, observe, record images, take materials, record sounds. There is a hidden link between this place and another imaginary world that I called Muori for a cycle of paintings. A hidden link with the islands of Reunion and the West Indies that were once inhabited. Moreover, an island surprisingly appeared right in the centre of the pond of Saint Jean sur Erve, at the end of the first lockdown. Strangeness of imagery plate and picture tectonics. Oddity of imaginary encounters.
This capture went on for quite a long time, after all. Several years, by small touches, in order to form sketches, waves, incomplete sketches, deaf to certain frequencies or colours of the place. The takes sometimes trigger gestures or rituals with or within the organic matter of the pond. The water is lapping. The steps are soft. Birds enchant the space. The drips glide over the oak wood. The squirrel fled as I approached. The pair of herons crosses to the other side mirroring my wanderings. These walks vary in length. They take place at various times. Looking for a surprise, a new sound, a revelation. The landscape is captured in a continuous and cyclical movement.
The materials are then confronted, assembled, cut, developed, remodelled, juxtaposed, superimposed to form a landscape, around the pond, a collection of sound memory, a stockpile of images. Layer after layer, the imaginary landscape transforms, moves and eventually turns into a fragile and tangible painting.
Etang donné* appears -or would like to appear- as a mental landscape, a sensitive space, a sound painting that is neither realistic nor narrative of the place that was visited, probed, contemplated, surveyed, crossed, lived in, but simply the outcome of an experience of this pond. A sound piece with condensed comings and goings, swaying movements, endless “come backs”, concentric circles formed by multiple visits.
The song hatches. The painting becomes dense. The sounds swell. A “presence” resonates within us. We enter the material of the place, composite, organic.
*(The title of the piece aludes to that of Marcel Duchamp, Histoire d’Eau Aussi -, meaning “also a story of water”. Etang donné translates as « given Pond » with a pun in French meaning « Given that»)
(translated by Florence Collobert, June 2021)
LOCATION : étang de Saint Jean sur Erve (small town in Mayenne), France
48°02'06.5"N 0°23'18.6"W
Source recordings made between 2018 - 2020.
Mastered by Flavien Gillié.
Cover & card design + treatments by Daniel Crokaert.
Based exclusively on photos by philippe neau.
Portrait by philippe neau.
Glass mastered CD. Packaged in clear vinyl sleeve with folded insert and additional art card on 350gr satin paper. Limited edition of 170 hand-numbered copies.
https://unfathomless.bandcamp.com/album/tang-donn
€14.00
Travel
Travel, the 19th studio album by Australian improvisational trio The Necks, documents their recent practice of starting each day in the studio with a 20-minute trio improvisation. The recordings offer some of their most ecstatic and captivating music cut to tape.
As bassist Lloyd Swanton puts it: “It’s a really nice communal activity to bring us together in focus each day, and some lovely music has resulted from it.” Although a straight “live” improvisation has never been recorded in the studio by the band, these tracks (save for some light overdubs and post-production) feel closest to their 30 years of celebrated live performances.
In 2017 Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ label released the band’s lauded Unfold, which first offered up this uncharacteristic studio work: four sub-20-minute pieces - instead of the typical 60+ minute arc for which the band is known - along with an obfuscated track list which leaves play order to the listener’s hand. The album quickly sold out, and persists as a treasure in collections or as a high-priced ‘Want’ on Discogs.
Travel marks a return to this double-LP format, offered in a beautiful gatefold package that features photography by Traianos Pakioufakis and impeccable mastering by Doug Henderson.
Produced by The Necks
Recorded by Tim Whitten, Studios 301, Alexandria, Australia
Mixed by Tim Whitten, Forbes Street Studios, Woolloomooloo, Australia
Mastered by Douglas Henderson, micro-moose-berlin, Germany
Photographs and design by Traianos Pakioufakis
Thanks to Jordan Verzar, Regina Greene, Lee Paterson
https://thenecksau.bandcamp.com/album/travel
"For the last 25 years, the Australian trio have created a radical new open form for musical improvisation with hour-long performances that touch upon motorik rock, minimalist composition, drone and more.... " THE WIRE
€39.50
Travel
Travel, the 19th studio album by Australian improvisational trio The Necks, documents their recent practice of starting each day in the studio with a 20-minute trio improvisation. The recordings offer some of their most ecstatic and captivating music cut to tape.
As bassist Lloyd Swanton puts it: “It’s a really nice communal activity to bring us together in focus each day, and some lovely music has resulted from it.” Although a straight “live” improvisation has never been recorded in the studio by the band, these tracks (save for some light overdubs and post-production) feel closest to their 30 years of celebrated live performances.
In 2017 Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ label released the band’s lauded Unfold, which first offered up this uncharacteristic studio work: four sub-20-minute pieces - instead of the typical 60+ minute arc for which the band is known - along with an obfuscated track list which leaves play order to the listener’s hand. The album quickly sold out, and persists as a treasure in collections or as a high-priced ‘Want’ on Discogs.
Produced by The Necks
Recorded by Tim Whitten, Studios 301, Alexandria, Australia
Mixed by Tim Whitten, Forbes Street Studios, Woolloomooloo, Australia
Mastered by Douglas Henderson, micro-moose-berlin, Germany
Photographs and design by Traianos Pakioufakis
Thanks to Jordan Verzar, Regina Greene, Lee Paterson
https://thenecksau.bandcamp.com/album/travel
"For the last 25 years, the Australian trio have created a radical new open form for musical improvisation with hour-long performances that touch upon motorik rock, minimalist composition, drone and more.... " THE WIRE
€16.50
Bleed (colour vinyl)
https://thenecksau.bandcamp.com/album/bleed
"Back in full force, Northern Spy returns with what might just be the best record we’ve heard all year: The Necks’ “Bleed”. A creatively visionary and astounding immersion into the band’s singular realm of sonority, unfolding at a glacial pace over the 42-minute composition’s duration, these two vinyl sides comprise some of the most tense and ambitious moments we’ve ever heard from one of the most important bands working today.
Since their founding during the second half of the 1980s, the Australian trio, The Necks - Chris Abrahams, Lloyd Swanton, and Tony Buck - have slowly emerged as an entirely singular force within the global landscape of experimental music, weaving remarkable, free flowing improvisations that rest within the border regions between Minimalism and jazz. Marked by astounding sense of artistry and musicianship, there is, quite simply, no other band like them. Just a year on from 2023’s absolute stunner, “Travel” - The Neck’s second outing with the American imprint Northern Spy - the trio returns to the label with “Bleed”, a single, 42-minute composition, unfurling at a delicate, glacial paces that seems to distill the nearly 40 years of collaboration within its dazzling interplay, endlessly pushing toward new, uncharted ground. Issued by Northern Spy in two beautifully produced vinyl editions - black and green - as well as a CD edition, housed in a deluxe wallet with printed inner sleeve, it’s yet another towering and entirely engrossing achievement by one of the greatest bands working today.
Drawing upon the diverse musical backgrounds of each of its members, The Necks were founded in Sydney, Australia, in 1987 by Chris Abrahams (piano / Hammond organ), Tony Buck (drums / percussion / electric guitar) and Lloyd Swanton (bass). Even from their earliest emergence into the global consciousness with their debut full-length, 1989's “Sex”, the group entirely stood out from the pack, demarcating a minimal zone at the more experimental reaches of jazz (if it can even be called that thing).
Defined by a rare sense of acoustic purity, restraint, and a singular creative vision, guided into being by unparalleled musicianship and mutual respect amongst its three members, over the decades, and across roughly two dozen full-lengths, The Necks have ebbed and flowed, creating a music that feels remarkably open while precise, their pieces evolving slowly over their durations, focusing the ear toward microscopic details, in understated tapestries of sonority that engage an endless sense of surprise from the most elemental means.
In the simplest sense, The Necks are a band that feel as though they have nothing to prove - three artists in close conversation, easing forward as a single, collective force - while making music that is earth-shatteringly understated to profound effect: the minimal, maximised. Their latest, “Bleed”, might just be their most striking statement, to this effect, to date. Comprising a single, 42-minute composition, the album displays a clearer bearing of its sophisticated inner workings and tensions than some of the band’s previous releases.
Constructed from the trio’s familiar pallet of structures, “Bleed” is a glacial movement of rhythmical and textural elements, and tones produced by piano, bass, and drums, with guitar occasionally woven in. An open and spacious image of creative restraint, Abrahams, Buck, and Swanton’s interventions and responses hang in the air with grace, flirting within an expanded sense of time that withholds the satiation of tension and release that has helped define The Necks' sound over the years, feeling at times so deconstructed and drawn out, that it, in moments, undermines an explicit sense of musicality: presenting a musical journey where the arrival is the journey itself.
Nothing short of astounding, and as close to a masterpiece as The Necks have ever produced, “Bleed” is a listening experience that holds the potential of changing our perceptions of music itself and the possibilities presented by group collaboration. In the most subtle of ways, it represents a giant leap for the group. If The Necks are a group that sound like no one else, “Bleed” is a record that almost defines that sound but could only be made by them.
Issued by Northern Spy in two beautifully produced vinyl editions - black and green - as well as a CD edition, housed in a deluxe wallet with printed inner sleeve, this a ten out of ten and beyond. Easily among the best records of the year and absolutely essential for everyone under the sun." [Soundohm]
"Australian minimalist-jazz trio The Necks’ new studio album, Bleed explores a sublime language of stillness. With a single, 42-minute composition, The Necks masterfully express the unspeakable beauty of decay and space in yet another totally distinct entry in a vast and stunning body of work." [press release]
€30.50
Bleed
https://thenecksau.bandcamp.com/album/bleed
"Back in full force, Northern Spy returns with what might just be the best record we’ve heard all year: The Necks’ “Bleed”. A creatively visionary and astounding immersion into the band’s singular realm of sonority, unfolding at a glacial pace over the 42-minute composition’s duration, these two vinyl sides comprise some of the most tense and ambitious moments we’ve ever heard from one of the most important bands working today.
Since their founding during the second half of the 1980s, the Australian trio, The Necks - Chris Abrahams, Lloyd Swanton, and Tony Buck - have slowly emerged as an entirely singular force within the global landscape of experimental music, weaving remarkable, free flowing improvisations that rest within the border regions between Minimalism and jazz. Marked by astounding sense of artistry and musicianship, there is, quite simply, no other band like them. Just a year on from 2023’s absolute stunner, “Travel” - The Neck’s second outing with the American imprint Northern Spy - the trio returns to the label with “Bleed”, a single, 42-minute composition, unfurling at a delicate, glacial paces that seems to distill the nearly 40 years of collaboration within its dazzling interplay, endlessly pushing toward new, uncharted ground. Issued by Northern Spy in two beautifully produced vinyl editions - black and green - as well as a CD edition, housed in a deluxe wallet with printed inner sleeve, it’s yet another towering and entirely engrossing achievement by one of the greatest bands working today.
Drawing upon the diverse musical backgrounds of each of its members, The Necks were founded in Sydney, Australia, in 1987 by Chris Abrahams (piano / Hammond organ), Tony Buck (drums / percussion / electric guitar) and Lloyd Swanton (bass). Even from their earliest emergence into the global consciousness with their debut full-length, 1989's “Sex”, the group entirely stood out from the pack, demarcating a minimal zone at the more experimental reaches of jazz (if it can even be called that thing).
Defined by a rare sense of acoustic purity, restraint, and a singular creative vision, guided into being by unparalleled musicianship and mutual respect amongst its three members, over the decades, and across roughly two dozen full-lengths, The Necks have ebbed and flowed, creating a music that feels remarkably open while precise, their pieces evolving slowly over their durations, focusing the ear toward microscopic details, in understated tapestries of sonority that engage an endless sense of surprise from the most elemental means.
In the simplest sense, The Necks are a band that feel as though they have nothing to prove - three artists in close conversation, easing forward as a single, collective force - while making music that is earth-shatteringly understated to profound effect: the minimal, maximised. Their latest, “Bleed”, might just be their most striking statement, to this effect, to date. Comprising a single, 42-minute composition, the album displays a clearer bearing of its sophisticated inner workings and tensions than some of the band’s previous releases.
Constructed from the trio’s familiar pallet of structures, “Bleed” is a glacial movement of rhythmical and textural elements, and tones produced by piano, bass, and drums, with guitar occasionally woven in. An open and spacious image of creative restraint, Abrahams, Buck, and Swanton’s interventions and responses hang in the air with grace, flirting within an expanded sense of time that withholds the satiation of tension and release that has helped define The Necks' sound over the years, feeling at times so deconstructed and drawn out, that it, in moments, undermines an explicit sense of musicality: presenting a musical journey where the arrival is the journey itself.
Nothing short of astounding, and as close to a masterpiece as The Necks have ever produced, “Bleed” is a listening experience that holds the potential of changing our perceptions of music itself and the possibilities presented by group collaboration. In the most subtle of ways, it represents a giant leap for the group. If The Necks are a group that sound like no one else, “Bleed” is a record that almost defines that sound but could only be made by them.
Issued by Northern Spy in two beautifully produced vinyl editions - black and green - as well as a CD edition, housed in a deluxe wallet with printed inner sleeve, this a ten out of ten and beyond. Easily among the best records of the year and absolutely essential for everyone under the sun." [Soundohm]
"Australian minimalist-jazz trio The Necks’ new studio album, Bleed explores a sublime language of stillness. With a single, 42-minute composition, The Necks masterfully express the unspeakable beauty of decay and space in yet another totally distinct entry in a vast and stunning body of work." [press release]
€16.00
Bleed
https://thenecksau.bandcamp.com/album/bleed
"Back in full force, Northern Spy returns with what might just be the best record we’ve heard all year: The Necks’ “Bleed”. A creatively visionary and astounding immersion into the band’s singular realm of sonority, unfolding at a glacial pace over the 42-minute composition’s duration, these two vinyl sides comprise some of the most tense and ambitious moments we’ve ever heard from one of the most important bands working today.
Since their founding during the second half of the 1980s, the Australian trio, The Necks - Chris Abrahams, Lloyd Swanton, and Tony Buck - have slowly emerged as an entirely singular force within the global landscape of experimental music, weaving remarkable, free flowing improvisations that rest within the border regions between Minimalism and jazz. Marked by astounding sense of artistry and musicianship, there is, quite simply, no other band like them. Just a year on from 2023’s absolute stunner, “Travel” - The Neck’s second outing with the American imprint Northern Spy - the trio returns to the label with “Bleed”, a single, 42-minute composition, unfurling at a delicate, glacial paces that seems to distill the nearly 40 years of collaboration within its dazzling interplay, endlessly pushing toward new, uncharted ground. Issued by Northern Spy in two beautifully produced vinyl editions - black and green - as well as a CD edition, housed in a deluxe wallet with printed inner sleeve, it’s yet another towering and entirely engrossing achievement by one of the greatest bands working today.
Drawing upon the diverse musical backgrounds of each of its members, The Necks were founded in Sydney, Australia, in 1987 by Chris Abrahams (piano / Hammond organ), Tony Buck (drums / percussion / electric guitar) and Lloyd Swanton (bass). Even from their earliest emergence into the global consciousness with their debut full-length, 1989's “Sex”, the group entirely stood out from the pack, demarcating a minimal zone at the more experimental reaches of jazz (if it can even be called that thing).
Defined by a rare sense of acoustic purity, restraint, and a singular creative vision, guided into being by unparalleled musicianship and mutual respect amongst its three members, over the decades, and across roughly two dozen full-lengths, The Necks have ebbed and flowed, creating a music that feels remarkably open while precise, their pieces evolving slowly over their durations, focusing the ear toward microscopic details, in understated tapestries of sonority that engage an endless sense of surprise from the most elemental means.
In the simplest sense, The Necks are a band that feel as though they have nothing to prove - three artists in close conversation, easing forward as a single, collective force - while making music that is earth-shatteringly understated to profound effect: the minimal, maximised. Their latest, “Bleed”, might just be their most striking statement, to this effect, to date. Comprising a single, 42-minute composition, the album displays a clearer bearing of its sophisticated inner workings and tensions than some of the band’s previous releases.
Constructed from the trio’s familiar pallet of structures, “Bleed” is a glacial movement of rhythmical and textural elements, and tones produced by piano, bass, and drums, with guitar occasionally woven in. An open and spacious image of creative restraint, Abrahams, Buck, and Swanton’s interventions and responses hang in the air with grace, flirting within an expanded sense of time that withholds the satiation of tension and release that has helped define The Necks' sound over the years, feeling at times so deconstructed and drawn out, that it, in moments, undermines an explicit sense of musicality: presenting a musical journey where the arrival is the journey itself.
Nothing short of astounding, and as close to a masterpiece as The Necks have ever produced, “Bleed” is a listening experience that holds the potential of changing our perceptions of music itself and the possibilities presented by group collaboration. In the most subtle of ways, it represents a giant leap for the group. If The Necks are a group that sound like no one else, “Bleed” is a record that almost defines that sound but could only be made by them.
Issued by Northern Spy in two beautifully produced vinyl editions - black and green - as well as a CD edition, housed in a deluxe wallet with printed inner sleeve, this a ten out of ten and beyond. Easily among the best records of the year and absolutely essential for everyone under the sun." [Soundohm]
"Australian minimalist-jazz trio The Necks’ new studio album, Bleed explores a sublime language of stillness. With a single, 42-minute composition, The Necks masterfully express the unspeakable beauty of decay and space in yet another totally distinct entry in a vast and stunning body of work." [press release]
€29.50
Disquiet
On Disquiet, The Necks stretch their immersive, shape-shifting sound across three discs and more than three hours of labyrinthine, patient intensity. This is their twentieth studio recording and it marks the 39th year of the band’s existence.
Meticulously recorded and sculpted, the four extended pieces on Disquiet see Tony Buck, Chris Abrahams, and Lloyd Swanton pushing at the outer edges of their collective intuition, building and unraveling hypnotic structures with microscopic focus. Present is the usual arsenal of piano, double bass, and drums, and all the in-between of sounds undefined and sources obscured.
The music of The Necks has always carried a profound sense of shared responsibility –– between the players, of course, in their utter commitment to the improvisational –– but also between the work and its audience. With music so open, there are profound opportunities to choose: what to focus on, whether to focus at all, etc. Disquiet takes this further: there is no particular listening order prescribed. There is no “Disc 1, Disc 2, Disc 3.” The music itself seems to stretch time, and this presentation challenges ideas of sequencing. The Necks, one may argue, are a mode of discovery as much as they are a band.
Regarding the sound itself, The Necks’ signature restraint and textural depth remain, with subtle tonal shifts, evolving motifs, and roiling phases of keen and propulsive clatter, strains of subdued surprise and unmatched intentionality –– as ever, expansive and absorbing.
Composer: Abrahams/Buck/Swanton (control)
Recorded by Tim Whitten, Rancom St Studios, Botany, Australia
Mixed by Tim Whitten, Forbes Street Studios, Woolloomooloo, Australia
Mastered by Douglas Henderson, micro-moose-berlin, Germany
https://thenecksau.bandcamp.com/album/disquiet
€37.50
Underneath the Spirit of Tranquility (Redux Version)
"Underneath the Spirit of Tranquility” (redux version) by Necrophorus (Peter Andersson from raison d'être) is a painted story canvas for the otherwise unreachable astral world. Adorned with esoteric ambiences, one feels as though embarking on a path of inner ascension while breathing the immaterial tranquilities. This redux version of 'Underneath the Spirit of Tranquility' (originally released 1996) has been carefully re-mixed for enhanced experience and spiced with two additional tracks. The artwork consists of drawings by Elinros Henriksdotter. Comes in a folding cover with 6 extra charts. Strictly limited to 500 copies." [label info]
www.wrotycz.com
€12.00
Taksu
„Fourth World Ambient“ nennen die liner-notes die Musik von LOREN NERELL, der wieder aus einem reichen Fundus an field recordings schöpft, die er auf BALI gemacht hat... Musik in „ewiger Gegenwart“, ohne Anfang oder Ende, ohne Vergangenheit oder Zukunft, als reine atmosphärische Schwingung.
“ Loren Nerell's association with Soleilmoon Recordings dates back to his 1996 release "Lilin Dewa", as well as the more recent "Indonesian Soundscapes". "Taksu" takes cues from both of these albums, blending environmental sounds and Balinese instruments together into a glowing, amorphous cloud of spine-tingling sound. Two musicians come to mind when listening to "Taksu": Jon Hassell, who popularized Fourth World music, and Brian Eno, the father of Ambient music. While sounding nothing like the work of either artist, Loren Nerell's music takes inspiration from both of them. His music is evocative of mist-covered mountains and slow-motion waterfalls, so it owes something to Hassell. But it also pays tribute to the patient genius of Eno, with its endlessly evolving atmosphere, in which there is no beginning or end, only the present. The crowning touch on this project came from Steve Roach, stalwart Ambient Music pioneer and long-time friend of Loren's, who came in to provide the final spacial treatments and mastering of the CD. In his liner notes for the CD booklet, Djam Karet founder Chuck Oken, Jr. describes the music as a "sound pool" that the listener is immersed in. His words couldn't be more accurate, and it's no exaggeration to say that putting this record on is like waking up at sunrise, deep in the tropical Balinese rainforest, surrounded on all sides by the sounds of the jungle. To describe ambient or atmospheric music as "a soundtrack" is clichéd, but it's really the best way to talk about "Taksu". It truely is a very special album, and one that asks to be seen, not merely heard.” [label info]
€12.50
Body Pilot
"Nest is the collaborative project of Huw Roberts (Wales) and Otto A. Totland (Norway). Using a combination of acoustic instruments, field recordings and sample manipulation, the two work together to create instrumental music linked closely with their environments.
While unmistakably a Nest record, the material on 'Body Pilot' marks a more restrained, pared back development of Nest's sound. The palette used to craft these pieces is sparser than on previous recordings, placing greater emphasis on the nuances and subtleties of each sound.
'Stillness' opens proceedings on familiar ground. Gently sustained strings rise from a near inaudible hum and are accompanied by slow, resounding piano notes. The pace is glacial, each sound unravels and unfolds in sequence painting a vivid picture of the record's opening scene. The muted greens of an open plain as it tapers into the distance and the pearl-white of the sky, featureless save the bas-relief of a distant mountain range. The landscape resonates in sympathy with the beckoning drone of a propeller engine.
On 'The Dying Roar', we find ourselves borne aloft amid turbulent skies. Brass and woodwind instruments swirl and eddy, growing in intensity until, like the ground disappearing below, they blur and fade into nothing. The engines are cut and we glide silently into the white. Solo piano plays out the piece and closes the first side of the record.
In sharp contrast with the pieces preceding it, "Koretz's Meteor" opens with the haunted drone of an electronic synthesiser. Unidentifiable sounds and effects clamour for space around the rising growl, sweeping from left to right, submerging and resurfacing. A camera shutter opens and closes, cicadas sing in the night, what could it be, that burns so bright?
'Body Pilot' comes to a close with 'The Ultimate Horizon', a detached, isolated piece of music. Sounds speed up and slow down like the on / off of a propeller, sub-bass rises and falls, passing above and below hearing level. The track fades as we travel beyond the infinite." [label info]
www.serein.co.uk
€13.00
Kall. The Abyss where Dreams fall
".... In a tradition that is anchored, at the same time, in avant-garde, ritual soundz and dark-ambient, with a typically Italian touch, NETHERWORLD gives a peculiarly and elegantly organic and palpable feel to sounds that, in the hands of others, would maybe fall flat …and it is as if the sound universe conjured by the magic of NETHERWORLD was strangely…how could one say? OCCUPIED. Each moment, each twist and turn of this sound adventure bears infinite richness and elasticity, at all times …those are rather ‘busy’ sound layers but each of the elements has sufficient breathing space and can differentiate itself from the other surrounding components. This antagonism represents one of NETHERWORLD’s greatest strengths. Another noteworthy antagonism: this tendency to propose us ambiences that are excessively introspective, subdued, withdrawn into themselves, but which, at the same time, expand, subtly dilate to occupy an incommensurable space. Upon the first notes (or pulses??) of the opening track, ‘’KALL’’, this infinite abyss, envelops us and our dreams sink, dissolve, reinvent themselves…The sound propositions found on’’KALL’’ have enough movement and density to please the ones fond of depth in their music, but the overall ‘purified’ feel will please the most discerning purist. For the occasion, MONDES ELLIPTIQUES once again used the mastering talents of JOHN SELLEKAERS @ METARC and it is CHRISTIAN SA LETTE who put his savoir-faire in our service for the design of the sleeve and images. Limited to 441 copies! Deluxe cardboard sleeve." [label description]
"Netherworld is Alessandro Tedeschi and on the album 'Kall - the abyss where dreams fall' he shows his interest in cool ambient and drone related kind of music, that slowly and patiently unfolds in the space. The music is presented in four tracks that are called 'Kall', from part one to part four. What's most present in the 14 minutes of the first piece is the pulsating drone atmosphere, that sounds very gentle and is put in the front, while from time to time there are other sounds too that are appearing in the background and are adding a specific and slightly tribal sounding sense to the track. The sense of tribal ambient music is even more present in the second piece, while in the third longer piece of 21 minutes, there are motives similar to those in the first track - slowly unfolding layers of sounds that are coming from the cooler corners of the ambient spectrum, a kind of atmosphere that is present through the whole album. 'Kall - part 4' is no exception in the sounds that Netherworld uses in the music on this album. The fourth part is as smooth ambient music as the previous parts, it is the smoothest track, with almost 8 minutes of few slowly shifting layers of a kind of sustained, unusual, calm and sometimes linear sounding and spreading ambient music, a kind of aesthetic and approach to the music that is mostly present on the whole album, that is not a typical ambient aesthetic, but it crossovers the border-lines between the ambient and drone kinds of music." [BR / Vital Weekly]
www.angle-rec.net
€13.00
Hero Brother
"Sarah Neufeld is a violinist and composer based in Montréal, Canada. Best known as a member of Arcade Fire, she is also a founding member of the acclaimed contemporary instrumental ensemble Bell Orchestre and has performed and recorded with many other groups, including The Luyas, Esmerine and Little Scream.
Neufeld began developing pieces for solo violin in a more formal and focused sense in 2011, though she has made improvisation and solo composition part of her process and practice since first picking up the instrument at a young age. Neufeld counts Bela Bartok, Steve Reich, Iva Bittova and Arthur Russell among the formative influences for her solo work, in tandem with an ear for the textures and sensibilities of contemporary electro-acoustic, avant-folk and indie rock music.
Neufeld's debut solo album Hero Brother indeed channels all of the above, flowing through shifting atmospheres and oscillating between restrained, stately ambience, emotive études, and raw kinetic energy. Small touches of wordless vocalisation, harmonium and piano supplant the violin in a few places. The album was recorded in Berlin by pianist and producer Nils Frahm, with Neufeld's performances captured in a number of locations with site-specific acoustics, including an abandoned geodesic dome, an underground parking garage, and the legendary Studio P4 orchestral recording hall at the broadcast complex of the former GDR. Hero Brother will be released on Constellation Records in August 2013.
Sarah has recently premiered her solo music at BAM (Brooklyn), the WSO New Music Festival (Winnipeg) and Wavelength Festival (Toronto), of which Exclaim magazine wrote "the highlight of the night was most certainly Sarah Neufeld, whose compositions range from Reichian to folksy without skipping a beat; she uses violin squeals, growls, scrapes and slides to express varying emotions and stomps the stage beneath her for percussion.
Packaging notes
CD comes in a custom gatefold jacket printed on thick 24pt. paperboard with a printed CD dust sleeve. LP is pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl at Optimal (Germany) and comes in a heavyweight jacket with black poly-lined audiophile dust sleeve, credit insert, pull-out art poster and download code for 320 kbps MP3 copy of the album. Artwork by Tracy Maurice." [label info]
€22.00
Hero Brother
"Sarah Neufeld is a violinist and composer based in Montréal, Canada. Best known as a member of Arcade Fire, she is also a founding member of the acclaimed contemporary instrumental ensemble Bell Orchestre and has performed and recorded with many other groups, including The Luyas, Esmerine and Little Scream.
Neufeld began developing pieces for solo violin in a more formal and focused sense in 2011, though she has made improvisation and solo composition part of her process and practice since first picking up the instrument at a young age. Neufeld counts Bela Bartok, Steve Reich, Iva Bittova and Arthur Russell among the formative influences for her solo work, in tandem with an ear for the textures and sensibilities of contemporary electro-acoustic, avant-folk and indie rock music.
Neufeld's debut solo album Hero Brother indeed channels all of the above, flowing through shifting atmospheres and oscillating between restrained, stately ambience, emotive études, and raw kinetic energy. Small touches of wordless vocalisation, harmonium and piano supplant the violin in a few places. The album was recorded in Berlin by pianist and producer Nils Frahm, with Neufeld's performances captured in a number of locations with site-specific acoustics, including an abandoned geodesic dome, an underground parking garage, and the legendary Studio P4 orchestral recording hall at the broadcast complex of the former GDR. Hero Brother will be released on Constellation Records in August 2013.
Sarah has recently premiered her solo music at BAM (Brooklyn), the WSO New Music Festival (Winnipeg) and Wavelength Festival (Toronto), of which Exclaim magazine wrote "the highlight of the night was most certainly Sarah Neufeld, whose compositions range from Reichian to folksy without skipping a beat; she uses violin squeals, growls, scrapes and slides to express varying emotions and stomps the stage beneath her for percussion.
Packaging notes
CD comes in a custom gatefold jacket printed on thick 24pt. paperboard with a printed CD dust sleeve. LP is pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl at Optimal (Germany) and comes in a heavyweight jacket with black poly-lined audiophile dust sleeve, credit insert, pull-out art poster and download code for 320 kbps MP3 copy of the album. Artwork by Tracy Maurice." [label info]
€14.00
Live at Hinoeuma
Great droning & earthquaking noise, a firestorm of sounds on many levels & with micrologic developments.... recorded live in London 2003. Soon to be rare !
“Recordings from a live performance in London during 2003 by one of the true legends of the experimental/ Anti music Scene. Totally destroyed dada-noise on a beautiful picture disk featuring collage artwork by TNB. ltd. 400” [Self Abuse]
“It doesn't get more physical than this. Imagine Daniel Menche in a violent mood coupled with english actionism! A terrific end to a terrific anti-career.“ [Love Rosenström, Segerhuva]
€28.00
Keine Hände
"Although it doesn't say anywhere on the beautiful picture disc, the 7" is a three way collaboration between Mama, Hjuler and The New Blockaders. A fine pairing I'd say. The squeaking metallic sound of the Blockaders with the crazy voices of Baer and Hjuler, along with some unclear tape manipulations make up to fierce statements of noise. And with such time restrictions, I'd think this is spot on. I have no idea why there is absolutely no information on the record itself or on the nicely printed insert. I assume its not shyness, if you care to create such a racket." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
www.psych-kg.de
€18.00
The Voloptulist
"Some sick, cold atmospherics on this first time colaboration between The New Blockaders, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke and guest Chris Corsano. Track one - TNB with Thurston Moore - is a brooding death tone overlaid with grinding, scraping noises that become increasingly beast-like as the track progresses. Track two - TNB with Jim O'Rourke - is more subtle but equally as menacing. Manipulated white noise and radio waves collide head on at the two minute mark with some muffled, claustrophobic percussion, courtesey of Corsano. Short, sweet and tense as f**k. Recommended." [label info]
"...The disc is divided into two pieces, the first being the collaboration with Thurston, which turns out to be a particularly obscure drone piece, constituted from hissing feedback tones, tape crackle and some sort of chaotic, mechanical sound sources. The piece evolves infinitesimally over the course of its fourteen minutes, rendering an uncompromising, though highly textured vision of analogue sound sculpting. The other, shorter piece '840 Seconds Over' continues in its predecessor's campaign of high frequency feedback manipulations this time with the addition of some caterwhauling noise oscillator free jazz and typically virtuosic improv drumming from Corsano. It's a real force to be reckoned with, and the crispness of Corsano's kit works perfectly against the hiss and fizz from the tape-heavy, droning elements. It's all over rather too soon (the whole thing clocks in at just over twenty-one minutes), but you can hardly expect anyone to keep up these levels of intensity for prolonged periods, can you? Superb, top-flight noise." [Boomkat]
€10.00
Interfaces
As part of the 20th KAMUNA (Karlsruhe Museum Night), so-called ›in-situ perfor- mances‹ took place at three locations in Karlsruhe on August 4, 2018:
The project room ßpace, the artist-run space Halo ARS and the pedestrian zone Kaiserstraße were connected to the ZKM via an outgoing audio data stream.
At ßpace, sound artist Lasse-Marc Riek condensed naturalistic field recordings, noise and soundscape recordings into a sonic live collage.
The live electronic duo Lintu + Røyk per- formed with modular synthesizers and broadcasted live electronica from Halo ARS in Karlsruhe’s Oststadt.
The members of KITeratur presented their participative performance ›SYNONiMUS‹ in the pedestrian zone in the Kaiserstraße, while the No Input Ensemble performed in the subspace under ZKM’s blue Cube. At ZKM, all incoming signals were fanned out in a kaleidoscopic manner and pro- cessed artistically in a multi-room sound installation by Yannick Hofmann, Marco Kempf, Benjamin Miller, Barbara Nerness, Sebastian Schottke and Dan Wilcox in the Cube, in the Cube vestibule and in the underground car park at ZKM.
This audio recording was made in the ZKM Cube, where the KAMUNA visitors could determine the sound mixing of the audio data streams via an interactive interface specially developed for this project and experiment with the sound material using a battery of interconnected sound aliena- tors and effect pedals.
Riek’s naturalistic soundscape recordings and field recordings, Lintus + Røyk’s syn- thesized electronic sounds, the voices of the participative speech performance of the university group KITeratur as well as the ethereal sound and feedback noises choreographed by the No Input Ensemble condense proportionally into this 60-minute experimental audio piece, whose tonal quality ultimately oscillates between Ambient, Drone and Musique concrète.
›Next City Sounds: Interfaces‹ took place as part of the EU project ›Interfaces‹ (EU funding programme ›Creative Europe‹) on the occasion of the Karlsruhe Museum Night 2018.
https://www.gruenrekorder.de/?page_id=18150
€13.00
BestiaIRE
A. Noizzze + I R E live
Music by Phill Niblock
Performed by Ensemble IRE trio
Kasper T. Toeplitz (e bass)
Franck Vigroux (e guitar)
Hélène Breschand (e harp)
pre-recorded tracks by PHILL NIBLOCK
B. Bestia
Composed & performed by
Kasper T. Toeplitz (e bass)
Franck Vigroux (electronics)
‘NOIZZZE‘ music commissioned to PhilL Niblock
With the support of La Muse en circuit / Cie D’Autres Cordes
Mastering & Cut by Fréféric Alstadt at Ångström Studio Brussels
Pictures, graphics & layout by Cedric D’hondt
©Matière Mémoire éditions / Art Sonore Sprl
MATME006LP
€24.00
Nurturing Exhibitions
Six musical compositions by Phill Niblock, soil and cutting tree of Amanatsu orange from Masanobu Fukuoka Natural Farm, wooden pedestals, speakers, wooden benches, wooden planter, acrylic case, water, sunlight. An exhibition by Mathieu Copeland.
Nurturing Exhibitions was one of two concomitant exhibitions that formed Exhibition Cuttings at Le Forum / Fondation Hermès in Tokyo, Japan between April 23rd (Fri.) and July 18th (Sun.) 2021, a time of closed borders when lives were mainly mediated through screens amidst various lockdowns.
A rich and fleeting ecosystem of new hybrid organisms nurtured by an environment in constant evolutionary motion, adapting in time, Nurturing Exhibitions consisted of an Amanatsu tree temporarily transplanted to the gallery space. Combined with the music of Phill Niblock that was played continuously, at times to a closed empty gallery, the photographs that compose this book portray the exhibition’s entire lifespan, from a composition being recorded to a ripe fruit being picked.
Herbal Cooled2 (23:07, 2019)
Deborah Walker, cello. The tones were recorded at Marcus Schmickler’s P I E T H O P R A X I S studio in Köln Germany, with Marcus Schmickler engineering and with a Brauner microphone; the construction of the piece was done at Experimental Intermedia in NYC by Phill Niblock, using ProTools software.
Born in 1981 in Italy. Deborah Walker is a cellist, a new music performer and improviser based in Paris.
Noizzze (23:05, 2020)
Ensemble I R E – Kasper Toeplitz, electric bass; Franck Vigroux, electric guitar; Helene Breschard, harp.
All Instruments were played acoustically, not amplified. The tones were recorded at the La Muse Studio, near Paris France; the construction of the piece was done at Experimental Intermedia in NYC by Phill Niblock, using ProTools software.
The Paris based Ensemble IRE is founded by composers Kasper T. Toeplitz and Franck Vigroux, featuring Helene Breschand, Philippe Foch and Christophe Ruetsch.
Poom3 (28:02, 2020)
Stephen O’Malley, electric guitar. The tones were recorded at the Trace.
Elements Studio in NYC, with Robert Poss engineering; the construction of the piece was done at Experimental Intermedia in NYC by Phill Niblock, using ProTools software.
Born in 1974 in USA. Stephen O’Malley is an American guitarist, producer, composer, and visual artist. He has conceptualized and participated in numerous drone doom, death/doom, and experimental music groups, most notably Sunn O))).
ExplMaranhaLisbon (23:05, 2020)
David Maranha, 4 bowed bass, 4 bells, 6 violins, 6 glass harmonicas, 4 double cane flutes, 4 shruti boxes.
The piece was realized by playing from a score by Phill Niblock, realized with assistance by Guy De Bievre; and recorded and mixed in David Maranha’s own studio in Lisbon.
Born in 1969 in Portugal. David Maranha is a Portuguese avant garde musician and artist, known for his work with Osso Exotico and his collaborations with Z’ev, Stephan Mathieu, Phill Niblock, David Grubbs, and Akio Suzuki.
ExplVoxHumana (23:13, 2021)
The Vox Humana Vocal Choir, Soprano: Maiko Inamura, Mikiko Kamiya; Alto: Kiyo Irisawa; Tenor: Seiji Kanazawa, Hatsugai Takashi; Bass: Eitaro Matsui; Founder and Director: Ryuta Nishikawa
The piece was realized by singing from a score by Phill Niblock, realized with assistance by Guy De Bievre; recorded in Tokyo, Japan under the supervision of Nao Nishihara, with Miho Miura as recording engineer and mixer.
An ensemble organized by Ryuta Nishikawa and other vocalists from Tokyo University of the Arts. Started in 1996, Vox humana has been pursuing the possiblity of new creation by human voice. Their repertoire includes the polyphony music before Renaissance and the contemporary music of the 20th century, which we can enjoy at their periodic concert.
Vlada BC (20:01, 2013)
Elisabeth Smalt, viola d’amore. The tones were recorded at Marcus Schmickler’s P I E T H O P R A X I S studio in Köln Germany, with Marcus Schmickler engineering and with a Brauner microphone; the construction of the piece was done at Experimental Intermedia in NYC by Phill Niblock, using ProTools software.
Born in 1964 in the Netherlands. Elisabeth Smalt is a viola player who works exclusively as a chamber musician, in styles varying from period instrument performance to extremely new music.
https://www.matiere-memoire.com/page-d-articles/phill-niblock-stephen-o-malley-deborah-walker-2cd-in-48-pages-book
€48.00
Plate Tectonics
Aufnahmen eines Konzertes aus Arnheim, Niederlande, vom Dezember 2002, in Studio-Qualität. Allertiefste dumpfe Dronescapes & verlangsamte Stimmen, Klassik-found sounds, glockige Klänge, obskure Vinyl-loops, immer dunkel & ominös & in einem dynamischen Feld voller unerwarteter Sounds. Eine recht einmalige Verbindung von Vinylloop-Plunderphonics, tiefbassigen Dronescapes und Geräuschen von selbstgebauten, oft ober-obskursten Gerätschaften und Objekten.
"Crawling back into the wound: NID 1995 – 2007. NID is an experimental group whose aim it is to challenge conventional concepts and structures of electronic music by experimenting with the source of sounds. The music is created on the spot, making each performance a genuine and unrepeatable event. It has been described as moving sound-objects, improvised electronic noise, or broodng ambient music. It has been compared to an underwater-journey, a pathway to the inner self. Given enough volume, it certainly affects the body as well as the mind. In which way remains open to the listener’s psyche. NID was formed in 1995. Over the years the core-members have performed in art-galleries, rock-clubs, bars, water-reservoirs, cinemas, as well as at industrial and electronic festivals and in record shops. In 1998 they were invited to play onboard the MS Stubnitz when it was anchored in the harbour of Stockholm as part of the “European Culture Capital” activities. They were also involved in the 2001 Six And More & R:IP jubilees, improvising with 30 other electronic free-jazz musicians. As for the group name… A “nid” is a curse or insult with homosexual connotation that was frequently in use in the Viking age. It brought a depth to the concept of honour and shame. It could be used as a challenge or simply to ridicule another (which was a challenge per se). It could reveal anyone else to be no better than he was, and it undermined social structures. NID disbanded in 2006. Chris Sidgell continues in various projects, most notably his solo project B-Tong. Jürgen Eberhard releases music under the name Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim. This is NID’s one and only proper CD release. The sound on this work may appeal to fans of Lustmord, New Blockaders or collage post-industrial in general/experimental ambient. The music on this CD was recorded live in Arnheim by Mars Wellink
(Vance Orchestra). The cover was done by Katja Wahl..." [band info & press release]
"While not new, we only just discovered NID, and our discovery came about in a very random manner, considering various related works were right under our nose. We listed a killer 4 way split 12" a while back called One Man Drone, and our favorite track from the spit was a piece by a group called B(degree)Tong. We later discovered that the man behind B(degree)Tong was previously a member of German experimental sound-collective NID. But what we did not know was that NID was sometimes also known as Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim, a group who had various releases on the Drone Records label, one of which is included on the recent tUMULt collection of out of print Drone singles. So now it's sort of come full circle and we have this, the only proper full length recording (as far as we know) from the group NID, aka Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim and it's pretty amazing. Pretty bizarre too, but then with a (sometime) name like Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim, what else would you expect?
Three looooooooong tracks. Each an epic, incredibly varied soundworld, blending found sounds and field recordings with drones and intense blasts of layered sound. The opener begins with a muted cacophony of birds and crickets, before disappearing into a roiling
black cloud of rumbling low end and distant droning guitar buzz. It almost sounds like sticking your head out of a speeding car, the wind whipping by and causing all sorts of distortions, but blurred into an impressively massive wall of sound. Within all this whipping sonic wind and rumbling whirs, are strange bits of percussion, the clang and bang of metal on metal, shakers and simple rhythms, they drift
briefly in the eye of the storm, before the drone drops again, even more furious than before, until it fades out amidst the dreamy
shimmer of female vocals and haunting minor key melodic buzz. Really intense and strangely beautiful.
The second track is another deep cavernous roar. A bit smoother than the previous number, but not for long, bit of metallic buzz surface amidst the undulating rumbles, with some serious dynamic spikes, some of which sound like brief bursts of SUNNO 0))), and others are even lower and more aggressive bits of low end exploration. There are bits of static and random buzz here and there, but mostly it's black and dark, a massive growling beast, slowly uncoiling into a monster that blocks out the sun. Near the end of the track, the darkness abates and in its place is a strange skipping stuttering snippet of music, wrapped in hazy distortion and looped into a mesmerizing rhythm, repeated over and over and over, gradually crumbling and becoming more and more distorted before erupting into a final burst of chest rattling low end, finally slowing down and sputtering to a halt.
The final track is over twenty minutes and is the most melodic of the bunch. Beginning with a looped cycle of xylophone melody, over
a throbbing low end pulse and streaks of keening distant guitar and bits of operatic female vocals. Very ominous and mysterious sounding. When suddenly everything stops, and there's a guy with a British accent ranting over someone ransacking a kitchen, breaking glass, clanging cutlery, and suddenly it's gone, and we're back in some new dronescape, a mumbled voice looped into a haunting mantra, beneath distant thunder like rumbles, and little blurs of high end melody, indistinct, but gradually building in intensity. The drones drift away leaving birds and voices, and some strange bits of hiss and skree, before transforming into a plodding doomdrone beast. A simple stretched out rhythm over cavernous thrums and the sound of subway cars, everything pulsing and throbbing, a bizarre bit of dark
collage, that manages to be strangely musical and completely hypnotic.
An amazingly weird record, and absolutely essential listening for the drone obsessed, which we would assume should be most of you..." [Aquarius Records]
"Posthumous release by this Swiss-German trio dedicated to mostly drone-bound sounds, noise manipulation, foggy samples and dialogue snatches. Here, three lengthy pieces encircle some fantastic voyages through muted hum, looped voices, gentle vibrations and the stench of noxious ooze. The last one, ‘35000 Feet Below the Ocean Surface’, clocks in at almost 22 minutes and hints at a leather-clad NWW surveying a desert of black ash. Which works a treat for me." [RJ, Adverse Effect]
€13.00
Attendre
"Three years and many live gigs after the self-titled debut, Niedowierzanie’s music has lost nothing of his maestria and exotic flavour. The complex compositions using a variety of acoustic instruments and digital effects still tell us of faraway places, conjuring vivid pictures of south-American landscapes, Mediterranean balconies and eastern harbours. But it has also become more accessible, leaving behind the long experimental pieces and turning instead to shorter, more rhythmic, even danceable songs full of Bohemian romanticism and Mediterranean flair. Dreamy, lazily swaying ballads alternate with somber pieces like funeral marches in the heat and dust of a summer evening, revealing sudden pangs of unease and anguish behind the flowing southern nonchalance. With “Attendre”, Niedowierzanie delivers a masterpiece of Post-Mediterranea worthy of such legends as Novy Svet or Mushroom’s Patience." [label info]
€16.00
Passing Out
Dritter Teil der nordischen "Drone & Alkohol-Intoxikation"-Trilogie, die den Zustand des Wegtretens zwischen Wachheit und Dämmerzustand klanglich adäquat wiederspiegelt; im tiefen Drone-Morast erscheinen Traumbilder, -gedanken & akustische Sequenzen der Realität auf. In paradoxer Weise ist man dann in der Lage, sowohl unbewusste wie bewusste Geistes-Inhalte zur gleichen Zeit wahrzunehmen...(sagen die Erzeuger dieses Albums). PASSING OUT ist ein One-Tracker von fast 70 Minuten, tiefgrummelnd-bassig und sonor und von mysteriösen, atmend-ächzenden Sounds durchzogen....
"The first chapter found the drink. The second came after a night of intoxicated shouting. The third chapter is inevitable: Passing Out.
The Nordic sound artists BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa have authored the last component to a trilogy of isolationist compositions for barren field recordings and lumbering electric drones, thematically linked in the psychotropic effects of alcohol. In doing so, they have issued a brief statement in defense of their research: "It's been four years and three studies, Passing Out being the final. Even in its most general, colloquial usage, Passing Out indicates the occurrence of a state that is incompatible with active behavior. It is possible that the individual could experience both consciousness and unconsciousness at the same time while encountering Passing Out."
Yes, Passing Out is a crepuscular recording, with the flickering of twilight further dimmed by the distant Arctic sun in wintertime and the blackened numbness of too much drink. With one singular track that spans 60 minutes, a nearly constant thrum and rumble of monochromatic low frequencies casts a grim pall upon the precisely dialed-in modulations and vibrations. Spectral guitars, maudlin tunes from haunted radios, angrily growling voices, and field recordings of wind-whipped snow and ice bury themselves deep amidst these subharmonic drones. All of these tease at the edge of perception, sculpting the narrative of the drone into a vehicle for unhinged expressionism of varying degrees of horror, melancholy, beauty, and oblivion.
The Swedish born BJ Nilsen defines his work as "focused upon the sound of nature and its effects on humans, and the perception of time and space as experienced through sound." He has numerous recordings on Touch and has collaborated with the likes of Chris Watson, Christian Fennesz, and Z'ev. The Icelandic citizens Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson are Stilluppsteypa, whose electronic abstractions engage absurd theatrics that mar the pristine surface of minimalism..." [label info]
"....The complete and total isolation of the music, the long passages of seemingly no action (there is just one piece, clocking it at 68 minutes), with then a sudden break, a melody filters in, the radio starts humming and field recordings - that backbone of so much in Vital Weekly and certainly here - make this an album of not just pure drones or just processed field recordings, but the strange elements thrown in, give this album a stranger, almost alien feel to it. If it's the equivalent of passing out is a bit hard to say: the act of passing out on alcohol prevents you from remembering anything. This is however their best album to date and makes a strong trilogy." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
"...Deep resonant vibrations abound, with some creepy breathing in your ear whisperings that may be those Leif Elggren vocals that Benny
was talking about. Gradually, all of these deep drones and shadowy overtures glide into a slumbering descent. But the Icelandic weirdoes
in Stilluppsteypa couldn't just let the album drift away without their absurdism forcing through the door, as they blurt with a clinical repetition of blooping electronics smashed and grabbed from Raymond Scott circa Manhattan Research. It's an unsettling climax to the album, but one that works brilliantly through Stilluppsteypa's expert use of electro-acoustic black humor. But it's drone that dominates the album, as angelic wash and devilish rumble collude to end this magnificent album. Oblivion never sounded so good. Passing Out is beautifully packaged with letterpressed and silkscreened artwork. Very nice." [Aquarius Records review]
www.helenscarsdale.com
€13.00
Line of Fire
“ Gloom, heavy electronic textures, over which islamic voices and environmental depiction of a war zone entwine. Sounds like being there in a nightmare, definitely. Static, suspended, a feeling of hopelessness and human suffering all over, pernicious, persistent. Scarcely noted, high quality colour printed sleeve, that seems to invite you to drown in the listening experience - and come out transformed.”[G.Ippoliti]
€10.00
The Unkept Secrets
"After few months of distance from the escape of "The Missing Tapes" and the relative "Rework" by Aube, Nimh (Giuseppe Verticchio) sets aside the ethnic-lysergic visions that have characterized the previous album and continues along the distance of sonorous search and fascinating experimentation electronic, already undertaken with works which "The Impossible Days" and "Subterranean Thoughts", ulteriorly expanding just the range of sounds and instruments set, revealing the own "secrets" through new, dark but stylistically a unclassifiable CD, in which it arranges with extraordinary originality and in an absolutely personal and unknown elements of drone music, dark ambient, electronics, ritual, ethnic, field recordings, and enriching in particular every track with the recurrent presence of evocative sounds of electric guitar in varied filtered and elaborated way. The search goes on..." [label info]
"This is an other perfect Nimh record, a world of magnetic, somnanbulic, fuzzing, moving electronic textures and drones covered by glacially melancholic guitar parts. These recent years there have been many descent projects published under the dark ambient - prog electronic label, but The Unkept Secrets is exceptional, reaching a degree of composition and complexity rarely obtained in this specific genre. Meridians opens the album with an intimate, colourful, extatic droning minimalist guitar composition with lot of reverbs and reasonances. A majestic, almost hallucinatory electronic piece. Narrative voices & mysterious abstract noises also come into the mix. As suggested by the title, Visions in Black is a haunted, gorgeously dark piece with abundant guitar's fuzzed out static notes, ghostly dark noises. The composition ends up with an almost funeral electronic choir. Strangely beautiful, the sound of the apocalypse or forgotten memories. The call reaches the listener into a parapsychological world made of echoing guitar tricks, floating electronic waves. A more dreamy-like composition, perfectly executed and really vibrant emotionally and physically speaking. Linga is just fantastic, a real buzzing drone trip with tribal-ethnic elements. An immersive medley of acoustic / electronic elements, it makes me think about shamanic sermons & ceremonials. The title track opens the way to a really sinister, dark musical ritual that turns into a shimmering, suspensful incantation dominated by harsh guitars and doom-like epic drones. The ending nightmare is a claustrophobic, intoxicated electronic piece for loud guitars, creepy noises and acoustic exoticism. The last tune is a more relaxed, tranquil affair after an intense musica ride throw lost deep memories. A totally absorbing electronic mantra, a real pleasure for the ears. Clearly among my all time favourite experimental electronic records with a things from Maurizio Bianchi, Maeror Tri and Aeolian String Ensemble. So recommended."
[Prog Archives]
€12.00
Deception Island
NNHMN returns to Zoharum with "Deception Island" a compilation CD of tracks taken from vinyl EP-s titled Deception Island Part 1 and 2 respectively, released by Spanish Oráculo Records.
As expected, the duo of Lee and Michal Laudarg deliver hell of a ride. Dark Wave, Synth Pop, EBM, New Romantic, Dark Disco - you name it. Spirit of '80s nostalgia is strong in this music. It's hard to listen to this without nodding your head or moving your hands and feet. Deception Island is very propulsive. From the first synths of "In Darkness" to the last beats of "Nachtgang" NNHMN keeps you enslaved on the dancefloor.
The track order has been slightly rearranged so the compilation has a more album feel and makes you find yourself listening to it for the third time in a row moving and watching the stars. You just don't want it to stop.
Restless dance of the night endless.
CD edition of 300 copies comes in "silk" digipack.
https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/deception-island-full-length-album
"The Berliner based Polish duo of NNHMN last year released two EPs entitled “Deception Island 1” and “Deception Island 2” on Oráculo Records. Zoharum this year released both EPs together as an album featuring the ten original songs.
Content: NNHMN is a band I personally consider as one of the greatest revelations from the past few years; Minimal-Electro-Wave music, which is clearly reminding me of the sterile- and cold atmospheres of the 80s. The whispering and totally emotionless way of singing of Lee creates an icy, sensual touch while Michal’s sound production creates a kind of dark-cellar dancefloor sensation.
+ + + : If there’s one band that awakens my curiosity on each new work it for sure is NNHMN (Non Human). They aren’t setting the world alight, but creates a fascinating vintage exposure with a true Minimalistic approach. The typical melodic strings, dry snares and icy sequences are reminding me of the 80s. I think it’s a real good thing both EP’s have been assembled as a full length album and there are some brilliant songs on it like “Deception Island”, “Education Lost”, “In Darkness”, “Nachtgang” and “Robot Woman”.
– – – : This album is a kind of compilation so if you already know both “Deception Island”-EPs you’ll be not surprised.
Conclusion: I remain totally addicted to the impressive Minimalism of this Berlin based duo; this is how Electro-underground music has to sound!" [Side-Line]
€12.00
Issue No. 12 (August 2024)
Illuminating the post-industrial underground.
Noise Receptor Journal: sound with impact -- analysing the abstract is one of the most well-respected underground zines dealing with post-industrial music, with a particular focus on dark ambient, death industrial, heavy electronics, and power electronics.
Noise Receptor Journal is targeted at an audience who values the permanence of print media over the transience of web-content.
ISSUE NO.12 CONTENT
Long-form and detailed interviews with: BJNilsen, Innere Front, No Guard, TeHÔM, Tone Generator & The Body Without Organs
The Society of Control: in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Tone Generator (aka Dominic Guerin)
NWN!/Hospital Festival, Osaka, Japan show report + 30 photos
CLUTCH 2 show report + photos
Reviews: 50 detailed reviews.
Artwork: cover and 10+ pages of original artwork by Tone Generator (aka Dominic Guerin)
Originally released August, 2024
Noise Receptor Journal : documentation of the post-industrial underground :
Review
"A wonderful journal documenting a niche of underground culture while being a cultural document itself." -Karin / Galakthorrö
"Noise Receptor zines... epic stuff in handy format. I enjoy the author's style; he artfully penetrates deep into the music and knows the history... It feels good to get a nice zine in your hands. Check it out." -Infinite Fog Productions
"Outstanding coverage of the true underground dark ambient/death industrial/industrial scene." -Jason Mantis / Malignant Records
"What I enjoy about Noise Receptor is the timeless nature of it. Very good complement to blogs, but which I feel don't really give the written content justice." -Kristian Olsson / Alfarmania / Styggelse
"While xerox will always be the most sacred of all zines formats, all print is welcome in the era of online corruption that has eroded every facet of society. Keep up the important work." --Dominick Fernow / Prurient / Hospital Productions
About the Author
RICHARD STEVENSON is an underground music writer and avid supporter of obscure and 'difficult' forms of music, notably the post-industrial underground. The five issues of his first zine, Spectrum, were collected and reissued in book form in 2019 as Spectrum Compendium. His second zine, Noise Receptor Journal, first appeared in 2013 and is currently ongoing.
€13.00
Experimental Structure
Von dieser extrem interessanten russischen Performance-Gruppe sind Releases nur schwer zu bekommen. Hier ein Mitschnitt aus St. Petersburg vom Oktober 2008, als sie hinter TROUM auftraten und mit diversen Gastmusikern eine theatralisch-expressive Stimmung heraufbeschwörten, sehr dunkel & geräuschaft & voller Spannung..
"Nowadays Noises Of Russia is one of the most known groups on the Russian experimental post-industrial scene, mainly because of their numerous concerts and CDR-releases, published by their leader - Gosha Solnzev aka 1g0g ("Van Gog") - on his own label ElectroIndustria. This release has captured one of such concerts which took place at the Experimental Sound Gallery (ESG-21) in St. Petersburg in October 2008... This concert was peculiar because of the non-traditional band line-up which aside from 1g0g included some of his friends: musicians Nikolay Kalmykov (Hladna), M.M. (Kryptogen Rundfunk), Igor Potsukailo (Bardoseneticcube) and Evgeny Savenko (Lunar Abyss Deus Organum), and also VJ Alco (video projection) and Grigory Glazunov (ODDDance Theatre, butoh dance). By common efforts these comrades performed totally improvised material quite typical for the "St. Petersburg post-industrial wave" and combining elements of collage, industrial, noise and ambient. Field recordings and voice manipulations, metal percussion and rough analogue signals, guitar semi-melodies and various sound effects - all this is harmoniously blended in the unified psychedelic soundsphere." [label info]
http://zhb.radionoise.ru/
€7.50
Resignation IV
Nordvargr Announces the Release of Resignation 4, the Fourth Installment in the Resignation Series
Swedish dark ambient and experimental artist Nordvargr (Henrik Nordvargr Björkk) is set to release the highly anticipated Resignation 4, continuing his sonic journey through rhythmic, atmospheric, and melancholic soundscapes. Building on the foundation laid by the Resignation trilogy, Resignation 4 expands the project’s signature blend of techno-inspired beats, dark ambient textures, and hypnotic soundscapes.
A Continuation of Sonic Exploration
Resignation 4 picks up where the acclaimed 2022 Resignation box set left off, offering a deeper dive into Nordvargr’s evolving sound. The album maintains one foot firmly in the techno scene, while also embracing moments of eerie calm and reflective melancholy. It is an album where rhythmic pulses and deep atmospherics converge, presenting a sound that is at once mesmerizing and abrasive, pushing the boundaries of electronic music.
This latest chapter sees Nordvargr taking his unique grasp of genre fusion even further, blending ambient melancholia with hard-edged, rhythmic elements. Fans of both experimental electronics and the fringes of techno will find Resignation 4 to be a captivating continuation of his visionary work.
Origins and Evolution of the Resignation Series
The Resignation project began in 2008 as an exploration of rhythmic, repetitive music paired with dark ambient soundscapes. It was born from a collaboration between Nordvargr and Nils Ekholm, merging techno-inspired beats with samples from old 78 RPM records. The first album in the series was described as “techno, if invented in the late 1800s,” drawing inspiration from the ill-fated 1897 North Pole expedition by S.A. Andrée.
Over the years, the project has grown, with each album taking a distinct direction—ranging from dubby techno atmospheres to harsher, noisier electronic soundscapes—culminating in the haunting, cinematic experience that is Resignation 4. Along the way, the project has evolved from its early experimental roots into a genre-defying force, standing at the crossroads of ambient, techno, and industrial music.
A Look Back at the Trilogy
The Resignation trilogy was re-released in 2022 as a deluxe box set, remastered with unique and exclusive material, including previously unheard demo recordings and bonus tracks. This set offered listeners a complete exploration of the project’s evolution, from the early rhythmic ambient experiments to the harder, more distorted sounds of later volumes. Note that the quickly sold out 3CD has now been repressed.
Tracks like Totem Visitations, originally composed for a Polish film soundtrack, showcased Nordvargr’s ability to craft immersive sonic environments that complement the darker edges of film and narrative.
Looking Forward: Resignation 4
With Resignation 4, Nordvargr continues to refine his signature style, exploring new territories of sound and emotion. This album promises to be a highlight of his prolific career, offering a bold and dynamic listening experience for fans of experimental and rhythmic electronic music.
Release Formats and Artwork
The album will be available in multiple formats:
•Vinyl: Edition of 300 copies. 100 Special Edition on marbled brown & Black vinyl and 200 copies on black vinyl. Printed Innersleeve and matte lamination. 9 Tracks. Running Time 39:57 EAN: 3770033798171
•CD: Edition of 300 copies in 4 panel Digipak, matte lamination. 9 Tracks. Running Time 39:57 EAN: 770033798164
The stunning album artwork and photography are created by Sandrine Pelletier, capturing the stark, otherworldly aesthetic of the Resignation series.
Resignation 4 continues Nordvargr’s exploration of the balance between beauty and brutality, inviting listeners to immerse themselves in a world where atmospheric depth meets rhythmic intensity.
https://cycliclaw.bandcamp.com/album/resignation-iv
€14.00
Akumu
"Japanese experimental music legend Kazuyuki Kishino now presents his new CD album entitled Akumu (Nightmare). On this album Kazuyuki tests his own limits into the darkness and focus all his artistic skills on creating a personal cinematic audio nightmare. Akumu is like being caught in a spiderweb that sticks and creeps to your skin, there is no escape. Akumu is a truly imaginative and terrifying electronic album that gives us a new and unique edge on the artist and sound master Kazuyuki Kishino's universe. This is the dark masterpiece of K.K. Null...Deluxe 6 panel digipak comes with beautifull stylish design/photography by Salt." [label info]
"Akumu finds KK Null once more dragging the listening into a heady, shifting and highly effective audio movie for the mind with his distinctive mix of electronica, ambience, noise matter, field recordings & heady cinematics.
As the albums artwork of frozen spiky organic matter and thawing firns suggest this has a very cold, barren yet alien beauty to it. And to my mind the album it rather brought to mind a soundtrack for travels through a strange isolated high radiation zone- like something from Tarkovsky Stalker but with more of twisted sci-fi angle. A few examples of this come with the opening track that switchers between eerier gong/ bell tone laden gothic ambience & sudden seering sound oveloads. This pictures in ones mind a deserted & overgrown market square that's still strangely ringing with the towns bells, with the sudden power-up’s and boil tones akin to been engulfed by radiation high spots that make your Geiger counter go mad. Track five is an building and kaleidoscopic audio slice of cold, mechanical, gone-haywire electro dread and intensity bringing to mind walking through a deserted car factory that’s starts operating on it’s own. As Null buildings up a detailed & at times jarring sound tapestry of purring, buzzing, scuttling, static hits, circuit board mournfulness and stale radiation heavy drone feeds. Really through out the album walks wonderful between tension, dread, jarring moments and general very heady and detailed audio scaping.
Another masterfully structured and built slice of internal soundtracking from KK Null which with repeat listens reveals more sonic facets and deeper atmospheric emersion." [Roger Batty, Musiquemachine.com]
www.hentai-vital.com
€15.00
TRIPPIN' MUSIK (black vinyl)
" ’Trippin’ Musik’ is Nurse With Wound’s most significant new dose in a while, collecting 3 epic discs of steeply psychedelic sonics that may well alter your breathing and heart rates and mental state. No tracklisting provided, play however tf you like.
Following from the reissue of NWW’s ’Soliloquy For Lilith’ boxset, ‘Trippin’ Musik’ relays the most recent findings from Steven Stapleton and co’s ongoing psychedelic research / surrealist reconnaissance / occult practice in electro-acoustic and avant-garde spheres. As the title suggests, it’s one for the journey, taking up whole sides of vinyl with intensely and intently focussed recordings that often take over 20 minutes to say their psychedelic piece in a cryptic language of abstraction.
Whether you take drugs to listen to this music or not, the effect is likely to live up to the title, but we’re pretty certain it will be stronger with than without. One disc features a whole side of what sounds like a folk song fractalised and slowed down by Carl Stone, while another also sees them strung out in desert guitar scenes sort of like a digitized interpolation of Earth jamming with Soisong, and the side of rapidly panned gasps is practically guaranteed to send your head into a tailspin given the right conditions, before it all shores up in a deeply lysergic scene of strolling, head-squashing, liminal/laminal electronic timbres that feel like classic kosmische slowed down and exhaled by an AI.
Trust the efficacy of ’Trippin’ Musik’ for psychoactive potential is right up there with the most potent sonic substance. Approach with spare time and a well stocked freezer for best results." [Boomkat]
€51.50
The Sylvie and Babs High-Thigh Companion
Ok, here it is – Sylvie & Babs as a picture disc LP, with new Babs Santini artwork. Was it always supposed to be this way? Who knows? But it won’t be around for long. One pressing and that’s it, buy or die – you know the drill.
“Sylvie and Babs is one of the most memorable, playful, and fascinating albums in the NWW oeuvre (though a decidedly unrepresentative one)…few (if any) other artists could’ve woven capricious contrarianism, low humor, bad puns, endless non-sequiturs, and chaos into such a satisfying whole“ – Anthony D’Amico
€33.00
3 Lesbian Sardines
https://www.dirterpromotions.com/releases/nurse-with-wound/3-lesbian-sardines/
Three lesbian sardines! Shouted by a heckler at a performance by the Dadaist Hugo Ball on stage at the Cabaret Voltaire. Is a perfect title for Nurse With Wound’s final appearance at the ‘Great Monster Dada Show’ at the legendary Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Oslo, 2019. The largest exhibit of dada art and artefacts this century, over 250 artworks by 43 artists including Kurt Schwitters, Jean and Sophie Teuber Arp, Hannah Hoch, John Heartfelt, Tristan Tzara, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, Raoul Hausmann, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray.
This electric performance captures the band at their most eclectic and playful. Here six tracks feature the classic line up of Steven Stapleton, Andrew Liles and Colin Potter including the toe tapping crowd pleaser ‘Flea Circus’ – a mutant hybrid of Kraftwerk and Aphex Twin and is amongst the best the band have ever recorded. ‘Broken America’ is timely reminder of the dire situation we are all facing with the arrival of Trump’s America.
The cover features stunning new artwork by acclaimed artist Babs Santini.
500 copies only in NEON GREEN VINYL.
SIDE ONE
1/ WEIMAR DRILL HEAD
2/ 3 LESBIAN SARDINES
SIDE TWO
1/ TRANSFERENCE (DID MARCEL STEAL ELSA’S URINAL)
2/ DOING WHAT WE ARE TOLD MAKES US FREE
3/ BROKEN AMERICA
€30.00
Pequenas Canciones de Amor
"The 1st thing that comes to mind when I hear O Paradis is Novy Svet and lookie lookie Jurgen Weber from just that project worked and wrote some of the material. It has the same campy cabaret vibe as Novy Svet. Though there are more eastern and gypsy elements into the Folkish overtone. I all honesty the 1st track was a tough listen to get through. There are moments were I really wonder where O Paradis are going with this.
They are very akin to Spiritual Front in song structure and ideals as well. I do like the lazy horns and heavy bass elements that add an avant jazz overtone. ‘Pequenas Canciones De Amor’ being in Italian some of the time is a bit hard for me to follow from time to time but there are really some beautiful track especially when the female vocals are mixed with the very lounge sung male vocals.
A truly shining moment is the Bob Dylan song so well done by the mighty Johnny Cash called " its aint me, Baby”. The additional accordion piece which is incorporated really adds to the fullness of the track.
Sometime I think O Paradis really want to be Novy Svet as some of the more dark ambient/ martini/ martial moments could come off one of their releases. I was always a sucker for Novy Svet so it’s something I greatly missed. I'm shocked that labels like Punch, WKN or Soleilmoon didn’t jump at the chance to release this title. Some of these tracks I think are in Spanish like Novy Svet did from time to time as well. As ‘Pequenas Canciones De Amo’ goes along the CD get stronger and stronger and a more complex beast that is hugely expansive and almost epic at times, which also include moments of even stirring neo-classic movements. This new label Tourette based of Texas USA have given a release to stand up with the bigger labels mentioned above. It comes in a wonderful digipak as well. Just to add to the magic of it all. I will be looking forward to hearing more from O Paradis and Tourette in the future." [Clint Listing /Judas Kiss]
www.touretterecords.com
€13.00
La Corte del Rey Pescador / La Reina esta mala
"I have been a follower of Ô Paradis since I purchased “El Juego Negro” a couple of years ago. Demian has always managed to present groovy, Mediterranean neo folk, with a large assortment of samplers, noises and improvised instruments, and most always caressed by Demian’s voice. Frankly, “La Corte Del Rey Pescador” is, in my opinion, one if his best results yet. He seems to have polished the sometimes crude angles of his previous records. The fluidity of the record is astounding, and the music has become riper, settled, like a fruit fills with juice in the spring sunlight. “La Corte Del Rey Pescador” reminds me more than ever of Corcobado, with a darker, more experimental sound. Especially the use of the bass and the introduction of diverse experimental melodies take the music that step further. The lyrics seem to have also developed, into an intimate world, full of metaphors and sparkled with direct statements. The swing of “La Verdad De Los Peces” is transformed into the dark pop ballad of “El Paraiso Perdido”. The languid “Solo Un Desierto”, with a naïve piano melody, becomes a folk masterpiece that disintegrates into the violent dark tune “El Trono De La Razon” to then let the record close with the brilliant, moving, “Mi Dios”. Twenty minutes definitely come out as being too scarce. A must for true folk, experimental pop and simply great music lovers."
"The debut album of Sergio Méndez comes through Tourette Records as part of the pack “La Corte Del Rey Pescador/La Reina Está Mala”. Sergio and Demian from Ô Paradis have a friendship that has culminated in the release of this double work, in which they have actually worked together on some tracks. However, don’t be mistaken, Escama Serrada doesn’t sound like Ô Paradis except maybe with some ingredients of the music production. But, hey, bread and cake also share ingredients yet they taste quite differently. Samplers, parchments of songs, melodies - but especially noise, sometimes thick, sometimes hard, are present as well. Always undulating and pulsing, creating the main bases for each song. Escama Serrada basically presents a sort of dark ambient, adding some martial spice at times and a lot of dark punk attitude at others. Perhaps the music is similar to a modern day nihilistic version of Einstürzende Neubauten, or deconstructed rock stricken through a machinery surface. I love the way the songs are connected to each other, and it seems the hand of Demian is visible here, since his Tourette release is perhaps also the one in which the fluidity of the record is the best in his career. Also, both records have seven songs, mirroring each other. My personal favorite is track “IV” with its haunting guitar that is slowly shaded by the atmosphere around it. Promising ambient, with ample possibilities and, appreciatively, a distinct personality." [both reviews from SIDE-LINE]
www.touretterecords.com
€22.00
1983 Unearthed
EARLY WORKS OF CHARMING INSIGNIFICANCE'
Previously unreleased, these tracks are the missing link between the band's Untitled 10" and Scene In Mirage LP. A shadow album to their debut, it shows the inner workings of a group of Nottingham 19 year olds finding thier sound, embracing electronica but moving towards ambient. At times naive but always charming.
This excavation is based on a very deep dive into the various cassettes and master tapes of their archive. While OYC had thought they'd documented their early years sufficiently with the Ambiguism box set, it soon became obvious the task was incomplete. They reassessed many unreleased tracks they had previously thought insignificant and of no value, and were surprised to discover that wasn’t the case.
1983 Unearthed can be seen as a forerunner to Scene in Mirage, sharing the same format of two opposed and contrasting sides. The U side (tracks 1-6) is compiled from unreleased beat-driven cassettes, while the Y side (tracks 7-10) is primarily from the ambient soundtrack to an early unreleased version of their Peripheral Vision video.
Despite the radically different approaches, this record shows that 1983 was a defining year for the band as they strove to find their sound.
Side U
Source: stereo cassettes
Instrumentation: SH09, TR606, guitar, bass, radio & found sounds, clarinet, bugle, WEM Copicat, syndrum, BOSS flanger, phaser & auto-wah.
Recorded at The End Room, Babbington, Notts.
Side Y
Source: 4 track cassette & quarter inch studio masters.
Instrumnetation: MS20, Powertran DDL, marimba, flute, location & found recordings.
Recorded at Complex Studio, Leeds.
Tracks Y2, Y3 & Y4 originally made for the video 'Peripheral Vision' (1983)
A FINAL IMAGE ARCHIVE RELEASE.
All tracks by Elliott/Horberry/Horberry/Hulme
Except 8 & 9 by Hulme/Orpheus
https://oyukiconjugate.bandcamp.com/album/1983-unearthed-3
€22.50
O'Nancy in French
"Finally on CD!!! The epic, noise industrial music by a cult duo (known from collaboration with John DUNCAN and his CV MASSAGE) from Japan in 1984. Remastered by Nobuo Ishizaki. The CD was issued in a limited edition of 200 copies in jewel cases including a four-page booklet with liner notes in English and Japanese by Takuya Sakaguchi."
€12.00
The Visitor
"JIM O’ROURKE returns with his first new solo album since 2001. All the classic O’Rourke-isms are here, for you musicologist types: percolating banjos, smooth electric leads, organic, kicking drum sounds, the flickering of shakers to the left and right, mellow but ominous woodwinds, sounds that indicate “vintage” (before turning left and running out the door), sonic jokes, sonic tear-jerkers, sonic jerkoffs, all wrapped in spacious yet subtle left to right placement of everything in the picture. There’s moments of low comedy next to high drama and juicy melancholy with a seeming lack of regard for proximity. Plus—sudden surging rhythms! The Visitor is sort of “O’Rourke Does O’Rourke”—Jim re-contextualizing everything he’s done over the years, and throwing out the bullshit. The one thing you won’t hear is his voice—perhaps another O’Rourkian self-examination? Or maybe he’s just saving it for all the name-calling on his next album." [label info]
"You probably can't find a musician with a wider breadth of sound, or more sonically varied releases, than Mr. Jim O'Rourke. During his vast career he's made everything from harsh noise to delightful pop, was part of one of the more influential groups of the last few decades, Gastr Del Sol, collaborated with Nurse With Wound, became a member of Sonic Youth, was at the forefront of the '90s experimental electronic renaissance, made some crunchy rock albums with his Wilco pal Jeff Tweedy, and the list just goes on and on.
These days O'Rourke has slowed down his output considerably so a new release is both much more anticipated as well as a total unknown as to which side of Jim O'Rourke will be on display. With The Visitor, O'Rourke emerges with his first new full length in many years and wow the wait was worth it! The Visitor is one long track clocking in at
around 37 minutes but it almost serves as some kind of early morning daydream song cycle with a spectrum of nuanced sounds that make us
think of Van Dyke Parks arranging a John Fahey album or what a more restrained James Blackshaw record might sound like.
The record starts with very hushed noodling guitar and as the piece goes on the sounds expand in richness as extra flourishes of bells, piano and other lushness flesh out O'Rourke's delicate guitar playing. Hard to avoid this cliché, but The Visitor really is a total journey, at first you don't really know where it's going and you're not sure if you necessarily want to follow but as the piece evolves it completely grabs a hold of your attention until you are lost in its slowly unfurling sonic voyage. Highly recommended!" [Aquarius Rec.]
www.dragcity.com
€13.00
Hands That Bind
"In addition to his day job transforming pop music with his own records, as well as those of Gastr del Sol, Loose Fur and Sonic Youth over the past few decades, Jim O'Rourke has been contracted for several dozen film scores over the years as well. It makes sense -- his abilities as an improviser, composer and producer allow him to interpret cinematic moments with a unique understanding for their construction and how they work. It doesn't hurt that Jim's a well-versed cineaste, a complete and total fan of watching films, which has given him a preternatural understanding of the role of music in movies. What doesn't make sense is how Hands That Bind is the first film soundtrack of Jim's to ever receive worldwide release! He's worked with filmmakers of international repute, like Olivier Assayas, Allison Anders, Werner Herzog and Kôji Wakamatsu! He served as music consultant on Richard Linklater's 2003 laff-fest, School of Rock! He's played in ensembles of award-winning documentaries and films alike! ... Made for an indie film that's been seen by festival audiences and not enough others, the soundtrack for Hands That Bind is a moody, atmospheric delight. Jim's roots in composition via tape-editing have evolved into a sophisticated assembly of found-and-processed sounds that achieve highly musical, near-orchestral majesty as they hang in the very air of the drama that unfolds in Kyle Armstrong's Hands That Bind. Described as a 'slow-burn prairie gothic drama' set in the farmland of Canada's Alberta province, and starring Paul Sparks, Susan Kent, Landon Liboiron, Nicholas Campbell, Will Oldham, and Bruce Dern, Hands That Bind is a spellbinding trip to the existential bone of rural working life in North America. As conflict rises over the hard-worked patches of land that provide a mere and mean existence, a desperate air settles in, as a series of mysterious, often supernatural occurrences rock the small community. O'Rourke's vaporous, serpentine musical backdrops and atmospheres reflect the obsessions and distractions of the film's principles; moods of all sorts seen or otherwise implied. Additionally, the music highlights cinematographer Mike McLaughlin's closely observed accounting of the farmers' environment, as well as the striking widescreen images of the big sky country with unnerving flair. For fans of Jim's ongoing steamroom series as well as collectors of soundtracks, Hands That Bind will provide hours of engrossing listening..." [press release]
https://jimorourke.bandcamp.com/album/hands-that-bind-original-motion-picture-soundtrack
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"The experimental producer and composer’s score for the prairie gothic film is luminous, faintly menacing, and clouded with uncertainty.
In Kyle Armstrong’s Hands That Bind, horror is hiding in plain sight. The film, which premiered in 2021 and is due for theatrical release this fall, is set amid desolate Alberta farmlands—a space whose relentless flatness you might assume allows for few mysteries. Straight roads stretch endlessly toward the horizon; barns outnumber trees by a wide margin. Any approaching threat ought to be visible from miles away. But in the world of this carefully paced prairie gothic, unsettling events arrive from out of nowhere, leading to more questions than answers. Who, or what, is mutilating the farmers’ cattle? Who’s in the black sedan making ominous drive-bys? And what are those lights swirling in the sky?
The crucial question, which drives the film’s grippingly human drama as well as its more cryptic events, is philosophical in nature: whether we can ever truly be certain about anything. “My opinion isn’t going to solve anything for you, because my opinion is that I don’t know,” remarks a bartender played by a scene-stealing Will Oldham, as he turns off a Scratch Acid song on the stereo. “Certainty is the rare exception to the rules of life. Whatever’s easiest to swallow is what most folks gravitate towards. Even if you lie to yourself, as best as you can, and look for something you call true, well, whatever your theory is, it’s probably wrong.”
Jim O’Rourke’s soundtrack is perfectly calibrated to this unforgiving space squashed between parched fields and blown-out sky. His palette—detuned piano, watery vibraphone, and a muted, amorphous shimmer that might be harmonium or synthesizer—matches the film’s dusty tones of beige and pewter and mobile-home brown. A high-end fizz resembles the incessant whine of crickets; the occasional spritz of static mimics the strange electrical phenomena on screen. Closer in spirit to the longform drone works of his Steamroom series than the fingerpicked Americana of Bad Timing or the mischievous classic rock of Simple Songs, O’Rourke’s instrumental score is, much like the landscape of the film, flat, faintly menacing, and miserly with its details. (Another comparison point might be the Boxhead Ensemble’s 1997 soundtrack to the film Dutch Harbor: Where the Sea Breaks Its Back, featuring O’Rourke alongside Chicago luminaries like Ken Vandermark and Douglas McCombs.)
It begins gently enough, with a high, lonesome harmony reminiscent of a freight train’s distant whistle. An acoustic bass plucks out a tentative melody. These opening passages move with pastoral ease. But the music quickly sours, clouded with uncertainty, as dark, shapeless figures clamber up from the lower register to disturb the tranquil upper reaches. Light is one of the film’s unspoken subjects—the implacable sun beating down on sere crops, the bokeh-like orbs cutting curlicues in the night sky—and O’Rourke’s soundtrack has similarly luminous properties. He favors soft attacks that come on like a backlist mist, and streaks of dissonance that flash out and disappear, swallowed up in the dull radiance.
The 38-minute score cycles through just a handful of themes and motifs, stirring them occasionally, as though to keep them from sticking. Halfway through, with “A Man’s Mind Will Play Tricks Upon Him,” brushed cymbals and plucked bass kick up a groove beneath a chiming piano melody; it’s one of few places where the record approaches anything resembling a song. But the moment is fleeting. In the concluding “One Way or Another I’m Gone,” the drumbeat returns, but this time there’s no lightness to it. It plods sullenly as jabbing tritones, a constant throughout the album, hint at a nameless evil. The soundtrack ends as it began, hovering in a nebulous interzone, neither major nor minor—ambiguous, ambivalent, unresolved.\\\" [Pitchfork]
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Eight years after “Simple Songs”, his last solo outing with the label, the towering talent of Jim O’Rourke returns to Drag City with “Hands That Bind”, the first LP in his long career to offer a proper release to his soundtrack work.
Composed for the director Kyle Armstrong’s 2021 film of the same name, the album\'s eight sublime musical complements interweave subtle melodic elements, bristling electroacoustic structures, and moody ambiences, collectively bridging the distance between O’Rourke\'s experimental work and his deft hand in the realms of pop. As absolutely brilliant as they come.
On the occasion of the release of “Hands That Bind” we are glad to announce a promotional sale with 15% off for members and 10% off for everybody on all available Drag CIty items, valid until Sunday at midnight or while stocks last.
The endlessly fruitful relationship between Jim O’Rourke and the Chicago based imprint, Drag City, traverses the better part of the last thirty years, with the label providing platform and support for one the great musical voices of our age. Beginning with his band Gastr del Sol\'s seminal second LP, “Crookt, Crackt, or Fly”, and running through his legendary suite of pop masterstrokes, - “Bad Timing”, “Eureka”, “Halfway to a Threeway”, and “Insignificance” - his involvement with projects like Loose Fur, The Red Krayola, and Mimidokodesuka, and a great deal more, his output with Drag City is a truly remarkable thing to behold, providing a snapshot into a restless creative mind within a collective body of intoxicating sounds. His last, 2015\'s “Simple Songs” build on the instrumental trajectory established by its predecessor, “The Visitor” (2009), but his latest, “Hands That Bind”, however, charts a new, surprising path. Composed as the soundtrack for the director Kyle Armstrong’s 2021 film of the same name, the album’s subtle melodic elements, played against bristling electroacoustic structures, bridge the distance between his more experimental work, largely housed in recent years on his own Steamroom imprint, and the pop-oriented work historically located on Drag City. Absolutely stunning from its first sounding to the last, “Hands That Bind” is yet another creative milestone from Jim O’Rourke that’s impossible to get off the turntable once the needle drops. Ten out of ten and not to be missed!
Jim O’Rourke is among the great voices of his generation. He is a true musical polymath, whose diverse efforts, since his emergence within the Chicago scene during the late 1980s, have continuously altered the creative landscape. Across more than a hundred albums, he has carved a relentless path, refusing conceptual stasis and the boundaries of genre and idiom, producing a body of work with such a profound impact and influence, that is so striking, forward-thinking, and important - while displaying a consistently unparalleled bar of quality - that it transcends the basic notions of art; becoming a network of sound, mirroring the pathways of an endlessly curious and uninhibited mind. O’Rourke’s music is thought unfolding in real time. Unbridled creativity in pursuit of the unknown.
Since his move to Japan during the late 2000s, O’Rourke’s recorded works have generally veered toward two polarities - direct, jointly billed, conversant collaborations with peers like Haino Keiji, Peter Brötzmann, Oren Ambarchi, Giovanni Di Domenico, Mats Gustafsson, Akira Sakata, Kassel Jaeger, and Fennesz, among numerous other, and privately created solo efforts falling under the banner of Steamroom - increasingly only issued as direct digital downloads. There has, however, been another body of work rumbling below the surface that has yet to receive a single proper release. Over the last few decades, O’Rourke has been composing several dozen film soundtracks for widely celebrated filmmakers like Olivier Assayas, Allison Anders, Werner Herzog and Kôji Wakamatsu. At long last, this mysterious area of the artist’s creative explorations begins to be more accessible with the release of “Hands That Bind”, composed for the director Kyle Armstrong’s 2021 film of the same name and his first film soundtrack to receive a proper release.
Anyone who knows much about O’Rourke is aware of his deep passion for film. Since his teens on the outskirts of Chicago, he has remained a devoted cinephile, which naturally, being the person and artist that he is, has cultivated an intimate understanding of the place and operation of music within the idiom. Any doubts to this end will be quickly laid to rest by the profound beauty and subtlety of “Hands That Bind”, composed for a “slow-burn prairie gothic drama” set in the farm-land of Canada’s Alberta province, that stars Paul Sparks, Susan Kent, Landon Liboiron, Nicholas Campbell, Will Oldham, and Bruce Dern, within which a series of mysterious, often supernatural occurrences, rock the small community.
Into these narratives and happening, O’Rourke composed eight sublime musical complements ranging from moody and atmospheric electroacoustic marvels that interweave long-tones and textural elements, drawn from diverse resonant sources, to more explicitly musically melodic and percussive pieces like “A Man\'s Mind Will Play Tricks On Him” and “One Way or Another I\'m Gone”, that return the ear to O’Rourke’s roots in post-rock and jazz. Joined collectively, these works evolve at glacial pace into a freestanding journey of startling proportions, building bridges within a single structure across the versatility and range that the artist has historically reserved for more discreetly located works, notably his poppier efforts for Drag City, and his more experimental works released on Steemroom.
Immersive and intoxicating, while displaying an understated elegance that only O’Rourke is capable of, whether regarded as a complement to moving image or a freestanding musical gesture, “Hands That Bind” is an absolute musical masterstroke of unparalleled brilliance, building on his long history of tape collage to construct a profoundly sophisticated assembly of found-and-processed sounds into orchestral majesty. Issued by Drag City as a beautifully produced LP, this is O’Rourke at his best. Ten out of ten and impossible to recommend enough. [Soundohm + press release ]
€27.50
In, Demons, In!
The time-stopping tract of ’In Demons In!’ is a naturally elemental drone collaboration between eminent experimentalists Jim O’Rourke and CM Von Hausswolf for their eternal admirers at iDEAL Recordings
Offering a transfixing peek behind the curtain of pure black hole drone dynamics, ‘In Demons In!’ finds the American in Japanese exile and the proclaimed monarch of the imaginary kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland meeting on common ground after 26 years of international correspondence. Initiated in Tokyo 2016 and completed over the proceeding two years in Japan and Sweden, the uncompromisingly adventurous results are galactic in scope and viscerally metaphysical in presence, conjuring scales of abyssal bass and diffused, atomised, abstract dark matter that make the listener feel like a speck of stardust floating in infinity.
Using sound as a magickal tool for psychic transport and to finely model notions of the metaphysical that typically elude human comprehension, the near 40’ work feels to collapse billions of years into a glacial moment. Location recordings made in Kathmandu lend an barely there iridescence, like microbial filaments flickering in the endless darkness, to their plunging, subharmonic basses and vaporised mid-upper registers, where spectral forces comb thru the piece, only very gradually altering the weightless keen of its planetary mass and mental traction.
Ultimately, and fans are likely to agree, ‘In Demons In!’ amounts to a vitally definitive entry in both artists’ catalogues, marking right up there with the most abstract wonders of O’Rourke’s electro- acoustic Steamroom volumes, while manifesting some of the most fascinating results from Von Hausswolff’s ongoing investigations into drone music’s paranormal properties. In other words: it’s Grade A+ zoner music.
€25.00
Seraphim Hallucino
Nach langer Wartezeit endlich ein neues Album für das US-amerikanische Projekt um BRANNON HUNGNESS und JOHN BERGSTROM, die vor Jahren auch eine EP für Drone Records eingespielt haben. SERAPHIM HALLUCINO ist ein erdrückend intensives, dunkles Werk basierend auf Instrumental-Improvisationen, die später im Studio ausufernd bearbeitet wurden... mit elektro-akustischer Finesse ausgestatteten Dronescapes, die geheimnisvoll & geräuschhaft tönen, man scheint wie in einem surrealen (Alp?)-Traum gefangen zu sein, immer wieder schlittern diese Sounds am Bewusstsein vorbei, um dann in überraschenden Arrangements wiederzuerstarken... eine einzigartige, filmische Atmosphäre wird erschaffen. Grossartiges Album!
"The music of Oblivion Ensemble remains as elusive and surreal as the ever-shifting cast of musicians and performerswho participate, knowingly, or unknowingly in their work. Founding members are John Bergstrom and Brannon Hungness (aka Figure). Hungness is a virtuoso experimentalguitarist and composer and a former member of the Glenn Branca Ensemble. Bergstrom is a computer-musicgearhead and a film composer with a classical music pedigree, and mastermind behind the industrial-noise assembly Torse. Seraphim Hallucino is Oblivion Ensemble’s fifth full-length release, the first since the virtual opera “Nightmare:Sinistrotorse” (Complacency, 1995). At Seraphim Hallucino’s source are strange, electro-acoustic improvisations of percussion, trumpet, voice, synthesizers and guitar. These improvisations are sculpted and sampled, twisted and turned, shaped into building and diminishing moments, and, at times appearing alone, pure and unmodified. Deeply imbedded in the music and fragmented lyrics are secrets, intertwining themes, voices, and imprinted messages. All come together to create an enormously complex, mercurial mix of surreal, dynamic and dark sounds. To fully appreciate the scope and intricacies of Seraphim Hallucino, headphones in a darkened room are highly recommended.
"The band most likely to compose a fitting soundtrack for the end of the world. ” [Sorted magAZine]
“Visionary gothic psychedelia. [The Wire]
"the most undefinable gorgeous musical anything that I have ever witnessed ... a beyond great performance, chilling and anxious.
[Best of Times]. In superb digipak, with artwork by Matt Vickerstaff of darkwaveart.co.uk." [press release]
"... Eerie textures are easily combined with chaotic and hectic movements. I am not sure wether we should see all twenty-two pieces as part of the total, or wether they are all separate, I rather believe the first, since some parts do flow nicely into each other, thus making the greater picture. There is a darker undercurrent on this CD, which doesn't make it easy to grasp, but it unfolds great beauty when explored in depth (and in dark, I presume)." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€13.00
7 Sjaele
After releasing “Selv I Drømme Lyser Den Første Sne” øjeRum returns to Midira Records, with a new album, called 7 Sjæle.
“7 Sjæle” features seven tracks, splitted on two 20 minutes long sides. On side A you will find six short tracks focusing on different minimal themes and on side B a nearly 20 minutes long track takes time to evolve more minimal themes into a fragile soundwall of loops.
Even without all the typical sounds of a vinyl, you can also here the warm aura of the tracks by listening to the digital version. Nevertheless this record is made for vinyl listening.
We also wanted to focus on the typical collage artwork of øjeRum, so we divided the elements of the cover artwork into its origins, so that the sleeve comes as a die cut cover with a printed 12inch insert.
The album comes in an edition of 200 copies. 100 on transparent clear vinyl and 100 on golden vinyl. The album features a two sided inlay and a download code for the album and the full length video for “Syvende Sjæl”.
Physical copies are available here:
www.midirarecords.com/portfolio/ojerum-7-sjaele/
credits
released October 11, 2019
music and artwork by Paw Grabowski
mastering by Antonio Gallucci
https://midirarecords.bandcamp.com/album/7-sj-le
€25.00
Skrawy
Schon die zweite film/sound-Zusammenarbeit des polnischen post-Industrial Projekts UCHO, mit dem Filmemacher OKO. Amorphe grün-gelbe Wellen und Muster die wie lebendiges Material erscheinen, abstrakte Collagenbilder und cut-ups, mit dunkel-glühenden ambient-noise Sounds unterlegt. Ein reinster synästhetischer, abgründiger Genuss ! Läuft auf jedem PC.
”New pictures & music. Truly alchemic journey! DIVX for PC users. Fantastic sounds & colours. Total time 28 min. Hi-fi stereo. Full colour cover on high quality photo paper packed in DVD box. Full recommendation!” [Nefryt]
€12.00
Pilgrimage
"The mighty return of the transcendental RIFF! The third Om record! By now the methods and purpose of their ultra heavy music of
the spheres is clear. The music on this album, much like the first two, is stripped to its essence. Bass and drums churning out super
hypnotic heaviness and repetitive chant-like vocals creating a cyclical whorl of trance-rock divinity.
With a lot of new releases from bands we love, change in sound and development of style is important, Om seem to operate with different principles than the average rock and roll outfit. The consistency of their sound lends itself to the eternal nature of the music, as if all three of their records are really just movements in some expansive, cosmic symphony. Within Om's canon, change is felt like the passing of time without the aid of a clock or calendar, existing in the infinite void. And what an ass kicking void it is! The riffs and rhythms on Pilgrimage are certainly just as good as those on either of their previous releases, which means amazingly heavy and heady slabs of stoned out ROCK!
The record starts off with the title track, which is an expansive slow burner. Mesmeric and spiritual, soft spoken vocals and a propulsive tom and tambourine beat. The riffs on this track, as well as the bulk of Om's material, have a certain eastern quality, like some strange Sabbath-raga meld, and they go on forever and ever, taking the listener on some sort of mystic celestial voyage. By track
two, "Unitive Knowledge Of The Godhead", the fuzzed out bass distortion kicks in, and the sound gets HEAVY! This Sleep-like heavitude continues into the 11 plus minute "Bhima's Theme", by which point in the album the listener is more than likely completely
transfixed, eyes a-glaze with the eternal riff burned into their brain. The last song on the album is "Pilgrimage (Reprise)", which makes for a very circular experience, like when listening to the album all the way through, time disintegrates and 32 minutes seems
like a split second or a week or an eternity! Heavy, mannnn...
Possibly one of the most distinctive things about Pilgrimage is the recording itself. This album sounds fucking great! We mean, for a band that just consists of bass guitar and drums, you could not pick a better engineer than Mr. Steve Albini, whose forte has always been the rhythm section, and he completely nailed the sound! It's warm and cavernous, and completely swallows the listener whole.
So, if you are in tune with the amaranthine vibes of Om's two previous records, you will most certainly appreciate this one as a continuation on the path towards the essence of musical anima mundi! RIFF TO ETERNITY!" [Aquarius]
www.southernlord.com
€15.00
Generic City
" 'Generic City' is the debut release for Two Acorns, a new label/publisher curated by Will Long of Celer. 'Generic City' is presented in a custom-designed CD package, created by mondii, with photography by Danielle Baquet-Long, and mastered by Taylor Deupree.
'For this collaboration work, I made a lot of field recordings. Songs of migratory birds that come to a big lake only in winter, the sound of breaking ice, frozen on a lake, the peal of huge bells in a temple, voices in prayer to the Buddha, footsteps in the subway, on the ground, made by coming and going people, machine sounds at a construction site, rain flowing into a steel pipe with a hard sound, the oscillation sound of rubbing iron which was recorded through a contact mic set on steel, the conversation of people walking in the city, noise of vehicles and trucks, kids voices from an elementary school, and so on. Like a time trip to transcend places, these sound-scapes are presented as a imaginary tale. To collaborate with foreign artists became a chance for facing Japan again for me. Reflecting on each of our localities to compose let us be aware anew of the vernacular which has been lost in the global world. Artists can't be unrelated to the characteristics (culture) of places (surroundings) where they live, and they are influenced obliviously in some way. By watching our everyday surroundings closely, we can engender a most realistic language of where we live, and how we think. I sense that peculiar, unfamiliar cultures and customs are invaluable wealth in human history.' - Yui Onodera
'In this collaboration work with Yui Onodera, we contributed many instrument sounds, and field recordings such as the streets of Los Angeles, rain on our doorstep, water draining into the gutter, cars passing on wet and slippery streets, people walking on their way home from work, talking in an airport baggage claim, crosswalks, airliners flying over, taxi rides, riding bikes through traffic, conversations in restaurants, the Metro Link train in Los Angeles, and walking on quiet streets. In our part of mixing, since we were working with someone's instrument sounds and field recordings from a city that we haven't visited, much was left to our imagination to re-create an environment and city setting for the piece. Trying to keep a balance between the heavily processed material and the entirely unprocessed material, created a natural bridge of movement inside the city. Processed elements became backdrops and scores to real activity, sometimes simply drifting away from the daily life, or the finding the soul of the pieces. When these two entirely different cities came together, it created an all new way of looking at, and hearing the city's movements around us. Cultures parallel one another, with the views of the skylines and empty streets left the only visible evidence of similarity.' - Danielle Baquet-Long, Will Long " [label info]
www.thesingularwe.org/twoacorns
"Two Acorns is a new label started by Will Long, one half of Celer. He deals with 'things you can hold in your hand, or keep on your bookshelf, to keep these feelings, memories, and experiences. There is no replacement for the smell of a book, the spin of a CD player starting'. Hear hear. The label starts of with a collaborative release of his band Celer (which was Long and his partner Danielle Baquet-Long, who passed away) and Yui Onodera. The latter provides field recordings, electronics, guitar, violin, piano and musical box, while Celer holds the mixing board, cello, violin, piano, field recordings, theremin, electronics and ocarina. I am not sure but I don't recall seeing many collaborations of Celer, but the result, four lengthy pieces work out quite well. Its probably everything you would expect from such a collaboration (you could debate wether that is good or bad), but the gentle, sustaining, of course drone - a word that can't be avoided when talking about Celer nor Onodera - like atmospherics work quite well, but what seems interesting is that many of the field recordings go unprocessed into the mix. Lots of rain, water, animals, street sounds, stuff that seems to be picked up with contact microphones and such like, and they bathe quite well in the string of sounds woven together on the various instruments. They add a great spice to the music, which doesn't stick that much in the world of 'just' drones too much. Beautifully ringing overtones, 'heavy' street sounds, air traffic and crackling of leaves: together they create a mighty fine aural landscape. Beautiful." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€12.50
Songs of Eta Carinae
"The first 1000 are in a 5 color gatefold boardstock sleeve. What if the star baby at the end of '2001: A Space Odyssey' was the product of Thom Yorke and Roger Waters? Orbit Service at your service. Wish you were here... An altruistic dark side of the moon proposition, Eta Carinae is a star 120-150 times the size of our own sun that lies a mere 7000+ light years from this island Earth. Discovered by no less than Edmond Halley his bad self in the late 17th century, Eta Carinae has been observed to fluctuate between telescopic and naked eye proportions over the past 3 centuries. Eta Carinae is in the last throes of its long life, with only about another 100,000 or so years to go before a likely supernova. It seems fitting that one of the most majestic and awesome of the celestial bodies should be serenaded by someone. Orbit Service have certainly taken space, the atom mother, to heart in this progressive ode. And like the star in their eyes the album expands and contracts from white hot to blue cool. The resultant cosmic astro-dirge howls in a bubbly flurry of electro-buzz and slowly pulsing drumbeats. Vocal whispers rise into muted wails, pushing against the very fabric of firmament itself before being drawn back into the gaseous miasma of the star-field. Violence and silence interlaced, as in the life of a sun. Or in the life of a son. The lyrics cast shadows on the stuff of terra firma and of the heart as well, making this just as much about inner space. Orbit Service's cris de coeur is a shaded psychedelic parallectrogram that almost answers the question: what if the star baby at the end of '2001: A Space Odyssey' was the product of Thom York and Roger Waters?. Orbit Service at your service. Wish you were here..." [press release]
€13.00
Die Hennen Zähne
Vier grossartig komplex scheppernde & ritualisiert-perkussiv tönende ORGANUM-Stücke, die eigentlich als zwei 10”es rauskommen sollten, wobei nicht ganz klar, ob es sich komplett um älteres Material handelt. ’MAUS’ ist ein geniales metallurgisch-obertoniges Power-Drone-Stück, wie es wohl nur ORGANUM hinkriegen kann !
„A four track mini CD combining the never released two 10inch's 'Maus' (DS57) and 'Die Hennen Zähne' (DS66). 'Die Hennen Zähne' opens with 'Die Kralle', actually a David Jackman track from his archive recorded in the early 1980's. Next is the title track 'Die Hennen Zähne', a joyful noise not unlike some of the TNB/Organum material incl. the sound of broken glass and tibetan horns, best to be experienced LOUD. 'Maus' is the centre piece of this mini album and typical 'old school' Organum. The album closes with the more quiet and haunting 'Kazi', a live improvisation featuring collaborator's Michael Prime and Emma O'Bong. Digipack. 600 copies. Total playing time: 18:18 min.” [press release]
€12.00
Die letzte Musik vor dem Krieg
Schöne geräuschhafte NEUE Stücke von ORGANUM, scheppernd-schrottige Konkret-Noises wie sie wir lieben vermischen sich mit ruhigem Klavier und Horn-Attacken...
“Two brand new pieces from 2003. Piano on side A and tibetan horns on side B add new sound colours to the classic Organum drones. Edition of 500 copies in picture cover.. Playing time: 6.39 min.” [label info]
€8.50
Solitude
“In the everlasting silence of the universe
Dark clouds reflect upon shimmering water
The voiceless radiance of solitude
Dissonant overtones in dark clouds
Pierce the eternal veil of night
The rivers rage ceaselessly
Burst
Swiftly, cloud-shadows and sunbeams
White flames burning through a dark sky
Wrapped in its own eternity
Wild and forsaken
No sound is tamed
Release and rebirth, revolve, subside and swell
Inescapable and incessant in motion
The path of that unfailing sound
A harmony
Ancient and solemn
The voiceless radiance of solitude”
David Jackman’s music, both as Organum and under his given name, is typically characterized by repetition, brevity and a deadpan aloofness. He’s made plenty of extremely short (sometimes one-sided) 7” singles, albums containing multiple slight variations on a single piece, and albums of compositional (if not sonic) minimalism. It’s Jackman’s typical move to provide very little information beyond a word, or sometimes an image. Lately, he’s been predisposed to not even providing an image; just as few words as possible on a white background, nothing more.
Naturally, he does not seem to do interviews and has no web presence. As listeners, we’re left to apprehend the music as itself. No guidance into his hermetic world. I find it refreshing. Whatever your experience of an Organum album is, that’s all you get. Thankfully, each emission is thought- provoking enough to get lost in and monolithic enough to encourage both passive and active engagement.
8Howard Stelzer]
"In Vital Weekly 1216, HS reviewed 'Electronics' by Organum, which was quite the change for Organum’s David Jackman. In the last decade or so, Jackman used quite a lot of real instruments to construct a bizarre composition that may or may not be the same. After that came 'Stillness', not reviewed on these pages, and the name was changed to Organum Electronics, which is also the banner for 'Solitude', a thirty-six-minute piece of harsh electronics. Oddly enough, the artwork didn't change and is still similar to the artwork of his 'quieter' phase and which I think is pop art without the images. I have no idea if David Jackman acquired a set of modular electronics to do this, or if this is something he always had but not used a lot. The loud character of the music brings back memories of the very first record I heard from Organum, 'In Extremis'. I always thought that was made with acoustic instruments played with mechanical objects and slowed down, and I might be wrong. It had that density of ringing sounds that I enjoyed a lot back then and still do; Organum is one of the three or four musicians of whom I own a lot of records. That sort of density I also find in 'Solitude', even when it might be all electronics. It sounds like being trapped in the machine room of a large ship. The more you concentrate, the more little nuances appear in the music, an odd sense of movement in a standstill notion. The music might be loud, but it has not the similar aggression I find in some noise records. There is, odd as it may sound, a soothing aspect to the music. I am a fanboy, I admit that, and that means Organum can't do wrong. It was a bold move to change the style of music for David Jackman, but most enjoyable!" [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€14.00
Fiire
A short(er) blast and a typical example of OE‘s Happy Noise. First (and last ?) OE music on vinyl. Edition of 150 copies on Black Vinyl.
€13.00
The Seven Sacraments
The Orphanage Committee is an ever-changing sound art project. Has Orphan S.C. Wallace now become religious?
Not likely, but you have to admit that 'The Seven Sacraments' is a damn fine topic to expand your mind!
This wonderful soundwork collects two lengthy compositions interpreting the Sacraments and being powered by real organ sounds. A true easy/uneasy listening experience to reach your personal Eargasm! Hell yeah! (Reverend EE)
CD Limited to 100 cps in a jewel-case or DL
Tags: abstract, ambient, field recording, experimental, mental muzick
https://eetapes.bandcamp.com/album/the-seven-sacraments
"Holy cow - sorry - but when I ended my review of the previous release by The Orphanage Committee, only four weeks ago (!), with "made me curious about where the Committee is heading next; I can't wait", I didn't expect the answer so soon. Belgium's Orphan S.C. Wallace releases an album with "two interpretations of the Seven Sacraments, being baptism, confirmation, eucharist, penance, anointing of the sick, holy orders and matrimony". Of course, this is very Catholic, and I have no idea how seriously we should be looking at this. Maybe it's a parody, or perhaps it's all serious business. Also, on Catholicism, I wrote before; that, "as a good Catholic boy, I don't care [about prayers], repent on my last day and go straight to heaven". I hope that works out one day (not too soon). Each of the two interpretations consists of seven parts, distinctly different, yet each flowing in the next. Unlike the previous LP, The Orphanage Committee returns to his first work (VItal Weekly 1319) and offers some more moody, synthesizer-based music. Not part of the cosmic school, perhaps, but repeating sounds, a bass line here and there, a repeated melodic loop. To top it off, there are field recordings, ranging from the schoolyard, radio and television. It's unclear what the relationship is between the spoken word and the seven sacraments; as far I could see, not a lot, and they were used in a more ornamental way. Face value, the music has very little to do with anything remotely religious, so even for atheists (for people of other faith), this is the most enjoyable mood music. So, if the correct order of the releases is the one in Vital Weekly 1372 as the debut, and in 1319 the follow-up, and then this, we can say that working with the more atmospheric end of synth-based music has his preference. A most enjoyable route to take, and the result is quite good." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Dream Sequence #3
this is third release in a series of 3”s with experimental ambient/drone pieces with a dreamy touch.
"dream sequence #3" was recorded with audiomulch and reaper between april 28th and july 10th, 2016.
the picture was taken at moerenburg, tilburg. a natural water filtration and where there once used to be a castle.
www.taalem.com
€5.00
Weerkaatsing
Weerkaatsing is the first collaboration by Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek) and Sietse van Erve (Orphax), both active players in the Dutch experimental electronic music field. While their paths did cross many times at concerts either as visitors or as performing artists, never before these prolific musicians got together. And as with so many collaborations also this one has a story behind it:
Reflectie (Orphax)
The idea behind this collaboration started in 2007, when Rutger released his EP Stofstuk and following this the remix album Kruimeldief.
For years since the release I was intrigued by this little piece and the various remixes, and always had the idea of making a remix myself (and actually to start a series of unrequested remixes). Finally in 2016 I took the time to really work on this Stofstuk remix. With some magic and other forms of witchcraft I created the almost 20 minute long drone piece Reflectie, based solely on the Stofstuk piece. I tried to put a real Orphax touch to the work, but without losing the true Machinefabriek sound. As such it really felt for me as if we did a collaboration; and it was screaming for more.
So I told Rutger about this and after I sent him the piece the idea came he would also remix one of my works. And from there this collaboration really kicked off...
Spiegeling (Machinefabriek)
The first time I met Sietse was at a gig in Utrecht, probably in 2006 or so, but I’m not sure. Since then, I saw him at so many gigs… one of the regulars of the scene, I’d say. Anyway, in 2007 I invited a load of artists to make a remix of my track ‘Stofstuk’. The results appeared on the album ‘Kruimeldief’, but what was missing was Sietse’s remix. At least, that’s what I found out recently. Apparently he had been ‘secretly’ working on a beautiful 20-minute remake of my track. Damn, it was too nice not to do anything with it, so we decided that I should return the favour and do a remix of an Orphax piece. I choose 'Geluiden van de Eerste Dag’, of his 'Tragedie van een Liedjesschrijver’ album, the piece that resonated the most with me. And the rework was done in no time. Not because I was in a hurry, but because the basic material of the track was so grateful to work with. I added a few looped snippets of violin which I recorded at a rehearsal (for another piece), and these worked perfectly with Sietse’s sounds. ‘One plus one equals three’, I’d say (cliché or not).
Weerkaatsing (Together)
So then we had two remixes. We had already decided to release this somehow, but it didn’t feel complete yet. That’s when ‘Weerkaatsing’, the title track, came to life. The most ‘collaborative collaboration’, and our favourite track of the album. It’s like the table tennis illustration on the cover; we kept bouncing sounds back and forth, until the track was finished. Which, again, didn’t take long. We were clearly on the same wavelength, and together with the other two tracks, we think it’s a really solid drone album.
movingfurniturerecords.bandcamp.com/album/weerkaatsing
"In a small country like The Netherlands there is a small, lively scene of experimental musicians, who bump into each other quite a lot and it is almost inevitable that there will be collaborations. Sietse van Erve, also known as Orphax bumped into Rutger Zuydervelt, alias Machinefabriek, bumped into each other a lot, as players of concerts or visitors to other concerts. Orphax was also interested in 'Stofstuk', an early piece by Machinefabriek (see Vital Weekly 573) that got quite quickly a remix CD to its name (see Vital Weekly 586). Van Erve was not on part of that remix project but over the years worked on a remix of his own and when Rutger found out, he decided to thank by doing a remix of an Orphax piece, 'Geluiden van de Eerste dag' from 'Tragedie Van Een Liedjesschrijver' (see Vital Weekly 899), in a twenty minute piece. To top it off they
worked on a joint piece of music, bouncing sound files back and forth and now all three pieces.
These three pieces are now to be found on 'Weerkaatsing', which means reflection, just as all three pieces have titles which Dutch synonyms for 'reflection'. Many works by both artists have been reviewed in Vital Weekly, and if you read what was written over the years, you know the words 'drone' and 'ambient' have been used quite a bit. This collaborative is not different and both play what their fans, me included, expect them to do. Where Machinefabriek has the sustaining organ sound Orphax is known, along with the stretching of bell sounds, Orphax uses the violin loops of the original and even allows for some rough cuts. Machinefabriek seems to be at his most minimal in this piece, in awe of Orphax, I'd say, and Orphax returns by showing a more musical side. In their duet piece they go for the more conventional drone approach and it consists of many layers of Orphax' old organs picked up in a space with a microphone adding an excellent space feel to them, and it gets a lovely treatment. This CD has a great cover too,
courtesy by Zuydervelt. An excellent release." (FdW/Vital weekly)
€12.00
Osci
Italienischer Newcomer auf SMALL VOICES mit einer von Nostalgie und Melancholie durchdrungenen Drone/Ambient-Produktion, field recordings und traditionelles Folk-Material wird z.T. loopig verwebt mit Gitarren- & Synth-Klängen, 3 nostalgische Postkarten runden das verträumt-nostalgische Bild ab... für Atmo-Melancholiker.
“SmallVoices is happy to present a new Italian promising artist: Fabio Orsi. 'Osci' is a two long tracks album (remixed by Gianluca Becuzzi/Kinetix) of ambient drone music, field recordings and experimental melancholic soundcapes... Using processed folk music parts (taken during folkloristic festivals, typical of the Apulian folk tradition), Fabio creates a dreaming atmosphere crossing between balls and bellows, silence and spirituality, everyday life: at home, in a church, in the countryside, at the small-town feast. All these sounds mixed and processed through digital machines: an encounter between modernism and tradition. Image a sort of mixture between Alio Die's ambient works, William Basinski's melancholia, Phil Niblock's experimentalism. Fabio Orsi plays: guitars, samples, field recordings, laptop. The black heavy weight vinyl was packaged in an elegant sleeve and including 3 postcards.” [label info]
“Osci is a deep hole into the ground of the loved/hated traditional music. It is a snatch with the past, watching it from unusual perspective, with deforming lens under coloured lights. Osci never meets "Art", it is something like a hack. As the sickle relates about the man, but it's completely unconcerned with their destiny. He speaks the speech of crickets and ants. Time no exist. Telephone are not used to ring and the bees are assembling a "flying saucers" with the elements of an old washing machine. Telephone doesn't know how to ring and voices are gliding in to the dark from mouths full of soil and cheap beer, talking about obscene love proposals. Under the Sun we reverse a big stone and the name of a girl crawls out, into the grass. Someone picks up it from the ground, and put it on the neck as an amulet. Violin's strings clasp the heart in an August night. Flames itching the flesh with pain. Finally our body shows infinite chances. Inside and outside. Every single pore is a hole. Inside is outside. A blink. We would like to shake the skin from bodies, jumping in the fire. A blink. Then we leave by car, disappearing on dusty roads. Sentenced to a slow craziness. All the rumours pushing under the scab. Where the streets are swelling as the veins and the buildings are collapsing, we plant a microphone, cold as a needle.” [liner notes]
€15.00
Mvsic for Solve et Coagvla
"Vladimir Igoshin (Ossaserpia) has created Opus alchymicum, spectacular account of the »work« of the musickal alchemists who developed a symbolic kind of psychochemistry, aimed at producing the gold of mystical illumination through celestial musick. See theories by Robert Fludd (Robertus Fluctibus) and Rosicrucian theories of the monochord. Very unique drone chamber musick with some strange industrial elements. Vladimir Igoshin is known for his contributions to HCD compilations such as Lust From The Underworld and/or AL: 100th Anniversary. Special art-work for an oversized hard-bound book (A5) designed by fantastic Madeline von Foerster! Special limited edition consists of 500 hand-numbered copies in hand-made box covered with rustish top-notch embossed Quilt 120g paper. The oversized embossed hard-bound book (A5) printed on Gmund Kaschmir cream 170g and embossed CD sleeve-jacket again on Quilt 120g paper. Very rare print for all fans of occult & alchemy! Special limited box on request only!" label notes]
"Genre: Dark Ambient / Drone / Neo-Classical (Chamber) / Industrial.
In today’s climate where record labels seem intent on cheaply mass produced releases to make a few quick bucks it comes as a relief to find a record label that actually cares about the presentation to match the music they release. Stepping into the, highly deserved, limelight is the Czech HORUS CyclicDaemon record label founded by Martin Mrskos. All their releases, well the ones I’ve been lucky enough to track down, have been impeccable in every respect. What went before though has been overshadowed by this latest release by the artist Vladimir Igoshin recording as Ossaserpia. I doubt many labels would have the balls to put out a recording housed in an actual hard bound book, A5 sized, in quality 120g paper and beautifully illustrated by the artwork of Madeline von Foerster. My eyes still can’t take it all in. I’m not by any means up on Art by any stretch of the imagination but I knows what I like and I like what I see set before me. The illustrations saying more than any amount of words can possibly describe. Which they need to as there are no words to accompany the pictures. A wise decision as it leaves the listener to use their own creative imaginations to make of it what they will as they listen to the music. For this book is best used in conjunction with the recording. Which I suspect was the way it was meant to be. Separated both are superb stand alone products. Together they open up undiscovered realms that feeds the senses. The touch, smell and sights of the book complimented by the aural grandeur that Vladimir has composed.
Based on the theories of Robert Fludd (Robertus Fluctibus), 1574-1637, a Kentish Anglican alchemist, mathematician, astronomer, cosmologist who wrote thirteen published works in his lifetime and the Rosicrucian theories of the monochord. Please Google these for I have not the time, nor the intellect required, to go into great detail here, the music expands on the theory that alchemists developed a symbolic kind of chemistry aimed at producing the gold of mystical illumination through celestial music. Clear as muck then. The concept may well be shrouded in unintelligible mystery to a Neanderthal knuckle scraper like myself but even I could see what the artist has tried to envision through his music. Featuring, what I can only call, a Medieval vibe mixed in with modern Industrial noise and drone sensibilities the twelve tracks are a treat for the ears. Though you will need to give it a couple of spins to really get inside every nuance that Vladimir has created.
From the off perceptions are challenged by the dirge drones and assorted muted ‘noise’ effects that spread like wildfire from the speakers. The bass tones are heavy duty and tinted with a dark apparel. Move past this introduction and the speckles of Neo-Classical / Chamber music begins to shine forth and suddenly the music takes the semblance of form as Vladimir throws all manner of different black musical combinations into the cauldron that bubbles with an intensity you never realised possible. You are treated to a music born of fire and brimstone from an age past brought to life in the present day. As your eyes scan and feast on the pictures of storm clouds, dragons and entwined couples the music conjures them in the minds eye. At its heart the music is surprisingly downbeat and steeped in dark oppressive moods where tranquillity appears smashed to a pulp. For all the unsettling swings the music takes, and it takes a lot, it ends on a note of triumph. A glimpse of fortitude winning against all odds.
Unlike many recordings that have tried to re-create the whole ‘magical’ dark ambient experience ‘Mvsic For Solve Et Coagvla’ is the only one I’ve encountered that has actually got under the skin of its subject matter. I’ll not pretend that it is by any means an easy recording to get into and many of you may be put off by the way Vladimir has tackled the subject in such an uncompromising way. This might have been the Achilles heal for a lesser experienced musician but Vladimir’s music is created in such a way that through repeated plays you become more accustomed to the sounds until finally the clouds break and the full visionary aspects opens up before your ears. If there was such a thing as a perfect 10 for both presentation and music working in harmony and tandem with each other then ‘Mvsic For Solve Et Coagvla’ would be it. I tell you now that it will be one of the most sought after recordings for music lovers and collectors alike this year. With only 500 numbered copies you’ll need to act fast…or live to regret it." [Alan Milne / Heathen Harvest]
label-website: www.horus.cz
€26.00
VII
Sold out"OSSO EXÓTICO hail from Lisboa, Portugal, and since their early releases (three LPs) they have developed a truly unique style – an atmospheric, meditative ambience created through the use of concrete classical instruments. Their last CD Church Organ Works (on Sonoris, France) was played entirely on church organs.... This EP could be considered a follow-up to the CD. The material presented here was likewise produced solely on church organs. OSSO EXÓTICO don't play the organ in the orthodox, classical manner; they instead create a minimal lull, both orchestral & droneful, using the natural reverberation of the church, thus evoking full, other-worldy atmospheres. This EP might make you listen attentively to a different kind of organic harmony. The "music of the spheres" can be found here!!
CLEAR VINYL, COVERS CONTAIN SPICES!
ALL 7"es APPEAR IN A LIMITED & NUMBERED EDITION OF 250 COPIES." [press release]
Minimum:Maximum / Orient:Occident
Aufnahmen von 1973 und 1977 vom poetischen Klang-Puristen und Minimalisten HANS OTTE. Stimme, Glockenspiel, Radiowaves, instrumentelle Geräusche, werden zu reduzierten aber wirkungsvollen Klangbildern verwoben, eine direkte Umsetzung von verwobener Klang- und Lebensphilosophie spiegelt sich hier wieder.
“minimum:maximum (1973): texts / sounds / pictures. An environment (simultaneous concert in Stockholm and Bremen) for two organists: Karl-Erik Welin and Gerd Zacher, keyboard instruments. orient:occident (1977): for two woodwind-players and tape: Ingo Goritzki, oboe; Hans-Wilhelm Goetzke, clarinet. "Perhaps best known for his piano work 'Book of Sounds' these two works by German composer Hans Otte were composed in the 1970s. In that decade his aesthetic creed became increasingly clear: 'the search for the character and individuality of sound as such, which must be rediscovered and re-experienced independent of superimposed structures. The composer understands the dialogue with sounds as the discovery of their nature.' (Ute Schalz-Laurenze). While Hans Otte was an enthusiastic, one might say visionary promoter of fellow composers, such as John Cage and David Tudor, whose impacts had registered to the general public long after their force reached the surface, he nevertheless remained deeply committed to his own music. Otte's writings, simple lines that say: 'words are just something added on'; 'all great things laugh'; 'when something is reminiscent of nothing'; and, 'it's really something -- that voice that was once in the mouth,' all direct us to his music, because: 'everything always happens: Now.' It is Otte's music that betrays his particularity of thought to what (is everything), how (it happens), and when (is now). Words are just something added on. Collectively, these aphorisms reflect an aesthetic that dispenses with words which may address themselves to an understanding of the world. Here, however, the world to be understood is indescribable. What is everything? When is now? How does it happen? The message is that words tell, music is. Listen. The titles of these works: orient:occident and mnimum:maximum, suggest a relationship between seemingly disparate things to remind us of Otte's adage: 'It is the gardener who owns the garden.'" [label info]
wwww.pogus.com
€14.00
Beautiful Monolith two
"No Progression. No Movement. No Entertainment. No Narrative. No Musical Journey. No Drone. No Collector Scum. No Reviews. No Fans.
Just electrified bloodbaths and blitzkrieg ragas from Nowhere, New Zealand, in search of fleeting moments of infinite density; where everything is louder than everything else, time slows to a crawl, and brains under stress slip into warm, prickly comas.
Primitive electronic bumps and cannabanoid-campfire pulses clump into clusters and march like stars on their gigantic skyward axis. Think Coltrane, Think Public Image, Think Amon Duul, Think Conrad, Cale, or MacLise. Think Prandit Pran Nath being chewed up by Hanatarashs tropical piranha collection.
Fluorescent, super-dense, trance-music to scare away the fools who buy records from the “drone” section." [label info]
www.quasipop.org
€6.50
Filth Haven
"As one half of Swedish/Norwegian industrial duo K.N.O., Kristoffer Oustad is no stranger to the Malignant roster, and yet within the broader context of the K.N.O. sound, his exact contributions were never fully known, or at least immediately recognizable. Listening to his debut solo recording, it becomes evident that the more emotive and moody qualities within those recordings seemed to be his primary responsibility. The 7 tracks that comprise Filth Haven operate on a palpable psychological level and are perhaps some of the most personal and deeply emotional recordings Malignant has released. Oustad shows an innate ability to craft intricate and detailed pieces of grey hued, analog darkness that feel suspended in time… dreamlike and meditative, yet always hinting at something ominous on the horizon, as gradually shifting textures, drifting tones and haunting melodies intersect in a hazy, somnambulant procession. While the method for composition (analog synths, guitar, and field recordings) may have been the same, each track is uniquely different than the next, but in the end, feels tightly bound together by a cinematic framework that sinks deep into your consciousness. An absolutely astounding and rewarding work for those that appreciate all manner of dark music." [label info]
www.malignantrecords.com
"Filth Haven is the first full length release published by the Norwegian Kristoffer Oustad under his own name. In the past Oustad has offered several albums and compilation works under the moniker of Kristoffer Nyströms Orkester (a power industrial duet formed with Peter Nyström of Megaptera) and Plague Machinery and the post-metal, avant-garde industrial project V:28.
Filth Haven is an ultimate bleak, demonic and epic soundscaping inferno. Massive, absorbing and grimy, the dark instrumental music rituals offered here are made of brooding droney chords, treated found sources, ultra-sonic electronic assaults, micro signals, harsh noises, disembodied chants and treated hypnotic-like percussive elements. The whole orchestration is amazingly captivating and exceptionally turbulent, as if we enter in complete nightmare-ish hallucinations which send us back to primordial origins or to some forgotten cosmic events. ‘Filth Haven’ is a tremendously hell-ish narrative album, a sublime illustration of infernal scenes of extravagance and final desolation we can appreciate in terrifying painting visions of John Martin, John Charles Dollman or Adolf Hiremy-Hirschl, just to name a few. The apocalyptic mood is interrupted by rare field recordings as in the otherworldly Acheron-like droning sound tapestry of “Row me over.”
Mesmeric splendor, compelling musical procession and dark contemplative estates that will ravish addicted fans of isolationist ambient music and anything related to post-industrial experimentalism. With this album Malignant Records proves one more time that they figure among the most iconic producers of shimmering industrial ambient music. Filth Haven is definitely a recommended album for collectors as well as beginners in the genre." [Philippe Blache, IGLOO MAGAZINE]
€12.00
Sprechzimmern (Hommage an Carlfriedrich Claus)
"Distance, busyness, sporadic communication occupied with other topics are often the reason why common interests are discovered only late and by accident. Carlfriedrich Claus, sound poet and graphic artist with a largely concealed output, working in the no-man's-land of Annaberg-Buchholz, near Chemnitz, Germany, was with some exceptions only discovered after the fall of the wall. Creating a work of vocal utterances not only composed with great sophistication, but underlined with intense philosophical research.
How could we not be enthusiastic and even euphoric when digging through the layers of his multi-faceted body of work that has progressively been published as deserved, which wasn't the case during the GDR regime that had him withdrawn his title of a professional artist. Concentrating on a few basic elements, intuition and chance as creative tools backed by intense theory and contextualization, working methods we all strive for ourselves. It was just a matter of time and time it took, but it was worth it, to do our own take inspired and in homage to this great man to whom we feel so linked.
This is not a collaboration of working on each other's sound files, it rather is to let each other know, to compare where each participant's exploration is positioned and how the distinct works could be arranged together in order to allow for a varied but continues listening session. A process of filtering and combining, adding and eliminating, varying density and permeability.
a homage to Carlfriedrich Claus
of fermenting language / aggregated resonances / swoosh-combined speech transparency:
historical-philosophical vibration / distorted densification = experimental retail salesman
/ articulating principal latency / private suspect statesmanship / destructive-combinatorial / an evening live in annaberg - buchholz: tol & rlw & dsm / chronicled, condensed and constellated in 2014.
full coloured artwork based on an original drawing by Guido Huebner (dsm)
edition of 300" [label info]
scrotum-records.de
€12.00
Ethnicities
Das Industrial-Projekt von PIERE JOLIVET, der auch Bestandteil der fantastischen VOX POPULI! gewesen sein soll. "Ethnicities" ist eine Zusammenstellung von bisher unveröffentlichtem Material.
"'Ethnicities is an electro-acoustical scope of unreleased recordings of Pacific 231's post-industrial period. Successive and consecutive cuts were made until he put together the concept of the album as: pluri-cultural diversity of the sounds, tropical steams, exotic journeys & electronic man-made build-up manipulations, urban dins and industrial mazes, ' Ethnicities ' is a psychedelic and unexpected patchwork from Pacific 231." [label info]
www.rotorelief.com
€15.00
Pause for the Jet
"DANIEL PADDEN kannte ich bisher als einen der Volcano-The-Bear-Bären. Nach Glasgow umgezogen, ging er auf Solopfade, erst als The One Ensemble Of Daniel Padden und mit Pause for the Jet (Dekorder 026) zum zweiten Mal unter dem bloßen Familiennamen. Seine Vorlieben für schräge Sounds aus fernen Ländern, für seltsamen Kraut- und wagemutigen Artrock sind darauf collagiert zu Songs und Instrumentals mit surrealen Haupt- und Nebenwirkungen. ‚Crow Crow Growth‘ mischt das Timbre von Charles Hayward mit Saitengezupfe und Ethnopercussion zu einem wehmütigen Folksong. ‚Sponge Shipwreck‘ lässt 33 Sekunden lang den Geist von Harry Partch erscheinen, ‚The Ghostly Whole‘ nur den Geist einer alten Kirchturmuhr, während Ratten pizzikato Kontrabass knabbern. Die Residents und Nurse With Wound haben ähnliche Seancen abgehalten, ähnlich von Recording Angels behütete Träume geträumt. ‚Three Farewells‘ mischt Posaune, Bassklarinette und Cello und loopt dazu einen elegischen Gesangsfetzen, bevor mit ‚The Liar Inbetween‘ wieder ein fast straighter Song erklingt, auch wenn die Begleitung erst nur seltsam verzupft und verschrappelt daher kommt und sich dann doch elektrisch verdichtet. Auf ‚The Shadow Of Lunch‘ tutet eine asthmatische Harmonika, die Kopfstimme dazu wackelt auf hölzernen Stelzen. Auf rostig schnarrenden Twangs schwimmt ‚Narwhal‘ dahin, um auf morbiden Trommelschlägen zu stranden. Katzenjämmerliche Salonmusik quietscht in allen Scharnieren, bevor Padden nach ‚Arc Fankle‘ mit seiner stotternder Percussion und ‚Bustle‘ mit seinem Bassklarinettengebrummel a capella ‚English Again‘ anstimmt. Seltsam, aber seltsam schön." [Bad Alchemy]
"Since 1995 Daniel Padden has been a member of Volcano The Bear, with several highly regarded album releases on Nurse With Wound's United Diaries label, Textile and Beta-Lactam Ring Records. After his move to Glasgow he started The One Ensemble Of Daniel Padden as an outlet for his solo recordings with releases on Catsup Plate, Secret Eye and Textile. When The One Ensemble slowly metamorphosed into a band of its own, Padden started to record his solo output under his birth name, with last year's "The Isaac Storm" on the Ultra Exzema label being the first seminal result.
Over the years Padden has developed a strong fascination for obscure musics from all over the world (re his recent "Epiphanies" article for The Wire magazine): mouth organ love-songs from Thailand, The Ramayana Monkey Chant from Bali, Khene pieces from Laos; so-called world music from Burundi to Bulgaria.
Combining these interests with his love for British Folk and Art Rock (This Heat, Robert Wyatt), Kraut Rock (Faust), Free Jazz, the surreal collage techniques of Nurse With Wound and the odd humour of The Residents, he has developed a totally unique and highly personal musical vision without ever sounding overambitious or directionless. Gorgeous song-writing is seamlessly transformed into pure fuzz or string drones, suddenly interrupted by some improvised reeds or collapsing percussion, all within the blink of an eye, and never losing its natural flow, "Pause for the Jet" is already an auspicious aspirant for our "Record of the Year"."[label info]
www.dekorder.com
€12.00
Magneettinen Kohtalo
2024 Repress in 6 panel digisleeve. Recorded between 2006-2012. 40 minutes album consisting large variety of material from gloomy brooding heavy electronics to rusty and dark rhythmic metal percussion industrial and epic atmospheric tracks. Aggressive vocals and dirty analogue sound.
€13.00
Dingggdongggdinggg Vs. Singggsonggsinggg
Singing songs while playing ding dongs, Charlemagne’s solo voice over the bells of his studio carillon is a premiere in his recorded works, and - to our knowledge- the first voise/carillon record in musical history. All the little shamanic stuffed deities inhabiting the carillon added their souls to the spirit of the reverberating songs, including a song in memory of Mika Vainio.
pressed in 1000 hand-numbered, yellow vinyls.
240 Come with a 7"«, engraved with an exclusive track on one side and etched with a Charlemagne drawing on the other.
Dedicated to the memory of Mika Vainio
Charlemagne palestine : Carillon & voice
Recorded by Frédéric Alstadt at Charlemagne Palestine’s workshop,
brussels august 25 & 26, 2017
Mixed by Frédéric Alstadt & Cedric D’hondt at Angström Studio
This Album is mastered and cut by Frédéric Alstadt at Angström mastering, brussels
Pictures and layout by Cedric D’hondt
The photos were taken in Charlemagne Palestine’s workshop, brussels
Produced by Christopher Denruyter & Cedric D’hondt for Matière Mémoire editions
© matière mémoire editions - art Sonore Sprl - www.matiere-memoire.com matme001lp
https://charlemagnepalestine.bandcamp.com/album/dingggdongggdinggg-vs-singggsonggsinggg
€36.00
The God Bear Archives I
During the year 2021, Charlemagne entrusted us with numerous archives recently found on audio cassettes dating from the 70s and 80s. After a long process of listening and selection, we are pleased to present the first volume of these archives to you.
ALL MUSIC, instruments & voices by charlemagne palestine
Except CD2 track4 by Simone Forti & Charlemagne Palestine
Track selection by Karbé dinel / Cassette digitization by Lionel Hubert
Mastering by Frederic Alstadt at Mont analogue Mastering
COVER PICTURE BY Henry Ughetto "Pour charlemagne palestine" 1998
THANKS TO Charlemagne palestine, Aude Stocklet & Lionel Hubert
The tracks coming from old audio cassettes, we have chosen to keep the defects of the tapes so as not to alter the work.
Copyright by matière mémoire éditions / GODBEAR series
MMGO005CD
https://charlemagnepalestine.bandcamp.com/album/the-god-bear-archives-i-unreleased-tapes-from-the-70s-and-80s
€23.00
The God Bear Archives II
All music, instruments & voices by charlemagne palestine
Except CD1 track7 by Simone Forti & Charlemagne Palestine
Track selection by Karbé Dinel
Cassette digitization by Lionel Hubert
Mastering by Frederic Alstadt at Mont analogue Masters
Graphic & layout by Cedric D'hondt
Cover picture by Kevin Clarke, RAGA TODI, ca 1984
Inside picture by Kathy Agnoli, Toronto 1976
CD’s picture by Sylvain Hitau, NEWLOOK #86 PP 32-33, 1990
Thanks to Charlemagne palestine, Aude Stoclet, Kevin Clarke & Lionel Hubert
The tracks coming from old audio cassettes, we have
chosen to keep the defects of the tapes so as not to alter the work.
https://charlemagnepalestine.bandcamp.com/album/the-god-bear-archives-ii-unreleased-tapes-from-the-70s-and-80s
€23.00
Dingggdongggdinggg Vs. Singggsonggsinggg
Singing songs while playing ding dongs, Charlemagne’s solo voice over the bells of his studio carillon is a premiere in his recorded works, and - to our knowledge- the first voise/carillon record in musical history. All the little shamanic stuffed deities inhabiting the carillon added their souls to the spirit of the reverberating songs, including a song in memory of Mika Vainio.
pressed in 1000 hand-numbered, yellow vinyls.
240 Come with a 7"«, engraved with an exclusive track on one side and etched with a Charlemagne drawing on the other.
Dedicated to the memory of Mika Vainio
Charlemagne palestine : Carillon & voice
Recorded by Frédéric Alstadt at Charlemagne Palestine’s workshop,
brussels august 25 & 26, 2017
Mixed by Frédéric Alstadt & Cedric D’hondt at Angström Studio
This Album is mastered and cut by Frédéric Alstadt at Angström mastering, brussels
Pictures and layout by Cedric D’hondt
The photos were taken in Charlemagne Palestine’s workshop, brussels
Produced by Christopher Denruyter & Cedric D’hondt for Matière Mémoire editions
© matière mémoire editions - art Sonore Sprl - www.matiere-memoire.com matme001lp
https://charlemagnepalestine.bandcamp.com/album/dingggdongggdinggg-vs-singggsonggsinggg
€15.00
Rubhitbangklanghear Rubhitbangklangear
"Second time in 20 years Palestine and Z'ev are performing together. First time they're recording it! Unreleased material from Charlemagne's lair, a place now called Charleworld, where both fellows spent 3 days in June 2010. Part of our Sub Rosa/Laboratoire Central sessions.
'i first started to play the bells while at high school of music + art in the sixties at st. thomas church across the street from the museum of modern art in manhattan!! i played everyday for years!! in the eighties
i met z'ev in amsterdam!! i'd known him for 20 years before he suggested one day that we perform together, which we did at lem barcelona in 2007!! later after seeing and hearing the carillon at my studio in brussels he suggested that we perform and record together there, which we did in 2010!! here's / hearsz what we did!!!!' charlemagne palestine " [label info]
www.subrosa.net
"Unter den Minimalisten ist Charlemagne Palestine sicher derjenige, der im etablierten und institutionalisierten Musikbetrieb weniger als seine Kollegen wahrgenommen wird. Die Auftritte und Aufnahmen Palestines hatten bzw. haben – nicht nur wegen dem Moment des Repetetiven (der sich auch im Titel widerspiegelt) – (auch) immer einen gewissen rituellen Charakter, etwa wenn z. B. die Stofftiere aus der extensiven Sammlung Palestines auf der Bühne drappiert wurden (vgl. die Rückseite der CD) und er sich den obligatorischen Cognac (der hier das Cover ziert) einschüttete. Und auch Z’EV hat sich sowohl musikalisch als auch schriftlich (in Rhythmajik, Practical Uses of Number, Rhythm and Sound, das bezeichnenderweise ursprünglich von Temple Press veröffentlicht wurde) mit dem, was Musik alles bewirken kann, auseinandergesetzt. Über das zuletzt genannte Werk schrebt Z’EV, es handele „not about music but spells out the use of rhythm and sound and proportion for Trance, Healing“.
In den Linernotes der Doppel-CD schreibt Palestine, er und Z’EV hätten sich 20 Jahre gekannt, bevor sie 2007 den Entschluss fassten, zusammen aufzutreten. Die auf „RubhitbangklanghearRubhitbangklangear“ enthaltenen Aufnahmen stammen aus dem Jahr 2010 und wurden in Palestines Studio in Brüssel gemacht. Auf der ersten CD finden sich die gemeinsamen Arbeiten: Während Palestine auf seinem Carillon -eine Art überdimensionales Glockenspiel- Melodien minimal variiert spielt, schlägt Z’EV seine schweren Bass-Trommeln. Was anfangs noch nebeneinander herzulaufen scheint, fügt sich im Verlauf der 18 Minuten zusammen; das Stück entwickelt sich zu einem repetetiv-perkussiven Mantra, das fast schon sakralen Charakter hat. Die zweite Duoaufnahme beginnt wesentlich zurückhaltender: Während die Glocken behutsam und langsam geschlagen werden, sind Z’EVs Beiträge kaum noch rhythmisch zu nennen, klingen so, als spiele er eine riesige Klangschale. Der dritte Track enthält dagegen erratischer klingende Perkussion, man meint, Z’EV wanke vom Cognac beschwingt durch eine Fabrikhalle, das Carillon ist hier stärker im Hintergrund. Das ist das vielleicht atonalste Stück auf dem Album. Die zweite CD enthält die Soloarbeiten und auch wenn diese nicht wirklich schlecht sind, so fallen sie im Vergleich zur ersten CD etwas ab, wobei die schiere physische Präsenz Z’EVs, die sich auf dem 46-minügen Abschlusstrack zeigt, schon beeindruckt und den Hörer – je nach Disposition – vielleicht tatsächlich in Trance versetzen kann." [M.G./African Paper]
"Here's two men who have been around since the 60s and both considerable ties to the underground, perhaps Z'EV more than Palestine. But neither have been elevated into the world of high art and are easy to approach. They met in Amsterdam in the 80s and have played a concert before, but only in 2010 they actually recorded material together at Charleworld, Charlemagne Palestine's own place, where has a carillon set up. The picture on the back shows what this looks like. Palestine up in the air playing the bells and Z'EV on the floor with his percussion. In '#3' the playing is somewhat chaotic and aided by natural reverb, but it's my least favorite piece of the three collaborations. In the other two we find an interesting drone like layer, played by Z'EV on a large skin drum and which adds a great texture to the more controlled playing of Palestine. In "#2' Z'EV only seems to rub the skins and makes it even more intense and creepy. I stopped the music because I wasn't sure if I was just hearing the music or something outside happened. That's the great mark of quality, I think. Those two long opening pieces would have been great enough by themselves. There is also a second CD with solo works. Palestine is brief here, just under eight minutes with a fine piece of carillon music, and 'Solo Z#1' sees Z'EV exploring more of those drone like sounds like on the second duo duo piece while his second piece lasts forty six minutes and we hear him like at least I remind me from the first time I heard his music (mid 80s). Banging metal percussion, aided with natural reverb, in what seems now proto-industrial music from an acoustic perspective. Excellent stuff here, this is the Z'EV I haven't heard in quite some time. Great package of excellent contemporary music all around." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€16.00
Difference and Repetition - A Musical Evocation of GILLES DELEUZE
"This new album (the tenth in their discography) was born from two ambitions: to pay tribute to Soft Machine's Third on form (4 sides / 4 titles) and to philosopher Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition is the title of his thesis) on the contents. The 4 long pieces of this double concept album were developed over 2 years and each has a different style and climate. Bold and kaleidoscopic, Difference and Repetition perfectly synthesizes the musical and literary obsessions of Palo Alto.
Palo Alto
Formed in Paris in 1989, Palo Alto released his first album (a cassette) on the Italian label Old Europa Cafe in 1990. The year 2020 is therefore an opportunity to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this first stone, the founder of a discography rich with 10 albums. The band is now composed of Jacques Barbéri (also a science fiction author), Laurent Pernice (ex-member of the French industrial band Nox) and Philippe Perreaudin (also coordinator of several compilations and reissues: Legendary Pink Dots, Un Département, Nino Ferrer Revisited, Ptôse, Hardy Fox…).
Literature, and particularly science fiction, is a leitmotiv in the band's work. Antoine Volodine, Thomas Pynchon, Philip K. Dick, Lewis Carroll or J. G. Ballard have been invoked many times.
In recent years, Palo Alto has multiplied musical collaborations with, among others, The Residents, Ptôse, Klimperei, Tuxedomoon...
From industrial music to inextricable electronic ramifications, by making a detour through improvisation, the musical universe of Palo Alto is multifaceted. Their new album is no exception to this rule… "
https://subrosalabel.bandcamp.com/album/difference-and-repetition-a-musical-evocation-of-gilles-deleuze
"Palo Alto aus Paris gibt es seit 1989 und mit "Le Clos" erschien 1990 ein erstes Album (auf Tonbandkassette), dem bisher ein gutes Dutzend weitere gefolgt sind. Das Projekt um Jacques Barbéri nennt als Einflussgeber Tuxedomoon, Art Zoyd, The Legendary Pink Dots, Coil, The Residents, Can und Cabaret Voltaire, und betätigt sich vornehmlich in experimentell-elektronischen Gefilden, verunreinigt seine Musik aber auch mit Punkig-Schrägem, New-Wave-Artigem oder Modern-Kammermusikalisch-Klassischem. Ich machte erstmals mit dem 1998 beim Musea-Unterlabel Gazul Records erschienenen Album "Transe Plan" Bekanntschaft mit der Formation, und auf jenem geht es auch weitestgehend elektronisch und experimentell zu.
Zum 30sten hat man dann das wohl bisher ambitionierteste Projekt verwirklicht. Ein Doppelalbum hat man sich vorgenommen, von der Form her wie "Third" von Soft Machine, also mit vier seitenlangen Nummern, welches sich mit dem Werk des 1995 durch Selbstmord verstorbenen französischen Philosophen Gilles Deleuze befasst. Dazu hat man sich einige musikalische Gäste gesucht: Den von Deleuze beeinflussten SF-Schriftsteller Alain Damasio als Vorleser, Richard Pinhas, der einstmals bei Deleuze studiert hat, an der E-Gitarre, Thierry Zaboïtzeff am Cello und Rhys Chatham an der Trompete. Das fertige Werk wurde schließlich Ende 2020 vom Belgischen Label Sub Rosa als 2xLP oder CD veröffentlicht.
Mit Soft Machine hat die Musik eher wenig gemein. Aber, es ging ja auch nur darum ein ähnlich ausladendes und gestaltetes Album zu veröffentlichen. Ein paar jazzig-rockige Spuren sind auf "Difference And Repetition - A Musical Evocation Of Gilles Deleuze" aber auch auszumachen. Ansonsten ist dies eine Art von elektronischer Musik, oft rhythmisch voran schreitend, bestimmt von programmierter Perkussion, vornehmlich aber dominiert von allerlei Synthesizererzeugnissen und bisweilen heftigst verfremdeten Saxophonklängen, in die je nach Stück weitere Blasinstrumente, Cello, Bass, E-Gitarre und Textrezitationen eingewoben wurden.
Vor allem im dreiteiligen "Triptych" verliest Damasio Texte, einen eigenen bisher unveröffentlichten über Deleuzes Tod (der auch im Inneren des Digipacks abgedruckt ist), aus Deleuzes Buch "Capitalisme et Schizophrenie" (1980) und aus seinem Roman "Les Furtifs" (2019), durchaus engagiert und intensiv, ganz im Stile des "Concerto Delle Menti" von Pholas Dactylus. Man kann, auch wenn man den französischen Text kaum folgen kann, nur gebannt zuhören.
Die restlichen Stücke sind vorwiegend instrumental gehalten, nur im einleitenden "The Tears of Nietzsche" wird kurz ein Text von Richard Pinhas’ verlesen (aus "Les Larmes de Nietzsche – Deleuze et la musique“, 2001), und sind recht stark von den jeweiligen Gastsolisten geprägt. Im eben genannten ersten Track ist Pinhas’ E-Gitarre klangbestimmend und die Nummer klingt dann über weite Strecken wie das recht typische Gitarrendröhnen, welches auch auf den Soloalben des Franzosen meist zu hören ist. Palo Alto, insbesondere Berberis Sax, sorgen aber für eigenen Charakter. In "Rhizom" knarzt Zaboitzeffs Cello erst bedächtig, dann immer wüster, eingebettet in eine hypnotisch dahin schreitende Space-Elektronik, in der das 'Tibetanische Horn' Barberis aber auch exotische Akzente setzt. Im abschließenden Titelstück ist dann Rhys Chatham tonangebend, allerdings nicht an der E-Gitarre, sondern mit einer heiser-krächzenden Trompete, übrigens oft begleitet von einem Damenchor (genannt 'Les Bottines'), der stellenweise fast für Zeuhl-Atmosphäre sorgt.
Eine recht schwer zu kategorisierende Musik ist auf "Difference And Repetition - A Musical Evocation Of Gilles Deleuze" zu finden. Als dynamischen Avant/Kammerprog, dröhnenden E-Gitarren-Elektrorock, krautige Elektronik oder als pulsierendes Electronicagemenge könnte man das bezeichnen, oder als eine dichte Verschmelzung dieser Ingredienzien, angereichert mit allerlei freiem Klangbasteln. Das Ergebnis ist jedenfalls reichlich originell, intensiv, voluminös, packend und auf jeden Fall sehr progressiv. Ich denke einmal, dass Avantprog-Freaks bzw. Zaboitzeff- und/oder Pinhas-Fans, die zudem die weiter oben genannten Vorbilder (oder einige derselben) schätzen, von "Difference And Repetition" (übriges auch ein Buchtitel Deleuzes) begeistert sein sollten. Ein später Höhepunkt des Progjahres 2020!" [Babyblaue Seiten]
€20.00
Mort aux Vaches
"Vinyl re-issue of the work initially released on CD by Staalplaat in 2000. First time on vinyl, remastered, with new cover design (a 1974 drawing by Charlemagne Palestine).
This is the first release in the 'GodBear' series, a project consisting in the re-issue of existing works and production of unreleased material by Charlemagne. In partnership with the Charlemagne Palestine Foundation." [label info}
"Pan Sonic + Charlemagne Palestine’s 20 year old drone album finally takes a new life on LP with this first pressing via Godbear following Staalplaat’s long sold-out CD
Forming the 2nd meeting on record between Palestine, Vainio and Väisänen after their 1997 hook-up with Pita (Peter Rehberg) on ‘Three Compositions for Machines’, their follow-up is slimmed down to the legendary pianist and Finnish wave shapers for an exceedingly tense, minimal, excursion marrying glacial microtonal chords licked with underlying, rhythmic subbass disturbance and occasional, off-key, distorted moraine that buckles the microtones from below.
Both sides of the equation maintain a tense equilibrium throughout the album, which, while originally divided in five parts, played thru seamlessly, whereas this new vinyl cut dedicates nearly a side per piece. Across its taut body Palestine and Pan Sonic sustain gossamer fine chords and swollen, sometimes unruly bass, appearing to under-do each other and never making any moves, but the tension just gives at point, sinking into subbass mire and slipping trains of thought out of line. It’s perhaps not entirely typical of either of them, and achieves a modest mix of their respective sensibilities." [Boomkat]
€34.00
A Magic Square of 5 to look at
Endlose Zeitlupenwellen von langsam dahinächzenden Sirr-Teppichen, als konzeptuelle Grundlage der Klangkunst-Komposition diente ein „magisches Quadrat“ und die entsprechende Mathematik der „kosmischen Harmonie“... interessantes Konzept und überzeugendes Klangergebnis von diesem eher im Ausstellungs/Installations-Betrieb arbeitenden Klangkünstler..
“OK, for all the math freaks out there, this is a must have. This CD by one of the most famous Dutch sound artists with a resume as long as both my arms is one big mathematician's wet dream. The theory of a magic square is simple enough, but not so simple that I would be able to reproduce it correctly here. What Panhuysen has done is to transpose the theory to image and sound (all the details about this can be found extensively in the booklet). Sounds boring? Well, it may sound that way, but the result is great! Especially the resulting 30 minute sound piece is a sheer beauty. Sine waves are played according to the rules of the magic square and some additional rules and the result is a piece that is hauntingly evocative, yet dry as a desert. This strange contradiction gives the work its strength and tension. The piece was originally conceived as a four channel sound installation but works very well in the CDd format. Together with the booklet and text it is a very hermetic work of art, extremely modernist, and therefore a welcome statement in times of relatively random digital number crunching. A very good work.” [MR, Vital Weekly]
www.beequeen.nl/plink.html
€13.00
Pendulum Change
"First vinyl LP edition by Dutch sound and visual artist Paul Panhuysen since 1986. In terms of sound art, Paul Panhuysen is well-known for his long string installations, yet he has produced a vast amount of other sound installations using different materials and sound sources ranging from various instruments to animals such as birds. This LP contains a recording of the installation "Pendulum Change Ringing", displayed at Pand Koloniale Waren in Hasselt (Belgium) in 2012. The installation consists of twelve engraved Turkish metal platters, each mounted onto a black plastic bin, and placed in a 20 meters long row. The rim of each platter is hit by a metal pendulum operated by a tiny electromotor. Each hit causes the platter to resonate with a rich sound texture full of dissonant overtones. During the recording, the twelve pendulums are activated one after the other. The paces at which they swing differ due to their rods having different lengths. This causes interlocking rhythmic patterns to emerge that become more complex with each step and never stay the same. Hits aggregate into clusters, then thin out again. The sound is not chaotic, yet its regularity is hard to comprehend. "You might call Pendulum Change Ringing a typical Paul Panhuysen piece: it works according to a system, quite a simple one in fact, but its effect surpasses that apparent simplicity by far." (René van Peer)
Edition of 300 copies. Full-color sleeve with photos of the installation and liner notes by René van Peer. Black poly-lined inner sleeve." [label info]
www.edition-telemark.de
€22.00
Meta
"Raphaël PANIS is a composer and a searcher, fascinated by sound : his works take the listeners at the heart of the vibration, into the intimacy of the microscopic disturbances.
His studies at Annecy CRR ans Paris CNSMDP (new technologies section with Louis NAON) allowes him to create his own instruments for live performances. He associates his sound installations with plastic works for various centers of art. He also composes for dance.
"Meta" consists of a multiplication of the sound layers (stratas), reminders and variations around sound elements, similarity and disparities to create a rich and coherent hearing universe." [label info]
rpanis.blogspot.fr
€10.00
VINYLMANIA (FILM)
"A trip into the grooves, Vinylmania is a 75 minute feature length documentary about an object that has never lost its soul: the vinyl record. An epic love story, the film is filled with fascinating characters and internationally recognized artists including PHILIPPE COHEN SOLAL (Gotan Project), WINSTON SMITH (Dead Kennedys, Green Day record sleeve artist), PETER SAVILLE (Joy Division, New Order record sleeve artist) and DJ KENTARO (2002 DMC World DJ Champion).
Devotion, ecstasy, infatuation, agony – all feelings that the director of the film, Paolo Campana, has experienced from childhood and shares with like-minded record collectors, Djs, musicians and artists (the said vinylmaniacs) in the documentary. Set in 11 different cities worldwide, the director sets out on a global road trip to find out what role vinyl records play in the 21st century." [publishers info]
"Wenn das Leben mit 33 Umdrehungen pro Minute läuft: Doku von Paolo Campana.
"Als Kind wurde ich von meiner Mutter immer mit einer Schallplatte von Mozart geweckt", sagt Paolo Campana, Filmemacher und DJ aus Turin. "Seitdem läuft Vinyl durch meine Adern." Der italienische Regisseur möchte verstehen, woher seine große Leidenschaft für Musik und Schallplatten kommt. Also tauchte er für seinen Dokumentarfilm in diese Welt ein und bewegte sich sprichwörtlich undercover. In "Vinylmania" führt uns der Regisseur durch die Facetten eines Objekts, das nie seine Seele verloren hat. Er spürt dem nach, was Vinyl in einer digitalen Welt so legendär macht. An vielen Orten der Welt begegnen wir einer Gemeinde von Sammlern, DJs, Musikern und Künstlern. Die Zuschauer erkunden die Läden, in denen die Leidenschaft zum Fieber mutiert, und die Fabriken, die wieder damit begonnen haben, Millionen von Platten herzustellen. Denn: Die Vinylplatte ist zurück! ",Vinylmania‘ ist sich seines grundsätzlich nostalgischen Ansatzes bewusst, aber lässt sich dadurch nicht beirren. Das macht die Dokumentation zu einem großen Fernsehvergnügen." (Spiegel Online).
Extras: Limitierte Edition inkl. Bonus-DVD: 8 Musikclips (Berlin, Prag, Paris, London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Tokio); 15 Bonus-Tracks – Interviews mit Sean Bidder (Vinyl Factory), Richie Hawtin (DJ, Produzent), Peter Saville (Designer), Guy Schraenen (Kurator), John Stanley (Schriftsteller), Dubplate & Mastering, Laser Turntable, Matt Mikas (Sammler), V. Vale (Re/Search), Klaus Florida (Bassist Dead Kennedys), Luxuria Music (Webradio), Eilon Paz (Dust & Grooves), Cesar Montesano (Sammler); Google-Map ausgewählter Plattenläden weltweit
"›Vinylmania‹ ist ein wahres Vergnügen. Er spürt erfolgreich der kulturellen Explosion rund um das Wiedererwachen von Vinyl nach und behandelt darüber hinaus auch die Leidenschaft und Liebe zur Musik. Jeder Musiker und wahrer Musikfan wird den Film sehen wollen.“" Record Store Day
"„Wenn man einen DJ auflegen sieht, dann ist das, wie einem Küchenchef beim Kochen zuzusehen.“" DJ Kentaro
"„Vinyl ist wie Jazz. Seine Sound-Nuancen sind einzigartig.“" DJ Kobayashi
"„Das ist meine Kindheit, meine ganze Geschichte…“" Philippe Cohen Solal, Gotan Project
€12.00
White Fur / Black Cathedral
"Parallel Lines ( /// ) is a Canadian improv-instrumental jam band comprised of Eric Quach (Destroyalldreamers, thisquietarmy) from Montreal on guitar, Ryan Ferguson (Sianspheric, Electroluminescent) from Hamilton on synthesizers, and Pascal Asselin (Below The Sea, Millimetrik) from Quebec City on drums. With 1000 km separating the 3 members and several years of crossing each other’s paths, sharing the stage with their various projects – the concept is simple: whenever the occasion arises during their busy schedule – jam and press record!
In 2011, Parallel Lines met at the Christ’s Church Cathedral in Hamilton, Ontario to record their next album, which is now available as the first release on Oaken Palace Records. Eric Quach’s typical, haunting guitar sounds blend with spaced-out synth loops and pulsating drumming, creating a sonic landscape that leaves you with a bright and relaxed smile on your face. This is music to dream and drift away, a must-have for fans of Quach’s solo projects and, in fact, for everyone who enjoys psychedelic music!
The Animal: Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus)
Polar bear
Parallel Lines dedicate their album to the most famous animal of their home country, namely the polar bear. All profits are donated to Polar Bears International, the world’s leading polar bear conservation group.
As of 2008, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) reports that the global population of polar bears is 20,000 to 25,000, and is declining. In 2006, the IUCN upgraded the polar bear from a species of least concern to a vulnerable species. It cited a “suspected population reduction of >30% within three generations (45 years)”, which shows the urgency of conservation efforts. Risks to the polar bear include climate change, pollution in the form of toxic contaminants, conflicts with shipping, stresses from recreational polar-bear watching, and oil and gas exploration and development.The IUCN also cited a “potential risk of over-harvest” through legal and illegal hunting.
If you want to learn more about polar bears, check out the extensive resources at Polar Bears International." [label info]
www.oakenpalace.com
€18.50
La Laguna / Lux-ed
"PARALUX is a nickname known for collaborating with her images on the live concerts of Tzesne. This is her first published work. Two video pieces that are produced far away from from the speed of the live context, two re-composed films made from the material collected from her performances. Video-ambient to be enjoyed at home!" [label info]
"The first release by Paralux, an 'one woman visual band' with the DVD-R as her first release, containing two short films with soundtracks. The music is dark but in 'Lux-ed' there is a very nice, desolate trumpet that almost sound like 'The Last Post', against a wall of dark humming synthesizers. Visually it is a bit of an assembly of pictures that don't seem to make much sense. In 'La Laguna' the sea plays an important role, both in the visuals as well as in the music. It seems that what was filmed was also taped and only slightly processed. Wind blows straight into the microphone. I must admit I liked the music from the first film and the images of the second. Both mastered the excitement of ambient music, but in both pieces there is also something lacking. Nevertheless it's a most promising start." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
www.seriesnegras.org
€9.00
Raumspannung
https://raubbau.bandcamp.com/album/raumspannung
after parca pace’s intense and challenging debut of 1999 jan carleklev took good care of his other projects - and it wasn’t until he had put out seminal albums with azure skies, mago and sanctum respectively before he turned to his most intimate outlet again. so in 2005 the sophomore parca pace cd surfaced on cold meat industry (which was still going strong at the time). ‘raumspannung’ proved a surprisingly sympathetic conceptual album, combining industrial undertones with a wealth of neo-classical composition.
clocking in just under 50 minutes again, this time it came in neatly divided nine separate tracks, accompanied by a lavish explanation of the conceptual background: living between walls, dealing with isolation, tearing down walls. tension is expressed through the omnipresent contrast of a - sometimes outright pompous - melodic lead with noisy feedback and subtle rhythms. plenty of variation, perfectly arranged ensured high entertainment value for the genre connoisseurs.
elaborate composition and a remarkable knack for detail led to very favorable responses upon the release of ‘raumspannung’ and have since safeguarded the material successfully against the ravages of time. still topical and enjoyable, parca pace’s second - and so far last - album is well worth to be saved from oblivion!
€13.00
Memoire Magnetique Vol. 1
"Transversales Disques is very glad to announce the release of « Mémoire Magnétique, vol.1 » spanning 1966-1990, revelatory collection of commercial and secret music by electronic music pioneer Bernard Parmegiani.
This series of rare application music compositions are representative of the vast scope explored by Parmegiani. Far from the strict format of concert music, its codes and usages, this music designed to fit with the screen is a work of amazing freshness and spontaneity.
It is pervaded with a singular balance, between minimalist music and a more articulated language. There is a space for melody, for word repetitions. Actually, repetition is a constant feature, blurring the line between his concert work and the rest. More than a border line, it seems to define two worlds, which communicate through it.
With an impressive number of application works, and some time spent at the head of the Sound / Image sector in the research service led by Pierre Schaeffer, the composer has managed to build up a framework designed for research and mutual exchange. Bernard Parmegiani presents us with lights, gestures, lines, various registers. Besides, how could one perceive these pieces of music without the pictures they are supposed to enhance? Each title is suggestive, and the best answer is in the field of imagination.
In the middle of the B-side, there is a true gem dated 1977. In this second extract of “Versailles… peut-être“ Bernard Parmegiani gives us a glimpse of the future. One can feel the pulse of the 80’s and of the first accents of Techno Music. It feels like driving a drop head car at 134 BPM, faster than on Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn”. One can also sense that soon the LFO will be replaced by the drum-machine.
Listening to these pieces of music arouses the same sensation as reading the prose of an author already known for his poetry. If one has never read his poems, here is the record that will open the door on a new world to be discovered / Maxime Barthélemy.
Remastered high-resolution audio transferred directly from the original tapes.
Exclusive Liner Notes + OBI STRIP
https://transversales.bandcamp.com/album/m-moire-magn-tique-vol-1-1966-1990
€24.00
Memoire Magnetique Vol. 2
Transversales is very glad to announce the release of « Mémoire Magnétique, vol.2 » spanning 1966-1993, revelatory collection of short and secret music by electronic music pioneer Bernard Parmegiani.
The second volume of this compilation allows us to discover some of unreleased rarities from Bernard Parmegiani’s personal archives and unpublished recordings which were composed for the screen or the performing arts.
Remastered high-resolution audio transferred directly from the original tapes.
Exclusive liner notes and pictures.
Musique originale composée, interprétée et enregistrée par Bernard Parmegiani.
Production exécutive : Jonathan Fitoussi & Sébastien Rosat.
Mastering à partir des bandes originales : Jonathan Fitoussi.
Direction artistique & graphisme : Jean-Philippe Talaga.
Traduction : Michèle Parent.
(P) 2021 Transversales Disques ®
sous licence exclusive de Claude-Anne Parmegiani
A1 / "Témoignages" - 1972.
Générique pour la série télévisée de Pierre Houdain.
A2 / "Pop secret" - 1970.
Version remixée pour concert de la musique créée avec le groupe
"Third Ear Band" au Royal Festival Hall, Londres.
A3 / "Voyage Conseil" - 1970.
Musique pour la publicité de : "Voyage Conseil".
Version non utilisée.
A4 / "Lion d'or" - 1988.
Générique pour l'émission radio de Georges Léon diffusée sur France Culture
le 22/02/1988.
A5 / "Flash sports" - 1975.
Indicatif de l'émission télévisée éponyme diffusée sur Antenne 2.
A6 / "Spot pub" - 1971.
Spot publicitaire non identifié, non utilisé.
A7 / "Journal TV 2" - 1981.
Indicatif du journal télévisé d'Antenne 2.
A8 / "Stade 2" - 1976-1986.
Indicatif de l'émission : "Stade 2".
Antenne 2, émission sport. Animation : Peter Foldès.
A9 / "L'art au monde des ténèbres" - 1982.
Série documentaire télévisée de Mario Ruspoli.
A10 / "Sonal Roissy" - 1971-2005.
Signal sonore de l'aéroport Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle.
B1 / "Bongo fuego" - 1967.
Film d'animation de Peter Foldès.
B2 / "Electrorythmes" - 1966.
Version remixée pour concert ; film de Peter Foldès avec la chorégraphe Marpessa Dawn.
B3 / "E Pericoloso sporgersi" - (élément) - 1991.
Musique radiophonique ; commande de France Culture.
B4 / "Une mission éphémère" - 1993.
Film d'animation de Piotr Kamler.
B5 / "Une honorable partie de Gô" - 1978.
Série documentaire télévisée de Jean-Emile Jeannesson,
"Lettres du bout du monde".
B6 / "Sonal Roissy" - (inédit) - 1971.
Maquette de signal sonore pour l'aéroport Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle.
Version non utilisée.
https://bernardparmegiani.bandcamp.com/album/m-moire-magn-tique-vol-2-1966-1993
"Belonging to a growing body of previously unreleased work culled from the archives of Bernard Parmegiani, the always incredible Transversales Disques returns with “Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 2”, the second instalment in their series of albums focusing on the composer’s work for film, television, and the performing arts.
An inevitable revelation for even the most devoted of Parmegiani’s fans, we’re also making it available as part of a specially priced bundle with brand new represses of “Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 1” and “Rock (Bande originale du film, 1982)” for those who missed them the first time around.
So good.
Over the last few years, the Paris based imprint, Transversales Disques, has set a remarkable standard for archival releases, bringing us a treasure trove of previously unreleased recordings by Pierre Henry, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Luc Ferrari, Igor Wakhevitch, Philip Glass, Ariel Kalma, François Bayle, Ennio Morricone, and numerous others.
While by no means the limit of their focus, the imprint has offered special attention to works by French pioneers of electronic music, particularly those associated with Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète (GRMC) and Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM). Central to this modus operandi is the work of Bernard Parmegiani. Back in 2017, they brought us the composer’s incredible 1982 soundtrack, Rock, created for Michel Treguero’s film of the same name, followed by the LP, Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 1 in 2018.
After three years of waiting, the label is back with the second instalment of rare sounds by Parmegiani, Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 2, accompanied by brand new represses of Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 1 and Rock (Bande originale du film, 1982), which have been out of print since their initial release. As a special celebration, we’re offering them individually or together as a specially priced bundle. They’re 20th Century electroacoustic music at its absolute height, hugely historically important, and not to be missed.
Bernard Parmegiani’s contributions to electronic and electroacoustic practice are now regarded as among the most important in the history of 20th Century Music, but this wasn’t always the case. For much of his career, the composer lingered in the shadow of his more famous peers at Groupe de Recherches - Pierre Schaeffer, Luc Ferrari, François Bayle, etc. Some of this was a consequence of circumstance and idealism. Gifted with a deep belief in access and humor, Parmegiani believed in the profound potential of electronic and electroacoustic sound, seeking to integrate it into everyday life, particularly through forms of mass distribution activated by radio, film, and television. A great deal of his output was created for these contexts - remaining unreleased on physical formats - while he supported himself as a sound engineer and as the head of the Music/Image division of French television. It is into this rarely heard body of recordings which Transversales Disques takes us once again.
Like the first instalment, Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 2 culls its material form the composer’s personal archives and unpublished recordings of material created between 1966 and 1993, focusing specifically on his output for the screen and the performing arts. Standing as a largely unacknowledged counterpoint to more famous works like De Natura Sonorum, La Roue Ferris, Dedans Dehors, Chants Magnétiques, and Chronos - created during same period covered by the collection - these works unveil a lesser-known vision of Parmegiani, one that embedded himself in the subconscious landscape of the French public, with sounds that were often heard without acknowledging their genius or source.
Comprising 16 revelatory tracks, of relatively short lengths - from 13 seconds to just over 8 minutes - Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 2 covers a brilliant range of material, from sci-fi tinged arpeggiating synths, brooding minimalist expanses, semi psychedelic meanderings away with free-flowing texture, pastoral meditations, playful, percussive musique concrète, pieces that flirt on the edges of kosmische and Berlin school electronics, and so much more.
Encountering the composer in the throes of his deepest passion - working alongside the visual realm - just when you’d thought you’d heard it all, Transversales Disques digs up more gold from the archives of Bernard Parmegiani, expanding our vision of the astounding talent and range of one of the most important sonic artists of the 20th Century.
These previously unreleased rarities have been remastered from the original tapes in high-resolution audio, and come complete with exclusive liner notes and pictures. As engrossing as records come, and an absolute blast to listen to. Not to be missed!
Across 17 despite works, Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 1 spans 24 years of Parmegiani’s output of music designed to integrate with the screen, drawing on a framework the composer developed for research and mutual exchange between sound and image. It should come as no surprise, given the overwhelming creative talent which Parmegiani possessed, that these efforts more than stand on their own when separated from the images with which they were designed to speak. The LP is an overwhelmingly powerful body of revelatory sound.
Not unlike his soundtrack for Rock, Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 1 pushes the boundaries of what the work emerging from Groupe de Recherches is often perceived to have been, if not the very notions of what qualifies as avant-garde. Imbued with Parmegiani’s overwhelming humor and playfulness, it offers nods to a countless range of musical idioms and fields of practice - often painting a dark, dystopian technological, rhythmic landscape with aural touchstones ranging from techno, Kraftwerk, and John Carpenter soundtracks, with a peppering of the clown show, reminding us that Parmegiani began his career as a mime.
There’s no question that Transversales Disques is taking the high road, bringing us into wild, wonderful, and often overlooked bodies of organized sound which rewrite almost every standard narrative of history. These works are some of a Bernard Parmegiani which all too few heard, belonging to a way of working which captures the idealism closest to his heart.
Absolutely brilliant creatively - a challenging field of imagination and an endlessly thrilling listen. Transferred directly from the original tapes with exclusive liner notes, if you missed the first pressing, don’t sleep. This is an absolute must for any fan of Parmegiani, GRM, soundtracks, and electronic music at large."
[Soundohm]
https://bernardparmegiani.bandcamp.com/album/m-moire-magn-tique-vol-2-1966-1993
€26.50
Memoire Magnetique Vol. 3
NEVER BEFORE RELEASED
Unreleased rarities from Bernard Parmegiani’s personal archives.
« Mémoire Magnétique, vol.3 » spanning 1967-1971, revelatory collection of short and secret music by electronic music pioneer Bernard Parmegiani.
Remastered high-resolution audio transferred directly from the original master tapes.
Exclusive liner notes and pictures.
Transversales is very glad to announce the release of « Mémoire Magnétique, vol.3 » spanning 1967-1971, revelatory collection of short and secret music by electronic music pioneer Bernard Parmegiani. The third volume of this compilation allows us to discover some of unreleased rarities from Bernard Parmegiani’s personal archives and unpublished recordings which were composed for the screen or the performing arts.
Musique originale composée, interprétée et enregistrée par Bernard Parmegiani.
Production exécutive : Jonathan Fitoussi & Sébastien Rosat.
Mastering à partir des bandes originales : Jonathan Fitoussi.
Direction artistique & graphisme : Jean-Philippe Talaga.
(P) 2025 Transversales Disques ®
sous licence exclusive de Claude-Anne Parmegiani
L'ARAIGNELEPHANT (1967)
Musique pour le film de Piotr Kamler
NARCISSUS ECHO (1971)
Musique pour un film d'animation de Peter Foldès
SADIQUEMENT VOTRE I (1968)
Musique pour une émission TV de Michel Wichard"Agrippe-le Agrippine !"
SABLES (1970)
Musique composée pour le film de Lucien Clergues
LA VILLE EN HAUT DE LA COLLINE I (1968)
Musique pour le film de Jacques Vernier
JE, TU, ELLES (1969)
Musique pour un film de Peter Foldès
LABYRINTHE (1970)
Musique pour le film de Piotr Kamler
€29.00
Necropolis
“Dreaming in Darkness” (2005), “Crystal Counterpoint” (2009), “ReVoiced” (2009), “Necropolis - City of the Dead” (2011).
“Dreaming in Darkness is forged primarily from small sounds, spaced apart from one another. A chime, a chink or a clunk, and then silence before a scrape or a click or a bump. It’s fragmentary, the origins of the sounds unclear. Taking the question of what a person who cannot see dreams about, Parmerud explains that the piece is an attempt to create surrealistic fragments of a blind person’s dreams. As the piece progresses, the sounds become increasingly densely packed, and with longer durations and overlaid, building sinister abstract scenes: in fact, not so much scenes as shifting shadows and variations in light.
The bubble of conversation marks the opening moments of Crystal Counterpoint: a recording which sounds like a restaurant or party, the chinking of classes and general hubbub of people grows and stops abruptly with the chime of a glass. Inspired by the sounds of the parties Åke’s parents used to host, and which he would hear from upstairs, the piece uses the very same glasses to create a wealth of sounds, from long, low drones to higher hums, elongated undulations and quick, bright glissandos. Grand swells of sound rise and cease suddenly, replaced by strange, quiet drifts of sound: it’s very easy to forget exactly what you’re listening to. But if anything, awareness of the origin of the sounds only heightens the experience, as you’re likely to marvel and wonder just how glasses could sound like an oboe or high winds across mountain tops. In his notes, Parmerud notes that there already exist a large number of recordings which explore glass sounds, and it is, indeed, an interesting piece to place alongside Miguel Frasconi’s Standing Breakage (for Stan Brakhage) (clang records, 2016).
ReVoiced moves away from musical abstraction and instead uses the voice as its instrument. A single voice is layered up on top of itself exponentially until a whole crowd of one voice is speaking. It’s actually quite a disconcerting experience. Voices are subject to all kinds of manipulation: sped up, slowed down, pitch adjusted, stretched, overlaid, echoed and delayed, in myriad permutations. Chants and dialogue and ululations, crowds and multiple languages meld together, and gradually, extraneous sounds — hard, heavy slabs of sound — crash in, while sharp-edged sounds slash for create a dull, percussive element to the slow-building torture of the familiar becoming twisted, distorted, abstracted and unfamiliar.
The final track, Necropolis — City of the Dead, is a musical tour through the catacombs of an imaginary city which contain the remains of some of the greatest music of all time. ‘But the condition of the musical bodies that rest in the crypts is unfortunately in various states of decomposition’. As such, in combining a well-worn joke (which is usually about Mozart when I’ve heard it) with a project to assimilate and deconstruct fragments of existing works, Necropolis is a sort of a collage. Classical, jazz, film soundtracks, many renowned and bordering on recognisable, at least in essence, all fade in and out and collide against one another.
While the title track may pick over the bones of musical history, it equally breathes new life, and the same is very much true of the work as a whole: the parts are disparate, fragmentary, scattered in origin from around the globe and individually amount to not very much at all. But the sum is spectacular, an experience which is thought-provoking and which has the capacity to be quite unexpectedly affecting.” By Christopher Nosnibor in Aural Aggravation, May 3, 2016
€15.00
Growl
"Composer Åke Parmerud is from Göteborg, which is also the home of underground labels such as Fang Bomb, Release The Bats, and Beläten, names on which we can always rely to provide solid blasts of depressive post-industrial noise and drone music. Parmerud isn’t exactly cut from the same cloth, being as how he’s a prize-winning and classically-trained electroacoustic maestro, but there are moments of tasty darkness on his Growl (empreintes DIGITALes IMED 15132) collection which appeal to a macabre chap like myself. La vie mécanique, for instance, is a pretty effective critique of modern industrialisation, or at least an observation on it, and takes the hoary old dystopian cliché of “modern man becoming machine-like” and dusts it down for an update that involves samples of machinery blended with Techno music. In this lively composition of clattering beats and metal, it’s far from clear where the factory machines leave off and the dancefloor begins; it’s intending to convey something about the body being broken down into smaller units, much like the cogs of a machine being taken apart. Parmerud also makes a commentary on the contemporary use of machines (laptops, presumably) for making music. I wish he’d be a little less equivocal about it, both in his notes and his music, but it’s a nifty statement.
Maybe serious composers shouldn’t dabble with Techno. However, if you think men of Parmerud’s generation should leave the kids’ music alone, you’ll be even more appalled by the idea of Growl itself, where he drily observes “metal music is big in Sweden” from his lofty position, and borrows some ideas from his youngest son who plays in a metal band. This might be Aron Parmerud who plays his “axe” for Marionette, a Death Metal band who made a couple of albums for Listenable Records. What the composer has done here is zero-in on the throat-shredding vocals that characterise a lot of the music in this genre, and through arranging samples of voices shrieking “Hell Is Us! Die We Must!”, has built a virtual “growlers choir”. With the dark techno backing, electronic effects, and gloomy ambient tones, this works surprisingly well, even if it sounds too “expensive” and well-produced for a genuine metal album and has far too many interesting dynamics. He also misses the claustrophobia and genuine sense of doom. But even so Parmerud turns in a strong piece of work, and in any case he wasn’t setting out to produce a metal album.
What else are the “young people” interested in these days? Vinyl records, of course! So listen in to 2011’s Grooves if you want to hear what Parmerud can do when sampling the black stuff. The source material for this was the vinyl collection of his friend Kai Hanekken; in fact the composition seems to have been a by-product of a digitisation project requested by said Hanekken, who urged the composer to pick up the gauntlet and create a composition. He gave in. What gets sampled are run-out grooves and vinyl “noise”, i.e. crackles and clicks and such; Parmerud seems to have been only too aware that doing this was already something of a well-worn cliché, but again he liked the challenge and wanted to see if he could invert it and bring new life into the idea. Although best heard at high volumes and played back through a multi-channel system, Grooves still succeeds on your home CD player and delivers a suffocating density which is clearly one of this composer’s trademarks. Continuity is severely disrupted by the multiple edits, and the speed with which the layers of abstract noise pile up is incredibly alarming. You’ll feel like you’re trapped on an enormous spinning black disc of death.
Also here: 2014’s Electric Birds derived from birdsong samples (yet another instance where Parmerud had promised himself he would never make a piece like this), and Transmissions II, the most recent composition. It derives from a multi-media work where, if seen live, a singing choir are able to manipulate sound signals in real time. Some fascinating complex electronic layers result, and it sounds a lot more contemporary than some of the formal music that often gets released on this label, and is every bit as convincing as any given Mego release from the last few years. Sometimes proper composers make a ninny of themselves when they try and get “with it”, but Åke Parmerud has nothing to be ashamed of here." [The Sound Projector]
€14.50
Chakra
Chakra is David's third album on gterma. The album carves and weaves its way through the mysteries surrounding the seven Chakras starting at the crown and working towards the foundation. Headphones strongly recommended.
https://gterma.bandcamp.com/album/chakra
"After “Puja” and “Stupa”, “Chakra” is the third album by New Zealand-based composer David Parsons on the Swedish G-terma label.
This time around, the tracks on “Chakra” were very much gear-inspired. David purchased a couple of Synthstrom Deluges, a locally made portable synthesizer, sequencer and sampler from Wellington designed for the creation, performance and improvisation of electronic music. This brilliantly designed piece of gear -running on an internal rechargeable battery- offers pretty much unlimited sampling storage and more composing tracks than one would ever need. In addition, they can also control all David’s other hardware and software synths. About 70% of the album’s music was created in the outdoors during holiday down south with this portable gear.
It ended up as a 62-minute inner journey (overall a bit more rhythmic than Parsons’ last releases) of slow progressing, minimal-angled and lush swirling sound waves. These meet up with David’s signature aural Tibetan and Asian flavours as well as some occasional monk chants. Its effect is dreamful, hypnotizing, and immersive and even becomes fulfilling when the intrinsic power trail of the 10-minute delight “Manipura” washes over the listener. Thereafter, David’s takes his listeners to great heights with the atmospheric, minimalist painting “Svadhisthana” (moving into “Himalaya’s” pure soundwaves), then rounds out the fascinating journey beautifully with the rhythmic-spiced, intense “Muladhara”.
The excellently mastered “Chakra” is a winner on all fronts making a great addition to Parsons’ discography. Headphone-listening is strongly recommended." [Sonic Immersion]
€13.00
The Dead Time
https://oxidation.bandcamp.com/album/the-dead-time
"In music, separating the wheat from the chaff these days is not easy, one has to apply some kind of compulsion and instinct towards interesting releases. “The Dead Time” was made out of processing sonic information in the passing of time, yet what makes this music stand out from the passing and make it “dead”?
"I am interested in the alchemical breakdown of things and the results of pure accidents.” -Phillip B. Klingler
Frans de Waard and Phillip B. Klingler are rooted in the experimental music scene. Both are still at the forefront of pushing the boundaries of underground and formal electroacoustic music. This album was made of collages of recordings De Waard made in 2014, fermenting on Klingler’s shelve until summer 2021. One day that summer, Klingler awoke with a premonition about the work, which started an intensely creative period. He created three collaborations: 'The Dead Time' with De Waard, a PBK & Nocturnal Emissions LP, and the CHAIN LETTER EXHORTATION Series. "It's the same way I like to paint: only when inspired to do so, and without preconception.” as Klingler states.
Both composers are daily concerned with archival matters, so they have a deep intellectual and experiential understanding of the importance of work and detail, no matter how small or few the edition. To my knowledge, this quality translates into the depth of sound, fragility and sensibility, the compositional approach of the unknown by the use of transformed field recordings, digital processed, mixer feedback, synthesizers and sample players, which allows them to enter this abyss of a personal and yet collaborative esoteric space. As Klingler puts it: “I think it was very nice to leave the tracks as "miniatures" with their characteristics, not attempting to be epic in scope, but more like the experiments of the 1950's/60's - Dutch composers of the Phillips Research Laboratory, where all ideas of creativity were embraced, even somewhat incongruous combinations. (..) The compositions are made, but they are abstract, no narrative”.
The “miniatures” sound like deep, personal, little moments of awakening, fermented by time, but then again appearing to be free from it: “We have imposed our own very personal process(es) on the audio to create sounds that belong to something but also subvert that thing.”, as Klinger states.
This is a robust and thoughtful work of two composers always deeply involved in their game and firmly immersed in its execution. Favourite piece: “Knife”." [MC / Vital Weekly]
€13.50
&
" &, first production of the newborn Anomala Soundscapes wants to be a programmatic manifesto of what the label intends to
realize. The debut album of a new label has the difficult task of giving the editorial imprint in one fell swoop. Vinyl was chosen as the
format and split album as a formula. The format of the vinyl was not chosen for the alleged better listening quality compared to than
other media, but rather and above all for to recover a certain now rare “listening ritual”.
The & project was intended to be released as a vinyl record from its very origin. Each side separately presents the work of one
of the two musicians, neither of whom had heard the work of the other until the release.
Who’ll frame my memories in ash Daniele Pecorelli
We are our consciousness, and our consciousness is the form and content of our memory. What happens to our memories the
moment we die? They become an electrical residue that fades away. As we are conscious that our memory is falling apart, a new
consciousness arises that in turn disintegrates into kaleidoscopic fragments until they dilate into the final moment of our recorded time.
Combustion Mark Schaub
Material, rough, sometimes unprejudiced, dark but carnival, tries to render the idea of transformation in an informal way without
emotional variations. In particular chemical transformation, the allusion to fire is made explicit by the title. The transformation is an
action of opposing forces and from the tension develops the passage that explores all the audible frequencies (even inaudible) trying
to materialize the intimate tension of the matter and the dissolution of the same in the final suspended and almost incomplete."
€22.50
Yes Sir, the Truth of Revolution
"CRASS WAS THEN - THIS IS NOW. WAKE UP TO IT
CRASS' album, 'Yes, Sir, I Will', was possibly the most angry and hard hitting attack on the political/military/industrial complex ever consigned to vinyl. Written by Penny Rimbaud in 1982 at the height of the Falklands conflict, it seethes with righteous indignation over what he saw as a pointless but vicious exercise in vote catching by a government whose popularity was severely on the wane. So powerful was this critique that it led to threats of prosecution by that very same government, threats which were typically used by CRASS to further their attacks on it and its tyrannical leader, Margaret Thatcher.
Over thirty years later, in 2014, Rimbaud was asked to participate in the Rebellion Festival, a yearly punk gathering held in Blackpool, UK. Realising that the opening date of the festival closely coincided with that of the euphemistically named 'Great War', Rimbaud and the festival organisers agreed that as an appropriate response they should open the event with a performance of 'Yes, Sir, I Will'.
In preparing for this performance, Rimbaud began to question the relevance of some of the content of 'Yes, Sir'. It seemed to him that much of it was pertinent only to the time in which it was written, a time when a genuine social uprising had appeared to be a very real possibility (one that was violently and conclusively squashed during the miners' strike of 1984). But times change and there was, he now felt, an element of aggression within the work which veiled its essential message of love and peace; it was a passion that could all too easily be mistaken for blind anger. With this in mind, and inspired by John Lennon's 'All You Need is Love', he set about rewriting 'Yes, Sir' from what he describes as a more Taoist viewpoint. Through replacing screams of anguish with laments of love, he was largely able to satisfy his wish to change 'Yes, Sir' into an expression of compassion, that being the hugely demanding realm of love in its unconditional form.
For the Rebellion performance of the now retitled 'Yes, Sir, the Truth of Revolution', Rimbaud was joined by CRASS' lead vocalist Eve Libertine plus a group of leading musicians from the London jazz scene with whom they'd worked extensively in the past. Named 'L'Académie des Vanités', the band consisted of Eve Libertine/vocals, Penny Rimbaud/vocals, Louise Elliott/sax, Kate Shortt/cello, Jennifer Maidman/guitar, Phil Robson/guitar, Thad Kelly/bass and Gene Calderazzo/drums. The live recording of that show, presented here, captures all the tense excitement created by presenting a primarily punk audience with complex poetics of love, accompanied by equally demanding freeform, improvised jazz. However, as had generally been the case with CRASS' output, wild, willing and worrisome, it would be wise to expect the unexpected. Equally, through its progressive and colourful imagery, the vibrant packaging designed by Gee Vaucher shows a refusal to harp back to the illusory golden past of punk dreams and conceits.
'We are poets, armed with the cobblestones of love, unconditional, uncompromising, beyond need of proof.' However, if proof is needed, it will most surely be found in the content of this radical, imaginative release." [label info]
www.coldspring.co.uk
€12.00
Presque Nature (Musique Immobiles 26-30)
When buying this album, you'll also get a free download code for "PSL drones", a 20-minute track belonging to the Musiques Immobiles series and previously released in the "taâlem advent calendar 2024".
Presque Nature, Laurent Pernice's brand new CD, will take you on a musical journey to one of the most remote parts of Vanuatu (Wunavae, on the west coast of Espiritu Santo Island), but also off the coast of La Ciotat, in the underwater depths of the Mediterranean, or even in areas of the Camargue that are off-limits to the public... You can also listen to sunrises in the Hardelot forest (near Boulogne-sur-Mer, north of France) or in the Vigueirat marshes (near Arles, south of France)... This journey of just over an hour, divided into five minimalist and contemplative sections, was composed (or rather uncomposed) over a period of ten years, during the composer's travels. They are a bit like sound sketchbooks. The concept of Musiques Immobiles was conceived by Laurent Pernice in the late 1980s and continues to fuel his inspiration today.
review in Vital Weekly 1500
Lastly, there’s Laurent Pernice, a former member of the French band Nox, whose later interests lie in the use of the sampler and electronics. I reviewed various of his releases. On this new release, he plays synths, piano, gopichandi, zither, bells, gigo, and gong, along with field recordings, which are listed per track. He did a fair bit of travelling; one doesn’t see Vanuatu often mentioned on a cover. The previous release I reviewed, ‘Antigone’ (Vital Weekly 1443), was a rather delicate one, and this one isn’t different. The music and field recordings are two separate entities. He plays music to fit the field recordings, or he has fully formed musical pieces and uses the field recordings as an extra, or perhaps it’s a combination of both. Unlike Moljebka Pvlse and Northam, whose drone and ambient pieces are abstract and devoid of melody, Pernice’s music is characterised by the gentle melodic touches he adds to the drones. These are primarily piano notes, and one could see a link with Harold Budd and Brian Eno at times, which Pernice extends to using percussion relatively sparsely. Depending on your mood, I’d say this is the perfect ending to a night of abstract drones, with a melodic bit at the end, or at the start and end, accompanied by Moljekba Pvlse’s haunting soundtracks. But on a sun-soaked, early Autumn day (what am I doing inside the house? Oh, it’s the last Vital Weekly), this is the perfect mellow soundtrack for such a day. (FdW)
credits
released November 7, 2025
All instruments (synths, piano, gopichandi, zither, cymbals, bells, jingo, gong) played by LP.
Except for ‘Six Jours’: fujara and batas drums played by Px Hal.
All field recordings made by LP.
Composed, recorded and mixed by LP between 2012 and 2022 at Studio du Cabanon, Marseille, France.
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01 - Six Jours
Field recordings were made in the forest on the East Coast of Espiritu Santo island, Vanuatu, in 2012.
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02 - Aussi loin
April 2015, at dusk, in the area of Vigueirat marshes in Camargue, France, that is off-limits to the public. You can hear the call of the eurasian bittern, which sounds like a bottle being blown into. This bird, more than any other, is in danger of extinction.
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03 - Lever du jour 1 (Vigueirat)
Harmony and melody based on Carlo Gesualdo's madrigal ‘Moro, lasso! al mio duolo’ (n° 17 of the Sixth Book).
Sounds of nature recorded at dawn in April 2015 near the Vigueirat marshes in Camargue,
France.
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04 - Un rêve subaquatique
Underwater recordings made in La Ciotat Bay, France, in 2021.
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05 - Lever du jour 2 (Hardelot)
The sounds of nature at the origin of this piece have been recorded around 5 AM, in August 2012, on the edge of Hardelot forest, Pas-de-Calais (France).
Mastered by Flavien Gillié
https://taalem.bandcamp.com/album/presque-nature-musiques-immobiles-26-30-alm-146
€13.00
N°6
PERSONAL BEST #6
Published january 2016
Format: 210 x 285 mm
100 pages
Colour
Interviews with:
SKASET (Norway)
LUCAS ABELA (Australia)
MARCIA BASSETT (USA)
CRYS COLE (Canada)
JOE MCPHEE (USA)
SODADOSA (Indonesia)
PBK (USA)
Topics covered includes: meeting Sun Ra, starting to play the sax at 28, Forbidden Planet, The Nihilist Spasm Band, PO, poerty, Chicago, UFO sightings, science fiction, politics, stagnation, the scary middle class, hatred of reverb, changing guitar strings in 23 seconds, that Manowar were never hip, 33 or 45 or in the middle, returning to rock, how play glass on your face, playing drums on a trampoline, playing power tools on turntables, Loop Station hatred, scares and scars, cutting your throat on purpose, noise scene guilt, INXS as the gateway, art scene carbon print, painting skulls, playing loud, eating lobsters, noise bombing in Indonesia, salt, broken radios, disco tracks that goes nowhere, Albert Ayler's wonkyness, loosing faith in expressionism, lack of dynamic and textural shifts, shock aesthetics, preserving artist archives, and much more.
marhaugforlag.no/personalbest6.html
€10.00
Henry: The Iron Man
"One lost lemonish night sleepwalking on a lost country road I dreamt that Shinya Tsukamoto was working on a blurred remake of "Eraserhead", and I was to soundtrack the grotesque mutation of Henry into an "Iron Man". I decided to manipulate and take advantage of the vinyl material to fondle crackles and released noises, to process textures and their resonances into vertiginous travellings of sound ; conjuring up flashes of disturbing black & white grainy sounds, behind-the-scenes close-ups, rapid nightmarish stop-motion effects.
I embarked on a visceral musical voyage, an intricate and imaginative soundtrack gathering both organic and sonic elements and giving life to a noisy magma where unexpected clicks stumbled over interferences, where digital accidents happened and drones and acoustic resonances filled the spaces in time. The music sprang on me and got caught in my eye.
A few years ago BiP_HOp had started a series called "Reciprocess", thus to celebrate 10 years since the inception of the label + my 25 years of activism/DJing I composed a 70+ minute soundtrack, cut it into pieces which were sent to friends to add their spices to. The Wire magazine liked the idea and agreed to give it away with their issue # 301, in March 2009.
AIDAN BAKER & Philippe Petit
CHAPTER 24 & Philippe Petit
COSEY FANNI TUTTI & Philippe Petit
SIMON FISHER TURNER & Philippe Petit
KLANGWART & Philippe Petit
DOUGLAS BENFORD & Philippe Petit
MARKOVO & Philippe Petit
BELA EMERSON (feat. vocals from RANDALL FRAZIER) & Philippe Petit
KUMO & Philippe Petit
EUGENE S. ROBINSON & Philippe Petit
SEVERIN 24 (feat. vocals from KATHY COMPTON) & Philippe Petit
JASON FORREST & Philippe Petit
LYDIA LUNCH & Philippe Petit
JEAN-HERV� PERON (art-Errorist/Faust) & Philippe Petit
STRINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS (Hervé Vincenti & Philippe Petit)
SYBARITE & Philippe Petit
JESU & Philippe Petit
dDAMAGE & Philippe Petit
Born in Marseille, South of France, where I started Djing, animating radio shows and editing zines in the 80s. In the 90s I contributed articles (under the pseudonym Candy Apple Grey and Filth Simpson ) for such magazines as Ruta 66 (Spain), Merlin’s Music Box (Greece), Maximum R&R (USA), What Wave, Cryptic Tymes (Canada), and French-written Taktik, Rage, Rocksound, Best, 491, Abus Dangereux, and many many more that no one will remember of… In those days, I had some fun and interviews w/ such bands as Nirvana, Fugazi, L7, Neurosis, Fuzztones, Babes In Toyland, Mudhoney, Pixies, Cynics, Dum Dum Boys, Alice Donut, Brood, Grotus, Fleshtones, Buzzcocks, Nick Cave, Sting Rays, Poison Idea, Jon Spencer, Soft Machine, Lydia Lunch, No Means No, Godflesh, Steve Albini, Gallon Drunk, Melvins, New Bomb Turks, and many other “noisy-rock” luminaries. In 1991, I started Kinetic Vibes Music, a Garage Punk zine and label releasing music by: Willie Loco Alexander, Pleasure Fuckers, Dead Moon, Bevis Frond, Lust-o-Rama, Ultra 5, Overcoat, Cryptones, Devil Dogs, La Secta, Dirteez, Tommyknockers and some other… Still available the mythical compilation “Electric Carnival” gathering 23 bands from 10 countries. In 1993 I founded the experimental label Pandemonium Rdz. Working with the likes of Guapo, Zeni Geva, Ground Zero, Condense, Cows, Headcleaner, Drive Blind, Double Nelson, Alboth!, Melt Banana, God Is My Co-Pilot, Samiam, Burning Heads, Cerberus Shoal, Flying Luttenbachers, Unsane, Bästard, Kepone, Ron Anderson, Ruins, Hint, Andy's Car Crash, Spaceheads… That is well documented there and many releases are still in print: www.pandemoniumrecords.com 41 records later, I needed to rejuvenate and started a new label: BiP_HOp was physically born in 2000 and will document avant electro for the century to come... A webzine, a radio show, organizing live events, and above all a label documenting the state of electronic art and sound design, unconventional sound adventures, modern ambient, contemporary alliances between acoustica vs. digitalia... Musics challenging the ears and the mind. www.bip-hop.com In 2000 Philippe Petit became Dj/ip@bip-hop.com chosing to use my e-mail address to keep contact with the listeners… Under this moniker I have been invited to play festivals and some of the best venues in Europe, Northern america, and even recently Mexico. According to me a DJ is not only an instrument for dancing but as a living musical library I should also take the audience to a new cultural trip / discovery. I want to entertain listeners and to open new "doors of perception", to create a virtual world to enable them to forget about their own existence for a short while. Sometimes I feel an urge not to be solo onstage which led me to start the duo Ear_Thrillerz. ; the now defunct group Deviationists ; and most actively these days the international collective : Strings Of Consciousness. www.stringsofconsciousness.info Today I still animate a radio show for Radio Grenouille which is the biggest non-commercial local radio www.grenouille888.org/dyn/ I still write in Noise Magazine. A bi-monthly mag, printing 25 000 which can be found in newstand all around France and is the best one dealing with Rock, indie rock, metal, post rock, punk, stoner doom, industrial, experimental, prog, Noisy music. Also a website (3000-3500 unique visitors/day) http://www.noisemag.net/ " [label info]
www.blrrecords.com
€10.00
At the Mountains of Madness
"With its majestic atmosphere, complex dronesaceping and deep cushions of textural shamanic percussions Martin Stürtzer paints with his 5th album of Phelios another aural picture. This is channeling the unimaginable and connects with the cubes and subterranean caverns of echoing, vaporous, wormily honey-combed mountains of madness. Epically scaled soundwaves creating a fantastic, daemoniac glimpse, among the churning zenith-clouds, of what lay back of those other violet westward mountains which the Old Ones had shunned and feared."
www.deep-audio.de/pheliosmount
€18.00
Proceed with Inquiry
"The contained DVD comprises video works, live performances and collaborations by radical Swiss sound artist DAVE PHILLIPS, sonically active since 1987, part of the notorious SCHIMPFLUCH GRUPPE (with Rudolf Eb.er, Joke Lanz) since 1991, having left his signature in numerous bands, projects and collaborations.
DAVE PHILLIPS uses sound as a means to activate primordial emotions otherwise hidden underneath the debris of civilization. His concept is called “Humanimalism” accordingly, meaning a state of mind that overcomes religious, material und supremacist charges of evolution, acknowledges itself as part of a whole and has grown into an empathic, conscious and connected creature allowing emotion and instinct their equal part in decision-making.
This collection presents his multifaceted work in composition, performance, psycho-acoustics, sonic rituals, voice, video, field recordings, objects and electronics, etc. in a yet unknown complexity and coherence of motion pictures. His performance work is revealed in all its undiluted brutality, the urgency and topicality of his work and his message is clearly evident, captivating and intensely documented.
Along with DAVE PHILLIPS’ video works created between 2014 and 2016, the DVD is a document of unique solo live actions and the notorious Paris 1996 performance of SCHIMPFLUCH-GRUPPE, as well as recent collaborations with G.X. JUPITTER LARSEN, and video artists PAKISE AKIN, JAN VAN HASSELT and REMOTE-CONTROL RECTUM, who in turn created their visual interpretations of PHILLIPS' audio works. It all amounts to a mind-expanding experience, playing with altered perception and throwing back the viewer onto his own vision." [label info]
"...Merely approaching, let alone summarising, the work of Dave Phillips is near impossible. Active for 25-odd years in multiple artistic fields (including appearances on almost 200 releases), his contribution here to the DVD component of the release is characteristically challenging. The work is delivered in three parts: video works, live performances, and collaborations.
The video works are varied with clear effort put into editing and sound composition. They’re often jarring and disorienting, always intimate, and personal. Some are abstract and intangible while others are precise and brutally polemic. There is slap-to-the-face activism in spades, including a sobering piece on humankind’s exploitation of the Earth and its animals (‘How sad, that nature speaks and we don’t listen.‘). Phillips’s use of footage depicting animal vivisection, cruelty, and industrial slaughter is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, as is the screaming text (‘Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance!’). But these pieces are clearly meant to shock and are more about our complacency and willingness to let them happen than about the actions themselves.
The collaborative works are interesting enough, though they are not as strong as Phillips’s solo contributions. He seems to supply audio primarily over his collaborators’ mostly impressionistic visuals. Many could display rather comfortably on a screen in a respectable art gallery.
The live performances are highly entertaining and showcase a theatrical grotesquerie typical of the Schimpfluch-Gruppe of which Phillips is a core member. Indeed, the best of the live recordings here has him on stage with Rudolf Eb.er for a Schimpfluch-Gruppe action in Paris. Contact mikes in mouth, their faces slam repeatedly and unceremoniously into bowls of spaghetti. It’s bleakly humorous and very uncomfortable.... " [Heathen Harvest]
silkentofu.bigcartel.com/product/dave-phillips-proceed-with-inquiry-dvd
€13.00
Sixth Mass Extinction
"black vinyl lp in embossed sleeve, edition of 300. comes with a free 8 page newspaper featuring articles that offer a broad view of what homo sapiens has achieved in terms of coexistence and in taking care of its home.
1.
Things Falling Apart 21:12
2.
Radical Hope 20:12
about
things falling apart - composition for three PA’s (stereo version):
the original 6 channel piece was commissioned by bad bonn kilbi festival düdingen switzerland 2018.
radical hope - live action (studio version):
this incarnation of live action was initiated in january 2016 and has developed since. triggered by a broken heart, it’s a critical analysis of subjective behaviourisms, self-reflections, self-criticisms and conclusions thereof. the subsequent translation of derived intentions into ritualised actions include purging, activating learning and healing processes, self-betterment, empowerment and hair-burning. has since morphed into a piece about the relationship of the human as a species with planet earth as a cherished entity, such as a loved one, a friend, a partner, a companion, a parent or a family member, a home or an origin.
all audio by dp. decomposed may to november 2018 for schimpfluch. mastered by riccardo mazza. artwork by brett wagg using photos by dp.
https://totalblack.bandcamp.com/album/sixth-mass-extinction
Dave Phillips INTERVIEW by CHAIN DLK
( By Vito Camarretta - August 11, 2021)
dave dp phillips long story short
fields of re/search: existences and behaviourisms humanimalistically. works that oppose the omnipresent restriction and reduction of life and living, that activate primordial shared emotions otherwise hidden under the debris of civilization, inviting rumination, encouraging intervention, endorsing catharsis, liberating, cleansing. therapeutical stimulation is acknowledged. sonic activism, ritual protest music, humanimalism
methods: audio de/construction, composition, sonic rituals, psycho-acoustics and performance
tools: voice, body, fieldrecordings, electronics, objects, video
reason for this interview: his recent release “to death” (7th July 2021, Misanthropic Agenda)
enjoy the reading!
Chain D.L.K.: Hi Dave! How are you doing?
Dave Phillips: Quite alright. I moved house earlier a month ago, I’m settling in…
Chain D.L.K.: I heard you recent ‘to death’ and I honestly think it’s a listening that I would likewise honestly recommend in this historical stage… but before focusing on it, even if those well-informed readers of our zine, whose memory has not been reset yet, don’t really need any introduction, how would you introduce yourself, your sound art and its direction(s)?
Dave Phillips: Puh. Well. My music is rather free, abstract, “cinematic”, and personal. It sounds more organic than it does electronic. What I seek in sound/music is altered states of consciousness, states of trance and liberation, cathartic and purging kind of highs, some sort of elevation. Sound for me is communication, so I like it to have some sort of narrative, intentionality, something shared. I’m interested in the effect of sound as much as its aesthetic form. Sonically I’m inspired by contemporary (classical) composition, the sounds of insects, traditional music, improvisation/free music, bass music, as much as the energy of radical punk and metal. Literature is a big inspiration too. My sound work is often accompanied by topical contexts that touch on environmental and existential issues but are more driven by the interconnectedness of things, the thing that some call chaos, this enormous ecosystem that we are a part of, the kind of free life that is uncontrollable and beyond our systems of control or scientific measurement or language. I call my music “ritual protest music” – I protest against the reduction and restriction of life – I describe my way of approaching sound as “sonic activism”. Uhm, long “introduction” but there you go…. just open ears…
Chain D.L.K.: The last outputs I vividly remember of yours, who reached somehow my desk (I often don’t know how or why some sonic entities reach my desk, besides the fact someone delivers them to my mailbox), has been a super limited split with Emerge on Nazlo, that was a tribute to Dmitry Vasilyev. Have you ever met him? Which tracks did he leave in your memory?
Dave Phillips: I met Dmitry Vasilyev a bunch of times. The last time was in September 2018 when Dmitry had organized a tour for me and emerge in Russia. We met in Sevastopol before embarking on a tour together. The day before our tour began, we went swimming in the Black Sea and Dmitry drowned. The tape you speak of is a reaction to that tragic loss. Dmitry’s enthusiasm for and energy invested in experimental music was amazing…
Chain D.L.K.: I have to amend… There’s also a CD from Attenuation titled ‘Post Homo Sapiens’, but I honestly haven’t unfolded it yet… What a shame! Can I get excused for that? What should I expect?
Dave Phillips: Of course! Post Homo Sapiens imagines a world where insects and plants rule.
Dave Phillips imagephoto courtesy of Jesse Newman
Chain D.L.K.: I enjoyed the reading of some of your texts (ref: https://www.davephillips.ch/texts), the last of which includes many interesting and praiseworthy ecologist thoughts and reflections, but it dates back to 2015. Are you writing some new text for the recent evolution of human history?
Dave Phillips: “For the recent evolution of human history”, haha. Besides writing, I collect and present texts too, and my texts sometimes take from articles and books that touch me. For the “sixth mass extinction” LP (2019) I collected a bunch of articles that together offer a picture of how humans are doing in terms of coexistence with other beings on this planet. It’s probably no surprise that we’re not faring very well – what we seem to be good at though is causing mass extinction and destruction. Said articles were accompanied by a profound text by professor Jem Bendell on “navigating climate tragedy”. For an upcoming split with sist en 343 called “thinking future coexistence,” I used a text by Charles Eisenstein on what happened since corona blessed us – this should be out in the autumn. I am supposed to write something for an upcoming compilation, but I haven’t got there yet…
Chain D.L.K.: So let’s go back (or forward) to ‘to death’. I remember the words of a Tibetan monk on this subject, who said that we have to notice that when a baby comes to life cries, and we smile, when a person comes to death (let’s say so) sometimes has a smiling expression on his/her face, while we cry. Is this somehow ironic viewpoint close to the meaning of death you were referring to on your last release?
Dave Phillips: Yes, very much so! Accompanying my father on his last journey was a profound experience that demystified death to an extent where it mostly wasn’t this “horrible thing” that people often seem to associate with it, but something quite different…. somehow magical, often peaceful and serene – my father was smiling a lot as he lay dying – and also somewhat unbiased, more to do with “life (in all its stages) never fails to amaze me”, where often opposing angles together make the whole.
Chain D.L.K.: I think that most of the weirdest consequences of this likewise weird pandemic crisis can be interpreted by using the filter of human fear of death. How did this situation influence your ‘to death’?
Dave Phillips: I was living in such intense reality bubbles at the time of the pandemic that the pandemic itself seemed to be happening on a side-stage, it didn’t seem to have that much impact on me. In hindsight, though, I realize it played into my perception more than I acknowledged. It affected my perception of the world. The slow dying of my father seemed to go hand in hand with the dying of something that somehow defines us as humans, as we grow more and more separate and distanced from one another and from purpose and freedom – as we have from the “natural world” at large, a separation that we are imposing on us more and more. That’s a slow dying. I mean, the empire is failing and falling, it will crash, no doubt, it’s just a question of when and how. And it sure won’t be pretty. People, please remove your filters!
Chain D.L.K.: I also enjoyed the fact that in the title, there seems a first part missing. You can expect an ‘Hymn to death’, an ‘Ode to death’ or even a ‘Yell to death’! But it’s as it is… just ‘to death’! How did you draw inspiration for it? I read it was somehow related to your father’s last moments (of course you have my deepest sympathy).
Dave Phillips: Thank you. Yes, it’s mainly inspired by my father’s illness, which was devastating and my being his carer for the last 15 months of his life. I witnessed his person being eaten away by disease – in a way, he was gone before death gave him peace. At the same time, I found myself in a role that made sense on so many levels, and somehow I managed to pull it through – I’m so glad I did. Taking care of the old is like taking care of the young, is like education, is like a purpose in life – outsourcing that to a paid service or a job or some system is missing out on profound experiences, on things essential, maybe on things that define us as animals or mammals or tribal beings. Something that teaches more than schools or universities can, but also demands more. So really it’s more about the journey, the path, the story of accompanying someone all the way “to death” and all that it sets free. My father’s wish was to die at home, and I’m glad that my siblings and I made that wish come true.
But this journey also leads to other related topics. There are many readings of the title. The ode/hymn “to death” is certainly in there, probably poking at the wish to demystify death as the huge taboo that it still is. the title also addresses what we’re doing to planetary life – to plants and other animals. Thus, also what we’re doing to ourselves: when I view my father’s disease in a global context, it’s a common cause – nowadays. The main causes of death in our times show us how sick our allegedly “civilized” way of life makes many of us. So much human waste. We are “civilized to death”. And then there’s what this is all doing to us emotionally and existentially – areas where many of us seem more dead than alive, where we merely function and follow rules. The slow death of human potential through our educational systems and through our imposed “normality” is part of that. The death of freedom through total control of life, as per recent events. I mean, life IS uncertain – that’s the exciting part, isn’t it? All our puny attempts to create “safety and security” are laughable if they weren’t so devastating in what they actually do to us – but we’re like animals born in captivity. Our established political and economic systems seem rather dead too – I mean, an economy that functions linearly is just grossly inadequate for a world and lives that happen in cycles. So there are many paths and pointers “to death”. I can also turn it around: if death is the only certainty in life, then a tribute to death is a celebration of life!
Chain D.L.K.: What are the reversed words in the opening ‘A Cycle Completed’ to say?
Dave Phillips: The tone matters more than the words. What do you hear?
Chain D.L.K.: Death is maybe the aspect of existence that keeps the strongest taboos still on. Do you agree with such a statement of not?
Dave Phillips: Yes, that’s also why I wanted to make an album that demystifies that, that steers us away from this taboo, from this conditioned denial or shame, this refusal to face all aspects of existence. I wanted to describe death as what it is, part of a cycle as natural as birth, something to encounter and to know, not something to primarily fear. On the contrary, I feel the awareness of death is one of the driving forces of life, it brings out deep emotions which frankly make me feel very alive. Death the experience has many beautiful aspects to it, at least in my experience. To reduce death – or this album – to just something “dark and scary” is merely scratching the surface – it’s looking away. If we could include death in the bigger picture as something normal, we may enjoy more freedom in our lives…
Chain D.L.K.: That piercing scary and somehow beastly scream on “To Death We All Go, The Sooner The Better”… how did you grab it, if it can be said?
Dave Phillips: I often start a recording based on notes I made or impulses, ideas about sonics, and sentiments. The tape starts running and… I try to put these sentiments into sound, and then… often things happen, I get carried away…. I go places, I enter different states of being, it’s like I travel like I’m somewhere else. Then sometime later, thump, I land again, it’s like I’ve returned from far… and sometimes it even translates onto tape ;o)
Like this album. I didn’t plan to do something about this particular topic, or about my father. I had a bunch of ideas noted, things I wanted to work into, but nothing like “to death”. Then I started recording. It was like a trance. It just poured out of me. The basic recordings happened within about ten days, basic structures of pieces were completed the following week. When I started listening back to what I had done, I was surprised. Then I realized what it’s about…
Chain D.L.K.: Paraphrasing and quoting the title of one of my favorite tracks of the album, what’s the real catastrophe you wanted to represent or maybe exorcize?
Dave Phillips: “The real catastrophe is that humanity continues”. It refers to the coronavirus and a reason why it might’ve appeared. I mean, we humans have vastly overpopulated this planet, and we are a very sick civilization, we’ve taken a couple of wrong turns too many, and we’re destroying not only our home but also that of all other inhabitants and them with it. It’s time we became extinct, or at least drastically reduced in numbers. We, humans, are the catastrophe… haha… it’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek, my sense of humor, though I reckon part of me means it ;o)
Chain D.L.K.: Is there any moment of ‘to death’ that you want to keep deliberately indecipherable?
Dave Phillips: Honestly, I try to be transparent with all that I do. My intentions, sentiments, feelings, it’s all there really. I don’t try to be cryptic or mysterious. On the other hand, it’s very subjective – I’ve put things out into the world that I thought were obvious and then find myself surprised by very different interpretations. So in this work, there are wordings, for example, that are only my own words for this particular moment, this context, they are subjective and not telling in terms of a narrative, so they needn’t be clear, they are only relevant in terms of opening spaces, it’s your own words or sentiments that take you through those spaces, and that’s fine.
Chain D.L.K.: Any plan to lend or adapt ‘to death’ for other forms of art (theatre or video art maybe)?
Dave Phillips: Not for now. The way this album poured out of me, the way it happened, this format is quite right for now. Emotionally, I’m quite elsewhere now anyway, also thanks to having this album happen.
Chain D.L.K.: Any work in progress?
Dave Phillips: Always :o) I’m currently finalizing two pieces for a 7″ for a young Portland label, and a comp track, but there are other pots cooking too…
Visit Dave Phillips on the web:
https://www.davephillips.ch/about
https://dave-phillips.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/dave-phillips
vimeo.com/davephillips
€20.00
Should A Seeker Not Find A Companion Who Is Better Or Equal, Let Him Resolutely Pursue A Solitary Course; There Is No Fellowship With The Fool / Cicada Trance
"should a seeker not find a companion who is better or equal, let him resolutely pursue a solitary course; there is no fellowship with the fool"
dave phillips' trajectory as an experimental recording artist began in the mid-80s, with a punk background that expanded to wilder and more nuanced territories as a solo artist.
having utilized field recordings, both raw and arranged, for over 20 years, not to mention his well-established work with bombastic body sounds, surrealist strings, and tribal percussion, phillips has honed his use of source material in a way that comes off more as a soldier's sense of duty than anything resembling a hobby. with "should a seeker... / cicada trance", he returns with two badly needed physical issues of integral field recording-based pieces that were previously only available for digital download.
"should a seeker..." was initially published as a digital release on the radical matters label in 2008. it is a structured arrangement of sounds with reptilian, amphibian, and insectan origin, remastered for physical release in 2023. for over 56 minutes, gurgles, primal roars, and screams from creatures of the night swirl in and out of the stereo spectrum in complex, yet somewhat rhythmic patterns, for an almost hyperreal effect.
from dave phillips about cicada trance:
the main insect featured here is the first one that drew me to another world, through its sound. a piercing high ringing frequency that seems to go on and on, often alternating with a slower, winding kind of motion, until the sound rises, peaks and drones again. some of these cycles are short, a minute or two a round, others seem to go for an hour, their winding down phase often partly silent; many play in 10 to 20 minute cycles. their song can differ from one region to the other, like dialects. their sound can be heard for miles. it’s ear-splitting loud when you’re close.
i’ve been wanting to do this piece for a long time, maybe since i returned from my first half year in thailand, early 1995. one recording herein is from then.
mostly i don’t see these musicians. many locals all over south east asia told me that these are cicadas. a few others gave other names. i never verified any further. i hear individuals and tribes, not really species. besides, there are all sorts of sonic individuals in these recordings, and i don’t think they care much about what we call them.
recorded in thailand, vietnam, indonesia and south africa, most of these are daytime sonic activities, one is nocturnal. all play in hot climates, frequently during the hottest time of day. two are desert inhabitants (kgalagadi), the others live in the humid heat of tropical rainforests.
i often wonder what goes on in these creatures when they’re playing. when they sing or stridulate, or whatever you want to call it, it’s vibration, it’s ongoing, repetitive. it’s being in the very immediate here and now. the common scientific explanation is “mating call” (another scientific favourite is “territorial call”). this may explain one of many reasons, but reasons apart from “functional” ones seem excluded.
i could imagine these singing ringing cicadas create trance states. like being high on life, ultimately immersed in the present moment and their immediate surroundings and celebrating it. maybe their sound creates altered states of consciousness also in other beings.
immersion - to be part of something
assembled jun ’21 - jan ’22 in zug and brugg, switzerland
dedicated to the most important beings on this planet - insects
alternate headphone listening is recommended
www.davephillips.ch
https://nopartofit.bandcamp.com/album/should-a-seeker-not-find-a-companion-who-is-better-or-equal-let-him-resolutely-pursue-a-solitary-course-there-is-no-fellowship-with-the-fool-cicada-trance
"As we all know, you can easily find noise music in nature. I am not a biologist, but I think cicadas exist in many countries, warm countries or just during the summer in some others. They are fascinating creatures, and many musicians have used recordings of them. Dave Phillips is the latest, and we know him as give or take, a man of noise music. In 1995 he spent six months in Thailand, and ever since, he has wanted to do a piece of music using recordings of cicadas. This now comes as 'Cicada Trance' and a work with a very long title, 'Should A Seeker Not Find A Companion Who Is Better Or Equal, Let Him Resolutely Pursue A Solitary Course; There Is No Fellowship With The Fool'. That piece was originally released in digital form by Radical Matters and used sounds of reptilian, amphibian, and insectan origin. Let's start here, as this is the first piece in the box. I think that the insects make up the backbone of the piece via long-form sustaining sounds, and on top of that, there are animal sounds, roaring and screaming, sometimes rhythmic, but I am unsure to what extent Phillips uses sound effects. There are none (so I believe, at least), and it's all a matter of overlaying sounds until a musical dialogue arises. This is quite a long piece at fifty-six minutes, but it's a great excursion. Strangely, I thought that this was indeed very much a Dave Phillips piece. It's loud but dynamic, and in some of his work, Phillips uses similar sounds but then of a different origin, such as his mouth or body.
Dynamics are not part of the other six, six minutes longer. Here Phillips uses just recordings of cicadas from Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and South Africa and places these together. Whereas 'Should' rocks back and forth, and sounds repeat, disappear but also return, no such thing happens here. It's piercingly high frequencies going on and on, just like they do in nature. It is almost like a harsh noise wall, but one realizes that this is all nature's (true!) forces. If you listen closely, and I did as I found this very compelling music, one notes minimalist changes or even melodic singing, especially in the second half. Here too, I can easily see this as a piece of music by Dave Phillips, but this time using only field recordings, and at that from various recordings from one animal. It is recommended to be heard by headphones, which I tried, but I must admit I thought it was too much at least the cicada piece. The other one worked great with headphones. What a blast!" [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€16.00
Earth shall not cover their Blood
"You’ve seen it before. Certain bands or artists delivering their finest work with their first recording. Then, in futile attempts to capture some of the same magic, becoming formulaic and stale, rehashing ideas and never really achieving the same caliber of work. Others, expanding on the elements of their prior releases, and through a natural maturation process, get stronger with each release. That would certainly be the case with Phragments. With their third full length studio CD, this Slovakian duo have made remarkable strides not only in quality but in scope. Equipped with an enriched sonic palate, Earth Shall Not Cover Their Blood mixes forceful brass and dark orchestral strings with rolls of powerful tribal percussion, somber wind instrumentation, ominous atmospheres, industrial clangor, and a strong and commanding vocal presence, particularly on tracks like “Over Deadlands” and “The Kin of Cain”. Cohesive, complete, and epic, this is a release that will open some eyes to new found authority of Phragments. Yours to discover. In 6 panel digipak." [label info]
€13.00
Trowo Phurnag Ceremony
This voyage began in the middle of the 1990's in Moscow, when a group of artists and musicians led by Alexei Tegin and based at the legendary Fabrique of Cardinal Art commenced their studies of traditional ritual music, drifting away from the field of contemporary electroacoustic and industrial music with the intent to delve deeper into the ancient musical cultures of the ancient Egypt, Iran and Tibet. The original 2003 lineup of the project that emerged as a result was ubbed Phurpa (one of the five tutelary deities of the Father Tantra in Bon tradition), and all the members have carried on with their research in the field of Bon and Buddhist liturgies up to the present day.
Before Buddhism reached Tibet, local people had practiced involved shamanic rites derived from various ancestral cults. Later on, circa the VI-IX century AD, a conflict between the local tradition, namely, the pre-Buddhist religion of Bon (which originates from Central Asia) and Tantric Buddhism (hailing from the North of India) gave birth to a unique cultural phenomenon known as Tibetan Buddhism, which combines an extensive metaphysical corpus and an advanced philosophical system with pristine ceremonial practices that reach down through many centuries.
In the X-XI century AD the monastic ensemble came into being. It has got a lot in common with the Chinese court ensembles of the Tang dynasty; nevertheless, the Tibetan ceremonial ensemble has preserved its authenticity and kept a large number of primordial elements stemming from the ancient Tibeto-Burmanese music intact to this day. A typical ensemble usually includes a pair of nga drums, several rolmo cymbals and a pair of gyaling oboes, as well as telescopic dunchen horns, dunkar shells and short wandun horns.
One of the unique features of the Tibetan monastic choir is a specific kind of overtone chanting, called "rgyud-skad", or the Tantric voice, which is based on the principle of the singer's transmogrification during the so-called "chanting meditation".
Recorded in 2005 at Melodiya studio, mixed and mastered in 2007-2008 at Magihead studio photography by Cheslav Merk, Ulrika Merk and Anna Lukyanova
sketis-music.com/catalog/skmr-060-phurpa-trowo-phurnag-ceremony
€13.00
Aqualuna - Alchemical Transformation through Vision and Sound
"AQUALUNA project refers to primordial, organic pictures and sounds connected with the element of water and the Moon. It integrates dreamlike aquatic and lunar pictures which follow in succession, parallel to music composed for the film. To intensify the reception, the Authors, among other actions, made an efficient use of the synesthesia effect. The film is kept in the poetics of a dream, it constitutes a symbolic story about transformation. From the darkness, from a bright spot of the Moon-the jellyfish, a woman is born, breathing under water. The woman is dreaming and from her dream emerge oceanic spaces full of deep-sea creatures. In the depths of the ocean or human consciousness the alchemical transformations occur, leading in the final stage to the birth of a new transformed self. The video was created with the use of the following items, materials and devices: diascop, camera, computer, colorful liquids, glass, transparent objects and some pictures discovered elsewhere. Featuring: The woman in the water - Katarzyna Marta Chrzanowska.
The soundtrack was composed and recorded with the use of the following instruments and sound sources: analog synthesizer, analog filter machine, digital drummer, spring drums, rattles, cymbals, bells, stones, shells, metal objects, field recordings and electronic effects." [label info]
www.zoharum.com
€15.00
From Dusk to Dawn
"best known as the keyboarder of italy's premier post rock combo giardini di mirò, wowing fans and sceptics alike with their formidable long players and impressively intense live performances, luca di mira finally returns as a solo artist. "from dusk to dawn" is the second album he pursued on his own. 6 years down the line, pillow's sound has changed quite drastically, yet glows with the same shocking deepness. focusing on a unifying, even more orchestral sound, di mira creates his own melancholic universe. centered around the epic "silent journey", pillow demonstrates in each and every track, how music should be approached in these troubled times. merging subtle piano fragments, overwhelming string arrangements, minimal guitar melodies and even 4/4 beats, pillow has written a soundtrack no one will ever forget." [label info]
www.city-centre-offices.de
€15.00
Mort aux vaches
Der Australier gehört inzwischen zu den anerkanntesten experimentellen Laptop-Musikern dieser Tage.. in der MAV-Serie gibt es abstrakte Geräuschkompositionen mit warmen Untertönen, seltsam quasi-rhythmische Muster & Sphärenharmonien zu hören.. wie immer im speziellen Art-Cover..
“ From all the people with a laptop and who travel, I rate Pimmon as one of the better ones. Not falling in a pure noise mode, or a pure improvisation mode, his music is a combination of melodies, raw chunks of sound and glitchy rhythms. His recent 'Snaps Crackles Pop' (a rather self-explanatory title) for Tigerbeat didn't make it to these pages, but would rank high in my top 10 for 2003. That CD was a studio, to get the full Pimmon picture, one would also need the 'Mort Aux Vaches' CD. Recorded at roughly the same time as the Tigerbeat CD, the live recording on 'Mort Aux Vaches' CD dates from about a year ago, upon his first Europe tour. Of course, the live side is always arranged in a more free mode, small mistakes happen but these pieces bear the Pimmon trade mark allover: grainy yet warm glitch rhythms, amplified static hiss that evolves into small wormholes and crackles and pop all around. However, Pimmon never looses the idea of composition - he never leaps into pure improvisation nor does he let things get out of control, there is always the structure to control. Pimmon clearly has this capacity, both in his studio work, but also in his live work. Finally a very good example of the latter becomes available. “ [Frans de Waard]
€14.00
Smudge another Yesterday
"The Preservation label presents Smudge Another Yesterday from Sydney's Pimmon. Pimmon is the alias for electronic composer Paul Gough. In the last decade, Pimmon has forged an international reputation for creating dense, challenging and engaging electronic music. This release picks up and goes further from the point where the acclaimed Secret Sleeping Birds left off. Smudge Another Yesterday is an exploration of the song behind the noise; the secret whispers hidden in the static. Within these vast and spacious works are endless fragments shaped and distended into magnetic states of subtle movement and pulse. From beautiful, foreboding pieces sung by hidden choirs to crackling, lava-flow like ambience, the mood swings of Smudge Another Yesterday are steeped in bristling commotion and stirring intimacy. It is a startling return from an individual and distinct artist. Smudge Another Yesterday was mastered by renown Italian composer Giuseppe Ielasi. Pimmon has previously collaborated with other celebrated artists of his field -- including Fennesz, Oren Ambarchi, Kid606 and Keith Rowe -- and has recorded for various labels around the world including Tigerbeat6 and Fat Cat." [label info]
www.preservation.com.au
€15.00
Darking lights of Babylon
Split-album. The German project PIPELINE ALPHA (from Wupptertal), being fascinated with old myths, offers two droney landscape tracks combining analogue / dark cosmic synth-work, vocal / choral invocations, acoustic & electric guitar/bass, shortwave/radio-sounds, ending in obsessed noise.. MESSIAH COMPLEX creates a very long noise-orgy with interesting developments & dynamics..
"EPIC AURAL DRONE NOISE / SPLIT RELEASE 3 TRACK CD. Limited to 119 copies worldwide / Screened Cardboard DVD Box / Printed Inlaycard on Special Paper / Numbered Edition!
Pipeline Alpha starts with a smooth eerie analog drone like mirror or organum called "flabbergasted" 11:21 minutes followed by "Ishtar" an wisphering voicesound with a organic bassline and ending with orgastic screaming from sinister god: "Ishtar" 20:51 than followed by a devastating brutal but differentiated noise storm from MESSIAH COMPLEX
called "beta-minus" 31:37 wich ends so sophisticated with quiet boiling basses like all begun." [label info]
www.amid-the-waves.com
€10.00
Tapes von Unterwegs 1971-1976
"Recorded & edited by Jürgen Ploog on different flights between 1971 & 1976 on a portable tape-recorder. Final selection, montage & editing by Robert Schalinski.
Like his literary fellow traveler William S. Burroughs who made tape experiments a few years earlier, the German Beat writer Jürgen Ploog (born 1935) began experimenting with tape recorders in the 1970s. Due to his career as a transcontinental pilot Ploog was constantly on the go. “My life was a series of interruptions both geographically (outwardly) and psychologically (state of mind) with exposure to different countries and the constant effects of jet lag.” This 40-minute cut-up is the result of his experiments. Passages of Ploog’s spoken text get mixed with Indian television voices, while sounds of Buddhist rituals are heard through an open hotel window. Radiograms, birds, recordings of airport and street noises, people noise and that of machinery … assembled, superimposed … scraps pulled out/torn, shifted and copied … questioned and documented … an alchemical experiment, a journey of sounds …
“Cut-up as a drug that leads to a different relationship with language, just as a hallucinogen leads to an altered relation with the so-called reality. The result is a fundamental shift of meaning. ‘Shift linguals’ was the motto in a continuous process with an open end …” J.P.
"This tape is a recording of many voices simultaneously under the spell of the urban Moloch. They moan, marvel, murmur and curse in a mixture of sounds that would became independent and found its own cadence. A sound that could turn drunk, melt on the tongue, mingle with the juices of the body and eventually turn into sweat and piss. The traveler lived with it as with microbes sucked up and gulped with every swallow.”
“When I look back now at those years, I see that they were a ground-breaking departure for me, not towards other, newly rising ideologies but into an unspecified way of writing and perception — because reality is based on perspective and seeing, thus opening the possibilities of an enhanced imagination and a vision of life under conditions which are not determined and pre-recorded. It may be said that these were the accounts of only the first steps. That in my case this was related to traveling to far-off continents and may just have been a lucky coincidence. At the same time it is obvious that it was difficult for me to record the exoticism of travel as merely a fortunate occurrence that gave me the chance to slide into remote scenery. The whiskey on the rocks at the beach of a tropical island is after all only the Technicolor-version of the beer in the pub back home. The challenge was to navigate under limitless technical possibilities and across the open space of digital deserts that spread rapidly …” J.P.2014
Jürgen Ploog - born 1935, lives in Frankfurt and Miami. He was a pilot for Lufthansa for 33 years. With Jörg Fauser and Carl Weissner he was co-founder of the legendary little-mag Gasolin 23. A friend and literary associate of William S. Burroughs, he is considered a father figure of the German-language literary underground." [label info]
www.90-prozent-wasser.de
€18.00
TriTone
"Tri Tone is Plurals' first studio recording as a trio following the most recent releases which feature live or session material. The last studio release was 2014's Bugenès Melissae - two tracks of calmer, more reflective music, standing aside from the bulk of the group's output which tends towards noise as the ultimate splitting-point after a period of collected density.
On Tri Tone that density is an end in itself. It is slow music that maps out its space carefully in coming together. It may be the gentlest and most patient of Plurals' albums, though it required the longest and most detailed sonic wrangling to complete. Two pieces were chosen from three hours of recorded music, and were contracted and expanded again by turns until eventually the finished versions took shape.
Plurals' studio improvisations typically expel a significant amount of aggression and intensity in their early stages, holding closer resemblance to live performances. With such force expunged however, the following material sees them exploring lengthy passages of audio cogitation rarely delivered live.
Mastered & cut by Frederic Alstadt at Ångström Mastering, Brussels." [label info]
"Silken Tofu seems to be taken by the music of Plurals; as a follow-up to a double CD
'Atlantikwall' (see Vital Weekly 1076), they now release a LP. This LP is the first studio recording of them as a trio, and the first studio recording to be released since 2014. This trio of improvisers (Daniel Mackenzie, Michael Neaves and David Hamilton-Smith) use a variety of tools (guitar, synthesizers, keyboards, vocals, tape machines, radio and reed and string instruments) and then go about to do their improvised work. For this record they recorded some three hours of music and extracted forty-eight minutes spread out over the two sidelong pieces. I can't judge if that is a lot or not. The music on both pieces is quite dense, rich with sound and also mostly not too loud. That seems to me a bit of break with what I know from them so far, which was always bit more towards the noise of lo-fi drone music. Like
always the changes within the pieces is quite minimal; Plurals take their time to slow go from one point in their piece to the next. In 'Sun Lock' for instance a simple drone starts out and little by little they add more and more sound, while the original drone lingers on, and towards the end it is very much changed and no longer recognizable. It ends as quiet as it started. Hard to say how much post-production and
editing took place here. Surely something, I would think, but for all we know, it is released as it was played back then. ‘Bas Fond' on the other side is more from the drone rock side of Plurals with mildly distorted guitars played long form drones. A record with two sides, obviously, showing two different sides of Plurals, not as obvious. From what I heard from them, this is the most refined work." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€16.00
Steingarten
"This is Berlin-based producer Stefan Betke's sixth full-length release, and his second release on his own ~scape label. Pole presents music that could be architecture, with his elegantly spare form that reaches out into space. After minimalist experiments with elements of hip-hop and dub, Steingarten has hardly any concrete references. What has remained, though, is the minimalism so characteristic of Pole. Built around little loops, his arrangements dispose with any kind of ornamentation. A stark contrast with the album's title and cover -- which shows a picture of the famously ornate, gingerbread-style castle Schloss Neuschwanstein. But despite some funky grooves, this is no dancefloor record. And despite its simplicity, the music never comes across as meager or repellently cool. This might be due to the fact that Pole has found a perfect middle point between avant-garde and pop." [press release]
"Eine Form von Sounddesign: Pole vereint Minimalismus mit groovy Beats.
--------
Stefan Betke alias Pole ist seit Ende der 1990er-Jahre national sowie international als einer der führenden und stilprägenden Produzenten elektronischer Musik bekannt. Nach Minimal-Experimenten mit Dub- und Hip-Hop legt er mit „Steingarten“ ein Album vor, das kaum konkrete Referenzen aufweist. Geblieben ist der für Pole so charakteristische Minimalismus. Um kleine Loops werden Arrangements aufgebaut, die auf jegliche Ornamente verzichten. Umso stärker wirkt der Kontrast zu Titel und dem Cover der Platte, einem Foto des verschnörkelten Schlosses Neuschwanstein.
Trotz einiger Funk-Grooves ist „Steingarten“ keine Dancefloor-Platte, und trotz extremer Schlichtheit wirkt die Musik an keiner Stelle karg oder abweisend. Denn Pole findet eine perfekte Zwischenform, die Pop und Avantgarde ausbalanciert. Die Beats sind groovy, aber nie aufpeitschend, und die Melodien werden fragmentarisch als harmonische Tupfer eingesetzt. „Steingarten“ ist eine Form von Sounddesign, das sich abseits von bekannten Behaglichkeiten seine eigene Welt schafft." [Indigo]
€16.50
Soyuz
“ Polio was originally intended to be a studio-only project dealing with the dregs of home-recorded detritus and recycling it all inside droning digital straitjackets. However, 2002 saw Polio out in front of audiences of at least 15 people on a couple of occasions which presented new challenges and resulted in a swag of new recordings awaiting their moment on a CD plonked inside a wrapping of cheap manilla paper with a neat schematic of a spacecraft on the front. Any excuse for pictures of space vehicles...
Soyuz presents the bulk of a live Polio performance at Lyttelton's appropriately off-kilter Wunderbar recorded to digital hard disc by the omnipresent David Khan, and one unlisted piece of studio deconstruction to finish the disc. Polio live is a mix of pre-processed drones, live loop & sine-wave manipulation & general knob-twiddling on the effects units. Sort of like those energy drinks you can get with extra crap thrown in to what is essentially sugar & water, Soyuz is like Gemini, but with extra minerals (?!)... ahh, hell, it's a hard thing to write blurbs with a hangover, but you get the picture hopefully...! The bottom line is if you loved Gemini, you'll definately like this disc. A further installment in the Polio saga will appear shortly on Norwegian imprint Humbug, but for starters why not sink your teeth into this beauty...” [label info]
€8.00
Parabolique d'Enfer
"This recording will be Sub Rosa's first posthumous recording of Henri Pousseur. It is the sixth release (out of eight) in their catalog devoted to this composer's experimental and electronic works. It also marks the end of the trilogy of the Parabolic works (following the 1972 unreleased recordings and the 2001 collective performance). This time around, we have a piece built through another major Pousseur work: Leçon d'Enfer (composed in 1990-1991 around Arthur Rimbaud). This previously-unreleased version was realized by Henri Pousseur in Cologne in 1992. This release was important to Henri Pousseur, as it concludes, in a sense, the Paraboles trilogy, after 1972's 8 Etudes Paraboliques (released as a 4CD box set comprised of all the études to be used as the basis for all current and future mixes) and 4 Parabolic Mixes (2001), on which four composers -- Robert Hampson, Philip Jeck, Markus Popp, and Pousseur himself -- tackled those source tapes. This suite of works was gradually pushing composition further into the territory of destruction and abstraction. This final installment, a mix made from the 1972 Études, as it should be, integrates a major external element (something already planned in the initial design), another work by Pousseur, "Leçons d'Enfer," a complex piece of musical theater dedicated to the memory of Arthur Rimbaud and composed in 1991 for the centennial of the poet's death. This work, over 100 minutes long, was written for two actors, three singers, seven musicians (clarinet, alto saxophone, tuba, harp, piano, and two percussions), tapes (including traditional Ethiopian music and field recordings from that area), and electroacoustic devices. With this version, Henri Pousseur shows how the deep impression left by a work in constant mutation can take different guises. The Rimbaud pictured in this flux is neither the promising teenager, nor the striking genius, nor even the desperate man struggling in vain in an empty landscape; it is an appeased hybrid breathing the ebullient air of the final times." [label info]
www.subrosa.net
€13.00
same
“Praxinoscope is a new project which sees the duo Roberto Opalio (one-half of My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini (close collaborator of the Italian space-brothers). While in the debut album as Painting Petals On Planet Ghost (out in early September 2005 on Time-Lag Records) Ramona will focus on her Japanese vocals alongside both brothers' acoustic tunes, here she plays little Japanese percussions and wind chimes, creating a resonant texture over Roberto's alien wordless vocals and space electronics. The material comes from a whole session recorded in a mysterious location of the Western Alps, directly transferred to cd using neither overdubs nor outtakes, practice which the Opalio bros have made us addicted to. For the entire lenght of its 40 minutes, the piece will stifle you the breath because of its so pure essence and intimate mood; a mystic, suffocated chant reminding the silence of ancient rituals, the ultimate exorcism to avert the Infinite Pain. Limited edition of 500 copies only as vinyl picture disc 12" LP with psychedelic artwork!” [label info]
“…..This project traverses a similar terrain as MCIAA, but is perhaps closer to Roberto's brilliant solo album, "Chants From Isolated Ghosts". Opalio's vocals star here, taking the limelight and thriving inside it. Effects drench his voice making it something truly not of this world. These lunar oceans of sound are magnificent and totally enthralling. It's as though he's a cosmonaut trapped inside a glass box, unable to travel the reaches of space. Such confinement derails your mind and Opalio sounds like a person struggling against himself. At times, hearing this is almost too much - there's simultaneous discomfort and exorcism happening and you can't quite focus intently on either. You are a passive player in this exercise, lost in the crevices Opalio and Ponzini create. I cannot discount Ponzini's contributions to this 40 minute piece, either. While it may seem minimal on the surface, her various "Japanese percussions" (mostly chromatics, cymbals, and the like) add a great deal of needed texture to counterbalance Opalio's haunted wails. It is reminiscent of the way Finnish master, Keijo, works in a lot of percussive elements to his tracks. And it has the same effect. Praxinoscope is a great new project from the always wonderful My Cat is an Alien. This is one of Opax's finest releases. Bringing to mind the vocal transcendence of the Skaters, Praxinoscope are proof that you don't need any instruments to make amazing sounds. This is wonderful, wonderful music” [Brad Rose, FOXY DIGITALIS]
€15.00
Morphosis
Satatuhatta is honoured to present the debut album of Primitive Wings, a new project by Jaakko Vanhala. ’Morphosis’ is a highly evocative album, bringing into mind vivid flashes of something primal, perhaps from the prehistoric past. At the same time it’s very raw, but without being utterly harsh. It can be seen as a sum of the artist's previous projects Zoät-Aon, Secret Apex and Vanhala, but it still presents something new.
Listening to the album, you can imagine insects digging their way through the forest floor, big dragonflies propelling amongst the ferns in the twilight, reptiles roaming in the verdant undergrowth, and prehistoric roars rising amongst the tropical trees. But it’s not a nature documentary. It feels more like an atavistic memory, an intuitive transformation taking you inside an alien consciousness. This could be felt as just undefinable chills or perhaps as a vision of an event on this planet, which happened under the same stars but billions of years ago. Something from the beginning, of growth, sentience and flesh, finding its expression in strange transformations.
https://satatuhatta.bandcamp.com/album/morphosis
"Another round of introductions here. Satatuhatta is a Finnish label "focusing on harsh noise and experimental sounds" and has about sixty releases, mainly on cassettes but, as we see here, also on CD. Many (or, instead, most) names are all new to me. Jaakko Vanhala is the man behind Primitive Wings, his latest project. Previously he worked as Zoät-Aon, Secret Apex and Vanhala. The cover doesn't provide us with the necessary information concerning instruments, which isn't a good thing from a reviewer's perspective. Listening to the eight pieces, running from five to seven minutes, I envisage a combination of reel-to-reel tapes, electronics and a battered synthesizer. The loops Vanhala cuts are long, short and shorter. By playing them all at once (or extensive layering), they never overlap in the same way, while at the same time, they never become very chaotic. Your ears adjust themselves to the proposed order of the sounds. At least, that's my little pet theory of this week. What he puts on his loops is very hard to say; electronic sounds are a contender for that, but also field recordings. I believe to hear some of that in 'One Star'. Somewhere below in the mix of mangled loops, some electronics lurk beneath, adding creepiness to the music. Primitive Wings operates primarily in the mid to high-frequency range and has some nasty sounds, but it is not necessarily all about an endless stream of harsh noise. Maybe there is a certain sameness in the sounds used here, which made me think that the album is, perhaps, ten minutes too long, but as always, that might be the idea of the noise plan behind such operations." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€12.50
Tormentor
Der neue Stern am Industrial & harsh noise -Himmel heisst PROPERGOL: Intelligent gemachter, psychologisch inspirierter Power-Noise mit Struktur (aus Frankreich).
“First 7" and vinyl release for this French confirmed project. "Tormentor" is dealing with usual PROPERGOL’s intimate obsessions and again music is nothing less than a reflection and an exploration of his confused and chaotic innerworld… Tracks are made of nervous, repetitive and hypnotic pulsations as well as noise injections and vocals in the typical PROPERGOL’s style made of anger and despair underlying his personal oversensitivity… With this 7", PROPERGOL takes you both to a trip to places overwhelming with imagination and to a mental journey on the sinuous and unhealthy roads of neurosis when your own imagination is becoming your most intimate enemy. Like a nice musical score on schizophrenia… Deluxe packaging on a glossy fold-out cover plus postcard. “ [label description]
www.nuitetbrouillard.com
€8.00
Songs of Experience
"in 1794, william blake published ‘songs of experience’ as an addendum to ‘songs of innocence’, to complete the picture
of ‘the two contrary states of the human soul’ - the state in question here being the constriction of the human spirit, the
suffocation of creativity by the force to conform.
after magnus sundström aka the protagonist had released his debut ‘à rebours’ in 1998, the sky seemed the only limit for this musical entity. but, to much disappointment within the industrial scene, for the next seven years only a couple of compilation appearances would be heard from the protagonist. then, in 2005 two cds came out via cold meat industry: the aptly titled ‘interim’ ep and the album ‘songs of experience’ (which was actually not entirely a new album, but in parts consisted of reworked versions of the aforementioned compilation tracks and a couple of tracks from the previous ep).
the music on ‘songs of experience’ resolved all doubts: the protagonist is a devoted artist, putting quality over quantity, and the result had been well worth waiting! as if no period of inactivity had ever discontinued the creative flow, the protagonist reassumed the path of the debut: orchestral splendour, rigid drumming, dramatic string works and an increased presence of haunting, eerie atmospheres, pushing the album towards the darker edges of the neo-classical spectrum. vocal deliveries are rather sparse and restricted to short spoken parts this time around, but feature prolific
guests again: tomas petterson of ordo rosarius equlibrio lent his unmistakeable voice to the protagonist’s most wellknown track, ‘strife’, a truly bombastic marching tune. jonathan grieve of contrastate can also be heard on one track, the heart-shattering ‘sick rose’. among all the opulence, romantic leanings all over, though the whole composition takes a decidedly bleak direction. the adapted literature features not only blake, but also baudelaire (here’s the symbolist theme again) and no other than the master himself, mr. william shakespeare. all in all, music and content combine into one
impressive libertine’s manifesto, proclaiming the power of free thought and the mistrust of authorities!
for this well-timed re-release, raubbau gathers together not only the original album, but also the exclusive tracks from the ‘interim’ ep, thus presenting the entire bundle of cmi-released protagonist tracks. until today, the protagonist stands out unique among neo-classical artists for the sheer brilliance of composition and the authenticity of his preoccupations - he is really serious about seriousness. history has been revealed, let beauty unfold!" [label info]
www.raubbau.org
€6.00
Grammar
Lou Mallozzi: turntables, CDs, Microphones, Oscillator
Fred Lonberg-Holm: Cello
Carlos Zingaro: Violin
Recorded by Pete Wenger at Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago, 28 May 2003.
Mixed and Masterd by Lou Mallozzi and Fred Lonberg-Holm at Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago, 23 June 2004.
Produced by Lonberg-Holm, Mallozzi and Zingaro.
@2003 Mallozzi / Lonberg-Holm / Zingaro
Lou Mallozzi (b. 1957)
Lou Mallozzi is a Chicago audio artist who has been dismembering and reconstituting language, sound, and gesture on stages, sites, CD, and radio since 1986. His background is in performance, intermedia and installation art, and since 1996 an increasing amount of his attention has been focused on improvised music. Using microphones, turntables, CDs and analog mixing, he collaborates with numerous instrumentalists in improvised frameworks. These collaborators have included Carlos Zingaro, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Michael Vorfeld, Mats Gustafsson, Jaap Blonk, Sebi Tramontana, Terri Kapsalis, Michael Zerang, Guillermo Gregorio, Birgit Ulher, Hal Rammel, and many others. He has performed in this context at the Come Sunday Festival (Munich), the Logos Foundation (Ghent), Podewil (Berlin), The Empty Bottle (Chicago), Candlestick Maker (Chicago), The Renaissance Society (Chicago), Kraakgeluiden (Amsterdam), and others. He has also composed several sound poems and structured improvisational works for soloists and ensembles, including Jaap Blonk, Barbara Lüneburg, and the ensemble Intégrales.
In addition to his improvised music projects, Mallozzi also produces intermedia and sound performances, radio art works, and sound installations. These have been presented at numerous venues since 1986, including the PAC/Edge Performance Festival (Chicago), the Chicago Cultural Center, Experimental Intermedia (New York), the TUBE audio art series at the Einstein Kulturzentrum (Munich), Spritzenhaus (Hamburg), Suoni/Sound 2000 (Isola d'Elba, Italy), The Subtropics Experimental Music Festival (Miami), the Fort Wayne Museum of Art (Indiana), Percorsi 98 Festival (Montegrosso d'Asti, Itlay), the Sound Canopy public art project (Chicago), Donald Young Gallery (Chicago), Gallery 400 (Chicago), the Bechtler Gallery (Charlotte), Randolph Street Gallery (Chicago), Aether Fest (Albuquerque), New American Radio, Bayerischer Rundfunk (Munich), Kunstradio/Radiokunst on ORF Vienna, Sender Freies Berlin, ABC Radio (Sydney), the Resonance FM Festival (London), and others. Among his collaborators in these realms are Sandra Binion, Mark Booth, Heinz Weber, Antonia Contro, and Maurizio Pellegrin.
Mallozzi has two CDs on the Penumbra Music label: Radiophagy (three radio works from 1990 - 1996) and Whole or By the Slice (electroacoustic collaborations with Hal Rammel). A CD of improvised music with Fred Lonberg-Holm and Carlos Zingaro is forthcoming on Rossbin Records (Italy). He also appears on Guillermo Gregorio's Faktura and Cornelius Cardew's Material (both on HatArt, Switzerland).
Mallozzi has received a number of grants and fellowships, including a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study Center (Italy), four Artist Fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, and grants from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and the Governor's International Arts Exchange Program.
In addition to his artistic career, Mallozzi is co-founder and Executive Director of Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, and he is on the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Fred Lonberg-Holm
Composer, improvisor and anti-cellist Fredrick Lonberg-Holm currently resides in Chicago. Defying categorization, his work deals only with the context of the specific musical situation in which he finds/places/builds for himself. A former composition student of Morton Feldman and Anthony Braxton, and cello student of Ardyth Alton and Orlando Cole, his ongoing projects include the groups Terminal 4, The Boxhead Ensemble, Pillow, and the Lonberg-Holm/Kessler/Zerang Trio. He is also currently a member of the Guillermo Gregorio Trio, the Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet, XMARSX, and Witches and Devils (music of A. Ayler). He also has been coordinating and directing performances of his Light Box Orchestra, a non fixed structured improvising ensemble utilizing a light based cuing system . In addition he has also performed in ensembles led by Anthony Braxton, Ken Vandermark, Anthony Coleman, Georg Graewe, Wolfgang Fuchs, and John Zorn. As an improvisor he has recorded and or performed with numerous musicians including Jaap Blonk, John Butcher, Gunter Christmann, Axel Dorner, Hamid Drake, Barry Guy, Joelle Leandre, Paul Lytton, Jeff Parker, William Parker, Mischa Mengelberg, Ikue Mori, Mats Gustafsson, Paul Lovens, Paul Rutherford, Sten Sandell, Hamid Drake, Jim O'Rourke, David Stackenaas, Willie Winant, Carlos Zingaro, and many others. He has also performed/recorded with the rock groups God-is-my-Co-Pilot, Wilco, the Flying Luttenbachers, Chris Mills, Janet Bean, Super Chunk, Bobbie Conn, Ahmed Elmotassem's Legal Fiction, L'Altra, US Maple, Freakwater, Lake of Dracula, Plastic Scorpions, Zeek Sheck, Smog and others. Concert works have been premiered by William Winant, Carrie Biolo, Joe Fonda and Bottoms Out, Duo Atypica, the Schanzer/Speach Duo, New Winds, Paul Hoskin, Kevin Norton, the E.S.P. Ensemble and others. He has performed throughout the US and Europe as both a soloist and ensemble member. His scores for dance have been performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Dance Theater Workshop as well as many other venues. Film credits include music for a Playboy Channel short and the independant feature Animals, by Michael DiGiacomo. He has recorded for the Avant, Pogus, Occa, miguel, Explain:, Locust, Meniscus, Nuscope, Curious, Random Acoustics, Skin Graft, Hat Art, Buzz, Knitting Factory Works, Drag City, Ecstatic/Yod, Nine Winds, Atavistic, Rastascan, Box Media, 8th Day, Tzadik, Truckstop and What Next? labels as well as many others.
CARLOS “ZINGARO”
Born 1948 in Lisbon, Portugal; violin, electronics.
Carlos Zingaro undertook classical music studies at the Lisbon Music Conservatory from 1953 to 1965, and during the two years 1967/68 he studied church organ at the High School of Sacred Music. Also, during the 1960s, Zingaro was a member of the Lisbon University Chamber Orchestra. In 1967 he formed Plexus, the only Portuguese group at the time to have developed a new musical approach based on contemporary music, improvisation and rock; the group recorded a 45rpm single for RCA-Victor in 1968.
From 1975 onwards Carlos Zingaro has performed with a wide variety of improvising musicians, including: Barre Phillips, Daunik Lazro, Derek Bailey, Joëlle Léandre, Jon Rose, Kent Carter, Ned Rothenberg, Peter Kowald, Roger Turner, Rüdiger Carl, Dominique Regef, Evan Parker, Günter Müller, Andres Bosshard, Jean-marc Montera, and Paul Lovens. In 1978 he was invited by Wroclaw Technical University in Poland to participate in the 1st Instrumental Theatre Meeting, and in 1979 he won a Fulbright Grant and was invited by the Creative Music Foundation in Woodstock, New York to participate in meetings, classes and performances with such composers as Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, George Lewis, Leo Smith, Tom Cora and Richard Teitelbaum (a regular collaborator). He also gave lectures on New Notation Concepts, Movement and Sound, and the inter-relationship of Improvisation and Body Attitude. As a soloist, or with other musicians and composers, Carlos Zingaro has performed at many of the most important new music and improvising festivals in Europe, Asia and America.
A substantial level of Carlos Zingaro's musical activities are associated with theatre, film and dance. In 1975 he completed Stage Design studies at the Lisbon Theatre High School and later served on the board of directors of the School. From 1974 to 1980 he was musical director for the Lisbon-based theatre group Comicos, being responsible for most of the original music scores performed during the period. In 1981 Carlos Zingaro received the Portuguese Critics Award for best theatre music and in 1988 he worked with the Italian theatre director Giorgio Barberio Corsetti on his Kafka Trilogy. He has also been stage and costume designer for several other theatre productions. He has produced several film scores and worked extensively with dancers and dance companies such as the Gulbenkian Dance Company, the Opéra de Genève Dance Company, Michala Marcus, Aparte, and Olga Roriz.
Carlos Zingaro was a founding member of the Lisbon-based art gallery Comicos, his work has been exhibited, and he has received several prizes for his cartoons, comics and illustrations, samples of which can be seen on a number of CD sleeves, for example, Musiques de
scène.
www.rossbin.com/rs019.htm
"Is there a mode (maybe mood, posture, or circumstance) in which you are required to set yourself in order to appreciate (maybe absorb) freely improvised music? If you are attending a live show, the location, smells, company, and certainly the visual aspects of the show contribute to your "experience." When you are merely listening to a purchased recording, what are the rules for your listening experience?
Do you meditate in a quiet room? Can you listen to it in your car? Walking with an iPod? Washing dishes? How does the experience of the improvisation mesh with your current environs? Don't ask me for answers, but consider all the stimuli that invade your senses every hour of every day. Maybe that's why the relentless beat-beat-beat of pop music is so simple... because no one's actually listening.
My point is this: no two listeners can have the same response to very highly interpretable music like what the Punctual Trio produces on Grammar.
The cast of players includes cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, the newest member of Vandermark 5 (plus Wilco, Terminal 4, The Boxhead Ensemble, Pillow, and the Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet, to name just a few); Lou Mallozzi, a sound artist from Chicago who lists Mats Gustafsson, Jaap Blonk, Sebi Tramontana, Michael Zerang, and Guillermo Gregorio as collaborators; and Portuguese violinist Carlos Zingaro, who has partnered with the likes of Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, George Lewis, Leo Smith, Tom Cora, and Richard Teitelbaum.
Simple review: you cannot dance to this disc, but I give it a ten.
The trio benefits from its choice of instrumentation. Lonberg-Holm's cello, which is seemingly at home in a range of settings from jazz standards to rock to free music, mixes well with Zingaro's violin's scraping, plucking, single notes, and complex travels. They are attuned to silence and space, as on the opener, or odd pulse and song forms, as with "Punctuation. Mallozzi doesn't drown you with samples or electronics; he places them in the mix as if he were Treg Brown, the sound editor of 1950s Warner Brothers cartoons. If you listen closely to "Punctuation, you may find yourself actually embedded inside a cartoon.
But then again, your experience with these sounds will probably be nothing like mine." [All About Jazz]
€6.00
Our Forgotten Ancestors
Massimo Pupillo is a composer and multi-instrumentalist, mostly known for being a founding members of ZU, with whom he released 18 albums and played more than 2000 shows around the world. He has also kept a very open and multidisciplinary approach that led him to work with some of the most acclaimed figures in today's world of arts: Romeo Castellucci, Chiara Guidi (of legendary avantgarde theatre group Societas Raffaello Sanzio), american choreographer Meg Stuart, french opera star Marie-Agnes Gillot, contemporary dance group Dewey Dell, world reknown dancer Yaman Okur, etc.
He has collaborated live and on record with avant-garde musicians and composers such as Alvin Curran ( founder of Musica Elettronica Viva in 1966), with world-famous piano duo of Katia & Marielle Labeque, with classical music virtuosos such as Viktoria Mullova and Giovanni Sollima. He has also recorded with Canadian soprano and orchestra conductor, Barbara Hannigan. Working with Katia Labeque he has had the huge honour of an album artwork designed by Storm Thorgerson, founder of Hipgnosis, probably one of the most important designers in music. With Katia Labeque, he has played and arranged tracks of an album of Moondog music that was released on the most important classical label ever, Deutsche Grammophon. Also with Katia Labeque he presented a special project at Paris' Philharmonie in 2016, working, between others, with Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Bryce and Aaron Dessner (The National). In the world of electric/ rock music he has collaborated with some of the most important names in the international scene, such as Mike Patton ( Faith No More), Stephen O' Malley ( Sunn O)) ,Thurston Moore, Jim O' Rourke (Sonic Youth), Guy Picciotto & Joe Lally (Fugazi), FM Einheit ( Einstürzende Neubauten) , Buzz Osbourne (Melvins) Damo Suzuki (CAN), etc. In free-improvised music he worked with Peter Brotzmann, Toshinori Kondo,Tony Buck ( The Necks) etc..
In the experimental music scene he has collaborated with Oren Ambarchi, David Tibet (Current 93), Thighpaulsandra (Coil), Christina Vantzou, Daniel O'Sullivan, Andrea Belfi, Abul Mogard,, Mick Harris (Scorn), Gordon Sharp (This Mortal Coil & Cindytalk) etc...
Between ZU, solo work and collaborations, he released more than 80 albums and played more than 3000 shows all over the world. As in 2022 he just recorded a collaboration with world famous iconic actor Malcolm McDowell called "Songs Of Stone" that will be released in september on italian label Subsound Records, and is currently working on a sound installation with Roger Ballen, one of the most influential and important photographic artists of the 21st century.
We know it
engraved in our cells
The origin
To feel the primordial song
We need to have
A childish interest
For the universe
Living In a hint of islands
Far and true
Atlantic and remote ones
A hint, that's enough
To find each other
Where time didn't exist
When there was only space
When there were mountains and seas and sky
And unnamed creatures
With roots like plants
Who extracted new forms of language from the force
To make the passage on earth more tender
To find a song that could ease the burden of love
Of this multiform creature that welcomed us
To expand ourselves like jellyfish
And make distance accessible to us
Making a continuous motion
Transforming this perpetual vibrating into our fusion
Since the origin
In a silence
Made sound
And then meat
Swimming on seabeds of ice and fire
A language that dances the dew of dawn
And sings the hidden streams
An origin where we find our ancestors
Timeless faces
Who breathe the depths of the sea and move the mystery
Meet them everywhere
For those with eyes to see
And ears to hear
Lived in the handed-down word
And in the tolling of the sky, that we call hail
On the journey back
Your hand is shaken
And your conscience accompanied
In crowds so endless
And inhabited
By a primordial solitude
Where our home will be a fire of inaccessible glaciers
In the stillness of a love that expands in a restless cosmos
With that hint still clinging
Of distant and real islands
From which the primordial song comes
Recorded and mixed by Massimo at Theresa House 2021/23
Beautifully mastered by Lorenzo Stecconi at Triple Sun 2023. Sleeve design by Rutger Zuydervelt
Front cover photo by Fridtjof Nansen
An Inuit woman with child on her back, Gronlandshavet, Kap Seen Bille
Taken during Fridtjof Nansen's expedition to Greenland, July 1888 - May 1889
https://glacialmovements.bandcamp.com/album/our-forgotten-ancestors
€16.00
Noonbugs
Minimaler Dark Ambient von diesem österreichischen Projekt, besonders gefallen die Parts mit Streichern...
“ Pure's debut full length on Mego continues to explore realms of sinister sonic's and edge of the equation audio initially previewed on the highly regarded "the.end.of.vinyl" 3" CD / 12" pic disc.
As a complete serve the full extent of this world is revealed to be an elaborate exploration - rich in texture, variation, mood and quality. In some ways this release can be seen as a take on the darker edge of 20th classical / avant garde as seen through a 4th generation raised on industrial/electronic mediums. Comprising of a continuous work and what seems to be minimal process,
this is by no means an unfolding minimal record along lines of Alvin Lucier or Elaine Radigue. Changes are more immediately discernable (whilst avoiding noise, distortion or any other 'immediate' tactics). The result is in an unsettling journey throughout an array of balanced elements: looped violins sway amongst ringing tones, a distant police siren adds an element of isolation to washes of dark frequencies. Fragments of suspense
guide the listener on a series of subtle subversion's coming together as a dynamic thematic whole. A see-saw of subversive sonic's which make for some prime late night ambience. One could say this is as close to dark ambient as Mego has come, but like all the best Mego releases Pure's is one that questions the exact nature of the genre from which it has sprung whilst incorporating certain signifying elements in an entirely new way.” [press release]
€13.00
Oppressum
"Quellet's music is not really outsider sound art, but it shares strong similarities with it. It explores a debarred universe almost impossible to escape. A minute - albeit extreme - exploration of sound (particularly through saturation), mystical discourse and excesses. However, the composer is also pictured as a regular guy living in a Swiss town, a guy who likes to toy with the local church's organ, accompanied by his wife. Sound materials come from a number of sources: the local church's organ, rented or borrowed percussion instruments (bass drum, timbales, gong, djembe), various objects being struck (his oil tank at home struck with hammers and iron ods), pipes, faucets, telephone touch pads, power tools, sound-producing toys, voice, mouth sounds, throat sounds, and wheelbarrows." [label info]
www.subrosa.net
€10.00
Circle Line
"A very peculiar journey........
It's not often we would say this, but listening to this on headphones is a most unusual experience!
Circle Line initially started life as a graphic score created by Phil Mouldycliff as a piece to be played by Keith Rowe in 1989. Over a period of twelve years this open form composition developed to the point where by 2002 an opportunity arose to make a recording of the work at IC Studio in Preston, using ambient recordings taken from Circle Line Tube stations made specifically for the project by Phil and Colin Potter . Keith effectively solos over the assemble tape collage of sounds from the Underground, starting and finishing with material collected at Edgeware Road. Given that a full circuit of the Line takes upwards of fifty minutes, the individual stations are grouped together to create workable sections delineated by geographical boundaries. Since making the recording the work has been performed live by Rowe, Potter and Mouldycliff on a number of occasions."
https://icrdistribution.bandcamp.com/album/circle-line
"R.P.M. stands for (Keith) Rowe, (Colin) Potter, (Phil) Mouldycliff, whereas the Circle Line is an integral part of London’s complex underground network. On such grounds – pun intended – Mouldycliff developed in 1989 a graphic score for Rowe’s performance; the trio recorded this version of the piece in 2002, accompanied by field recordings captured during a trip on the same route. In synthesis, what we hear is Rowe’s trademark dissection of the object previously known as the guitar mixed with structural sounds of wagons, other mechanical entities and human reverberations (voices, steps and so on) typical of an hour spent on the CL.
Having often traveled with this very medium in the past, the problem was usually having my player’s musical selection smothered or otherwise ruined by the surrounding clangor-cum-hubbub. In this case we have Colin Potter who – fortunately for us – balances the whole’s overall level, skillfully processing where necessary. The advice we are given is to listen with a good pair of headphones, and should definitely be followed. Only in this way does the music reveal its clever microscopy, giving the listener’s hearing apparatus the respect it deserves.
Beyond banal classifications – no, it is not a “drone album” – Circle Line represents an exercise in careful listening aided by sonorities that stimulate the innards of our discernment, although complementary to a day of ordinary commuting. Enjoying these extemporaneous inventions – that is, everything which exists between subsonic engrossment and exploitation of timbral oxidation – is a special pleasure in this particular context. I might look at commuting with earphones from a different perspective, after all." [Touching Extremes]
€13.00
Elongated Pentagonal Pyramid
“We are really "receivers" floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency, and what we extract from this sea and transmogrify into physical reality is but one channel from many extracted out of the superhologram” “Seperateness is an illusion”. AKIRA RABELAIS, ein Anhänger der holographischen Theorie (beruft sich auf DAVID BOHM, KARL PRIBRAM und STANISLAV GROF), spiegelt mit seiner Musik das “fundamental something” hinter allen Dingen, das, was alles zusammenhält...
"Rabelais has collected his own electronic compositions on Elongated Pentagonal Pyramid, a self-produced, limited edition CD, where he gingerly teases out the tissues of surface noise in a similar vein to the likes of Terre Thaemlitz, Achim Wollscheid and Mego's Rehberg & Bauer. But simply because he insists on placing individual clarity of vision at the center of the creative process, rather than be enslaved and driven by the technological toys and tools of the day, he will always remain a liberating remove from any definable 'scene'." [Rob Young, The Wire]
€13.00
Eisoptrophobia
Akira Rabelais’ supremely moving eisoptrophobia album issued on vinyl for the first time, 17 years after it was first released on CD. Harnessing Akira’s own smudged recollections of childhood brought to life via treated solo piano pieces by Erik Satie and Bartok, it’s a haunting mutation of sound that comes hugely recommended if you grabbed his peerless Spellewauerynsherde reissue last year, or indeed any of his releases for David Sylvian’s Samadhisound label. Followers of The Caretaker’s work or Stephan Mathieu’s classic 'Radioland' album should also dive deep into these exquisite, bittersweet memories of secret histories lost in time.
First released in 2001 on CD by Ritornell, a sub-label of Mille Plateaux, ‘eisoptrophobia’ was an early iteration of Akira applying his Argeïphontes Lyre software to classical music, opening a fascinating schism between the original object and his modern, subjective perspective in the process. Made up of spellbinding, uniquely decayed renderings of solo piano pieces, it forms a poetic farewell to the 20th century and a reluctant embrace of new technological possibilities.
The original piano recordings of Satie and Bartók pieces were made at Wave Equation Studios in Hollywood, California, and subsequently transformed by Argeïphontes Lyre with beautifully elusive results. The recognisable melodies here ring out in myriad new ways, sometimes fractured and indented by patinas of crackle that echo the original contours, while, at othere, smudged into mind-bending obfuscation or spectral, timbral thizz. They have the uncanny capacity to resemble exhumed artefacts, dug up after decades of decay, and riddled with potently psychedelic mycelium ready to spore on the listener’s mind. But they also capture that elusive yearning for early life; the distant crackle of AM radio playing in another room, scratched records, a piano playing, somehere.
The title eisoptrophobia itself means ”fear of mirrors“, in an interview with L.A. weekly back in 2002, Rabelais explained that he picked it as a way of articulating his dread of limitation. ”I exist in a much larger space than what I am physically. But if I were to look into the mirror, I would suddenly pull back into my body.” A feeling not unlike the experience of sitting through this remarkable album before suddenly being snapped back to your surroundings.
First time on vinyl, Black 2LP housed inside a deluxe, thick spine gatefold sleeve. Lacquer cut at D+M, Berlin, photography by Jacqueline Roberts, design by Michael Worthington
€26.00
Occam Ocean 3
Occam river II, for violon and cello
Occam VIII, for cello
Occam delta III, for violon, viola and cello
Silvia Tarozzi, violon.
Deborah Walker, cello.
Julia Eckhardt, viola.
Recorded in 2019 at l’Abbazia di Santa Maria Assunta, Monteveglio (Bologna)
With a 32 page booklet.
Occam Ocean 3 is an exceptional project, the result of collaboration between Eliane Radigue, French composer, pioneer of the exclusive use of continuous sounds, and three string instrumentalists, Julia Eckhardt, Silvia Tarozzi and Deborah Walker. Composed in Paris, the 3 pieces of this record were recorded in September 2019 at the Abbazia di Santa Maria Assunta, Monteveglio (Bologna) in Italy
Éliane Radigue stopped producing electronic music and began creating collaborative works with instrumentalists in 2001. Since then, she has produced over 70 works ranging from solos and string quartets to works for orchestra. She began creating occam ocean ‒ the series that makes up most of this prolific output ‒ in 2011. The individual pieces share a creative process that relies almost solely on oral and aural transmission: musicians visit Radigue at her apartment in Paris, often returning for multiple sessions before the pieces are completed.
Solo pieces are typically based on a combination of pre-prepared sonic materials from which Radigue selects sounds ‒ a process which she calls her “shopping” ‒ and a water-based image that guides the form and a ect of the piece. Ensemble pieces combine soloists from the project into many novel con gurations. Radigue often bases these ensemble pieces on new water-based images.
Radigue’s work may seem created almost as if by magic ‒ from thin air, vibrations or from zealous admiration ‒ but this is music that is made possible by the hard graft and meticulous concentration of expert musicians. Each piece requires a special kind of virtuosity that entwines precise muscular skill with extraordinary memory, imagination and patience. For musicians who have played in multiple ensemble pieces in the occam ocean series, the demands grow in nitely more complex, as one must remember many subtle differences between the different pieces.
This CD is the document of a special situation at a monastery in the mountains in Italy. It documents a version of these pieces that is co-created with a specific location at a speci c time. But the pieces may continue matu- ring as they continue to be played in di erent contexts. Like Radigue’s music that slips in and out of memory, we must allow these recordings to exist in the moment of listening but not as scores or xed objects.
This is music that resists remembering.
This is music that exists solely in the moment of its performance, that marries precision and uidity, that does not concern itself with written traces but only an indelible atmosphere of sonic transformation.
This is music that is experienced both privately and collectively, that merges our own inner worlds of perception with the exterior world of space, time, bodies, instruments, soundwaves and architecture.
This is music that covers its own tracks. It is a Japanese rock garden where beautiful patterns are created and then erased.
This music inhabits the far reaching corners of the room, bouncing o of beams and dancing in our ears, blending and merging into an autonomous mass of ecstatically vibrating sound.
€25.00
In Memoriam-Ostinato / Danse des Dakinis
"Alga Marghen presents the last chapter from the Feedback Works documentation series, a brand-new LP including "In Memoriam-Ostinato" and "Danse des Dakinis", two previous unreleased tracks by Eliane Radigue. Among the works of fixed duration from the feedback period, "In Memoriam-Ostinato" is the link between "Jouet Electronique" (ALGA 029LP) and "Opus 17" (ALGA 045LP), and allows you to understand the evolution of her approach. "In Memoriam-Ostinato" is a game of mirroring symbols which glide into a non-measured, bent and elastic, temporality. Eliane Radigue's working method and her aesthetic direction are evident in this work from 1969: her very own unique temporal space of sonic experiences. Even though it bears the same name as the third part of "Adnos III", "Danse des Dakinis" is a peculiar work in Eliane's oeuvre. Conceived in a short time, with all kind of tapes from the composer's past work, it fluently shows a kaleidoscopic vision of Radigue's sensibility for sound. In 1998 she put together a curious self-portrait in sound. There is a feedback ostinato conceived around 1969 and which refers to "In Memoriam-Ostinato" and "Opus 17". All through "Danse des Dakinis" you plunge into the sound of a creek recorded at Mills College campus that brings you back to the field-recordings from the beginning of the 1960s, made on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. Such elements construct "Elemental1" (ALGA 029LP) as well. There are also some discreet interventions on the ARP 2500 synthesizer. It is indeed a peculiar work, which doesn't have the same features of her other compositions, especially at that time of her compositional path. There is an explanation for the composer producing this kind of sound material in 1998, and not limited to the sound waves of the ARP synthesizer. Invited to a workshop at Mills College in 1998, Eliane Radigue could not load herself down with her bulky instrument on such a trip. So, she left with just a few tapes taken from her own collection, drawn from different periods, and composed "Danse des Dakinis" with those old elements. There is tension in this composition, a certain wildness, an unpredictability of elements, those which are recognized as fundamental elements, which give structure to the universe. "Dance des Dakinis" is an intimate and wild symphony, alive and unpredictable, which is to be the next-to-last gesture of the composer before completely stopping her work with electronics." [label info]
"There is no artist, working in the contemporary field of experimental sound, that is more important than the French composer Éliane Radigue. She is a shining light, who, for more than half a century, has quietly blazed trails with a body of work that is as creatively visionary as it is sublime. Back in the 2010s, Alga Marghen launched a crucial archival series, dedicated to some of Radigue’s earliest and previously unavailable works, many predating her first LP, 1983's “Songs of Milarepa”, by more than a decade. Having already delivered four LP of this material, they return with their fifth and final instalment in the series, “In Memoriam-Ostinato / Danse des Dakinis”. Perhaps the most fascinating of the group, the first work was composed in 1969 in the period between the creation of two of her earlier works comprised within Alga Marghen’s initiative, “Jouet Electronique” and “Opus 17”, while the second draws on material recorded during the 1960s and then further intervened with, “Danse des Dakinis” was conceived and created in 1998 by Radigue as a self-portrait in sound. Absolutely essential on every count, we couldn’t think of a better place for this series to end, further illuminating the remarkable beginnings of one of our greatest living composers in truly eye watering ways.
Born in 1932, Éliane Radigue began her musical endeavours in Paris during the late 1950s and early '60s, working under Pierre Schaffer and Pierre Henry, before quickly outstepping her mentors. Initially working predominantly in tape, during the early 1970s she made the radical switch to modular synthesis, beginning a decades long exploration of the ARP 2500 that drew on her practice as a Buddhist and pushed the notions of musicality endlessly forward, taking the entire landscape of experimental sound with her through a series of sonic mediations that bound life and art.
During the early 2000s, Radigue set aside her synth, embarking upon a hiatus from music, before taking the unexpected step of beginning to compose works with and for acoustic instrumentalists. By the the early 2010s, this new phase in her career had begun to emerge as the sprawling work, “Occam Ocean” series, arguably bringing her more acclaim and adoration than any other point in her long career. Fittingly, it was during roughly this same moment, beginning with “Jouet electronique”, that Alga Marghen embarked upon their archival series dedicated to Radigue’s earliest and previously unavailable works, offering a unprecedented and much needed sense of dimension to the breadth of her career. Followed in rapid succession by “Feedback Works”, “Vice-Versa, etc…”, and “Opus 17” - each mining the period when the composer worked predominantly with magnetic tape - it’s been nearly a decade since the last LP appeared, making the emergence of their final instalment in the series. “In Memoriam-Ostinato / Danse des Dakinis”, that much more sweet.
Comprising two free standing works, the first, “In Memoriam-Ostinato”, foreshadows the pacing that would soon come to define Radigue’s unique approach to composing sound. Measured and slow, it is an immersion into an extending state of contemplation, manifested in organizations of sound; a game of mirroring symbols that bend and elongate time, inviting the ear to get lost. As Radigue recounts: “This piece was commissioned for a Happening, Mémorial. It was a sort of secular procession to the castle of Verderonne, a beautiful place. The pools bordering the edifice were lit, and everyone was dressed or draped in mauve. It terminated in one of the grand salons of the castle where I played “In Memoriam-Ostinato”.”
While considerably more concise than many of the durational works through which Radigue would come to make her name, the 23 minutes that make up “In Memoriam-Ostinato” are not encompassing or lacking in depth. Where it differs is within the presence of slighter darker temperament and mood. Across the work’s length, low rumbles of textural noise form a bedrock - feeling a bit like the death knell of dying electronics - into which strange, warbling tones of feedback pulse and dance with a palpable sense of tension. Like so much Radigue’s work over the years to come, “In Memoriam-Ostinato” actively obscures a consciousness of the artist’s hand. It's so elegant and risk laden, that were it encountered by chance, without context, it might be perceived as the generative form of an abandoned radio station within an alien landscape.
Rounding out the collection and not to be confused with the third part of “Adnos III”, which bears the same name, “Danse des Dakinis” is quite possibly the only work of its kind in Radigue’s remarkable body of work. Drawing on a wealth of tapes she created during the 1960s, the work was created in 1998 as a kind of self-portrait in sound; a kaleidoscopic vision of Radigue's sensibility for sound, a memoir, and a hall of mirrors prismatically reflecting the multiples sides of self. The piece, because of the many phases in her career from which it draws, is a fascinating hybrid that uses field-recordings from the beginning of the 1960s, made on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and capturing the sound of a creek recorded at Mills College campus, feedback elements from 1969, as well as later interventions on her ARP 2500 synthesizer.
Standing outside her larger body of composition, while intrinsically bound to it, “Danse des Dakinis” nods toward the dakini, a female deity in Vajrayana Buddhism or a female demon in Hinduism, establishing a curious bond between wrathful female forms and the elements of nature which double, in Buddhism - a central force in Radigue’s life and work - as the absence of ego or mental obstacles, where nature itself is revealed. Here, once again, we encounter the composer in a darker meditative state, weaving the sounds of nature into those of her Arp and feedback to create a complex internal world that blurs the lines between abstraction and raw emotion, electronics and organic sounds.
It’s hard to not feel a little bitter sweet about the long overdue emergence of Éliane Radigue’s “In Memoriam-Ostinato / Danse des Dakinis”. On one hand, it’s a truly incredible and deeply illuminating body of work. On the other, it signals the end of Alga Marghen’s decade long immersion into the composers crucial, previously unreleased body of feedback works from the 1960s. Still, we couldn’t think of a better way to end than here. It’s one of the most intriguing and engaging of the group. Absolutely fantastic from the first to the last." [Soundohm]
€26.00
11 Dec 80
"11 Dec 80 is a two-CD set containing Eliane Radigue's live performance of Chry-Ptus (1971), her first work for modular synthesizer, and the world premiere of parts one and three of Triptych (1978). Triptych part 2 is also performed. Upon hearing these performances for the first time in many years, Radigue declared them to be the best versions she'd ever heard. Radigue's sublime renderings of these major pieces are full of illusory stasis, slow change, and dense, slow-motion drone that has characterized her pioneering electronic work. These pieces move like a river with currents shifting beneath the surface. While you can't quite distinguish the individual components you get a clear feeling of motion and change." [label info]
https://imprec.bandcamp.com/album/11-dec-1980
"Carrying on their incredible dedication to the work of Éliane Radigue, Important Records returns with “11 Dec 1980”, a staggering double CD of never before released live recordings. Capturing the composer in the midsts of sublime performances of her two seminal works, “Chry-Ptus” and “Triptych”, and in the case of the later debuting two of its sections.
A rare chance to return the ear to a crucial period in Radigue's sublime and astounding career.
For the better part of two decades, the American imprint, Important Records, has occupied a crucial place in the landscape of ambitious and forward-thinking contemporary sound, offering a home to an incredibly diverse range of artists. Recently, it’s been hard to ignore their growing catalog of archival works and reissues by historically seminal composers like Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, Yoshi Wada, Charlemagne Palestine, Catherine Christer Hennix, Else Marie Pade, and, most notably, Éliane Radigue, whose “11 Dec 1980” - a never before issued body of live recordings - that now joins their incredible catalog. Encountering the composer performing live during a defining moment in her career, its truly remarkable sounds are imbued with a historical importance that can’t be understated. Comprising the works “Chry-Ptus” and “Triptych” across a beautifully produced 2CD set, this is one of those albums that can’t be missed.
The French composer, Éliane Radigue, is among the most remarkable creative figures working today - a visionary mind who has quietly blazed trails for more than half a century, leaving an unparalleled body of work in her wake. She has endlessly rewritten how we understand music and the materiality of sound. Quiet, radical, and rebellious, her works are infused with mesmerizing intellectual and creative optimism, culminating as sonic mediations which join life and art as a single force.
Born in 1932, Radigue began her musical endeavours in Paris during the late 1950 and early '60s, working under Pierre Schaffer and Pierre Henry, before quickly outstepping the limits of her mentors. First working predominantly in tape, during the early 1970s she made the radical switch to modular synthesis. Over the next three decades, drawing on her inward passage as a practicing Buddhist, she dedicated herself to an intimate relationship with her ARP 2500, exploring it endlessly - pushing not only her own notions of musicality endlessly forward, and with it the entire landscape of experimental sound.
During the early 2000s, Radigue made the unexpected shift in moving from synthesis to composing for acoustic instruments - most notably appearing as the sprawling, constantly evolving work, “Occam Ocean”. While this has closed the body of electronic works that evolved over the course of three decades, thankfully there have been a slow trickle of archival works to return us to those incredible sounds. Important’s “11 Dec 1980”, is the latest to return this seminal period in her career to our ears.
Spanning two CDs, “11 Dec 1980” comprises two works performed live by Radigue on the composer Charles Amirkhanian’s Berkley, CA, based morning concert series on KPFA radio. The first piece, taking up the entire first disc, is “Chry-Ptus”, among the most important works in her output from a period of remarkable growth and transition. Made in 1971 at the studio she shared with Laurie Spiegel at New York University, on a Buchla installed by Morton Subotnick, It was the first she composed for the modular synthesizer, and thus laid the foundations for decades of work to come.
In addition to representing a bridge within Radigue’s own practice, “Chry-Ptus” equally signifies a transition within the history of synthesis, incorporating textural elements which offer an image of its generative machine, as so many electronic works had done before it, while clearly moving into more etherial and constrained territories that would represent a seismic shift within the field; a pulsing body made of the Buchla’s bleating tones, giving way to an incredible dance of sub-harmonics and overtones generated by the simultaneous playback, with or without synchronisation, of the two tapes onto which they were committed. The result is overwhelming immersive, mediative, surprising and beautiful, and that doesn’t even begin to address its historical weight.
The second disc of “11 Dec 1980” is “Triptych”, a work that wouldn’t relieve a proper physical release until 2009. Remarkably, this performance represented the world premier of two of the three parts (1 & 3). Like “Chry-Ptus”, “Triptych” is a major composition in Radigue’s canon. Composed and recorded in her Paris studio, it is the first in a series of masterpieces inspired by Tibetan Buddhism, the religion and practice that would guide her work over the coming decades, as well as marking her return to composition following a slowing in her musical production that resulted from spiritual explorations. Each part of the work draws its inspiration from 'the spirit of the fundamental elements,' water, air, fire, earth..”
Created with a great sense of humility and contemplative simplicity, “Triptych” begins with a passage of slow rumbling, as though drawn directly from the organic matter of the natural world, before shifting into nearly an hour for delicately modulating synthesised long tones and drones. Here we encounter Radigue's sublime rendering eluding to full illusory stasis, rich with density and microscopic motion. It’s the composer at her absolute best, immersing the ear in consciousness altering sounds like no other can.
Once again, Important has done some seriously remarkable work, unearthing these recordings and transporting us back to an exceptional moment in Radigue's creative evolution, not to mention electronic music at large. Issued as a double CD, and overwhelmingly beautiful, we’d struggle to recommend it enough." {Soundohm]
€20.00
In Teufel's Küche?
"... The music is great, yet hard to define. Is it musique concrete? Perhaps one could say it is. There is the use of piano sounds, various objects picked up with contact microphones and perhaps some voice material. But what Raionbashi does with this material is not drown it in electronic processing, but built in various layers of unprocessed nature. Lots of layers it seems, but with various moments of silence built in. I perhaps wrongly expected some noise, but this is far from it. This is some great obscured music (as opposed to obscure music), with some intense moments. Not easy listening, but one that grows every time you play it ." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
" 10" Vinyl published by Absurd (Greece) and Ignivomous (USA). Follow-up release of 2006 'Kollekte' LP on Hanson Records (USA). All Voices, Noises, Instruments, Body-Functions & Apostrophes by DL. Performed, recorded and mixed 2005-2008 at No-Go-Area, Berlin. Mastered at Clunk, and cut at D+M, Berlin, by Rashad Becker. Edtion of 500 copies. 33rpm." [label info]
" "In The Devil's Kitchen." So translates the German title, the
first that we've stocked from Daniel Lowenbruck, who both records as
Raionbashi and runs the Tochnit-Aleph mail order service out of
Berlin. He's also a long standing member of the Schimpfluch Gruppe
whose provocative recordings and performances directly channel the
Vienna Actionists such as Hermann Nitsch, Gunter Brus, and Rudolf
Schwartzkogler. Where the Austrians were pushing their transgessive
acts through art world channels, Schimpfluch has their origins in
punk, industrial culture, and (at least for the case of Schimpfluch's
Dave Phillips) metal taken to a Dada extreme laced with theatrical
ultra-violence. So begin these deconstructed tapes and mangled silences.
Lowenbruck cites that the sources to his Devil's Kitchen
include 'noises, instruments, body functions, and apostrophes.' The
discernible sounds are a piano being struck by a hammer fist on the
lower octave of the keys, a police whistle blowing out the condenser
mic on a Walkman, and some downpitched vocal howls that come across as
way more demonic than those wolf growlings on Ben Frost's album By The
Throat. Between these recognizable elements, Lowenbruck cuts and
pastes with monochromatic noises that puncture grey curtains of leaden
hiss. Compositionally, certainly hits the mark with the guttural
musique concrete from the Schimpfluch Gruppe, somewhere between the
machined ruptures of Dave Phillips and the unsettled ambience crafted
by the impeccable G*Park; or less self-referentially stated, somewhere
between the sound poetry of Henri Chopin and the corroded tape work of
Joe Colley. Limited to 500 copies and highly recommended!" [Aquarius Records]
www.tochnit-aleph.com
€10.00
Conquest Play / Clockwork
12" LP by legendary Ramleh on Entropy, with two exclusive tracks. "Conquest Play" is a terrifying guitar noise wail, while "Clockwork" is a rhythmic
post-punk epic. Essential stuff.
€13.00
It's never alright
For many years now Fourth Dimension Records has forged a strong relationship with both Gary Mundy and Anthony Di Franco of Ramleh by virtue of support for their respective solo endeavours, Kleistwahr and JFK. After having released a large proportion of their albums under these guises it then only made sense that a Ramleh record itself for the label would be mooted. This single grew out of these discussions and follows on from 2019's critically acclaimed The Great Unlearning 2LP on Nashazphone, which itself saw Gary and Anthony not only reunited with Stuart Dennison, Martyn Watts and Philip Best, but also collaborating with Philip's wife (and Consumer Electronics partner) Sarah Froelich and delivering perhaps their most immediate and surprising work to date. Made available as a good old fashioned double-A side on 'punk rock green vinyl', both 'It's Never Alright' and 'Kerb Krawler' maintain these high level proceedings, too. If you ever wondered how Noddy Holder might sound if fed through the Ramleh mangler, then 'It's Never Alright' will help flesh out that thought with its city-destroying stomp attack colliding head on with the kinda untamed keyboard splurge the group is more generally renowned for exorcising. Before you then begin to prod at those question marks arising from the melee, 'Kerb Krawler' helps to reel you back to a psychedelic orbit nobody but Ramleh know how to navigate. Proof positive, should it be necessary, that these boys won't be donning mirror adorned top hats any time soon. Typical for Ramleh as they stand now, both songs represent just two of the many sides they're now given to exploring. Bold, serious, playful and once again illustrating exactly how easily they straddle the line of being great musicians never afraid to turn that notion on its head by rising to new challenges, this single pays testament to their current upward curve. Limited to 500. Due in November 2019.
€8.00
Wanderlust
Winter Light is proud to announce the release of Rapoon ‘Wanderlust' CD, a brand new studio album containing 10 all new and original tracks. Robin Storey aka Rapoon needs no introduction, having released around 60 albums alone under his avant-garde project. Robin has collaborated with many artists over the years and for this release additional vocals for the album have been supplied by the Russian folk singer Tatyana Stepchenko aka TOLOKA.
As the title indicates. ‘Wanderlust’ is the endless yearning, the search for questions and for answers, the horizon ever drawing onward with the lure of what lies beyond. The pull of the mountains and the deserts and the infinitive light of the stars, shining from the distant past. We travel…..
The album is released in a full colour, 6-panel digipack. Artwork and cover design by Midnight Sun Studio with original paintings from Robin Storey.
The CD is comprised of 10 original tracks with a running time of 70:08. Strictly limited to 400 copies.
www.winter-light.nl
"During the cold and eerie autumn season, the best thing that could happen is a record which could easily transform bad weather and dark emotions into something dreamy and wonderful. Rapoon is a fine example of this dreamy atmosphere, and its new record, Wanderlust, is the biggest gift for anyone who wants to participate in this magical travel through a state of wandering.
Wanderlust has been released by a small and obscure Dutch label, Winter-Light. The imprint has released some other releases including two from Seetyca and some other bands. The atmosphere and sound of Wanderlust perfectly describes the goals of Winter-Light as I see them: to spread highly somnambulant music usually in ambient or drone form, refusing anything radical or anything political, instead just focusing on someone else’s dreams or nightmares and exploring that kind of emotion in audio form. The mind of someone sleeping is rather obscure, led by unconscious, filled with many different layers, and Wanderlust is just like that too. It’s hard to simply describe this album in simple terms, but it’s crucial to say that this Rapoon effort is about a lot of things; it’s filled with many elements and every song seems like a different dream.
Rapoon
One big aspect behind the music of Wanderlust is rhythm. The album starts with a beat which pulses like an ocean and leads to an evolution of cascading samples. The structures behind each individual song seems to remain similar throughout the album, with seemingly only samples driving it to the end. Speaking of samples, it’s difficult to recognize their origins, and that seems to be a good element—to a fault. In that way, samples seem to be much more obscure and strange, which is definitely unique. In other songs of Wanderlust, simple synth melodies are used with an equally straightforward yet effective rhythm, creating a stronger style of that ethereal sound. Sometimes, Robin Storey‘s music even sounds sacred, especially with the addition of classic instruments. In other cases, songs on Wanderlust sound more playfully mystical—almost cinematic in scope, like vintage film scores. Gloomy synthesizer sounds create a mood of desolation. Listening though the album, you get the impression that the whole thing is alternating between elevated emotions, ethereal visions, and genuine melancholy.
‘Calling Ghosts’ is unique to the album as it begins with something similar to female Slavic chanting and works its way into a violin performance, distant samples, and some other instruments. Listening to Wanderlust, it‘s difficult to miss just how varied it really is, which is a quality that unveils itself in its fullest glory through Storey’s patented epic atmospheres, especially on ‘You Look Like Something’, whose twelve-plus minutes are filled with strange ambient artifacts.
Rapoon’s Wanderlust is a dreamy landscape full of majestic vibes, strange but suitable samples, and sounds of exotic instruments. Its general atmosphere and the sounds that create it are often so foreign that they feel almost alien in nature—something that Storey is becoming exceedingly talented with at his age. It is the perfect album for this autumn as we work our way into winter, and it‘s intended to be played by a listener every evening just before sleep. The effect of it should be unforgettable."
[Heathen Harvest]
€13.00
Hotel Bravo
After a longer break Rapoon returns to Zoharum with allbrand new studio recorded album. The eponymous „Hotel Bravo” is a relict of sorts, which lost its splendor with time and water that took away a part of adjacent land. This decaying building is also a symbol. A special place evoking fragile memories, scraps of images and long forgotten conversations. It’s all the movies seen during the time of adolescence. Finally, it’s all the dreams dreamt years ago by guests within its premises…
The above depicts a journey to which Robert Storey invites you on a course of its eight intricately woven sound compositions.
https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/hotel-bravo
€12.00
Dust of Souls (re-issue)
“Dust of Souls” was previously released by Ultra Mail Prod. Limited to 100 copies release was almost entirely sold out in pre-sale leaving many Rapoon fans empty handed and aurally dissatisfied. Trying to meet the expectations of those who weren’t lucky enough to get this album Zoharum picks up the gauntlet and decides to reissue this important piece of Rapoon’s discography.
Album presents 8 tracks of trance inducing rhythms and sounds. With a use of processed acoustic instruments, electronics and ambient scapes Robin Storey takes us on a journey to the unknown lands and spaces. Near East ethnic influences are served in a form of loop based brain captivating compositions. Think of softer side of Muslimgauze but more ritual and hypnotic.
As usual former member of :zoviet*france: delivers a great piece of listening, where you can fully appreciate his years of experience as musician and independent artist. This is experimental music in its best.
Album comes in 6 panel digipack limited to 500 copies.
https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/dust-of-souls
€12.00
:Cinema Telephonique:
We present the latest release from Rapoon. ": Cinema Telephonique :" is an audio description of an imagined film. Robin Storey was inspired to start working on the album by the acoustic phenomenon that appeared while scrolling his sound files into 1010Blackbox sampler with the play activated. Staccato little snapshots of sound evoking cinematic fragments of pictures through the random audio. Every track was played live with looped drum recordings/resampled and multi-triggered. The recordings were then refined in Pro Tools. This album contains material, composed especially for a vinyl plate according to the scheme used before the CD era, when the longplay lasted not much longer than 40 minutes, which contained the entire concept, divided into two sides and also functioning as separate fragments, consisting of several shorter pieces arranged in such an order as to build their proper drama, taking into account factors such as their length, dynamics and sound.
The album is released only as LP on 180g of navy blue, transparent vinyl in a limited edition of 300 copies.
https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/cinema-telephonique
€20.00
same
"Jeremy Pisani recorded these 11 tracks between 1996 and 2003. As a resident of western Massachusetts, he shared stages with acts like Sunburned Hand of Man (=vaguely focused free folk), P.G.Six (acid folk, reviewed on next page), MV & EE Medicine Show (=avant music), Flaherty & Corsano duo (=avant music), Dredd Foole (=guitarist / s-sw, -havn’t hear him yet-) and Joshua (psych-folk) has maintained a curiously low profile.
The combinations of fingerpicking guitar meanderings with additional textures and some murmering voice (like on “First”) fits well with music like early Tower Recordings, Six Organs Of Admittance, Currituck Co., etc. Jeremy described his music well as “A soundtrack for dreams, chemical endeavours, human afflictions and distant memories”.
Acoustic guitar is the main instrument, often as acoustic guitar meanderings, with textures and fingerpicking improvisations, combined with some additional instruments like amplified guitar and banjo. On several tracks the guitar is combined with mellotron : on “Routine”, “Cistern”, “Wingshot”, and on the slightly loaded “Flight”. There are also touches of collages with other sounds (like with a distant phonograph on “Agrippa”). The production and mixing is well done and in a combination of songs the concept has been made optimal. I heard for instance an original use of changing the environmental echoes or tensions in the recordings on “Stormwatch”. “Pallid” has also a strangely mixed sound, which has some surreal effect, probably benifits from a less perfect recording. And “Flight” which has a somewhat dense tension is mixed as outro into the quieter acoustic fingerpicking solo. In between tracks with more tension are various very moody instrumental tracks like “Routine”, which has also flute and mellotron. A strange track is “Green Hill Beach” which starts with waves, then has guitar improvisations (amplified and acoustic), some voice whispers, and then evolves to more and more electro-acoustic and electric guitars echoes, to a point of saturation with effects, then calms down as if filtered again to amplified guitar meanderings only. In general I can say that those people who liked the experimental approaches from Six Organs of Admittance should check this artist too. But also fans of Joshua / P.G.Six might notice here a wonderful undiscovered talent.
The last hidden 12th track is a beautiful solo fingerpicking instrumental closer in Middle Eastern mode. A release which definitely deserves to be heard with an official publication." [Psychedelic Folk]
"Red Favorite, a cycle of compositions for guitars, electronics and voices created by Jeremy Pisani was first released as a limited edition CD on Spirit of Orr and is now offered, as it was originally conceived to appear, on an LP. He moved closer and looked through the peephole. And he saw: the world stretched out before him, a quiet and gentle space with a broad expanse of grass that practically glistened in its greenness. A sparkling brook ran through the meadow in the middle distance, and now he saw that the grass was dotted with the pale blue and soft yellow of many blooming flowers, which, half hidden in the grass, stared out at him like so many frightened eyes. On a distant hilltop stood a grove of small pink trees, covered and obscured by the astonishing pinkness of their blossoms. The world had a sense of freshness, as if it might only be minutes old -- washed clean by a careful springtime rain, dried and scrubbed by a solicitous breeze, burnished to its brightness by the rays of a gentle sun. It was an uncomplicated place, a very simple place. But what it had was quite enough; it had all it needed." [label notes]
€15.50
Years of Lightning, Day of Drums
"Brand new album from two former :zoviet*france: members Robin Storey (Rapoon) and Mark Spybey (Dead Voices on Air). This is the fifth album of their joint project which has been formed in 2006 and now gathers more and more attention from the audience which it really deserves. Obviously the duo is on its best creative form today and this work proves it totally. Delicate improvisational loop/collage technic which became a face of :zoviet*france: of its golden mid-80s era is brought here to a new level of sonic wizardry making a perfect balance between great operational technical skills and living breathing musical canvas. An absolute masterpiece of experimental electronic sound art which is far from both formal approach of concrete music and total lack of structure typical to pure improvisationists. Very recommended not only to :zoviet*france: / Rapoon / Dvoa fans but for much wider circles of true music lovers! This edition is limited to 450 copies and comes in a full colour digisleeve with two inserts." [label info]
€13.00
In real Life
Black Truffle present In Real Life, the latest in a flurry of releases from Berlin-based guitarist and composer Julia Reidy. Having drawn acclaim for solo performances on 12-string acoustic guitar that bridge microtonality, ‘American primitive’ stylings and classic minimalism, Reidy’s recent releases have utilised an increasingly broad sonic palette, fleshing out guitar-based composition with electronics, field recordings, and – most strikingly – heavily auto-tuned vocals. On In Real Life, Reidy pushes one step further, crafting an epic LP-length suite that moves from abstracted song to lush electronics and explorations in contemporary musique concrète. Beginning with a passage of eerie electronics and creaking percussive interjections, Reidy’s heavily auto-tuned voice quickly takes centre stage. Surrounded by explosions of electric guitar and synthesised arpeggios, the auto-tuned voice delivers a melancholic ode, bringing together poetic images to reflect on the instability of experience and mutability of identity in a contemporary world saturated by digital technology. This concern with the unsettled relationship between the physical and digital is reflected musically by the constantly shifts in emphasis between Reidy’s physically demanding guitar-picking and the various forms of synthesis deployed. Similarly, the dynamic imagery of cutting, shattering, and ‘racing streams’ present in Reidy’s lyrics also serves to characterise the structure of In Real Life, which ceaselessly shifts between distinct episodes. The song-based opening, long sequences of frenetic 12-string guitar shadowed and eventually overtaken by synth tones, passages of delicate chiming harmonics, electro-acoustic cut-ups – each flows seamlessly into the next, often recurring throughout the record’s duration, which lingers over interstitial moments between these episodes.
Mixed and mastered by Joe Talia at Good Mixture, Tokyo. Vinyl cut at 45rpm for maximum fidelity by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin. Artwork by Suze Whaites. LP desgn by Lasse Marhaug.
€20.50
Clone EP
"The Clone EP was actually recorded in late 2011 and followed close on the heels of the Concur EP, which was released on Tiny Lights in December 2011. It is therefore a reaction to that first EP, a desire to keep moving forward artistically and a reflection of where my my head was at during the time I was mixing the tracks together. Where the Concur EP was essentially a series of remixes using samples from my brother's band I Concur to create something new while reflecting the spirit and energy of those songs, The Clone EP is very much a fresh piece of work, starting with nothing but an interest to make beat driven music and to keep revising and editing the same samples until I came up with three linked but unique tracks, hence the title of the EP. Therefore the techno rhythms of Clone 1 almost seamlessly morph into the broken beats and noise of Clone 2 which in turn dissolve into the drone soundscapes and reverb drenched percussion of Clone 3. They are cannibal and brethren, feeding off one another and mirror image at the same time.
The sound of the three tracks is again very much a reflection of that period of time as well. I had recently discovered for myself just the potency of Sandwell District, in all of their sounds, images and guises. At the same time I was grinding my way through a number of long term influences such as Mika Vainio, Throbbing Gristle, Public Image Limited, Burial, Ben Frost, Autechre to name but a few, trying to do my best to endure the typically bleak British weather and the tendency for reflection and introspection which typically invades ones consciousness as we near the end of another year. Limited to 100 copies." [label info]
www.altvinyl.com
€10.00
Designer Time
The first-ever vinyl reissue of this epic collaboration between industrial experimentalists from Iceland, Reptilicus, and The Hafler Trio. Designer Time was originally released 1994 on Staalplaat as a CD release. This new version is remastered and pressed on white vinyl.
Reptilicus (Guðmundur I. Markússon and Johann Eiriksson) met industrialist extraordinaire and only constant member of The Hafler Trio, Andrew M. McKenzie, in 1991 when he was visiting Iceland with artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff. This was the beginning of a fruitful collaboration which lasted for several years. During this period, McKenzie moved to Iceland where he lived for over a decade, having a considerable influence on the Icelandic experimental and electronic scene, among them artists such as Curver and Johann Johannsson.
In the beginning of 1992, Reptilicus found themselves with McKenzie in a huge freezing chamber of a derelict slaughterhouse (which was later to become the lodgings of the Iceland Academy of the Arts). They were accompanied by Indriði Einarsson of electro-performance pioneers Inferno 5. In the freezer, they recorded various sounds that were later subjected to sampling and software manipulation. The results, which combined a layering of noise, ambient and rhythm with a pinch of the unforeseen, were released on CD by Dutch label Staalplaat in the beginning of 1994 under the joint names of Reptilicus and The Hafler Trio. The title, which is a pun on “designer drugs”, refers, on the one hand, to the idea of a form of time that is designed, artificial, and man made, and, on the other, to the genres of mood, easy-listening and muzak, as is evident from the sleeve design.
Reptilicus continues the band’s collaboration with Toronto-based Artoffact Records, who are no stranger to the Icelandic music scene, having released records from Kælan Mikla, Sólveig Matthildur, Legend, and other Reykjavik-based artists. Artoffact released Reptilicus’ Unison in 2018.
Designer Time will be reissued on Vinyl, CD, and digital formats on June 4th, 2021.
https://artoffact.com/releases/designer-time/
€23.00
Etat d'Urgence
"RESGESTAE is the project of Nicholas P., an experimental musician living in Athens, Greece. Using samples, field-recording, etc. he creates post-industrial, cinematic soundscapes, incorporating true political, social and economic elements. "Etat d'Urgence" is no more than a social control soundtrack, an experience in our daily lives of fear. Recommended to all those who like POST-SCRIPTUM and PROPERGOL.
RESGESTAE is the project of Nicholas P., an experimental sound-artist living in Athens, Greece. He started creating post-industrial music in 2005 with a dark-ambient project called [distopia] which released a couple of full-length albums, split-releases and a few EP's on various independant labels.
From 2010, being infatuated with the dark-ambient and "horror" concept, Nicholas started experimenting using wave editing software, working with field-recordings and other sound samples. RESGESTAE was born. The name could be translated to "things done", or the space of time that occurs from commiting a crime to the sentencing for that crime.
RESGESTAE is influenced by contemporary politics viewed from a social prism. Nowadays, everything ranging from a discovery of a virus to the theoretical definition of a new field of economic competition is a political act that affects everyone's social life. He's also influenced by the works of W.S.BURROUGHS, F.NIETZSCHE, Aldous HUXLEY, CRITICAL ART ENSEMBLE, Jacques MESRINE and various street articles.
RESGESTAE's purpose is to compose contemporary power-electronics with both "cultural terrorism" and an esoteric aesthetic. For him, the "typical" power-electronics sound , mixing harsh electronics and up-front vocals has gone into hiatus. His purpose is to use extreme frequencies, samples and drones to form a deep sub-sonic landscape. This creates a cinematic experience incorporating true political, social and economic elements. That's why this first release deals with media control, the deep state, technoscience and biotechnology. "Etat d'Urgence" is no more than a social control soundtrack, an experience in our daily lives of fear." [label info]
www.nuitetbrouillard.com
€12.00
Sam's Enchanted Evening
The Residents are an American art collective best known for their over 60 studio albums that were recorded over a period of over forty years. They also created some outstanding multimedia works, mainly three CD ROM projects and ten DVDs. Working as an anonymous collective, their identitites were kept secret until in 2017 Hardy Fox revealed himself as their primary composer. Hardy died in October 2018, but the group continue to record and perform. Sam's Enchanted Evening is a theatrical performance by Randy Rose, lead singer of The Residents. It was performed between October 2011 and March 2012 in Berkeley, California and New York City. Rose's only companion on stage was long-time Residents collaborator Joshua Raoul Brody on piano. A one-man cabaret performance consisting largely of re-interpreted renditions of popular songs from the mid-to-late 20th century, interpreted by Rose in the guise of "Sam the Stranger", it was the first Residents-related performance piece to be credited to an individual member of the group. Full tracklist: 1. Introduction 1 2. The Ballad Of Davy Crockett 3. Sam's Opening Monolog 4. Teddy Bear's Picnic 5. Monolog - Favorite Songs 6. September Song 7. Sixteen Tons 8. Monolog - The Nightgown/The South 9. Ode To Billy Joe 10. Ring Of Fire 11. Monolog - I Got Married 12. True Love Never Runs Smooth 13. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry 14. Monolog - Creosote 15. Willow Weep For Me 16. Monolog - Little Sam 17. Livin' La Vida Loco 18. Introduction 2 19. Who Do You Love 20. Moon River 21. Walk On By 22. Tracks Of My Tears 23. Monolog . Duane & Ronnie 24. Born To Be Wild 25. Monolog - Drafted 26. Chinatown By Chinatown 27. Mack The Knife 28. Monolog - Vietnam 29. Paint It Black 30. Monolog . Torture 31. The Windmills Of Your Mind 32. End Monolog 33. Happy Trails 34. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry (Rehearsal).
Soloperformance von Residents-Leadsänger Randy Rose als CD im Digipack auf Klanggalerie. In San Francisco beheimatet und seit Ende der sechziger Jahre aktiv, zählen The Residents, deren Mitglieder ihre wahre Identität seit Anbeginn geheim hielten und sich dabei stets in bizarren Kostümierungen präsentierten, zu den experimentierfreudigsten Formationen der zeitgenössischen Musikszene, die ihre Veröffentlichungen zudem auf dem bandeigenen Label Ralph Records präsentierten. So erschienen von der für ihren höchst eigenwilligen Mix aus Experimental-Rock, Elektronik und Avantgarde / E-Musik bekannten Band, die 1974 mit „Meet The Residents“ ihr wegweisendes Albumdebüt vorlegte, bis dato mehr als sechzig Studioalben (mit zumeist gesamtkünstlerischem Konzept). „Sam‘s Enchanted Evening“ ist eine Performance von Randy Rose, dem Leadsänger von The Residents. Zwischen Oktober 2011 und März 2012 in Kalifornien und New York City aufgeführt, war Roses einziger Begleiter auf der Bühne dabei der langjährige Residents-Mitarbeiter Joshua Raoul Brody am Klavier. Die Ein-Mann-Kabarettaufführung bestand größtenteils aus neu interpretierten populären Liedern des 20. Jahrhunderts und wurde von Rose in der Gestalt von „Sam the Stranger“ vorgetragen.
https://www.klanggalerie.com/gg449
€19.50
Enquiries
"I’ve been waiting for this one to come for quite a while. The solo debut of Lloyd James, known for what he has done in NAEVUS for the last decade.
Rumors about this commitment found their way to me shortly after ”Silent Life” and I thought to myself that ”gotta sound like Clapton” but no no no. As RETARDER, Lloyd sets out on a very edgy and stormy voyage, full of obstacles to overcome. It’s very experimental, most of this material could possibly destroy a NAEVUS album and sometimes, it’s even more weird than that LARK BLAMES album he did together with Marc Blackie (SLEEPING PICTURES). Not two tracks sound the same but that’s just a statement I establish and, it’s neither positive nor negative, it’s just the way it is.
The intro is a long and exhausting piano improvisation with some horns hidden underneath. Could probably call it arty or something. It doesn’t sound too good, which is probably the whole idea, but it does something with you and you will feel like... Empty afterwards.
The second track has a slightly proto post-punk feeling, a simple, mechanic riff and a vocal loop is the core and I must say it sounds quite cool.
”Tongue in the Wind” takes the listener on a multi-layered ambient trip, where spacey sounds are mixed with something that resembles a theremin.
Track four is called ”Father Duncan” and it’s probably the least experimental one, actually, it could be a NAEVUS song with that strummed guitar and simple drum pattern. We’re also given some Lloyd-singing and pretty nice lyrics as usual when he’s the author. A nice track and a well deserved break between all the madness that went by and that awaits; ten seconds into the fifth track you’ll succumb to the feberish nightmare sounds, could probably go under the parole noise lite. ’Tis really lots of deranged and distorted sounds swirling around and around for about, what it feels like, half the day, and it’s a really scary track if you ask me.
”Superman’s Cave” is another ambient one and once again with lots of mysterious bleeps that sounds like something from my childhood, can’t tell what though, but it’s certainly has a nostalgic feeling.
”Modern Evening” is nice, maybe my favorite, and sounds very apocalyptic and atmospheric and we get some singing again, over slow and brooding electric guitar harmonies and strange effects, and then finally we have ”Chalk is Valuable, Keep it in Your Hand” that could as well be a tribute to CABARET VOLTAIRE and their mysterious ”Exhaust” with a deranged voice popping up at random going ”Chalk... Hand...”, after a while accompanied by some garage guitars and a monologue by Lloyd. The end.
So, that was the album I’ve been waiting for? Did it fill my expectation? Sure did. It’s awesome to hear Lloyd in such a different context than what I’m getting used to. It feels fresh and the entire album is awfully well done. It may not be the first choice for everyone and just because you fancy NAEVUS, I can’t guarantee that this will work you you. Open up all your senses and prepare for a while. Give it a shot. And then another. Personally, I think this shows that mr. James is an artist capable of doing almost anything with success." [review by The Shadows Commence]
more info : www.myspace.com/retarder
www.touretterecords.com
€6.00
Gute Nacht, Berlin
Zweites Album der russischen dark ambient Industrial – Koryphäen, eher ruhig–introvertiert-melancholisch wie auf den frühen Tapes, mit deutlichem WW II - Bezug. Die Musik wirkt wie ein Epitaph, das voller niemals zu überwindender Trauer die Erinnerung an die Schrecken der jüngeren Geschichte wach halten will...
“....Fifth opus from the Russian trio, 'Gute Nacht, Berlin!' as the previous 'The Fourth Face' 10" and 'ReuTRauM III' 7" is also released by the Austrian label HauRuck! This is the 2nd CD in the Reutoff discography. Released just a few months after 'Unseen Rituals', 'Gute Nacht, Berlin!' is musically very close to the previous mentioned album. The ambiances are the ones we expect when listening to this band: sometimes ritual, hidden... sometimes floating, atmospheric... but always with the undescribable 'something' specific to Reutoff that sets them apart from other bands...
No need to give more details, as the whole album is brilliant. Nevertheless I can't prevent myself from underlining the beauty of the second title 'die sunden der vater'. Just let yourself be carried away by the magnificent soundscapes and the drawn out melody... A very long (11 minutes) industrial ambient piece that is certainly one of the very best Reutoff titles I have ever heard!
The album also features two new versions ('Libera me (edit)' and 'Allegoria No. 3') of excellent tracks present on the first tape of the band ('Das Absterben' released in 1998), re-released a few months ago on CD-R by the Italian label By Blade. For those who do not own this tape or the very limited CD-R, this an excellent opportunity to listen to two compositions based on ancient works...
'Die rote fahne' also deserves to be mentioned... Built upon a combination of small, minimalist and repetitive noises with a rather epic Russian song (extracted from or mixed with a film?), this original composition will endlessly intrigue the listeners... The CD comes in a nice full-coloured digipack and is obviously highly recommended, while waiting for the soon to be released fifth part of the ReuTRauM series...” [NathalieF., Heimdallr]
€13.00
Deprivatio
Ganze fünf Jahre nach "Gute Nacht, Berlin" endlich das neue Album der Moskauer Ambient Industrial / Elektronik Band, die es wie wenig andere verstehen eine wirklich hoffnungslose Atmosphäre zwischen Misantrophie und trister Melancholie aufzubauen...
"... Reutov ist eine von Moskaus kleinen Satellitenstädten, die haupt-sächlich aus Industrieanlagen besteht. Ihr wird von den Band-mitgliedern, die alle in der Nähe leben, eine ganz besondere Atmosphäre zugeschrieben, die man beim Hören der Musik als trübe Industriemelancholie zwischen Zerfall und Science Fiction begreifen könnte; eine Stimmung, wie sie in Deutschland manche alte Häfen oder Güterbahnhöfe ausstrahlen. Ein Faible für den Klang der deutschen Sprache, das sich auch in vielen deutschen Songtiteln ausdrückt, hat aus dem 'v' am Ende der Stadt das doppelte 'f' für den Bandnamen werden lassen.
Wie immer ist auch dieses REUTOFF-Album eine Antwort auf die Frage, wozu eigentlich Dark Ambient erfunden wurde. Die fantastisch-düstere Stimmung erwächst stets aus der Musik der Russen selbst, und nicht – wie bei vielen Genrekollegen – aus den großen Worten, die begleitend zur Musik gemacht werden. Aber – endlich eine Veränderung – "Deprivatio" ist nicht mehr so durchweg archaisch wie noch die ersten Arbeiten, es ist ebenfalls nicht mehr so homogen industriell wie die beiden letzten Alben "Unseen Rituals" (2002) und "Gute Nacht, Berlin!" (2003). Die neue CD ist die bislang dynamischste, abwechslungsreichste, aufregendste und futuristischste Veröffentlichung von REUTOFF.
Hypnotisch ist der Beginn. Zum Dauerloop eines Kindersummens gibt eine rauchige, weibliche Sprechstimme auf Englisch Anweisungen, was zu tun ist: "Stellen Sie Sich vor, Sie sitzen in einem riesigen Theater mit schwarzen Sitzen und können nur eine einzige Sache sehen..." So düster und geheimnisvoll die ersten Sounds, so beruhigend sind die Worte. Später passt sich die Musik an und entspannt sich Richtung Downbeat, garniert mit verhuschten Männerstimmen und noisigen Geräuschen. Der Opener bereitet die futuristische Atmosphäre, die das ganze Album durchzieht. Noch häufiger im Verlauf der knapp 73 Minuten kommt sich der Hörer vor, als würde er durch einen von STANISLAW LEM entworfenen Park lebender Maschinen wandern. Auch das intelligente Songwriting – wenn man bei einem zehnminütigen Dark Ambient-Track davon überhaupt sprechen kann – offenbart sich gleich zu Beginn. Überraschungen wie eine eingeflochtene und beinahe folkige Akustikgitarre sowie versteckte und vertrackte Melodien und Rhythmen machen aus einem langen auch einen sehr abwechslungs-reichen Soundteppich. Es folgt ein eher klassisches Dark Ambient/Noise-Stück, dessen Drones in Verwandtschaft zu SAL SOLARIS gleißen und schimmern wie Sonnen im Weltall. Großes Kino, im wahrsten Sinn des Wortes, denn REUTOFF-Alben werden immer gerne mit der Stimmung von Filmmusiken oder Filmen – unter anderem "Stalker" von TARKOWSKIJ – verglichen. Und selten traf dieser Vergleich so zu wie bei "Deprivatio", auch bedingt durch die technisch hervorragende, satte Produktion.
"American Whores" geht dann wieder einen gänzlich anderen Weg. Die Collage bringt zu einem Bass, der auch MASSIVE ATTACK oder MOBY alle Ehre machen würde, ganz unterschiedliche Samples zusammen. Musik der 1920er-Jahre, fast eine Minute lang solo. Dazu verdichten sich die Trainerin eines Fitnesskurses und ein Kirchenprediger mit Chor – in Kombination mit dem Namen des Songs – zu einer infernalischen Amerikakritik. Nie wirken solche Samples belanglos, sie unterstützen bei REUTOFF immer die Atmosphäre des Tracks.
Auch der einzige deutsch betitelte Song, "In Die Leere Gehen", ist eines der Highlights: Hier ein strahlendes Universum mit synthetischen Engelschören, dort düstere Gewittercluster, die glauben machen, dass sich die Hölle öffnet – fehlt nur noch ein Sample von Luzifer persönlich. "Sun Of Sleepless" ist mit seinen knallenden und knirschenden Beats eine weitere Empfehlung für die Macher des nächsten Endzeit-Streifens; mit laut wehenden Fahnen geht die Welt unter. Und zum Abspann verglüht "25-th Hour" wie die letzte Moll-Hoffnung eines im futuristischen Kerker eingesperrten VANGELIS. Für so viele Höhepunkte übersieht man gerne die wenigen schwächeren Momente, etwa die Mischung aus Ethno und Dark Ambient mit piepsigen Loops menschlicher Geräusche ("Nemesis").
Alles an "Deprivatio" atmet russische "Metropolis"-Atmosphäre. Das Individuum zwischen Experiment, größenwahnsinniger Industrie, Verlassenheit und Zerfall. Damit ist die neue REUTOFF-Veröffentlichung längst nicht mehr nur ein Stimmungsbericht aus Reutov, sondern ein Abbild des neuen, modernen Russlands. Genreuntypische Experimente, die gekonnte Verknüpfung diverser Samples und Abwechslung in Tempo und Klangbild sorgen dafür, dass "Deprivatio" eines der besten und ausdrucksstärksten Dark Ambient-Alben der vergangenen Jahre ist. Es macht außerdem sehr neugierig auf die angekündigten Kollaborationen im Herbst." [Michael We. für nonpop.de]
"Finally, since five years after their 2003 “Gute Nacht Berlin” on Albin Julius HauRuck!, here is the long-awaited full-length solo CD from this most well-known Russian industrial project worldwide. “Deprivatio” is a sad story of a person surrender to the enemy environment, it’s about idle struggle with time and fatigue, about constant withering of passions and imminent vitality deprivation. Being maybe the most hopeless and sad work for the band, this album is paradoxically their most rhythmic and dynamic. There are more noisy drum loops and electro sounds here than martial drum patterns and old school noise, but their unique deep and profound melodic main themes are still remain as the basement for the brilliant new tracks of despair and downfall. The ascetic b&w artwork was done by Murad Ibatullin known for the recent “Iznutri” compilation. The release comes as a jewel box with 6 panel booklet, the first 100 copies come with 33x21 two sided poster." [label info]
€12.00
NullRauM
"Retortae is proud to present an epic work from the most world well-known Russian industrial combo called Reutoff which has just celebrated its 15 years of existance. NullRauM is a collection of all the tracks included in ReuTRauM series initially released as seven 7” vinyls issued by seven different labels in seven different countries as well as four tracks made especially for this collection. The entire period of its creation took around 15 years – as long as the project exists – and it could be considered as the band’s most important work to date. Complex dark drone ambient structures typical to Reutoff presented here in all their historical development, from the very first 7” released in 2000 by legendary Drone Records to the most recent tracks made exclusively for this release. The result is extremely pessimistic and profound reflexion of the old world collapse and desperate anticipation of the shape of things to come. Though NullRauM material is a collection of the tracks made during such a long period of time, today it looks really homogenous and holistic, and its mosaic elements have finally found its providential shape. Extremely recommended to absolutely everyone. The release comes in laminated full colour digisleeve with 16 pages booklet." [press-release]
€17.00
No One's Lullabies
"No One's Lullabies" is the 9th album by Reutoff, one of the best-known Russian projects on the international post-industrial scene. Over the course of one hour they will be performing their "lullabies" which won't let you sleep though... The whole panopticon of borderline mental states will unfold before the eyes of our attention. Every track is a masterfully performed decadent dance of emotions and feelings. Steady industrial rhythms, an unhasting but assertive semi-drunk waltz, circus-like grotesque with wicked medieval shades, comatose jazz swinging in dark tones and epic electronic doom that could also fit well in the repertoire of their brother-project Otzepenevshiye - all imbued with remarkable spirit and slightly inflamed imagination.
The material entitled "No One's Lullabies" was initially produced as a cassette mini-album by the German label Sea State in 2014 in a small edition of 80 copies in unconventional handmade packaging. The extended version with four additional compositions was put out by Reutoff on their bandcamp page as a web-release. Now we're glad to present the CD version of the album for the happy owners of CD-players and optical drives! The CD-edition contains an exclusive bonus track with a live version of one of Reutoff's rare compositions. The disc is packed in a matte 4-panel cardboard digisleeve, artwork features paintings by Fabrice Billard, the chef of Divine Comedy Records.
http://zhb.radionoise.ru/
"If someone were to ask me, which post-industrial artist gives you the biggest pleasure when you listen to their music, I would never mention Reutoff. If somebody else were to ask me which project is in my opinion the most daring in its experiments or simply the most innovative in the scene, Reutoff wouldn’t be my pick either. But if you were to ask me about the musician who combines experimental with so-called “catchiness” the most effectively, well, I’d have to think about mentioning this Russian duo.
They’ve been active for about 18 years, releasing a variety of materials, also in collaboration with other artists in their famous Kreuzung series: a collection of names such as Deutsch Nepal, Troum or Der Blutharsch. “No One’s Lullabies” was originally released on tape, thanks to the Sea State label from Leipzig. Zhelezobeton gives us an extended edition on CD, with five additional tracks and a cover image painted by Fabrice Billard, the owner of the Divine Comedy label.
For many years Reutoff’s line of work and constructing additional sound structures has more or less been the same. They take a nicely crafted industrial background, a mid-tempo rhythm theme, often looped and encrusted with other trinkets and little diamonds, so that most of the tracks possess a slowly yet nicely building tension that leads to a culmination, abundant in sounds and atmospheres. Not all of the tracks though: Reutoff is not a project that always chooses the easy and proven ways – check this splendid dark ambient of a non-obvious feeling in “Nameless Tune With No Fate”.
This is also one of Reutoff’s huge advantages. That you can’t describe their atmosphere in one or two words. You need to build the whole story in your mind, different for each track. It may be dystopian sci-fi straight from Orwell or Bradbury novels; a dark yet epic, sometimes even strangely romantic story, similar to, say, “Blade Runner”. After all, titles like “New World Disorder” or “Requiem for Android” cannot be a coincidence. On the other hand in some track you may notice a somehow optimistic… no, not a good word – a note that breathes with hope. Saying that not everything is lost, that there are still new and mysterious worlds to explore even though our planet is lost.
I feel this modern sci-fi element is pretty solid in Reutoff’s works, which is even more interesting considering the fact that when it comes to technical matters a strong analogue vibe emanates over the whole of “No One’s Lullabies”. This is specific for many post-industrial artists coming from Russia, that while they’re faithful to classic samplers and synths, they’re able to achieve such a fresh effect. Reutoff, Cyclotimia, Sal Solaris, some Cisfinitum efforts. This offering is no different, and once again provides us with a certificate of the uniqueness of the Russian post-industrial scene." [Stark/Santa Sangre mag]
€13.00
Tracey Feels Worse
Elevator Bath is honored to present the first ever release of sound work from famed music writer Massimo Ricci.
Known as an individualistic reviewer - or, as he puts it, a "composer using words as main instrument" - in the meantime Ricci keeps researching, dissecting and altering sounds, something he has been doing since the late 60s.
"Tracey Feels Worse" consists of a single 35-minute piece based on recordings made by the composer in 1984, which, over time, were radically rearranged and reformed. Now in its final state, the piece is a wholly abstract undertaking; ominous and deliciously inscrutable.
The work does not contain hidden meanings or esoteric implications, nor does it want to symbolize unprovable "truths." Ricci - an atheist lone wolf who despises the opportunistic traits of false spirituality - processed extremely simple sources to the point of near-unrecognizability, generating enigmatic spirals and indeterminate environments from what was originally born as mere parody.
The specific sounds and techniques employed remain mysterious, as neither samples nor loops were utilized. But this mystery is fitting for such a haunting, ephemeral piece of music - even if the sound is robust. Indeed, there is an almost physical presence to the ever-shifting elements at play here. The soundscape is in constant motion, yet the overall impression is of a kind of uneasy calm. Perhaps the piece's structure lends itself to a feeling of anxious serenity. The sounds unnerve while the methodology soothes.
The piece's palindromic construction recalls the ghosts of Victorian literature, doomed to repeat their movements in an endless cycle for all eternity. But ultimately, in Ricci’s words, "'Tracey Feels Worse' may be interpreted as a threnody for the risible irrationality of the human theories about creation and afterlife. Typically fabricated by minds anxious to satisfy the needs of the self, they’re pitifully inadequate for the egoless infinity of sound and silence.”
https://elevatorbath.bandcamp.com/album/tracey-feels-worse
€13.00
Disconnect (OST)
"Jason Bateman and Alexander Skarsgard star is this drama centered on a group of people searching for human connections in today's wired world. Extremely well received on the festival circuit, LD Entertainment is releasing the picture in April. This album includes the entire score composed by Max Richter (Waltz With Bashir, Sarah's Key) for the film. It is an emotional and beautiful score which plays a central role in the film." [label info]
www.milanrecords.com
"One of the most beautiful and definitive tracks in Max Richter's ever-growing body of work is "On the Nature of Daylight" from The Blue Notebooks, the album that brought him to the attention of many critics and fans. Since that breakthrough, he's developed a niche as a composer ready and willing to revamp the classics, as he did with Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, as well as a sensitive and versatile composer of scores for films ranging from looks at the not-so-tame secret lives of domesticated animals (Die Fremde) to dystopian sci-fi (Perfect Sense). Richter's music for Disconnect is an intersection of those career paths: the score uses "Daylight" as its emotional and musical focus, surrounding it with pieces that echo and complement it. While Martin Scorsese's brain-twisting thriller Shutter Island also featured the piece prominently, here it's fundamental to the film and its exploration of how technology brings people together and (more often) pulls them apart. Cues like "The Swimmer" reprise "On the Nature of Daylight"'s beautifully somber violin melodies, while "Confrontation" pits them against pummeling electronic beats in a way that could be heavy-handed but maintains a dignified poignancy in Richter's hands. Elsewhere, the score borrows from other Blue Notebooks pieces like the lovely "Written on the Sky," or evokes them as on the mournful organ pieces "Hospital" and "The Gun." Given the film's tech fixation, most of the rest of Disconnect's music is more electronic and makes the most of Richter's minimalism, whether on brief, wash-like tracks such as "The Report" or more elaborate ones like "Zero Balance," which moves from delicate tones to more ominous ones as it progresses. Many of these tracks aren't as attention-getting as the ones that draw from Richter's classical roots, but his cues for Disconnect's action scenes are as tense as they are restrained; "Pursuit" and "Running" are just as taut, but far subtler, than a typical climactic score piece. Disconnect is of a piece with scores like Cliff Martinez's Traffic, where the music seems to just faintly tint the air with the proper mood. It may not be among Richter's richest works, but he provides what the film needs from its music with more depth and restraint than many other composers could have managed. ~ Heather Phares Audio Mixers: Michael Schubert; Max Richter." [Henry-Alex Rubin]
€17.50
Helgoland
"A place can inspire us in many different ways. Whether it be painting, photography, poetry or sound, all of these outputs are driven by a desire to preserve the essence or spirit of the landscape that has touched us. Lasse-Marc Riek chose the medium of sound to demonstrate his love for the natural history of Helgoland, a small German archipelago in the North Sea. Over the course of two years, Riek gathered together a series of field recordings that move from the majestic to the intimate. The delicate sweep of sand particles caught in the breeze sits alongside the harsher sounds of a passing storm battering the land with an unrelenting force. Some recordings demonstrate the overwhelming presence of seabird colonies, alive with the vocalisations of Black-legged Kittiwakes, Common Guillemots and Northern Gannets. This all-encompassing cacophony of growls, cackles and screeching calls creates an evocative and imposing sound picture, yet other recordings allow us to experience each of these species at closer quarters. We are able to listen in on the conversations of Black-legged Kittiwake and Northern Gannet families and experience the harsh cries of Arctic Terns calling to each other over the sound of crashing waves. One of the most moving recordings captures guillemot chicks taking to the water for the first time. The parent birds can be heard calling to their young, encouraging them to take that all important leap. The incessant, high-pitched calls of the chicks are occasionally accompanied by rapid fluttering and a gentle splash, signifying the successful jump of a chick onto the water. Birds are not the only inhabitants of Helgoland though, and several tracks are dedicated to the mournful wails of the Grey Seal. The calls are almost human like, especially those of the pups, and it comes as no surprise that these sorrowful sounds have links with ancient legends of mystical people found along the shoreline. The final recording in the series features the sound of a plane starting its engine and then taking to the sky, leaving behind nothing but the rhythmic breaths of a Grey Seal bull asleep among the dunes. Humans are not necessary here. Though they may inhabit the islands, the land is not really theirs. The land belongs to nature. Long may that continue." [Cheryl Tipp / Curator, Wildlife Sounds, The British Library, England]
www.gruenrekorder.de
€14.00
Lung Tree
ERIC GLICK RIEMAN: Piano & Synthesizer, LESLI DALABA: Trompete, STUART DEMPSTER: Trombone, Didjeridoo, etc..
9 Stücke fein gesponnene Instrumental- & Geräusch-Improvisationen, eher zurückhaltend und mit Gespür für Mikro-Details, manchmal fast meditativ...
“This is one of those recordings that arrived unannounced in the mail. I knew Lesli Dalaba, of course, but the others were new to me. The project is Eric Glick Rieman's and I found it immediately intriguing. There seemed to be something quite subtle going on; minimal, microtonal, economical and eccentric; it plays subtly with timbre, pitch and structure and never quite does what you expect. At first blush it seemed as it would be another interesting but conventional improvising trio, but after a few minutes the organising intelligence, and the clear compositional discipline became clear. And after this, throughout the CD, it sticks to the point. This is a deep investigation of a very few simple principles. Acoustic instruments rub ambiguously up against electrified objects and electronics, but these in the main provide atmosphere and harmonic complexity, never overpowering the mingling air-columns on which the wave of this CD floats. Attachments, modifiers, objects all make an appearance, but the topic is the small, the tenuous - and the tenacious - above all, breath.” [ReR]
€14.00
Satanic Inventions
!!! Limited to 200 copies only !!! 51+ min. playtime
October 2022 PRESS RELEASE
Artist: rlw (Ralf Wehowsky)
Title: Satanic Inventions
Track Titles:
1. Early Symptoms
2. Normality, Lost # 1
3. Overworn With Watching # 1
4. Fever Glazed Thine Ears # 1
5. Fever Glazed Thine Ears # 2
6. Normality, Lost # 2
7. Fever Glazed Thine Ears # 3
8. Overworn With Watching # 2
9. Normality, Lost # 3
10. Overworn With Watching # 3
11. Overworn With Watching # 4
12. Normality, Lost # 4
13. Fever Glazed Thine Ears # 4
14. Overworn With Watching # 5
15. Out Of Joint
Format: CD
Cat no: BRCD 22-1021
Release Date: October 2022
Black Rose Recordings are proud to present the stunning new solo release by Ralf Wehowsky. He is currently one of the most respected electronic composers of our day. With this release his starting point is the comparison of the black plague and covid-19 as there are some astonishing similarities of how people dealt with the diseases. Denial of reality, conspiracy theories, searching for scapegoats, etc: Surely satanic inventions are the source of all calamities? Extracts from documentary recordings and a few fragments of ars nova/subtilior compositions have been transformed, extended, fragmented and re-contextualised, from which the 15 pieces of this release are built.
Ralf Wehowsky was one of the founder members of the seminal German group P16.D4 and the label Selektion whose ground-breaking releases influenced many working in today’s experimental music scene. Previous releases have seen him collaborate with such well known and diverse artists such as Merzbow, Bernhard Guenter, Jim O’Rourke, Achim Wollscheid and Lionel Marchetti. His music is impossible to pigeonhole into one simple bracket. It is neither industrial or musique concrete, nor computer music nor improvisation.
“RLW's work moves on the edge of musique concrete, but never looses it's touch with industrial music on the one hand and with microsound on the other. But it defies these categories and can perhaps only be classified as RLWmusic. Great work!” – [Vital 584, The Netherlands]
“…truly outstanding” – [www.chaindlk.com]
"There have been many documentations on differences and similarities of the pandemics, which plagued mankind over the last centuries and millennia. Comparing the black plague and covid-19 there are - besides the obvious differences (more victims in absolute numbers
because of increasing overpopulation, decreasing number of victims in relative numbers because of the evolution of scientific knowledge) - astonishing similarities how people dealt with the diseases. Denial of reality, conspiracy theories, searching for scapegoats: Surely satanic inventions, spread by elites, papists, jews, communists, etc, are the source of all calamities? Human stupidity never should be underestimated. For tunately, history teaches that the misery ends
someday, even if the pandemic meets with war, famine etc. Amidst similarities new powers do grow. In the late 14th century ars subtilior must be pointed out. Liberation from religious themes, breaking open
rhythm, introducing bizarre chromatic passages, odd dissonances, etc.
Therefore, it seemed natural to combine documentations of actual madness with songs from that past. Some short extracts from documentary recordings and a few fragments of ars nova/subtilior compositions have been transfor med, extended, fragmented and recontextualised, from which the 15 pieces of this release are built.
Recorded from April 2021 to March 2022, Eggenstein, Germany" [liner notes]
"Seeing such a political statement on an RLW CD is something I don't recall seeing before. It is about the pandemic and the conspiracy theories that spawned, which I (too) believe is the true disease of our times. "I can read", usually means, "I like to cherry-pick popular notions", and "science is an opinion" is usually said by someone who has no clue as to what science is. Or, as I challenged someone: "How do you prove that all swans are white" to which I got the answer ", by killing all black ones", which seemed proof that not all swans are white. RLW says that all misery end one day, and something will grow. In the 14th century, Ars subtiloir (subtler art) became a musical style. It was rhythmic and notional, more complex. The end of the plague (well..) ended in something new. RLW uses music recordings from that time and short extracts from documentary recordings. Not that you easily recognize any of this in the fifteen pieces of music. Sure, some of this finds origins in voice material, and a word here or there is recognized, but who or what remains a mystery. The abstraction level is very high, as with much of RLW's music. He applies a collage-like approach to his music. A surprising element is the use of turntable/vinyl, which I haven't heard from him in some time. RLW's music is of a different complexity than the original Ars subtiloir, so I assume (not being an expert here), that he applies his musique concrète techniques to the music. Editing, stretching, granular synthesis and whatever else there is are as strong as any other RLW record. One thought I had with hearing these voices bending and twisting; maybe they sound like shapeshifting alien reptiles? Having read most of David Icke's books (to be found in a folder on my hard drive labelled 'humour'), there must be a place here for the sounds of reptiles. Throughout, there is some excellent, imaginative music here. I would say that even without the backstory, this is still a great release; it can be enjoyed equally."[FdW/Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Die Eisenbüglerin
"The idea for this project was in the air since the late 1980´s. There was an intense, though short-lived, (snail) mail contact between DSM and P16.D4, RLW´s group in those days, which fell into sleep for reasons unknown today.
20 years later the contact lived up again. After getting themselves informed about the actual respective state of work, methods and techniques and sounds, the recordings for the project started.
RLW cd: The basic recordings were done by rlw from early to mid 2009, sound sources are instrumental (piano, trombone) and household objects. First detailed sketches of the compositions (autumn 2009) include heavily treated versions of these recordings, cross-modulations with sounds supplied by DSM and with DSM-variations of the RLW sounds sent to Caen. Fine-tuning of the compositions took until fall 2010.
DSM cd: With very few exceptions I used only the original sound recordings of RLW, discarding most of his own processing that he provided me with as I wished for treatments only what would be conceived to be already into the realm of the compositional strategies I fancied for these works. So up to which degree a processing of a sound turns it into an autonomous new one is a question without answer. In consequence resulted a collaboration starting with extremely few basic recordings. However as they had been particularly distinctive by their material character as well as the audible space of the recordings and the variation of their physical intensity as they all resulted from manual efforts they provided me with what was needed. Besides dynamical treatments and cleaning up, my sound processing is not only mostly analogue or equivalent too, but mostly even mechanic. Playing back recordings through 'no-fi equipment' and recording them again, while manipulating mechanically reproduction and recording devices is what I employ most." [label info]
www.aufabwegen.com
"Now here's two guys whose history goes back at least thirty years. Both from Germany and both from the world of cassettes and industrial music, but both having grown into something else, the world of academic music, musique concrete. Ralf Wehowsky was the main man behind P16.D4, but left that name behind to become RLW, while Guido Hubner always remained Das Synthetische Mischgewebe. Especially that is perhaps a bit odd. Hubner's work is more than Wehowsky's connected to the world of serious composing, yet he maintains his old 'band' name. Both of these men also know each other for a long period and there has always been talk of doing something together, so after much discussion, this double CD 'Die Eisenbuglerin' is the result of an extensive 'music by mail' collaboration. They both use conceptual angles to work from. 'Ah, DSM is always very fragmented, maybe I should work opposite', 'let's use mainly analogue, mechanical techniques to transform this material'. Also in the final execution the results are not widely apart, which is fine. It would be hard to say whose CD is who, if you didn't look at the label. Lots of microscopic detailed sounds - sometimes isolated, sometimes like mass - are the very foundation of this music. A fascinating ride, this is. Some close to fifty minutes by RLW and close to sixty by DSM. As said differences are in the details with this. Maybe DSM is at times a bit more fragmented and RLW a bit more 'full' at times. None of the sound sources mentioned on the cover (piano, trombone by RLW) can be easily traced, if at all, in these pieces. Excellent electro-acoustic music in the best tradition of both microsound and serious academia." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€17.50
Birds of Venezuela
Among many of his amazing records I came across Jean C. Roché's Birds of Venezuela, beautifully produced LPs of birdsong. I began to plan a trip to Amazonas, to record the unearthly song of potoos and Yanomami shamanism. (David Toop)
The bird on the cover. The potoo, this metal-looking bird is one of the sonorous curiosities of this mad nature, the sound that he produces essentially is a death song that David Toop listen, in his 1978 expedition, but was unable to record. Amazement playing its role.
The bird songs which i had recorded in the West Indies in 1969 made me inclined to find out more about those of the nearby South American continent, and convinced me, moreover, that musically speaking, they possessed an unquestionable originality in comparison with those of Africa and Europa. I therefore decided to carry out a series of orthonological trips on this continent, starting with the North: Venezuela, and so, with this in mind, i disembarked at Caracas on 27th May 1972. The unusual musical volume of this tropical country made its impact on my arrival in town, where the unbearably shrill chirping of the cicadas overwhelmed me each time I passed under a tree. At night fall, around even the meanest of ditches filled by the daily rain, myriads of toads and frogs struck up a concert, which, through its sheer intensity, muffled all other surrounding noises. When I penetrated the forest, I could hear bird species literally by the dozen and individuals by the hundred, all calling and singing together at dawn and at dusk... (Jean C. Roché)
€15.00
Berlin Fields
"Berlin Fields is a sonic journey not limited by national boundaries, city limits, or material limitation. Roden perambulates, recording as he goes with the immediacy and quirks that come from using both portable recorder (a Sony PCM-D50) and phone. Exploring intuitively, Roden brings together 19 sonic vignettes via 'finds': things discovered; and 'activation': objects performed on site. Using intuition as a guide, Roden's interactions and sonic interventions - 'play' in every sense of the word - are both learning tool and platform for his creativity. Unearthing a vocabulary spoken by quotidian things, Roden coaxes tables, radiators, sardine tins and all manner of chanced upon paraphernalia into speaking their curious and complex language. Mindful of Rolf Julius' artistic philosophy, Roden introduces performances that sit congruently within, and do not disrupt, the sites he happens upon on during his travels through the capital cities of France, Germany and Finland. The land- and cityscapes, formal architecture and informal spaces Roden explores act as host for his interventions. Instead of simply absorbing his bodily movements and thought process, such places create a consonant dialogue with his soundings, saturating their own particular sounds - indeed atmospheres - within Roden's wanderings. Roden is both player and listener in a world sounding with music, and musical with sound. His actions are delicate insertions that proliferate: actions, soundings, reactions that spread into, echo, and synergise with the world. His performances activate the specific place, space and object with microscopic precision - the knowledge of a shaman. Ripples of tone singe the edges of a bird-filled landscape bestowing it a glowing aura; rhythmic motions on cavernous metal are 'touched by hands', jam jars are caressed across tables to intone chanting, a poetry of sorts. Such soundings act as a bridge, directly connecting body (and being) to location; a marker for experience. What is evident in Berlin Fields, is that Roden respects the sonic world around him. He is playful, mischievous perhaps, but most of all he listens with the ears of the ancient, the sacred. His motivation, simply, is to work with situations and sounds that move him - that teach him something new or different - that in turn drive him on to explore new environments, situations, objects and the places they inhabit. Ultimately, Roden brings one closer to an intimate world of reverie - an aural terrain that heaves, resonates, clips, scrapes, chimes and drips a mystical, ancient language." [label info]
www.3leaves-label.com
€15.00
Oionos
Notes from Steve Roden on Oionos
Oionos was created for the exhibition The Grand Promenade, in Athens, Greece.
The exhibition took place in various archaeological and historical sites in central Athens, creating a situation for contemporary site specific works to be in dialogue with their historical surroundings.
While it was not originally offered as a possible site, I pleaded with the curator to allow me to work with architect Dimitris Pikionis’s Church of St. Dimitris Loumbardiardis, about a 10-minute walk from the main path of the Grand Promenade. Pikionis designed the original promenade which is still visible in several areas, but much of the area’s original designs were altered during the “restoration” before the 2004 Olympics. The small path that leads to the church gives a much stronger impression of Pikionis’s vision for the entire promenade as it was; so i wanted to use my work to draw viewers/listeners into his world.
When I first saw the small church it totally took my breath away, and I immediately began to think about a work that could exist in resonance with it — but not distract from it. The church itself is still in use, and I wanted to the work to be gentle and out of the way of the people who worship there. I decided to use the large tree in the front of the church for a hanging work that would a little bit of visual presence as well as sound which could blend with all of the insect noises and the overall quiet of the area.
The audio was built from field recordings and small “poor” objects such as tin whistles, toy harmonicas, and the like. These “instruments” suggested by the museum of musical instruments in Athens, where the proper instruments take up most of the museum, but there is a wonderful display case in the basement with musical toys, religious objects, and other sounding devices not considered musical instruments. I felt that these simple things related to Pikionis’s ideas about architecture and craft, and his interests in indigenous culture in conjunction with intellectual and modern culture. I felt there could be a relationship.
credits
released January 14, 2022
Oionos was created in 2006 for the exhibition The Grand Promenade, in Athens, Greece.
https://room40.bandcamp.com/album/oionos
€23.00
De-Composed
„de—COMPOSED“ — New artist's book by Berlin-based sound artist Stefan Roigk. The catalog documents acousmatic compositions, sound installations, musical graphics and text-sound compositions of the years 2005 to 2023 on 144 pages and 2 Audio-CDs.
A complex assemblage, composed of documentation photos, texts and drawings, becomes an interlocking whole in its dynamic flows and fields and animates the paper as a vibrantly structured visual composition. A piece of music for the eyes, in which the boundaries between documentation, draft and work become blurred in a surreal mesh of the concrete and fictional. Here, the reader generates their own individual temporal axis based on their speed of observation and focus on the optical elements, thus becoming a mixing board for a composition realized as a catalogue.
Three text pieces give a deeper insight into Roigk's understanding of sound as material and the translation of sound events into other media.
As an equivalent to the visual approach of the catalog and in order to adequately convey the sonic dimension of the artistic work, (sound) fragments of all the works covered in the catalog were transferred into a dynamic collage-like arrangement with Roigk's typical aesthetics and are included with the catalog as an independent listening experience in the form of two audio CDs.
„Stefan Roigk, de—COMPOSED (Audio Extracts)“ is published in conjunction with the catalogue "Stefan Roigk, de—COMPOSED" / published 2023 by Errant Bodies Press, Berlin / ISBN 978-3-9823166-8-0 / for further information please visit : www.stefan-roigk.com / www.errantbodies.org / © 2023 Stefan Roigk + Errant Bodies Press / This Publication was supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds
https://stefanroigk.bandcamp.com/album/de-composed-audio-extracts
"In a plastic bag, we find the following: a softcover book, 21x26 centimetre, 144 pages, 2 A5 postcards and a double CD. All of this is by Stefan Roigk, a Berlin-based composer born in 1974. I mention that year because, much to my pleasant surprise, the first time his name popped up in Vital Weekly was in issue 109, which must have been around 1997, which started, also very funny, with "Can you believe that in today's digitalized world there are still existing people who start a cassette-label?" Over the years, I reviewed his various releases, and his language, German, is essential to him. However, unlike some of his previous works, these two CDs aren't all spoken word, which is excellent. More to enjoy if the language is a barrier. What I didn't know, or perhaps I wasn't as aware, is that Roigk is also a visual artist and that many of his music pieces come with installations, or vice versa. The book is a catalogue of these installation pieces, the oldest from around 2007. Even when these pages are stills and not the real thing (or, in the case of a DVD, a registration of the real thing), it gives an excellent overview of his work. Like his music, many installation pieces are also collages of everyday objects in a new context. Some pieces on these CDs have been released before, so one could say this is a greatest-hits package. The downside is that the order on the CD is different than in the book, so one goes back and forth, learning about the material used in these pieces. Roigk uses musique concrète techniques of superimposing elements, intricate cuts, montage and altering his sounds. Of course, over two hours of music
is quite a stretch, but sitting back with the catalogue certainly works very well. I took away from it that Roigk creates a very coherent body of work in which music, visuals and text play a homogenous role." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€28.00
Peggy
Jon Rose and Chris Abrahams (of The Necks), after four decades of being parts of other projects, finally got around to recording as a duo. Jon uses a number of violins, including the bird - a specially made tenor hardanger fiddle with sympathetic strings; his tunings are non-standard, and create complex microtonal dissonances with the standard keyboard. Abrahams is unfazed and somehow manages to make the conversation coherent; they’re still speaking one language – probably because these are both virtuosi and they’ve been around the block a few times. So this is not easy music; the simple problems aren’t stimulating, so these negotiations begin at masterclass level. Though pitch and counterpoint are the main topics, the third extended piece pushes timbral exploration to the edge; piano and violin are typecast as ‘classical’ but here they sound more electronic and industrial. Probably not for everybody, but the real innovators seldom are.
/
THE NECKS-Pianist CHRIS ABRAHAMS trifft in dieser spannenden Zusammenarbeit auf JON ROSE. ´Peggy´ ist der Komponistin PEGGY GLANVILLE-HICKS gewidmet und erscheint als CD auf RECOMMENDED. Avantgarde trifft auf Contemporary Classic. JON ROSE und CHRIS ABRAHAMS kennen sich seit fast vier Jahrzehnten. In dieser Zeit haben sie in einer Reihe von Formaten zusammengearbeitet, darunter z.b. bei ´Violin Music in the Age of Shopping´. ´Peggy´ ist allerdings das erste Mal, dass sie als Duo zusammen arbeiten. Man merkt den beiden Musikern ihren reichen Erfahrungsschatz an. Mühelos spielen Piano (ABRAHAMS) und Geige (ROSE) zusammen, klingen dabei harmonisch und (gewollt) dissonant. Das Album ist PEGGY GLANVILLE-HICKS, einer angesehenen Musikkritikerin (New York Herald) und Opernkomponistin gewidmet, die ihr Haus, nach ihrem Tod, Musikern und Künstlern zur Verfügung stellte.
€13.00
Lexika
Lexika is a soundtrack to an imagined sci-fi movie set in deep space. It started with an image of a completely silent explosion in space. From that image I created a narrative of sorts, where a story unfolded as I set out to create the music that would become Lexika. With Lexika I’ve tried to step outside of myself and look at life, the universe, and our fragile existence from another vantage point. The themes of the album – grief, sorrow, hope, perseverance – are themes I come back to repeatedly though. This time they’re just framed in a slightly bigger picture.
When I close my eyes and listen, I see supermassive black holes. I see the Oort cloud, asteroids hurtling through endless black, the Andromeda galaxy, a radiant supernova, the redshift at the end of the universe. I see the endless vastness of space, I see Voyager II leaving our solar system and I see Mercury as a tiny dot in front of our sun. I see a story that unfolds forwards and backwards simultaneously through time where we – humanity – are both part of it and not. How, from the cosmic perspective, mankind’s existence is so brief that you’d miss it if you blink. And how that also makes it so precious.
- Dag Rosenqvist
https://dronarivm.bandcamp.com/album/shelter
€13.00
Vintermusik
"One album, seven tracks, two people. Who are they? Dag Rosenqvist is a Swedish musician releasing solo music under his own name/previously Jasper TX moniker, and Rutger Zuydervelt is prolific Dutch sound artist familiar to most as Machinefabriek, already known to Zoharum followers via ”Dubbeltjes” compilation of his rarities. And what is ”Vintermusik”? Actually, it is another rarity being reissued.
The tracks from this album date back to 2006 and are one of the early tracks commited by both Dag & Rutger. They did not meet at the time of the recordings, they used the Internet to exchange files. And so 50 minutes of music was created. It is contemplative music full of shimmering guitar drones, delicate piano melodies and bits of field recordings. They sound cold, yet warm at the same time. So the time for releasing this music is just right – it is a little bit of winter music for the end of the summer.
The original version ”Vintermusik” came out on a CDR limited to just 200 copies. Due to a popular demand we decided to re-release it. It has not dated in the least bit, it is as fresh as on the day of its release. As a special bonus, another rare gem was added, that is ”Feberdröm” coming from a 3” CDR. It gives you the full picture of those early ventures into duo collaboration between Dag and Rutger.
”Vintermusik” is released in a 3-panel ecopak in a strictly limited edition of 300 copies." [label info]
www.zoharum.com
"With some recognition (to avoid the word fame), Rutger Zuydervelt, also known as Machinefabriek, can always lean back and grab an oldie but goodie (and sold-out-ie) from the shelf and have it re-released. This is what happens here: The first six pieces were released in January 2007 on a CDR by the musicians themselves and probably didn't make it to these pages, and 'Feberdröm (Koortsdroom)' was released in December 2007 as a 3"CDR and reviewed in Vital Weekly 609. All of this now compiled on 'Vintermusik', a proper CD version of all the work by Dag Rosenqvist (sometimes also known as Jasper TX) and Rutger Zuydervelt. It's after all these years still not possible to tell who did what on these recordings, as for instruments and mixes that is. The original 3"CDR is placed at the end of this release back then I wrote: "... it's a great work. High static crackles, a mid-range bed of warm drones and a bass that rumbles somewhere below. Much along the recent works of Machinefabriek, and a sound that brought him his fame so far. Maybe there is a risk of repeating, but no doubt the fans will take that for granted. Nice one." The other five pieces follow a similar schematic, I think: lots of drone like sounds, generated by guitars and loop devices (and who knows what else from the electronics department) and all of this creating a solid hour of the finest dark ambient. Nothing new, but what did you expect from a re-issue? Fine quality, through out all of this." (FdW/Vital WEekly]
€12.00
Drop By Drop, Suddenly
"The first CD starts with the shortest seed pieces that play primarily with the timbral and microtonal differences highlighted between tone-holes, forming a layered, pseudo-multitrack effect while playing with only one fingering, single note or multiphonic. They range from the more strictly tonal or modal pitch-centered to the thicker atonal and dissonant collection of frequencies found in some multiphonics. Pieces progress to longer complex ones by the second CD, some of which have as minimal material as the shorter ones, but make more extensive use of live multitrack recordings and frequency filters to further bring out changes in frequencies or accentuate beatings inherent in specific multiphonics. The electronics used were created explicitly for each composition using the computer-based program MAX/MSP.
Save for the unconventional 15 microphones of the “prepared bassoon”, these recordings include pieces with no sound processing whatsoever, as well as pieces that do involve sound processing and multi-tracking. Importantly, however, any processing (timed entrances of microphones, overdubbing, looping, spectrum filtering, pitch shifting...) is made in real time, not post-recording. All recordings are single-take recordings where four speaker channels along with room microphones have been mixed down to stereo. Key clicks occasionally get picked up in a loop recording to return sometimes processed, sometimes not later; in circular breathing a multiphonic might drop out a moment before sounding again –what might sound like clicks or occasional drop outs on some of the recordings are not overlooked mastering faults but the result of this live processing and playing as would be experienced in performance.
With a formal background in classical music and early performance practice Leslie Ross took a plunge into the free improv scene of downtown NYC in the mid 80’s and has immersed herself in experimental music ever since. Her connected, parallel, work as baroque bassoon builder also opened up into explorations of invented instruments and sound installations at the same time. She has presented solo programs, both acoustic and electro-acoustic with laptops or electronics throughout Europe and the US over the past three decades. In the mid 2000’s she returned her music focus to a detailed exploration, analysis and understanding of bassoon multiphonics, the details of which she has made freely available on her website. It is through this exploration of multiphonics and the subtle changes made when playing with resonance keys that she was brought to the multiple-mic project of this CD." [label info]
https://xirecords.bandcamp.com/album/drop-by-drop-suddenly
"In my desperately insufficient erudition, the sum of “bassoon” and “woman” gave “Lindsay Cooper” as the most likely result until three days ago, when – while rummaging across the piles of promos received in 2018 – I retrieved this 2-CD set by Leslie Ross. Haven’t been listening to anything alternative since. More than the trademark biography-in-pills used by the official specialists to fill half of a writeup, let me urge you to check this article to understand the kind of creative individual we’re dealing with. An instrument builder, inventor and skilled player who lives surrounded by canaries and cats, and produces valhallas of tones, microtones and illusory tones from a single source. What’s not to like?
A resort for brains who don’t content themselves with shabby explanations, Drop By Drop, Suddenly comprises tracks of length varying from 5’13” to 27’37”. An attentive look at the program reveals that the pieces are ordered from shortest to longest, as if Ross wished to take the hand of the listeners to gradually immerse them into oceanic clusters to reach mental emptiness. We also noticed that the harshness deriving from certain pitch contiguities tends to decline (not always!) with the temporal extension. What Ross is telling us – perhaps without realizing – is that every apparent strain can be alleviated or, at the very least, considered under different perspectives with the acquisition of fundamental psychoacoustic data. Especially when lulled by such a concentration of upper partials, occasionally suggesting fragments of near-immobile melody (“Closed Circuit, A Pastoral”) or simply lifting us from the chair (“Water”).
Amazingly, everything heard occurs in real time. Even when veritable legions of bassoons (and relative key clicks, and whatever else one can hear, including the aforementioned birds) are perceived in the stereo field. It’s all born from an expert positioning of the microphones – Ross amplifies the unthinkable, besides the “normal” – and loops, natural or less: what do we know, poor guitarists deprived of the chance of circular breathing? The aim of the composer – subjecting the audience to a feeling close to the vibrational totality experienced by the performer – is achieved in full. Equally notable is the cross of inner stability and disregard of corporeal issues generated by the superimpositions; but we’re on Phill Niblock’s label, therefore we were expecting it, in a way.
And so, another case of droning wonderment. However – trust this madman – that’s just the beginning of an utterly enriching voyage. Sometimes being a canary implies receiving incredible rewards." [Touching Extremes]
€17.50
Wandering Eye
"Aria Rostami and Daniel Blomquist's debut album "Wandering Eye" was recorded over the span of a year and a half. "Dome A" and "Dome B" were recorded inside of a planetarium dome to no audience and it was the second time Rostami and Blomquist played together. "Ridge A" is the latest song recorded and it was performed live in Blomquist's basement. These live tracks use source material ranging from samples from the internet, to live field recordings, to synthesizers. "Dome C" and "Dome F" were compiled by sending material back and forth over and over again and then rearranged into coherent songs. These studio recordings mostly consist of processed piano originally recorded by Rostami. "Ridge B" originated as a cover of the Persian pop song "Do Panjereh" by Googoosh that Rostami had created but was manipulated and distorted in the process of sending the material back and forth. The song titles come from a paper published by Saunders et al. titled "Where is the best site on Earth?" which highlights the best places to observe space from the Antarctic Plateau. Antarctica is the coldest, driest and calmest place on earth. The astronomical sights there yield images of the heavens that are sharper and have more clarity than any other sight on earth. It is a gateway to observe other worlds.
Aria Rostami and Daniel Blomquist are from San Francisco, CA. Rostami and Blomquist's work occurs at two stages, the gathering/preparation of source material and the live performance. Primarily, Rostami and Blomquist's source material focuses on, digital information and the exchange of that information, repetition and decay, and non-involvement or surrendering aspects of creative control. Some of the piano recordings were created by answering a simple questionnaire Rostami made that uses letters, colors, numbers, major verse minor, and picking between flat, natural and sharp to create a framework for a composition. After the framework is created, Rostami creates a song on the piano, records and sends it to Blomquist who in turn manipulates it. In some cases, Rostami recorded the material using the audio recording option for the app Viber. Rostami used Viber to communicate with a friend who was visiting Iran. Since he had asked her to fill out the survey through the app, he also recorded the material through the low quality recording interface. Sometimes this material is thrown back and forth and sometimes it's processed only once or barely touched. The recording is then turned into a loop and recorded to tape. This system was developed to surrender control and allow the origin of the composition to come from somewhere else much like field recordings or sampling does (two other ways Rostami and Blomquist gather source material.).Time, entropy, and decay are central factors in Rostami and Blomquist's work. For live performances Blomquist works with samples gathered and manipulated digitally and then dubbed to analog tape, reconstituting the quality and predictability of the digital source material. By using loops, Blomquist can take a short audio clip and concentrate on processing it live and allow for improvised changes to that recording over long periods of time. Rostami adds in an extra layer of drones, fuzz, melodic ambience and crescendos with his synthesizer. Their compositions explore dynamic relations between digital and analog sound creating quiet transitions and soaring peaks."
https://glacialmovements.bandcamp.com/album/wandering-eye
€15.00
False Flag Rapture
Following up on 2020's critically acclaimed "Ballad of the External Life" LP, Rrill Bell's latest outing on Elevator Bath is a complex amalgamation of acoustic source materials (metallophones, winds, strings, and brass), (cassette) tape treatments, and digital assemblages, which coalesced over a period of six years, starting from the artist's desire to build a highly personal album around a turn-of-the-century recording of his late grandmother singing an impromptu hymn in Slovak dialect at a family gathering, resurrected from memory after lying dormant for 50+ years. Working through a family legacy of religious hallucinations/visions, the album (in spite of its tongue-in-cheek title) unironically explores themes of potentially staged transcendence, ecstasy of suspicious origins, vulnerability, inspired/anxious states of mind, fractured identity, doubt, rupture, redemption by proxy, and the dilemma of being forced to adopt a perspective in a contingent universe.
The music on "False Flag Rapture" is restless yet focused, shifting, evolving – like "Ballad...", never staying in one place too long – and features a wide range of aural perspectives, as well as a strong sense at times of "listening with", rather than merely "listening to". Hyper-detailed, darkly tinged ecstatic/manic passages alternate with dreamlike chamber pieces and muted celestial drifts cloaked in an uneasy haze, with the occasional disarming reveal.
A labor of love begun in earnest in 2015 and completed in 2021, "False Flag Rapture" is a testament to abstract electro-acoustic music's oft under-appreciated potential to treat deeply personal themes while connecting alienated human beings.
Born and raised in the US-American Rust Belt, and a resident of Germany for over two decades, Rrill Bell draws on the formative inspirations of radical scratch culture, Cagean thought, harmolodics, musique concréte, and various other strains of experimental music practice. Originally rooted in the world of improvisational performance, over the past decade his work has expanded to include various hybrid approaches to location recording, augmented reality, composition, and audio narrative.
In addition to 2020's "Ballad of the External Life" LP on Elevator Bath, Rrill Bell's music has previously been released by the Klappkart, Gertrude Tapes, Weird Forest and Denovali labels, among others.
Rrill Bell: chimes, vibraphone, crotales, glockenspiel, drum machines, tapes, dictaphones, tape decks, and electronics
featuring contributions from
Felix Fritsche: clarinets/flutes
Koenraad Ecker: cello
Alex Morsey: contrabass/tuba
Mastered by James Plotkin
Artwork/collage by Rrill Bell
Photography by Katrin Koenning
Layout by Colin Andrew Sheffield
42-minute lime green cassette with full-color six-panel j-card in clear Norelco case, plus full-color outer o-card featuring collage art by Rrill Bell.
https://rrill-bell.bandcamp.com/album/false-flag-rapture
€11.00
When Better isn't quite Good enough
"The spirit of enquiry and experiment is still alive and kicking - in Portugal anyway. On this double CD, Vitor looks twice at the same material. On CD one we get his unique take on guitar improvisation, which is electric, songlike and mixes genres in an unusual way. Then he takes all the pieces on that CD and orchestrates them with drums, bass, piano, guitar, clarinet and trumpet, to make a duplicate CD on which the same pieces appear as quite different pieces. You can choose one or the other, or compare the takes - or try to unpick the process by listening. And the band lists some of the leading figures of the Portuguese avant-jazz, and indie rock scenes.
Vítor‘s career has veered from rock (he was the founder of the hit band GNR) through minimalism, folk, punk, thrash metal, electronic and country to free improvisation (29 years with Telectu). Since 1987, he has focused more on classical contemporary composition - for soloists, chamber groups and orchestras and written five operas. Here gets back to his rock roots, bringing all that other buzzing knowledge with him."
€17.50
The Sphere of Density
S.E.T.I. is one of the most important representatives of the dark ambient genre of recent years. Another incarnation of Andrew Lagowski and his most active project, with releases on labels such as Loki-Found (Power & Steel), Touch, Incoming!, VIVO, Ash International and Syntactic (Klanggalerie). 'The Sphere of Density' is his latest album, which consists of two CDs, of which the first contains completely new studio material, and the second is a record of an improvised concert that was very well received at the Wroclaw Industrial Festival.
Both CDs depict various styles of the S.E.T.I. project. Although they were created around the same period of time, they are completely different in terms of sound character or construction of the tracks.
The Sphere of Density is inspired by the vision of Alexander Petrovitch Kazantsev - a russian science fiction writer.
"A whole cosmic laboratory of precision instruments has passed near the Moon and communicated via radio a priceless information about the nature of interplanetary space. Received information expanded cosmic conception of men with daring brains, passionate hearts, trained muscles and sensitive nerves. These men will fly in one of the lunar ships in order to see from lunar observatory, without the barrier of atmosphere, constructions rised by the inhabitants of other planets, to discover other stars, to solve the secret of secrets – the cause of the emergence of stars, of transformation of energy into matter..."
https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/the-sphere-of-density
€17.00
71:36
"Mille Plateaux proudly presents sister-label Force Intel, which will cover great music that is simply not experimental enough for Mille Plateaux. Force Intel will take care of the sound that is usually called IDM.
Sabi (aka Taro Peter Little) and Kiyo (Kiyoshi Ono) are two long-standing producers on the Tokyo electronic scene, but hardly recognized outside Japan so far. 71:36 is split in two halves: ambient IDM, sometimes with an organic piano touch in the first five tracks by Sabi. Here, the epic "Sleepy Emerald" stands out. Orchestral, rhythmic and atmospheric, this is one of the best ambient IDM tracks in recent memory. "Om" is a beautiful, quiet piano-based track. The fifth track could be a soundtrack to a science fiction movie -- you can almost hear the image of a new sun being born. The second half has the Kiyo tracks and is strictly IDM -- rhythmic and with experimental, often glitchy sounds, but still enjoyable even to less advanced IDM listeners. Simply put: just great IDM with remixes by a line of excellent IDM producers including Julien Neto, Kettel, Richard Devine and Machine Drum." [label info]
www.forceintel.com
€13.00
Garden of Shadows and Light
"Garden of Shadows and Light is the first collaboration between Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Toop, presenting the entirety of a concert performed in London in August 2018. With their collective musical experience encompassing collaborative work with figures as diverse as Evan Parker, Akiko Yano, Arto Lindsay and Christian Fennesz, in contexts ranging from pop session work to film scores to sound installation, no one could be sure how Sakamoto and Toop would approach their first concert together as a duo. From the opening moments, in which Sakamoto's delicate inside-piano work is paired with distant scrapes and moans from Toop's prepared lap steel guitar, it became immediately clear that a subtle, at times hushed, form of free improvisation is being practiced here, one in which space, pause and silence often take on heightened importance. The album's title takes inspiration from the aesthetics of Japanese gardening, and the spatial metaphor this suggests is apt, as listeners can imagine themselves wandering through a subtly changing environment, chancing on beautiful details and admiring them before moving on. You are led through a series of discrete moments, each uniquely shaded, whether by highly amplified small percussive sounds, austere electronic tones or the mournful tones of Toop's bass recorder. The course of the music follows a non-teleological drift, in which Sakamoto and Toop seem less concerned with establishing an overarching structure than in allowing each moment the space it needs to develop and breathe. When Sakamoto eventually turns to the piano's keyboard in the performance's second half, the music becomes lushly enveloping, as his jaggedly lyrical lines float against a backdrop of prepared guitar and field recordings. The music takes a radical, unexpected turn when Sakamoto picks up an electric guitar, with both players turning up the volume for a passage of distorted roar and shuddering feedback -- bracing evidence of the unfettered, exploratory approach shared by these two uncategorisable musicians, beautifully documented here."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLvHLB0oSdg
€29.50
En-trance
Zweites Album dieses Projekts auf AUTARKEIA, dem litauischen Label. Wilder und perkussiver als „Shcut ente..“, werden hier schamanistische Tänze & Ekstasen aufgeführt, alles handgespielt und ungeordnet, Blasinstrumente, beschwörende Vocals & Geschrei.... im gleichen Geiste wie Z’EV, 23SKIDOO, alte PSYCHIC TV, aber auch VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA oder wilde MAEROR TRI oder rituelle HYBRYDS kommen einem in den Sinn... und wieder duftet die CD nach MANDELN.
“En-trance” was recorded, but still wasn’t released by the magic-practising artists almost a decade ago. This album compiles two lasting live-recorded tracks. Ritual pulsing, archaic sound of wind instruments, deep-dark “ambient” and surrealistic, unexpected music bends immersing the audience to the swirl of phantasmagoric moods. There are some movies classified as of the “noir” stylistics, the main feature of which is highly forcible and strong atmosphere. If the records also have the classification of the “noir”, “En-trance” could be considered one of the most emphatic works of this style. Emotions generated by the “En-trance” music could be compared with the psychedelic atmosphere of the first albums of NWW, Hybryds. Interesting record and mystic ritual having sustained the challenge of social disregard during the years.
Album's tracks listing:
1. neophile gets ex-sited
2. and now s-he starts laughing
Album lasts for 40 min. 36 sec. It’s packed in a nontypical black plastic DVD case. Limited edition 500 copies. CD is covered with special lackuer which smells like an almond.“ [label info]
www.autarkeia.org
€12.00
Shcut enteRing worts
Wer auf beschwörenden Okkult-Ambient-Industrial steht, ist bei SALA genau richtig. Geisterhaft tönende Loops & verfremdete Stimmenfetzen, Glöckchen- oder Triangelsounds, alles in sehr hypnotischer Bewegung irgendwo im Hallraum tauchen seltsame Geräusche auf (Akustikgitarren).... gewidmet Jhonn Balance!
“Shcut enteRing worts” consists of two forceful tracks of “ritual ambient” style. They are not distinguished in the compact disk as the ritual couldn’t and shouldn’t be accelerated or perceived in separated pieces. Starting from hypnotic “mantra”, music gradually unravels to the strong and mystical “ambient”, the main feature of which being reiteration transmitted by the sound loops. These are organically supplemented by the tabors, bells, magic spells and mysterious sounds floating from the distance and generating only the strong mystic mood of the audience. Actually, concerning the impact, this music is in line with the works of world’s famous artists acting in this field – Coil, NWW, Omenya, Hybryds, Deutsch Nepal. The “Schut enteRing worts” album was recorded by the participants of SALA project when experimenting with Brion Gysin’s dream machine, which formerly inspired the well-known William S.Burroughs and had a strong psychedelic effect.
Album's tracks listing:
1. His: Entering The Dream
2. The Last Words Of Hassan Sabbah
Album lasts for 36 min. 26 sec. It’s packed in a nontypical black plastic DVD case. We recommend you to listen to “Schut enteRing worts” only on Hi-fi stereo. Limited edition 500 copies. CD is covered with special lackuer which smells like an almond.” [label info]
www.autarkeia.org
€12.00
Adhere
"When legendary noise duo Yellow Swans dissolved just prior to releasing Going Places, it left in its wake two musicians with very distinct but very different voices. Pete Swanson's post-YS technoid experimentations have been well documented, but that still leaves Gabriel Saloman, who, after leaving the group, buried himself headfirst in sounds and images that were possibly even further away from his comfort zone. Adhere is Saloman's first "proper" solo album, and it finds him stripping away the blood, sweat and tears of his old band, revealing a rich seam of ominous restraint. Delicately-picked strings, piano and hocking woodblock percussion are drowned in reverb and drawn out in cold anguish giving a cracked, minimalist mirror to the work of fellow Miasmah alums Kreng or Elegi. A softly-spoken record, while Adhere pushes away Saloman's noise history, none of his well-documented intensity is discarded and lost. Instead, the blistering punk nihilism is allowed to simmer and boil over in different ways, and the occasional moments of post-Cocteau Twins shimmering bliss we could just about make out on Going Places are now given a chance to shine in all their glory. Adhere is a surprising, challenging and perfectly-paced album, and fits into its very own niche, ushering in a new generation of listeners to Saloman's distorted, hazy vision. Includes mp3 download." [label info]
www.miasmah.com
"After the breakup of the much-loved floor-core noise duo, Yellow Swans, Pete Swanson has carved quite a solo career for himself, but we haven't heard as much from fellow YS member Gabriel Saloman. As it turns out, Saloman has been rather busy himself over the past few years in Vancouver working on various solo projects of his own under the monikers of GMS and Sade Sade and with collaborative projects Diadem and Chambers. Most of his projects have taken on a conceptual form of social resistance like his Music for Prisons project, which employed field recordings of protests for imprisoned Tamil refugees with original music to be broadcast at extreme volume outside of prison walls as a form of political protest against authoritarian-imposed incarceration.
But Adhere, his vinyl debut for the Miasmah label, is the first time we're getting a full sense of the range of Saloman's sonic vision, and it is uniquely compelling and powerful. Composed in collaboration with a contemporary dance group, Adhere reads as a modern classical composition in seven parts with intense builds and pregnant silences, centered around reverberated piano, bowed strings, ambient guitar, percussive woodblocks and martial drumming into a captivating and beautiful soundscape. Sometimes the intensity is restrained by minimal piano stabs in a big empty room, in the third part, we hear some gorgeous Robin Guthrie-ish guitar washes, still later some dramatic yet solemn percussion. The entire composition toggling back and forth between quietly pensive dynamics and voluminous crescendos that give a sonic drama to an obviously visual accompaniment. Perfect for the Miasmah label which has always had a strong focus on marrying works of experimental classical forms with dark penetrating ambience." [Aquarius Records]
€16.00
Movement Building
Shelter Press collect all three volumes of the compelling Movement Building works for dance by Gabriel Saloman (Yellow Swans) in a handy double CD set, providing a first opportunity to listen and immerse yourself in the noise deity’s most refined and touching body of work since going solo after Yellow Swans’ demise.
Since 2014 Shelter Press has been steadily releasing a multi-volume series of documents showcasing Gabriel Saloman’s music for contemporary dance. Under the title of Movement Building, these albums have covered a wide breadth of themes and approaches, all of them coalescing around Saloman’s darkly cinematic approach to contemporary guitar music. Known for his part in the seminal electronic-noise duo Yellow Swans (alongside Pete Swanson), Saloman has taken the sweeping drones and fried electricity of his former band and embedded them within an expanding pallette of bowed strings, martial percussion and resonant piano.
Shelter Press has now made good on its promise to collect all three volumes of this vinyl only series – Movement Building Vol. I (2014); Vol. II (2015); and Vol. III (2017) – as a double CD featuring two hours of music, new artwork, previously unreleased tracks, a new digital master by Helmut Erler of Berlin’s Dubplates & Mastering, and an extensive essay on dance, politics and the themes of each album written by Saloman. These collected volumes provide an absolutely necessary document for any fan of Saloman’s work, past or present.
The first disc collects Movement Building Vol. I and Vol. II, the former a sprawling 36 minutes epic that had previously been separated into two discreet tracks for vinyl and is collected here as one continuous piece, moving through an extended set of drone and loping drum play before climaxing in the kind of glorious guitar chording most often associated with groups such as My Bloody Valentine, GSYBE or Mono. Movement Building Vol. II explores various combinations of drum and drone, ASMR inducing high end clatter and Saloman’s infamous take on Miles Davis’ classic My Funny Valentine.
The second disc collects Movement Building Vol. III, including two tracks not available on the concurrently released vinyl version. Vol. III shares with earlier albums the emotive and disorienting bowed guitar, militant percussion and searing guitar eruptions that was so evocative of memory and trauma. Joining this pallet are other familiar Saloman sounds: shoegaze washes of distorted guitar, minimalist piano attacks, melancholy guitar melodies, and a patina of harsh noise at just the right moments. Added to this is a more contemporary approach to drums and bass, perhaps an effect of his collaborations with producer Michael Red in their dub-ambient project Chambers.
Saloman’s music has never sat comfortably in any genre, sharing with a select cohort of other artists (Stephen O’Malley, Lawrence English, Grouper, Kreng, Tim Hecker, among others) an ambiguous position overlapping “modern classical”, “electronic music”, and the more outer limits of “ambient metal”. The recordings collected in Movement Building doesn’t clarify as much as it expands Saloman’s oeuvre further into an idiosyncratic musical no-man’s land that fails to be faithful to any popular musical trend – contemporary, retro or futurist.
€17.00
I thought it was us but it was all of us
"Saltland is the new project led by Montreal-based cellist Rebecca Foon, best known as a founding member of contemporary chamber group Esmerine and a former member of Thee Silver Mt. Zion and Set Fire To Flames. Foon began composing solo work in 2010, featuring multi-layered cello and hushed vocals at the intersection of drone, no-wave, improv, dream-pop and minimalism. Joined by Jamie Thompson (Unicorns, Esmerine) on miniature percussion, programming and signal processing, Foon's live performances in Montreal and abroad over the past two years have seen her sound progress towards gently rhythmic and electronic territory as well. She has transfixed audiences with this new music while sharing the stage with Mary Margaret O'Hara, Julia Kent, Nat Baldwin and Sam Amidon, among others. As her largely home-recorded debut album began taking shape throughout 2011, with numerous guests contributing to various pieces, Foon adopted the Saltland moniker for this work.
I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us is a beautifully restrained debut album that telescopes the directness and economy of Foon's compositional and vocal styles into lush, twilight atmospheres aglow with luminescent tendrils and flickering particles. Foon sings of childhood innocence lost, of tender utopic reveries and downcast dystopic horizons, and the search for soft, stoic strength in a darkening, devolving world. Foon’s voice is discreet but defined, drifting on buoyant currents of sound sourced from her plucked and bowed cello lines, in most cases propelled by Thompson's bespoke percussion and understated programming/processing, with touches of guitar, bass, horns, woodwinds, strings and backing vocals added by a cast of supporting players. The record unfurls like a gauzy flag in a restless breeze at dusk: a delicate, resolute sentinel set against the fading light.
The album's ambience also owes much to the work of Mark Lawson, the award-winning engineer (Arcade Fire) who collaborated closely with Foon to record and mix these songs at Six Saint V, her apartment studio in Montreal. Lawson, along with friend and percussionist Thompson, helped to forge a balance between lo-fi intimacy and shimmering breadth with these recordings, remaining faithful to the all-anologue instrumentation of the source material while judiciously deploying signal processing strategies to subtly refract, saturate and expand the sonic landscape. With contributions from Laurel Sprengelmeyer and Jess Robertson (Little Scream), Mishka Stein (Patrick Watson), Colin Stetson (Bon Iver), Sarah Neufeld and Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire) among others, Saltland offers up an unassumingly immersive debut album of searching songs that blend several core influences into a distinctively naturalistic sound. Saltland stakes out an unaffected, meditative, clear-eyed and earnest space where minimalism, dream-pop, drone, shoegaze, confessional folk, chamber music, and ambient/electronic coexist and coalesce.
Release date: 14 May 2013
Running time: 38:32
Packaging notes
CD comes in a custom gatefold jacket printed on 100% recycled paperboard in 4-colour process. LP is pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl at Optimal (Germany) and comes in a heavyweight gatefold jacket printed in full-colour process." [label info]
www.cstrecords.com
€23.00
Morgen wieder lustig
"Sankt Otten’s fourth album sees the duo’s sound evolving once again, while retaining the undeniable hallmarks of atmosphere, melodic dexterity and depth. Morgen Wieder Lustig employs stacks of luscious synthesizers, with knowing nods to fellow Germans Kraftwerk and Klaus Schulze, alongside Oliver Klemm’s hallmark soaring guitar drones and Stephan Otten’s unmistakable rhythms. The album presents a musical vision that is both epic and personal – a kind of internal cinema. Single ‘Lustig, lustig demain encore lustig’ is a prime example of Sankt Otten’s glorious new direction. The track acts like a magnet, irresistibly drawing the listener along with its hypnotic drums. Elsewhere the album is soaked in majestic refrains, demonstrating Sankt Otten’s control of rhythm and texture. While their early sonic experiments explored the brooding and frayed edges of ambient, post-rock and jazz, these new songs push this relationship to a new level. Morgen Wieder Lustig shifts from the head-rush ambience of ‘Das bezahlte Lob’ to the dark and twisted post-jazz of ‘Fromme Lügen’. Just when you think you have the album pegged, ‘X für U’ drags you on a melancholic, Klaus Schulze-inspired sc-fi odyssey." [label info]
www.denovali.com
€10.00
Song from the Forest: The Soundtrack
"This is the soundtrack album to the film “Song from the Forest”, which tells the story of Louis Sarno, an American who has lived for thirty years among the Bayaka pygmies in the Central African Republic. No outsider has had such access to this beautiful and musical culture, and this selection of the best of his recordings presents the sounds of this amazing people and their environment with a depth and richness never heard before.
SONG FROM THE FOREST: THE FILM /// Premieres in Germany: Showtimes
As a young man, the American Louis Sarno heard a song on the radio that gripped his imagination. He followed the mysterious sounds all the way to the Central African rainforest and found their source with the Bayaka Pygmies, a tribe of hunters and gatherers. He never left.
Today, twenty-five years later, Louis Sarno has recorded over 1,500 hours of unique Bayaka music. He is a fully accepted member of Bayaka society and has a son, Samedi. Once, when Samedi was a baby, he became seriously ill and Louis feared for his life. He held his son in his arms through a frightful night and made him a promise: “If you get through this, one day I’ll show you the world I come from.”
Now the time has come to fulfill his promise, and Louis travels with Samedi, age 13, from the African rainforest to another jungle, one of concrete, glass, and asphalt: New York City. Together they meet Louis’ family and old friends, including his closest friend from college, Jim Jarmusch.
Carried by the contrasts between rainforest and urban America, with a fascinating soundtrack and peaceful, loving imagery, their stories are interwoven to form a touching portrait of an extraordinary man and his son.
A modern epic set between rainforest and skyscrapers.
FROM THE DIRECTOR
In the fall of 2009, I was traveling in the Congo River Basin when by chance I heard tales of a white man who was said to have lived for decades in the rainforest with a tribe of huntergatherers called the Bayaka Pygmies, for decades. I went to look for him. A few days later, I was standing in a clearing when Bayaka came running at me from all directions, brandishing spears and screaming. Suddenly, the noise ceased, and a tall figure detached itself from the undergrowth: a white man, two heads taller than everybody else, a Bayaka baby in each of his arms. Before me stood a legend: a lost, forgotten man, reborn in the Central African jungle. A man who once ate tadpoles for a month, who married a Bayaka woman, who survived malaria, hepatitis, typhoid, leprosy, and has recorded more than 1500 hours of unique Bayaka music. Before me stood the musical Herodotus of the Central African forests, the white Bayaka—Louis Sarno.
When we shook hands in this clearing, I instantly felt that something really big had happened in my life. How could I know that this was the beginning of a journey which would turn me—a writer and journalist—into a film-maker and which would take me across the globe for years to come? To me—a person without a real home, driven from place to place, a passionate hunter-gatherer of stories who has spent the past twenty years traveling to the most remote corners of the Earth—Louis Sarno is the most fascinating person I have ever met. He took a radical leap, accomplishing what I often imagine myself doing when I am on the road: leaving it all behind, starting over, becoming someone else. More than everything else I am impressed by his life’s work: the fantastic recordings of Bayaka music that we are proud to present in this soundtrack from Song From the Forest. (Michael Obert)
FROM THE CURATOR
Beautifully mapping the entire range of music-making of a single community of hunter-gatherers across more than a generation, the Louis Sarno collection of Bayaka music and soundscapes is extraordinary, unprecedented, and unrepeatable. No field recordist has ever matched the depth and sensitivity of Sarno’s commitment to presenting a record of what it sounds like to live with an indigenous community. Sarno has developed a uniquely sensitive recording approach, refined through an acute listening that is only possible through permanent immersion in a culture.
Nearly all of the recordings on this soundtrack have been drawn from the Louis Sarno collection of Bayaka music at the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford. Louis continues to donate his exceptional recordings to the Museum with the long-term intention that they will benefit the community whose musical life they so beautifully present. (Noel Lobley, Ethnomusicologist, Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford University)
FROM THE MUSIC SUPERVISOR
Through Louis Sarno’s recordings, Bayaka music has become famous around the world. I first spoke to Louis about his endeavours in the mid-nineties when I was putting together “The Book of Music and Nature”, which included some of his work. When I heard he was still down there, twenty years later, and that a film wasnbeing made about his life, I knew I wanted to help.
Central to Bayaka music is a sonic integration with the rhythms and melodies of the forest itself. We have tried to include selections from the vast archive that highlight the ways the human sounds fit into the natural sounds, as an inspiration for how human life as a whole might better be part of our surrounding environment, our true home. (David Rothenberg)
TRACK NOTES BY LOUIS SARNO
1. Yeyi-greeting / 4:30
Yeyi just means ‘yodel,’ and this is one of my favorite forms of Bayaka music. They used to go on all night, slowly moving through the village, and at dawn they’d be going on one last time, throwing leaves on the roof of each house. The new generation doesn’t do it the way it used to be done. This is the most recognizable sound in Bayaka music, pure vocal music, very beautiful songs. When they sing you can hear the forest all around them.
2. Women Sing in the Forest / 4:55
This is recorded in a bimba forest, where there is not much undergrowth, so you hear the singing echoing as if you were inside a natural cathedral. The Bayaka have this way of wandering into the forest, taking music from different forms, and improvising together as they collect water or gather mushrooms. I love the sound of women’s voices in the distance in the forest. The forest without that sound is incomplete. These are the most lovely voices on Earth.
3. Tree Drumming / 3:08
There is a certain kind of tree, the gooma that has big buttress roots. You hit it and it really resonates. Whenever the Bayaka come across a tree like this on the trail they hit it and play a little music. It’s kind of irresistible. Then they move on.
4. Bobé Spirits Calling / 5:53
I remember that camp, it was a beautiful one. The first evening, as the sun was setting, I saw this fire in the distance between the bimba trees. But it turned out to be the sun, at ground level in the forest, and you could barely see it through the trees at the horizon. The Bobé were really wild, spinning around and dancing wildly. That was the time when they buried Samedi’s grandmother. I had just came back from America, and I walked fifty kilometers in one day, and I heard she had died. The next day I set up to find this camp. We didn’t know where to go exactly, and it took us three days to find it. I was so moved by the place. The ceremony went on for two or three nights. This is a typical esimé, when the women move on from the usual melodic singing into something polyrhythmic. The Bobé are not human, they are animal spirits, and they use sounds that are beyond language. The Boyobi ceremony is not just music, it’s theater, dance, and myth, all blended together. Sometimes the Bobé spirits are naked in the moonlight, smeared with bioluminescent fungus. No crew has yet been able to film this!
5. Bayaka Night Insects / 4:52
Insects, yes, but also a few birds. That’s a type of cuckoo. I call it the “ngon go go” bird. There are two cuckoos and the rest is insects, with maybe a few tree frogs. Sometimes you get these moments in the forest where everything seems to come together like that. That’s why I spent so much time in the forest, because most of the time nothing much seems to be happening. But once in a while you get these beautiful moments, which you can only get by spending a lot of time out there. Years.
6. Louis Sarno Speaks / 2:32
Ewunji was an incredible guy, Samedi’s great-grandfather. He was known to go very deep into the forest, way into what’s now the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in Congo, and we just wandered around with spears, no hunting nets. You couldn’t survive like that now. The small animals have been decimated by poachers. Taking care of this should be the responsibility of the World Wildlife Fund, but they prefer to concentrate on big charismatic animals like elephants and gorillas, instead of the animals that the Bayaka depend on, small forest antelopes and monkeys. The Bayaka are no longer allowed to go into the park, but the poachers still go in there with shotguns.
7. The Flutes We Hear No More / 5:12
That was the only time I ever heard two flute players playing at the same time. Momboli and Gongé playing mbyo duets on Dec. 22 nd 1992. You are supposed to hear this music in your dreams, that’s why they usually play it alone at night, so it can get into your dreams. They play more or less in unison even though the Bayaka love vocal polyphony. This is a music you no longer hear anymore, since the last flute player died a few years ago. He gave me his flute and I had it in my house and could get a bit of a sound out of it. But when the Séléka raided my house last year during the insurgency, they destroyed everything, and they smashed the flute. This is a sound we will never hear again.
8. Net Hunt / 3:00
Well, that’s not actually a net hunt. That’s actually gida-gida, it’s a gorilla hunting game, they imitate chimpanzee noises. That’s from 1987, the very first time I went out into the forest. Just the men and boys are singing here. They make these fake spears and pretend to kill.
9. Earth Bow / 2:09
To make an earth bow the Bayaka take a sapling and bend it over, then attach a piece of twine to one end of the sapling, tie the other end to a piece of bark and hold it over a hole that they dig in the ground. This was Boungingi, and those are the same guys who were playing the tree drum. Just takes them a minute or so to make this instrument. Usually one person plays it, but there is always some extra percussion in the background.
10. Geedal / 2:28
That’s Balonyona, one of the greatest masters of the bow harp, the geedal. I recorded many hours of his playing, he really was the best player of this instrument. In 1991 he even went to Paris to play. It has six strings, you find it all over Africa. But the Bayaka way of playing is a bit different. They use fewer notes, and more rhythms. They play along with the pulses of the forest. It fits right in.
11. Flute in Forest / 5:16
That is a beautiful melody, the flute sounds so beautiful in the forest in the distance. That sound brings back so many memories of so many good times. Momboli played that melody a lot, and I recorded it often in the distance. You hear the night ambience swelling with insects, frogs, cuckoos, and the distant flute. So many good times… This music is really part of the whole forest world.
12. Water Drumming / 2:55
When the women bathe, they are always playing water drum. And sometimes they get these percussive melodies, this is a music for girls, and they are much better at it than the boys. Women will do it, too, and sometimes I’ve been far away when you can only hear the deepest sounds, and I think it’s the drum, and when I get closer, I realize it is women playing in the water. It is one of the few instruments Bayaka women are allowed to play.
13. Lingboku Celebration / 5:36
Ah, the Lingboku – women’s music. That is the one spirit they still have. They claim all the others have been stolen from them by the men. A lot of the lyrics make fun of male sexuality, it’s really an expression of female power. The men don’t like women to do it. But they don’t stop them. The men are not supposed to be present when they sing it. “The penis has no endurance and dies right away, but the pussy is always ready to keep going.” You ought to mark this song “explicit” on the CD. The dancing is quite explicit, too, the women look like they’re humping each other and if they catch men looking at this they’ll chase them away.
14. Moukouté’s Lament / 1:52
Ah, that’s little Moukouté. He appears in the film. At the time you recorded him for the film, he really wasn’t all that good at the geedal. But since then, he’s gotten a lot better.
15. Yeyi-Farewell / 5:32
What can you say? It’s beautiful. Yeyi. It’s the most pure Bayaka music. I never get tired of hearing these songs. They bring back so much musical wealth of these people. I don’t make recordings anymore. In some ways it’s easier to make recordings with today’s new technology, but I don’t love it the way I love those old cassette recorders. How do you write numbers on those tiny SD cards! They’re always getting lost. Many of the people I used to record are no longer alive. The new generation is just not the same." [label info]
www.gruenrekorder.de
"One of the various releases this week that is supposed to be a soundtrack. Here no film either, but just the recordings made by Louis Sarno, made in Central Africa with Bayaka Pygmies, a tribe of hunters and collectors. Sarno is not a visitor, but he lives there as a member and married, has a son and recorded 1500 hours of music and sounds. That's what the documentary by Michael Obst is about, about this rather unique field recordist. Sarno, who guides us through music from Bayaka and the place they live in, documents each of the fifteen pieces here in word. Flutes, tree drumming, singing, games, celebrations and such like are what we hear on this disc. Sometimes recorded from a distance, with the rainforest adding a whole additional layer of sound, which works very well. The 'Tree Drumming' reminded me of earlier Etant Donnes. I very much enjoy a release like this. Not because I know a lot about the subject of tribes or Non-Western music, and I am the first to admit I can't say
anything worthwhile about this, other than: I think this is a fascinating trip. Maybe it's because I was on holiday just now, and perhaps I would like to evoke the memory of holiday a bit longer? (I doubt whether Central Africa will ever be a point of holiday for me however). Just for now I can really enjoy all of this a lot. Strangely fascinating music. A sound documentary as well as something that you can enjoy from a purely musical point of view. Very nice variation in the world of field recording." [FdW/Vital Weekly #946]
€14.00
Bells
"Bells is an Evening Record. The deep of its sound travel us toward a landscape and a situation directly. It is a record that supposes an experience on listening, a compromise with hearing. Images float, changing in a record with a beautiful narrative. The trip, the steps and tension appears clearly in this process that means to listen to this record.
It is an unique track of long haul. It is not a fleeting record. It is a record-experience.
I have the chance to make listen to Bells to my pupils of twelve years old, as an exercise of writing. And this is one of the very beautiful results: “It presents a picture of me walking with Hiroki headwind in a field close to nothing. Like night, also appears to be near a route by traffic noise. In a moment it looks like rain and another seems to pass a train. The noise is constant. The combination of constant andsound recordings is perfect. I think Hiroki Sasajima walks through puddles.
It was a very good piece of work why is good at drawing on white paper. Evening Bell is the perfect title.Hiroki I imagine abandoning any idea where he is recording all the sounds you hear. This is very good to use your imagination.
With this work Art you can imagine many things.” " [Bernardo Durand]
www.ahoraeterno.com.ar
€12.00
1938
Eine DER Überraschungen des Jahres 2007 war das neue Album der "Art-Punk" Band aus L.A.!
"Eigentlich könnte die kalifornische Band Savage Republic heutzutage auch eine große Legende in Sachen Art-Punk und experimenteller Indie-Musik sein, so wie Sonic Youth, Minuteman oder die Einstürzenden Neubauten. Warum man diese Band normalerweise nicht in einem Satz mit diesen Genre-Größen nennt, ist wohl eine ungerechte Laune der Musik-Geschichte, standen Savage Republic doch in den 80er Jahren eben mit diesen Bands zusammen auf einer Bühne. Savage Republic sind deshalb auch so etwas wie Art-Punk-Pioniere, die auch nicht vor den schrägsten musikalischen Einflüssen zurückschreckten. Da wurde der frühe West-Coast Hardcore-Punk genau so angesehen wie 60’s Psychedelic oder Ethno-Folk. Dick Dale gehörte genau so zu den Vorbildern wie Ennio Morricone oder Mikis Theodorakis. Vielleicht war es diese Verschrobenheit und Kreativität, weshalb der Band aus Los Angeles ein größeres Publikum verwehrt blieb. Nun nach 18 Jahren Pause gibt es endlich mit „1938“ ein neues Savage Republic Album. Und zu welchem Label würde dieses Album besser passen, als zum Neurosis-Label Neurot Recordings? Eben. Trotz seiner enormen Spielzeit von ca. 70 Minuten treten beim Hören von „1938“ an keiner Stelle Ermüdungserscheinungen oder Langeweile auf. Da finden sich auf dem fast instrumental eingespielten Album Industrial-Sounds, mittelalterliche Klänge, Folk-Elemente, Psychedelic, Kraut-Rock, Impro-Musik oder auch mal jazziges. Ein besonderer Fokus wird dabei auf die Percussion- und Schlagzeugarbeit gelegt, sodass Savage Republic trotz seiner Ausgefallenheit ein sehr rhythmisches Album ist. Freunde von Bands wie Pere Ubu, Can oder den Butthole Surfers könnten bei „1938“ ihre helle Freude haben. Die Betonung liegt dabei auf „könnte“, denn Savage Republic sind einfach zu Eigenständig und als Solitär im Musikgeschäft anzusehen, dass man diese Band nur mit Vorsicht in gewisse Schubladen stecken sollte." [Independentkicks.de]
"Los Angeles art-punk pioneers Savage Republic have come roaring out of obscurity with 1938, their first full-length album of new material in 18 years-- hot on the heels of this spring's powerful Siam EP-- both on Neurot Records. Throughout the '80s Savage Republic was a deep-underground phenomenon, playing highly unorthodox shows in remote desert locations, abandoned factories, skid-row parking lots, and grimy bars across the US and Europe with such luminaries as Einstuerzende Neubaten, Minutemen, Sonic Youth, and Live Skull as well as hardcore-punk slugfests with the likes of Bad Religion, Angry Samoans, and Final Conflict. Known for their oddly tuned guitars, tribal beats, shouted vocals, metal percussion (typically 55-gallon oil drums and items gleaned from dumpsters and junkyards), and Morricone-meets-Dick Dale melodies, their performances were at times ritualistic and occassionally involved fire and explosives.
In their current incarnation, Savage Republic core members Thom Fuhmann, Ethan Port and Greg Grunke are joined by UK punk-rock veteran Val Haller, whose resume includes stints with Wayne County, Flying Lizards, Lords of The New Church, and X-Ray Spex, and noted drummer and percussionist Alan Waddington, known for his tenure with The Unforgiven as well as live and studio work with everyone from Willie Nelson to Gwen Stefani. The album also features contributions by guest artists including multi-instrumentalist Tara T. Tavi, classical violinist Julia Zuker, and drummer Bryan Taylor.
While staying true to their roots, Savage Republic have updated and expanded their singular Mediterranean-surf-soundtrack-folk-noise blend into a musical hybrid both contemporary and timeless. Trademark scrap-metal percussion and layers of guitar drone are now joined by spooky ambient textures evoking sonic landscapes exotic, dreamy and sinister. An undercurrent of dread is never too far away. In keeping with their tradition of graphic excellence, the album is packaged in a tri-fold cover designed by and featuring the photography of Ramona Clarke-Fuhrmann. " [press release]
www.neurotrecordings.com
www.mobilization.com
€13.00
Unfolding Luxury beyond the City of Dreams
"Dekorder presents two new vinyl editions composed and designed by UK sound artist Janek Schaefer, who is known around the world for his wide variety of engaging and unpredictable works for installation, concert and composition. Following his highly acclaimed ‘Lay-by Lullaby’ album on 12k [which Pitchfork listed in the ‘Top 10 under-the-radar releases for 2014’], Janek has created and collated a collection of tracks that showcase both his more ambient works [077], and his highly charged sonorities [078]. A beautiful pair of LP’s that ideally should be experienced together for your home listening pleasure. The tracks were mastered by Stephan Mathieu and cut by Lupo at Calyx Mastering.
A1 White Lights of Divine Darkness
By chance I composed this for my brother-in-law the day he passed away. In recent years he had seen the white lights of heavens gate, but returned, and became fascinated by what he called God’s divine darkness in this lifetime.
A2 Unfolding Honey 6:06
A track from my exhibition soundtrack 'Future Beauty, 30 years of Japanese fashion' held at The Barbican Gallery, London. The exhibition featured some amazing folded garments by Issey Miyake, that inspired the unfurling fabric feeling of the composition.
A3 Luxury 3:00
An orchestral drone piece featuring an old French lady singing to her cats with an extra celestial chorus.
A4 Skyline Ascending 3:28
A Carpenters LP piano loop is layered again and again over a high sky recording, which was recorded using a helium balloon floating in the clouds over the city, with raindrops.
B1 Coda (for Sir John Dankworth) 5:00
In my early teens, I used to attend week long music camps, in tents, within the grounds of Sir John Dankworth's home with Cleo Laine. I used to know them, and composed this piece with one of their vinyl's on the day I heard he died. The installation premiered at the Sydney Cooper Gallery in Canterbury, broadcasting a 3 channel version to six 50's radios.
B2 The City of Dreams 8:28
Theme tune for the opening of “The Mill: City of Dreams” a site specific theatre production in a deserted mill in Bradford. Piano motif recorded live with my twin-arm turntable, additional overlays recorded with Mark Robinson on his old family piano.
B3 Beyond 6:30
The Carpenter’s return, sliding piano loops through recordings made in Grand Central Station at closing time when the vast hall was deserted, and the full majesty of the acoustic space could be appreciated. Stilettos pass by forming polyrhythm's, as the last train announces it’s departure...
credits
released 19 November 2014
Biography
Janek Schaefer has exhibited, lectured, and performed widely throughout Europe [Sonar, Tate Modern, ICA, Strasbourg Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art], USA/Canada, [Walker Art Center, Mutek, Princeton, XI], Japan, and Australia [Sydney Opera House 2003]. His foundsound concerts and installations explore the spatial, social and celestial qualities that sound can communicate, through the twisting of old and new technology. The context of each idea is central to its development and resolution, often exploring themes of appropriation, accident, & alteration.
Janek studied Architecture at the Royal College of Art where he worked with Brian Eno, creating “Recorded Delivery” in 1995, and discovered how important sound is in perceiving space, and place. In 2008 he won the British Composer of the Year Award in Sonic Art, and a Paul Hamlyn Award. The Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool exhibited a Retrospective of his career to date in 2009. He is represented by the Agency gallery, London, and is a Visiting Professor at Oxford Brookes Sonic Art Research Unit. He lives and works in Walton-on-Thames." [label info]
www.dekorder.com
"The other LP has seven pieces, shorter pieces of course and it's a pity that there are no clarifications printed on the cover. They are in the press text, so we know why there were created, so we know, for instance that 'Luxury' is 'an orchestral drone piece featuring an old French lady singing to her cats with an extra celestial chorus', or that 'Skyline Ascending' is 'a Carpenters LP piano loop is layered again and again over a high sky recording, which was recorded using a helium balloon floating in the clouds over the city, with raindrops'. Shorter these pieces may seem, they essentially are not unlike his longer pieces: multi-layered sound events that create a beautiful dense, atmospheric field of sound. Careful crackles, computer processed sustaining loops (from instruments, vinyl, field recordings, nothing is sacred in the hands of Schaefer), and carefully placed field recordings in their raw state. There is obviously no reason to pick one over the other, but I think I prefer the second LP to the first, great as that one is. The second LP had more variation and the compositions were better worked out, unlike the more endless stream of sounds approach of the first. The differences are small I know, and it's probably best if you get both at the same time. This is Janek Schaefer at what he does, and what he does best. No surprises here, pleasant or otherwise." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€14.00
Contact Microphone Recordings
To some MAGNUS SCHAEFER might be known through his nice mCDR „Im Sommer“ from 2002, here’s now the follower, a 30 minute CDR with more field recordings, guaranteed non-digital. Comes with totally handmade cardboard cover & inlay w. drawing.
„Auf "contact microphone recordings" verdichten sich vertraute und doch nicht zu identifizierende Geräuschphänomene zu mikroskopisch-organischen lo-fi dronefeldern. Sechs Tracks, Spielzeit ca. 30 Minuten.
"Contact microphone recordings" presents a microscopic, organic world of familiar, yet alien sounds and noises, forming ever changing "non-digital" lo-fi drone-fields. Six
tracks, playtime about 30 minutes.” [Magnus Schäfer]
€7.50
Mauerharfe
Günter Schickert, krautrock maestro of echo-driven psychedelia, returns on Marmo one year and half after the release of the Labyrinth LP. Mauerharfe consists of old and special material, which has officially never seen the light before. It is due for release on the eve of the 30th anniversary of Berlin Wall fall, in 12” LP with CD, CD and digital formats. The physical versions contain exclusive pictures, linear notes, a prose poem by Peter Unsicker and some draft writings by the artists with reflections on the project.
Berlin, August 1990, first post-wall Summer. Two friends, the locals Günter Schickert and gallerist Peter Unsicker perform a spectacular yet symbolically intimate interpretation of those epochal changing days by building a sound installation with a damaged piece of the Berlin Wall. They persuade the patrol “Feliks Dzierzynski” of the Western German army to transport and relocate a the piece outside Peter`s Wall Street Gallery on the Zimmer Strasse, in the borough of Mitte, where only a few months back the intact structure actually passed through.
Once the wall was positioned, they bend down the bars of the iron structure that crop out the concrete, bind piano chords to them, stretch the strings down to the bottom base of the construct and connect guitar amplifiers to the set up. The Berlin Wall is ready to be played as a harp.
Günter Schickert`s Mauerharfe are executed between August and October 1990, resulting into three long field recordings.
Side A features a 19` long piece. The tape-induced background noise lays down a carpet of haunting atmospheres and introduces the experiment. Günter starts to test the chords by pulling out, with his fingers, dry and acid timbers. The warm up evolves by investigating wider sinusoidal waves and dilated metallic riffs. The track takes the form of a more conventional music narration, as the artist bangs the harp with a sort of rudimental violin bow creating marching percussive patterns. Layers of psychedelic ambience take over the scene before mixing up with roaring industrial spasms. Lunar sceneries seem to emerge, paving the way to sudden strings feedbacks, crackling distorted clicks and menacing reverbs.
Flipping side, a similarly long take opens up with ferocious urge, like being catapulted into a warfare between iron and cement, sounding like a real military operation. As the strings get hit and pulled, the metal seems to crash into thousands of pieces, dissolving into merciless distortions. Yet it is intriguing to notice how these dynamics of madness occasionally generate wavy and gentle sub-harmonics. This piece adds up intensity in comparison to the previous one, containing enhanced abrasive and distorted frequencies. The final part is marked by monstrous echoing rhythms, before drifting back to a chaotic rumble of fire, metal and concrete.
The third piece, Mauerharfe 3, is a 30 minutes long performance dated August the 13th 1990. As Schickert recalls, 29 years before exactly on that same date, the construction of the Berlin wall was accomplished. This take appears exclusively on CD, with copies included inside the vinyl package and as a separate CD format release. The recording is cleaner than the previous two, giving more width and definition to the sounds. As opposed to Mauerharfe 1 and 2, where the wall of sound is overwhelming, in this 3rd take human presences can be heard : fragments of women voices, a baby crying, the siren of a police car. The compositional approach is more sober, the tones of the harp warmer, closer to an actual one, its notes more gentle, discrete and meditative, sometimes resulting into deep, gong-like percussive timbers.
As Günter Schickert claims, the idea behind the project was the one of representing, in a personal musical way, the feelings and sensations that he – as well as many others experiencing the division and eventually the removal of the Wall - felt through the decades around the presence of this monstrous separator. The wall becomes an instrument, seen both as an object and executor of the experiment, while the human and artistic presence almost vanishes. The atonal and harsh sounds embody the ugliness of an inhuman separation, the terrible echoes of prisons and the lament of its prisoners. The pulling of the strings suggests the repression of a regime, while releasing these it indicates a dash of freedom.
You can get lost into the intensity of the Mauerharfe, find always new sensations and a countless amount of details. If you approach the listening with adventurous spirit and a good dose of curiosity, it can really throw you back into the past, a past of segregation, austerity and suppression, yet of an urging desire of liberation.
https://marmomusic.bandcamp.com/album/g-nter-schickert-peter-unsicker-mauerharfe
€22.50
Rauschbereich
"Drawing current and breath through metal... it’s hard to picture just how either is possible, but Schnüffler plumbs the backwaters of both aural miracles in an engrossing, if pageless, storybook entitled "Rauschbereich."
The name of Gino Robair and Liz Allbee's hyper-attuned duo, Schnüffler, is a colloquialism meaning someone who huffs substances. "Huffing" is equal parts curiosity and consuming obsession, and as any huffer knows substance has a way of vanishing. So hork up yours before this handbuilt edition of just 56 copies, end-pages beautifully illustrated by Allbee herself, is gone for good." [label info]
www.resipiscent.com
€12.00
Insomni
"Couldn't sleep arose to forage for sound. The hum of the fridge encouraged further investigation of hidden, domestic sounds; the fish tank, dvd player, a broken laptop
Dawn and morning light allowed more sound and the guitar, in its case, beckoned
From darkness to light
Guitars: Guild 12 string D-125 & Vintage Guild 6 string GF-25. Mics: Induction coil pick up & Hydrophones. Buddha Machine pre-recorded and mixed, then re-recorded at Holme Fen Posts using mobile speakers. Recording device: Edirol r-09. Radio: static between stations. Software: Max MSP (self-programmed), Supercollider & Logic Pro.
Simon Scott (b. 1971) is a British multi-instrumentalist who is currently based in Cambridge, UK. Insomni is his fourth album and his debut for Ash International and is published by Touch. His music is a fusion of digital signal manipulation combined with an aesthetic of compositional collaboration with environmental sounds and organic acoustic textures. He is inspired by his interests in sound ecology, music technology, the natural world, illustration, photography, composition and sonic art.
Below Sea Level, originally presented live in quadraphonic sound, was released on Touchline in March 2015, after 12k originally released the album in 2012 as an 80-page journal and seven track CD. It explores the aesthetics of active listening, sound ecology and the subjective distinction of compositional materials and sound timbres. Critically applauded for creating juxtapositions of analogue and digital timbres, the man-made and natural world sounds, captured in his local sunken landscape of The Fens in East Anglia, create a fusion of digital signal manipulation combined with organic acoustic textures.
Since the late 1990's Scott's solo work has been featured in a variety of international films, sonic art exhibitions, dance productions, television productions and digital multi-media projects.
He has toured worldwide since 1988 and he is the drummer for UK band Slowdive, who worked with Brian Eno on 1993 'Souvlaki' album. His track 'Für Betty' was included on the German label Kompakt's 'Pop Ambient' (2014) compilation series and his solo music has also been previously released on recording labels 12k, Morr Music, Miasmah, Sonic Pieces and Ghostly International.
Scott is also a freelance composer and sound recordist for film and television and recently appeared on the BBC program 'Springwatch Unsprung' recording aquatic wildlife and discussing his work with presenter Chris Packham. He has taught Music Technology and sound recording in Cambridgeshire and lectured at Cambridge University.
In 2008 he established the KESH recording label, releasing global artists audio and visual projects and he has also collaborated on various projects with Taylor Deupree, Nils Frahm, Machinefabriek, The Sight Below, Isan and James Blackshaw." [label info]
"There are people who know Simon Scott as member of the renown shoegazer band, Slowdive. I have, unfortunately, never got into their music during their reign (even now I can see Rafael Anton Irisarri glaring down at me for this comment). I have, however, come upon Simon Scott's music back in 2009, where, for the first time since his playing drums for Slowdive, he has ventured out to release a solo album. Since then, Scott's music appeared on many of my favorite labels, such as Miasmah, Low Point, Slaapwel, and even 12k. Scott also runs and releases on his very own imprint, Kesh Recordings. His latest full length, Insomni, lands courtesy of Ash International, a long running outlet for Mike Harding, who is already busy with curating releases for Touch.
Insomni opens up with a slowly rising guitar strum slash drone slash noise, perfect as a soundtrack for my early morning walk, as I step out towards a lethargic and barely visible sun. The volume ascents with the climbing star, and soon envelopes every cell of my body. Gentle ambient soundscapes are intermixed with growling distortion, and it is this cocktail of dynamically opposing sonic vibrations that awakens my neurons, and a smile creeps in. The thunder eventually dissolves into a field recording of chirping birds, and Scott's guitar chords tell their story. Those awakened in the midst of night will recognize this texture of insomnia, mixed with fleeting thoughts within an empty chalice of a mind, and distant sounds of the universe unfolding on its own... all on its own...
Couldn't sleep... arose to forage for sound. The hum of the fridge encouraged further investigation of hidden, domestic sounds; the fish tank, dvd player, a broken laptop... Dawn and morning light allowed more sound and the guitar, in its case, beckoned... From darkness to light… -Scott
Insomni pursues its tale through a set of repetitious passages, shimmering light and lo-fi fabric. These are accented with environmental sounds (including the pickup of a cellular electromagnetic interference), wrapping this reverse lullaby into an organic aural pillow of music to wake up to. My favorite moment on the album enters with Scott playing his acoustic guitar (the press release credits a Guild 12-string D-125 and Vintage Guild six-string GF-25) - this is where Scott's talent as a multi-instrumentalist truly shines - it feels like Simon Scott is all this music, all these sounds, all this one. This is a beautiful record to add to your collection, and if you buy directly from the label you will receive two bonus tracks not available anywhere else. Highly recommended for fans of Rafael Anton Irisarri, William Basinski, Lawrence English and Christian Fennesz."
[headphone commute]
€15.00
Two Lakes
"In April 2010, 12k recording artist Seaworthy (the recording project of Cameron Webb) and Matt Rösner traveled to the south coast of New South Wales to undertake a detailed field recording study of two coastal lake ecosystems at the Lakes Meroo and Termeil. The aim of the project was to explore the sounds of a fragile coastal Australian environment and to build from those sounds unique musical pieces that provide a place for listener contemplation and reflection. Field recordings were taken from the lakes and surrounding beaches, forests and streams at different times of the day. Various equipment including a hydrophone, a shotgun and stereo microphones were used to capture the natural sounds of each lake. During breaks in field recording, the artists set up recording equipment in a nearby lakeside cabin. Using acoustic and electric guitars, a ukulele, and electronics, a series of improvised performances were documented. On the last day of the trip, with the experience of the recording process still fresh in mind, rough arrangements were created from the field recordings and improvised sets. Matt Rösner then took these arrangements back to his studio in Myalup -- a small coastal town on the opposite side of the Australian continent -- to mix and finalize the production. Both Rösner and Webb have been active in the Australian experimental music scene for over ten years, with a plethora of releases on local and international labels sharing a similar vision of molding found sounds and field recordings with traditional instrumentation and electronics. Aside from shared musical interest, both artists grew up in close connection with the Australian coastline, albeit on opposite sides of the continent. This connection with their landscape as a remote and diverse place is evident in the pieces created by the artists during their collaboration on the South Coast. Two Lakes marks the third full-length appearance for Seaworthy on 12k following 2006's Map In Hand and 2009's 1897 and blends his signature guitar style with the beautifully arranged field recordings and electronics of Matt Rösner. Two Lakes is a strikingly stark and lonely album undeniably influenced by the remote recording cabin and delicate Australian ecosystem. The blend of instrumentation comes off more like a natural, live duet between artist and nature than a modern-day layered recording. Webb's finger-picked acoustic guitar and ukelele play off of the sounds of wind, reeds and insects in perfect harmony, supported by soft beds of eBowed drones and careful electronic tones. Despite their human presence, Rösner and Webb manage to create music that resonates on another level, as if composed by the lakes themselves." [label info]
www.12k.com
€14.00
Soul Cleansing
"In three decades, Industrial music, due to its tangible form, has given birth to numerous interpretations and splintered factions.
What’s indisputable, is that most of what is actually defined as “industrial” has ultimately become more about entertainment than
confrontation and far removed from the original intent. This is the context in which Sektor 304 has appeared. Equipped with a frightening
and impressive array of primitive instrumentation pulled from junkyards and scrap metal heaps, this Portuguese outfit has delivered an astounding formal debut ¬ a heady mixture of truly old school industrial in the vein of Einsturzende Neubauten, Test Dept , and S.P.K, and the grinding, bass heavy dirge of vintage Swans and Godflesh. These are anthems to the past, but geared towards an apocalyptic and bleak future… a form of counter-culture using what is most evident in modern western society: the debris, the abandoned objects, the waste, the noise, and the interference.
With a solid foundation of rusty, oil drenched percussion, Sektor 304 adds layer upon layer of squalling industrial clangor, hammering metallic noise, grimy atmospheres, heaving masses of haunted factory drones, and threatening tribal batter, with a strong and commanding vocal presence. The sound here is almost physical in nature - provocative, persistent, and demanding. An organic impulse filled with shamanic drifts in which the noise barrage allies itself with metallic rhythmics and the use of concrete elements in the compositions. Junk, plastics, amplified objects. A change of scale. A manipulation of
non-musical sounds in search of visual inductions trying to bring forward
the sequences of Tsukamoto or situations invoked by J.G. Ballard. The conflict between man and machine as a metaphor of the struggle of man against himself. A mix and weight of three decades of sonic subversion.
It can be said that to find the future of music, one must look to the past, drawing influence from prior achievements, yet forging a new identity, and sculpting something completely unique and distinct. With Sektor 304, the future is now, and it’s not entertaining. In 6 panel digipak, mastered by Steel Hook Audio." [Malignant Records]
"Epic crushing metallic industrial heaviness, the kind of thing
we thought they just didn't make anymore, but this is total Swans /
Godflesh / Cop Shoot Cop worship, pounding metallic percussion,
soundscapes of whirring drills, blown out low slung bass, howled
distorted vox, the whole thing so repetitive and mantric, thick slabs
of distorted rumble wrapped around tons of damaged electronics,
bleating horns buried beneath reverb drenched beats, some songs are
full on walls of twisted electronic crunch, others are brooding,
droning skeletal sprawls, laid over deep blurred basslines, and tribal
rhythms, some are dense whorls of deeeeeep sinister black ambience,
all darkly drifting layers, and distant bits of clang and shimmer. For
a few moments here and there, the sound gets downright poppy, like
some sort of washed out post industrial deathrock, but even then, it's
shot through with a seriously menacing sonic undercurrent that seeps
into every beat, and every note. Filthy, crusty, heavy, haunting,
crushing and brutal, the perfect mix of old school industrial pound,
and more modern bleak blackness. Fucking fierce and frightening, grim
and punishing, and we're digging it like crazy." [Aquarius Records]
€13.00
Subliminal Actions
"The follow-up to the highly acclaimed Soul Cleansing CD finds Portugal's Sektor 304 expanding on all aspects of their debut, once
again channeling the essence of the old school guardians (Test Dept, SPK, Crash Worship), while simultaneously exploring new, uncharted
territory. Comparatively speaking, Subliminal Actions is a more complete and focused album, with an even better flow than Soul Cleansing and more attention paid to detail, unleashing a cacophonic whirlwind of buzz saw grind, loops, power tools, and scraping, junk metal debris, clashing head on with exertive tribal percussion, clanging oil barrel rhythms,
and industrial clamor resonating over a sprawling, post apocalyptic wasteland. Some tracks, such as the opener, "A Carving on Metallic Flesh", heap on the scorching noise, while others, such as the resounding, rhythmic driven "By The Throat", "A Vessel of Guilt", or
"Vultures" are delivered with factory-line precision, laced with grimy layers of bass-heavy dirge, bleak, reverbed squall, and distortion filled, atmospheric drone. Among the many highlights, is the albums closer, "A Prismatic Sun", a 10 + minute epic excursion into a nightmarish world, populated by whispered vocals and uneasy drift that
slowly rises and grows in intensity, climaxing into a blissfully dark and sweaty orgy of low slung bass, ominous, ceremonial drumming, and
suffocating darkness. Subliminal Action not only compliments Soul Cleansing, but takes the
Sektor 304 sound to new heights, delivering yet striking record sure to solidify their standing as one of premier, truly industrial acts in
operation today. 10 tracks, 63 min., in 6 panel digipak, mastered by James Plotkin." [label info]
www.malignantrecords.com
http://soundcloud.com/malignantrecords/sets/subliminal-actions-by-sektor
€12.00
Microphonics XXI-XXV
"with the conclusion of other remaining projects and collaborations, there’s no focus other than dirk serries’ ongoing exploration of minimalism. four years in the making and undoubtly fuelled by his 2009 debut and previous mainstays vidnaObmana and fear falls burning, this second microphonics studio album is a heartbreaking symphony of echoing themes, wailing overtones and beautiful desolation. microphonics xxi-xxv, subtitled ‘mounting among the waves, there’s a light in vein. the burden of hope across thousands of rivers’ does hint towards an emotional statement, one that boldly goes beyond what previously achieved.
microphonics xxi-xxv will be out on march 16, as a limited edition double 10inch in a numbered gatefold sleeve (150 copies on white vinyl, 300 copies on black vinyl), complete with a cd copy of the album, and a cd in a deluxe mini album gatefold sleeve." [label info]
www.tonefloat.com
"At the end of 2008 microphonics I - V saw the daylight. Time has come for Dirk Serries to play music under his own name and say good-bye to his alter-egos vidnaObmana and Fear Falls Burning. The design of that album was minimalist in structure. Quiet guitar patterns built up and flowed away and a calm, meditative ambient atmosphere with adventurous harmony was created. Five live albums and a 10 " were released at Tonefloat. Meanwhile appeared the last album of Fear Falls Burning, what can be called a stunning album, which led to an acoustic aftershock of an era ended. For more than four years later arrived the second studio album by the musical project microphonics, microphonics XXI - XXV with the subtitles Mounting among the waves, There's a light in vein, The burden of hope and Across thousands of rivers, which are the titles of the four tracks on the album. Elements of Fear Falls Burning, vidnaObmana and of course microphonics can be found in the compositions. The sound of
the guitar is dirtier, unpolished, seeking feedback and underneath the many layers of repeating sounds in which Serries is a master. The discrepancy between the heavy bass lines, distorted guitars, layered chords and delicate strumming seek each other, collide and blend together. Cheerfulness is hard to find in this album. It is true quest in which somewhere hope flickers. In this way the album ends with open chords and a rolling drone. The album is a pleasant surprise twist in the microphonics project, in which the ambient atmosphere reigned supreme. The double 10?is coming out with a book of city photography of Martina Verhoeven, the partner Dirk Serries. She plays bass in 3 Seconds or Air (a side project of Dirk Serries) and is responsible for the cover photography of Serries. The photography of the book, I haven?t view it yet, but given the pictures I've seen her before, it will be aesthetically pleasing and appropriate to the album. Often there is a desolate atmosphere in carefully composed black and white photos. Tonefloat knows to release another wonderful compilation of image and sound, which is a delight for the eyes and ears."(JKH/Vital Weekly]
€27.50
Unfortunately
"This fourth and latest offering was recorded over 3 evenings during the band's recent residency at the Montreal Interculture Institute. It truly represents the band's appetite for experimentation & their desire to keep things interesting for their fans. At times epic and challenging, perhaps like a secret collaboration between Fly Pan Am & Acid Mothers Temple." [label info]
www.alien8recordings.com
€13.00
Signatures
Mit einer etwas andere Art von "Plunderphonics" sticht C.A. SHEFFIELD auf "Signatures" hervor; seine vier Stücke sind feinst gesponnene Drones, die aus Extrakten von alten Grammophon-Platten gewonnen wurden. Auf diesen befanden sich, dem Labelkonzept von INVISIBLE BIRDS gemäss, Vogelgesänge und weitere Natursounds (was man den stark transformierten Drones allenfalls noch als subtile organische Aura anmerkt). Sehr sanft und kontemplativ auf den Punkt gedroned, beim letzten Stück epische Ausmaße annehmend...
"these pieces were composed without the use of a computer, only a turntable, old sampler and a portable 64-track digital workstation.
each track is a distillation of commercially available recordings with the essential qualities remaining, only very brief sections are selected and the raw components then contracted into gradually shifting and unfolding atmospheres, offering subtle nuances
and quiet restraint. fragments from these tracks include sounds from birds or water, some being partially obscured while others are veiled references to those elements. in "broken light," the low rumbling that appears at the beginning and for the first few minutes is the sound of birds' wings flapping upon takeoff)." [label info]
"this is the second release by a new label called invisible birds. their first release was m. swizynski's 'films 2007' we reviewed in vital weekly 625, although it didn't mention this as a label. the label focuses itself on releasing 'limited edition cds and dvds evocative of birds and the landscapes they inhabit', which i think is a very nice selection method for incoming demo's. colin andrew sheffield might better known from the releases on his own label, elevator bath, for which he released cdrs and a cd. his 'signatures' cd has its official release december 10th 2008, the 100th birthday of olivier messiaen, another lover of birds and music (probably in that order). sheffield uses a turntable, old sampler and a 'portable 64-track digital workstation' and no computer on these recordings. on the turntable lies records of nature sounds, birds and water, of which sheffield carefully selects fragments to sample and layer on his ancient workstation. if you staple enough sounds on top of eachother, then have them slightly out of sync, one can create beautiful drone music, and that's exactly what sheffield does here. the first three tracks are nice, but it will turn out they are exercises for what is to come: 'breath of day', the fourth and final epic of this, with gramophone hiss and organ like sounds, being stretched out over the course of the twenty-seven minutes this lasts. a true beauty, in all its simplicity. sometimes the simplest things is enough to get things done. the previous tracks, which lay out what sheffield wants, eventually, are great too, but aren't of the same beauty as the last one. if it would have been just the first three i would have been equally enthusiastic about this, now i'm probably ecstatic. great cd." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
www.invisiblebirds.org
€13.00
Serenade
The twelve jagged audio collages found on Colin Andrew Sheffield's "Serenade" shift from blurry abstractions to choppy sound art to mournful plundered passages, always with the singular stylistic approach the composer has developed over the last 25+ years of activity.
As the follow-up to his previous full-length release, the critically acclaimed "Images" (2023), "Serenade" picks up where that album left off, although with an expanded sonic palette of funk, soul, jazz, and library records as his primary sources. Of course, the finished work bears little resemblance to the original components as Sheffield opts to draw out the mystery and minutiae from his building blocks rather than simply rearrange the chosen snippets. In these dense new compositions, hidden details come into relief as loops develop and morph while elusive melodies emerge from the mist before vanishing into thin air.
From the beginning stages in which samples were gathered, until the final product was at last completed, Sheffield spent around eighteen months stitching together the tracks for "Serenade". Rather than sounding labored or stale, however, much of the record has a kind of ramshackle quality about it, with a DIY aesthetic at its heart. The characteristic looseness of these pieces could be attributed to Sheffield's use of vintage sampling hardware, but the presence of imperfect loops and rough textures was both a conscious decision and an inevitable part of his distinctive creative process.
Ultimately "Serenade" is a collection of miniatures exploring Sheffield's interest in bending found sounds to his will, in creating a certain ambiance of open-ended intrigue, and thereby describing a hazy landscape — one perhaps flecked with distant clouds and obscure lights in the sky: a paean for the inexplicable.
Recorded at home in Austin, July 2023 - December 2024
All sounds derived from various commercially available sources
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu
Lacquer cut by Andreas Lubich
Photography by Adam Pacione
Layout by Colin Sheffield
https://colinandrewsheffield.bandcamp.com/album/serenade
"Strings swell up from the bottom of a dark pool of water, drones vibrate like the hull of a doomed cargo plane, the ghosts of ghosts walk in circles across sheet-metal… he conjures these scenes and more like them here." — Matt Korvette, Yellow Green Red
€22.50
Essential Anomalies
Colin Andrew Sheffield (sampler) and James Eck Rippie (turntables) began playing music together in Dallas, Texas in 2000 and released their debut LP, "Variations," a year later. They separated soon afterwards, relocating to cities 2,600 miles apart; and though they continued with solo work, they remained inactive as a duo until recently. During this hiatus, Sheffield stayed busy dealing antiquarian books and running his Elevator Bath label; Rippie became an accomplished sound mixer for major motion pictures and television shows. And yet the collaboration between these two friends of a quarter century has always held a special significance (as Francois Couture of AllMusic stated: "The level of understanding between [these two artists] ... commands respect"). So, in 2015, when the two found themselves both living in Austin, a reactivation of their improvising duo was a happy inevitability.
"Essential Anatomies" is the fruit of the pair's renewed efforts. Comprising four pieces originally issued on limited edition cassettes and now widely available for the first time, the double LP is an experiment in audio collage and instant narrative composition. The main tools are sounds from the past: commercially available recordings manipulated and sculpted into a medium with inherent potential. Unlike their plunderphonic ancestors and contemporaries, however, Sheffield and Rippie place a heavy emphasis on atmosphere and a kind of musicality. Their work is surprising and challenging, but it is infused with their keen sense of structure and listenability.
Elements of sound art, drone, glitch, and noise emerge from their altered samples. These sounds have been stripped of any extraneous cumbrances, leaving just the crucial components. The parts that remain, the essential anatomies, form the basis for an ongoing abstract dialogue between two artists with a remarkably developed affinity. The results capture dual streams of consciousness, coursing with a description of nonrepresentational beauty.
"[B]est described as abstract plunderphonics. Sheffield and Rippie use samplers and turntables to sculpt the past into new forms that defy instant categorization; suffice it to say that the old has never sounded so new."
- Richard Allen, A Closer Listen
"Essential Anatomies" has been released by Elevator Bath as a limited edition double LP, copies of which are also available here: www.elevatorbath.com
Mastered for vinyl by James Plotkin
Cover art by Eugenia Loli
credits
released July 7, 2017
Colin Andrew Sheffield (b. 1976, El Paso TX) is the founder of the Elevator Bath recording label. He has released a number of solo recordings on labels such as Invisible Birds, Mystery Sea, Quiet World, and 23five.
James Eck Rippie (b. 1977) is a visual/sound artist originally from outside Nashville TN. His recorded work has been as a turntablist, but he has also worked extensively with other instruments and mediums. He has released his work with the Crónica Electronica and Sirr labels, among others, and has collaborated with sound artists Simon Whetham, Paulo Raposo, and eRikm.
Sheffield and Rippie will tour the US this summer.
elevatorbath.bandcamp.com/album/essential-
anatomies-3
"Compiling recent small-run cassette works into a luxurious double record set, Essential Anatomies represents a reunion for the duo of Colin Andrew Sheffield and James Eck Rippie. Collaborators since 2000 and friends for even longer, the four lengthy recordings here capture their Texas reunion in 2015, and with its undeniable sense of complexity and cohesion, makes it clear that they have not missed a step from their time apart.
On paper, what Sheffield and Rippie do is well-trod ground: processing and recontexualization of samples and other forms of pre-recorded music. But rather than being another pair of John Oswald wannabes, they do so with distinct expertise and precision. To use a slightly abstract metaphor, they are much closer to Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad production, taking bits here and there and using them as elements in a much different whole, than they are Puff Daddy’s wholesale plagiarism and lack of innovation.
The first of the four lengthy pieces (each around 22 to 23 minutes long) is an instant launch into the gloom that is Essential Anatomies. Chilling, piano like scrapes cut through a blackened, churning abyss of sound. Some shrill, sharp bits pierce through the darkness here and there, but the piece largely stays pleasant, even though it is rather bleak and covered in a nicely noisy sheen of fuzz. Tortured, almost melodic tones occasionally shine through a wall of ghostly drifts and heavy rumbles, at times heading toward a bit of harsh crunch, but stays in check. The melodies appear here and there again, acting as a slightly less oppressive counterpoint to the sound of decay that surrounds it. Finally, the duo end the piece on a lighter note, like sun shining through menacing gray skies.
What is abundantly clear right from this start is that Sheffield and Rippie are not only extremely proficient at creating moods and space with their samplers and turntables (respectively), but also a creating dynamic compositions that are quite expansive and varied, changing often but returning to reoccurring motifs that results in a more composed, rather than improvised sound. The second piece allows a bit more of their source material to shine through, mostly in the form of piano notes and what sounds like frozen reverberations of chimes far in the distance. There is the same sense of space, but erratic loops and mangled notes result in a composition that builds in tension, eventually transitioning into haunting church organ like walls that dominate the latter half of the piece.
Comparably, the second record comes across a bit less melodic and a bit more textural in the composition and structure. Part three begins with an almost percussive, crunching machinery like opening that is eventually melded with a batch of wet, almost organic like noises and radio static. Bits of recognizable music still sneak through here and there, but it is less the focus. Instead, metallic sweeps and unnatural field recording like sounds fill out the mix, though it ends on a slightly more ambient note. The final composition first is free and spacious, with some crackling tactile like elements at first, but soon it takes on a decaying sound. More organ and mangled string fanfares give a more conventional signpost here and there, but by the end the duo has already transitioned the sound to one of tension and fright, slowly evolving into an uncomfortable silence to end the record.
While I do not believe I could ever manage to place the source of the sounds Colin Andrew Sheffield and James Eck Rippie utilized in making Essential Anatomies, never does it feel like the two overly processed or from their source. Meaning that, there is some of the original character left from the source material, however subtle it may be. Instead these audio building blocks are obscured but tastefully utilized to construct these atmosphere heavy works. Rippie’s day job is a sound mixer for films and television shows, which surely aided the two in creating the cinematic mood that these two records conjure up. It is that combination of sonic nuance and compositional strength and diversity that make Essential Anatomies so good." [Creaig Dunton/Brainwashed]
€25.00
Exploded View
"Ah, a minimax CD! I haven't seen one of those in quite some time. And if you are wondering what it is, a minimax CD is a CD with a small portion of music, usually, twenty-three minutes (but I know of instances were they are thirty) and the rest of the disc is transparent, which give a great effect for design. Elevator Bath goes to town with a fine digipack around it. It begs, of course, the question: why not a proper full-length release? We aren't told but for some reason, Colin Andrew Sheffield and James Eck Rippie found their piece of enough interest to stand by itself. These two musicians have been going for some time and in recent years have been working together quite a bit, culminating in releases together. They use turntables, samples and processing. Earlier this week,
in a private conversation with a friend of mine I was complaining about turntablism, which is
something that I don't care too much about. Mainly because of its rotating aspect, making a lot of sounds the same; even if you decide to play sandpaper. In the case of Sheffield and Rippie, that aspect is luckily not there. I would believe they pick up the sounds from the turntable and give it the good twice over in the sampler and whatever else they use for processing (be it analogue or digital) and the results are used in a nineteen-minute montage/collage of modern musique concrete. It has that great vibrant feeling of things buzzing, sparkling and flying about, sometimes
staying in a place for a short time, sometimes a bit longer, but new elements are carried in, bashed on their heads and before you know melted down in the microwave into a nasty drone. There is quite a bit of dynamics in there, obviously, I would say as these men know their trade quite well, and that begs the question again: why not a bit more? Please?" [FdW/Vital Weekly]
https://sheffieldrippie.bandcamp.com/album/exploded-view
€7.50
Vertonen 16
“In a edition of 100 copies EE Tapes offers a new CDR by Shifts, a side-soloproject of Frans de Waard. He started this project in 1995 and defines it as an "ongoing exploration in the world of guitars". 'Vertonen 16' being his 16th step in this research I suppose, results in one lengthy ambient piece lasting some 33 minutes.
In order to describe the experience of listening to this music I would like to make the following comparison. Imagine yourself looking at a very abstract painiting. A painting even more abstract then the painting (by Frans de Waard) that is on the cover of this release. Imagine a square painted smoothly in just one colour. After concentrating at it for some time, it is as if 'things' start to move and to flow in the painting. Of course you know you are imagining it, but on the other hand, it looks as if things really start to move. Listening to the new Shifts CDR is a similar experience. We hear just 'one' sound moving slowly ahead with no shifts at all for about half an hour. Because there are no shifts, it's not correct to say that the piece 'moves'. In a way development, progress and even duration are no fitting concepts here. It's a very static and 'timeless' music. But by listening closely to the piece it starts to reveal many little changes at a microscopic level and within a very limited range. You start to ask yourself whether these changes are real or effected in the mind like the moving of the colours. So you end up in an ambigious soundworld and that's an interesting experience. Also an enjoyable one, because de Waard created some nice rich sounds that didn't bore me at all. So whether imagined or real, in the end this is not relevant. Because one way or the other: it really Shifts!” [Vital Weekly]
€9.00
Isolated Agent Stranding Behaviour
"Elevator Bath's ongoing series of picture disc LPs (each record being adorned with full-color artwork by the recording artist) continues with Matt Shoemaker's debut appearance on vinyl: An enigmatic pairing of new recordings with appropriately cryptic artwork.
Much of Shoemaker's recorded output prominently features the use of field recordings (see his Tropical Amnesia One CD), but in this case he has eschewed such grounded measures and has instead sculpted a two-part puzzle which seemingly exists on some other plane(t). Layer upon evolving layer of sonic phenomena is still the methodological trademark, but the content is almost entirely electronic, lending a great deal of vivid color to a description of blackest space. The two works presented here are powerfully mysterious, unsettling examples of Matt Shoemaker's prowess as a composer of details, of moods and tenses.
The improbably relevant artwork for this picture disc consists of two collages utilizing Shoemaker's own hand-dyed paper. The images, as well as their meanings, are essentially abstract and yet remarkably familiar. On the A side, the Isolated Agent scuttles in a circular motion, forever locked in an endless search for the unknown element. The B side depicts the constant retreat, the Stranding Behavior inevitably resulting in/from confusion.
"You realize what you are implying? That we owe our human condition here to the intervention of insects."
Matt Shoemaker's music has been released by such labels as Trente Oiseaux, The Helen Scarsdale Agency, and Ferns Recordings. He resides in Seattle.
This picture disc LP has been released in an edition of 233 copies.
Total running time: 30 minutes" [label info]
www.elevatorbath.com
"The other record is by Matt Shoemaker, who seems to be always present, with his regular releases on labels as Ferns and The Helen Scarsdale Agency. His work recently shifted a bit more towards that of working with field recordings, but on this LP it all seems to be electronic again. I have no idea wether these are the result computers working overtime or meters and meters of cable connecting one synthesizer to another, and once connected start playing themselves, almost, as it were. Shoemaker layers the results of whatever process he applies on a multitude of tracks and does some highly creative mixing with those sounds. Highy atmospheric (obviously! I'd say) of course, but Shoemaker's work is also a bit more experimental than the usual drone minds (UK, USA, otherwise). Shoemaker knows how to put in a strange angle in his work, that makes it just a bit different than the ordinary drone record. Partly based in the seventies cosmic tradition, partly drone and partly serious avant-garde, but with a long, stretched time signature. Great record." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€17.50
Re-Born
https://ant-zen.bandcamp.com/album/re-born
'birth is not a beginning; death is not an end.' - chuang tzu
buddhists, hindus, jains and taoists all believe in an endless circle of life and death. according to their karma (past and present actions), all beings are reborn into a better or worse next life. only an 'awakened one', a buddha, who sees transcendental truth as it is, can break free from this vicious circle of existence and enter nirvana, becoming conscious of and melting into our real essence. the aspects of this rebirth became the principal topic of siamgda's seventh release.
're-born' is probably siamgda's most beat-oriented album so far which will surprise newcomers as well as veterans of marc fischer's work. It’s filled with fresh ideas and unexpected side-trips into new musical directions. predominant technoid rhythm pulses and percussive loops blended with distinctive ethnic sound textures, electronic sequencer lines and haunting vocals result in gripping tracks of power and beauty. never before in siamgda's sonic evolution have trance and circumspection been so perfectly combined - this is advanced rhythmic industrial noise par excellence for mind and body.
more releases of siamgda:
mailorder.ant-zen.com/products/band/id/1244
bandcamp... mehr
Mitwirkende
veröffentlicht am 5. September 2016
written and produced by marc fischer.
recorded between 2015 & 2016 in india & nepal.
mastered by eric van wonterghem at prodam, berlin.
photography by marc fischer. layout by stefan alt.
€8.50
Imaginary Landscapes
"After 9 years of silence, here’s the 11th album from the unclassifiable Brussels-based duo. With their usual tamping drums (just mention the two parts of “The Decision to Exist” or “Same Area”, led by a ferocious 808), a regular bass guitar hammering, some bare minimum poor voices, threatened violins, skinbound flute and oboe here and there, a distorted furious piano everywhere and finally some tiny cautious optimism (the extra-human guitar in “Enough Slaps”), the whole is carefully assembled in order to obtain an accurate picture of life on Earth. “Pain” and “Pleasure” are different aspects of the same mental construction." [label info]
www.kotaerecords.com
€13.00
Parallel Landscapes
"Limited edition of 300 copies with unique artwork made by Russian street artist (Grisha), which were carefully adapted to sleeve design by Mikhail Myasoedov. The vinyl LP contains 4 selected tracks from the full 8-track album.
After 9 years of silence, here’s the 11th album from the unclassifiable Brussels-based duo. With their usual tamping drums (just mention the two parts of “The Decision to Exist” or “Same Area”, led by a ferocious 808), a regular bass guitar hammering, some bare minimum poor voices, threatened violins, skinbound flute and oboe here and there, a distorted furious piano everywhere and finally some tiny cautious optimism (the extra-human guitar in “Enough Slaps”), the whole is carefully assembled in order to obtain an accurate picture of life on Earth. “Pain” and “Pleasure” are different aspects of the same mental construction." [label info]
www.kotaerecords.com
€18.00
Born into Trouble as the Sparks fly upward
The second Silver Mt Zion album featured an expanded band, with a similarly expanded band name. The addition of cello, second violin and second guitar allowed SMZ to develop richer, denser arrangements while preserving live ensemble playing. The opening instrumental pieces picked up where the debut left off, with found-sound loops and treatments introducing repeated melodic themes that move slowly through various counter-melodies — the greater breadth of instrumentation brought extra subtlety, complexity and harmonic range to bear on these neo-classical dirges. Guitars and vocals moved to the fore on the album’s centerpiece tracks. “Take These Hands And Throw Them In The River” is an astounding juxtaposition of rhythmic thrust and ricocheting vocals, driven by a battered lyrical paranoia that conjures equal parts fear and rage. The calm after this storming piece comes by way of another vocal tune, this time fragile and near-whispered, with dual lines that alternately mask and reinforce each other. A piano and cello interlude prefaces the last side of the record, which features two guitar-driven songs, the first a blazing rock piece that builds to an exuberant distorted climax, the second as close to a pop masterpiece as this band is likely to craft, highlighted by a lovely arpeggio guitar riff and the defiant refrain “musicians are cowards”. While remaining anchored in an underlying sadness and mourning over this failed world, this album reveals an angrier, more urgent face as this unique ensemble charted ever-widening sonic and emotional terrain.
PERSONNEL
Beckie: cello
Efrim: guitar, piano, tapes, effects, voice
Ian: guitar, organ
Jessica: violin, voice
Sophie: violin, voice
Thierry: contrabass, voice
GUESTS
Jonah Fortune: trumpet, trombone on TRACK 7
Eric Craven: drums
Mischa and Sasha: voices
Recorded at thee mighty Hotel2Tango in Montreal by Howard Bilerman. Mastered by Harris Newman.
theesilvermtzion.bandcamp.com/album/born-into-trouble-as-the-sparks-fly-upward
€10.00
Blank for your own Message
"Available late Feb. 2008. First ed. of 500 copies in a full color book bound case. Silverman should be given a degree in bio-melodics. This most recent body of collaged constructions pulsates with aspects of a living system. Slurred drones rush sonic corpuscles through electronic capillaries, imparting breath to each track. An obscured, parenthetical heart beat occasionally comes through as an unexpectedly metallic panging in the background, mostly drowned out by the fluid dynamics of localized subsystems playing out their various vital functions. Perhaps each one of us DOES sound a little like a Javanese gamelan orchestra inside if you hit the right spot. Cutting to find out is not advocated. Silverman’s fantastic voyage sounds like a spiritual dissertation on degrees of scale. The musical camera obscura sometimes finds purchase on an atomic level, aurally zooming into the humming orbits of individual atoms and even creeping up on the sounds of the electrons, protons and neutrons themselves. With this beautifully ambient series of orchestral maneuvers in the dark, Silverman may have found a tonal replacement for Gray’s Anatomy." [label info]
"The Silverman aka Phil Knight is one of my favorite musicians in the experimental ambient/drone scene. Over the past decennium he has been responsible for some of the most beautiful ambient/meditative music I've ever heard. His previous LP/CD for BLRR Nature Of Illusion is one of the best albums in this genre I have heard in many-a-year. The Silverman's solo albums have always been slightly overshadowed by his work for the Legendary Pink Dots. This is a shame, as his solo work deserves a place of its own. Perhaps this new CD Blank For Your Own Message will do the trick. Starting off life as a "zen-opera" in seven parts, the music here is more varied than Nature Of Illusion. BLRR drops the term "bio-melodics". For once I have to agree. This actually fits the music and the world of The Silverman. Although the music has seven parts, the 43 minutes that make up this album are programmed into one track. It is hard to tell the origin of some of the sounds; there are traffic tapes and acoustic sounds (percussion, cow bells) of a more ethnical nature, all mixed up with synthetic sounds. These combined make up a very strong album. Packed in one of those typical BLRR deluxe hard-carton sleeves, this is a great addition to the already great discography of The Silverman." [FK / Vital Weekly]
www.blrrecords.com
€15.00
Dust
Limited edition 12' Vinyl.
Sion Orgon's 5th album featuring Thighpaulsandra, Richard Johnson, Claudio Gian and many other guests.
or a number of years now, Sion Orgon has been crafting music that fuses abstract electronic mulch with the kind of bright melodies one would expect from a shiny pop group. Using avant-garde sensibilities and a vision partly shaped by his affiliation with both Thighpaulsandra and Coil, the Welsh producer/musician has never been afraid to push these into areas most artists of a similar disposition would never be bold enough to touch. At once catchy, psychedelic, filmic and disturbed, Sion Orgon's work has a very distinctive feel to it that only arrives from a craftsman firmly locked on to his own path. 'Dust' is the very latest collection of work, comprising six new tracks featuring Thighpaulsandra (Coil, Spiritualised, Julian Cope) on half of them and a number of other guests, including Claudio Gian, Lara Ward and Richard Johnson (Splintered, Theme). Somewhere amongst the many convoluted folds of often weird 'n' wonderful sounds are texts spoken by a number of random Finnish and Latvian people, further enhancing the multi-dimensional stealth attack of any one of the songs presented here. Like, again, his regular collaborator Thighpaulsandra's work, Sion's is enmeshed in rich layers and tangents so disparate they'd never make sense in anybody else's hands, and despite the countless such claims put forward by those essentially creating music permanently stuck in first gear this truly is aimed at those who demand far more from their listening experience. Limited to 300.
https://sionorgon.bandcamp.com/album/dust
"Welsh man Sion Orgon was always somewhere on the wider boarder of my radar due his regular involvement with Thighpaulsandra and also occasionality with Peter Christopherson of Coil. Supporting his artist career as Sound Designer, Studio Technician and Music Producer for Film, Theatre and Animation this is actually his 5th solo album.
"Dust" was first published as limited Vinyl LP (300 copies only) via Lumberton Trading Co. last Autumn and is now also available as CD with identical tracklisting.
Honestly I didn't expect him to be such an stylistic versatile musician - within these 6 tracks he moves seamlessly from noisy indie rock, abstract ambient to and back, with a grand finale of heartfelt and moving psychedelic rock.
Starting with "Spat Out Of Dust", co-written and featuring Richard Johnson of Splintered he immediately catches your attention with a relentless beat and guitar pushing forward the cynic vocals until it fades organically into an open structure. After this track which reminds me positively of current Ministry "Ornament Centipode" is a dramatic soundtrack-ish piece, musique concrete with an experimental and psychedelic edge. Besides it's also one of the three tracks featuring Thighpaulsandra on modular synthesizers.
Followed by "Head Bomb" the setted mood continues at first but steadily gains intensity until a psychotic rage can be imagined which is lived out to the fullest. Supported only by Claudio Gian on Bass and Chey Davis on Percussion & field recordings Sion Orgon leaves no nerves untouched here.
'Who Do You Think You Are?' (co-written by Thighpaulsandra) gets back into indie-rock post punk mood with dramatic interferences, a switch suddenly into melodic progressive metal excursions and backwards into field recordings filled post punk deserts.
"Disintegration" is the straightest alternative rock song imaginable here, paired with a hip-hop beat and surprising merciless vocals. This one leaves me puzzled, an outburst of energy to be resolved only through the final epic "The Mouth That Has No Face" which is an astonishing homage to early psychedelic rock, light-hearted, playful and even with a catchy melodic refrain before it slowly fades into field recordings which leave you at peace with the world.
While this release basically lasts only 6 tracks in barely 40 Minutes it really kicks ass, ashes and dust at once." [CHAIN D.L.K.]
€20.00
Kino IV: Black Sun Rising
"Rounds up the first three 7" releases on Shock, Majora and Forced Exposure, the bonus track from The Portable Altamont (1991) compilation, plus six previously-unreleased tracks, including three from the Xaman sessions. A disc of total rock!
Finally available, after almost two years of driving Dirter & Shock to the brink of insanity -- a massive 4CD retrospective of Skullflower's early works from 1986-1990, featuring all the material previously released on Broken Flag, Shock, Majora and Forced Exposure, plus around two hours of previously-unheard music -- 14 tracks spread across the series. And this is not "out-take" dross used to fill up CDs, this is essential early Skullflower providing further insight into their uniquely twisted musical world. All material has been digitally mastered by Richard Whittaker at FX, and each CD comes in a deluxe gatefold card cover and inner sleeve with newly-unearthed artwork by Matthew. Booklets feature extensive notes and previously-unseen flyers, posters and photos." [label info]
www.dirter.co.uk
"This long in the works reissue campaign has had aQ staff and aQ customer Skullflower nerds freaking the fuck out. Four, count, em FOUR reissued rarities! On the last list, we reviewed reissues of both Skullflower's very first 12"ep Birthdeath, and their first proper full length Form Destroyer, both absolute psychedelic noise rock crushers. But that was only the beginning. Since most Skullflower fans were already super familiar with those records anyway, it was more a chance to revisit, as well as preach the gospel of early Skullflower to the uninitiated. But it's the other two reissues that might be the most thrilling. Elsewhere on this week's list, you'll find a review of Xaman, Skullflower's 1990 second album, one that due to a manufacturing defect found most copies eventually rendered unplayable, and thus essentially unheard for decades. And then there's this one, a singles comp, hopefully the first of many, gathering up three different singles, originally released on Majora, Forced Exposure and Shock, and the crazy thing is, even the Skullflower freeks here, had only ever actually heard ONE of em! So that alone made this totally essential. But in addition to those singles, there are also SIX previously unreleased tracks, as well as Skullflower's three contributions to The Portable Altamont compilation (which also featured such noisy luminaries as Coil, Current 93, Nurse With Wound, and Drunks With Guns), all of which add up to some of the filthiest, noisiest, most pummeling, tranced out, knuckle dragging, psychedelic krautrock-style dirgery you've every heard. Cuz really, for all the skree and crunch, all the noisy churn and caveman pummel, most early Skullflower jams are stretched out hypnorock sprawls, albeit constructed from crumbling superdistorted bass, wild tangles of angular melody and shards of noise guitar skree, and some surprisingly motorik drum bashing...
The only one of the three reissues that's sort of new, begins with the weird choice of starting not with any of the previously released 7" tracks, but instead, a double shot of unreleased rarities, the opener "Night Tripper" as good as anything SF was doing at the time, squalls of feedback, thick, blown out riffage, damaged drumming, yowled, buried in the mix vox, super murky and hypnotic, which leads right into "Kasso's Blues", which is loping and lumbering, a sort of detuned atonal main riff, and some garbled vox wrapped around tribal beats make it sound like some super obscure, super wasted Butthole Surfers jam. The aforementioned single, the only one we HAD heard, is the "Rift / Avalanche" single on Majora, and it's some of our favorite Skullflower, smoldering, brooding, dirgey, but sorta dreamy, a locked minimal rhythm, buried vocals, and then long arced tones, super mesmerizing and so epic, the 'flipside' though is a wild nois drenched heavy psych freakout that looks forward to groups like Rusted Shut. The Forced Exposure single delivers one part noisy Dead C style plod rock freakout, and one part billowing psychedelic space out, while the Shock single is super swaggery and dirgey, the recording muted and murky, total cave like rehearsal style sound, but it suits them, the second half getting downright rocking.
After that, there's the awesomely titled "Bo Diddley's Shitpump" , which might be the most bloozy of the bunch, as is hinted at by the title, but it's more like Pussy Galore style blues, tangled up with some Swans and some Hawkwind, and with a hint of mutated AmRep style bash and howl. "Against Everything (A Guide To Canine Foreskin Retraction)" sounds like a Crash Worship record on Shock, wild dense tribal drumming, wreathed in a cloud of flanged shimmer, wah wah splatter and spidery tendrils of tangled guitar melody, and girded by some strange industrial whirring buried in the mix. "March Of The Lemmings" is all garage blooz swagger, with echo drenched vocals and a thick chugging main riff, even some bleating horns, everything dubbed to high heaven, and then wrapped in a spider web of noise guitar skree, and finally closer "The Punk Rock Song" is about as punky OR poppy as SF get, but they manage to fuck it all up and douse it in just enough noise to keep it interesting...
Holy shit, so much amazing, twisted, noisy sonic genius. As far as we're concerned all four of these Skullflower reissues should have /could have been Records Of The Week, but forced to pick one, t had to be Black Sun Rising. But seriously, who are we fooling, you NEED all four!!!
Nice packaging too, mini gatefolds, printed inner sleeves, and a booklet with reproductions of the original 7" covers." [Aquarius Records]
€15.00
Chapel Image
Sky Burial’s fourteenth full-length recording marks a return to ‘epic’ length compositions fea-turing a single track spanning the length of the release. Firmly rooted in the kosmische ethos, ‘Chapel Image’ is a constantly shifting journey through the nebulous depths of drone and dark ambience with full-immersion being just held at bay by the uneasy dichotomy of low and high frequencies and punctuation of rhythmic and industrial elements.
Comes in digipack limited to 300 copies.
Note from the mastering studio: “Based in drone, Chapel Image encompasses the listener in abroad stereo field, engulfing you in so-und while elements play back and forth in the stereo mix. You can mention haunting or ethereal but this doesn't serve to define the full range or feel of the entire 45 minute piece. The mood changes throughout shifting from beautiful bell tones and diving into industrial dirges. It's not a recording that sits still for any time. It does repeat some themes eventually revisiting to the bell tones and reverb soaked synth tones or occasional rhythm, but the variation is paced and it paves the way for the liste-ner moving them along with the track.” –Chris Goudreau, Ninth Circle Studios
Sky Burial is Michael Page, a visual and sound artist living on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. After several years recording and touring in the power electronics/industrial/noise genre as Fire in the Head, Michael formed Sky Burial in 2006 as an outlet to explore the ambient side of industrial music, often citing esoteric, literary, esoteric, metaphysical and mythological subject matter as a muse. Much like the Tibetan ritual from which the project takes its name, Michael chose to work under the Sky Burial moniker as an act of freeing himself from artistic confines, providing an unfettered route for sonic expression and experimentation. Although initially inspired by early industrial music projects and electronic/ambient/kosmische acts of the 70's & 80's, the music of Sky Burial continues to evolve and blur genre boundaries.
Michael has released over 50 recordings since 2004 under various monikers and has collaborated on his releases with Mark Spybey (Download/Dead Voice on Air/Zoviet France), Nik Turner (Hawkwind), Jarboe (ex-Swans), Anni Hogan (ex-Marc Almond), Troum, Danny Hyde (Coil), Nigel Ayers (Nocturnal Emissions), Bridget Wishart (Hawkwind), Johann Eiriksson (Reptilicus, Gjöll), Nick Blinko (Rudimentary Peni), Gee Vaucher (Crass) as well as production assistance from James Plotkin (Khanate) and Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu).
www.wrotycz.com
€12.00
(before the dream...)
Sold outreleased February 1995
"This obscure project from Seattle may be known to some through several strangely and wonderfully packaged vinyl and tape releases (and one CD), as well as through installations and sound works presented in many galleries and other locations. On this nameless E.P. we find two tracks, 'Before the Dream' and 'Of the still Earth' in the typically unique SMALL CRUEL PARTY-style, here working with water-sounds as well as unidentifiable sources, thus creating a very particular language of noise, a special dimension that be must entered 'soul to soul', a very personal communication.
What is expressed by this kind of music you can find in your own treasury! SMALL CRUEL PARTY delivers the KEY (sic!) to open it!
The E.P. is accompanied by a full discography. SMALL CRUEL PARTY also played a rather short but fantastic gig at the first Drone-Extrakt Festival, at Tara (Emden), in October 1993. We'll never forget it.
'SMALL CRUEL PARTY teaches you to listen to a different language.' "[label info]
" SMALL CRUEL PARTY BANNTEN DEN SOUND DER KERAMIKWANNE. IN IHR SITZT MAN, INMITTEN VON WILD ÜBER DEN MENSCHEN NOCH UNBEKANNTEN DICHTERN DISKUTIERENDEN, KLEINEN SCHWARZ GEPANZERTEN TIEREN. SICH STETIG DEM HAHNE ENTREISSENDE WASSERTROPFEN MISCHEN SICH MIT IHREM KLANG UNTER DIE KNISTERNDEN STIMMEN. INMITTEN DIESER GROTTENGERÄUSCHE LIEGT DER HÖRER UND BEGINNT ZU BEGREIFEN, INDES DIE SCHEINBAR ENDLOSE OFFENBARUNG SCHLIESSLICH DURCH DIE BEGRENZTE AUFNAHMEKAPAZITÄT DER SINGLE AUSBLEIBT UND ERKENNTNIS IM BRODELNDEN SOG DES ABFLUSSES MIT HINABRAUSCHT."
(Peter Schlewinski, Vertigo)
" WICHTIG FÜR DAS VERSTÄNDNIS DER MUSIK VON SMALL CRUEL PARTY (ICH BIN MIR SICHER, ER WÜRDE ES NICHT MUSIK NENNEN) IST EINERSEITS DIE KONZEPTIONELLE ARBEIT MIT KLÄNGEN UND UMWELTGERÄUSCHEN, ANDERERSEITS DER SCHEINBAR MEDITATIVE CHARAKTER SEINER AUFNAHMEN. SCHEINBAR DESHALB, WEIL GERADE BEI SEINEN BESSEREN STÜCKEN MEDITATIV TATSÄCHLICH NUR EINE UMSCHREIBUNG IST: SIE REIZEN DIE SINNE ZU EINEM GENAUEN HINHÖREN, SIE SIND STIMULANZEN DER SINNE, DIE SICH VORNEHM ZU PHANTASTISCHEN KLANGLANDSCHAFTEN ENTWICKELN. DER HERRSCHENDE MINIMALISMUS DER MITTEL IN DEN ARBEITEN VON SMALL CRUEL PARTY ERLEICHTERT ES, DAS ANLIEGEN HINTER DER MUSIK ZU DEUTEN. "
(Thomas Beck, Odradek)
Sondes
“Sondes (Multiple Soundings) by Randall Smith brings us four years in the life of this versatile composer, condensed into an earjam of seventy-five minutes. Known for his delicately conceived musique concrete collages, typically working with thousands of found sounds, here Smith adds acoustic instruments to the mix, in order to more faithfully reflect the complexity of all he encounters. Filled with sorrow, celebration and dance, Smith plunges into worlds we’re unable to see, in order to bring back, like some explorer of centuries past, some idea of what they might sound like. Whether the sounds of continents taking shape, or the internal chemistries of mother and child, each turn is unexpected, graceful, filled with discovery and invention. If no one has heard music like this before, and no one has, it’s only because each personality fills with the tumult of the world in an entirely new way, like a signature, or fingerprint. Sondes is an invitationto uncover the hidden worlds beneath this one, to cleanse the ears until everything appears as it really is: infinite.” [Mike Hoolboom]
www.empreintesdigitales.com
€12.00
Owl
"This is the first brand new solo album from Steven R. Smith since last year's epic "The Anchorite." Few artists can boast the impressive discography Smith does, full of far more hits than misses. And with "Owl," he shows that he's still got new tricks up his sleeve. On here, you'll find some of the things you expect with a new Steven R. Smith record: sprase, angular walls of his trademark guitar playing with embellishments from an array of acoustic instrumention. But there's a new twist here: vocals. Yep, vocals. Smith unleashes his voice on "Owl" and does so in such an impressive fashion that it leaves me asking what took so long?" [label info]
www.digitalisindustries.com
€12.00
Chewing hides the Sound
https://klanggalerie.bandcamp.com/album/chewing-hides-the-sound-deluxe
Klanggalerie präsentiert: das remasterte Snakefinger-Solodebüt von 1979 (Ralph Records) plus drei Single-Bonustracks, sowie elf bisher unveröffentlichte Versionen der Albumsongs auf der zweiten CD! Der Londoner Musiker Philip Charles Lithman traf in den frühen Siebzigern in San Francisco auf die Residents, die ihm auch seinen Künstlernamen verpassten. Zunächst kehrte Lithman nach England zurück, um mit der Pubrock-Band Chilli Willi And The Red Hot Peppers zwei Alben zu veröffentlichen. Daraufhin wieder in den USA, arbeitete er als Solomusiker und veröffentlichte 1979 „Chewing Hides The Sound“, nicht nur zusammen mit den Residents geschrieben, sondern auch auf deren Label Ralph veröffentlicht. Das Album enthält Klassiker wie „What Wilbur?“, „Picnic In The Jungle“ und natürlich das Kraftwerk-Cover „The Model“. Die oft surreale Stimmung und Lithmans Slideguitar-Stil prägen die Musik. Auf der ersten CD sind neben den zwölf Albumsongs drei exklusive, nur auf dazugehörigen Singles zu findende Bonussongs. Auf CD 2 sind elf bisher unveröffentlichte Versionen zusammengefasst, alternative Mixe bzw. Remixe, die erst kürzlich in den Residents-Archiven auftauchten und 1987 im Zuge der Veröffentlichung von „Snakey Wake“ im Gedenken an den zuvor verstobenen Lithman entstanden.
Snakefinger surely needs not much of an introduction. Born Philip Charles Lithman in London, he moved to San Francisco in 1971. His roots lie in the British blues scene, but he soon became friends with The Residents who also gave him the name Snakefinger based on a photograph of Lithman performing, in which his finger looks like a snake about to attack his violin. In 1972 Lithman returned to England and formed the pub rock band Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers. After the lack of success of the second album, he returned to the states and work on his first solo album began. "Chewing Hides The Sound" came out in 1979 on Ralph Records. It includes classics such as his Kraftwerk cover "The Model", "What Wilbur?" and "Picnic In The Jungle". The songs on the album were co-written with The Residents. The music showcased Lithman's distinctive slide guitar playing and often surreal imagery. At the same time, a string of singles was released. All tracks that were exclusive to these releases are added as bonus tracks here. Very recently, a so far unknown remix of the whole album was discovered in the Residents' archive. It was made in 1987 in preparation for the Snakey Wake by The Residents and has never been published in any form. Klanggalerie are now proud to present you this lost gem for the first time ever on this double CD. Full Tracklist: Disc 1: 1. The Model 2. Kill The Great Raven 3. Jesus Was A Leprechaun 4. Here Comes The Bums 5. The Vivian Girls 6. Magic And Ecstasy 7. Who Is The Culprit And Who Is The Victim? 8. What Wilbur? 9. Picnic In The Jungle 10. Friendly Warning 11. I Love Mary 12. The Vultures Of Bombay 13. The Spot 14. Smelly Tongues 15. Talkin' In The Town Disc 2: 1. What Wilbur (Alternate Version) 2. The Vivian Girls (Alternate Version) 3. Kill The Great Raven (Alternate Version) 4. Interlude (Neon Lights) 5. Here Come The Bums (Alternate Version) 6. Magic And Ecstasy (Alternate Version) 7. Friendly Warning (Alternate Version) 8. Talkin' In The Town (Alternate Version) 9. Who Is The Culprit And Who Is The Victim (Alternate Version) 10. I Love Mary (Alternate Version) 11. The Vultures of Bombay (Alternate Version)
www.klanggalerie.com/gg220
€20.00
Gewächse im Zwielicht
full press release:
This Friesian multi media artist with two works on one CD: his compositions combine drone-ambient and electroacoustic elements and passages in a wonderful way (sometimes spheric, sometime bizarre, sometimes
melancholic) = various instrumental, vocal and electronic sources are building a hypnotic and poetic web, very complex and with many unexpected twists and surprises in the mix... this album is like a little wonder!
The CD combines two complete works by the artist: "Gewächse im Zwielicht", consisting of 4 pieces (2019-2021), dedicated to the hidden phenomena becoming recognizable only after closer examination, and "An End. An One Another" (2021-2022), an installation work for the art gallery 'De Groen' in Arnhem, Netherlands, for this he worked with a choir. Five long pieces with a total time of over 62 minutes, revealing many details with repeated listening...
as the author notes: "My goal is the creation of rich sounds with layers only reachable by multiple listening. Each work exposes itself over time with each consciously made playback / perception: Repetition becomes a reward for the listener."
listen to a track:
https://soundcloud.com/drone-records/thorsten-soltau-das-begehren
###########################
THORSTEN SOLTAU: Self-taught artist since 2006. Working under his given name as well as Femurl [ˈfiːmjuːl].
Strong interest in sonic disintegration, conceptualism and dualism (philosophy / gender).
Thorsten Soltau is a citizen of KonungaRikena Elgaland-Vargaland. He resides in Friesland, Lower Saxony.
MUSIC.ART.MORPHOSIS.
A reflection.
I call myself a listening person – I am constantly listening to and into environments. This has lead to a refined sense able to picking up things that may slip the attention of others. My ears are trained to scan the places I visit – crowded metropoles, remote spots in nature or even familiar surroundings of office or home. My way of listening can be divided in two modes: the perception of sound on an unconscious level or the deliberate focus on sonics.
Becoming a sort of scanning antenna had a profound effect how I compose. The experience of my listening is reflected in my sound works. As an example several compositions feature barely noticeable overdubs. They can only be heard with specific settings of loudness and spatial room (and are therefore easy to recognize with headphones) or equalizer settings. Another example is the creation of dense clusters of sound resembling information streams or (over-)crowded places.
My goal is the creation of rich sounds with layers only reachable by multiple listening. Each work exposes itself over time with each consciously made playback / perception:
Repetition becomes a reward for the listener.
On sounds.
My compositions are either electronic or electroacoustic. A commonly used sound is the human voice or excerpts of complex synthesis. As a composer I choose my source material wisely. The starting elements have to inhabit the desired mood and intensity later formulated into full compositions. Nevertheless I am open for developments by surprise or error during sound design.
One important factor is randomness. Sounds or sound manipulating factors are mapped to random forces which allows for unexpected results. Some of my composing techniques are deliberately executed against their primary intention as well. This allows for an ever-morphing character of my works until the final touch is added.
On sonic morphosis.
My compositional ethic has strong ties to morphosis. To reflect different degrees of sonic shifting / transformation / transitions I apply several techniques and methods. As explained above the use of complex treatments and randomness allows for a sound that constantly shapes into an liquid and organic sculpture. The sonics I create are further exposed to imperfections and errors – like body and mind aging or perishing over time.
Errors are integral and welcome. Most of them occur as a glitch in the analogue or digital domain during sessions or setup changes. They give a further layer to the music resembling small failures made by the composer – adding a human touch despite their virtual origin.
On concepts.
My solo work has always been underlined by concepts. My canon includes albums with apparent or less apparent concepts. Often works can be seen as cornerstones of things I research at that time of their genesis. Several compositions reflect situations from personal life. Thus all works can be seen as intimate and highly personal sonic artifacts. Conception can be seen as the base of each work without outweighing the listeners experience. Each of my pieces can be explicitly heard as a sole composition as well.
https://thorstensoltau.de
€13.00
Interdimensional
The new Sonologyst album, Interdimensional, explores the paraphysical dimension of cosmic music. It completes the dilation process of his sound, which began with the albums Silencers (CSR 253CD, 2018) and Ancient Death Cults And Beliefs (CSR 270CD, 2020), forming an ideal trilogy inspired by what is beyond the boundaries of science. Interdimensional is inspired by the scientist Michio Kaku who theorized what could be the remote future of the human species, beyond matter, the stars, and known dimensions. A future that could lead you to the victory over the end of everything, beyond the foreseen and inevitable death of the universe known to us. Also, a cosmic record in terms of sound, Interdimensional is pervaded by a sense of stasis reminiscent of Thomas Köner's isolationist electronics, but still characterized by the use of electrified instruments, analog synthesizers, and recordings of resonant metal objects. Unlike the previous records, however, the typical dark experimental/post-industrial sound of Sonologyst is filtered through hazy warping reverberations, and infinite delays, which musically depict the intergalactic journey of a civilization in search of a possible future beyond death.
https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/interdimensional-csr305cd
€13.00
Voyage
"Voyage' is the latest album from Lincolnshire based sound designer Harry Towell. Released under his Spheruleus guise, this album utimately provides a soundtrack to a doomed sea-voyage. Through eight different movements, 'Voyage' chronicles everything from the immense pride felt as the ship sets sail to depicting the horror and heartache of its sinking. The album then closes with detailed passages that portray the decomposition of the ship as it begins to rot deep under sea.
This album is well researched with Harry having explored his chosen subject thoroughly. For the two years in which the album has been in the making, the young sound designer studied the history of great sea disasters and also took inspiration from soundtracks such as Gavin Bryars’ ‘The Sinking Of The Titanic’ and Gareth Hardwick's 'Of The Sea And Shore'. Although the Titantic's infamous fate was naturally a strong influence on the project, 'Voyage', does not refer to any particular sinking ship. Instead, its purpose is to sonically depict the various emotional aspects that lie within a failed sea voyage, as felt by all those who are affected by it.
Once the concept for 'Voyage' had been born, Harry revisited one of his old demos from early 2010 and decided to make this the spine of the album. He then used his instrument collection including; guitar, violin, trumpet, bugle, zither and keyboard to add several layers to the demo. In doing so Harry has been able to develop his chosen theme and create the character required to turn this forgotten treasure into the album it is today. As a poignant exaggeration of the events that unfold through the track 'She Sinks', there is a contribution from Russian pianist Alex Tiuniaev that opens and closes this dramatic track. He also performs on the track 'Clouds Swarm', as it heads into a crescendo.
Aside from his solo production work, Harry also records with brother Stuart under the name Paper Relics and runs the Audio Gourmet netlabel, which specialises in 15 minute EPs designed for shorter 'tea-break' listening. His work as Spheruleus has seen him release through netlabels such as Test Tube, Resting Bell, Earth Mantra, Audio Gourmet and in March 2010, his first physical album 'Frozen Quarters' was released on CD format by the Under The Spire imprint." [label info]
www.hibernate-recs.co.uk
€12.00
The late Surge of Gold
"The Late Surge of Gold is the work of British sound designer Harry Towell, under his Spheruleus moniker. Previous releases have graced labels such as Hibernate, Home Normal and Time Released Sound and collaborations that
have seen him work with the likes of Pleq and Ekca Liena. Harry also runs the Audio Gourmet netlabel and its new sister label Tessellate Recordings, which specialises in limited edition CDr releases. The Late Surge of Gold
was composed specifically for Analogpath, recorded during last year’s Indian Summer in the UK, a phenomenon in which the sun shines deep into autumn. This is an album which documents warm and hazy summer, the bright
sunshine that extends through autumn before eventually descending into the cold of winter. The sounds are a typical example of Spheruleus’ work, pooling together fragile acoustic recordings from the artist’s instrument
collection. They are joined by field recordings, static and subtle drones which amount to a lo-fi pastoral tale, unfolding the full spectrum of seasonal colours from the warmth of yellow and orange, fading slowly to
grey and darkness. Artwork by Johan Söderberg, except from the image which features a building. This was taken by Harry Towell on holiday in the Peak District at the height of the Indian Summer." [label info]
http://analogpath.com/main/
€10.00
![Telomer[e]](/pictures/albums/19127/SRH-Telomere LP.jpg)
Telomer[e]
listen: https://klanggold.bandcamp.com/album/telomer-e
Sascha Rosemarie Höfer — telomer[e]
Höfer uses different sound sources and recording processes. One of his focus points is the collection of sounds and noises, which he predominantly records analogue and very rudimentary on tape, various voice recorders and microphones he holds dear. Höfer is collecting sounds indoors or in the field. Usually en passant.
“I like to listen if something interesting catches my ear, but not obsessively. I collect sounds, when I feel like it, not because a certain sound may be extraordinarily exquisite, making me want to trace it. I would regard that as a disruption of the moment, something I generally want to avoid.” says Höfer.
Sascha Rosemarie Höfer’s album telomere[e] breaks with his works of previous years. It took longer to complete, is devoid of conceptual and artistically developed ideas. Rather, it presents the process of metamorphosis: dieback, segmentation, recombination, exploration, ageing and rejuvenation, thus mimicking the language of biology.
telomer[e] took three years to complete, a time during which the different pieces underwent various ecdyses, during which ideas developed and unravelled, explored different stylistic directions and once again dissolved, until first fusions emerged. Fusions Höfer picked up to shape the musical segments into something larger than themselves, finally developing pieces for piano he later merged with the different sounds. The result: telomer[e] as presented on this album.
“It is important for me to create a musical representation of the space where I am recording the music. Not least because it carries a central momentum, which I consider as a fundamental element that may not be excluded. The result often sounds rough and lo-fi-esque.” says Höfer.
telomer[e] is captivating due to its contrasts, it is playful, harmonic and atonal, creating a glamorous homogeneity, despite — or because of — these musically antagonistic efforts. Höfer brings the sounds to life, he nudges them into a conversation until they are fusing, but without losing their immediacy. If you are expecting it to be easy on your ears, you’re out of luck.
Written and produced by srh. Recorded, arranged and mixed by srh.
Instruments: piano, modulated guitars, drones, fieldrecordings, dictaphones, glockenspiel, analogue synths, digital and analogue processing.
Trumpet on “TTACCC” arranged by srh, played by Marco Stubbemann; voicesample on “TAAACC” and clattering on various tracks by Mathilde Schoenmakers.
Cover photography by Melanie Schoenmakers; design: Andreas Usenbenz; mastered by Fabian Tormin [plätlin mastering].
translated by www.tommibrem.de
€15.00
Specimens
Sehr ungewöhnlicher Release aus dem COLLECTIONS OF COLONIES OF BEES-Umfeld mit mechanisch-rhythmischen Aufnahmen eines "präparierten Klaviers" wie es durch JOHN CAGE berühmt wurde, sehr wuchtig und seltsam, als spiele man "Rock" auf Gamelan-Instrumenten...
"MELISSA ST. PIERRE tosses classicism and post-classicism overboard, utilizing the prepared piano -- John Cage's notorious instrument of choice -- and electronic enhancement to sail resolutely in the direction of rock & roll. Peppering the strings, hammers, and dampers with a variety of objects, she transforms the piano's typical timbre: sparkling gamelans chatter; harrowing voodoo drums call out in the night. "Specimens", St Pierre's debut, features production and performances by COLLECTIONS OF COLONIES OF BEES; together they rival famed electric harpist ZEENA PARKINS as conservatory arsonists with a decidedly Hendrixian flair." [label info]
www.tableoftheelements.com
€11.00
How To
New material from the master cassette manipulator Howard Stelzer. "How To" is 46 minutes of collage ranging from drones to harsh noise. Not to be missed for any fan of Stelzers work.
Mastered by James Plotkin and art by Lasse Marhaug.
If your not familiar with Mr. Stelzer here is what TinyMixTapes.com has to say about him.
"Don’t let the disappearance of his label Intransitive Recordings fool you; Howard Stelzer has kept himself as busy as ever. The New York-born tape manipulator may no longer have an outlet of his own, but even before closing Intransitive Recordings down back in 2012, he had been releasing albums pretty much everywhere. He has recently announced a new album on Phage Tapes, How To, which follows the still-fresh Narrow Escape and At Ease, a collaboration with Joe Bastardo.
Active since the mid-90s, Stelzer has made cassette tapes his trademark platform to craft complex collages of noise, found sounds, and synthetic textures. Yet he is best known as an all-around devotee of tape as a medium, collecting hundreds of cassettes, writing about sound art and tape culture, and curating an amazingly ambitious catalog of experimental music for Intransitive Recordings. Based in Boston and active for over a decade, the label released music by Jason Lescalleet, Nerve Net Noise, Jason Talbot, C. Spencer Yeh, and Brume, among many others. Nevertheless, it would be unforgivable to overlook 1998’s Bond Inlets, Stelzer’s crowning achievement; an album where he was able to pick the inherent limitations of consumer-grade tapes apart, laying out a foreboding work of rare emotional power."
https://phagetapes.miiduu.com/howard-stelzer-quothow-toquot-cd
€10.00
Commit
the third production from the stelzer/murray project hits a sweet spot of slippery, industrial occultation that harkens back to an almost forgotten period of music from the late \'80s and early \'90s. think cranioclast, arcane device, phauss, small cruel party, organum, and pretty much everything from the quiet artworks label. exquisitely composed and overtly nocturnal without ever falling into the tropes of dark ambient and with plenty of gestures, signals, and threats that allude to any number of allegorically inclined processes (i.e. tape manipulation, time-delay accumulation, electro-acoustic minimalism, etc.).
the howard stelzer half of this project has penned the following to provide context about commit:
\"i’d like to tell you about commit, the third album by stelzer/murray. really, i would. but i don’t think what i have to say would be terribly illuminating. in fact, i’d love it if someone could tell me about what the heck it is we do.
what i mean is this: over the past several years, brendan murray and i have had plenty of conversations about our music and have come to the conclusion that we don’t know much about it. we don’t even recall making a lot of it. we’ve listened back to our first album, connector (which was released by helen scarsdale in 2017), and it struck us as very good and also almost entirely unfamiliar. same with the next album, commuter (published by humanhood in 2019). we cannot deny that stelzer/murray wrote, recorded and produced both albums… we have vague recollections of sculpting the component pieces into their final forms… but the writing/recording process remains utterly enfogged. how can that be?
perhaps both brendan and i compose our music while we are asleep. maybe the band exists only when both members are in some psychogenic fugue state. some months later, we become aware that stelzer/murray music has been made… by us? apparently so! we’ve remarked to each other that when we listen back to our albums, it seems as if the music is both ours and not ours at the same time… as if we (maybe) weren’t involved in making it. i assume that we were, but cannot explain how or why any of the stuff exists. i’m okay with that. during an interview several years ago, brendan and i were asked to describe the stelzer/murray compositional process. to our shock and delight, we realized that we couldn’t quite say what it was. we weren’t being intentionally evasive; we just didn’t know. turns out, it never occurred to us to talk about our music while we were making it. isn’t that wonderful? or is dissociation of this magnitude just unnerving? can it be both?
this new album exists under a similar subconsciously-imposed shroud. i\'m not privy to much more inside information about commit than anybody else is. was there a mood we were aiming for? a conceptual through-line across these songs? maybe! it\'s certainly possible! if you notice anything, please send a note with a self-addressed stamped envelope to us (c/o helen scarsdale) and we’ll respond if we think you’re on the right track. whatever your guess, we’ll assume that you’re correct since you know just as much about stelzer/murray as we do.
there’s one other possibility: stelzer/murray music turns out the way it does because its creators work in ways that are both deeply intense, intuitive and intimate. we don’t discuss an album’s architecture because as soon as the initial sounds appear, we both somehow know where they’re headed. we don’t need to articulate conceptual approach or thematic connection because those things are already baked into our interactions over the past 24 years. i don’t mean to imply that commit is without structure or cohesion or attention to detail... only that those qualities are apparent to us at the same moment that they’re apparent to everybody else. we\'re comfortable working this way.
now, look: this is supposed to be a press release, so i\'d better get to the elements that such a document requires. typically, such a thing would contain some eloquent verbiage to inspire interest in the product. i’ve spoken to the creators of this lp to glean inside information and was offered a sheepish shrug in return. and besides, even if i had the ability to spill some language that sets this music into some clever conceptual frame that might get you to pull out your wallet, i wouldn’t want to. some loaded adjectives could have the effect of coloring your perception beforehand. once you put the record on, any suggestions of imagery or atmosphere would only lead to preconceptions that would either be affirmed (yes, this album sounds exactly like i thought it would! hooray for me!) or refuted (i expected one thing and got something slightly different and so now i am disappointed). sorry, but i don’t see the point.
here’s what i can say for sure: commit is, in both my and the band\'s estimation, a great record and stelzer/murray is a really good band. i can refer to them in the third person because i genuinely have no recollection of my supposed role in the creation of any of their records. you may point out that the sequence of seven letters to the left of the slash resembles my own last name. i’ll chalk that up to coincidence. stelzer/murray may as well be people i’ve never met. once commit comes out, i\'m a fan like anyone else. i’ll just sit back and enjoy the damn thing.
playing it at a high volume seems like a good idea.\"
h. stelzer
somewhere in massachusetts
winter 2022
https://helenscarsdale.bandcamp.com/album/commit
€23.50
Silmand
Seelenmonat. Viertes Album der Neo-Klassik / Sakral-Ambient / Mittelalter-Folk Pop-Band und Mitbegründer des "Heavenly Voices"-Genres, hier mit Verstärkung von Mitgliedern von LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH und CLAN OF XYMOX. 13 Stücke voller dunkel-romantischer Momente, musikalisch hochwertig arrangiert & von erhabener & fragiler Schönheit, zudem scheinen die meisten Instrumente original eingespielt zu werden. Melancholische Streicher sind omnipräsent, emotionaler geht es kaum !
"The first new sign from STOA in 7 years! Fans will be happy that the STOA mastermind stays true to himself with his fourth album. Besides the usual melancholy, unusual pop rhythms found their way on the various albums, but the typical STOA sound is still distinct. The vocal lines harbour some surprises as well. For once theres the angelic voice of singer Mandy Bernhardts, known from the live performances of the band; on the other hand, the voices of three guest singers sound on Silmand. The first voice belongs to the Australian multi-instrumentalist Louisa John Krol. The Dutchman Peter Nooten (Ex-Clan of Xymox) could be engaged for Silmand as well as the Leipzig-based Ralf Jehnert (Love is Colder than Death)." [label info]
"For lovers of melancholic music, it probably doesn't get much better than Silmand." [Heathen Harvest]
www.darkdimensions.de
€15.00
Glaciology
"Strom Noir, which is a moniker for Emil Maťko, amazed everyone with his last year's album "Urban Blues", which saw Emil exploring urban spaces with the use of ephemeral guitar melodies. On his new album on Zoharum Emil, goes to entirely different places: filled with white glaciers and snow-capped mountains.
The subtitle of Strom Noir latest album is "Four Songs about Snow and Ice." Emil Maťko skillfully converted the arctic landscapes into sonic structures. Four compositions filled with static guitar drones resemble a snowy picture. They unravel very slowly and subtly into one another. They require focusing on them. A 20-minute bonus track which is the full version of ”Niekedy Sa Vracaju” originally released on "Tanec Rusaliek" cassette in the shortened version, has a similar sense.
The CD is housed in an ecopak sleeve and is strictly limited to 300 copies. The cover is based on photos by Martin Matula. ”Glaciology” was mastered by Michal Iliaš. The whole production process was overseen by Michał Porwet." [label info]
www.zoharum.com
€13.00
Mountains become Machines
"Having previously featured on our recent DCD compilation "...that first season", Strom Noir returns to our label with his first full length album release on Winter-Light - 'Mountains Become Machines'.
Emil Maťko, the man behind Strom Noir, hails from Bratislava, Slovakia. Since 2008, Emil has released around 15 albums to date on a variety of different formats, as well as a number of singles and also contributed to several compilation albums. His music can possibly be best described as guitar and loop based ambient, with a melancholic feel to it. Strom Noir builds up intricate layers of sound using mostly only electric and acoustic guitars, effected through pedals.
The artist himself describes the thoughts and processes behind the recording of ‘Mountains Become Machines‘.....
‘The beginning of the recording process is dated back to the second half of 2013, that time with the intention to come up with the full-length release consisting of more “stand-alone” tracks built significantly on acoustic guitar, in most cases, heavily transmuted. As I used to set the recorder always in a way that it recorded associated sounds from the recording room as well, recordings are more complex and have some accidental/random aspects; on the other hand, the overall feeling is a little bit lo-fi. That’s the process how the tracks, I would label as the core of the album, were basically recorded – the beginning of spring, mountains become machines, sám na vrchole hory (alone on the mountain top), where late the birds sang and čistota (purity).
Back then, I was thinking to interconnect these tracks with short guitar drones, some kinds of interludes, however, as you can hear, they (all corals are yours, hollow and black water rising) became regular tracks over time.
So as the result, mountains become machines has a little bit of everything. The more stand-alone tracks are backed by the abstract ones, pictures full of sunshine are followed by dark images and calm parts are accompanied with distorted pieces.’ "
www.winter-light.nl
€13.00
Divine Legions Beyond Psyche
"With their fifth full length CD, Finlands Strom.ec continue to further explore the far regions of power electronics, challenging the
confines and stretching the boundary of the genre, sculpting new and innovative creations that are uniquely their own. Having been
under construction for over seven years, Divine Legions shows Strom.ec with a majestic control of their craft, offering 8 tracks (including one 21 minute epic to close the CD out!) of powerful and explosive industrial music, full of volatile frequencies, brain bending, enigmatic atmospheres, hallucinatory noise, and the trademark vocal assault that few acts can rival. Presented in a luxurious 8-panel DVDigipak, designed by Jerome Nougaillon, Divine Legions Beyond Psyche represents Strom.ec at their finest, most creative form, having reached a pinnacle in an already illustrious." [label info]
www.malignantrecords.com
€13.00
Lunatic Asylum
Joke Lanz and Sudden Infant once again return in their razor-sharp trio setting whereby the absurdist nature that Joke's work is already cut with is reconfigured in a gnarled and beefy punk-fucked contorted rock setting. Short bursts of angular flex are heavily propelled by depth-charge rhythms, wry lyrical musings on modern living, and sensibilities hatched from years of experience in the worlds of sound art, abstract music, industrialised junk-noise and related areas have manifested in the perfect follow up to 2018's Buddhist Nihilism album on Harbinger Sound. Aided by Christian Weber on bass and Alexandre Babel on drums, Joke lays on a battery of electronics, loops, field recordings and samples to complement mostly semi-spoken vocals that appear like they've been swept from the overflowing gutters of a shopping centre into a huge ball of malaise that can only be laughed at as world leaders look on perplexed. Exactly as the title suggests, 'Lunatic Asylum' depicts a world in absolute disarray as the seams binding it together slowly fall apart to reveal jesters whose best attempts to glue everything back in place are built on bigger lies more transparent than ever. Meanwhile, citizens of the developed world turn on each other for the stupidest of reasons or grow fatter with their descent into an ignorance nourished by half-baked cultural nuggets pre-packaged and sold as great and awe-inspiring work. And everything has to be recorded, photographed and shared as brain cells are decimated by false ideals, propaganda, exaggerated lifestyles and a huge tub of popcorn swimming in indiscernible yellow gloop. Such are the snapshots that resonate as Lunatic Asylum takes some well-aimed swipes at the human condition of the 21st Century. Featuring a fantastic guest appearance by Franz Treichler (The Young Gods) on ' Il y a des Enfants', each of the 14 songs that constitute Lunatic Asylum are bold, heavy, playful and rife with surprising twists and turns Joke's mostly English splatter-poetry helps guide into a space that's about as accessible as the outer reaches of rock can get. In a perfect world, this is the stuff even daytime airwaves should be pregnant with but, since the world is presently tripping over its own feet more so than ever, we will have to suffice with wherever this can nudge with the help of Fourth Dimension Records. One day, hopefully, more will catch up. Please note that a vinyl version of Lunatic Asylum will appear later, but due to continuing heavy delays at the pressing plants this won't be available to pre-order till June. In the meantime, the CD features two bonus tracks.
https://suddeninfant.bandcamp.com/album/lunatic-asylum
€14.00
Ramshead
The basis of these pieces were field recordings made in the Kosciuszko National Park during summer. This national park covers alpine and sub-alpine areas, and as such provides an unusual environment within the typical low lying bushland and desert of greater Australia. It covers the highest peaks on the continent, and as such is a diverse environment that covers everything from heavily wooded valleys and riverways, through to rugged grasslands high above the treeline. There is a similar variation in animal and bird life, whilst the weather is inclement all year round with everything from blazing sun to snow in one day.
However I had no interest in trying to document this environment in a literal sense, rather the approach was purely subjective and perceptual. It is an attempt in mapping and constructing a response, but perhaps also an attempt to build the density and extremities of this environment with a sonic equivalent. I used a light recording rig, preferring to work quickly and informally with a mind to building up a large palette of sounds that would later form the raw ingredients of these sound pieces. I used quite pronounced editing and manipulation to slowly shape them into something with it’s own physicality and mass. Something that hopefully embodies and epitomises these antediluvian and monolithic mountains.
(Philip Sulidae, 20 December 2017)
€14.00
Five Dramas
The histrionic Swedish artist Isak Sundström (Rocks & Waves Song Circle) embraces the fascinating sound world of the "spoken word", infusing new expressive perspectives to this genre with original sensitivity. These five vocal dramas are based on the subtitles of some films by Douglas Kirk, texts that describe the sound effects and events that occur outside the screen. But the result is rather that of a new dissolved narrative, of another space that explores the boundaries of emotional imagination. In this way, the poetic interest seems to fall on the totality of human existence, in an open dialectic between earthly and supernatural, profane and religious, nature and divinity, heaven and hell, light and darkness. The atmospheric frame is supported by an electronic carpet, drops of piano fall soft and slow, while the modulations of the voice are enriched and intensified by a colorful orchestra of percussion and wind instruments. The narrator's voice of Vincent Williams has something of the typical "black" vocal emphasis of American spiritual jazz, but which alternate with moments of pathos and ecstatic transcendence typically Nordic and European.
€19.50
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Kannon
"Kannon is an album which was composed in the aftershadow of SUNN O)))’s most recent successes in immersive collaboration (the group worked with Scott Walker on Soused, Ulver on Terrestrials in 2013 and 2014) and also from the broad and influential wake of their epitimous Monolith’s & Dimensions . Kannon emerged both independently as a conceptual entity and with roots in the legacies of those projects, yet was fully realised years later, in 2015. The album is 36 minutes in length and consists of three pieces of a triadic whole : Kannon 1, 2 and 3.
The album celebrates many SUNN O))) traditions ; Kannon was recorded and mixed with SUNN O)))’s close colleague and coproducer Randall Dunn in Seattle, in Studio Litho, Aleph and Avast!; and the LP includes performances by long term allies and collaborators Attila Csihar, Oren Ambarchi, Rex Ritter, Steve Moore and others. And at the core the composition centers around the dynamic and intense guitar and bass interplay of SUNN O)))’s founders : Stephen O’Malley & Greg Anderson.
It’s possibly the most figurative album SUNN O))) has created, which is unusual as they usually dwell in layers of abstraction and subjectivity. On the other hand the album is the most outright “metal” in years, drawing personal associations and memories of cherished albums like Panzerfaust and Twilight of the Gods again to the forefront of consciousness. At the third time it is very close to the cyclical character of mantra which the band has evolved into as a living creature, the enormity of intense sensate detail and manifestation of the live in concert face of SUNN O))), the organism that has flourished, metamorphosed and transcended tremendously over the past ten years.
The literal representation of Kannon is as an aspect of Buddha: specifically “goddess of mercy” or “Perceiving the Sounds (or Cries) of the World”. She is also sometimes commonly known as the Guanyin Bodhisattva (Chinese: 觀音菩薩) amongst a plurality of other forms. There is a rich lineage behind this idea tracing back through many asian belief systems, with as many names and cultural personifications of the idea.
SUNN O))) commissioned critical theorist Aliza Shvartz to write a text / liner notes around these ideas and topics. She also explores the relations and perceptions to their approach to these ideas via the metonym of music and SUNN O)))’s place/approach within the framework of music and metal overall.
SUNN O))) also commissioned Swiss designer/artist Angela LaFont Bollinger to create the cover artwork, an abstracted sculpture of vision of Kannon, and the French photographer Estelle Hanania to capture portraits of the core trio (Csihar, Anderson, O’Malley) in the impressive and obscurant Emanuel Vingeland mausoleum in Oslo.
The LP is packaged in immaculate tip on gatefold sleeve by our long time comrades Stoughton Printing, and pressed at Cascade in Portland, Oregon. CD, download and coloured vinyl versions are also available.
– Stephen O’Malley & Greg Anderson / SUNN O))), 11 September 2015" [label info]
credits:
Released December 4th 2015
Attila Csihar - Vocals
Stephen O’Malley - Guitar
Greg Anderson - Guitar, Bass Guitar
Oren Ambarchi - Guitar, Oscillator (K1,K2)
Randall Dunn - Korg MS 20 (K1, K2)
Rex Ritter - Moog (K2)
Brad Mowen - Concert Bass Drum (K2)
Steve Moore - Juno 106 (K2)
Conch trio : Dempster, Priester, Moore
Recorded at studio Litho, Avast! and Aleph, Seattle by Randall Dunn
Mixed at Avast! by Randall Dunn
Assistant recording engineer (Litho) : Mell Dettmer
Mastered by Jason Ward at CMS
Kannon 1, 2, 3 written & arranged by SUNN O)))
Lyrics by Attila Csihar
Produced by SUNN O))) with Randall Dunn
SUNN O))) art direction : Stephen O’Malley
Cover and typographic design by Allison Lafont Bollinger
Text by Aliza Shvarts
Band portraits by Estelle Hanania / Detail from mural Vita at the Emanuel Vigeland Mausoleum, Oslo
© Emanuel Vigeland Museum / ARS 2015
www.southernlord.com
"Those grimrobed ambient metal overlords O'Malley & Anderson (here with guests including Oren Ambarchi and vokillist Attila Csihar) add a new opus to their extensive discography of doom/drone masterwerks! The three part Kannon, which may have germinated from the track "Cannon" found on their live Domkirke double lp from 2008, is art to play loud. All deep drones, deep voices, doubtless deep thoughts (check out the liner notes by critical theorist Aliza Shvartz). And here are OUR notes: Abyssic atmospheres of vast grinding drones. Layered, liturgic cavernous ritual. Gorgeously sculpted feedback flowmotion. Along with moments that remind us of the wide open Western spaces twang of more recent Earth (or Barn Owl) as well." [Aquarius Rec.]
€13.00
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Life Metal (Pinwheel green and purple vinyl)
SUNN O))) are pleased to present Life Metal, their first new studio album in four years, due for release on Southern Lord in April 2019. The album will be supported by their first European tour since 2016, including their first ever French tour - dates and details below.
At the very beginning of 2018 SUNN O))) co-founders Stephen O'Malley & Greg Anderson set out on a path toward a new album production. They were both determined to create new music and a new method of working in the studio, without forgetting the long and proud history of production and studio accomplishments forged during their first two decades of existence (and the members' own musical experiences out of the band's). One long term goal was completely clear: to record Sunn O))) with Steve Albini in his Electrical Audio studio. Steve took the call, said "Sure, this will be fun. I have no idea what is going to happen."
Greg and Stephen gathered twice that spring for writing, conceptualising and riff woodshedding in the very building where the band was formed: Downtown Rehearsal in Los Angeles. Sonic cosmoses, flashes of abstract colour (synthetic and objective) and themes emerged from the mastered depths of saturation and circuits between the two players and their mountains of gear. Themes developed in terms of brightness and energy, while visionary cues pointed toward subconscious areas of practice and the pair realised they were exploring other zones of consciousness via sound/time and sound/energy manipulation. In early summer a pre-production session with full backline, as a trio with T.O.S. on Moog, was recorded at Dave Grohl’s 606 studios, Northridge, California.
In July 2018 SUNN O))) spent just over two weeks in Chicago at Electrical Audio (Studio A) with Steve Albini at the helm. The results are astounding: there is breadth and luminosity of colour, it sounds vast. The sessions were impeccably recorded, authentically represented and completely accurate. The spectrum cracked the firmament open in clarity. An all analogue technique was used, they recorded and mixed on tape, providing a creative gateway for SUNN O))) to evolve their production methods into stronger, confident, performance based and a more logical executive process. The album was mastered and lacquers cut from tape in October by SUNN O))) ally Matt Colton at Alchemy in London. The LP version is a AAA album, recorded and mixed on tape via a completely analogue production, from the input of the band's amplifiers and the air coming off the speakers in front of the microphones to needle touching the pressed vinyl on your turntable.
Continuing one of the main currents of the SUNN O))) concept, depth of exploration within collaboration, brought forth Hildur Guðnadóttir to the Sunn O))) constellation. Hildur is a sometime live collaborator of Sunn O))) and a renowned film music composer, former member of the bands Múm, Pan Sonic and Angel. She was a long time collaborator with the composer Jóhann Jóhannsson (RIP). Hildur lent her incredible attitude, as well as her voice, breath and electric cello, and the enigmatic haldorophone to the proceedings, culminating in the epic composition/concerto "Novæ". The cosmos clearly expands.
Tim Midyett, a close friend of Greg and Stephen since the Seattle days of the early 90s (and member of Silkworm, Bottomless Pit and Mint Mile), joined in a foundational role tying earth to sound with wicked performances on aluminium neck bass and baritone guitars: instruments he helped pioneer playing back in the 90s (alongside Steve and Shellac of course). Dark matter is reality.
Prolific new music composer Anthony Pateras arranged and recorded an incredible contribution of pipe organ for a piece titled "Troubled Air" (titled after an essay by author Aliza Shvarts, who also penned the liner notes for Sunn O)))’s Kannon) at Schlosskappelle, Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart. String theory of space.
The resulting album is titled Life Metal. It is fully realised and completely real. The record was produced by the core of Stephen & Greg & arranged by the greater constellation Sunn O))). Paintings by visual artist Samantha Keely Smith graciously adorn the sleeve and provide a perfect suitable mask to the proceedings. They collide ideas of 19th century romanticism & late 20th abstract expressionism (mysticism) with Sunn O)))’s approach to metal (via reference points of Arbo, Turner, Delville, Richter, Turrel, Wou-Ki). Photographer Ronald Dick shot them in baths of light colour representing depth of sound pressure in the work.
SUNN O)))
Life Metal
(sunn300, Southern Lord)
1. Between Sleipnir's Breaths
2. Troubled Air
3. Aurora
4. Novae
There is a second more meditative LP titled Pyroclasts, also recorded by Steve Albini in parallel, and which will be revealed in the autumn 2019 (more later) with all music performed by Stephen, Greg, T.O.S., Tim Midyett, and Hildur Guðnadóttir.
€35.00
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Eternity's Pillar (Opaque Purple)
SP1713 Eternity’s Pillars b/w Raise the Chalice & Reverential is sunn O)))’s premier work on the maxi 12” medium for Sub Pop.
It consists of three brand new tracks created and performed by the iconic duo of Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson and co-produced by sunn O))) and Brad Wood. Brad Wood recorded the material at Bear Creek Studios in Woodinville and Sea Grass in Los Angeles in 2025. The tracks on this maxi 12” are the first official sunn O))) studio recordings to feature only the original core duo on heavily saturated electric guitars and synthesis.
sunn O))) gave extreme focus and care to each step and aspect of the recording, each tone and level of saturation, each gain stage and speaker, each arrangement and harmonic. The Pacific Northwest forest is our guide.
“Eternity’s Pillars” is named for the mid-1980s television program created and hosted by jazz visionary and spiritual guru Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, focusing on her incessant belief in music’s capacity to attain spiritual transcendence. “Raise the Chalice” is named for a rallying cry often uttered by Northwest legend Ron Guardipee throughout the mid-1990s. “Reverential” equally pays respect and sends loud praise to those who came before us with the heaviest burdens, expressions with music and art being the materials of an antiphon.
The front cover of the maxi 12” depicts the duo in the woods northeast of Seattle, through the lens of Charles Peterson.
sunn.bandcamp.com/album/eternitys-pillars-b-w-raise-the-chalice-reverential
€30.00
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Terrestrials
"Oslo, Norway, August 10th, 2008. Following their 200th gig, playing before 2000 people at the Oya festival, SUNN O))) teamed up with Norwegian legends ULVER at their Oslo studio, Crystal Canyon. They recorded three "live in improvisation" pieces, starting that evening and ending at dawn, as Northern sunlight seeped in through the windows. 'We were sitting in the console room, early in the morning, listening to the takes. Someone said, ah, sunrise over Crystal Canyon,' as if the night had been a dark one. We all laughed and Greg proposed it as a title. In that setting it sounded perfect. The boys had mentioned wanting the music to orient towards the light, like some lost pilgrim stretching before the sun. We kept that mental picture for the processing.' - Kristoffer Rygg That take became the album's opening piece, "Let there be light," which builds up from silence and darkness and proceeds - ceremoniously, coruscating - O'Malley and O'Sullivan creating the backdrop for Rygg's Basso Profondo chants. The music unfolds over eight minutes before reaching a crescendo of bass and brass, introducing both Anderson and ULVER as we know them. The Sunn has risen. "Western horn" accelerates on a single and austere note of sustained bass and low end, evolving gradually into a haunted soundscape. Crying violins, clusters of Fender Rhodes, guitar pickups, and metal plate drones are gradually layered beneath Anderson's augmented bass feedback. "Eternal return" introduces Rygg singing a lyric evoking ancient Greece, Egypt and the Biblical lands. The song is palindromic, echoing the lyric, beginning and ending with the same bass line and musical pattern, though the guitars are ultimately reversed as the song implodes upon itself. "Terrestrials" is three movements which are fluid like the flow of magma beneath the Earth's crust, sonically uninhibited, unpredictably cosmic, haunting and stirring yet simultaneously ceremonious and beautiful." [label info]
www.southernlord.com
"Naheliegendes wird vermieden, statt dessen eine zähfließende Düsternis mit fast fragiler Aura: das Sunn o))) & Ulver Kollaborationsalbum “Terrestrials” schickt die Hörer (nicht nur) mit dem Opener “Let There Be Light” und seinen verlangsamten Mariachi-Trompeten fast ein bisschen in die Irre, lässt dieselben zumindest lange im Unklaren, welche Richtung das Stück wirklich einschlagen will… Als “ewiges” Intro hinter verwaschenen Staubwolken der Wüste? Ein Akustik-Drone?
Erst das letzte Viertel, wenn “Let There Be Light” schon fast zu ersterben scheint, bringt die Auflösung: wenn sich typisch Sunn o))) artige Harmoniebögen zu manifestieren beginnen und die weiterhin präsenten Bläser mit einem deutlichen Maß an Schwerkraft versehen. Das dann folgende, düstere (und düsterere) “Western Horn”, im Kern eine windende Schichtung von sich reibenden, spröden Gitarren, dabei nach außen so etwas wie die musikalische Umsetzung eines langsam aufkommenden (oder abflauenden) Sandsturms, versenkt die Hörer nach “Let There Be Light” wie unvermittelt in eine ebenso unwirkliche wie unwirtliche, auch ohne ebensolche Soundästhetik zerrende, schwarze Welt. Die, ganz nebenbei, ein weiteres Mal beweist, dass “Heavy” eben auch ganz anders gehen kann.Und dann die größte Überraschung: “Eternal Return”, in den allerersten Tönen noch wie eine direkte Fortsetzung von “Western Horn” klingend, durch die hier stärkere Präsenz eines E-Pianos und ganz besonders die Art der Harmonien aber letztlich in eine ganz andere Richtung weisend: wie eine Art geisterhafter Widerhall, eine eigene Interpretation der Stimmung von oder eben gleich eine Kollaboration mit Bohren & Der Club Of Gore… zumindest rund 6 Minuten lang, bevor das Stück einen völligen Twist macht, Gesang über tragenden Synthstreichern, als Break. Und zurück fällt in die Düsternis des Beginns.
In der musikalischen Schattierung so vielfältig wie “Monoliths And Dimensions”, möglicherweise. Und eine Elegie in schwarzer Akustik, sicherlich. Insgesamt betrachtet." [N, Blackmag]
€13.00
7
„Um direkt allen Mißverständnissen vorzubeugen: Auf „7" der neuen DVD von SUPERSILENT gibt es keine Extras oder irreführende graphische Menüs. Keine staatlichen Warnungen, keine Einführungen mit Ufos. Kein Schnickschnack. Denn Label, Künstler und Regisseur hatten den Anspruch, das „7" wie eine Audio CD laufen sollte, nur mit Bild. Einlegen und ein komplettes SUPERSILENT Konzert genießen, genau so lange (109 Min.) und in der gleichen Reihenfolge wie dargeboten. Man kann sogar zwischen den Tracks hin und her skippen. Keine Overdubs (auch wenn sich irgendwie einige psychedelische Momente auf die DVD geschlichen haben:-)), statt dessen hat DEATHPROD einen hervorragenden Stereo Mix abgeliefert, bei dem man sogar zwischen Dolby Digital und dem leicht besseren DTS wählen kann. Und dank DVD-9 ist die Bildqualität sowieso überlegen.“
"The Norwegian death-jazz improvising unit return for the seventh of their Supersilent series, this time in the form of a DVD release of a highly-anticipated live performance in Oslo on August 16, 2004. Members Arve Henriksen (trumpet, electronics), Helge Sten (audio virus), Ståle Storløkken (keyboards) and Jarle Vespestad (drums) form a band that refuse categorization, with experiments in such disparate elements as ambient, jazz, electronica, rock, techno, noise and musique concréte. Critics have compared them to the Miles Davis band of the early '70s, and groups like Stockhausen, Einstürzende Neubauten and Can. Supersilent hadn't played the capital for quite some time and the line went around the block. With the uncertain knowledge that all Supersilent concerts are totally improvised, it didn't take long to hear that they were in excellent form and interplay, all captured by three cameras to black and white 16 mm film and recorded by Kai Andersen from Athletic Sound. Filmed by Norwegian multimedia artist Kim Hiorthøy, the black and white footage lends a filmic quality very rarely seen in concert DVDs. Constructed like an audio CD with visuals, there are no extras, no menus, no FBI warnings or meaningless graphics -- what you get is a pure, complete Supersilent concert from start to finish, 109 minutes. What you see and hear is how it was, no overdubs have been applied to the recording, but a couple of psychedelic hiccups have found their way to the film. The 6 "tracks" are divided so you can skip back and forth as on a CD. By using the audio button on the player's remote control you can chose between Dolby Digital and the slightly superior DTS sound alternatives, if your DVD player is ready for DTS. The sound is mixed by Deathprod in good old stereo. Please also note that this is a DVD-9 production, giving superior picture quality due to the disc having dual layers and more available space. What you hear and see is a multifarious, totally improvised, completely unique live performance from a group who define the best in bombastic Nordic sound. Running time: 109 minutes." [label info]
€16.00
6
"Supersilent have been a solid cornerstone in Rune Grammofon since the very beginning and are seen by many as representing the very essence of the label. From the monumental hardcore blizzard storms of 1-3 to the elegant electrojazz of 4 and the almost quiet soundscapes of 5, this new album is where the sum of all things Supersilent comes together in a shape of almost epic proportions. Like 1-3 and Scorch Trio, it was recorded at Athletic Sound in Halden, Norway. More than ever it appears clear that their music lives in a no man's land between the genres, somewhere between rock, electronica, jazz and modern composition. As with all their recordings and live performances, everything here is improvised. That most of the music on 6 appears to be written or at least arranged is testament to the high, almost telepathic level they work at . Needless to say, there are no overdubs. Often being labelled jazz because of the improvising aspect of the music and the fact that three of the members come from a jazz background, with 6 they are just as likely to attract followers of bands such as Goodspeed You! Black Emperor, Sigur Rós, King Crimson, (late) Talk Talk or Popol Vuh." [label info]
www.runegrammofon.com
€15.50
11
"This is the eleventh release in the Supersilent series. These recordings are taken from the very fruitful sessions that resulted in Supersilent 8 (RCD 2067CD), but are no mere leftovers. Indeed, Supersilent 8 was originally scheduled as a triple release, but producer Deathprod (Helge Sten) finally decided to split it. This is also the first vinyl-only release from the band. Supersilent 8 was recorded during a 5-day studio session at Athletic Sound in Halden, Norway, the all-analog facility where other Rune Grammofon albums like Supersilent 1-3 (RCD 2001CD), Scorch Trio (RCD 2025CD), Luggumt (RCD2040CD/RLP 3040LP) and Raus Aus Stavanger (RCD 2049CD) were recorded. From the monumental hardcore blizzard storm of 1-3 to the elegant electro-jazz of 4 and from the quiet soundscapes of 5 to the epic 6, Supersilent yet again re-invented themselves with 8, an album that to a certain degree explored more abstract and mysterious pathways beyond categories and comparisons. In fact, these sessions turned out to be so fruitful, that producer Deathprod finished 5 hours of music and at one point considered making it another triple CD. In the end, 68 minutes ended up on Supersilent 8, but it was always understood that more of the excellent music that didn't make it to the final cut would appear in one way or another at a later time, and indeed, here it is as a vinyl-only release. This was also Jarle Vespestad's final studio session. This 180 gram audiophile vinyl edition was carefully mastered by Bob Katz and cut by Paul Gold at Salt Mastering. Members include: Helge Sten (audio virus, electric guitar), Ståle Storløkken (synthesizers, keyboards), Arve Henriksen (trumpet, voice, electronics), and Jarle Vespestad (drums)." [label info]
www.runegrammofon.com
€15.50
Boombana Echoes
"I had the pleasure to meet and record with Akio Suzuki late in 2005. Having discovered his work a good few years before that, I had always been impressed with his clear passion for the expressive nature of sound - not merely as a vibrational art form, but also for its mystic, perhaps even spiritual qualities. His many experiments with sound, space and environment were a great inspiration for me and still to this day fill me with a great sense of wonder (no doubt a result of Suzuki's magician like quality, after all he is a shaman). These recordings are edits from a series of both site specific and situation specific encounters we developed together during a short performance based residency in Brisbane. The first recordings we made together were site specific, and the title of this edition reflects the location in which we began working on the project together. Boombana is an area of forest that shifts from open eucalypt woodland to sub-tropic rainforest within a matter of 500 metres. It's located on route to Mt Nebo and not far from there, the view stretches all the way to Moreton Bay. I recorded Suzuki-san during high summer, the forest sizzling with an eerie electronic fizz of cicadas and leaf hoppers, occasionally interrupted by screeching Sulphur Crested Cockatoos. It was these recordings that form the inspiration for the duet published here. Returning to Brisbane, Suzuki and I recorded a series of pieces late one evening. Suzuki played his remarkable Analapos and I used a some hand percussion and a range of small electronic devices that in many ways reflected on the initial sessions we recorded in Boombana - the cicadas replaced by tone generators and filters. The titles of each work also directly link back to Boombana, its distinctive flora and fauna. Coming back to these recordings more than half a decade after they were created, I'm still captivated by Suzuki's remarkable use of his unique instrument the Analapos and I'm inspired to this day by his mastery of sound as an art form. I dearly hope you enjoy these pieces.' Lawrence English. 2 color letterpress die cut sleeve. 3 letterpress printed inserts of drawings by akio suzuki. designed and printed by ben owen. akio suzuki - analapos. lawrence english - field recordings, drum, electronics. recorded live at 121, December 2005." [label info]
www.windsmeasurerecordings.net
€20.00
The one who modifies Time and Light
CD with handmade packaging in an edition of 200. Sleeves feature a black monochrome craquelure abstraction, a number of these are available in a box with specially made art-work and a bonus CDr (edition of 11).
First in a series focusing on sound and music in cinema, dwelling on field recordings, follies and harmony initially used to augment picture, now isolated and modified as a lover's response to the experience of film.
The recordings are highly memory-annihilated edits of a mediation on the work of Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy, created initially for Patrick Mcginley's Framework Radio. A further reworking of this music began in the logic editing system, where a slow-duplication was instituted in order to create a more stereo-rich listening experience. Soon discovered was a plethora of glitching errors. These glitching dreams were then augmented and purified in the tradition of John Cage.
In addition to these "chance procedures", a touch of immobility, abstractions and layerings was added underneath to release the
music further from its maker. After all this nonsense, the mix was found to be a pleasantly disorienting experience. This work is dedicated to my love Chi and our puppy Leviathan.
Leviathan gave me these words of inspiration which one can find in Paradise Lost Massacré :
"Infinite Vale. Through the vast and scornful deep, tossing fiery waves of dire hope, what sea-beast Leviathan that piloted the ocean storm, and burned lakes contrary to his own dark designs, he doth obscure mercy and continues on his dusky air. Praise Leviathan: the one who modifies Time and Light to drive us hence."
credits
released April 23, 2018
Artwork and design by Mount Analogue
Sleeve image by M. Świeżyński
Mastering by Stephan Mathieu
https://ingentingkollektiva.bandcamp.com/album/the-one-who-modifies-time-and-light
€13.00
Requiem
All instruments and compositions _ Luca Canciello & Lorenzo Brusci
Vocals _ Movement 2, The Zimbabwebird; Movement 1 and 3, Sosta Palmizi
Text, Movement 2 (by Zimbabwebird, in Zulu and Shona, 2015): "Thuma mina, mweya mutsvene.
Unditumeo" [Send me, pure spirit. And then send me.]
Lorenzo Brusci, 1966, co-founder of MUSSTDESIGN.com, managing partner at the music robot start up MUSICFIT (musicfit.ch).
He launched over the last 20 years prestigious adventures in the audio and sound space design field as the sound and interactive design studio GIARDINO SONORO (giardinosonoro.com) and the architectural speakers manufacturer ARCHITETTURA SONORA. He has been composing music for various ensembles, theatre, television and radio since the early ’90s (He founded TIMET.org in 1993).
Lives between Berlin, Tuscany and Krakow.
www.lorenzobrusci.com
www.soundcloud.com/lorenzo-brusci
Luca Canciello, Italian born, Berlin based.
Multi-instrumentalist, composer, sound designer, he performs experimenting with live electronics, instruments and sounds.
www.soundcloud.com/climnoizer
His musical journey and inspiration have brought him into various fields and art disciplines, working solo or collaborating with other artists and bands.
His interest for other art forms, in particular dancing, leads him composing musical pieces for theatre, dance companies, experimenting the various natures of rhythm in music .
On sound design, he’s been involved on projects linked to international cultural heritage and architectural media mapping.
The mechanism of individual and collective memory and its rituals, are the central inspiration of our Requiem. It’s not a formal Mass; our intention was to harvest and express the community’s need of sharing and binding its ties while facing the experience of death.
A deep sense of community - religo in latin, binding in english - inspired our structural research. Requiem becomes then the concerting moment that asks for “holding back”, a desperate request of time suspension, the ultimate demand for re-living, re-experiencing, re-loading, re-gaining, now, in this very ritual and public moment what will be lost forever.
Through a free attitude in music composition and expression - our syncretism - we designed a process of electroacoustic layering, consolidating in 3 compositional areas the process and destiny of organic life.
- Living Elegy - the enchantment for life and its many endangering gates: the movement is subdivided in (living) Articulation, (ritual)Transition and (pathological) Abandon;
- Nostalgia - the seeking for the integral time suspension and life preservation;
- Transfiguration - where we depict the organic reaction to danger and biological faith, subdivided in (furious and ultrabiological) detachment, (regenerating) intimate power, (coding the) extended mind, (persuing a new form of) immanency.
https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/requiem
"Lorenzo Brusci (Timet, Climnoizer, Giardino Sonoro) & Luca Canciello gestalten als SYNCHRE mit ihrem Requiem (ACU 1009, CD) aus Drones, Breakbeats und dunkel grollenden Blechbläsern (oder Orgelpfeifen) einen Dreisatz aus 'Living Energy', 'Nostalgia' und 'Transfiguration'. Als einen Übergangsritus, mit einer zart flehenden Gesangseinlage von Tozim Madzima aka Zimbabwe Bird, zu plonkenden Lauten aus dem Innenklavier. Danach wieder rauschend sich wälzende, zittrig verzerrte und knarrende Synthie- und Gitarrensounds, mit Vogelgezwitscher durchsetzt und erst zeitlupig gedehnten, dann wieder zuckenden Beats. Und zuletzt auch wieder der dunklen Bläserpracht, zu der sich diese grandiose Musik der brausenden Verwandlung entgegen stürzt. Wer braucht noch eine Leitkultur, nach so einem Durchgang ins weiße Licht?" [Bad Alchemy]
€10.00
Now and Forever
"Mathieu Vandekerckhove, mostly known for his work with Amenra. For years the self-taught musician learned and studied his craft of songwriting and sound scaping, mainly as a means to self exploration, meditation and attempts at channelling negative into positive energy, this while staying below the surface at all times.
Now 2012 marks a turning point for Mathieu Vandekerckhove and Syndrome as he steps forward, with the epic 28 minute long “Now And Forever”. Dedicated to his son Wolf, this track offers words of guidance and will grant you a look into the heart and soul of the artist. Close your eyes and hear the beating heart of pure artistic freedom.
First 75 orders will get an extra booklet with photography by Mathieu Vandekerkhove."
hypertensionrecords.com
"Gent in Ostflandern, Heimat AMENRAs und somit auch die von Mathieu Vandekerckhove. Der AMENRA-Gitarrist ist ebenso wie seine Kollegen ein Vielbeschäftigter. Die belgische Ausnahmekapelle und ihr ganzheitlicher Ansatz wussten im letzten Jahr gemeinsam mit NEUROSIS live dergestalt zu überzeugen, dass der amerikanische “Headliner“ an jedem Abend Vollgas geben musste, wollte die Band nicht von Vandekerckhove und den Seinen in den Schatten gestellt werden. Wer NEUROSIS kennt, weiß, dass sie diese Form der Herausforderung suchen und lieben.
Dass Eindruck zum Ausdruck wird, ist ein Wesenszug kreativen Wirkens. Die Belgier indes verzahnen künstlerischen Ausdruck und das eigene Leben eng. Nicht umsonst wird bei keiner Veröffentlichung auch nur ein Aspekt dem Zufall überlassen. Gleiches gilt für alle Projekte der in Gent Beheimateten – gleiches gilt somit auch für SYNDROME. Es geht die Geschichte, dass Vandekerckhoves Projekt einem Zuhause Experimentieren entsprungen sei, vor ca. sieben Jahren. Mit “Now And Forever“ liegt die mittlerweile dritte Veröffentlichung vor, ein Track mit einer Spielzeit von 28 Minuten. Das Stück bildet den Wandel ab, der sich in SYNDROME eingeschrieben hat und setzt sich aus Ambient, Drone, Doom und ja – Folkelementen zusammen. Unterstützung erfährt der Belgier von Bandkollegen Colin H. van Eeckhout und Josh Graham. Letzterer sollte als NEUROSIS-Mitglied und A STORM OF LIGHT-Kopf keiner weiteren Vorstellung bedürfen.
“Now And Forever“ startet mit einer eindringlichen Akkordfolge, die sanft von einem Drum durchklopft wird. Der vormals erwähnte Wandel drückt sich immer wieder in einer hohen Verdichtung der einzelnen Sounds aus, schnappt Versätze beinahe beiläufig und schichtet diese sorgsam auf, bereitet so auf das Hervorbrechende und Anstürmende vor, besänftigt diese und überführt sie kurz darauf wieder in mindestens zweimalige, versetzte Wiederholungen desselben Motivs. Die Intervalle des Motivs ändern sich stetig und befördern so den rauschhaften Charakter. Ab Minute neun gesellen sich Vandekerckhoves Brummvocal hinzu, um schließlich durch Colins helle Gesangsparts abgelöst zu werden. Immer bleibt die Gitarre leitend und gleicht dabei aber auch einem Katalysator. Sie senkt nicht nur die Aktivierungsenergie, sie überführt auch Dunkles in Klingendes, Tönendes. Reaktant dabei ist das Niederringende des Alltags, dass in das Ergebnis namens “Now And Forever“ expediert wird. Im Vergleich zu AMENRAs Wirkweise des “Hervorbrechens“ steht bei SYNDROME eher das Aufbrechen im Vordergrund. Wo dort die Ausdehnung, das Treiben und das Herauskommen definiert werden, geht es hier eher um ein Öffnen, ein Aufschließen und Durchstoßen. Das Ein- und Aufweichen von Strukturen geschieht entlang des beschriebenen Wandels.
Dabei findet der Hörer AMENRAs die anderen Projekte der Mitglieder in die Wertvorstellungen der Hauptband gut verfugt. Nicht umsonst haben die Belgier mit der CHURCH OF RA eine Form der Herangehensweise gewählt, die in Glaubenssystemen wurzelt. Ernsthaftigkeit ist dabei das Credo, fernab von Dogmen und Hierarchien der Entstehungsgrundlage, sondern vielmehr Basis für eine bedingungslose Hingabe, die Ergebnisse erschließt wie das vorliegende. Dort, wo eine Deckungsgleichheit von Handlungen erzeugt wird, entsteht eine Überzeugungsgemeinschaft, eine, die gemeinsam einen Pfad beschreitet, der an den wenig begangenen Weg Robert Frosts erinnert. Das, was dabei betreten wird, ist gesäumt von einem Streben nach Ganzheitlichkeit in Bild und Ton. Das dort im Verborgenen Schlummernde wird Stück um Stück freigelegt, hoch ist der Aufwand für dieses Abringen, jetzt und für immer." [S.L./Black Magazine]
"Nearly a decade ago, Syndrome came into the world through the Belgian mind of one Mathieu Vandekerckhove due to his need for a meditative vehicle through which he could release the negative energy in his life and transform it into something more constructive. This vehicle obviously existed in obscurity, laying dormant in silence for many years before taking on the attributes of droning post-rock and finding a home in 2011 with Belgian label ConSouling Sounds where Vandekerckhove has spent his entire career under this moniker to this point. Life was officially given to Syndrome when “Floating Veins” was released last June, finding availability in both a 12″ and a CD limited to 500 copies, of which the first 100 came with a bonus DVD-R of material. Other than that and “Now and Forever” here, the only other existing official Syndrome release is a three-way split with Monotonos and Sequences entitled “Fall of Man”. Outside of Syndrome, Vandekerckhove is otherwise known for his work as guitarist for sludge doom bands Kingdom and, more importantly, Amenra whom found a decisive home in Neurot Recordings a year ago. Unfortunately it seems that, despite a promised release of the new studio album “Mass V” a few months after signing, nothing has yet been unleashed.
This slow pace on Neurot may be what has freed Vandekerckhove to pursue his solo project in such depth, and that depth has found him constructing a one-track, 28 minute opus in dedication to his son, Wolf, for this release. What few words are present here exist as a guiding light for his son towards finding himself, finding strength, helping others, and knowing no matter how distant the expanse, be it physical or ethereal, his father is there in spirit. It’s an intimate portrait of the proverbial handing of the torch in blood, primal if not tribal in spirit. A tribal nature is in fact how this album opens, with a subtle light percussive notion — the only place on the entire album where you’ll find any hint of bombast behind the epic, weaving feedback drones that shimmer harmoniously before washing away in tides of a deeper, less tenuous drone that is textured lightly by gentle noise and guitar tones. These moments will eventually give way to the heart of the track that contains the lyrical content and the most desolate production within the release to give space for the vocals to express their stern, yet inert fragility. The deep performance here, both literally and emotionally, immediately reminds of efforts from several artists including Steve von Till and later Ulver, and whose building ethereal guitar nature is uncannily reminiscent of the gut-wrenching dreamy style that Love Spirals Downwards once achieved.
Other than the obvious emotions associated with succeeding at bringing a child into this world, there has to be something incredibly special on an entirely different, subconscious level about implementing those emotions into a dedication through music. It was a decade ago, this year, that Green Carnation released their acclaimed “Light of Day, Day of Darkness” album which was inspired by, at least in part, by the birth of Tchort’s son and the death of his daughter. Obviously there is a greater sense of melancholy in that record, but there is a very distinct yet undefinable emotion that accompanied that album — an emotion that is also present in full force here. It certainly isn’t melancholy, but it is reserved all the same — focused and incontrovertibly sincere. That said, it’s difficult to place the particular portion of the painting by Matthieu Ronsse, “Bateau”, that as used as the album cover, in regards to it’s significance to the subject matter at hand. It certainly fits in with the ethereal music of “Now and Forever”, and there are certainly ties in sound to the sea, but it is certainly cryptic at best in relation. The figure pictured has a ship’s flags linked to the inside corners of the eyes, almost representing tears, while the sail itself covers the mouth. The ship itself is on fire. There are many obvious lines of thought, but they seem to contradict one another once their paths cross.
Perhaps this is an explanation best saved for another article at another time. Regardless of the cryptic artwork though, it’s hard to imagine an album of this style achieving a level of perfection that rises above this. There’s simply such an incredible amount of intensity, love, and musical prowess at work in “Now and Forever” to find any kind of negative attributes within." [Sage/Heathen Harvest]
€20.50
The Chiasmus
"Nicholas' debut CD is much more than an impeccably constructed piece of abstract drone music: The Chiasmus undulates between waves of quiet melancholy and overwhelming beauty, with small slices of pointillistic noise. an album where the emotional response is always the central focus rather then pure aesthetic concerns, the nuances of The Chiasmus are only revealed upon multiple listens; by then, the listener is completely tuned into the world it presents. packaged in a jewel with a 16 pages booklet of art by Avery McArthy." [label info]
"... We mostly know him as the owner of Sentient Recognition Archive label, who produce some professionally packed CDRs of the moody, textured drone music around. I think this is the first time I hear his music. Its hardly a surprise that he creates such music himself. Drone music with a big D. Szczepanik seems to be drawing inspiration from all over the place. Through calm and atmospheres, he isn't too shy about breaking away from that and offer a louder end of his excursions. Things buzz and drone and sometimes bite your ear. Think a louder Organum meeting the softest Machinefabriek. The softer moments are the best, I think, but the louder bits (a minority here) provide a great counter point. Maybe a bit long, but very nice." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
"A split release between bad ass French microlabel Basses Frequencies, and Szczepanik's own Sentient Recognition Archive label, The Chiasmus is Szczepanik's latest collection of dronology, and the first proper cd we've had (quite possible his first proper cd release
entirely). We've long been fans, being the dronelords and ladies we are around these parts, and past Szczepanik joints have demonstrated a mastery of the drone, creating surprisingly lush and lustrous expanses of low end minimalism. On The Chiasmus, Szczepanik continues to move ever deeper, ever darker, five long tracks, each a different variation of drone, drifting from minimal black shift, to near Pop Ambient bliss.
Record opener is cavernous, epic, Teutonic and slow shifting, peppered at the beginning with bits of glitch and hiss, the song soon settles into an uneasy sprawl, ominous and dangerously grim, but still somehow warm and expansive and enveloping. The second track shifts gears completely, unfurling a gauzy bit of chordal shimmer, all warm and sun dappled and delicate and gauzy, gentle tranquil melodies played out over minutes instead of seconds, a little Eno for sure, as the song drifts and flutters and hovers dreamily in midair. The final three tracks hover somewhere in between, deep moaning post industrial whirs laid over dense metallic buzz, the two layers slowly seeping into one another like some blackened sonic spill, deep bell like tones ring out, their tones frozen in time and stretched out into softly undulating sheets of sound, slightly reflective and iridescent and
kaleidoscopic, glimmering and glistening underneath some alien black sun, and finally, a loooooooong stretch of grinding muted buzz,
spreading out in slow motion, it's black shimmer infused with streaks of melody, as if some strange black seas was slowly growing warmer and coming to life before our ears.
Fantastic, gorgeous stuff. Essential listening for the drone obsessed..." [Aquarius Records review]
www.bassesfrequences.org
€12.00
Lack Affix
"Lack affix isn’t so much about one particular location as it is an homage to the memories of the places we can’t vividly remember. This is about the imagery conjured when certain senses are triggered. It’s about our mind’s recreations of memories past; at once familiar, but also different in some inexplicable way. (Nicholas Szczepanik) Washington DC
-
Since a couple of years I’ve been living in different areas very far from the centre of the city and for Lack Affix I tried to capture this particular feeling I used to get during the nights by the time I lived at the most overcrowded districts; those extremely distant-blurred sounds of night activities as trucks delivering boxes, police helicopters, construction sites working on full hours, gas stations filled with taxis coming and going but mostly that undefinable, abyssal texture of a huge city at very late hours.
As Nicholas was sending me his re-works on my raw stuff and his own recordings for me to work on, we went more into this direction. So, I focused even more on recordings from the same streets and specially from terraces and inside subway entrances to reconstruct the sounds as I used to hear them those times ago; hopefully, even to recover some peaceful sensation I’ve never felt again so far, no idea if related with the dulling sound of those crowded districts or not. (Juan José Calarco)
Buenos Aires, Argentina"
[label / website info]
www.unfathomless.net
"The third release in the Unfathomless series is a duo release of two artists bringing sounds to the table from their own places. Nicolas Szczepanik from Washington and one Juan Jose Calarco from Buenos Aires. They traded these sounds and then started to work on processing these. This resulted in the three pieces on this CD. Its hard to recognize the busy urban life in these pieces. Just as much as you would guess, this could also be the sounds from a small village. Unless of course they stuck out their microphones in the middle of the night, picking up the remains of the day and the birds of the night. Occasionally they work towards a crescendo, but even then its not easy to spot the city. Not that I care about this, I must say. They come up with music that has a lot to imagine about. Great field recordings, and great processing of the sounds. They do an excellent job, mixing all of this together, with great clarity and lots of detail. The sound bounces all over the dynamic spectrum.
If you like say Francisco Lopez, then you're bound to like this too. Highly refined soundscapes." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€14.00
Parvenu
Parvenu is a work about authoritarian structures and developments.
The narrative is abstract, all sounds are concrete. Every single sound on this recording is based on recordings from three bee hives.
Track List:
Sometimes She Had Melancholic Memories of Her Larval Stage – 11:48
His Primary Role Was to Mate with the Fertile Queen – 9:04
The General Skepticism of the Constitutional Monarchy Was Justified as New Forms of Authority Surfaced – 15:11
The Surviving Virgin Queen Hid in the Shadows of Her Former Kingdom – 11:37
www.gruenrekorder.de
"Behind szmt (no capitals needed) is Tobias Schmitt, better know, I think, as Suspicion Breeds Confidence, but also an improviser and organiser of concerts. As szmt he “contextualizes seemingly contradictory material and techniques. All input is equal and will be formed into a coherent but nevertheless open to misinterpretation result by means of improvisation and composition” and for
‘Parvenu’ we read that it is a “work about authoritarian structures and developments. The narrative is abstract, all sounds are concrete. Every single sound on this recording is based on recordings from three bee hives”, in which context I guess the whole authoritarian structures becomes funny. When I played this yesterday for the first time I didn’t look any of this up, nor could I really decipher the font
on the cover and decided to give it another try, another day, which turned out to be today. Now that I know I am hearing the processed sound of bees, it sounds like something very obvious, but I guess that’s always the case. I assume that Schmitt is armed with a laptop and sound processing tools that lie within those machines to compose the four pieces on this CD. It is shimmering, quiet, sometimes loud, sometimes very processed, beyond recognition and then sometimes it seems to be fairly close to
what is really a recording of a bee. Most of the times it sounds like the work of microsound, that active music force from a decade ago, but in the case of szmt that is perhaps 2/3 of the story. In “The General Skepticism of the Constitutional Monarchy Was Justified as New Forms of Authority Surfaced” (all four
titles are that weird, indeed), Schmitt let’s his bees do a dance, and while not really techno music, or perhaps something we could or should dance too, there is surely some kind of groove to be detected.
Schmitt’s work reminded me of Roel Meelkop, Marc Behrens and that posse, but he added his own
twist by allowing a more loop based structure, working his processing around those, calling for
minimalist developments within each piece. It’s these perhaps not so big differences that actually made it stand out from the microsound as it was before and made it into something he can call his." [FDW/Vital Weekly]
"Gruenrekorder recordings are often filled with surprises, and szmt’s Parvenu is no exception: the brainchild of Tobias Schmitt, the forty-eight-minute release was created entirely using sounds derived from three bee hives. Given the szmt description provided, Schmitt, who also issues material under the Suspicion Breeds Confidence alias (e.g., The Fauna and Flora of the Vatican City) and has contributed to a number of releases on the label over the years, would appear to be somewhat of a provocateur. szmt, we’re told, “contextualizes seemingly contradictory material and techniques” such that all input is “formed into a coherent but nevertheless open-to-misinterpretation result by means of improvisation and composition.”
In the case of Parvenu, four long-form explorations are presented, each carrying with it a wordy title, the lengthiest “The General Skepticism of the Constitutional Monarchy Was Justified as New Forms of Authority Surfaced.” The material’s predictably abstract and amenable to interpretation, the listener free to conjure any number of possible interpretations in response. Occasional moments of insect swarm and buzzing do surface, but for the most part Schmitt’s treated the original recordings like so much raw material ready to be liberally shaped and transformed.
As the recording plays, it’s impossible to predict what direction it’ll take; at one juncture, a writhing, industrial-inflected rhythm pattern begins to assert itself before a swathe of smears abruptly takes its place. Elsewhere, amplified chirping, grinding, and warbling noises suggest a microphone moving in closely on the hive and its inhabitants, with rutting sounds of indeterminate origin implying activity of some (re)productive kind occurring within. Tinged with sci-fi bleeps, a few ambient-like episodes arise that one would perhaps misidentify as synth-generated were one unaware of the production methodology involved, and strange though it might sound, that aforementioned track, especially when it features clattering beat elements, threads sequences into its fifteen-minute frame that aren’t unlike what one might encounter in an early Autechre experiment.
A number of possible descriptions come to mind, but experimental soundsculpting might be the best and simplest fit for what’s going on here. Such experimentation is business as usual at Gruenrekorder central, of course, as long-time followers of the label already know. As strange to outsiders as Parvenu will be, to Gruenrekorder fans such weirdness is nothing more than standard operating procedure." [Texture]
€13.00
Meikai No Heso
Yuji Takahashi “Meikai no Heso” CD
Edition OMEGA POINT Archive Series OPA-026
A collection of small pieces of tape music by renowned composers, that haven’t been talked about very much. All of them are premiere release on disc.
tr.1 Yuji Takahashi (1938 -), Meikai no Heso (The Umbilicus of Limbo, 1963) (sound file)
It is also known as Window to Antonin Artaud, or The Umbilicus of Limbo. it was performed in a version of tape and instruments - poetry reading of the French poet Antonin Artaud, which was modified on the tape, and bass instruments as well as percussion instruments. This is a live recording of Musicians Group: New Direction at Sogetsu Art Center, conducted by Toshi Ichiyanagi. At the beginning of the concert, Kuniharu Akiyama gave his commentary about the piece.
tr.2 Kuniharu Akiyama (1929 - 1996), Jo-un Keiji sho (1987) (sound file)
It is a segment of a body of work Sound Gift, that was commissioned by WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk) for a show to celebrate John Cage’s 75th birthday. A short text, “Kumo Kumo-wo Joshi Keiji-suru (Kumo=Clouds, Keiji=Cage)”, which was a poetry reading by Akiyama, was looped in the tape, which then overlapped with Haiku about clouds (including English and German), words related to Zen ( in which Cage immersed himself), and sounds. By the way, an English version of Haiku was read by Ayuo Takahashi.
tr.3 Yoriaki Matsudaira (1931 -), Constellation (1984) (sound file)
This is a work by using UPIC device developed by Iannis Xenakis (which can translate graphical images into sound). Here is Matsudaira’s commentary.
“I decided to draw the constellation which we can see in Japan, and chose to fade in colours depending on the brightness of each star. Each of us was supposed to indicate the tone by images, and I remember that I decided to divide the sky into four sections to change the tone little by little.
tr.4 Yoshio Hachimura (1938 - 1985), Catch in the air (1973) (sound file)
It was produced in 1973 at NHK Studio of Electronic Music. Some Japanese traditional instruments, piccolo, tuba, violin, piano as well as electronic sounds were edited on the tape. Its sharp materialistic sound is characteristic of this composer.
tr.5 Toshi Ichiyanagi (1933 -), Music for Film Shikisokuzekuu (1974) (sound file)
The visual of Shikisokuzekuu is described as follows; A letter of Heart Sūtra is projected one by one on the screen rapidly. From the middle of the film, religious paintings appeared with subliminal effect, and flickering vivid colours were added. That gave the audience a dizzy sensation.” The music is mixed barbaric rhythm, electronic sound and Japanese traditional instrument.
omega-point.shop-pro.jp/?pid=159022056
€21.50
Descent into Delta
"A year passes by and finally Talvihorros is back with his latest album Descent Into Delta to be released on both vinyl and CD. The man behind this one man guitar driven excursion is London based Ben Chatwin who in addition to hibernate has had material released through Benbecula, My Dance The Skull and our sister label Rural Colours. Despite only recently forming the Talvihorros project in 2008, Chatwin has been experimenting with sound ever since he first picked up a guitar as a teenager. His live performances have seen him share a stage with the likes of Tim Hecker, Stephan Mathieu and Ian Hawgood to name just a few. Chatwin has to this point juggled live performances and studio work as two separate entities with studio material being culled from sounds derived from as many different instruments as possible and live performances being restricted to just guitar and pedals.
Descent Into Delta marks the blurring of the lines which separate these two disciplines. It was live performance that ignited the production of this record, which began life as a series of live improvisations, these were then selected and edited over a long period of time. During the mixing process the concept to Descent Into Delta was born and it slowly developed through many hours of editing and arrangement. Chatwin became interested in different states of mind, realising it actually produces frequencies or waves - much like sound, itself. When the mind is alert, awake or anxious, these waves are Gamma, at the other extreme, during deep sleep, Delta waves are produced. It was in turn Chatwin's intention that the sounds of Descent Into Delta would loosely depict a journey from Gamma through to Delta, as a kind of experiment to see whether the listener could be subconsciously encouraged to trace this path through sound.
Towards the last few moments of the album on the last track 'Delta', Chatwin was joined by viola player Anais Lalange who added a subtle but effective impact to the closing stages of this record. The addition of this instrument brings a whole new dimension and texture to the guitar explorations of Talvihorros." [label info]
www.hibernate-recs.co.uk
"Back in Vital Weekly 731 I reviewed the first CD by Talvihorros, also known as Ben Chatwin, a man with a guitar and effect pedals. He has had a couple of other releases, which I didn't hear. Up until this album there was a separation between live concerts and studio work. In his studio he would be using whatever sounds he could produce from whatever instrument, but live he was restricted to guitar plus effects. For this new studio album he took many hours of live playing into the studio and then started to edit and arrange this. Of his previous release on Hibernate I thought it was all quite ambient, but on this new one, things are less strictly defined. The guitar is overall a dominant factor for this, and its played at times in a more improvised way, feeding through bundles of sound effects. That results at times in menacing walls of sound such as in 'Beta', in which it reaches for the ambient doom of Nadja. Darkness is anyway something that lingers in all five pieces here, even in its more introspective and quiet moments, such as the very beautiful 'Delta', which has a nice viola to it. One could say that with this album Talvihorros found more a voice of his own than on the previous. Blending ambient with the improvised textures of ambient doom/metal into five fine tapestries of sound is very nice, though not unheard before, but a fine move indeed." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€12.00
Cotidie Morimur
Sold outA legendary and very original italian post industrial group from the cassette-underground culture of the late 80’s/ early 90’s, who had their one and only vinyl release on Drone in 1995. They were at the forefront of what one could call “archaic drone-noise”... TQTR are active again these days so we decided to put this early Drone EP back into existence..
“WHILE STILL RELATIVELY UNKNOWN, THIS ITALIAN GROUP HAS BEEN ACTIVE SINCE 1988 AND MANAGED TO RELEASE SOME OUTSTANDING UNIQUE SOUNDING TAPES IN THE INTERNATIONAL/ EXPERIMENTAL TAPE-SCENE. DRONE RECORDS IS PROUD TO PRESENT THE VERY FIRST VINYL RELEASE OF T.Q.T.R., A 7" EP FEATURING THE TRACKS 'DYSKRASIA' AND 'ATAXIA'.
THEIR MYSTERIOUS AND MONOTONIC MUSIC CAN IN OUR OPINION BE TRULY CLASSIFIED AS REAL ARCHAIC MUSIC, EVOKING EMOTIONS OF AN ANCIENT AND FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTER. FOCUSING DEEP INTO THE GROUND OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, THEIR MUSIC IS A KIND OF ARCHETYPICAL EXPRESSION THAT IS TIMELESS AND AESTHETIC. PERHAPS TO UNDERSCORE THE QUALITY OF THEIR MUSIC AS ITS OWN SECRET LANGUAGE, THE BAND INSISTS ON USING LATINS FOR THEIR TITLES. THIS EP SHOWS THE GROUP WORKING ON A MORE RHYTHMIC MODE, WITH URGENT DRONES AND STRANGE HARMONIES CREATING AND ATMOSPHERE OF NATURAL MYSTICISM – MIRRORING THE NEVER UNDERSTOOD FORCES WITHIN ONESELF. Cotidie morimur. Cotidie demitur aliqua pars vitae.”
[from the original press release 1995]
300 COPIES ON BLUE–YELLOW VINYL. FULL COLOUR PRINTED COVERS
"Auf 45rpm gerade siechender Spielmannszugabstraktion, auf 33rpm eine Mischung aus ovalesker Lockedgroovemontage und geradezu schläfrig-suggestiver Langsamkeit inmitten der parallel ablaufenden Klangereignisse. Charmant ist das sanft industrielle Outfit der Titel, besonders die geradezu mantrische B-Seite mit dem elegischen Namen »Ataxía« spiegelt einen geradezu einfühlsam ablaufenden Klangprozess wieder, in dessen Cage’scher Maschinenwiederholung so etwas wie ein chakrisches Bewusstsein für Klänge widerhallt. Die A-Seite hingegen pervertiert Organums Chaoskompositionen via sanfter Repetition und nahtloser Aneinanderreihung industrieller Klänge sowie abgenudelter Softjazzplatten im ausgewaschenen Hintergrund. Nicht gerade was für den Weihrauchgarten, aber definitiv etwas zum Staunen." [Thorsten Soltau / AEMAG]
€6.00
Cotidie Morimur
Sold outreleased March 1995
lim./numbered first edition of 250 copies. Individually symboled P.E. sleeves & printed covers; dark blue vinyl
“WHILE STILL RELATIVELY UNKNOWN, THIS ITALIAN GROUP HAS BEEN ACTIVE SINCE 1988 AND MANAGED TO RELEASE SOME OUTSTANDING UNIQUE SOUNDING TAPES IN THE INTERNATIONAL/ EXPERIMENTAL TAPE-SCENE. DRONE RECORDS IS PROUD TO PRESENT THE VERY FIRST VINYL RELEASE OF T.Q.T.R., A 7" EP FEATURING THE TRACKS 'DYSKRASIA' AND 'ATAXIA'.
THEIR MYSTERIOUS AND MONOTONIC MUSIC CAN IN OUR OPINION BE TRULY CLASSIFIED AS REAL ARCHAIC MUSIC, EVOKING EMOTIONS OF AN ANCIENT AND FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTER. FOCUSING DEEP INTO THE GROUND OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, THEIR MUSIC IS A KIND OF ARCHETYPICAL EXPRESSION THAT IS TIMELESS AND AESTHETIC. PERHAPS TO UNDERSCORE THE QUALITY OF THEIR MUSIC AS ITS OWN SECRET LANGUAGE, THE BAND INSISTS ON USING LATINS FOR THEIR TITLES. THIS EP SHOWS THE GROUP WORKING ON A MORE RHYTHMIC MODE, WITH URGENT DRONES AND STRANGE HARMONIES CREATING AND ATMOSPHERE OF NATURAL MYSTICISM – MIRRORING THE NEVER UNDERSTOOD FORCES WITHIN ONESELF. Cotidie morimur. Cotidie demitur aliqua pars vitae.”
[label info]
€6.00
1986-1989
"TAMING THE OUTBACK...
OK ... you probably haven’t heard of this 1980’s UK band before – but they really are worth it ...
Taming The Outback were a three-piece from Southend-on-Sea (Essex, UK) who were active from 1986 to 1989 (hence the title of this retrospective compilation). While they spent most of their time playing outside of the town itself and bemoaning the R&B traditions of the area, they were very much a Southend band. The three members of the original line-up formed after crisscrossing each other’s musical paths in South East Essex in the early 1980s. Melbourne-born drummer Daryl Amos and bass player Jason Sherwin first played together in local band A Wreath For Brezhnev, later meeting-up with guitarist/singer Tony Sampson (who played with Playground) to form Taming The Outback – band characterized by an aggressive, driven rhythm section, strong self-penned songs with a rich, echo-saturated guitar.
Playing live became a primary focus for the band but the endless gigging, drinking and the failure to release the aforementioned second single and the LP (already recorded) probably marked the beginning of the end of the band. Taming The Outback itself played their last gigs in 1989 with the aggression being turned inwards between personnel and instruments.
This limited edition retrospective CD collects the unreleased LP, their 7” single and the cassette EP, along with demos and some rare live recordings – all carefully and professionally remastered by Sting Davies at Big Noise, one of the UK’s top audio restoration engineers. Their music has never sounded better. The deluxe packaging pays homage to those lovely old vinyl gatefold sleeves and has an information-packed 24-page full colour booklet and inner sleeve (initial copies also come with a 2-sided mini-poster with more press cuttings and a sticker). Check out our web page for videos, more images and (aging and fading) press cuttings." [label info]
www.chronoglide.com/equation.html
"Every now and again I find a band or artist that I just am absolutely in love with, only to find upon further research, that they have fallen to obscurity and little to no more material exists to be had. That is very much the case with Taming the Outback. Being a big fan of the post-punk movement as a whole, I was certainly excited to give this disc a spin, but I had no idea what was in store. A 'definitive' collection, culled from the entirety of their 3 year lifespan, '1986-1989' may just be one of the most quintessential post-punk records I've experienced. From the opening notes of 'Fire & Smoke' to the moving, dramatic leads of 'Mistrust' to the final notes of 'American Dream' this cd is a near flawless listen. So many classic influences are channeled throughout this disc, while not a single one of them can quite be used for comparison. The Outback were able to draw from these influences and really put their own stamp on it all. From bass sounds very reminiscent of the Cure's 'Disintegration' album, coupled with certain melodies containing the ghosts of Joy Division's early work to the angst of Killing Joke and hint of the western vibe of Fields of the Nephilim (with whom The Outback shared the stage for a tour) to the tension building vocals of Echo and the Bunnymen and Mission UK'¦ The list just goes on and on, yet I can't stress enough, that at no point does it sound like any of these bands have been recycled in any way. Taming the Outback had something so magical that this world just couldn't accept it, and after just three short years, tensions grew to a head, and the magic was no more. Lucky for us the trio, after 2 decades, decided to release this retrospective of singles originally slated for an abandoned LP, demos, and live tracks. While the quality of some of the live tracks isn't 100% pristine, some of the almost inaudible tape noise, really at its worst just adds a warm, nostalgic feel the latter half of the album. Even the packaging is impressive. A thick, heavy, double gatefold style cardboard sleeve is adorned with the band's infamous crucifixion publicity shot, and comes with a poster, and full 24 page booklet containing lyrics, interviews and reprints of more than a few press clippings about the band; and a second edition limited to just 75 copies (which at last inspection were still available) comes with the same, as well as 4 badges, a mini reprint of 'Alive and Kicking' fanzine from 1987 featuring the band, and an original copy of their only 7' in a picture sleeve. Once again, just a phenomenal record in every way; go out of your way if you must, just make sure you get this one under your belt before you die." [Barton Graham / Chain DLK]
€13.00
There is Nothing to Attain
Kent Tankred (b.1947) is one of the true hidden masters of Swedish electro-acoustic and experimental music. Tankred studied at Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm in the early 70s and he has released a sparse catalogue of fine works, mainly for his and Leif Elggren’s Firework Edition Records as well as Ash International. In 1995 he put out the extremely strong album ”Ordinary Things” on Fylkingen Records. ”THERE IS NOTHING TO ATTAIN” is his first albums since the 2010 CDr with the same title. - iDEAL.
*
Music is not like people. Nonetheless most music tries to pretend it is human, imitating their movements, feelings, attributes, even opinions.
Kent’s music doesn’t pretend to be anything. One quickly forgets there could be a human behind it, even though it may have arisen from some profound game, a concentration on some discovery, combination, principle.
The music is naked, or rather unclothed, inhuman, at the first encounter reminding you of everything you would prefer to avoid: leaf-blowers, neighbours drilling the wall, machinery grinding, a screwdriver stripping the thread with a careless move, electric warning signals, all on top of each other.
A recent radio programme was discussing whether the phrase “human error” should be replaced by the less recriminatory “human contribution”. Meanwhile a submarine has sunk into an ocean chasm and the 53 aboard who might still be alive will run out of oxygen before they can be reached. A struggle between man and machine.
But here there is no struggle, the machine is likened to any other natural phenomenon. It just is, does what it does, or doesn’t, in its own time which is neither fast nor slow since it doesn’t have to be compared with anything, has no purpose, no significance, is neither good nor evil. A god like Einstein’s, indistinguishable from nature in its entirety. A galaxy does not rotate in order to be beautiful or strong. A fan does not make something flap about randomly in order to trace a certain pattern.
In the starkly dystopic early science-fiction film On the Beach (1959) a Morse signal is detected from a region where all life should have been eradicated by the atomic winter. An expedition is sent to resolve the mystery. In a completely lifeless industrial zone they find that someone, before the radiation wiped them out, had hung a coke bottle on a string from a roller blind balanced so that the random flapping of the blind caused the bottle to press the telegraph key, producing a haphazard stream of code which inevitably from time to time formed meaningful words and phrases.
I am hard put to explain what it is than can suddenly make the music so entertaining, so jocular in the midst of this objective, mundane mangling. Yet one does get reminded at some point that someone is behind all this, has discovered or molded, has chosen this; perhaps not a joke but pure serendipity.
Just as things originate so must they vanish, by one decision or another – a handbrake, a puncture, a flying catch. The process “concludes”, or purports to, as when someone suddenly wakes you from a dream which you forget immediately but retain the echo of a feeling. Or you are surprised by your parents opening the door when you’re in the middle of a game where you can’t remember whether what you’re doing is supposed to be secret or not.
And so the cauldron or the ventilation pipes spill out a bus garage, a swarm of drones, or those flying bicycles Leonardo had a mind to make.
Johannes Bergmark.
https://idealrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/there-is-nothing-to-attain
€17.50
Interiors Two
New impressionistic, metaphysical investigations from Andrew Hargreaves’ Tape Loop Orchestra.
Taking his cues from found photos and a hopeless romantic sensibility, Tape Loop Orchestra’s entropic drift carries him thru rooms 7-13 of his ‘Interiors’ trilogy, taking all the time he needs to ponder the questions: “Are there invisible entities left adrift when a room is unoccupied, sounds forever reverberating beyond the life of the body? Is there a way for us to access this library written in the air?”Across the LP he typically divines a moire of ephemeral emotive nudges swept up in ferric swells, while the bonus CD supplies an intimate audience with TLO recorded live at Manchester’s Partisan venue on a chilly sunday evening in winter 2018.
In a transition from fading daylight to darkness, the music on the LP inhabits richly melancholy headspace. Initially clear, plangent keys and choral sighs almost subliminally begin to fray at the edges as their signals become reiterated in outwardly spiralling feedback loops. Across the front the sound connotes a late summer light ebbing away into dusk, gradually allowing the ear’s eye to adjust to the low luminosity of the B-side, where a chill of night seeps into the near-static scenes, fringed by the meridian sound of distant cars or the shiver of spirits accreted in soft furnishings and peeling wallpaper, eventually slowing down to a stark solo piano pulse and even Carpenter-style atmospheric noir.
Leading on beautifully from the LP’s solemn ending is TLO’s live set recorded for an event organised by Tom Houghton at Partisan, a listed building in a historic quarter of Manchester city centre. We were lucky enough to be lulled to a soporific state by said set, and we can assure listeners it’s lost none of its enchanted appeal on the CD.
€34.00
Take all the Ships from the Harbour, and sail them straight to Hell
In der mächtig wachsenden Field Recording-Szene hat sich der Australier TARAB durch seinen besonderen Stil inzwischen einen Namen gemacht... Seine Aufnahmen schwanken zwischen den Polen des "ganz nahen" und Detaillierten und dem "entfernten, verhallten, undeutlichen, verrauschten", wobei er v.a. rauhe, knirschend-knarzige, metallisch-quietschende "Granular-Sounds" bevorzugt. Gewohnte musikalische Parameter spielen hier keine Rolle mehr, die editierten Soundschnipsel ergeben "nicht-harmonische" aber doch Emotionen und Intellekt herausfordernde dynamische Strukturen... das ist atmosphärische, experimentelle Musique Concrete mit Drone-Elementen. TIP !!
"The title to this album from Tarab (nee Eamon Sprod) is striking enough in its allusions of damnation, with a watery grave a potential outcome from human activity impacting the earth. So, it may be stating the obvious that the corroded locations where mankind has scarred the surface of the earth feature prominently in the work of this Melbourne based sound artist. The residual elements of these sites become the agents for metaphor and allegory in Tarab's work, documented through field recording and sympathetic actions with found objects from those sites. One such location that features prominently in Take All of the Ships... is Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. Once the home of an immigration station at the turn of the 20th Century and later a Nike Missile site for the US military, Angel Island now rests in the hands of the US National Park Service, which has left some of the buildings to succumb to the forces of decay. From the sounds culled from this site and others closer to his antepodean home, Tarab diligently overlays and stiches together a highly tactile composition with very little digital treatments to speak of.Take All of the Ships... opens with an ominous rumble whose frequencies appear to emerge from the center of the Earth and liquefying the surface upon impact. As these tones ebb and flow, Tarab unveils as revolving series of exaggerated details from a hyperbolic gash of two heavy pieces of metal grinding against themselves to a toxic chorale of nighttime insects to sand, wind, and surf detourned into sedimentary white noise. Tarab's compositional sensibility shifts throughout the album, at first sparsely situating these sounds into shadowy vignettes. Gradually, Tarab coalesces this sublime opus into an arcing crescendo which exhibits sustained harmonics rarely heard in the best of the contemporary dronemusik technicians much less from the realm of sound ecology." [label description]
"Like much work in the hybrid, Take all the ships..., a 55 minute suite of environmental sound, is drawn from a few specific places (in this case, Angel Island, a deserted military base turned national park), but is not really meant to be about that place. Instead, it is a layered series of sonic events that act as metaphors. The dominant mood here is bleak and overcast, and certain motifs recur: wind howling and whistling through pipes, ice cracking and tinkling, shortwave radio transmissions, the complaint of metal being scrapped and twisted, booming reverb that seemingly has no source. The sounds become signifiers of desolation, solitude, a creeping sense of life that has no human presence.
This metaphorical approach moves the result into fictive, often surreal territory, but, like G*Park, Sprod’s recording method is austere but meticulous. This means that his sounds retain plenty of natural reverb and keep their stochastic character. They hold the interest even when the inevitable lulls in activity set in, those moments when the piece feels more episodic than fully developed. But in their precision and ability to evoke tactile images, Sprod’s sounds are powerful ones, reminiscent of what Tod Dockstader has said about the sounds he preferred: "“I like to have edges. Sound to me is always very physical. I can feel, not just hear it. It has personality. It has weight, proportion. It’s like I can pick it up and hold it." The sounds are masked, but not abstracted. They are the kind of lies you want to believe." [Matthew Wuethrich, Dusted Mag]
www.23five.org
€14.00
Mormor
"Tarkataks MORMOR schafft es mit einer bezaubernden Leichtigkeit, unser Hören in Bewegung zu versetzen. Wir finden uns am Ende der Nacht auf einem Floß, in einem Gewässer aus Klang, soweit das Hören reicht. Akustische Räume öffnen sich, und bieten behutsam bearbeiteten Klängen zuvorkommend ihren Platz an. Melodien singen von ihrem eigenen Entstehen und Vergehen. Statischer Dunst verhüllt die nahe Dämmerung, bis in der Ferne mechanische Oszillationen von einem Ufer und frühen Vögeln künden. Klippen unter der Oberfläche erzeugen schimmernde Interferenzen. Der Ort ist erfüllt von einem fernen Echo letzter Hausmusik, und verstörte Endlosschleifen erzählen in fremden Sprachen von einer unmöglichen Insel, auf der Menschen und Maschinen einen gemeinsamen Rhythmus finden. Versöhnt besteigen wir wieder unser Floß - und lassen uns von MORMOR auf erhabenen Wellen zum fliehenden Horizont tragen." [label info]
"...Tarkatak's music is still highly atmospheric, but much more sparse these days. Each of the four long pieces is built around just a few loops, which Tarkatak plays around with, changing the color of them, getting them out of sync and back in sync again, and such like, and creates a wonderful textured sound. There are times when 'Mormor' reminded me of Taylor Deupree, but then a bit more dark, but it has the same relaxed feeling to it. But there is also the featuring of rhythm, which is also an entirely aspect, certainly when it comes down to stripped down techno rhythms. Quite a break with the past, I think and quite a step forward. Including is a film for one of the tracks, which depicts the sea and the sand, along with a lonely man - the sort of film you'd expect with this lonesome music. Great CD, and hopefully bringing him some more recognition" [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€10.00
In Pieces - Volume One
"in pieces - volume one" - taumel trifft das ensemble adapter
- - -
im winter 2016 haben sich 'taumel' und das 'ensemble adapter' zu mehreren improvisativen sessions getroffen um einen musikabend zu entwickeln, bei dem die gegensätze und grenzen zwischen komposition und improvisation, freiheit und festlegung, chaos und struktur verschwimmen oder kollidieren. im mittelpunkt der sessions stand die entwicklung einer spezifischen, klang-gestischen musiksprache. jeder musker hat gewissermaßen auf seinem instrument einen charakter und seine jeweils eigene spezifische klang-gestik entwickelt. diese sessions haben wir mitgeschnitten und für "in pieces" als grundlage genommen. "in pieces" besteht aus den remixes dieser sessions, sowie zusätzlich von taumel produziertem studiomaterial.
"in pieces" kann als sureales klanggedicht verstanden werden, als eine abstrakte klang-geschichte, die durch die verschiedensten zustände wandert - von größtem glück bis hin zu raserei und wahnsinn. in den 2 mutierenden klangfeldern kreist die assoziative geschichte um das thema der sprachlichen unveräußerbarkeit und damit auch um das thema 'chaos und ordnung'. diese doppelbödigkeit, der versuch zur schönheit und dessen umkippen in zerstörung und versagen. schreibversuche, sprechversuche, gestammel, gestotter, geschrei, einengung, wegdriften, gesumme... in der mutation der zustände treffen heterogene klangereignisse aufeinander oder werden vermengt zu einer neuartigen masse zwischen lied, sprechen, melodie, harmonie, geräusch, beats, riffs, wort, elektronik und verfremdung. die aktion des instrumentalisten (das instrumentenspiel) steht auf der gleichen ebene wie jede andere klangerzeugende handlung oder stimmliche veräußerung sowie jede elektronische klangerzeugung und ist immer gestisch gedacht, performativ, als handlung, als akustischer tanz.
"volume one" ist der erste teil eines als zweiteiler geplanten musikalischen zusammenhangs ("in pieces - volume two). in zwei klangteilen (seite a, seite b) ist "in pieces - volume one" kein liederzyklus wie unsere anderen serien, z.B. TRAUM, sondern eher ein musikalischer 2-akter, später insgesamt 4-akter. hier teilt sich die gesamtform der musik-serie nicht auf in alben und songs, sondern in alben und deren a+b seiten, wie akt 1, 2, 3 und 4. vielleicht kann man daher "in pieces" auch als akustisches theater hören, oder als hörspiel ohne worte, oder als soundtrack ohne film, oder als film ohne bild, oder eben einfach als eine ordnung sich verändernder klangereignisse.
"off the record"
in "off the record" trifft taumel auf andere musiker und entwickelt alben in kolaboration. hier können verschiedenste formen der musikalischen interaktion ausprobiert werden. in diesem fall von "in pieces" bestand die zusammenarbeit mit dem "ensemble adapter" in den besagten sessions, die das grundgerüst und skelet für das gesamte album bilden.
- - -
INFORMATION:
"in pieces - volume one"
by taumel and ensemble adapter
label: dronerecords
https://www.dronerecords.de
taumel: jakob diehl / sven pollkötter
https://www.taumel.net
publisher: https://www.la-chunga.com/en/
ensemble adapter: Kristjana Helgadóttir / Ingólfur Vilhjálmsson / Gunnhildur Einarsdóttir / Matthias Engler
http://ensemble-adapter.de
instruments: voice, drums, percussions, guitars, tipewriter, flutes, harp, clarinets, prepared piano, keyboards, synthesizer, loops and samplings, electronics, fxs on instruments.
- - -
- - -
"in pieces - volume one" - taumel meets ensemble adapter
in winter 2016, 'taumel' and the 'ensemble adapter' met for several improvisational sessions to develop an evening of music in which the contrasts and boundaries between composition and improvisation, freedom and determination, chaos and structure were to blur or collide. the sessions focused on the development of a specific, sound-gestural musical language. in a way, each musician developed kind of a character on his instrument and its own specific sound-gesture. we recorded these sessions and used them as a basis for "in pieces. "in pieces" consists of the remixes of these sessions, as well as additional studio material produced by taumel.
"in pieces" can be understood as a sureal sound poem, an abstract sound story that wanders through the most different states - from greatest happiness to frenzy and madness. in the 2 mutating sound fields, the associative story revolves around the theme of linguistic inalienability and thus also around the theme of 'chaos and order'. this ambiguity, the attempt at beauty and its overturning into destruction and failure. attempts at writing, attempts at speaking, stammering, stuttering, screaming, constriction, drifting away, humming... in the mutation of states, heterogeneous sound events meet or are mixed to a new kind of soundmash between song, voices, melody, harmony, instruments, noise, beats, riffs, words, electronics and alienation. the action of the instrumentalists (the instrument playing) is on the same level as any other sound producing action or vocal expression as well as any electronic sound production and is always meant gesturally, performatively, as action, as acoustic dance.
"volume one" is the first part of a musical context planned as a two-part work ("in pieces - volume two). in two sound parts (side a, side b) "in pieces - volume one" is not a song cycle like our other series, e.g. TRAUM, but rather a musical 2-act, later altogether 4-act. here the overall form of the musical series is not divided into albums and songs, but into albums and their a+b sides, like act 1, 2, 3 and 4. perhaps, therefore, "in pieces" can also be heard as an acoustic theater, or as a radio play without words, or as a soundtrack without a film, or as a film without a picture, or simply as an order of changing sound events.
"off the record"
in "off the record" taumel meets other musicians and develops albums in collaboration. here different forms of musical interaction can be tried out. in this case of "in pieces" the collaboration with the "ensemble adapter" consisted in these sessions, which form the basic framework and skeleton for the whole album.
https://soundcloud.com/drone-records/taumel-in-pieces-vol-one
"For various reasons, this is an oddball release for the Drone Records' subdivision of Substantia Innominata. Firstly, because one of the musicians is a relatively well-known actor, who played a role in the excellent German TV series 'Dark', a must-see if you like that sort of thing with time travel. He's also a composer for various films. With Sven Pollkötter, he is the duo of Taumel. I am sure Diehl's participation will raise a few unusual eyebrows in the direction of this record. More importantly, the music is not what we know from this series, a subdivision of Drone Records, which, by and large, deal with the more droney end of the musical spectrum, music for the subconsciousness. Taumel teams up with Ensemble Adapter, a four-piece group of percussion, clarinets, flute and harp, along with a ton of effects, tapes, and voices. The six of them recorded a couple of improvisations, which served as the basis of further mixing, remixing and processing by Taumel (who play keyboards, voices, guitars, typewriter, tapes, percussion, sampler, and such like). On this record, there are eight pieces, which in itself is also a thing you don't see a lot with releases on this imprint. The result is still much rooted in improvised music than you would think or even jazz, but with that streak of darkness, that is more common here. A most remarkable record, I'd say, and one that took some time here before it sank in. The resulting pieces of music are just that, pieces of music, rather than soundscaping or long-form pieces. There is excellent clarity here regarding the instruments, which are all pretty well defined within the result. However, the four pieces per side can be seen as one long story, moving from place to place, albeit a more abstract one, of course, but maybe I am distracted by the fact that there is an actor at work here. Also, it has an excellent film character. I can easily imagine visuals to go along with this, and it comes close to the world of soundtracks. Perfect record, but not one that quickly reveals its secrets." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€16.00
La Bar Mitzvah du Chien
"Another shamanic journey in Tazartès's universe. He sings and plays all the instruments and samples, recorded in the very same room as all his other solo records since 1974. Performed, produced, and recorded by Ghédalia Tazartès for Bisou in 2012. Tazartès's son, Lalo, can be heard on "Don't Cry for Me, Mamma." The front cover is a picture of Quentin Rollet, shot by Yannick Ressigeac. The back features a drawing by Lalo Tazartès. Mastered by F/Lor." [label info]
€18.00
5 Rimbaud 1 Verlaine
"Vinyl reissue of this great tribute to the poetry of Rimbaud and Verlaine made by our favorite French sorcerer, who exceptionally abandones his typical imaginary language to reinterpret six small poems in his own way, jumping from one musical genre to the other and happily letting them crunch together in a childish, enthusiastic play. Recorded in Paris in his flatelier around the same time he recorded the wonderful Hystérie Off Music and previously available in an almost unnoticed mini CD edition published by the French label Jardin au Fou, it's now available in a remastered vinyl version - with an excellent 45 rpm cut made by SST in Frankfurt.
Pressing info: 350 copies on black."
€16.50
Unusual Path
“Unusual Path” is a nearly 20minutes long track, that builds up slowly, layer by layer, sound by sound. It´s electronic music with a very warm analogue feeling, that constitutes the sound of Tegh. Pliable noises and piercing drones create an epic soundstory, complemented by field recordings.
Tegh focusses on just one track, to tell a story about an “Unusual Path” and the listener is invited to create her/his own story.
PHYSICAL RELEASE:
www.midirarecords.com/product/md-045teghunusual-path/
credits
released May 31, 2019
Remixes by Siavash Amini (Iran) and Zenjungle (Greece). Amini and Entezami are also a part of the Iranian experimental music scene “SET”, that gives artists a chance to present their music in Tehran.
The remixes create a very own aura: Amini stripped down the track to a minimal ambient track with a twist and Zenjungle transformed the track into a dark jazz drone.
“Unusual Path” got mastered for vinyl by Antonio Gallucci (Architeuthis Rex).
https://midirarecords.bandcamp.com/album/unusual-path
€23.00
Incompleteness
"INCOMPLETENESS" is the all new album from the visionary duo of TEMPLE MUSIC, beautifully presented in typical Faria fashion with 4 full colour inserts in an immaculate art housing...
In 1931, the Czech-born mathematician Kurt Gödel demonstrated that within any given branch of mathematics, there would always be some propositions that couldn't be proven either true or false using the rules and axioms of that mathematical branch itself... the implication is that all logical system of any complexity are, by definition, incomplete; each of them contains, at any given time, more true statements than it can possibly prove according to its own defining set of rules. This implies that you'll never entirely understand yourself, since your mind, like any other closed system, can only be sure of what it knows about itself by relying on what it knows about itself.
TEMPLE MUSIC'S Alan Trench and Stephen Robinson have used both the implications of Gödel's theorem and the doctrine of anamorphosis to compose and fashion an album of 4 interconnected and complementary tracks that somehow look both forward and back; that juxtapose the old and the new into an organic whole of both sacred and temporal instruments - Indian harmonium and shruti box, plucked and hammered dulcimers, bodhrans, mosenos, various flageolets, synthesisers and keyboards, guitars, bass, Tibetan bells and singing bowls - 4 drifting shards of ethereal and sometimes frightening beauty, rose petals on the snow that are finally revealed to be tiny, perfect drops of crystalline blood...
Tracy Jeffery of Orchis, Cunnan and SQE contributes to 2 tracks: vocals to Elemental and harp to Anamorphosis
Track listing:
"The Transmission of Enochian Via The Seer Edward Kelley" (11.44)
"Anamorphosis" (19.47)
"In Completeness" (11.30)
"Elemental" (9.08)
TEMPLE MUSIC believes that each piece of music should reflect the place, time and circumstance of its creation; that each composition should, in effect, be a Genius Loci of a moment; of a thought: a manifestation of the True Will. To this end, we employ a number of techniques, some more abstruse than others; alchymical as well as musical. The project took it's first steps back in 1995 as an offshoot of the English dark folk band ORCHIS and their interest in ancient Greek modal music, drone, magical trance states and krautrock. Orchis made several recordings for a planned ritual music side project, only one of which ever saw the light of day; 'Anadiomene' on 'Mandragora' (1999). There was then silence until 2004, when the first Temple Music recordings began to be released via the Polish experimental label Shining Day. Initially it was essentially a solo project by Alan Trench (ex World Serpent), but before long Trench joined forces with Stephen Robinson (ex The Beloved), initially for further recording but eventually to undertake live semi-improvised performances. The live Temple Music experience proved to be a phenomenon, veering between shifting walls of noise and moments of arctic intensity, sometimes unsettling but always demanding attention, rhythm and chaos combined.... Temple Music employ both acoustic and electronic instrumentation, from vintage synths and samplers to a vast array of plucked, bowed, blown , hammered and invented sound makers in order to accomplish their dense, introspective and numinous music."
[full label info] www.shiningday.pl
€13.00
The Sacred Truth
"From the ashes of Dark Ambient legends Endvra the TenHornedBeast is rising. Cryptic, menacing atmospheres erupt from droning chasms of feedback. On an altar of horn and fire "The Sacred Truth" is revealed. An ultra doom / drone epic! Presented in a matt-laminate, spot-varnished digipak. TenHornedBeast is Christopher Walton." [label info]
"With a past in the British dark ambient-project Endura in joint venture with Stephen Pennick, Christopher Walton knows exactly how to create atmospheres of the disturbingly black kind. His solo-project "Tenhornedbeast" is like a trip back to the early days of death industrial. The expression on the five intersections of the album is repetitive and slowly moving, though the approach to dark minimalism varies on the overall album. With drones based on orchestration of the dark kind the associations from beginning of the album stylishly turns towards the Cold Meat Industry-scene, more precisely towards the lesser harsh moments of Brighter Death Now around the "Necrose Evangelicum"-period. From fourth intersection titled "In the teeth of the wolf", the drones becomes more guitar-based in the gloomy drone-rock style characterizing the expression of Sunn O))), with a dark ambient-based touch reminding of Lustmord and early british industrial/metal-ambient-project Saw Throat (aka SoreThoat ). The true power of this album is Christopher Walton ability to create cinematic atmospheres of trance-like hypnotism with this great mixture of acoustic and synthetic. Impressive album." [NM / Vital Weekly]
www.coldspring.co.uk
€13.00
split
Zwei lange Stücke auf dieser Split der Bands aus UK. Unfassbar weiten & mächtigen, fast halbstündigen DOOM-DRONE produzieren TENHORNEDBEAST, die früher als ENDVRA aktiv waren. MARZURAAN ist die zweite Inkarnation von RYN, und sie rocken hier weniger metallisch-krachig, sondern in wunderbarer ultra-minimaler JESU-Manier... Spezielles ausgestanztes Cover.
"Aurora Borealis is proud to present this split CD by two of the lesser known greats from the Northeast of England. TENHORNEDBEAST is the dark vision of Christopher Walton, part of the much feted ENDVRA, masters of 90s dark and occult ambient. 'Law of the needle', clocking in at over 28 minutes, is an oppressive opus of doomed drone, both monolithic and multifaceted. Pure power. "elongated, sinister drone, ...distant, echoing string resonance from bowed guitars and cold, steely walls of distortion" think the good folks at Boomkat, as well they may. MARZURAAN contribute 'Into countless battles', 13 minutes of narcotic guitar haze. I think this is my favourite of anything they have done to date. So good, you never want it to end. The gruff metal grunts of the 'Solid Wood' LP have been replaced by a subdued, almost crushed vocal, totally stands out. "acres of textured guitar, low end pressure and brooding drums" say Boomnkat. Can't wait to hear more from MARZURAAN - this is epic, like a bassier, looser, Mogadon dosed JESU with a man past caring roped in to give his thoughts on where its all gone wrong. Pete from MARZURAAN did the artwork and layout. Printed on heavy textured card and with 2 diecut runes. Comes in a pvc bag." [label info]
" Every once in a while, someone will release a record, and we can't help but feel like it was made specifically for us. And for you. Some records just perfectly speak to the aQ aesthetic, as undefinable as that seems to be. This is another one of those cases. Someone thought it would be a perfect combination to match up UK one man ambient drone outfit Tenhornedbeast, with UK slow motion doomlords Marzuraan. And it is perfect. And a fantastic idea, but just because something is a great idea, doesn't always mean someone thinks of it. And we're not saying we had been thinking someone should get these two bands together specifically, we're just glad they did, and we sort of wish we HAD thought of it. But that's neither here nor there. The important thing is that it happened, and now we can all luxuriate in the deep dark heaviness both of these bands explore. And while the bands are indeed different, their aesthetics are not all that far removed. The both exist in some blackened nether region, haunting sonic realms, where heaviness can be expressed in both utter darkness and extreme force, sometimes
both, and once in awhile neither.
Tenhornedbeast offer up a nearly 30 minute long sonic ritual, beginning as a bit of swirling black minimalism, but slowly building to a truly intense wall of doomdrone, the sound thick and textured, a churning cauldron of low end buzz and downtuned disembodied riffs, all brought to a boil and poured out in a viscous black torrent, left to flow like some subterranean river. But these deep drones are laced with melodies, and keening high end shards, allowed to shine forth occasionally, but often swallowed up before they can fill those caves with their unnatural light. The track continually changes shape, sound and timbre, various shades of grey and black, lightening and darkening as the landscape changes, a haunting journey through some lost world, where sound replaces sight, allowing us to navigate ever deeper.
Marzuraan counter with what must be one of their prettiest tracks ever. It's still sludgey and doomy, but the notes ring out, the melodies almost soar, the sound fuzzy and glimmering, almost like these guys have caught the shoegaze bug as well. Washed out and blissy, super melodic and melancholy, but the coolest part is that the track seems to warble and waver, almost like someone is manually adjusting the tape speed, so the notes sound drunken and drugged, the track lurches and weaves drunkenly, only adding to the haunting and off kilter beauty. Part way through, the riffs get a little more riffy, and then the vocals come in, a moaning distant croon, and we're most definitely in serious Jesu territory, but that weird speed shifting hitch, keeps it from sounding too pretty, or two blissy. But if these guys keep heading in this direction, they could definitely give Jesu, and Nadja and other metallic shoegazers a run for their money.
The packaging is super swank, a three panel gatefold, each of the front panels diecut with each band's symbol, printed inside and out, housed in a thick plastic sleeve with a sticker affixed to the front." [Aquarius Records review]
www.aurora-b.com
€13.00
Sunken / Buried / Forgotten
"A brand new CDEP from Terra Sancta, originally planned as part of the next full length release, but the tracks here are significantly
different from the newer material being recorded as to warrant a separate release. Sunken|Buried|Forgotten should be seen as a sort of bridge between Terra Sancta's past and future recordings, the three tracks here (total time roughly 23 minutes) representing the heavy
droning sound found on particular parts of Disintegration; swaths of roughly textured, post-industrial drift, propelled forth with a
massive back weight into a crescendo of epic turbulence, leaving a wake of swirling cosmic debris in its path. Once again, Terra Sancta
shows an innate ability to push the limits of what is traditionally considered dark ambient. 4 panel digipak, lmtd 500." [label info]
www.malignantrecords.com
€8.00
Sphaera
"Between 1984 and 1989, my acousmatic work was focused on processing and merging the four fundamental substances. Each 'element' gradually became articulated with the others, thus crystallizing my subjective perception of their materiality. Over the years, helped by the enthusiasm of a Greek friend who propelled me into the Socratic universe, what started out as an exploratory path has become a circular, spherical unity, in which each occurrence simultaneously belongs to one of the four substances as well as the whole. These four sections, of uneven durations, embody the different resonances of each 'element' upon my imagination. The movements are ordered compositionally and range from the intangibility of the air to the extreme density of the earth. In 'Eterea', the dual nature of air, a space for the dissemination of sounds and an environment for mobile masses, shaped the work and the development of its forms. Whether it be the vast expanse of particles as organized movement or the displacement of sources in our three-dimensional perception, ethereal air fills the space and drives the immaterial motions and gestures. 'Aquatica' locates the materiality of water in relation to its amazing extremes: from the drop to the ocean, an extensive journey unfolds through the various phases of the reinvented liquid. Still waters, deadly waters, raging waters follow one another, leading to the aerial fusion of a primordial equilibrium eventually retrieved. Then comes 'Focolaria' and the unsteady fires, the elusive and wild will-o'-the-wisps that open and adorn the gates leading to the depths of the earth. The land of 'Terra' is devoid of atmosphere, a land of matters before the advent of life. The sounds of the original matter merge and evolve into purer forms. The motions trigger progressions towards new equilibriums of forces, the ultimate fusion, the very last attempt, needed for the emergence of life. The sphere is now complete, the world ready for creation..." --Daniel Teruggi
"While the theme of the four elements has been a constant source of inspiration in the arts, its setting to music using electroacoustic techniques seems highly auspicious, since the notion of matter and its transformation is consubstantial with the concrete approach. In Sphæra, Daniel Teruggi precisely addresses this question, transcending matter with the help of novel digital audio techniques so as to draw out forms, trajectories, layers, and musical objects, all of which result from the merging or sublimation of primordial sounds. Indeed, this is where Daniel Teruggi's music and compositional approach stand out: by engaging sounds, with strength, will and inspiration, in a close encounter with energies, whether tectonic or electrical. Such collisions, such metamorphoses, are then appeased in the whole space of the composition, a fascinating landscape, the final destination of all transmutations." --François Bonnet, Paris, 2021
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnittstelle, Berlin, July 2021. Translations: Valérie Vivancos. Layout: Stephen O'Malley.
https://danielteruggi.bandcamp.com/album/sph-ra
€20.00
same
"The fifth release from Finnish underground label Anima Arctica is this self-titled debut work by Tervahäät, a duo consisting of Antero Väätäjä and Ilmari Akkanen. This shortish but interesting album builds bridges between raw post-industrial ritual tracks and frosty Finnish folklore.
From the start of the album on, we are presented with the successful instrumental base of this project that returns in most of the tracks: banjo and bass melodies overlaying rumbling industrial soundscapes, varied organic percussion and some seething electric guitar work. Longer tracks like “Otava” forge these elements into extended ritual journeys, accompanied by pathos-filled vocals in Finnish. The accompanying sheet of English text (a translation of the lyrics?) speaks of animals, spirits, and mystic poetry. In general, the music of this album is not easy to get into; while there are accessible tracks like the Nordic neofolk of the instrumental “Joulukuu”, the greater part of the album is rather esoteric and demands a receptive mood, one that resonates with the cold and oppressive visual imagery. It is perhaps typically Finnish in the sense that it doesn’t open up at the first listen.
However, despite this closedness and lack of very direct compositions that immediately grab you by the throat, Tervahäät manages to deliver an album that has a compelling mysticism about it, as well as an original sound that blends organic, industrial, and folkloric elements. The foundations for an interesting musical oeuvre have been laid here, and lovers of experimental post-industrial music should definitely check this album out. It will be especially appealing if you have an ear for Finnish underground music of the past decade." [O.S. / Evening of Light]
www.animaarctica.fi
€10.00
Taival
"Taival continues on the paths and narrow roads through Finnish forests to further explore the rustic and mystical sounds and visions of Tervahäät. Seven tracks of ritualistic folk & neofolk are inspired by rural surroundings, spiritual unity, and a sincere interest in the native land and its entities — trees, animals, and the spirit of the ancestors. The fourth album of Tervahäät brings also some surprisingly warm winds from the icy north-west, but the warmth also carries a slight smell of decaying bones and suspicioulsy friendly whispers from old ghosts." [label info]
www.animaarctica.fi
"I have spoken to many people about their taste in music. Several of them can pinpoint a defining moment that triggered their now eclectic taste, which has led them along the path of musical freedom. I, personally, keep very limited and musically specific company, but for me it’s a very simple and nostalgic memory.
Have you ever had one of those evenings where you find yourself looking at film after film on YouTube? You go from band-to-band and genre-to-genre, and you stumble across some amazing, bizarre, and down-right amateur videos. That particular nostalgic night, I stumbled across a man playing a Finnish instrument called the ‘kantele’. I was amazed at how simple the instrument looked and yet how sweet the tone is. The first one I heard was a five-string, and the YouTube trail quickly brought me to a ten-string. Before I knew it, I had placed an order for a five-string kantele to be made in the United States. This epiphany of sorts found me entrenched in the culture of Finland, whilst playing its national instrument.
This immersion in Finnish culture—now six years on—has not deteriorated; if anything, it has intensified. From the stories of the Kalevala, Vainamoinen, and the mythical Kantele he constructed from a pike’s jaw-bone, to the vast landscapes full of lakes, forests, and elks, and the pre-Lutheran religious customs and practices that were once the Pagan folklore of the land… It’s quite possibly the polar-opposite, natural elements of my homeland that fuels my fascination.
Tervahäät
When my editor told me to ‘light a fire’ underneath the Tervahäät review, I detected a Finnish scent on the name. Further examination of the cover and notes brought about the jubilation and motivation required to get that ‘fire’ going.
Many no doubt know that Finland is renowned for great music. Being a folk metal junkie, there isn’t much that comes out of Finland that I don’t like or haven’t seen live, even here in Australia. Having predominantly covered folk and neofolk to date with the Heathen Harvest Periodical, it was a much-anticipated listen.
The polar opposite landscapes of which I previously spoke are significant. We have huge deserts, dried-up lakes, and a bevy of poisonous reptiles to keep your trekking interesting. I played Taival in my car on a four-hour drive across the plains of South Australia. My research on the band’s name, Tervahäät, loosely translates to ‘Tar Wedding’. Quite auspicious given that my initial listen is being done on the open road! The album’s name, Taival, loosely translates to ‘Journey on foot’. As we say in Australia, ‘bugger that’—there are too many snakes out at this time of year.
The opening song, ‘Kärrinpyörä’, begins with guitar strumming reminiscent to the intro of a Western film scene. The harsh and drawn-out vocals accompany a simple melody being looped in the background. Harsh vocals are usually associated with heavier music but there is elocution with these, which really hold your interest. The surroundings in the early stage of my journey are arid and harsh. Dry farms and wrecked cars are a common sight. The previous suggestion of Western theme has much more credence (to my present situation). The chorus keeps returning and after a while I find myself singing and humming it in a familiar way.
‘Kevätkirot’ begins with a more melodic approach that fins the vocals taking a 180-degree turn wherein Riimu showcases his vocal ability. His voice wouldn’t sound out-of-place belting out Russia’s national anthem or one of Ivan Rebroff’s classics. These haunting tones are hypnotizing. They captivate me to the extent that I needed to know more about the lyrics. Not verbatim, but in Riimu’s words, the song reflects a particular mood: A time in early depression, or that bleakest time in spring and utter loneliness. The outro of the track has a dreamy presence and plays a haunting sound whose origins would point to a wind instrument.
The album isn’t short of effects, and as ‘Tuomiolaulu’ begins, the presence of reverb gives the song an enchanting sound. Again the song is driven by powerful vocals; the music passages are superfluous to them but accompany the style.
Have I mentioned that the album has an occasional Western theme? The use of Banjo on ‘Koulutie’ reaffirms this theory. The previous description of Finland’s landscape casts a rural description which gives credence to my suggested theme. It then dawns on me that this album draws inspiration from the transition of seasons—the personal reflections and mood changes that occur within all beings and in the case of this album, the artists.
The song ‘Taival’—also the album’s namesake—ends the seven-track recording. A synthesizer and eclectic but simple percussive beat accompanies the consistently haunting vocals. I listened to this one a few times over. With each listen I hear a new overtone in the background. Like the recording was being infiltrated by ghosts or spirits from the ancient land or another world. One in particular sounds like a Tuvan throat singer. It adds a mystique that’s hard to quantify in words. It still sends a quiver of eeriness over my body with each listen.
Musically simple, vocally diverse, and lyrically reflective are appropriate word associations for Taival. It’s been a while since I have heard anything like this, and I want to explore this style a lot more. I have myself in recent times been meditating to this record; the music works with me like a spiritual guide to the Suomi landscape that I’m yet to visit. Its place as driving music wasn’t limited to that one encounter. The CD hasn’t left my stacker. The artists are clearly emotionally entrenched in their music. It comes across as from the heart; it comes across with honesty, and it works." [Malachy O'Brien / Heathen Harvest]
€13.00
# 12 : LINKE MYTHEN
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Martin Büsser:
Vom Verfassungsfeind zum deutschen Aushängeschild. Ton Steine Scherben.
Frank Schuster:
You can count me out. Mit Rockmusikern ist keine Revolution zu machen.
Tobias Lindemann:
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Black Power, Black Panthers, Black Pop.
Sebastian Schäfer:
Popmusik in der DDR. Eine Chronik.
Linke Verlage in Deutschland. Eine Gesprächsrunde.
Christian Hißnauer:
Nach der Gewalt: Linker Mythos RAF – linker Mythos BRD. Terrorismus im deutschen Film
Miriam Spies / Johannes Ullmaier:
Jeden Tag woanders ... Interview mit Gerd Conradt.
Enno Stahl:
Literatur und Terror. RAF-Rezeption in Romanen der letzten 25 Jahre.
Dagmar Brunow / Luka Skywalker:
Zur Mythenbildung nicht geeignet. Im Gespräch mit Irmgard Möller.
Andreas Kragler / Tine Plesch:
Do You Dig It? Ein Interview mit Michaela Melián und Thomas Meinecke.
Jochen Bonz:
Die Funktion des Signifikanten. Über eine Ausstellung von Michaela Melián.
Annibale Picicci:
Industrial zwischen Tradition, Konfrontation und Affirmation linker und rechter Mythologie.
Jens Petz Kastner:
No Woman, No Cry. Der Mythos von Reggae als schwarzer Kultur der Befreiung.
Olaf Karnik:
Dem Gone, Dub & Delay. Wie spricht Reggae in Deutschland?
Julian Weber:
Das große 80er Revival. Ein Zeitalter wird besichtigt.
Andreas Rauscher:
Never Mind The Situationists – The Filth And The Fury. The Sex Pistols und The Clash im Film.
Oliver Uschmann:
Bad Religion und die Dialektik der Aufklärung.
Tobias Stalling:
Nach Punk in die Disco. Von der Pop Group zu Radio 4.
Martin Büsser:
Bildet Netzwerke! Antifolk – zurück zum Do-It-Yourself.
Christina Nemec:
Und sie tanzen immer noch. »Wir gehen bis Ihr geht« – Versprechen eingelöst – doch was jetzt?
Hans Plesch:
Hanns Eisler. Zerstrümmerung und Anverwandlung.
Nicolai Dierks:
Jenseits von Autonomieästhetik oder Politisierung der Kunst?
Essay zur kompositorischen (Post-) Avantgarde der 60er und 70er Jahre.
Joachim Ody:
Linke Perspektiven in der Avantgarde der 60er und 70er Jahre.
Felix Klopotek:
»Every Noise Has A Note.« Neue Musik und Linksradikalismus.
Roger Behrens:
»Komm mit ins Abenteuerland ...«. Pop als Mythos.
Johannes Ullmaier:
Zur potentiellen Differenzierung von ›linkem Mythos‹ und ›Mythos der Linken‹.
Andreas Kragler:
Das Problem der Linken mit der Ästhetik oder Der ewige Streit um Form & Inhalt.
Fabian Kettner:
Ein erledigter Fall. Zum Tode von Eckhard Henscheid.
Franziska Meifert:
Aktion. Re-Aktion. Konzeptuelle Mythen am und im Wiener Aktionismus.
Tine Plesch:
Freies Radio als linker Mythos? Interview mit Andreas Stuhlmann.
Jan Deck:
Der »Mythos Globalisierung« und die Linke.
Marcus Stiglegger:
Abschied vom »Mythos Amerika«. Die filmischen Elegien des »letzten Linken« in Hollywood.
Johannes Ullmaier:
Der Linksomat
Rezensionen (Tonträger/Bücher)
www.ventil-verlag.de
€14.50
#23: TRANSZENDENZ - Ausweg, Fluchtweg, Holzweg?
In der avancierten Popkritik genießt Transzendenz keinen guten Ruf. Im frühen Punk wurde ein explizites Transzendenzverbot ausgerufen; das bewegungslinke Lager denunzierte das »Ausklinken« als konterrevolutionär oder verklärte es im Reggae zum »antiimperialistischen Befreiungskampf«.
Als der moderne Pop in den 1950ern entstand, war er das Immanenteste überhaupt geschaffen für das reine Diesseits. Das Jenseits, die Transzendenz, tauchte lediglich ironisch gebrochen, als Diskurs zweiter Ordnung auf. Erst ab den 1960ern lassen sich explizite Transzendenz-Momente im Popkosmos finden. Und gleichzeitig wurde Kritik laut: Was ins Jenseits ausgreift, ist entweder kein Pop oder schlechter Pop. Doch Pop störte sich nicht daran, brachte das Transzendente als Leerstelle zum Schwingen und füllte diese mit Schlagworten aus dem Fundus von Esoterik, Raumfahrt und Psychedelic.
Kurz darauf wurde das Transzendente offensichtlich gemacht. Christlicher Rock und der islamisierte Cat Stevens wollten den Pop missionieren, Heavy Metal verklärte ein negatives Christentum. Und im Krautrock, im Jazz und in der experimentellen Musik diente ein Spiritualitätsgestus stets der Abgrenzung zu den Niederungen der Popkultur. In den 1990ern wurde die Transzendenz dann rehabilitiert, zumindest solange sie nicht mit säkular-moralischen Normen in Konflikt geriet. Dem Jenseits brachte man dieselbe diffuse Toleranz entgegen, wie den meisten anderen Pop-Phänomenen auch.
Heute bedienen Neo-Drone und Neo-Psych ein bestimmtes Marktsegment unter vielen gleichwertigen. Und damit macht sich Sprachlosigkeit breit. Wie reden wir über spiritistischen Neo-Folk oder Hauntology, wenn die politisch inspirierten Kategorien der Vergangenheit ebenso wenig greifen wollen wie diejenigen der Weltflucht? Und was genau ist das Transzendente an der gegenwärtigen Entgrenzung der Stile?
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Johannes Ullmaier:
Worüber man nicht reden kann, darüber. Transzendenz und ihre Rolle in Musik und Popkultur
Roger Behrens:
Der Geist der Utopie
Thomas Hübener:
Notizen zur Transzendenz im Säkularpop
Martin Niederauer:
»If you find earth boring …«. Spiritualität und Religiosität im Jazz und die Interpretationen des Unbestimmten
Holger Adam:
Spirituelle Neuorientierung jenseits von Krautrock und Neuer Musik. Peter Michael Hamels Musik der 1970er-Jahre
Volker Zander:
Moondogs Oberton-Kontinuum
Wolfgang Brauneis:
»Ich lebe in meinem eigenen Königreich«. Zu Michael Buthes Kunst der 1970er-Jahre
Tim Stüttgen:
Sun Ra: Kosmischer Noise. Eine quare Lesart von Sun Ras musika-lischer und performativer Praxis im Schatten der Sklaverei-Geschichte
?Move On Up. Die große Transzendenz-Diskografie
Frank Apunkt Schneider / Didi Neidhart:
Discotranszendenz & Distant Thunder … Transpirationen am Tag danach
Franziska Meifert:
Turn on, tune in, drop out! LSD, Musik, Transzendenz
Alexander Nym:
Vom Pilzkult zur Popkultur. Entheogene im Dienst des kulturellen Wandels
Michael Horowitz:
Tickets zur Transzendenz
Sascha Hommer / Martina Lenzin:
Parolen aus der Stadt. Abenteuer eines Wolfes. Episode zwei
Christian Werthschulte:
»Wir leben in einer Nicht-Zeit«. Ein Gespräch mit Mark Fisher über die Geister der Zukunft
David Schwertgen:
Was soll denn eigentlich verschwunden sein? Vaporwave und die Leere hinter der Oberfläche
Raphael Smarzoch:
Schwellenakustik. Liminale Klanglandschaften in und jenseits von Pascal Laugiers Martyrs
Flora Könemann:
Text, Ton, Stimme, Frequenz. Transzendenz? Das (un-)stimmige der (eigenen) Stimme
Hendrik Otremba:
Tobias Gruben und die Wahrheit. Zur Erinnerung an einen fast Vergessenen
Wolfgang Buechs / Jonas Engelmann / Jens Meisenheimer: Jurpolp From an Unknown Planet. Sun Ra antwortet
Marius Henderson:
Soft Berry Metal. Eine »häretische« Annäherung an Black Metal Theory
Gerald Fiebig:
(Verheißungs-?)Volle Dröhnung. Dronemusik und spätmoderne Zeiterfahrung
Peter Scheiffele:
Vodou. Eine politisch-religiöse Praxis zwischen Revolution und Überlebenskampf
Sandro Holzheimer:
Yeah Science!? Die Transzendenz des neuen Atheismus
Jasper Nicolaisen:
Wir sind hier nicht in Wittenberg, Martin … 95 Thesen zur Möglichkeit einer emanzipatorischen Religion
Rezensionen Tonträger
A. K. KLOSOWSKI & PYROLATOR: Home-Taping Is Killing Music
AARON DILLOWAY: Siena
AARON MOORE & THIERRY MUELLER: Today Is Yesterday’s Tomorrow
ALAHUTA: First Connexion
ANDREAS DORAU: Ärger mit der Unsterblichkeit / Demokratie
ANDY STOTT: Luxury Probelms
ANIKA: EP
ANNE-JAMES CHATON / ANDY MOOR: Transfer
ASHLEY PAUL: Line The Clouds
ASH WEDNESDAY: Love And Other Numbers
BEAK>: Beak>> / Beak>> Bonustracks / 0898/Welcome To The Machine
BORIS HEGENBART & 19 ARTISTS: Instrumentarium
BRENDA RAY: D’Ya Hear Me: Naffi Years 1979–83
BROADCAST: Berberian Sound Studio
BRR: s/t Buch
BUDHADITYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Eye Contact With The City
BUKE AND GASE: General Dome
CANDELILLA: Heart Mutter
CHAD VANGAALEN & XIU XIU: The Green Corridor II
CHARLATAN: Isolatarium
CHARLATAN MEETS THE NORTH SEA: Emerald Eyes
CHICALOYOH: Thébaïde Des Pierres Bleues / In My Garden Shed/Vol. 2 / Les Fantômes Sortent Des Racines
CHRISTINE SUN KIM / WOLFGANG MÜLLER: Panning Fanning
CHUZPE: 1000 Takte Tanz
CLASSLESS KULLA & ISTARI LASTERFAHRER: Auf & Zustände
COLIN STETSON: New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light
CONRAD SCHNITZLER: rot / blau / Consequenz / CON 3
CROCODILES: Endless Flowers
DAGOBERT: Dagobert
DAVID FENECH: Grand Huit
DAVID ROTHENBERG: Bug Music
DEMDIKE STARE: Testpressing #1 und #2
DER PLAN:: Die letzte Rache
DER PLAN: Geri Reig / Normalette Surprise / Die Letzte Rache / JaPlan
DIE NERVEN: Fluidum
DIE TÖDLICHE DORIS: Losspielen
DIVERSE: Noise of Cologne 2
DOLDRUMS: Lesser Evil
DRACULA LEWIS: Permafrost EP
DROPOUT PATROL: s/t
EKKEHARD EHLERS: Adikia
EMIL RICHARDS: Stones – Journey to Bliss
ENSEMBLE PEARL: S/T
FIELD ROTATION: Fatalist: The Repetition Of History
FREIBURG: Aufbruch
GEOFF BARROW/BEN SALISBURY: Drokk: Music Inspired By Mega-City One
GHOST TIME: Ghost Time
GIANNI GUIBLENA ROSACROCE: La Piramide Di Sangue / La Mia Africa
GRAFZAHL: Der Rückzug ins Private
GRAVETEMPLE: Ambient/Ruin
GROUPER: Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill / The Man Who Died In His Boat
HAFTBEFEHL: Blockplatin
HANS W. KOCH / THOMAS LEHN / BEN PATTERSON / JOSEF CSERES: Requiem For A Baby Grand. Final Piano Music For 8 Hands And Tools
HECKER: Chimerization (english) / Chimerization (farsi) / Chimerization (deutsch)
HOTEL MORPHILA ORCHESTER: Schwarze Energie
IANNIS XENAKIS: GRM Works 1957–1962
IGOR WAKHÉVITCH: Logos / Hathor / Docteur Faust / Nagual / Les Fous d’Or / Let’s Start
ILLUSION OF SAFETY: Sweet Dreams
JACK DICE: Block Motel
JENNIFER VEILLEROBE: Luftlöcher
JESSIKA KENNEY & EYVIND KANG: The Face Of The Earth
JE SUIS LE PETIT CHEVALIER: An Age Of Wonder
JOHN FAHEY: Voice Of The Turtle / Transcendental Waterfall: Guitar Excursions 1962–1967
JOHN ZORN / MOONCHILD TRIO: Templars – In Sarcred Blood
JUKEBOX MAMBO: Rumba And Afro-Latin Accendet Rhythm & Blues 1949–1960
JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE: The 20/20 Experience
KETTCAR: Zwischen den Runden
KIASMOS: Throwna EP
KIKO C. ESSEIVA: Drôles d’oiseaux
KLUSTER: Klusterstraße 69–72
KOFELGSCHROA: Kofelgschroa
KOMMANDO SONNE-NMILCH: You Pay I Fuck
KUUPUU: Sous Juju / Sisar
LAURIE SPIEGEL: The Expanding Universe
LORD HURON: Lonesome Dreams
LORD TANG: Lord Tang
LUBOMYR MELNYK: Corollaries
LUNAR ABYSS DEUS ORGANUM: Atanimonni Aitnatsbus
MARCUS WIEBUSCH: Hinfort ! Feindliche Macht
MARK LORENZ KYSELA: Eins+
MATS GUSTAFSSON / PAAL NILSSEN: Love / I Love It When You Snore
MATT CARLSON: All Moments
MICHAEL PRICE: A Stillness
MILES: Faint Harted
MODERN PETS: Excessive/Organic Kidneys
MOON DUO: Circles
MUTTER: 25
MV&EE: Fuzzweed / Zebulon Residency
NATHAN BOWLES: A Bottle, A Buckeye
NEIL ARDLEY: A Symphony of Amaranths
NILS FRAHM: Screws
NILS WOGRAM / SIMON NABATOV: Moodes And Modes
NORBERT MÖSLANG: Indoor_Outdoor / The Sound of Insects
ONEIROGEN: Kiasma
ORBIT THE EARTH: Aphelion
OTIS G. JOHNSON: Everything – God Is Love 78
P16.D4: Passagen (6CD+)
PALAIS SCHAUMBURG: Palais Schaumburg
PELT: Effigy
PETER BRODERICK: These Walls Of Mine
PETRELS: Onkalo
PRSZR: Equilibrium
PTTRNS: Body Pressure
PYROLATOR: Inland / Ausland / Pyrolator’s Wunderland / Pyrolator’s Traumland / Neuland
RACHUT/LANDSCHIER: Blinder Mond
RAINER VEIL: Struck
RED MATH: Obsolete Systems
ROBBIE BASHO: Seal Of The Blue Lotus
RUTH FEAT. MUSHY: Far From Paradise
SAFFRONKEIRA: Tourette
SCHORSCH KAMERUN: Der Mensch lässt nach
SELVHENTER: Fricka B. Fricka / s/t
SLEAFORD MODS: Austerity Dogs
SPRINGINTGUT: Where We Need No Map
STEPHEN MALKMUS AND FRIENDS: Can’s Ege Bamyasi
SUN PAPA & THE FAN CLUB ORCHESTRA: An Insane Portrait
SUUM CUIQUE: Ascetic Ideals
SUZANNE CIANI: Seven Waves / Lixiviation Ciani/Musica Inc. 1969–1985 / Voices of Packaged Souls
SWEET VALLEY: Stay Calm / Eternal Champ / Jenova
THE BLACK TWIG PICKERS: Rough Carpenters
THE COSMIC JOKERS: The Cosmic Jokers
THE EX & BRASS UNBOUND: Enormous Door
THE NORTH SEA: Grandeur & Weakness
THE PETER BRÖTZMANN CHICAGO TENTET: Concert For Fukushima, Wels 2011
THE SCHWARZENBACH: Farnschiffe
THE SOUND OF GERI REIG. Düsseldorf – San José 1979. The Original Tapes
UN-KOMMUNITI: Black Dwarf Wreckordings 83–85
URBAN HOMES: Centres
V. A.: Personal Space – Electronic Soul 1974–1984
VARIOUS: Drone-Mind // Mind-Drone Vol. 2
VARIOUS ARTISTS: Your Victorian Breasts
VATICAN SHADOW: Ornamented Walls
VIRGIL MOOREFIELD: No Business As Usual / Five Ideas About the Relation of Sight and Sound
VLADISLAV DELAY: Kuopio / Espoo
WEISSER WESTEN: Weisser Westen
WILLIAM SHELLER: Lux Aeterna
WOLD: Freemasonry
WOLF EYES: No Answer: Lower Floors
XUL ZOLAR: Eternal Love/Goa Bay / Hex
YOSHI WADA: Earth Horns With Electronic Drone / Singing In Unison / Off The Wall / The Appointed Cloud / Lament For The Rise And Fall Of The Elephantine Crocodile
ZS: Score / Grain
Rezensionen Papier
DIDI NEIDHARDT / HANS PLATZGUMER: Musik ist Müll
HEINRICH DEISL: Im Puls der Nacht. Sub- und Populärkultur in Wien 1955–1976
KARL MEYERBEER / PASCAL SPÄTH: Topf & Söhne – Besetzung auf einem Täterort
CHRISTOPH WAGNER: Der Klang der Revolte
TIMME ROSENKRANTZ / FRADLEY HAMILTON GARNER: Harlem Jazz Adventures. A European Baron’s Memoir, 1934–1969
DEREK ANSELL: Sugar Free Saxophone. The Life and Music of Jackie McLean
MARKUS HEIDINGSFELDER: System Pop
PAULA-IRENE VILLA / JULIA JÄCKEL / ZARA S. PFEIFFER U. A. (HG.): Banale Kämpfe? Perspektiven auf Populärkultur und Geschlecht
JAMES KENNAWAY: Bad Vibrations. The History of the Idea of Music as a Cause of Disease
JENNIFER SHRYANE: Blixa Bargeld and Einstürzende Neubauten: German Experimental Music ›Evading do-re-mi‹
NIKOLAOS KOTSOPOULOS (Hg.): Krautrock. Cosmic Rock and its Legacy
HUNTER HUNT-HENDRIX / NICK RICHARDSON / BRANDON STOSUY: Black Metal. Beyond the Darkness
THERESA BEYER / THOMAS BURKHALTER (HG.): Out of the Absurdity of Life. Globale Musik
CORNELIUS VON JACKHELLN (Hg.): GewaltKunstWerk
STAN HAWKINS (Hg.): Pop Music And Easy Listening
ANTONIO GRAMSCI: Literatur und Kultur
DIETMAR DATH / BARBARA KIRCHNER: Der Implex. Sozialer Fortschritt: Geschichte und Idee
SONJA EISMANN (Hg.): Absolute Fashion
DIRK BRAUNSTEIN / SEBASTIAN DITTMANN / ISABELLE KLASEN (HG.): Alles Falsch. Auf verlorenem Posten gegen die Kulturindustrie
URSULA MARKUS / TANJA POLLI: Das Geschlecht der Seele. Transmenschen erzählen
ALEXANDER KARSCHNIA/MICHAEL WEHREN (Hg.): Kommando Johann Fatzer (Ringlokschuppen. Mülheimer Fatzerbücher 1)
CORNELIA VISMANN: Das Schöne am Recht
NIKLAS LUHMANN: Macht im System
WERNER FULD: Das Buch der verbotenen Bücher
DAVE MONROE (Hg.): Philosophie für Verdorbene – Essays über Pornografie
SVEN LEWANDOWSKI: Die Pornographie der Gesellschaft
CHRISTIAN KESSLER: Die läufige Leinwand – Der amerikanische Hardcorefilm 1970–1985
STEFAN SCHELER: Cumshots – Höhepunkte der deutschen Pornofilme 1 + 2
STEFANIE VOIGT / MARKUS KÖHLERSCHMIDT: Die philosophische Wollust – Sinnliches von Sokrates bis Sloterdijk
MYRON HURNA: Späte Gegenwart. Zur Historisierung des Holocaust
ALEXANDER KLUGE: »Wer ein Wort des Trostes spricht, ist ein Verräter«. 48 Geschichten für Fritz Bauer
ANNIKA SCHEFFEL: Bevor alles verschwindet
SARAH DIEHL: Eskimo Limon 9
VLADIMIR JABOTINSKY: Die Fünf
SARA STRIDSBERG: Darling River: Doloresvariationen
JOSEF WINKLER: Wortschatz der Nacht / Mutter und der Bleistift
BRIAN WOOD / MARK BROOKS / ROLAND BOSCHI: 100% Marvel 64: Wolverine und die X-Men. Alpha & Omega
WENZEL STORCH: Arno & Alice
ANKE FEUCHTENBERGER: Die Spaziergängerin
SOPHIA MARTINECK: Hühner, Porno, Schlägerei
MARC-ANTOINE MATHIEU: 3 Sekunden
TONTO (Hg.): Noise
SASCHA HOMMER (Hg.): Orang # 10: Heavy Metal
HENNING WAGENBRETH / R. L. STEVENSON: Der Pirat und der Apotheker
ATAK / MARK TWAIN: Der geheimnisvolle Fremde
CHRIS WARE: Jimmy Corrigan. Der klügste Junge der Welt
THOMAS VON STEINAECKER / H. J. BALMES u. a. (Hg.): Neue Rundschau: Comic – Form und Inhalt
KERI SMITH: Mach Mist!
MEL GOODING / JULIAN ROTHENSTEIN (Hg.): Psychospiele – Persönlichkeitstests, Spiele und Fragebögen
JÖRG VÖLLNAGEL: Alchemie – Die königliche Kunst
HARTMUT KRAFT (Hg.): Ecce BLALLA! Abstürze und Höhenflüge
PAULE HAMMER: Welt-Enzyklopädie
DIETMAR DATH / HEIKE AUMÜLLER: Verbotene Verbesserungen
CHRISTIANE ZU SALM (Hg.): Manifesto Collage
GISELA VETTER-LIEBENOW (Hg.): Karikatur & Zeichenkunst
TOBIAS G. NATTER / ELISABETH LEOPOLD / LEOPOLD MUSEUM (Hg.): Nackte Männer – Eine Entdeckungsreise
LENTOS KUNSTMUSEUM LINZ / LUDWIG MUSEUM (Hg.): Der nackte Mann
DOX PRAGUE (Hg.): Amor Psyche Aktion – Wien. Das Feminine im Wiener Aktionismus
MUSEUM MODERNER KUNST STIFTUNG LUDWIG WIEN (Hg.): Wiener Aktionismus – Kunst und Aufbruch im Wien der 1960er-Jahre
HANS-PETER WIPPLINGER (Hg.): Padhi Frieberger – Glanz und Elend der Moderne
HANNAH PILARCZYK (Hg.): Ich hatte die Zeit meines Lebens. Über den Film Dirty Dancing und seine Bedeutung
KONRAD KLEJSA/SCHAMMA SCHAHADAT/MARGARETE WACH (HG.): Der polnische Film. Von seinen Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart
CHRISTIAN SCHIFFER (Hg.): WASD – Texte über Games. Vol. 2 »Select System – Games und Politik«
GEORG SEESSLEN: Träumen Androiden von elektronischen Orgasmen? / Garten der Lüste / Future Sex in Queertopia (Sex-Fantasien in der Hightech-Welt I–III)
WOLFGANG MÜLLER / AN PANHUYSEN (Hg.): Gebärde, Zeichen, Kunst
WOLFGANG MÜLLER: Subkultur Westberlin 1979–1989. Freizeit
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#24: BUG REPORT. Digital war besser
" »Wie würden Sie das Internet beschreiben?«
»Als die Hölle in bunt, mit Nullen und Einsen. Eine binäre bunte Hölle.«
– Bernd das Brot
Bei kaum einem Medium fallen Theorie und Praxis so wenig in eins wie bei Computern und dem Internet. Wir lesen Blogs, auf denen in einer Breite und Tiefe über nischenhafte Popmusik gesprochen wird, wie es im »goldenen Zeitalter« des Pop-Journalismus niemals möglich gewesen wäre. Wir halten unsere Plattensammlungen mit Datenbanken, die von ihren NutzerInnen gefüllt werden, auf dem neuesten Stand. Gleichzeitig steht uns ein Großteil der Musikgeschichte mit ein paar Suchanfragen zur Verfügung – womöglich illegal, auf jeden Fall aber kostengünstig. Auch die testcard-Redaktion selbst, die sich zwischen drei Großstädten und einer bayerischen Universitätsstadt aufteilt, wäre ohne das Netz kaum koordinierbar.
Trotzdem hört man gerade in sub- und gegenkulturellen Kreisen Klagen, die weit über die Kritik an der Datensammlung durch Regierungen, Geheimdienste und Medienkonzerne oder mickrigen Spotify-Einnahmen hinausgehen. Von »digitaler Erschöpfung« ist da die Rede oder von »kommunikativem Kapitalismus«, von einer Verschränkung von Liberalismus und Kybernetik, der Herrschaft der Algorithmen oder vom »fucking Internet«. Zeit für eine Bestandsaufnahme jenseits von kalifornischer Ideologie und »Disruption«, aber ausdrücklich nicht auf der Seite derjenigen, die mit aller Macht ihren Einfluss von den alten Medien in die neuen herüberretten wollen.
Vielleicht sprechen wir letztlich über ein altes Problem: Was ist die Basis, was der Überbau, wie verhalten sie sich zueinander? Das Sprechen über Digitalisierung und das Netz fällt uns vielleicht deshalb schwer, weil die Form von Technologie nicht ohne ihren polit-ökonomischen und sozialen Rahmen zu denken ist. Oder sind ein anderes Computing und ein anderes Netz möglich?
Aus dem Inhalt: Sounds der Digitalisierung >> Verschaltete Welt >> Kleine Genealogie des Computers >> Digitales ABC >> Zustand und Zukunft des Webcomics >> Digitale vs. analoge »Gegenwart« >> Nathan Jurgensons Webtheorien >> Mensch-Maschinen und Roboter >> Erzählen in der Digitalisierung >> Altern der digitalen Ästhetik >> Retrospieleboom >> Ungegenstand der Musikinformatik >> Let’s Player >> Indie-Computerspiele >> Ästhetik des Post-Digitalen >> ...
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Christian Werthschulte:
(right now, please). Warum die digitale Gegenwart irgendwie auch nicht besser als die analoge geworden ist
Roger Behrens:
Digital ABC
Roger Behrens:
Digitale Frist. Computer. Pop. (Beta-Version)
eve massacre:
Network of blood. Von »Augmented Reality« bis zum »Liquid Self«: Nathan Jurgensons Webtheorien
Waltraud Blischke:
Bugs, Big Data und die UnverNETZbaren. Ein Gespräch mit Peter Bittner, Stefan Hügel und Julia Stoll vom FIfF
Marco Schröder:
Eine Maschine für alle Maschinen. Kleine Genealogie des Computers mit Implikationen für seine Anwendung in Philosophie und Musik
Raphael Smarzoch:
Rumorende Algorithmen. Die Sounds der Digitalisierung
Flora Könemann & Chris W. Wilpert:
Part of your distortion. Effekte im Zeitalter ihrer Re-Auratisierung
Julian Rohrhuber:
Dienst nach Vorschrift. Über den Ungegenstand der Musikinformatik
Waltraud Blischke:
t-cardcomp. Die Musikliste zur ungeregelten Geschmacksynthese
Jonas Engelmann:
In Love With the Modern World. Ein virtueller Roundtable über Zustand und Zukunft des Webcomics hierzulande
Carl Wiemer:
Das schnelle Altern der digitalen Ästhetik. Samuel Beckett und der Zenit ?ästhetischer Modernität
David Schwertgen:
Der Autor im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit
Johannes Ullmaier:
Human Trouble. Transhumane Anthropologie im Turing-Test
Hommer / Lenzin:
Parolen aus der Stadt. Abenteuer eines Wolfes. Episode 3
Bettina Wilpert:
Guided by Voices. Erzählen in der Digitalisierung
Waltraud Blischke:
»Wenn man damit Geld verdienen kann, muss das ja salonfähig sein.«
Ein Gespräch mit dem Let’s Player SgtRumpel
Philipp Eichhorn:
Technology in our hands. DIY als Totengräber des Fortschritts anhand des Retrospielebooms
Fiona Sara Schmidt:
Die Geschichte muss das Medium notwendig machen. Die Spieledesignerin Lea Schönfelder über Autorenspiele, Zensur und perfekte Posen
Benedikt Frank / Thomas Schröder:
Wo andere Urlaub machen. Arbeit im Spiel, Spiele als Arbeit
Rezensionen Tonträger:
20.SV: The Great Sonic Wave
ADDISON GROOVE: Turn Up The Silence
ALOA: s/t
ALTE SAU: s/t
ALVARIUS B: Chin Spirits
AMANDA FEERY: Spells From The Ice Age
AME ZEK: Rostfrei
AMON DÜÜL II: Düülirium
ANDROMERDA MEGA EXPRESS ORCHESTRA: Live on Planet Earth
ASTRAL SOCIAL CLUB: Medow Mechanicals
BANANA PILL: Weave
BANKS: GODDESS
BART DE PAEPE: Rhode
BEYONCÉ KNOWLES: s/t
BILL ORCUTT: Daddy’s Got A Spice Rack
BILL ORCUTT: Fantomas ? Le Faux Magistrat
BIRD PEOPLE: King Of the Grove / Nightshades
BOHREN UND DER CLUB OF GORE: Piano Nights
BRIDGET HAYDEN: Just Ideas/The Night’s Veins
BUCK GOOTER: Molescules
BULBUL: Hirn Fein Hacken
CATHY LANE: The Hebrides Suite
CHRIS PETIT: The Museum of Loneliness
CHRISTINA KUBISCH UND ECKEHARD GÜTER: Mosaïque Mosaic
CICADA DREAM BAND: Bug Music
CRASH COURSE IN SCIENCE: Signals from the Pier Thirteen
DANIEL BACHMANN: Orange Co. Serenade
DANIEL BLINKHORN:Terra Subfónica
DAS WEISSE PFERD: Inland Empire
DATASHOCK: Keine Oase in Sicht
DEUTSCHE TRINKERJUGEND: Scheissegal
DIE HEITERKEIT: Monterey
DIE PARTEI La Freiheit des Geistes
DIVIL A’ BIT: In Deference To The Squeamish
DJ RASHAD: Rollin’ EP / Double Cup / We On 1
DJ SARDENA: The Voice: Studio Sardena
DJ SLUGO: King Of Ghetto House
DSR LINES: Spoel
EEK: Live At The Cairo High Cinema Institute
EIKO ISHIBASHI: Imitation Of Live
EMBRYO: Message From Era Ora
FENNESZ: Bécs
FENSTER: The Pink Caves
FILIPE FELIZARDO: Volume II ? Sede e Morte ? Guitar Variations For The Thirsty And The Dead
FKA TWIGS: LP1
GONZÁLEZ & STEENKISTE: Dimly Lit
GÜNTER SCHLIENZ: Contemplation
HAILU MERGIA: Shemonmuanaye
HALSABSCHNEIDER: Havelmusik 1982?1984
HEIN SCHOERS: The Sounding Museum: Box Of Treasures
HELEN: Witch/Zanzibar
HELLVETE: Ode
HONIGRITTER: Kellergeister in unserem Haus
IF, BWANA: Live at the Logos Tetrahedon
INEZ LIGHTFOOT: Sleep By Day / Fly By Night
ISLAJA: S U U
JA, PANIK: Libertatia
JAMMIN GERALD: Factory Funk
JASON LESCALLEET: Much To My Demise
JEFF & JANE HUDSON: Flesh
JIM O’ ROURKE / PAAL NILSSEN-LOVE / LASSE MARHAUG: The Love Robots
JIM O’ ROURKE: Old News / No.?9 / No.?5 / No.?7 / No.?6 / No.?8 / FIRE! WITH JIM
JOSHUA BURKETT: Xavier’s Birds
JUMPING BACK SLASH: Namhlanje EP
KELIS: Food
KEMIALLISET YSTÄVÄT: Alas Rattoisaa Virtaa
KILLERLADY: s/t
KK NULL + THE NOISER: s/t
KLINISCH SAUBER: Kommerz Krieg Mond!
KREIDLER: ABC
KREISKY: Blick auf die Alpen
KRISSI B: The Duke
LANA DEL REY: Ultraviolence
LASSE-MARC RIEKS: Helgoland
LAU NAU: Valohiukkanen
LEAST CARPET: Back Alley
LIEVEN MARTENS MOANA: Os Canais
LILY ALLEN: Sheezus
LIMPE FUCHS / VIZ MICHAEL KREMITZ: Kugel Haus Musik
LOS MICROWAVES: Life After Breakfast
LOUIS SARNO: Song From The Forest
LOVE A / KOETER: Split
LUKE FOWLER: Fowl Tapes II
MAMMANE SANI: La Musique Électronique Du Niger / Mammane Sani And The Workstation / Taaritt
MANY ARMS: Suspended Definiton
MARCELLUS PITTMAN: Do You Like Music EP / 1044 Coplin
MARION, FRANZISKA UND ARNULF MEIFERT: Incredible Familiar Music / Absolute Relative Music
MARK PRITCHARD: You Don’t Know Me
MARY OCHER: Eden
MERZOURGA: 52°46’ North 13°29’ East. Music For Waxcylinders
METABOLISMUS: Sus
MOUSE ON MARS: Spezmodia EP
MURENA MURENA: Ghoaster Coaster
MUTTER: Text und Musik
MY BLOODY VALENTINE: mbv
NOXAGT: Brutage / Collection 1
O’ ROURKE / Steamroom
OLIMPIA SPLENDID: Nuttu Nurin
ORACLES: Stanford Torus EP
OREN AMBARCHI, KEIJI HAINO & JIM O’ ROURKE: Imikuzushi / Now While It’s Still Warm Let Us Pour In All The Mystery
ORPHAN FAIRYTALE: My Favourite Fairytale
PANABRITE: Wasteland Cycle
PARRIS MITCHELL: Project EP
PART WILD HORSES MANE ON BOTH SIDES: Aulos’ Second Reed
PASCAL NICHOLS: Nihilist Chakai House
PATRICK COWLEY: School Daze
PETER MICHAEL HAMEL / THOMAS GUNDERMANN: Coincidence
PETER MICHAEL HAMEL:Voice Of Silence
PHARRELL WILLIAMS: G I R L
RAMBLING BOYS: True To Blue
RASHAD BECKER: Traditionel Music of National Species Vol. 1
RAUM: Event Of Your Leaving
RAZEN: Reed Bombus LFO
RODOLPHE ALEXIS: Morne Diablotins
RP BOO: Legacy
RUARI O’ BAOIGHILL: The Faceless One
RYLEY WALKER: All Kinds Of You
SCHREIN: Einszweinschrein
SIR RICHARD BISHOP: Solo Acoustic Vol. 8
STAER: Daughters
STEVE GUNN / MIKE COOPER: Cantons de Lisboa / Way Out Weather
STOSSTRUPP REVIVAL DUETT: s/t
SUN RA: Mix-Tape
SUNROOF!: Rock Power
SWANS: To Be Kind
TENSES: Howard
THE SPACE LADY: The Space Lady’s Greatest Hits / »Major Tom«/»Radar Love« / Recorded Live in San Francisco / Songs in the Key of Z. Vol. 2
THE YOUNG MOTHERS: A Mothers Work Is Never Done
THEO PARRISH: Footwork / American Intelligence / Theo Parrish’s Black Signature
TOM WU: s/t
TRAXMAN: Da Mind Of Traxman / Da Mind Of Traxman 2 / Westside Boogie Traxy Vol. 3
TREK WITH QUINTRONIC: Landing Plus
VALERIO TRICOLI: Miseri Lares
VAPOUR THEORIES: Split-LP
VENN RAIN: Crepuscular Raze
VARIOUS ARTISTS: Keine Bewegung!
VARIOUS ARTISTS: Pulsating Strings: A Collection of Psychedelic Asian Guitar Music
VARIOUS ARTISTS: 10 Year Anniversary Hybrid Vinyl Series
VARIOUS ARTISTS: Cassette Van Antwerpen
VARIOUS ARTISTS: La Psicotropia
VILLAGE OF SPACES: Gathering
WESTBAM: Götterstrasse
WILLIAM ONYEABOR: Who Is William Onyeabor?
WILLIAM TYLER: Impossible Truth
WOOG RIOTS: From Lo-Fi to Disco
ZEA: The Swimming City
Rezensionen Papier:
ALBERTINE SARRAZIN: Astragalus
ASTRID KUSSER: Körper in Schieflage. Tanzen im Strudel des Black Atlantic um 1900
BENJAMIN STEIN: Das Alphabet des Rabbi Löw
BLACK HAWK HANCOCK: American Allegory. Lindy Hop And The Racial Imagination
BRECHT EVENS: Die Amateure
CHRISTIANE BAREITHER, KASPAR MAASE, MIRJAM NAST (HG.): Unterhaltung und Vergnügung. Beiträge der Europäischen Ethnologie zur Populärkulturforschung
CHRISTOPHE BLAIN: Gus: 1. Nathalie / 2. Schöner Bandit / 3. Ernest
CLAUDIA BOSSE (Hg.): Cheap Method Edition #1. Struggling Bodies In Capitalist Societies (Democracies)
DANIEL CLOWES: Der Todesstrahl
DAVID BUCKLEY: Kraftwerk. Die unautorisierte Biographie
DAVID PRUDHOMME: Einmal durch den Louvre
DAVID SIMONELLI: Working Class Heroes. Rock Music and British Society in the 1960s and 1970s
DENNIS EICK: Digitales Erzählen. Die Dramaturgie der Neuen Medien
DIEDRICH DIEDERICHSEN: Über Pop-Musik
DIETER MERSCH: Ordo ab chao ? Order from Noise
DIETMAR DATH / OLIVER SCHEIBLER: Mensch wie Gras wie
DIETMAR DATH: Feldeváye ? Roman der letzten Künste
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Present Shock
EKKEHARD KNÖRER: Battlestar Galactica
ENNO STAHL: Diskurspogo. Über Literatur und Gesellschaft
ERIKA SCHMIED: Peter Kurzeck ? Der radikale Biograph
ERWIN IN HET PANHUIS: Hinter den schwulen Lachern. Homosexualität bei den Simpsons
FANNY BRITT / ISABELLE ARSENAULT: Jane, der Fuchs und ich
FLORIAN CRAMER: Exe.cut(up)able statements. Poetische Kalküle und Phantasmen des selbstausführenden Texts
GUNNAR HINDRICHS: Die Autonomie des Klangs
HANS BLUMENBERG: Präfiguration. Arbeit am politischen Mythos
HANS-CHRISTIAN DANY: Morgen werde ich Idiot. Kybernetik und Kontrollgesellschaft
HEIKO KOCH: Casa Pound Italia. Mussolinis Erben
IAN F. SVENONIUS: 22 Strategien für die erfolgreiche Gründung einer Rockband
JAN SÜSELBECK (HG.): Familiengefühle. Generationengeschichte und NS-Erinnerung in den Medien
JOE SACCOS: Der Erste Weltkrieg ? Die Schlacht an der Somme
JONAS ENGELMANN: Gerahmter Diskurs ? Gesellschaftsbilder im Independent-Comic
JÜRGEN SCHMICH: Plattensüchtig. Expeditionen in eine andere Welt. 7 Schallplattensammler im Interview
JÜRGEN ZIMMERER: Kein Platz an der Sonne. Erinnerungsorte der deutschen Kolonialgeschichte
KATIA FOUQUET: Jonas oder der Künstler bei der Arbeit
KITTY KRAUS: Lidschlag
LINDER STERLING: Frau/Objekt
LUCIUS BURCKHARDT: Der kleinstmögliche Eingriff
MAGNUS KLAUE: Verschenkte Gelegenheiten. Polemiken, Glossen, Essays
MAISHA EGGERS / GRADA KILOMBA / PEGGY PIESCHE / SUSAN ARNDT: Mythen, Masken und Subjekte. Kritische Weißseinsforschung in Deutschland
MANUEL MENRATH: Afrika im Blick. Afrikabilder im deutschsprachigen Europa 1870?1970
MARIA JANION: Die Polen und ihre Vampire. Studien zur Kritik kultureller Phantasmen
MARK BUTLER: Das Spiel mit sich. (Kink, Drugs & Hip-Hop). Populäre Techniken des Selbst zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts
MARTIN NIEDERAUER: Die Widerständigkeiten des Jazz. Sozialgeschichte und Improvisation unter den Imperativen der Kulturindustrie
MERCEDES BUNZ: Die stille Revolution. Wie Algorithmen Wissen, Arbeit, Öffentlichkeit und Politik verändern, ohne dabei viel Lärm zu machen
MICHAEL PETRY (HG.): Nature Morte ? Stillleben in der zeitgenössischen Kunst
MICHAEL PHILIPP / BUCERIUS KUNSTFORUM (HG.): Dionysos. Rausch und Ekstase
OSWALD WIENER: die verbesserung von mitteleuropa
OUMAR DIALLO / JOACHIM ZELLER: Black Berlin. Die deutsche Metropole und ihre afrikanische Diaspora in Geschichte und Gegenwart
PETER KURZECK: Bis er kommt / Angehalten die Zeit
SPRING: The ABC of Tragedy / Wunder
STEFFEN SCHOLL: Musik ? Raum ? Technik. Zur Entwicklung und Anwendung der graphischen Programmierumgebung »Max«
STEPHAN PACKARD (Hg.): Comics & Politik
STUART HALL: Ausgewählte Schriften
SUSAN ARNDT / ANTJE HORNSCHEIDT: Afrika und die deutsche Sprache. Ein kritisches Nachschlagewerk
SUSAN ARNDT / NADJA OFUATEY-ALAZARD: Wie Rassismus aus Wörtern spricht. (K)erben des Kolonialismus im Wissensarchiv deutsche Sprache
THOMAS MEINECKE: Analog. Kolumnen
TOBIAS GOLL / DANIEL KEIL / THOMAS TELIOS (HG.): Critical Matter. Diskussionen eines neuen Materialismus
VARIOUS ARTISTS: In 50 Comics um die Welt / Comics zur Lage der Welt
VOLKAN ÇIDAM: Die Phänomenologie des Widergeistes. Eine anerkennungstheoretische Deutung von Marx’ normativer Kritik am Kapitalismus im Kapital
VOLKO KAMENSKY / JULIAN ROHRUBER (HG.): Ton. Texte zur Akustik im Dokumentarfilm
WENZEL STORCH: Die Filme
WERNER SCHWAB: Fäkaliendramen
WOLFGANG HERRNDORF: Arbeit und Struktur"
[Verlags / website info]
www.ventil-verlag.de/katalog/testcard
€15.00
Musicamorosa
"Im Schatten blühen junge Mädchen pink? Jorge Mantas jedenfalls ließ sich durch Proust inspirieren, untermischt mit von Tristesse und Abschied geprägten Liebesgeschichten von Poe bis Wong Kar-Wai, Mädchenbildern von Waterhouse und Rosetti bis Rohmer und Deville, aber auch den Erotika-Ikonen der Fotografen Guido Argentini und Roy Stuart. Mein erster Eindruck - Bilitis - war also gar nicht so abwegig. Ein Computermönch träumt von Sensuality & Sadness und schon treibt Sublimation delikate Blüten. Gefühlskitsch bekommt im Halbschatten einer künstlerischen Sensibilität gleich etwas Sublimes. Musik als Geliebte, umsponnen von einer Delectatio morosa, der Lust an sündigen Vorstellungen? Fast alle Titel stammen aus Prousts Die Gefangene. Colleen spielt dazu La Lectrice und alles wird gleich ‚Pariserisch‘. Nicht Lukas, der Hl. Antonius ist der Schutzpatron der Künstler. Das ist nicht halb so sarkastisch, wie Dionysius als Nothelfer gegen Kopfschmerzen. Ich schwanke, während Mantas mollige Drones mich umschweifen und verführerisch ihre Gestalt wechseln, zwischen Kopfzerbrechen und Gedankenverbrechen - wie denn auch anders, wenn eine Musik gleichzeitig so schön, fatal und schizophon daher
kommt. Ach wie so schwelgerisch öffnet der Laptop seine Speicher, auf deren Grund man auf Wagners Liebestod und Debussy stoßen würde. Was gerade noch knirschte wie Sand oder schäumte wie die Brandung um Aphrodites Knöchel, ist nun blinkende Gitarre, dann wieder eingedampftes orchestrales Rauschen. Als Encore folgt ein ausführlicher Remix durch @c, schnüffelnd wie eine Maus, die rosige Nackedeis wittert." [Bad Alchemy]
"Marcel Proust has been one of the main sources of inspiration to me in the last years. His ideas devoted to the affections of the human heart, his approach deeply rooted on the long literary French tradition in which love can only be lived in sadness, is something that goes much beyond pure aesthetic. So it came only natural that somehow I would try to convey this literary and philosophic interest with the sound aesthetic I pursue. The image of a sleepless solitary writer confined to a Parisian soundproof room, has everything to do with the experience of a modern laptop composer, alone in the dark of a room, in a sort of headphone ecstasy with his acoustic fragments of reality. Both experience loneliness. Both are melancholic dreamers creating from an imaginary memory of the world. Whether this music is truly related with some of the delicate emotions depicted in A la recherche du temps perdu or not, it's up to the listener to decide. Could this be a possible sound equivalent to the literary images of affection written by Proust in the early 20th century? Is the sound atmosphere of each piece loaded with some kind of sensual aura? Would ever be possible to express a sadness full of joy in the same moment of music? Probably we'll never know. But perhaps we think about it next time we'll listen to musicamorosa." [Jorge Mantas]
www.cronicaelectronica.org
€15.00
Forest Nocturne
The debut solo album from sunn O))) axe-man Greg Anderson as The Lord. 8 song collection of dark heavy cinematic-inspired darkness. Limited edition vinyl release.
Forest Nocturne sees Anderson taking cues from legendary film composers: John Carpenter and Bernard Hermann, in order to create cinematic landscapes which are heavy with tension, and offset by the injection of lethal doses of early 90s Scandinavian Death Metal - with Attila Csihar (of notorious Norwegian black metal band Mayhem) lending his putrid vocals to final track ‘Triumph of the Oak’.
For Forest Nocturne, Anderson worked with renowned producer Brad Wood. Dan Seagrave's epic and fantastical style is instantly recognizable on the album's stunning artwork, something which seems to depict an ancient and unknowable force in the woodlands. Forest Nocturne is described by Anderson as “the music of the night”, but inspired by imagery conjured on daytime hikes, and majestic and beautiful trees, which he sees as survivors - and perhaps the last known connection that we have to an ancient world, and acting as a connector between past, present and future of the human race and of our time on this planet.
https://thelordsl.bandcamp.com/album/forest-nocturne
€20.00
Ghosts
"Tony Wakeford kann's nicht lassen! Als ob der umtriebige Mr. "Sol Invictus" nicht schon mit zahlreichen Nebenprojekten (u.a. Grey Force Wakeford, Trio Noir, L'Orchestre Noir, Hawthorn) ausgelastet wäre, hebt er nun gemeinsam mit Andrew King sowie ausgewählten "Familienmitgliedern", u.a. Renee Rosen, Guy Harries, John Murphy (u.a. Knifeladder, SPK, Death in June, Shining Vril) oder Kris Force (Amber Asylum), ein weiteres namens The Triple Tree aus der Taufe, dessen Debut "Ghosts" niemand geringerem als dem britischen Ghoststory-Autor M.R. James (1862-1936) gewidmet ist.
Bereits das James-Zitat "Depend upon it! Some of these things are so, but we do not know the rules!" auf der Rückseite des Booklets deutet die Marschrichtung an: Festgelegte Regeln kennt man hier nicht, und schon gar nicht die des Neofolk. Folglich sollte man sich der Scheibe exakt unter diesem Gesichtspunkt nähern, denn "Ghosts" ist abgedreht, "Ghosts" ist schaurig und "Ghosts" verlangt dem Rezipienten zeitweise einiges an Toleranz ab. Sägende Geigenläufe, diffuse Feldaufnahmen, schräge Flöten-/Pfeiftöne, dumpfe Percussions sowie viele weitere Soundelemente, oft subtil disharmonisch zusammengefügt, erzeugen eine Atmosphäre, welche den Hörer direkt in James' gespenstische Szenarien zu führen vermag, in staubige Bibliotheken, schmutzige Hinterhöfe oder düstere Gemäuer des viktorianischen England. Die Stimmen von "Dr. Wakeford" und "The Rev. King" tun dazu ihr übriges. Während "The Mezzotint" oder "Lost Hearts" in schlichtem Erzählstil dargeboten werden, kommt "The Stalls" als altertümlicher Kanon daher und "Black Crusade" scheint von beiden direkt in einer Kaschemme der Londoner Docks eingesungen worden zu sein.
Doch "Ghosts" ist auch berückend schön. Neben dem durch gezupfte Gitarre und markante Männerstimmen fast erhaben wirkenden "Three Crowns" sind es hauptsächlich jene Titel, in denen die beteiligten Damen Autumn Grieve, Kris Force oder Mercy Liao gesanglich zum Zuge kommen. Dabei kristallisiert sich vor allem das perlende Duett "The Malice of Inanimate Objects" als Höhepunkt heraus. Aber selbst dieses ist von einer unheilsschwangeren Aura umgeben, da die Lieder ständig durch schrille Versatzstücke gebrochen werden, die sich entweder als Intros/Outros oder komplette Tracks einschleichen. Genau das richtige, um die Gruselstimmung immer wieder zu entfachen.
Trotz alledem kommt jedoch eine typische Eigenschaft der Inselbewohner nicht zu kurz, der Humor. Im Booklet präsentieren sich die beiden Protagonisten nämlich launig, wie direkt aus einem der schauerlichen Romane entsprungen. Schrullige Fotos für ein ebenso schrulliges und gerade deshalb fesselndes Album. M.R. James wäre sicher stolz gewesen!" [Medienkonverter]
"The Triple Tree consists of Tony Wakeford (Sol Invictus) and Andrew King aided and abetted by M, Autumn Grieve, Kris Force (Amber Asylum), Guy Harries, Renee Rosen and John Murphy (Death In June, SPK, KnifeLadder), and is an extended homage to the supernatural fiction of M. R. James (with a certain nod to his notable studies in the New Testament Apocrypha) the greatest ghost story writer in the English language, and the finest medievalist of his generation. Join Dr Wakeford and the Rev. King as they search for the Three Crowns, attempt to Cast the Runes, purchase The Mezzotint, follow Mr Abney’s "remarkable enlightenment" in Lost Hearts, and join Count Magnus on the "Black Crusade"! Winter evenings will never be the same again... Digipak with booklet." [label info]
".. Anthony Wakeford and Andrew King is best known as part of the project Sol Invictus, that for more than two decades has combined neo-folk and neoclassical influences with electronic experimentation. The comprehensive experiences in that particular field beautifully flourish on this tribute to haunted tales of medieval times under the project flag "Triple Tree". The atmosphere is perfectly accomplished with some beautiful male and female vocal integrated in medieval folk-expressions that stylishly turns associations towards Dead Can Dance. As a contrast to the organic sounds, the electronic part of the album first of all operates in ambient-oriented soundscapes to create haunting atmospheres of ghouls. "Ghosts" is a strong sonic depiction of early ghost stories from M.R. James, inspiring the listener to dive into the dark forces of the medieval author!" [NM, Vital Weekly]
www.coldspring.co.uk
€8.00
Fuck off get free we pour Light on everything
"THEE SILVER MT. ZION haben über sieben Alben seit 1999 hinweg einen stacheldrahtbewehrten Bogen der Protest Music gespannt. Erst kürzlich haben sich THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA auf nur fünf Musiker zurückgestutzt. Menucks massive E-Gitarre fungiert hier als Rückgrat, um das zwei Geigen, ein Bass (dieser Tage öfter elektrisch als akustisch) und das Schlagzeug rotieren. "Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything" ist das erste definitive Dokument des neuen Sounds und Stils der Band als Quintett. Das Kernstück des Album, ,Austerity Blues" mit seiner Abschlusszeile "Lord let my son live long enough to see that mountain torn down" gesungen in verschiedenen Spielarten über die zweite Hälfte des 14-minütigen Epos, personifiziert den unerschrockenen Blick Menucks auf eine Welt voller Erbärmlichkeit, Gier und Ungerechtigkeit, betrachtet durch die Linse von Elternschaft, Sterblichkeit, Durchhaltevermögen und Trotz. Dies ist keine fröhliche Musik, aber sie kann auch nicht einfach so als apokalyptisch und weltmüde abgestempelt werden. ,Fuck Off Get Free" wütet voller Zorn und Hoffnung und ist zugleich absolut leidenschaftlich und bewusst unromantisch. THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA zeigen einmal mehr, das es so viel gibt, gegen das sich kämpfen lässt. Im Unterschied zu anderen Bands haben THEE SILVER MT. ZION die passenden Kampfsongs im Gepäck. //
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra (SMZ) has traced a barbed-wire arc of genre-defying protest music since its inception in 1999. Formed by Efrim Menuck, with Thierry Amar and Sophie Trudeau, the initial iteration of the band was a predominantly instrumental trio that forged a more intimate and ragged chamber-punk than Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the other group in which all three founding SMZ members also played (and continue to play). Through seven albums from 2000-2010, SMZ expanded its line-up and shifted towards an increasing use of lead and group vocals, with Menuck penning politically-charged lyrics to anchor long-form multi-movement compositions that juxtaposed electrified guitars against a 4-piece string section of violins, cello and contrabass.
Most recently, SMZ has pared back to five players, with Menuck's massive spectrum-spanning electric guitar sound emerging as the spine around which two violins, bass (now more often electric than acoustic) and drums are deployed. SMZ have managed a handful of short tours in the past couple of years (in the gaps between GYBE commitments) and as anyone who has seen the band in its recent incarnation can attest, their current sound is more honed, laser-guided and bone-rattling than ever, melding hardcore, blues, garage and dark metal influences that have nothing to do with anything so quaint as “post-rock” (a tag the group has always and rightly rejected).
Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything is the first definitive document of the band's newfound sound and style as a quintet. It’s also their first single LP-length work since the band’s debut record as a trio almost 15 years ago, and features road-tested pummeling rock-outs “Fuck Off Get Free (For The Island Of Montréal)”, “Take Away These Early Grave Blues” and “What We Loved Was Not Enough” alongside the previously unheard lullabyes/minuets “Little Ones Run” and “Rains Thru The Roof At Thee Grande Ballroom (For Capital Steez)” and the album centerpiece “Austerity Blues” with its closing lyric “Lord let my son live long enough to see that mountain torn down” sung in varying incarnations throughout the second half of this 14-minute epic.
This lyric in many ways encapsulates Menuck's unflinching take on a world replete with shabbiness, greed and injustice, seen through the lens of parenthood, mortality, endurance and defiance. There are few other musicians who deliver social critique with the courage and honesty of lines like “All our cities gonna burn / All our bridges gonna snap / All our pennies gonna rot / Lightning roll across our tracks / All our children gonna die”. Feel-good music this is not; but neither can it reductively be tagged apocalyptic or world-weary. Fuck Off Get Free rages with scorn and with hope, utterly passionate but pointedly unromantic. Thee Silver Mt. Zion once again demonstrates, like few other bands working today, that there is much to fight for and against, and plenty more fight songs to sing." [label info]
www.cstrecords.com
€21.00
Fuck off get free we pour Light on everything
"THEE SILVER MT. ZION haben über sieben Alben seit 1999 hinweg einen stacheldrahtbewehrten Bogen der Protest Music gespannt. Erst kürzlich haben sich THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA auf nur fünf Musiker zurückgestutzt. Menucks massive E-Gitarre fungiert hier als Rückgrat, um das zwei Geigen, ein Bass (dieser Tage öfter elektrisch als akustisch) und das Schlagzeug rotieren. "Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything" ist das erste definitive Dokument des neuen Sounds und Stils der Band als Quintett. Das Kernstück des Album, ,Austerity Blues" mit seiner Abschlusszeile "Lord let my son live long enough to see that mountain torn down" gesungen in verschiedenen Spielarten über die zweite Hälfte des 14-minütigen Epos, personifiziert den unerschrockenen Blick Menucks auf eine Welt voller Erbärmlichkeit, Gier und Ungerechtigkeit, betrachtet durch die Linse von Elternschaft, Sterblichkeit, Durchhaltevermögen und Trotz. Dies ist keine fröhliche Musik, aber sie kann auch nicht einfach so als apokalyptisch und weltmüde abgestempelt werden. ,Fuck Off Get Free" wütet voller Zorn und Hoffnung und ist zugleich absolut leidenschaftlich und bewusst unromantisch. THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA zeigen einmal mehr, das es so viel gibt, gegen das sich kämpfen lässt. Im Unterschied zu anderen Bands haben THEE SILVER MT. ZION die passenden Kampfsongs im Gepäck.//
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra (SMZ) has traced a barbed-wire arc of genre-defying protest music since its inception in 1999. Formed by Efrim Menuck, with Thierry Amar and Sophie Trudeau, the initial iteration of the band was a predominantly instrumental trio that forged a more intimate and ragged chamber-punk than Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the other group in which all three founding SMZ members also played (and continue to play). Through seven albums from 2000-2010, SMZ expanded its line-up and shifted towards an increasing use of lead and group vocals, with Menuck penning politically-charged lyrics to anchor long-form multi-movement compositions that juxtaposed electrified guitars against a 4-piece string section of violins, cello and contrabass.
Most recently, SMZ has pared back to five players, with Menuck's massive spectrum-spanning electric guitar sound emerging as the spine around which two violins, bass (now more often electric than acoustic) and drums are deployed. SMZ have managed a handful of short tours in the past couple of years (in the gaps between GYBE commitments) and as anyone who has seen the band in its recent incarnation can attest, their current sound is more honed, laser-guided and bone-rattling than ever, melding hardcore, blues, garage and dark metal influences that have nothing to do with anything so quaint as “post-rock” (a tag the group has always and rightly rejected).
Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything is the first definitive document of the band's newfound sound and style as a quintet. It’s also their first single LP-length work since the band’s debut record as a trio almost 15 years ago, and features road-tested pummeling rock-outs “Fuck Off Get Free (For The Island Of Montréal)”, “Take Away These Early Grave Blues” and “What We Loved Was Not Enough” alongside the previously unheard lullabyes/minuets “Little Ones Run” and “Rains Thru The Roof At Thee Grande Ballroom (For Capital Steez)” and the album centerpiece “Austerity Blues” with its closing lyric “Lord let my son live long enough to see that mountain torn down” sung in varying incarnations throughout the second half of this 14-minute epic.
This lyric in many ways encapsulates Menuck's unflinching take on a world replete with shabbiness, greed and injustice, seen through the lens of parenthood, mortality, endurance and defiance. There are few other musicians who deliver social critique with the courage and honesty of lines like “All our cities gonna burn / All our bridges gonna snap / All our pennies gonna rot / Lightning roll across our tracks / All our children gonna die”. Feel-good music this is not; but neither can it reductively be tagged apocalyptic or world-weary. Fuck Off Get Free rages with scorn and with hope, utterly passionate but pointedly unromantic. Thee Silver Mt. Zion once again demonstrates, like few other bands working today, that there is much to fight for and against, and plenty more fight songs to sing." [label info]
www.cstrecords.com
€14.50
Poison is (not) the Word
"In early September 2011, Theme, the Poland/UK-based group centred around Lumberton Trading Company’s very own Richard Johnson (ex-Splintered, Husk, etc.) and Stuart Carter (ex-Splintered, The Fields Of Hay, ex-Heroin, etc.), went into a Budapest studio with their good friends Zsolt Sörés and Jean-herve Peron (a.ka. Art-Errorist of influential German group, Faust) for two days. Although some basic ideas had been worked on and discussed prior to this meeting, the main objective was to record a side-long piece of music that used one of these ideas as a starting point to what would otherwise essentially amount to a collaborative improvisation with Zsolt, plus further collaborative pieces for the other side of the record both involving also Jean-herve Peron and being completely of the moment.
The main piece, entitled ‘Poison Is (Not) The Word’, pays witness to Theme branching into territory probably closer to their work as Splintered (i.e., their Moraine LP from 1996, which featured Jim O’Rourke source material on one side). Stretching over 24 minutes in length, it remains anchored to Theme’s tendency for psychedelic drones and textures whilst Zsolt applies improvised electronics and viola to them and words are either chanted or spat out. A saxophone, added by Zsolt Varga, then completes the sprawling ‘brink-of-chaos’ feel perfectly.
On the other side are two pieces also spanning over 20 minutes between them. The first, ‘Baszd meg az apád!’ (which translates as ‘Fuck Your Father’ from Hungarian), begins misleadingly as a mass of atmospheric swirls, cavaquinho plucking, textures, psalterion, and sax until Jean-herve cuts in with some shouted vocals as effective as they are brief. The second, ‘Puszta Psycho’, is built around a tempered refrain of cavaquinho string picking led by Jean-herve then welded to subtle touches of hissing electronics, psalterion, space clatter, sax blasts (courtesy of Varga), subtle textural plumes, indiscernible knocking and scrunching sounds, Jean-herve’s vocals and buried chanting by Richard Johnson.
This MLP represents the first of two vinyl releases that document the time these artists all recorded and played live together over a period of 10 days. The second release will be a limited edition 7” on LTCo sister label, Fourth Dimension.
It is hoped another tour by Theme, Jhp-Art Errorist and Zsolt will take place in October or November 2012." [label info]
www.lumberton-trading.com
€15.00
A Means by which to break the Surface of the Real
"We at Redscroll Records are very excited for our first release under the Nothing Under The Sun imprint. It is very fitting that it is with THEOLOGIAN, a long-time compatriot and embodiment of the direction we intend to take with Nothing Under The Sun, distorting the known into the unfamiliar. A Means By Which To Break The Surface Of The Real features DAVID CASTILLO of PRIMITIVE WEAPONS / WHITE WIDOWS PACT, DANIEL SUFFERING of WHORID, as well as contributions from MATT SLAGLE and engineer KEVIN D. REILLY JR., who has periodically worked with Lee M. Bartow since the earliest incarnations of Navicon Torture Technologies (back in the mid-late ‘90s). Tortured screams reach out over the tumbling industrial workings below. Low register whispered meanderings slowly rise to meet those screams. Machines’ rhythmic drones fold in on the voices. Sirens invite and warn. Sink into the synthetic abyss." [label info]
redscrollrecords.com
"Another nod to Hellraiser is found in the title to this vinyl only release from the larger than life project Theologian. Lee M. Bartow, the author and creator of Theologian's death-synth epics, has stated that Clive Barker's horror stories are fundamental to his work, even referencing the Hellraiser books as his bible in various interviews. In this quote, we are introduced to the puzzle box that when solved opens a portal into another plane of existence, with any number of demonic characters to be found on the other side, Pinhead included. The roar of big machines endlessly churning, boiling, and grinding with an infernal purpose is heard throughout this album, with the side long B-side "Truthseeker's Pick" emerging as some sort of hellish field recording of sulfuric vents, locomotive clatter, and metal-on-metal clank with nothing but misery and pain to be experienced in such a realm. The album's introductory track "God Comes As A Wall" finds Theologian screaming into the void of a collapsed black hole, crushing rock, building, planets into a singular thrum of cataclysmic white noise. "The Sun Failed To Rise Today" is a continuation of the plodding industrial dirges that Theologian crafted on the mighty Some Things Have To Be Endured, spiralling with spectral noise, megalithic rhythms, and soaring mechanized screams. The shortest number makes for one of the more intriguing pieces in "Surface Of The Real" with its subaquatic techno pulsations bracing the clarion melodies for guitar and / or voice. Limited to 500 copies." [Aquarius Rec.]
€18.50
Acid & Ecstasy
Thighpaulsandra is a veteran of many music worlds, and displays it on his kaleidoscopic multi movement tracks. With his first album in six years, Acid & Ecstasy, he whizzes through a particularly electrifying set of stylistic left turns. ‘Princess Margaret’s Mellotron’ starts off with guttural spiritual ambience before swerving into a twisted rock ‘n’ roll breakdown. A tripped out, irreverent take on the 2020s Britpop re-revival powered ultimately by a vast array of electronics and Coily industrialism, the track somehow expertly blends trickling gamelan polyrhythms, marching band brass, and murky ambience into a genre defying art rock mixture.
Acid & Ecstasy" ist das neunte Soloalbum des
musikalischen Provokateurs Thighpaulsandra (u.a. ex-COIL/SPIRITUALIZED/JULIAN COPE) und seine erste Veröffentlichung seit dem 2019 erschienenen Album Practical Electronics. Willkommen zu einem weiteren tiefen Tauchgang in Thighpaulsandras anzüglicher Klangwelt, welche sich keinem Genre zuordenen lässt. Ein Doppelalbum, das eine Vielzahl von immersiven Soundscapes, rauen Rockmomenten und lyrisch geschärften Balladen enthält, die wir alle von diesem unruhigen Troubadour erwarten, plus eine Menge fleischiger Überraschungen. Sieben gewichtige Tracks, die dich auf die beste Art und Weise verwirren und dich durch einen eklektischen Zirkus von unverfälschter Genialität chauffieren. Verdränge den Unglauben und kreuzigen die Neugier, du wirst nicht enttäuscht. Erhältlich auf Doppel-LP und Einzel-CD.
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"If like me you loved Thighpaulsandra‘s debut or the panoramic nature of his Golden Communion album, I’m glad to report the big-band sound is back with a vengeance on this new offering.
As sprawling as it is provocative, this beast is an accomplished double helping that happily mingles menace with glitzy pop-tastics skewered in plenty of Stockhausen detours and atonal splurges. A largely song-based soiree, dashes of black humour and grandiose synth work abound, each track never starting where it finishes, its malleable betweens mood-swinging like a tree-skipping gibbon, grinning with mischievous intent.
The orator’s words shine, scenic playthings perversely weaselled, poking fun at the righteous. The music, just as anarchic, obsessively delighting in blushes of prog-like excess, scooping up funky spandex grooves or taut totem riffs beset with a warble of classical delicacies, suddenly slamming you unexpectedly into a host of bent-up and crumpled trauma.
Bold and marauding, it’s an entertaining ride that draws you into its theatrics askew, starfishes you back from the wreckage on a refreshed stream of consciousness piggybacking on a grinding bassline and creamy wizardry – psychedelically triggered melodics and adrenalined rushes that push intriguing holes through the fabric of its own reality.
The jazzabelled tribal mantra of “The Curtain” erased into an ECM coma to comb-over a lush Spanish guitar and flourished balladry. A Julian Cope-like cadence chasing slippery abstracts and trickling diodes. The songwriting free-flow doesn’t disappoint, pillows with possibility, offset in ovalling obliques and star-clustered satellites, leaping headlong into some weirded-out Cardiacs-like operatics. In anybody else’s hands this might fall foul, flounder messily; but Thighpaulsandra’s trip marvels with the improbable, alchemises the errant with seamless ease.
The debauched hilarity of “Princess Margaret’s Mellotron” (bringing to mind Double Vulgar‘s ode to her royal highness) meal-worms the ridiculous, all raspberried and choral-tapered, “Sliding down the corridors of powerrrrr” skilfully subverting with toe-tapping tautness and genre-bending fluidity. That multifaceted voice plucking charismatic to later turn despotic on “Cattle Truck”, the music souring to blunted blows disembarking into some head-nodding wrongness and a zero-gravity suspense outage of rumble-roasted layers.
I can’t begin to imagine the amount of work involved creating something this complex and widescreen, but my ears are enjoying every twist and turn. As the album ends on the sticky avant-garden of “The Brown Hare Remains”, I’m reminded again of Thighpaulsandra’s genius in conjuring a rarefied atmosphere. An oddly shimmering creature of a track, stabbed in reverbed-glowing rhythmics and gong-like metallics to skitter on an aftersun of chilled poetics slivering between French and English on this dusky purple pulse. A lilting ambience that tessellates like a slo-mo of broken petals wistfully lost to the gathering silence.
Acid And Ecstasy is another extravagant triumph that I’m going to be listening to for years to come.
[Michael Rodham-Heaps/FREQ]
€35.00
Acid & Ecstasy
Welcome to another deep dive into Thighpaulsandra’s salacious sound-world. A double album opus, Acid and Ecstasy synaptically sabres a host of immersive soundscaping, raucous rock moments and lyrically sharpened balladry we’ve all come to expect from this troubled troubadour plus plenty of fleshy surprise. Seven weighty tracks that potently tangle you up in the best of ways and chauffeur you around an eclectic circus of unadulterated genius. Displace dis-belief and crucify your curiosity - you will not be disappointed…
Thighpaulsandra is a veteran of many music worlds, and displays it on his kaleidoscopic multi movement tracks. With his first album in six years, Acid & Ecstasy, he whizzes through a particularly electrifying set of stylistic left turns. ‘Princess Margaret’s Mellotron’ starts off with guttural spiritual ambience before swerving into a twisted rock ‘n’ roll breakdown. A tripped out, irreverent take on the 2020s Britpop re-revival powered ultimately by a vast array of electronics and Coily industrialism, the track somehow expertly blends trickling gamelan polyrhythms, marching band brass, and murky ambience into a genre defying art rock mixture.
€15.00
UVB-76
Thirteen Hurts is a recording artist named Richard Adams who has performed at Denver Noise Fest a few times, as well as Norcal Noise Fest, and in one instance, he drove over 2,000 miles to play St. Petersburg Noise Fest. At that time, he lived in a solar powered home in rural Colorado, 6 hours from any form of civilization. I imagined him in some sort of geodesic dome listening to numbers stations and Coast To Coast AM with only the cold, dead air of winter, and hitherto useless power lines in the distance to accompany it.
Thirteen Hurts live was also quite a surprise. Whenever I see about 30 pedals sitting on a table, I always assume that there's going to be a great deal of muddy, buzzing garbage to endure, but not in this case. Each time I saw this phenomena, there was such a level of control and focus, also accompanied by a casual, playful demeanor, that it looked like that of a practiced, serious scientist, or maybe a "rocket surgeon" would be a better term. The assurance that this person could fix a car or save a life while laughing, chatting, and gesticulating, came to mind. The man was like a ninja with his pedals, building little ditties and then destroying them with epic blasts of clearly articulated, yet cataclysmic, disastrous noise.
It's only appropriate then, that NO PART OF IT is releasing UVB-76, an album inspired by a Russian shortwave radio signal whose origin has never been found, and whose communications have been poured over and analyzed for decades. Naturally, much (actually about half, I'm told) of the source material is from radios, and certainly there will be some segments of this release that the kids will call "brutal!" and "sick!", but the depth and range of this release, like the two Thirteen Hurts CDs before them, is unprecedented. The attention to detail is without comparison. Each track is amounts to prime numbers.
At times, layers of heavily panned electric rhythms dance in and out of sync while what sounds like dying drip-drop synth burble cascades in and out of the picture. At other times, it sounds like the sci-fi soundtrack to an animal stalking its prey, despite ominous, disruptive climate patterns. Brooding, creeping static pulses punctuate swarms of oscillating ghost hiss. Musique Concret glossolalia meets high-speed cut-up squealing robot ganglia. With what seems like a minimal approach, "UVB-76" runs the gamut. Each track is rich and unique, and any two tracks would compliment eachother as sides on a stellar 7 inch. 66 minutes in duration, and not a moment is wasted.
https://nopartofit.bandcamp.com/album/uvb-76
€8.00
Blood
Third and last album from the 4AD-supergroup.
"This group was essentially the creation of Ivo Watts-Russell, the co-owner of 4AD Records, a highly successful Wandsworth, London-based independent label. This Mortal Coil was actually a collaboration of musicians recording in various permutations, overseen and directed by Watts-Russell. The first single, an epic cover version of Tim Buckley 's 'Song To The Siren', was originally intended as a b-side. However, bolstered by the considerable talents of Robin Guthrie and Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins), it saw its own release and became a near-permanent fixture in the independent charts as a result. The album that followed set the pattern for the occasional outings to come.(...)
Featuring a selection of artists from the 4AD roster plus various outsiders, the albums included several cover versions of works by Watts-Russell's favourite songwriters (Buckley, Alex Chilton, Roy Harper, Gene Clark and Syd Barrett )." [unknown source]
€15.50
Hell
This record evolved as a concatenation of two happenings. Thisquietarmy presented his album “Democracy of Dust” on stage at the Moving Noises Evening 2017, supported by Tom Malmendier, who joined in for some live drum parts for older tracks of thisquietarmy. Dirk Serries played one of his last ambient sets before releasing “Epitaph” at the same evening. So things came together very quick and the idea was born to end up the evening as a trio.
Hell features a long improvisational track, in which you can hear typical Serries and thisquietarmy sounds accompanied by some diversified percussion sounds by Malmendier. The set starts very quiet and cautious and ends up in climax of experimental guitars and absolute amazing freejazz drumming.
Recorded at Christuskirche Bochum. Mixed by Dirk Serries. Mastered by Eric Quach.
“Hell” comes as a 6panel digisleeve with matt finish. Limited to 200 copies.
https://thisquietarmy.bandcamp.com/album/h-e-l-l
€15.00
Death
" “DEATH” presents a lonely journey of great intensity across the desert, facing inner and external elements, fatally leading to an escape for salvation. The journey is split into three tracks: “Sand” discovers the tough, arid and suffocating desert, as attractive as it is frightening, it surrounds you completely without compromise and there is no turning back. “Furnace” describes the beginning of the blistering heat and the dusty pilgrimage; the rocky landscape is mirrored by a great loneliness in which is revealed our inner demons, ready to engage a battle without mercy against your own soul. “Salt” depicts the comatose state of being at the tail end of the journey, disoriented and dehydrated, lost within psychedelic hallucinations, physically fighting death with little of what is left of your mind. Mastered by Fear Falls Burning.
180g vinyl with free download coupon (no CD, unfortunately) 80 black / 320 gold." [label info]
www.bassesfrequences.org
€14.00
Zerfall / Zerfallen
Thisquietarmy and N met during live shows and festivals on and off for years. As both are always interested in doing collaborations it was just a matter of time, when both would team up for a guitar drone convention.
All started with an improvisational live set in Cologne, followed by a studio session in Duisburg, back in 2019.
“Zerfall | Zerfallen” features all the tracks of those two sessions, except one track, that is featured on “Zerstoeren”, the sister release (MD 098).
“Zerfall” (LP) features two epic tracks and it is obvious after the first seconds, that the studio session was a loud unfaltering monster. We can say that for sure, because this is one of the rare occasions, we had the chance to join the recording session. Imagine an old industrial building with a big studio room on the upper floor, where two guitarists are sitting in front of an amp wall, playing so loud that no earplug can save you.
The first track “Zerfall Alpha” flows with loud noise soundwalls by N and the looming sounds of thisquietarmy, evolving into soundscapes that feel like both guitars are melting into one unbending soundwall, going loud and sometimes quiet even to get subsequently louder. “Zerfall Beta” is the evil twin of the A side track and unfolds a massive drone doom wave.
“Zerfallen” (CD) features the other three tracks of the session, in the same mood like “Zerfall” but with an individual sonic evolving. All rounded up by the live session from Cologne “Zerstaeuber“, which is also featured on “Zerfallen”. Here you can discover, how the musicians approached very tentative, how their sounds work together for the very first time.
All in all, you get 2 hours of massive drone doom ambient noise guitar fulmination. Listen loud for maximum aftermath.
“Zerfall | Zerfallen” comes in an edition of 222 copies on LP+CD. Black vinyl with printed labels, housed in reverse board printed sleeve on 300g cardboard. The CD is housed in a reverse board printed cardboard wallet.
If you want to read more about the recording session, here is an intrview Eric and Hellmut did for Fifteen Questions: 15questions.net/interview/thisquietarmy-and-n-share-their-creative-process/page-1/
Zerfall (LP)
A Zerfall Alpha 22:27
B Zerfall Beta 23:20
Zerfallen (CD)
01 Zerfallen Eins 11:21
02 Zerfallen Zwei 12:52
03 Zerfallen Drei 31:27
04 Zerstaeuber 17:24
Technical:
LP + CD / Limited to 222 copies
LP comes on black vinyl / printed labels / reverseboard printed sleeve
CD comes in reverseboard printed sleeve
thisquietarmy (amps+guitars)
N (amps+guitars)
recorded by Tobias Stieler, June 2019
mixed+mastered by Eric Quach, March 2021
photography by Roxane De Koninck
www.midirarecords.com/release/md-097-thisquietarmy-x-n-zerfall-zerfallen
€27.50
Pine Cone Temples
Episches neues Werk dieses 4-köpfigen kreativen Geräusch-Improvisations-Kollektivs, deren Klangquellen keine Begrenzungen zu kennen scheinen. Neben gewöhnlichen Instrumenten werden field recordings aber auch konkretes Material eingesetzt. Die Improvisationen klingen so sensibel & fein verwoben als seien sie „gewollt“ komponiert. Jedes neue Stück offenbart überraschende Sounds, und doch wirkt das Werk wie aus einem Guss. Entspannter „Abstrakt-Geräuschambient“, der niemals langweilig wird. Bei THUJA wirkt LOREN CHASSE von ID BATTERY mit, die auch eine Single auf Drone hatten – nicht nur deswegen sei dieses Werk hiermit in höchstem Maße empfohlen !
“By incorporating real-time recordings of natural sounds from their particular surroundings, the four members of Thuja play off each other and the space they inhabit with impeccable instinct, succeeding in creating eerie yet strikingly melodic compositions. The end result is a total immersion of the senses, for both the player and the listener. Across the grand expanse of Pine Cone Temple's two discs, implements such as piano, guitars, percussion, and well-placed contact mics are blended like pigments to conjure the subtlest of sonics, pulling every lost drop of their immediate universe into floating and buzzing cinematics. Minimalist hues are brush-stroked into being and slowly unfurl into the atmosphere. Improvised clouds of sound softly erupt to form compositions of such immense and precise detail, it would seem the music was written out rather than spontaneously developed. Such is the magic of Thuja and their uncanny ability to sculpt microscopic psychedelia from their immediate environment and collective consciousness.” [label info]
“....and all of them loosely based in one way or another on nature, or natural sounds, or the way music and found sounds interact with the spaces they are performed in. There are instruments like guitars, drums, bass, but more often than not, you'll find sticks and stones, found objects, junk, all sorts of industrial and natural detritus, recorded, re-broadcast, and recorded again. Utilizing natural reverb, the sounds of certain spaces, ambient sounds as well as making the act of making music, music in itself. Wow. So what does Pine Cone Temples sound like? It's wide open and expansive. Ambient perhaps, but there's too much going on for it to be strictly ambient. It's more a sort of abstract soundscape, the sort of soundscape the requires close listening, active listening, in order to understand, and feel the sounds, not just hear them. The rustle of leaves, crickets maybe, running water, or are those sounds manufactured by the band in an attempt to pay homage to the music of nature? Does it matter. Maybe its both, the sound of running water accompanied by Thuja emulating the sound of running water. Clicks and creaks, and little bits of clatter, a simple melody played on a recorder, warm organ warble, whipsering wind, toy xylophone notes released and left to drift in the slowly shifting breeze, distant bird calls, reverbed piano, dark cavernous rumbles, shimmering single notes stretched perilously across a sound field dotted with the echo of dripping water and the buzz of vibrating guitar strings. This isn't so much music as it is simply sound, sound that has been lovingly shaped and guided, observed and interacted with, recorded in its element. As if Thuja were just recordists, who use their own sounds to lure the sounds of nature to come just a little closer, in order to capture them raw and natural, and incorporate them into the sun dappled cloak of their jewelled nature-folk. The sounds of music can be smooth and soothing, or raw and primitive, as can the music of sound, and thus Thuja, whose music of sound is pure, and organic, lush and lustrous, and breathtakingly beautiful.” [Aquarius Records]
www.strange-attractors.com
€15.00
same
"A brand new vinyl only full length from aQ beloved ambient improvised free rock explorers Thuja. The core group is all present, Loren Chasse, Glenn Donaldson, Steven R. Smith and Rob Reger, joined for these sessions by Thuja satellite members: Greg Bianchini, Keith Evans, Bryan DeRoo and former aQ mailorder mistress Christine Boepple. Collected from various live performances, these tracks find Thuja setting up in various venues around the Bay Area, and
transforming each location, at least briefly, into a forest glade, or a darkened wood, or a fog shrouded seashore, using traditional
instruments as well as sticks and stones and other found objects to conjure up ghostlike soundscapes , each track, every performance, a
slow burning sprawl of humid and humming minimalism.
Almost the entirety of the A side is taken up by an epic stretch of alchemical minimalism, a muted series of washed out melodies, of gentle scrapes and distant shimmers, various notes and chords expressed in long streaks, the guitar lines unfurling lazily, the band eventually coalesce into a glistening high end crescendo, suddenly reminding us of Sunroof! with their upper register ur-drone skree, but here that skree is more muted and muddied, a mournful keening, before the band elves back into a more minimal moonlit crawl. Disembodied slowed down riffs are draped over whispered whirs, while the band lurk in the shadows, letting tiny bits of light spill out, creating barely there sonic patterns, and dusty dreamlike song skeletons.
The B side is even more understated, each track a brief soundscape, exploring dark dusty corners, shuffling through a blanket of dead leaves, the band barely there at all. Almost like they set up their instruments and just stood there, letting the wind and the wildlife create the sounds. When the music does materialize, and take more solid form, the guitars weave themselves into delicate little
tangles, drifting over deep resonant swells, all around sounds betray the environment, but become inexorable parts of the organic sound being created, snippets of conversation, voices, footsteps, alongside subtle bits of percussive thump, warbly distant melodies, a deep dark
ambience, a gorgeously subtle sound that manages to be quietly propulsive even as it seems to hover motionless.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!" [Aquarius Records review]
label-website: www.importantrecords.com
€15.50
Hills
Thuja's 2002 album, Hills, emerged out of a particularly productive phase for the loose assemblage of musicians known as the Jewelled Antler Collective. Glenn Donaldson and Loren Chasse, who had recently formed Thuja alongside Steven R. Smith and Rob Reger, were dialling down the volume, moving away from the instrumental rock interludes of previous groups like Mirza, and exploring more rugged terrain - laminal improvisation, wistful wide-eyed folk songs, field recordings and home-recorded electro-acoustics. By 2002, Jewelled Antler had developed a certain notoriety for unstintingly releasing excellent, small-run CD-R releases,. Thuja's albums had been picked up by Craig Stewart's visionary Emperor Jones imprint, but Hills was released on a small-scale American CD-R label, Last Visible Dog, run by Chris Moon. One of four albums (and two more mini-CDs) Thuja released that year, it's a startling document, a collective of eviscerated dream tones and cavernous psychoacoustics. The unforced, luxuriant development of Thuja's music - a misty fold of keyboard drones, tinkling piano, clusters of percussives, shuttling and scrabbling strings and other things - often asks for metaphor from the natural world. But this is also distinctly city-based music, as Donaldson described it: "insular warehouse music from a still affordable city, before the internet dominated everything. No intention of getting noticed or 'streamed', just making sounds for the sake of it. A rejection of rock things: clubs, structure, volume." The music on Hills and other, loosely contemporaneous releases often played on broken instruments and non-instruments, with small, sensual details captured by contact mics, was "all improvised," Donaldson recalls, "but no 'jamming' or soloing [was] allowed, just a slow evolution towards a mood." In that respect, Thuja can lay claim to a heritage of all-in-one, group-mind improvisation that arcs back to AMM and Musica Elettronica Viva, but also connects with other, less immediately recognisable precursors - there are shades here of groups like Biota, or composer Sofia Gubaidulina's improvisatory outfit Astreja. There's a relaxed yet questing folksiness too.
https://rosehobart.bandcamp.com/album/hills
€20.50
The Breath of the Hydra
A three way collaboration between the Germany based THE OVAL LANGUAGE, the Catalan TIBETAN RED and DAS SYNTHETISCHE MISCHGEWEBE living in Rennes, France. In an on and off exchange since end of 2016, a continuous exchange of audio material, ideas and suggestions. Salvador Francesch and Guido Hübner meet again after long years at the occasion of a concert of the latter one at the LEM festival in Barcelona. Since then working together became evident as was the choice of including Klaus-Peter John with whom several collaborations had already seen the light of day through the years, most notably the homage to the late Carlfriedrich Claus ‘sprechzimmern’ with RLW as well as a 2x CD collection of collaborations on the notorious Monochrome Vison label in Moscow.
The association of their different sound worlds and even more specifically their extremely particular fashions of creating them was meant to merge and melt in a whole able to blur clear distinctions with only an occasional sneaking out of a head and a hissing tongue amongst many that takes the scent and direction respectively in the brooding heat that forges shape and carves direction.
TIBETAN RED Salvador Francesch is a catalan-canadian painter, sculptor and sound explorer who lives in La Garrotxa, Girona. He has released 5 CDs in his Tibetan Red project. His work pursues experimentation with sounds that seek to convey some aspects of his interest in Eastern rituals and ceremonial art.
THE OVAL LANGUAGE Klaus-Peter John is from Leipzig, the project started as a trio in the early 80’s working to turn into his solo project with sound, noise works in open spaces, photography, installations and land-art informed projects in which mainly the voice is put center stage.
DAS SYNTHETISCHE MISCHGEWEBE started in the early 80’s in Berlin with cassette production and performative concerts, exhibitions and installations to which a D.I.Y. approach of a lot of customized equipment became inherent accompanying an interest in several areas of science and technology. Moved to Barcelona then France, producing many recordings and performance works.
https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/the-breath-of-the-hydra
"The Breath of the Hydra (ACU 1029), da weißt man ja, es sind drei Köpfe. So auch hier: TIBETAN RED + THE OVAL LANGUAGE + DAS SYNTHETISCHE MISCHGEWEBE. Ersterer, Salvador Francesch in La Garrotxa in den katalonischen Pyrenäen, hat dem mit Todo entretenimiento es una anticipación del infierno auch das Motto vorangestellt. Der Dichter José Bergamin soll das gesagt haben, als Vorstand der Alianza de Intelectuales Antifascistas der kulturelle Kopf der Spanischen Republik, der Picasso den Auftrag zu "Guernica" gegeben hat. Francesch teilt mit Bergamins Rechtfertigung des 'Roten Terrors' allemal die Vorliebe für Rot und offenbar auch die Vorfreude auf die Hölle. Blödsinn, natürlich die Abneigung gegen Amusement. Er ist mit seinem Debut 1985 auf Freedom in a Vacuum nicht ganz so lange dabei wie Guido Hübner, der ab 1981 sich der Cassette- & Soundculture einschrieb. Bei "Sprechzimmern" (2015), einer Hommage an den konkreten Lautpoeten Carlfriedrich Claus, und zehn Jahre zuvor bei 'Papillon Schizophone' war er dabei auch schon mit Peter John zusammengekommen. Der Leipziger, der in den 80ern als Sänger bei Neu Rot (!) anfing, hat sich nach "Hibernation" & "Waldkonzerte" auf Edition Telemark zuletzt mit "Hexen Hexer" gegen Denunziation und Hexenjagden positioniert, auch wenn heute dabei, anders als im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg und beim Hydraschlachten, seltener Blut fließt. Ich kann mir eine 'Melancholie des Widerstands', wie sie Hübner von László Krasznahorkai aufgegriffen hat, als das Verbindende zwischen den dreien vorstellen bei ihrem alchemistischen Procedere mit brodeligem Köcheln und Sieden, das einher geht mit kratzigen und schleifenden Impulsen und hohleren, quasi perkussiven Anmutungen, die das überwölben. Dazu vexieren zirpige, halbwegs natürliche Klänge mit einem leisen, hauchzarten 'Schreiben' mit metallischem Griffel, über das motorische, zischende, sirrend oszillierende Attacken hinweggehen und einen industrialen Dominator installieren, der impulsiv oder gedämpft rumort und infernalische Stimmen nur ahnen lässt. Der Griffel schreibt weiter in einer opaken Nichtstille und hat dabei etwas von einem Keuchen oder Röcheln an sich. Martialische Wellen mischen das auf, und zischende Ventile machen das zu einem Tauchgang in die Schinderwerkstätten der Schlotbarone. Trappeliges Toben, abgerissene Kürzel und tatsächlich der Kehle entrissene Laute verunklaren dabei die Differenz von Mensch-Maschine, Organisch-Anorganisch, Außen-Innen, Hart-Weich, Makro-Mikro. Immer wieder leise als bruitistische Audiographie aus winzigen, halb wie gehauchten Krakeln vor einer nun dröhnend bebenden Klangwand. Wenn nur das Schreien nicht wäre, das infernalische, kaum zu hören, aber doch nicht zu leugnen. Ganz in der Nähe - Folterkeller, Höllen. Die satanischen Mühlen mahlen als zerrende Tonbandspuren, weiß der Teufel, was sich hinter verschlossenen Türen alles abspielt. Scharrt da wer an Metall? Was sind das für unheimliche Heimlichkeiten?" [Bad Alchemy]
"German Attenuation Circuit label run by Sascha aka EMERGE, has released a new album in which three sound artists of electronic experimental music collaborate: German artist The Oval Language, Catalan Tibetan Red and Das Synthetische Mischgewebe who lives in Rennes, France.
"The Breath of the Hydra" is the result of exchanging audio files since the end of 2016.
Salvador Francesch is a Catalan-Canadian painter, sculptor and sound explorer who lives in La Garrotxa, Girona. He has published five CD's with his Tibetan Red project.
Klaus-Peter John aka The Oval Language is from Leipzig and works in noise, open space, photography, installations and informed land-art projects where the voice takes center stage. Guido Hübner aka Das Synthetische Mischgewebe started in the early 80's in Berlin with the production of cassettes and performance concerts, exhibitions and installations.
This album consists of a single track of almost 52 minutes long which unfurls two faces. One, the sound is almost imperceptible and silence plays a relevant role. In the other, drones and noises are the background of a proposal with a strong organic character and consequently, gasping and buried voices are barely heard and spit out an indecipherable language. The clicks near the middle of the track look like whips that are followed by screams which are in the distance. All this takes place in a dark ambience that well represents the history of the Hydra." [Guillermo Escudero/LOOP]
https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/the-breath-of-the-hydra, http://www.attenuationcircuit.de/
€12.00
Geboren um zu dienen
“8th part in the ongoing re-release series of all early Tietchens albums between 1980—1991. Described by Tietchens himself as his «Industrial» album, «Geboren, um zu Dienen» was originally released on the spanish ESPLENDOR GEOMETRICO label in 1986. The CD version incl. three unreleased bonus tracks from the same period and comes with a full colour fold-out booklet incl. liner notes by Tietchens himself.” [label info]
„If I'd ever recorded an «Industrial» solo album, it must be «GEBOREN, UM ZU DIENEN». Although I obviously wasn't one of the inventors of «Industrial Music», I clearly felt an affinity to it. So I tried to learn my lessons well adding my own musical aspects to the general apocalyptic noises of this genre. My main concern was to dive deep into the canonical topics of fear, hysteria, claustrophobia, machine and threat. The end was imminent as hundreds of Pershings and SS20 all pointed in the direction of the march up area called West Germany, the seals of the read buttons were already broken. Even the conventional alternative — a tank war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact — sounded like utter apocalypse. Would we really have welcomed our brothers from the east with open arms? This particular background has to be seen as the main influence on GEBOREN, UM ZU DIENEN. I believe that many of my colleagues also recording «Industrial» albums felt the same at that time. IF there would have been a «Bang» it — without doubt — would have been global.
Fear, emptiness and the futility of the aesthetical, were not alien to me, but until then I moved inside a carefully tested zone which was defined by a spectrum of experimental forms. GEBOREN, UM ZU DIENEN was an experiment in itself which first fruits I set free immediately. As if I'd to work under a deadline I recorded the tracks hastily, not wasting much thoughts about dynamics, duration, precision and construction. In the same way I resolutely did rough mixes of the seperate tracks of the pieces: what sounded dirty stayed dirty. Essentially the raw and the unsculptured were a part of the dogma of «Industrial». The original nine tracks plus five more (three which appear as Bonustracks on this CD) all developed in a very short period of time. The album was released on the spanish «Esplendor Geometrico» label, run by Andres Noarbe, in the same year. Originally a tape only label EG released a series of radical albums during the mid 80's, also albums by the «Industrial» group of the same name, many which are much sought after items today. Of course only 500 copies of the album were pressed, which still meant a considerable financial risk given the small circle of potentionally interested listeners. But the enthusiasm and dedication of everyone involved lead to a self-evident «Nevertheless».
Looking back at these years it has to be noted that I established a daring attitude then, which luckily developed positively and stayed with me until today. The fact that a german attorneys general confiscated a small number of the LP in 1990 deeming the cover as being immoral («A Call for abortion»), was registered with satisfaction. A case like this corresponds with the mark of quality granted by the «Stiftung Warentest». Go on Germany! “ [Asmus Tietchens, 2006]
Editorial notes: The original masters of all the pieces incl. the bonus tracks are in perfect condition and were used 1:1 for the transfer onto CD. Only the fade-out at the end of «Mein erstes Erlebnis» was slightly corrected.
€15.00
Aus Freude am Elend
Wohl eine der ungewöhnlichsten & schönsten Tietchens-Alben, die augenzwinkernde Verwendung von vokalem Material war hier der Fokus, found sounds & field-recordings werden eigentümlichst verfremdelt, aus Schlager- oder Volksliedern die abartigsten Töne rausgekitzelt, absolut unkategorisierbare Klänge entstehen... ein wunderbares-wundersames Re-Kontextualisierungs-Projekt! JA WIR LIEBEN ES! 2 Bonus Tracks!
"11th part in the ongoing re-release series of all early Tietchens albums between 1980-1991. AUS FREUDE AM ELEND is based on the human voice as a primary sound source and was originally released in edition of 500 copies on Dom America in 1988. The CD includes two previously unreleased tracks and comes in a jewel case with full color artwork and poster booklet also feat. the original front and back cover. First edition of 600 copies.
Asmus Tietchens AUS FREUDE AM ELEND (Dom America Dom US LP 02) 1988 "Following my research of piano and water sounds (DS102, DS88) it didn't come as a surprise that my next project was about the human voice as a sound source. The great masters of Plunderphonics already showed the way in the early 80's, when they plundered the gigantic junk-shops packed full of already recorded material, which was stolen by them to use it for their own aesthetic targets. This album only consists of such stolen goods. Each track (with the exception of 'In memoriam P.F.') was based on voices of people who I naturally didn't ask their permission to use these recordings in the first place. So you can hear the voices of ecstatic religious people as well as other people making love. You'll also hear someone singing to Annette and Peggy out of the trash bin of a publishing company. Even the screams of furious teachers came in handy while I made loops from them. Especially loops: Rarely before this album and only once after it (on Stupor Mundi) did I made use of the structural means of loops to such an extent. I was fascinated by the rhythmical and harmonic permanence, in the same way as many of my musical colleagues at the time. The aspect of the 'Ritual' was a self-evident common formulation in difficult music during the 80s, so loops and tape voices, monotonous rhythms and LoFi became obvious means to shape the music. AUS FREUDE AM ELEND too was strongly spiced with these ingredients and therefore can be seen as a prototype album of this specific view of music during the time. This tendency was supported - even partly inspired - by a new generation of sound machines, which also made it possible for new aesthetic goals to appear at the horizon. The 90s were near at hand and sound art music would develop drastically in many ways in the years to follow. Samplers, digital editing, hard-disc recording and the first PC's opened new doorways. Half of the material on AUS FREUDE AM ELEND was already created with these digital tools. I never quite understood how the labels Dom America (run by Jon Carlson) and Dom here in Germany were connected. Did Carlson used to be a fan of Dom which was founded by Christoph Heemann and Achim Flaam. Did he simply liked the release politics of this label. And what became of Dom America ? Actually I don't know. I guess it was one of the small enthusiastic independent labels which released a handful of titles and which disappeared after being active for a couple of years during the 80s. However AUS FREUDE AM ELEND had vanished shortly after its release. I only used 'stolen' voices twice again ('Stupor Mundi', 1990 and 'Das Fest ist zu Ende. Aus', 1993) after this album by the way." [label info / credits]
"... Much like some his previous records, most notably 'Formen Letzer Hausmusik' and 'Seuchengebiete', its foremost a work of electro acoustic or musique concrete. There is an element of repetition that one wouldn't easily spot with the original 'masters' of the genre, but Tietchens uses them in his own, highly personal, way, adding his own fine blend of electronics and in order to make a creepy sound, a sinister play of vocals. The people whose voices are used sound like they are singing in a far away cage, in isolation, a cry to get out. After all these years this record hasn't aged at all, and is a highlight in Tietchens career." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Nachtstücke
"Nachtstücke owed its publication to former Tangerine-Dream member Peter Baumann,who was asked by the French label Barclay/EGG to produce three albums focussing specifically on German electronic music. He was working with Hans-Joachim Roedelius at the time, who had been given a few Tietchens tracks on cassette. When Baumann heard Roedelius play them in the studio during a break in proceedings, they sparked his interest and he met up with Tietchens some time later; they agreed that he would go over the material again and edit or abridge it in places. A release date was pencilled in for the latter part of 1978. The commissioning label, however, doubting the commercial potential of the project (Tietchens: “How right they would turn out to be”), postponed the release and had to be reminded of contractual commitments on more than one occasions. When the Nachtstücke LP finally appeared, almost two years later, it bore the unauthorized subheading Expressions et Perspectives Sonores Intemporelles and featured a completely different cover. Originally, the album was to depict a leathery embryo with a laser beam shooting through its eye (Tietchens: “I liked the idea of sta
rting with something so gruesome”), but now three blurred figures danced on the sleeve: “I was pretty disgusted when I opened the package containing my copies”, Tietchens reports, taking the rerelease as his cue to create completely new artwork.
Nachtstücke has surprisingly little in common with the pseudo-pop of the ensuing Sky Phase, but shines a light further ahead to the gloomy, spectral aspects of Tietchens’ later works. Created between 1975 and 1978, the Nachtstücke pieces reveal a deliberate
approach, avoiding dissonance and discord wherever possible. Still, the release saw the album “fall right out of time” as Tietchens frankly admits: “Gentle rhythm and harmonic beatitude did not suit the concert of advanced pop music as it was then being played.”
Nevertheless, the Nachtstücke tracks remain important to the artist, as they document his early encounters with the Moog Sonic Six and Minimoog. With this in mind, the material is presented here in its original, unadulterated form." [label info]
www.bureau-b.com
€25.00
Ornamente (zwischen Null und Eins)
"(….) Wenn alles dich anwidert, wird das Mittagessen zum Fest. Die Lebensmittel ersetzen die Ideen. Vom letzten Bauern bis zum verfeinertsten Intellektuellen ist die Essenszeit die tägliche Liturgie der seelischen Leere. Die Umwandlung eines unmittelbaren Bedürfnisses in ein Zivilisationsphänomen ist ein gefährliches Fortschreiten und ein schwerwiegendes Symptom. (….)
— E.M. Cioran „Über Frankreich“
TRACKS:
Ornament 1 (05:18)
Ornament 2 (11:11)
Ornament 3 (08:44)
Ornament 4 (11:14)
Ornament 5 (11:14)
Aufgenommen und von Okko Bekker produziert im Audiplex Studio E, Hamburg Druckvorlage: Karajew.
Asmus Tietchens (b. 1947, Hamburg, Germany)
1965: First experiments with tape recorders and electronic sound devices (sine wave generator, rhythm machines) and concrete sound material.
1971: Minimoog and 8-track tape recorders
1980: First LP release Nachtstück in France, produced by Peter Baumann of Tangerine Dream
1982: begins Industrial music stage
1984: LP Formen letzter Hausmusik released by the Nurse with Wound’s label United Dairies.
1984-1989: several LPs on international industrial music labels including Esplendor Geometrico, Hamster Records, A-Mission, Multimood and others.
1985: Experiments with computerized keyboard Fairlight CMI
1986: First journey commissioned by the Goethe-Institut with concerts in Brazil
1989 – 2010: Teaching Sound Design and Sound Research at the University for Applied Sciences in Hamburg
1991: Second journey commissioned by the Goethe-Institut with concerts in the Argentine, Chile and Uruguay
Since 1991: numerous CD releases on international labels (LINE, Staalplaat, Soleilmoon, Selektion, Mille Plateaux, and more)
2003: Karl Sczuka Award for Acoustic Art
2006: Karl Sczuka Award for Acoustic Art
2010-2013: Teaching Sound Design at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg
tietchens.de " [label info / credits / biography]
"A new album by Asmus Tietchens can be quite an intimidating prospect. The Hamburg-based acoustics professor has been investigating the inner and outer realms of electronic sound production since the mid-sixties. He makes no concessions to mass marketing: the 'press release' for this disc simply features a quote, in German, from everyone's favourite Romanian misanthropist philosopher, Emile Cioran, taken from a withering critique of French culture and high gastronomy. But you can forget about all that once you put the disc on and immerse yourself in the delicate, ethereal sounds that unfurl like wisps of light-reflecting dust. The otherworldy tones and subtle dynamics here are rich in detail and complexity, but the drama is on a microscopic scale, giving that sense of being opened up to a new dimension of musical experience. Some of the weird tonal characteristics Tietchens favours remind me of Alvin Lucier's 'I'Am Sitting In A Room' - where a narration is gradually blotted out by the resonant feedback of the room through a process of replaying and re-recording. Tietchens manipulates and arranges his strange resonances to open up a haunting sound world of tones that float eerily amidst watery, metallic glints. The disc's final track builds into the most expansive composition with a melodic arc surging through the deceptive stillness, suggesting more cosmic dimensions that I can imagine gracing an intense, introspective sci-fi film that's probably impossible to make." [normanrecords.com]
www.lineimprint.com
€15.00
Seuchengebiete 4
"Seuchengebiete 4, the continuation of Asmus Tietchens' almost legendary series of treated water sounds, consists of six Hydrophonies. The sonic palette ranges from deep gurgling bass pulses to fragile movements of showering bright particles. The overall mood is ernest, contemplative and dark. Seuchengebiete 4 is perhaps the ultimate soundtrack for our crises-ridden times." [press release]
https://aufabwegen.bandcamp.com/album/seuchengebiete-4
"Der Hamburger Asmus Tietchens schätzt Serien, man denke etwa an die auf inzwischen sieben Teile angewachsene Mengenreihe. Auf den Alben der “Seuchengebiete”-Serie finden sich sogenannte Hydrophonien, Stücke, deren Basis das Geräusch von tropfendem Wasser ist. Der erste Teil erschien 1985, sechs Jahre später folgte Nummer zwei, 1997 auf Donna Klemms Label Artware Nummer drei. Schon in einem Interview im Jahre 2007 sprach Tietchens davon, an neuen Hydrophonien für einen vierten Teil zu arbeiten, jetzt erscheinen sechs neue Aufnahmen auf Auf Abwegen.
Auf„Hydrophonie 21“ scheint Wasser in einer Höhle zu tropfen und zu (ver)hallen, im Vordergrund blubbert es, während im Hintergrund seltsam-melodische Flächen zu hören sind. Dann scheint Wasser ausgeschüttet zu werden und zu fließen. Dem Track wohnt eine leichte Unruhe inne. Die nicht nur numerisch, sondern auch auf dem Album darauf folgende Hydrophonie nimmt diese Bewegung zurück, ist tastender, reduzierter, minimalistischer. Zum Teil klingt das Fallen der Tropfen so, als zupfe jemand einen akustischen Bass. “Hydrophonie 24″ hat einen leicht metallischen Klang, ist vielleicht- etwas verkürzt gesagt- mit durchaus dissonanten Momenten das industriellste Stück auf diesem Album. Dagegen scheint “Hydrophonie 26″ zurückhaltender und weniger unruhig zu sein. “Hydrophonie” 32 hat einen leicht ambient-sakralen Charakter und ist der vielleicht atmosphärischste Track auf diesem Album. “Hydrophonie 27″ beginnt fast kaum wahrnehmbar, dann hört man entfernte, kristalline Momente, als würden Vögel zwitschern.Was klar gewoden sein sollte, ist, wie unterschiedlich trotz gleichen Ausgangsmaterials die einzelnen Stücke sind.
Über die Jahre ist Tietchens immer sehr konsistent darin gewesen, wenn er über die (nicht vorhandene) “Botschaft” seiner Musik gesprochen hat. Schon 1991 meinte er: „I don’t try to create moods with my music, and I don’t try to tell stories, and my music doesn’t carry any message except an aesthetic one (now and then). Mostly my pieces are formalistic exercises, or better, the results of formalistic exercises. Music shall be no more than itself. Absolute Music.“ In einem jüngst erschienen Interview wird diese Haltung noch einmal klar artikuliert: “’Absolute Music’ is not connected with any political, spiritual, ideological or educational intention. The listener is totally free for his own impressions, feelings, possible pictures and thoughts when listening to ‘Absolute Music’. To me that is total freedom of perception. I am no teacher, no philosopher, no scientist – why should I intrude my thoughts on any other human being? I always try to let the music speak for itself. That should be enough.“ Dennoch darf auch auf diesem Album das obligatorische Cioran-Zitat natürlich nicht fehlen: “Der zügellose Optimismus hält der geringsten und bedeutungslosesten Offenbarung der menschlichen Natur nicht stand.” [MG / African Paper]
"In the 80s, there was a small list of very hard to obtain records, records of the kind that everybody wanted. Among them was Seuchengebiete' by Asmus Tietchens, released by A-Mission Records. That label vanished quickly, and the records too. I am sure I traded some obscure Gerogerigegege LP for it, but it was worth the trade. I may have told this story when I reviewed the CD re-issue back in Vital Weekly 504. On 'Seuchengebiete', Tietchens explores the sound of water dripping in his studio sink. It was the first record on which Tietchens explored the quieter side of music. Later on, there were more volumes of this approach (although never called 'volume 2' etc.). The second volume was in 1991 (reviewed in Vital 23, when it was a paper fanzine; see advertisement elsewhere), and '3' was in Vital Weekly 121. I mentioned for the latter that I didn't get the design of the release, which is, maybe oddly, also the case here. As this CD arrived on Saturday, I took a whole Sunday off to play all four 'Seuchengebiete' instalments. Over the years, some things have changed in the music of Tietchens. It was the first 'Seuchengebiete', one of his first quiet works; these days, his music is soft. Many of his musical compositions contain sounds beyond recognition, but in this case, it is pretty clear what the source material is. The dripping of water can be recognized, but it is transformed in various ways, from delightful high-end splashes to low-end bass sounds; some of this sounds like it is changed with granular synthesis, but no doubt there is also another technology at work here. There is something profound about the music, slow, contemplative; maybe the music is a sign of the sorry state of our times. Perhaps it is the association I have with the water sounds here; that of leaky pipes in an abandoned industrial landscape. The soundtrack for a worse tomorrow? I am sure that is not what Tietchens put into his music, as I would think there is very little meaning put in by him, but it is all about the listener's associations. This time, Tietchens applies his current composing techniques to an older idea, working wonderfully well." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€13.50
Abraum Zwo
“In English, Abraum Zwo means Rubble Two. Twelve years ago I made field recordings in the Hamburg harbour. The most exciting recording was actually sensational: rubble being transported from a distant building site in a very long steel pipe (diameter approximately 80 cm.) flushed with water. I’ve never heard such sounds before. I derived four pieces (Abraum 1–4) from that material which were released in 2010. The new series (Abraum 6-10) is composed from the same basic field recordings but with a totally different approach. Due to the fact that the area where I’d recorded the original sounds has changed radically in the last twelve years, I tried to recall this bygone locale, hence the pieces’ highly atmospheric sound, as opposed to the first four which were pure musique concrète“. [Asmus Tietchens, Hamburg, April 2021]
"On the day this new Asmus Tietchens CD arrived, I went to see the new James Bond movie, 'No Time To Die' (not bad, a bit long), so seeing the label being Universal Exports made me smile. Let's hope the good relatives of Chubby Broccoli didn't trademark the name. The front cover here doesn't depict where a Bond baddie hides, but the harbour of Hamburg. This is the location where Tietchens goes for the field recordings on 'Abraum Zwo'; that stands for 'Rubble Two'. You can find the first instalment of this series in Vital Weekly 775. Tietchens didn't return to the harbour to record new field recordings. That could have been an idea, as he says that the area changed quite a bit over the past twelve years, so that would have been interesting. He returned to the original field recordings of 'Abraum' and used (his words) "a totally different approach". This time around, it is all about the atmosphere of the place. Or perhaps one could say the residue left of the area. The music as the fading memory of location now re-shaped. Some of this sounds very mysterious and vague, but I mean this is in the most positive sense of the word. The first 'Abraum' was full of sound (relatively, of course; this is post-2000 Tietchens), created with the most refined and most delicate musique concrète techniques. On this new release, everything that reverts to musique concrète is removed, and shimmering sounds is what remains. At times quite droney, but in the world of Asmus Tietchens, nothing is static. Much like the water in the harbour, everything is fluid. Tietchens traces the contour of sound without touching too much upon the sound itself. I am biased when it comes to the work of Tietchens. I know you know. I think 'Abraum Zwo' is outstandingly good work. That may not come as a surprise. In the last few days, this has been the album that was on rotation a lot. Maybe that says it all?" [FdW/Vital Weekly]
https://universal-exports.bandcamp.com
€13.00
Conclusio
From the label : New album by German sound veteran Asmus Tietchens and a return to his more industrial music roots, typefied by the title of the albums opening track ‘German Angst’. Edition of 300 copies . Digipak cover.
no Bandcamp!
"Die Stadt hatte zwischen 2003 und 2022 eine umfangreiche, aus insgesamt 18 Alben bestehende, Wiederveröffentlichungsreihe des Frühwerks Asmus Tietchens’ gemacht. Nun erscheint mit „Conclusio“ neues Studiomaterial auf dem Bremer Label.
Während auf dem kürzlich hier besprochenen Album „Lichthöfe“ Tietchens mit Thorsten Soltau zusammenarbeitete und dessen Ausgangsmaterial seinen Bearbeitungen unterzog, ist “Conclusio” wieder eine reine Soloveröffentlichung, was heißt, dass sich – der Tradition gehorchend – wieder ein Zitat des großen rumänischen, schlaflosen Pessismisten E. M. Cioran findet. Diesmal kann man lesen: „Alles steuert der Hässlichkeit und dem Gangrän entgegen: Dieser Erdball – er eitert, und die Lebenden stellen dabei ihre Wunden zur Schau, auf die die Strahlen des Leuchtgeschwürs herabfallen.“ Wer wolle angesichts des (nicht nur) gegenwärtigen Irrsinns da widersprechen?
Oft finden sich bei Besprechungen des Werks des Hamburgers Wörter wie „Abstraktion“ (etwa hier), er selbst verwendet einen Begriff, den ich in einem leicht anderen Kontext einmal bzgl. des Werks von David Jackman verwendet habe: Absolute Musik. In einem Interview meinte Tietchens einmal: „’Absolute Music’ means that it contains no message except an esthetic one. ‘Absolute Music’ is not connected with any political, spiritual, ideological or educational intention. The listener is totally free for his own impressions, feelings, possible pictures and thoughts when listening to ‘Absolute Music’. To me that is total freedom of perception. I am no teacher, no philosopher, no scientist – why should I intrude my thoughts on any other human being? I always try to let the music speak for itself. That should be enough“.
„German Angst“ eröffnet das Album mit unruhigen, leicht hektischen Klängen, denen durchaus (insbesondere im Verlauf des Stücks) ein Moment des Bedrohlichen innewohnt. Der binnengereimte Track „Die Schwere der Leere“ beginnt ruhiger, erzeugt dann aber eine ähnliche Unruhe. Anfangs meint man, auf „Lammkopf im Ofen“ würden Bleche über den Boden gezogen, dann klingt es zwischendurch, als solle hier kurzzeitig eine E-Gitarre s(t)imuliert werden. Dagegen wirkt „Imperial Logistics“ mit einzelnen stampfenden Passagen reduzierter. „Organischer Restbestand“ ist melodischer, gegen Ende wird man an Streicher erinnert. Die ersten Minuten des minimalistisch-rauschenden „Kotbeutel über Korea – hurra!“ lassen fast an Ambient denken, bevor ein Loop einsetzt, der an demente Zirkusmusik denken lässt. Das Titelstück erweckt des Eindruck, in einem Schneegestöber aufgenommen worden zu sein.
Von den zuletzt erschienenen Alben Tietchens’ klingt „Conclusio“ in besonderem Maße unheimlich, ist durchzogen von einer Atmosphäre des Irritierenden. Das im Innern der CD abgebildete Gesicht einer Person, deren Mund zum Schrei geweitet ist, das karge Interieur des Covers und das die Rückseite zierende Bild mit dem Wort “Auflösung” tragen ihr Übriges dazu bei, ein Schaudern auszulösen." (MG / African Paper]
€15.00
Neues Boot
TAL presents the first musical collaboration between Hamburg based Asmus Tietchens and Japanese artist Miki Yui, operating out of Düsseldorf for almost 20 years now. Highly respected and hugely influential artist Asmus Tietchens first made his mark on the electronic music scene in the late 1970s, whereas Miki Yui debuted her sonic settings in 1999.
Their first joint album NEUES BOOT envelops the listener with a poetic sound sensibility and a conceptual clarity which was processed and passed back and forth between their individual studios in Hamburg and Düsseldorf.
Asmus Tietchens: After Stefan Schneider suggested to release a Yui-Tietchens album on his TAL imprint Miki and I quickly developed some ideas towards our eventual collaboration.
We agreed upon an ongoing mutual exchange of material. We have both been very familiar with each other's music for a long time and we found our individual approach towards sound design to be uniquely compatible. We do not use our electronic tools in order to merely achieve the maximum of technical possibilities, but to illustrate aesthetic necessities. This entails a deliberate reduction and refined perception of the sonic characteristics of the material. Only this approach enabled us to fully realise the complete spectrum of the sounds and noises we were working with in order to construct this New Boat. Each and everyone of my treatments is e x c l u s i v e l y based on a track supplied by Miki. I added no new sound sources. Naturally the spatial and temporal dimensions of the source material were thus altered. These transformations are exactly what makes our collaboration special and unique. Very early on we had agreed on New Boat as a working title and a guiding light . Of course in the beginning we had no idea where this New Boat might take us. Now we do know. After several months of ship-building the boat has now set sails for new sonic horizons. Ahoi!
Miki Yui: The title of the album as well as the individual tracks have been inspired by conversations with Asmus. When we had a chat after one of his concerts, he told me about Kōdō, the Art or the Way of the Scent. It is a 8th century Japanese incense ceremony. Very frequently the names of Japanese incense sticks are derived from natural themes, e.g. Bairin is the plum grove, the scent of the first blossom heralding the end of winter.
This poetry, the ephemeral nature of the world reminded me of Kigo, words from a Haiku (a form of Japanese poetry), which reference a particular season or a natural phenomenon. So I chose the names of the individual pieces from Kigo as if The Boat was exploring nature whilst sailing through the seasons. Only in retrospect I realised that the titles combined create this poem:
Early spring a hazy view in the night (Oboro)
Plum groves (Bairin)
Over a Dayfly (Kagerou)
A Milkyway (Amanogawa)
Dawn (Akatsuki)
Art of fragrance (Kōdō)
On fragile thin ice (Usurai)
https://asmustietchensandmikiyui.bandcamp.com/album/neues-boot
"Exquisite electronic subtleties from two generations of explorative artists, pairing the tactile sensitivities of cult Hamburg based Asmus Tietchens with Düsseldorf resident Miki Yui for the first time with marked success.
Mutual spirits, Tietchens and Yui have long operated in pursuit of a lower case, spectral muse, and now at the behest of TAL’s Stefan Schneider they present a beautifully insoluble sound that transcends the sum of their parts. Incredibly delicate, and full of nanoscopic movement, the seven tracks unfurl between passages of burbling pastoralism and oneiric drowse, with particular highlights in the hypnotic timbral artefacts of ‘Kagerou’ or ‘Usurai’, and their 10’ of lush scenery inhabited by peacocks and a canopy of phosphorescing animaliculae and atmospheres in ‘Akatsuki’ recalling aspects of Mark Fell & Rian Treanor’s tape for our Documenting Sound series." [Boomkat]
"It’s a sad, hard fact that circulating music by means of physical objects is becoming the exception and not the rule. So, if you’re going to do it, might as well do it right and make it special. Future Audio Graphics makes LPs that bind interdisciplinary collaborations within gatefold LPs. Each combines a text by one artist, images by another and a record of sounds by a third. Ironically on Sculpture Gardens the efforts of writer François Bonnet (aka Kassel Jaeger), sculptor Virginia Overton and sound artist Anne Guthrie cohere into a consideration of impermanence.
Through his efforts to reissue works of electronic music on vinyl, Bonnet, a published author and the artistic director of Groupe de Recherche Musicales in Paris, has had plenty of opportunity to think about how ready-made vinyl objects can concentrate attention upon work, as well as how rapidly records become items to be hunted rather than merely purchased. Even when one fixes one’s work within an object, other peoples’ perceptions of the object and the work cut into it aren’t fixed. Neither is the object’s availability; LPs sooner or later drift into the collector’s realm. Bonnet doesn’t waste words on the peculiar circumstances of vinyl records in his essay, but a reader might think about his efforts to present them while reading his discussion of the relationships between art objects, ready-made objects and time. Time and the changes that accompany its passage are, he suggests, part of the artist’s material. Virginia Overton’s images depict aluminum pans that she installed at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She used them as containers of small gardens; when the plants died, she flipped them over and used them as sound resonators. Inside one of the museum’s galleries, Overton had placed cast-off pieces of metal and wood, which she repurposed as sculptures. Nothing stays the same, but in change new phenomena emerge.
Anne Guthrie’s portion of the work uses sounds collected from Overton’s exhibits as a starting point. She collected field recordings of the gallery interior, the outdoor area where the gardens were installed, weather, distant machinery and close-up captures of herself moving objects and deploying microphones. The magnified sounds of precise work and plants living and dying, sometimes straight and sometimes processed to draw out particular timbres, loom over distant jets and HVAC units, and into this mix Guthrie weaves the distant parping of her French horn. Across four discrete tracks, one can hear different moments and environments fixed for a moment in one representative configuration, which is now an object that can be bought and displayed and played in other times and places. Guthrie’s decisions and actions use Overton’s work as a starting point to illustrate Bonnet’s words."
[Bill Meyer /DUSTED]
€14.50
Harvesterhude
"2 CDs in printed paper sleeves housed in carton slip case. Designed by Asmus Tietchens.
500 copies. Dedicated to C.V. Liquidsky.
On „Harvestehude“
After more than 10 years of enthusiastic experiences and encounters with so-called „Difficult Music“ throughout the 1980ies Martin Peinemann and Asmus Tietchens deemed their somewhat differing approaches to making music compatible and agreed upon a loose collaboration in the year 1992. For various reasons (organizational and others) the work was not to take place at Audiplex studios but at Peinemann’s home studio. This modest lab featured all the necessary technical equipment needed to realize noise music meeting the standards of the day. This included an analogue 4-track-tape deck (9,5 cm/sec, Dolby noise reduction, integrated 6-channel mixer), soon after a digital 8 channel multitrack, a powerful periphery and sound producing devices of all kinds. For „Hochallee“, their first collaboration, Peinemann and Tietchens set themselves no definite deadline. The working sessions took place in an atmosphere of relaxation, usually on Saturday afternoons. By 1996 Peinemann and Tietchens finally had amassed a series of pieces they considered to be complete. At this time Peinemann began working on computer generated solo works and Tietchens moved on towards a more reductionist sound work.
„Klosterallee“, their second collaboration, was realized under completely different circumstances. In the years gone by since their last work Peinemann had deeply immersed himself into the field of extreme digital sound manipulation that he often discussed with Tietchens. From this collection of sound structures Peinemann offered some to Tietchens as sourcings for further treatments. The following expanding of these structures was not done in the form of sessions but executed by Tietchens alone over a period of three months. Peinemann then authorised the final results.
Unlike Asmus Tietchens Peinemann never released any music until now. He always valued the working process higher than the working result. The reason for this collaboration to finally come out as a double CD follows a noble motif that can be roughly translated as such: „A warning to the Old, an instruction to the Young.“ (Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, „Pädagogische Ergetzungen“, 1802).
www.aufabwegen.com
"Quite a treat: last week we reviewed a brand new release by Asmus Tietchens, and this week there is even a double CD of collaborative works. Asmus worked with lots of people in the past, from Merzbow to Vidna Obmana, from Achim Wollscheid to Arcane Device. Most of his collaborators are quite well known, save perhaps for C.V. Liquidsky (and we are still waiting for that particular album to be released
on CD as part of Die Stadt/Auf Abwegen's re-issue program), but he's the man to whom Tietchens and Martin Peinemann dedicate their collaboration. Right, Peinemann, you may ask: now who's that? I also have no idea, really, as up until now he never released anything. The two discs here were recorded in two different periods. The first disc, called 'Hochallee' (the name of the street where Peinemann lived then) has recordings the two musicians made together in the period 1992 to 1996. For
Tietchens this was an entirely different environment than the usual surroundings
of the Audiplex studios where he always seems to record (well, save for a few exceptions). With rather 'low' standards, such as a four-track recorder, six-track mixer and all sorts of apparatus, they recorded thirteen pieces, and at the end they deemed this fit enough for a release (which then took another twenty years).
The other disc is called 'Klosterallee' and it's here that in springtime 2005
Peinemann recorded basic sound material for Tietchens to re-use, and this he did
at the beloved Audiplex studios. By then Peinemann had moved his work into 'extreme
digital manipulations' (the word of the label). One is right when one says this is an interesting find, displaying us mid 90s Tietchens and mid 00s Tietchens, working
in for him slightly different surroundings (at least on one disc) and with someone with whom we have absolutely no history. I was corrected following last week's review and told that Tietchens does work with computers since about fifteen years, using GRM tools, but of course on the first disc that is not the case. These
thirteen pieces are rudimentary pieces of electronic music, sometimes blissful feedback, sometimes a dub inspired synth song ('Hochallee 12'), pieces with looped, rhythmic sounds, and in general it seems that the classic Tietchens treatment is never far away in these pieces. Several of these pieces could have been on, say,
'Aus Freude Am Elend', the various albums with Terry Burrows or some others from the early to mid 90s. That slightly mechanic play with sounds, the entrapment in sound effects (reverb plays some role indeed), but also a rolling rhythm (reminiscing krautrock, one could muse?) in 'Hochallee 6', which makes this first
disc quite an odd bunch of different approaches, but it's a variety that works
very well.
The second disc is the Tietchens we know from recent years, and indeed he doesn't
refer to himself as a reductionist, because his music doesn't resemble that of Ikeda
or Noto; also knowledge picked up last week. His current music is all about quietness,
not for any esoteric reasons, but simply because he wants us to listen more closely,
and perhaps concentration is by now a lost art form in this hectic life everyone is supposed to have these days. Here none of the source material is easily recognized, in fact not at all, but it feeds through analogue and, as we have learned since last week, digital means and reduced to a few sounds here and there sometimes held together with a simple, sustaining drone like sound, a residue of what once perhaps a much bigger sound element. It's interesting to play both of the discs back to
back and hear the progress of Tietchens and the way he treats his sounds. On the second disc perhaps less 'new', because there have been more works alike this and some of the early/mid 90s stuff has moved the background of our memory. I am not sure if that's really the case. However both CD's in this package are, no matter how different they turn out to be, quite beautiful. This is a must for every
Tietchens fan." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€18.00
8 Stücke
"Second collaborative effort between german sound manipulation pioneer Asmus Tietchens and american improv-drummer Jon Mueller. The CD features 8 tracks that run up to 53 minutes. Jon Mueller on the second collaboration: “The previous collaboration between Asmus and I involved me using only sounds derived from drum heads. For Acht Stuecke, I've used only Chinese gongs and cymbals, so a completely different range of sound occurs. The performance of the percussion material was from various non-mechanical techniques (striking, swinging gongs, extended techniques, etc.) to create a palette of mostly textural sound with a large frequency range that Asmus could work with.” And indeed, work he did! The completeness that is Acht Stuecke is of breathtaking beauty and simplicity and complexity at the same time. The album is definately more homogenous and ‘together’ than the first meeting of the two musicians. It emanates a warm and deep sound evolving ou t of total soundless blankness as it seems.
Jon Mueller has been active for several years in the us improv scene playing in various ensembles and doing solo work. he runs the excellent web mag/label/mailorder croutonmusic.com. Asmus Tietchens has been producing electronic music since the 1960ies and is one of the most renowned sound artists today in Germany. In the last five
years he was awarded twice the SWR state radio prize “Karl Sczuka Preis” for radio art. He has released more than 80 records and CDs on labels all around the world." [label info]
"...There are occasions in which one doesn’t need to speak too much to establish a truth, and the truth here lies inside the repeated bends and turns of a gorgeous album, among the best of both artists’ career. The original materials furnished by the Milwaukee percussionist - sounds of Chinese gongs and cymbals - were studio-treated by the German manipulator through his usual masterful methods, this time maintaining the qualities of the harmonic resonance of the metal rather evident amidst the choked gulps, the modified waves and the fractured hiccups that we’re used to receive from the Hamburg-based sonic transformer. There’s this splendid three-way cross between the real essence of Mueller’s stricken parts and swinging gongs, the instant mutated jargon developed by Tietchens over that, the final elemental amalgam bringing the whole to sound like a hidden microcosm where a hypnotically undulating presence is blemished by sparse singular voices of unknown entities. It’s really difficult to describe the overall feel in sheer words, but those who are gifted with the ability of picking disguised frequencies from the core of the more superficial ones are in for several special moments, aware of phenomena that not everybody can actually penetrate." [Massimo Ricci / Touching Extremes]
www.aufabwegen.com
€13.00
Lumieres
listen: https://klanggalerie.bandcamp.com/album/lumi-res
Kooperationsalbum der beiden lange befreundeten Hamburger Klangkünstler und Avantgardisten als CD im Digipack auf Klanggalerie. Asmus Tietchens ist Klangkünstler und Komponist aus Hamburg. Sein Interesse für Musique Concrete entdeckte er bereits im Alter von 10 Jahren als er eine deutsche Radiosendung hörte. Ab 1965 begann Tietchens mit Tapeloops zu experimentieren und daraus musikalische Collagen zu erstellen. Bald kam der Einsatz von Synthesizern hinzu. 1980 erschien sein Debütalbum “Nachtstücke”, produziert von Peter Baumann (Tangerine Dream). Es folgte eine Reihe von Alben mit elektronischer Popmusik für das Label Sky, Heimat vieler berühmter Krautrock-Bands. Tietchens verwendet für seine Kompositionen oft Klangquellen wie Wasser, menschliche Stimmen oder Papier. Auf Labels wie United Dairies, Esplendor Geometrico oder Dom Records vertreten, ist er mit der Industrial-Musikszene verbunden. Tietchens hat keinerlei akademischen Hintergrund, alles was er tut, ist autodidaktisch erlernt. Trotzdem war er viele Jahre Professor für Sounddesign in Hamburg (FH für Gestaltung). Tom Fleischauer aka. Alice Freshmouth ist als Musiker, Komponist, Engineer und Produzent seit Jahrzehnten im Hamburger Underground und darüber hinaus bekannt. Seit 40 Jahren miteinander befreundet, haben beide Musiker hier erstmals zusammengearbeitet, die elf Tracks bilden eine ideale Schnittmenge ihrer unterschiedlichen musikalischen Universen.
Asmus Tietchens is a sound artist and composer from Hamburg, Germany. He got interested in Musique Concrete by listening to a German radio programme when he was 10 years old. In 1965, at the age of 18, Asmus started experimenting with tape loops and turned them into musical collages. Soon, the use of synthesizers was added. In 1980 his debut album Nachtstücke was released, produced by Peter Baumann of Tangerine Dream. This was soon followed by a series of albums of electronic pop music for the Sky label, home of many Krautrock bands. Tietchens often uses special source materials for his compositions such as water (Seuchengebiete), human voices (Von Mund zu Mund), paper (Papier ist geduldig). He is associated with the Industrial music scene through his collaborations and releases on labels such as United Dairies, Esplendor Geometrico or Dom Records. Tietchens never studied composition, he has no academic background, everything he does is self taught or learnign by doing. Nevertheless, he was professor for sound design in Hamburg in recent years. Alice Freshmouth is an anagram project by Tom Fleischhauer. Tom plays guitar and bass and has worked as producer, live sound engineer, booker, promoter and composer. Him and Asmus have been friends for over 40 years, they regularly meet in Hamburg, either as musicians or attending concerts. When Tom played Asmus his most recent musical compositions, the two decided that their work was not completely compatible, but shows enough similar approach to start a spontaneous collaboration. Soon afterwards first ideas were exchanged and half a year later an album was born. Both musicians think that there is equal measure of each of them to be heard on this CD. Full tracklist: 1. Courbé 2. Drone Léger 3. La Lueur 4. Bruit De Nuages 5. Sombre 6. Long Souffle 7. Sous La Lumière 8. À Partir De 9. Lune Souriante 10. Blanche 11. Claire.
https://www.klanggalerie.com/gg482
"Let’s assume Asmus Tietchens needs no introduction; in about 1000 podcasts (yes, a small celebration coming up in Vital Weekly 1470), he appears 48 times. It’s also no secret I love his work very much. In recent years, Tietchens has worked with many people, mainly by exchanging sound files through the Internet. I am unsure if that’s also the case of Alice Freshmouth, which is an anagram of Tom Fleischhauer. I had not heard of him, but he’s a guitar and bass player and has worked as a producer, live sound engineer, booker, promoter, and composer. More importantly, he’s been friends with Asmus for 40 years, and they meet regularly at concerts. They believe their current work could have been more compatible, but a similar approach led to a spontaneous collaboration. Ideas were exchanged, and only a little later, there was an album. It could be like Tietchens’ approach to the studio-as-instrument that he could work with anybody. Yet, this album’s music also sounds a bit different from other recent Tietchens collaborations. The typical Tietchens sound he gets with the sort of processing he does is part of this, but unlike many other times, it’s embedded in whatever Fleischhauer brings. It is hard to say what that is, but the music sounds more musical or less abstract than what we usually hear from Tietchens (with or without guests). It is sometimes industrial or ambient, but always with that vague notion of a melody, or at least a trace. Also, there seems to be a greater diversity of sounds in the music here, with more field recordings, straightforward drone sounds, and vaguely industrial soundscapes. It is a vastly varied release, so it’s somewhat surprising. Indeed, this is the most different of his recent collaborations. Suppose what I suspect is accurate, and they recorded this together in the studio or sat together while working on the final mix. In that case, this might mean Tietchens should, perhaps, let more people in the studio and change his modus operandi, as these results are excellent.
Following a string of re-issues, this is an all-new work for Tietchens on the Klang Galerie label." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€15.00
Stones Air Axioms
"Stones, Air, Axioms" is a sound work based on the relationship between the architecture and acoustics of St Pierre Cathedral in Poitiers. It is articulated around informal acoustic experiments and a study of the site. It is restricted by the range of noises potentially generated by the site… [label info]
www.circum-disc.com
"The starting point of this is quite interesting. Before electricity arrived there we were other forms of technology to communicate. Look at the architecture of churches or amphitheaters, and you can see how clever they are to resonate a message. This sound work deals with that notion: the travel of air waves through space. In the St. Pierre Cathedral in Poitiers the church organ is used, as well as white noise generator opposite (some 75 meters away) of it and microphones are used to pick those sounds moving through the cathedral. Each piece here, four in total, deals with a specific quality of the relation sound and architecture. Although I am not sure if I can fully understand the exact nature of this process, I think this is a wonderful work. It opens with 'SAA1: Air Volume', which sounds like shifting heavy objects through a heavy reverberant space, some close by and some far away. Like testing the space. In the other pieces the mood is less heavy, or better in 'SAA2: For Standing Waves' is sheer quietness, occasionally interrupted by louder sounds and occasional long form sine wave like sounds. Here 'far away' comes more in play. In 'SAA3: For Standing Waves, Disturbances', organ and sine waves move about, indeed in a somewhat more disturbing way, pleasantly forceful, which continues in the final piece. I am not sure if I learned more about the spatial quality of this particular cathedral, but I do know I heard a more than excellent CD." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€13.00
A Semiotic Survey
https://fernsrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/a-semiotic-survey
Limited to 200 copies. Cover drawing by Frederic Malette – Graphite, pastel, essence – 2018
Translation by William Ransone.
Paraponera clavata picture by Didier Descouens.
Field recordings made by Thomas Tilly at Saül and on the Rorota road, French Guiana, May 2015.
Composed using field recordings, electronic sounds and microphones dysfunctions, from 2015 to 2018 by Thomas Tilly.
All the recordings were realized during a residence supported by the DAC (direction des affaires culturelles) Guiana.
€12.00
Codex Amphibia (Phonotaxis)
THOMAS TILLY
CODEX AMPHIBIA (PHONOTAXIS)
Cd Digipack | APO 15
Booklet 24 pages + Leporello 5 pages.
Digital version | FLAC | MP3 :
thomastilly.bandcamp.com/album/codex-amphibia-phonotaxis
Codex amphibia (Phonotaxis) has been recorded, composed and mixed between 2016 and 2020 in French Guiana and France by Thomas Tilly.
credits
released June 29, 2021
Teaser : www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1FH_8YPknk
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Video teaser of the sound art and herpetology project realized by Thomas Tilly (composer) and Antoine Fouquet (Research associate at The French National Center for Scientific Research) during the frogs explosive breeding phenomenon, french Guiana 2016-2018. Pictures by Antoine Fouquet, Thomas Tilly and Audric Broux.
This Pieces are part of a both scientific and artistic collaborative project conducted with Herpetologist Antoine Fouquet, research associate at French National Center for Scienctific Research Cnrs. These compositions follow Codex amphibia (an interpretation of the explosive breeding), released in 2018 on Glistening Examples.
This work has benefited from an "Investissement d'Avenir" grant managed by Agence Nationale de la Recherche (CEBA, ref. ANR-10-LABX-25-01), and has been supported by Le Lieur Multiple, Jazz à Poitiers, Césaré, Studio d'en Haut, and has benefited of the grand "Brouillon d'un rêve, Pierre Schaeffer", by SCAM.
https://label-aposiopese.bandcamp.com/album/codex-amphibia-phonotaxis
€16.50
Taikuri Tali
Antti Tolvi is a self-taught Finnish musician known for his participation in groups like Avarus, Kemialliset Ystävät, Lauhkeat Lampaat, Päivänsäde and Rauhan Orkesteri. 'Taikuri Tali' is a typical example of Finnish psychedelic folk music. A delectable solo work, not so minimalistic, as his first 'Pianoketo' double LP on Fonal Records, but a more trippy psychedelic one! His music takes on a meditative quality, with organ melodies and electronic noisy sounds. An amazing work and one of his best.
https://ikuisuus.bandcamp.com/album/taikuri-tali
€18.00
Music for an unprepared Autoharp
Kevin Tomkins is best known for his work in Whitehouse and his own group Sutcliffe Jugend, now called Sutcliffe No More. He also worked with Bodychoke, Inertia and Patient K. Most of his music has its background in the power electronics scene that evolved in Great Britain around the label Come Organisation and the group Whitehouse. Power electronics is a style of noise music that typically consists of static, screeching waves of feedback, analogue synthesizers making sub-bass pulses or high frequency squealing sounds; with screamed and distorted vocals. The genre is noted for its influence from industrial. It is generally atonal, like most noise music and also features a lack of conventional melodies or rhythms. To match its sonic excess, power electronics relies heavily upon extreme thematic and visual content: whether in lyrics, album art, or live performance actions. For his solo work, Kevin sometimes uses a very different style to his group work. An autoharp or chord zither is a string instrument belonging to the zither family. It uses a series of bars individually configured to mute all strings other than those needed for the intended chord. This album's music was all generated on such an instrument and is totally different to Sutcliffe No More. Its roots lie in avantgarde music rather than noise, with rhythms and melodies generated on the instrument. It was edited from over 20 different recordings to present an album of stunning variety and beauty
https://www.klanggalerie.com/gg440
€15.00
Shanghai Files - 6 (or more) Ring-Shaped Films
Shanghai Files (6 or more ring-shaped films)
This is a new partitura of a sound work whose origins date back to 2007. Initially conceived as an environmental piece, it consisted of six pre-recorded sequences of different lengths, each looping on its own speaker suspended from a large, centuries-old plane tree. The setting was the garden of a historic villa.
The original installation was titled "6 Pellicole ad anello" (6 Ring-Shaped Films), echoing loops and growth rings alike — ideally protective sound films.
In the unusual year of 2020, I dusted off those old audio files — including some alternate takes — and created a home-based quadraphonic version, which I eventually mixed down into a stereo snapshot of its ever shifting layers and shared through a month-long series of radio broadcasts.
This stereo adaptation took on a different name. I pictured the sound files like sticks from the game Shanghai: held in the hand, then released — falling into a chance pattern, a circle of sound shifting with each new drop. Hence, "Shanghai Files."
The new partitura began to take shape when Darren Tate asked me for a full-length work to inaugurate his newly founded label, Fungal Editions. I sent him an earlier version of what would become the main piece — he readily approved it as a fitting start to the project. That prompted me to revisit the material and expand it with two additional tracks.
The composition eventually found its final form — revu et corrigé, so to speak.
I actually had a second, much shorter track on hand — a sort of offshoot of S-Files. While the first leans more toward ambient, this one edges closer to the domain of radio art, with cut-ups and sonic manipulations that suggest a more radiophonic intent.
At that point, space had opened up for a further development — there was a need for a 3rd chemical bath. The title speaks for itself: a slow, metamorphic wash that alters, dilates, and reconfigures a chosen cluster of the ring-shaped films.
"Shanghai Files" partly draws on material from my documentary soundtrack work around 2007, when I would process sound to create specific backgrounds — or what I came to call “tints.”
The voice, originally recorded for those documentaries, by contrast, was later isolated and broken down into tiny, luminous fragments that subtly come to mark the main piece.
The release comes in a beautiful 6-panel Ecopack. Over the years, Darren has shared with me a number of nature photographs, which I’ve finally woven into a delicate visual montage. And our collaboration doesn’t end here…
To Gualtiero Toniutti
27.4.1961 – 31.5.2023
original recordings 2007
additional recordings, “partitura”, mix 2020-2024
remastered by Colin Potter at IC Studio
artwork by Massimo Toniutti based on Darren Tate’s photographs
layout designed by Deison
https://massimotoniutti.bandcamp.com/album/shanghai-files-6-or-more-ring-shaped-films
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but this might be the first time I've received a CD from Darren Tate. It's not a release with his music, which, if remembered well, was on different labels, but the start of his Fungal Editions as a label. A label, so I suppose, to release his work and not that of others, so much to my surprise, it's new music by Massimo Toniutti. I always thought Massimo was the slightly unknown Toniutti, but these days it seems he does more releases than his brother Giancarlo. On this new CD, he has three pieces, of which the first is the primary one. The genesis of these pieces is in a work he already composed in 2007. That was "an environmental piece, it consisted of six pre-recorded sequences of different lengths, each looping on its speaker suspended from a large, centuries-old plane tree. The setting was the garden of a historic villa." In 2020, when we had time to revisit the past, he dusted off the sounds in his archive and composed ever-changing patterns with them. On CD, he treats these sounds like the game Shanghai; "held in the hand, then released — falling into a chance pattern, a circle of sound shifting with each new drop. Hence, "Shanghai Files." I admit I don't play many games, so I have no idea what this is. The sound sources are diverse, including spoken and murmured voices, large drones, and small sounds, all of which are digitally manipulated. Much like Steve Roden's work, these sounds overlap in numerous ways, never forming the same configuration twice. Unlike Roden's work, Toniutti's music on '41 Ring-Shaped Films', as the central piece is called, isn't as ambient and follows a slightly more cut-up feeling, moving through vastly different landscapes.
'Spillikins (Radio Edit)' is the shortest of the three pieces and a more traditional song-like composition, employing musique concrète-like cut-up techniques within a shorter time frame. Still, I would think with much of the same sound material, it would turn out to be a neat little radio play. The CD ends with 'A 3rd Chemical Bath', in which all sounds blend in a more amorphous tonal poem. It's a natural resting point of the CD, an ambient coda, and it's not that the album needs such a coda. It's not what happens before that must result in a ten-minute long-form drone piece, but it's a fine piece nonetheless. An excellent inaugural release for this label. (FdW)
€15.00
Mureedil
“Tonton Macoute is a French band formed in 2006. With a stock of cheap instruments, the trio wanted to find a dense, subtle and massive sound, in order to create motorik soundscapes, psychedelic drones, electric hypnosis and timeless storms. Rehearsals and recordings took place in a basement. Using the studio as an instrument, all the tapes were re-worked to produce this LP record titled “Mureedil”. Early listeners mentioned experimental rock and compared the music of Tonton Macoute to F/i, This Heat, Harmonia or Sonic Arts Union. Etienne Coussirat : guitar, keyboards, drums, percussions, etc. Emmanuel Holterbach : guitar, tapes, analog synth, etc. Jacques Masson : guitar, bass, organ, etc. Recorded from February to June 2006. Edited, mixed and mastered at Studio Fluorescent, Lyon, France from August to November 2007.
Etienne Coussirat (born in 1980) is a musician who builds impossible musical instruments and practices electro-acoustic improvisation. His work focuses on auditory perception and on the exploration of acoustic phenomena. Emmanuel Holterbach (born in 1971) plays enharmonic glasses with Orbes, offers acousmagic experiences with eHœCo, rocks with Tonton Macoute and presents his kaleidoscopic sound environments in Europe, Canada and China since 1992. He’s also in charge of Eliane Radigue’s archives.
Jacques Masson (born in 1974) is a music fan and a music journalist. He writes poems, draws and composes electronic miniatures.
Their first LP titled “Mureedil” is also the first record released by Les Productions Fluorescentes, available now in an edition limited to 300 copies.” [label info]
€19.50
Entities Inertias Faint Beings
From David Toop:
The music existed already, spores maybe or dormant clusters of digital files. Out of three periods of solitude the germination began. The first was in Queensland, on Tamborine Mountain (an aboriginal name), so silent at night that I listened to recorded music – Japanese gagaku, Buddhist ritual from Bhutan, Korean Confucian music – as if drifting into cavernous black space. Stepping into sleep I saw a hypnagogic image - a transparent swimming pool suspended over the mouth of a volcano. I read Stephen Mansfield’s book on Japanese stone gardens – “Successful stone arrangements seem almost alive, the elements conversing among themselves with an occult vitality, the call and response that has been noted between well-placed rocks resembling the chanting of Buddhist sutras” ; Daylight listening in chill air, hearing whip birds, butcher birds, noisy mynahs, kookaburra chatter, rainbow lorikeets; catapult elastic, I wrote, radio waves in a kettle, electric buzzers. On Queensland’s Gold Coast I gazed at a distant humpback whale breaching out to sea, watched Yasujiro Ozu’s 1934 silent version of A Story of Floating Weeds, listened to cicadas burst into life as a helicopter flew overhead.
Back into society and driving with Lawrence English I asked him, why would anybody release music in the 21st century? He laid out his philosophy; I was convinced. Then in St Ives, Cornwall, solitary again, drawing, reading Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects and Clarice Lispector’s Agua Viva (her beautiful sentence: “dry keys echo in the dark and humid early hours”), gazing at ocean flux, music trembling into life from secreted audio files, music becoming living entities. Phantoms rose up out of sea mist, images of black light and blistered skin from photographers (Takuma Nakahira and Tomatsu Shomei), the fermenting of sounds. From a distance I heard voices – the extraordinary painter Mariko Sugano reciting ancient Japanese garden texts on the taboos associated with stone setting; Emi Watanabe’s flute as if a ghost from the Noh; the sounds of underwater creatures in my pond; Sylvia Hallett’s sarangi crying (in cavernous black space); the fervent drumming of Rie Nakajima’s small mechanical beings (like cooking with paper, wire and batteries); John Butcher’s reeds, music as a scientific exploration of the body, the instrument. Rie talked about the properties of objects, soft or hard. In the Noh play Aoi no Ue, the spirit is compelled with drum and plucked string (the catalpa bow).
In solitude I contemplated death, decay, the gush of life. Back in the car, Lawrence told me, when you die you’ll leave many projects unfinished. I laughed. Unspeakable truths, notes for a language to come, maybe not this world.
room40.bandcamp.com/album/entities-inertias-faint-beings
"Composer/performer/improviser David Toop’s latest release traces the seam between sound and music, paying attention to the hidden sounds that surround us and turning silence inside out.
In a lot of ways I’ve come to dislike music,” David Toop told The Wire in 2003. “I love sound, I love silence, but music as a whole I don’t like anymore.” You might assume that would have troubled him, given that Toop, then 54, had been deeply involved with music for most of his life, in virtually every role imaginable: performer, improviser, composer, critic, theorist, archivist, curator, and label owner. But if it represented any sort of crisis for him—six years before, burnout and “indifference to contemporary music” had led Toop to hang up his hat as a music journalist—it didn’t hold back his output. Since making the statement, Toop has continued to perform and lecture, released a half-dozen albums, and written two books, including the recently published Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation, and the Dream of Freedom.
But Toop’s turn away from music, that complicated category of organized sound, has been crucial in one very important aspect: It has allowed him to ask probing questions about the nature of listening. Those questions come to a head on Entities Inertias Faint Beings, his first studio album since 2007’s Sound Body. Offering a vibrant array of rustle and hum, the new album traces the seam between sound and music, between the intentional and the incidental, between expression and mute abstraction. A partial index of its sounds would include the whine of rubbed wineglass rims; shortwave radios on the fritz; the electric buzz of the forest canopy at night; the languid click of fingernails across guitar strings; the whirr and flap of a 16mm film projector’s take-up reel. It is an album about paying attention to the hidden sounds that surround us, about turning silence inside out. And it is an album about using sound to find one's own bearings.
Entities Inertias Faint Beings got its start as an autobiography—or, more precisely, it is the result of what turned out to be an abortive case of writer’s block. Its genesis lies in three periods of solitude: first a stay on Tamborine Mountain in subtropical Queensland, Australia (“so silent at night that I listened to recorded music—Japanese gagaku, Buddhist ritual from Bhutan, Korean Confucian music—as if drifting into cavernous black space,” Toop writes in his introduction to the album), and then on Queensland’s Gold Coast, where cicadas harmonized with helicopters. Back in Cornwall, trying and failing to write his life’s story, he began sifting through several years' worth of personal recordings he had stored on his computer: small, percussive thunks; filament-like drones; the crinkling of paper. Shuffling, layering, and arranging—not so much composing as feeling his way through the material, as if improvising—he added new sounds to the mix, like a quiet passage of acoustic guitar from one of his daily practice sessions, and a hydrophone recording from his garden pond. And in London, he fleshed out the pieces with the help of musician friends. The improvising saxophonist John Butcher lends trilling, bird-like sounds to two tracks; Rie Nakajima's battery-powered motorized objects rattle and whirr, suggesting insect colonies in upheaval.
The overall result—thematically, anyway—is something like one of W.G. Sebald’s literary peregrinations: a palimpsest of place, memory, and accident, although its precise route is unknown to all but its creator. There is little to tell us what any of these clicks and pings might actually be. Several of the album’s track titles suggest cryptic headings scrawled on notecards in dusty filing cabinets: “dry keys echo in the dark and humid early hours”; “pieces of wood and iron, phials of odours”; “sea slug.” They function as indices of possible experiences, and if they explain little—do the bassy gurgles of “sea slug” really come from a gastropod mollusk?—they offer unusual and inviting travelogues consisting of little more than white noise and feral throb.
But Toop can’t quite resist sneaking music—that most elegantly ordered aspect of organized noise—back into the equation. Again and again, understated wisps of melody, harmony, and rhythm surface briefly and disappear just as quickly, sending out ripples that supercharge every corner of this lovely, engrossing album. In the album’s centerpiece, “ancestral beings, sightless by their own dust,” Sylvia Hallett’s sarangi, a bowed string instrument from Hindustani classical music, weaves an eerie, mournful air over slow, methodical pulses. Then, at the track’s end, a jungle’s worth of growling, chirping, buzzing sounds swells and is swallowed in turn by the steady gush of a tropical rainstorm. Toop has compared his compositional processes to traditional Japanese stone gardens—one track, “setting stones,” quotes a thousand-year-old passage on the subject—and at its most engrossing, Entities captures the uncanny qualities of inanimate objects in conversation with one another. It is a way of suggesting that the music exists independently even of its creator; it is a product of the act of listening itself. By the act of focusing our ears, we bring it to life—and vice versa." [Pitchfork]
€23.50
Musique Inconcrete
After the quickly sold out »Ggràn« cassette, released on Fragment Factory in 2016, we are very happy to welcome back the Italian sound artist Mauro Diciocia aka Torba for his 2nd contribution to the FF label catalogue. »Musique Inconcrète« is the follow-up to »Musica Conventionale«, released earlier this year on his own Edizioni Aaltra imprint, and marks the second installment in a trilogy of related recordings, informally named »Le Musiche«. While being active in the field of contemporary sound art and noise music for more than a decade, Diciocia has produced a whole lot of mostly small run cassette releases. This LP is Torba's first and long overdue full-length album for the vinyl format.
While Diciocia's latest work is far from being composed in classical terms, the concept behind the album revolves around the idea of sketch or annotation. Or better still: The inconcrète. A semi-false (or semi-correct) french word, used to undermine the consistency of the french Musique Concrète tradition in a rather light-hearted manner. During the conception of this album, MD was strongly influenced by the work »Incompiuto - The Birth of a Style« by the Italian contemporary art collective Alterazioni Video. They loudly claim that Incompiuto – the unfinished – is the only Italian art style of some significance in the past 50 years: "The term ‘incompiuto’ refers to the architectural and infrastructural works whose construction has been halted, and which can be witnessed throughout the entire Italian peninsula. They are all publicly funded, and for a variety of reasons (design errors, political decisions, inaccurate cost estimates, contractors' bankruptcies, evident disregard of building regulations, the disappearance of funds, etc.) their construction has been interrupted, leaving behind a series of ruins in reverse.” (Alterazioni Video)
Far from any reference to post-architecture or mafia-political controversy, the final output of »Musique Inconcrète« is a macro cut-up of sound-screens reorganized as quasi-organic narration: Fragments of unfinished compositions, roughly assembled according to a mere aesthetic criteria. Beyond the sporadic use of oscillators and a few inserts of other people's music manipulated on ¼-inch tape, the whole LP is made out of field recordings collected in the region of Salento in southern Italy, where Diciocia is currently living. All environmental sounds were captured with common consumer electronics (walkman and mobile phones) in order to give back the domestic feeling of an abandoned opera. Speaking of geography, the first track Lapjèdr Fòr is the only exception. Intended as an introduction to the whole narration, it testifies MD's emotional and non-linear journey back from Germany, where he spent about eight years, to Southern Italy: It contains a clashing mix of recordings made in Berlin and around the seaside of Torre Lapillo.
The pictures for the artwork of the album were taken by the photographer Gabriele Albergo, whose perpetual-in-progress project »Salento Death Valley - A Black Diary of the Most Beloved Italian Peninsula« aims to deconstruct the touristically idealized image of the region through the serial production of what he calls anti-postcards.
Edition of 300 copies on black vinyl.
https://fragmentfactory.bandcamp.com/album/musique-inconcr-te
"Many of the sounds on Musique Inconcrète are thin, threadlike, fibrous, like amplified insect legs or the metallic rustle of uncut guitar strings. Usually such a description would apply to an album with much more sound processing and alteration involved in its construction, not a work that relies as heavily on mostly unmanipulated field recordings as this does, but the singular vision that audio collage maestro Mauro Diciocia (a.k.a. Torba) has adopted for Musique Inconcrète is unconcerned with “usually.” The six tracks on the LP are true sonic sketches, a structure he borrows from the Alterazioni Video collective’s tradition of Incompiuto—the incomplete. Diciocia warmly embraces a state of unfinishedness, fully content to explore acoustic settings and movements with qualities that might often be cited as weaknesses: insubstantiality, choppiness, frailty. He uses the aforementioned field recordings—most of which were captured in southern Italy—as fragile canvases for his sketches, their beautifully mundane soundscapes both contributing their own unique textures to the music as well as serving as a base for quiet interjections of buzzing static; occasional and very choice musical samples; and other oddities. The recordings themselves are often shaky and unstable, an effect that’s achieved via either subtle processing or the recording medium itself; Diciocia chose to use basic electronics like small tape recorders and mobile phones to evoke “the domestic feeling of an abandoned opera.” Such careful efforts to fully adopt an intentional lack of polish or seamlessness make Musique Inconcrète not only a fascinating and thought-provoking release but also more lush and well-realized than one could ever think possible." [Noisenotmusic]
"Wenn das neue Torba-Album ein Pendant in der Welt der haptisch erfahrbaren Artefakte hat, dann ist es die Ruine – ein Phänomen, welches das Künstlerkollektiv Alterazione Video jüngst am Beispiel unvollendeter Architektur und Infrastruktur untersuchte, an verschiedenen Konstruktionen, die aus Geldmangel, wegen technischer Probleme, politischer Planänderungen und ähnlicher Gründe Fragment bleiben mussten. In der dazu entstandenen Studie wurden sie als die bedeutendsten Kunstwerke des heutigen Italiens bezeichnet.
“Musique Inconcrète”, erneut eine Reihe an feinsinnigen Cut-Up-Kollagen, wurde stark von diesen Überlegungen getriggert und setzt sich aus eher spontan zusammengesetzten Komponenten zusammen, denen man ihre Fragmentiertheit anmerkt. Benannt hat Torba das Resultat allerdings nicht nach dem Unvollendeten, sondern nach dem “Inkonkreten”, was eine ganze Reihe weiterer Bedeutungsnuancen eröffnet.
Im Vergleich zur One Track-CD “Musica Convenzionale”, dem ersten Teil der losen Reihe “Le Musiche”, erst recht aber zu früheren Veröffentlichungen, sind die sieben Tracks des neuen Longplayers noch ein ganzes Stück dezenter, andeutungshafter und ungreifbarer: Mikrosequenzen, deren Soundmaterial diffus an Zikaden, Straßenlärm, Sinustöne, Wind und Wasser und zwitschernde Vögel, aber auch an jazziges Basspiel erinnert, eine Viel-, wenn nicht Unzahl an per Telefon aufgezeichnetem Material, dazu Songzitate und immer wieder dezente Manipulation – all das liegt übereinander, greift ineinander und verschmilzt doch nur soweit miteinander, dass das Konstrukt einer Einheit verwehrt bleibt. Alles verbindet sich gerade so stark, dass die Konturen einzelner Klänge undeutlich und eben unkonkret werden.
Man kann darin freilich eine Kritik an den Ideen der Musique Concrète, oder zumindest das Aufzeigen einer Kehrseite und eines blinden Flecks sehen, betonten die Pioniere dieser Musik doch besonders das Material in seiner wie selbstverständlich angenommenen Abgegrenztheit. Die einzig deutliche Grenze, die Torba hier zieht, ist die des immer wieder überraschenden Schlusspunktes einer Sequenz oder einer Tonspur, womit er an einige seine früheren Tape-Veröffentlichungen anknüpft. Torba ist nach wie vor ein Gelände mit vielen abrupt endenden Sackgassen. Mehr noch als in den opulenteren Stücken wird dies in den zwei minimalistischen “Intermezzi” deutlich, in denen der (teils verfremdete und im Tempo hochgeschraubte) Auftakt einer berühmten Klaviersonate durch ein Szenario verhuschter Sounds getrieben wird. Daran, dass das Motiv immer wieder nach drei Tönen de nova da capo geht, mag man sich gar nicht gewöhnen, und soll es vielleicht auch nicht.
In dieser Spannung, in der die einzige klare Kontur die Evidenz des Unfertigen ist, liegt die Signifikanz und natürlich die größte Herausforderung von “Musique Inconcrète”. Hat man sich daran gewöhnt, erkennt man viel Schönheit in dem Gebräu aus Verkehrslärm, Stimmengewirr und verschwommener Jahrmarktsmusik." (U.S./African Paper)
€18.00
Mein Licht beleuchtet nur Abgruende
"processed fieldrecordings of a journey through the baltic states, finland + lapland. reflections on constructed nature + disruption as utopia.
01 - anorexie im bauch eines wals (12:42)
02 - faules blut in molochs adern (19:38)
03 - keinen traum mehr zu haben (01:24)
04 - fuer die noch lenenden toten (17:32)
05 - vermehrt zu gast im laeukemiecluster (23:38)" [label info]
http://telenautik.de/grimm/totstellen
"Der Alptraum kommt in lautleisegefälligen Schritten, die baltischen Länder bieten neben der touristisch entlegenen Industrieromantik auch etwas wie ein dreckig-verschlafenes Lokalkolorit, welchem mit Mikrophon und Sampler zu Leibe gegangen werden kann. Wann beginnt der Alptraum wirklich? Dann wenn man aufwacht und feststellt, dass die Realität sich bei aller Authentizität doch beliebig verformen lässt. Totstellen hat in 5 Kompositionen seine einjährige Reise durch die baltischen Länder festgehalten, streng feldrekorderistisch, wie ein audiophiles Tagebuch welches die jeweiligen Reisemomente auf ehrlichste und naheliegendste Art zu skizzieren vermag. Mal rauschen die Bäche, dann wiederum dräunt und hallt der industrielle Alltag der Straßen und öffentlichen Plätze durch die Aufnahmen, werden Funkstimmen und Wassertropfen zu grotesken Klangmonstern, die ihre Formwandlung auf unerklärlich hässlich-faszinierende Weise exhibitionistisch zur Schau stellen. Wenngleich Totstellen’s Abgründe sich ihrer Funktion wohl nur im Gedächtnis seiner eigenen Reiseerinnerungen öffnen, atmet »Mein Licht Beleuchtet Nur Abgründe« eine ganz eigene Sprache, das verworren-gutturale Geflecht aus Erinnerung und Lücke. Die archaische Umverpackung, handgenäht und mit Siebdruck versehen, macht aus diesem Release eine besonders intime Angelegenheit. Chapeau." [Thorsten Soltau / AEMAG]
"...Totstellen uses both field recordings, but plays music, sound material creates what he encounters, like the rustle of plastic and metal buckets on ticking. In one way or another, the atmosphere is nostalgic and melancholic compositions and are true sound paintings. These beautiful CDR's packaged in a self-sewn cover with a picture book where the emptiness of the city and nature plays a central role. Highly recommended!" [JKH/Vital
Weekly]
€12.00
Oberhausen Ritual
12" heavy 180 gram black vinyl. solid black matte cardboad sleeve with glossy black hot-foil print, plus 12" inlay and sticker. this lp includes an mp3-download-code. hand numbered edition 200 copies + overpressing
it was in the fall of 2016 that trepaneringsritualen in the shape of th.oth XIX graced the maschinenfest stage with one of their infamous rituals, and naturally this is mandatory to be documented via the raubkauf series. trepaneringsritualen has made quite a name for itself, with the signature “dödsindustri” sound since 2008, an especially vile brew of upfront electronic noise, feedback and agitating night-rhythms, fuelled by eclectic references to all kinds of magick.
the set presented on “oberhausen ritual” is a concise representation of their musical output so far, familiar tracks alternating with unheard ones, all coalescing into an intoxicatingly vile stream of sound, clocking in well under 40 minutes, yet leaving nothing to be desired.
it’s with the bleak abyss of “immaculate & incorporeal” that the listener gets sucked into the otherworld that is trepaneringsritualen, with th.oth XIX’s trademark vibrant, guttural vocals kicking in on “a black egg”, and “the 7th man” offering the first appearance of the drums of death. from there, it’s a constant buildup, with every track adding more of the ritual’s raw, primordial force, culminating in the glorious “he who is my mirror”. and it’s that grand finale which also best exemplifies his crossover credibility with other extreme music scenes (i.e. metal).
the success of trepaneringsritualen doesn’t simply come from producing led-heavy death industrial, it comes from being unique and authentic. originality and dedication, simplicity and a more than convincing overall picture – to which this live document adds an important feature.
https://raubbau.bandcamp.com/album/oberhausen-ritual-live-at-maschinenfest-2016
€25.00
Leviathan Device
"Triangular Ascension is the debut album by Venezuela's Federico Agreda and a much welcomed addition to the Cyclic Law Roster. Taking inspiration from Thomas Hobbes book "Leviathan", the album aims to depict the inner nightmare of the reality of mankind, ever dwelling in fear and self-destruction. Upon activation of the "Device", the water once used by the Elohim to create life, rages over the lands cleansing the planet from every living creature that crawls the soil, concluding in a post-apocalyptic requiem sung by the leviathans themselves. The music translates into a carefully crafted work full of cinematic drones of ruthless atmospheric power, destined to make Triangular Ascension a name to be reckoned with.
Edition of 1000 copies in 4 panel Digipack.
9 Tracks. Running Time 59:40" [label info]
www.cycliclaw.com
www.cycliclaw.com
€13.00
Clonic Earth
"The experimental Italian composer returns to PAN with a new LP, titled 'Clonic Earth'. His ongoing output for the label has long-presented his electroacoustic sound compositions where since the mid-'00s, he has utilized analogue live sampling and real-time editing of field and studio recordings by means of manipulation of 1/4 inch tape.
Asides from being a founding member of the Italian avant-rock group 3/4HadBeenEliminated, he has worked extensively with various musicians, choreographers and multimedia artists including Thomas Ankersmit, Antoine Chessex, Werner Dafeldecker, Anthony Pateras, and Robert Piotrowicz.
His studio compositions, documented on few records, often explore themes of the internal - represented both by the psychological and the physical - and of the occult, which with the use of spoken text makes them often deeply existential works, self-investigations of the psychological, emotional and irrational horror within.
The new record, 'Clonic Earth' is a perturbing, compelling and eventually mind-expanding work, marked by compositional strategies of exploded narratives, psychological insight and oracular literary references, where questions about the boundaries of spatial perception in the decoding processes of acousmatic music are overturned into existential, metaphysical questions.
Tricoli's allegorical and philosophical universe takes the form of an unhinged mind's landscape swarming with estranged sound objects, and sometimes reminiscent, in the complexity of details and surrealistic effects, of Hieronymus Bosch's larger paintings. Compared to his previous works, the content of 'Clonic Earth' explores more synthesized and heavily processed sounds, especially vocals, often appearing in the form of a religious, electrified chanting.
The record is described by its author as a natural consequence of the internal collapse depicted in his previous record, 'Miseri Lares': 'As if all the debris left inside my loudspeakers have been ignited to expand into the ether, to find a justification at the principle of Chaos, or Cosmos alike.'
This movement is expressed by references to the theme of fire as original matter in the Chaldean Oracles which, together with the later work of Philip K. Dick, are the main sources for the vocal/text elements of the composition. Fire, intended as the convulsive principle of existence, but also an ontologically terminal element - hence a representation of the infinite decay and a mean of communication with the otherworldly Ð serves the author a metaphor for the acousmatic listening experience itself: a borderline perception of sounds eternally fixed in their spasmodic disappearance, which could eventually drag us into a different layer of reality, drastically changing, subverting, or expanding the space in which they are diffused. A ritual, somehow, which may link the listener and the perceptive space that he inhabits with whatever lies beyond the loudspeakers, beyond the vibrating surface of the world.
The 2xLP is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, featuring artwork by Bill Kouligas."
www.p-a-n.org
€27.50
AIWS
"AIWS is the first full-length cd release from Troum since 2003. It covers studio-recordings composed from 2002-2005. These musicians have compiled some of their most favorable pieces through the years to be placed on this release. Presenting nine analogue (4&8 track) recorded compositions that lead the listener through vast feelings of beautifully deep melancholic and hypnotic states of mind. Composed with guitar-drones and harmonic phrases that are processed in various ways creating an atmosphere of the sublime and emotional meditative states that transcend listener to immerse within themselves.
Ingredients: Sufi-songs, old vinyl-crackles, acoustic & e-guitars, e-bow, e-bass, voice & whisperings, accordion & flute. Stunning photography & design work by Alan McClelland(Eye.lyft). One of the most emotional and profound Troum releases to date now available on Transgredient Records. Dedicated to Eternity.
TRACK LISTING of AIWS [* and meaning of titles & phrases]
1. AHMATEINS
2. AGGILUS
3. SPIRARE
4. PER SONUM
5. PANTAH
6. [GA] PLAIAN
7. PENTHOS
8. NEHEH
9. PELETÄ
total length: 49:30 min
[* AIWS=Eternity (gothic language), also shortcut for "Alice-In-Wonderland-Syndrome". 1. "Inspiration" (gothic) 2. "Angel - Carrier" (gothic) 3. "breathing - aspirating - sighing - smelling " (latin) 4. "through sound" (latin) 5. "way - path - line" (old indian) 6. "supplication" (persian) 7. "the sorrow of mourning - lament" (greek - also a greek god), 8. "Eternity" (egypt) 9. "escape - flight, also: rescue - salvation" (hebrew) " [label info]
"... nach einigen 12“s und Kollaborationen die 7. CD des TROUM-Duos. GLIT[S]CH & BARAKA[H]
sind dafür bekannt, dass sie sich zu Nietzsches „Die Welt ist tief, viel tiefer als der Tag gedacht“ tief in die Augen blicken und dann ihren Fliegenden Teppich starten. ‚Ahmateins‘ ist, bewusst analog und lo-fi, gewebt aus engen Gitarrenwellen und sämigen Drones von E-Bow und E-Bass. Flug und Flucht, Atmen und Seufzen sind dabei eins. Sound ist der Weg und das Ziel. AIWS ist nicht nur das gotische Wort für Ewigkeit, es steht auch für das Alice in Wonderland Syndrom. Prosaisch ist das eine mit Kopfschmerzen verbundene Sehstörung, metaphorisch aber heißt das doch: Die Welt mit Alicens Augen als Wunderland sehen können.
Troums Zauberteppich schwebt auf harmonischen Strömen durch Rauch und Licht dahin, auf einem spiraligen Kurs ins Sublime. ‚Pantah‘ lässt den Saitenklang deutlicher erkennen, in [Ga]plaian‘ ist Sufigesang verdichtet, in ‚Penthos‘ scheint ein Akkordeon zu pumpen, in ‚Neheh‘ Licht nicht bloß zu schimmern, sondern zu singen. Tiefenmusic Reaching Our Unconscious Minds."
[Bad Alchemy]
"....The pieces on this new CD were recorded from 2002-2005 on Troum's own analogue equipment, all live to four-eight track recorders, without the involvement of computers. Troum, a duo (be it hard to believe), is best a live band, even when working in the studio. Their instruments are guitars, e-bow, bass, voices, accordion & flute, old vinyl. And oh, sound effects. Lots of those are involved in the music of Troum, but they never stand in the way of the end result. Spacious head music. Loud at times, quiet when necessary, but there is a certain roughness about the band, which is an element I really like. Even when things are quiet, they never really are quiet. 'Neheh' is just an example of some sparse organ like loops, feeding through some delay and bouncing gentle forward, but with a certain grittiness. Highly atmospheric even when experienced without the help of any chemicals or other illegal substances and the best but perhaps more frightful experience when played in the dark and with the headphones tied to your head. You are bound to play it again, if not only because it might be too scary to leave the room... Of all things experimental, ambient and industrial (Menche, Zoviet*France, Lustmord), Troum can easily stand the test and be the best of the lot." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€12.00
Nargis
Sehr rauhes, etwas älteres Material, basierend auf verzerrten e-bow Gitarren & extrem verlangsamten Gesang... majestätisch & unheimlich zugleich... die "heavy" Artwork stammt von MARS WELLINK (VANCE ORCHESTRA), fullcolour cover & inlay.
"Latest slab of guitar based whir and drift from these masters of the drone (they do in fact run the DRONE record label after all).
Formerly Maeror Tri, Troum embody the drone, they live, breathe, eat and sleep drones. And it shows. Their records are gorgeous and epic,
but seem so effortless, as if the sounds they create are simply channeled through their corporeal forms, but have been created in
some fiery forge at the center of an alien planet.
The first half of this single still sounds like Troum, but is unlike anything we've heard from them, strange looped high end guitar, what sounds like backwards chords, almost choral vocals, dramatic and haunting and cinematic, very much like some super stylized horror movie music almost, warbled and wavery, over a distant grinding low end tone drifting way off in the background, washed over by epic sweeping swells..
The other side is a bit more raw and intense, a seriously corrosive guitarscape, distorted and crumbling chordal buzz, looped
and layered into a strange glacial riff, strewn over deep dark swirls of slow shifting sound and haunting minor key melodies. It manages to
be intense and fierce but also gloriously washed out and blissful.
Super swank, full color covers, full color inserts, and pressed on nice thick vinyl. And of course limited, just not sure - how- limited..." [Aquarius Records]
www.vivahaterecords.com
€6.00
Symballein
Sechs Stücke aus der Frühphase von TROUM, erschienen auf obskuren & raren Compilations im Zeitraum 1997 - 1999; dunkel, dronig-morastig, tieffrequent, von massiver Konsistenz, post-industriell, jenseitig ...am ehesten zu vergleichen mit der ebenfalls damals erschienenen Debut-CD RYNA.
"...alle sechs sind gute beispiele für die "kl_F/B-S/comp-Theorie", bilden trotzdem ein fast perfektes gesamtwerk und zeigen troum durchweg von ihrer düsteren seite; kavernenartig, rhythmen durch meterdicke wände gefiltert, stimmen aus der zwischenwelt. ein stärkerer kontrast zur aktuellen, dagegen fast leichten A.I.W.S. erscheint kaum möglich......
ps: die "kl_F/B-S/comp-Theorie", deren erste erwähnung hier nicht mehr eruiert werden kann, stellt die (unbewiesene) vermutung in den raum, dass bands kleinere Formate/B-Seiten/compilation-Beiträge gerne dafür nutzen, ein wenig abseitigere tracks zu platzieren. neben dem wunsch, auch mal über die eigenen stränge schlagen zu können, der experimentierlust zu frönen, wird vermutet, dass zum teil auch stücke dergestalt eine heimat finden, die aufgrund von laufzeitbeschränkungen der veröffentlichungsmedien in vorhergehenden releases gekippt werden mussten.
psps: und des wird zeit, endlich einmal small voices aus italien zu loben; allgemein + besonders und jetzt besonders wegen der coverartworks: hier strukturpappe-aufklapper mit schlitz zur cd-aufnahme: eine weitere perfekte annäherung an das lp-cover als die sowieso perfekte verpackung." [n, Unruhr.de]
"Symballein" is the second TROUM releases on SmallVoices label after the well ... "Autopoiesis" LP picture disc (SVV001) actually SOLD OUT. This album is a collection of very rare material, from the very beginning of Troum (period: 1997 - 1999). As Troum meaning the music is dreamy... The concept of the ‘Dream’ is the common thread running through Troum; the name, the music and the philosophy. For not only is TROUM the old German word for "DREAM" but, according to their website, ‘the dream, seen as a central manifestation of the unconscious, symbolizes the aim of TROUM to lead the listener into a hypnotizing dream-state of mind, a pre-verbal and primal consciousness sphere. TROUM uses music as the direct path to the Unconscious, pointing to the archaic "essence" of the human’s inner psyche. TROUM tries to create music that works like a direct transformation of unconscious matter’.
In Symballein dreams are obscure and indecipherable..., in one word nightmares; the music is archaic and droney, with multi-layered guitar drones..., oneiric ambient industrial nearly to Maeror Tri best releases. The disc in packaged in a elegant and luxurious embossed cardboard digi-sleeve. Symballein: "perceivable & non-perceivable things fall into one" [label press release]
€10.00
SIGQAN
"...„Sigqan" von 2003, remastered und in neuem cover auf neuem label, diesmal dem eigenen. und gerade bei so verbesserungen ist das ergebnis ja oft zwiespältig; das re-master hier dagegen subtil lebendiger, körper- und räumlicher, die (für troum verhältnisse) fast minimalistische, auf gebündelte sounds setzende klangästhetik unterstützend bzw. eben einfach besser ans ohr bringend: dunkel, fast glazial, gegeneinander verschiebende ebenen rund um den hauptstrom der einzelnen teile der sigqan-trilogie, im „part 3" mit ergänzender, eher subtiler rhythmustextur; bis zum ende nur noch ein feedback zwischen cello- und trompetenästetik den beginn widerspiegelt. unter den troum alben vielleicht eines der focussiertesten, vielleicht immer ein wenig versteckt zwischen der grossen tjukurrpa-trilogie; in jedem fall: schwer empfohlen. das neue cover, wieder ein digipack, diesmal in farbe, textur und besonders typografie irgendwie nicht einem bestimmten grafischen (zeit)geschmack verpflichtet wie damals die erste auflage." [N, Unruhr.de]
"Deep beneath the ocean is a world of mystery, wonder, darkness, and danger. Even if it weren't for the cover art of this German duo's brilliant new album, there is unmistakably no other place in the universe that has influenced the sounds and movement of what is represented within. These drones are not passive in the least. The depth and volume are all encompassing, and moving slowly but steadily like an ancient and lonely large whale through the graveyards of shipwrecks, at the very beginning of the food chain in which all living creatures depend. Recorded live in the studio without overdubs, the first two parts are based on live performances the band was touring around with in 2001, the first being a dark blue rumble, heavy on the low end and marked by patient melodic movement, the second with swirling guitar strums and leads like the sun coming through in bended bands of beams: flickering, reflected, and refracted. The intangible overwhelming feeling of weight and pressure is unavoidable and inescapable, like being frozen in a dream, unable to move, but calm and comforting all the same. Around the half-way mark, it dips back into the darker regions as pitch and pace slow down deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper yet into the cold, black unknown. The third part was recorded as an afterthought, and is described as a new ending. Its brightness and chugging backwards-sounding guitars brilliantly accent the feel that it is a journey which is reaching its end. At this point, it feels that the central figure in the journey seems to be a vessyl of some sort, and the 16-minute Part 3 is thematic of a glorious resurfacing, reintroduction to the bright light of day, and returning to solid ground. But, as the brightness comes, so does an ominous sense that all might not be right. The world looks different than before, the places are familiar but everything's seemed to have changed. The credits may roll but this is certainly not the end." [Jon Whitney / Brainwashed]
“Finally, the first Troum record to be widely available in the United States, released through Relapse subsidiary Desolation House, and we're pleased to say it's maybe their best yet. Troum are the ambient-drone ensemble that emerged from the dissolution of proto-industrial dronesters Maeror Tri. Unlike the primarily guitar based whir and rumble of Maeror Tri, Troum obfuscate their sound sources, laptops, found sounds, accordians, guitars too maybe, and the results are timeless, mysterious, haunting, ethereal and utterly breathtaking dronescapes. Sigqan is a lengthy three part epic, beginning with rich sonorous foghorn like swells, that ebb and flow, separated by near silence, and slowly building in intensity from warm crescendos to huge doomy pulses. Eventually, these roaring rumbles joined by complementary shimmers of high end, that sound out, and then dissipate like sonic ripples, fading into blackness. The swells slowly grow closer and closer until the edges begin to blur and a subtly more continuous melodic framework begins to emerge and so begins the second movement, a creepy and slightly ominous, slowly fluctuating slow-motion-melody, whose lazily shifting notes keep the sonic landscape dense and rich, and keeps the sounds from flatlining into monochromatic drones. As the piece winds down, the dynamics and melody start to smear together into a warm, diffused fuzzy hum, with the subtle traces of melody sinking deeper and deeper into the dark warmth. The third and final movement was a sonic afterthought, added/recorded later than the first two, but is a pleasantly dreamy coda, with a slightly sunnier tone, a keening upper register melody, stretched out into subtly slithering iridescence with a shuffling, staticky rhythm just below the surface. So nice.“ [Aquarius Records, 2003]
"Beauty and profundity are the evident merits of the album - like the unity of oceanic and atmospheric elements, and namely the ocean is most frequently mentioned association used by critics and musicians. When you are at a depth of thousands metres, even the storm on the surface is impossible to hear." [Dmitry Vasilyev, IEM]
€13.00
Mare morphosis
"'Mare morphosis' forms the third & final part of TROUMs so called 'Power Romantic' trilogy that started with 'Mare Idiophonika' in 2010. The basic materials & arrangements for this one long epic piece were created from 2009-2013 (partly based on the recordings for the 'Bach Eingeschaltet, Dritter Band' 7" dealing with experimental reworkings of J.S.BACH pieces) & to some extent used live in different live-programmes: A piece like an 'Ocean of Transformations', morphing through various stages of intensity. 'Mare morphosis' stands out in the history of TROUM studio-albums as their most symphonic, refined and orchestral effort so far. Cover photography by Paul Takahashi, graphic design by Tilmann Benninghaus (8 panel fold out digipack). First edition: 1000 copies.
'Mare morphosis definitely gives Troum’s music a new dimension, reflecting ancient waves, amplifying the power of Sehnsucht, drumming the drowning heart." [Denis Boyer / Fear Drop]
"Mare morphosis" ist eines der stimmungsvollsten und abwechslungsreichsten Werke von TROUM, die ich kenne. Die einzelnen Abschnitte wirken tatsächlich wie Sätze einer Sinfonie, ohne dass die Gesamtanmutung vernachlässigt wird: Es geht hörbar um die mächtigste aller Naturgewalten, das Wasser, in seinen unterschiedlichen Ausprägungen. Von ästhetisch über melancholisch bis düster und bedrohlich; vermutlich sind die 'Veränderungen' im Titel so zu deuten. Wunderschön und mit vielen Details zum Mehrfach-Hören gespickt.' [Michael We / nonpop.de]" [label info]
"What comes with the Power Romantic trilogy (which pt. 1 and 2 are: Mare Idiophonika, Grote Mandrenke) is brooding from the core of Troum’s universe. Relating Troum with strong Romantic tropisms is like sewing an endless canvas. In every musical piece they work, the two musicians BarakaH and Glit[s]ch navigate a vast sea of sound, recalling the Romantic feeling in front of deep landscapes that reflect the very soul, threatening in a voluptuous appeal the observer to dissolve in the totality. Troum’s attraction to the notion of Dissolution is felt every time that the sound waves inflate to shape a luminous drone, every time that the pulsation melts into a magmatic rumbling. And what about the beauty of sadness, celebrated since the days of Maeror Tri…
That sea of sound, of profound melancholic drones and waves gets its monument with the Power Romantic trilogy in which Troum show their skill in harmony, but not only. Drones and harmony still reign but a clear way is designed for melody and rhythms (as it already was in Tjukurrpa pt. 3). The oceanic feeling is fueled by new movements, like a storm upon and under the fluid. Mare morphosis, pt. 3 of the Power Romantic trilogy, opens as the very building of a Sunken Cathedral, with heavy rhythms like stone columns gently embraced by subtle sharpened melodic phrases. The whole soundscape navigates then by the tide and lets the strong motion of sound rumbling and driving to surface the heavy layers of undercurrents, bringing up to light their deep melancholic germ of melody. Mare morphosis definitely gives Troum’s music a new dimension, reflecting ancient waves, amplifying the power of Sehnsucht, drumming the drowning heart." [Denis Boyer / Fear Drop]
listen: http://troum.bandcamp.com/album/mare-morphosis-cd-2013
www.troum.com
€12.00
To a Child, Dancing in the Wind
Nach über 2 Jahren konnte die lange geplante Zusammenarbeit von TROUM mit MARTYN BATES endlich fertiggestellt werden. Gedichte des irischen Dichters W.B.YEATS dienten als textliche Grundlage für sechs Stücke voller Sehnsucht & Emotion, Drone-Harmonics treffen auf expressiv gesungene Poesie....
“ - Profound songs inspired by YEATS-poems: The acoustic transformation of the deepest yearning - For this release, the german ‘transcendental-drone’-duo TROUM teams up with the legendary british singer / songwriter and EYELESS IN GAZA-member MARTYN BATES.
More than 2 years in the making, MARTYN BATES has sung & played (mouth organ & melodica) over basic material TROUM provided – consisting of harmonic minimal loops & basic song structures derived from accordeon, e-bass & guitar, percussion), who were then also responsible for the final subsequent additions mastering (adding more guitar-work, voices & balalaika).
MARTYN BATES has chosen to sing four poems of the famous Irish poet W.B.YEATS, and he did this with a most impressive sensitivity for TROUMS very sublime & rather hidden harmonic structures. There are also two instrumentals in a more experimental style on this disc, one being a dark drone reprise of the main piece “MAD AS THE MIST AND SNOW #2”. MARTYN’s voice is surely not something for everyone – it’s of an extreme emotional & yearnful quality that might be not easy to stand – a yearning which is like a deep “cry out to the horizon”, to something that is unreachable per se, feeling a passion that tears you apart inside. This is pure emotional poetry transformed into yearnful audible spherics!
Artwork: Daniel Crokaert, founder of the dream-ambience CDR-label MYSTERY SEAS in Brussels and a long-time fan of both MARTYN BATES & TROUM, has created a stunning 6-panel digipack using pictures provided by Martyn.
The Artists: MARTYN BATES is the legendary british songwriter, being active since the early 80’s, one half of EYELESS IN GAZA & also working solo with other musicians and with Alan Trench as 12.000 DAYS. He has established a unique own style combining elements of folk & various other influences with this remarkable singing, being expressively poetic & highly emotional at any time.
TROUM is a german duo consisting of 2/3 of the remains of the ambient-industrialists MAEROR TRI (last year saw a rennaisance of M.T. with many re-releases of their works). TROUM describe their music themselves as “transcendental drone-muzak”, a very atmospheric & emotional but often also monumental and noisy, hypnotically & at times trance-inducing rhythmic melange.
General Disc-Info: 6-panel 4-colour digipack, 6 tracks, 38:30 playtime” [press release]
”....Now its so much more than 'just' a drone record: the voice forms a counterpart of the music, perhaps because it fits so well. This is certainly on of the best drone records I heard this year, because it's so familiar as well as such a surprise.” [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€12.00
Landscape and Voice
Black Truffle is pleased to present Landscape and Voice, a radical new work (and rare vinyl release) from major Japanese sound artist Toshiya Tsunoda. Undoubtedly one of the most influential artists working with location recordings since the 1990s, Tsunoda’s work possesses a rigorously searching quality that sets him apart from his contemporaries. Tsunoda is known to many listeners for the subtle atmospheric poetry of his early Extract from Field Recording Archive series, which focussed on vibrations recorded in various indoor and outdoor environments in his native Miura Peninsula, often inside pipes, bottles and other vessels. In more recent years, his work has explored the implications of his claim that field recording should be seen as ‘depiction’ rather than ‘documentation’. He has explored disorienting editing and processing in his works with Taku Unami, and, perhaps most radically, represented Maguchi Bay as a kind of kinetic sculpture for shaking speakers by removing all but the inaudible low frequencies from a field recording (Low Frequency Observed at Maguchi Bay).
One of the recurrent concerns of Tsunoda’s recent work, as he explains in the crystalline liner notes accompanying this release, is ‘exploring how I can establish a subjective relationship with an environment, rather than seeing it merely as an object to be recorded’. This has taken various forms, from documenting simultaneously an outdoor environment and the blood flowing through the listener/recorder’s body (captured with a stethoscope) on The Temple Recordings, to representing his own experience of the landscape as made up of ‘grains of space and time’ by inserting looped fragments into field recordings in Grains of Spring.
On Landscape and Voice, this meeting between subject and object becomes an almost mystical union between the natural and the human. As with all of Tsunoda’s work, a relatively simple concept leads to compelling, thought-provoking results. Landscape and Voice combines vowel sounds spoken by six voices with short, looped fragments of field recordings, their noise character suggesting consonants: voice and landscape thus join together in something like words. The record consists of three pieces, each using a different, richly evocative field recording, which periodically freezes, catching on a looped fragment to which is synchronised an abruptly looped spoken vowel sound. The lengths between these interruptions vary, as do the tempi of the loops. The interruption of these lushly immersive recordings of the world – bristling with bird song, rushing water, distant traffic, and clinking metal – only serves to intensify them, as if the depicted environment itself had been returned to the listener each time it abruptly reappears. At the same time, the constant interruption creates an uncannily frozen effect, as if the recorded environment were an object rather than a stretch of recorded time. When combined with the bare human presence of the vowel sounds, the result is both austere and magical. Pressed on 45RPM for maximum fidelity, in a gorgeous sleeve designed by Lasse Marhaug with liner notes from the composer, Landscape and Voice is a radical proposition from one of the deepest thinkers in contemporary sound.
https://blacktruffle.bandcamp.com/album/landscape-and-voice
€23.50
Cleavage of Acoustics / Cacerolada
Nr. 3 in der Mixer Split LP Reihe ! JUSTIN BENNETT hat einem Protestmarsch in Barcelona gegen den Irak-Krieg im März 2003 beigewohnt, eine unglaubliche detailreicher Soundkulissensumpf aus Sirenen, Autohupen, Perkussion, Pfeifen & Gegröhl. T. TSUNODA arbeitet diesmal nicht mit reinen field recordings, sondern lässt Sinuswellen auf konkretes Material treffen, was zu knisternd-resonanzbildenden Effekten und merkwürdigen „small sounds“ führt.
Tolle Geräuschmusikplatte !
“Both Justin Bennett and Toshiya Tsunoda have gained a reputation when it comes to fieldrecording-based soundworks. Using their sonic surroundings as the startingpoint for their work, both are unique in approach and result. "Cacerolada" is based on a noise-protest against the Iraq-war, recorded in Barcelona. It wakes up and dies out as any day does, gradually moving along all kinds of sonic occurrences in between. Compared to Tsunoda's, Bennett's work comes from a more contemplative approach, outlining to his listener the beauty, absurdness or musicality of the everyday soundtrack he's living in. Originally these protests served a highly political goal, to record them and treat these recordings as a piece, is what made "Cacerolada" into a sound-object, to be listened to with different ears. This is the core of Bennett's work. Using hardly any processing-tools (Bennett composes with the raw building-blocks he records), these environmental-pieces are very much like documents, with specific artistic or aesthetical qualities. He hunts for certain scenes or situations and captures moments in time that contain a specific type of gesture he is looking for. The reference to daily life might be very much upfront, though Bennett's work is much more than a highly associative collection of recorded sounds. His recordings easily keep up as complete compositions with a strong musical form, taking the listener beyond what is heard at first sight and this is exactly where the strength in Bennett's work as a composer and sound-artist lies. These works show a delicate timespam, organically interpolating from scene to scene. The so familiar sounding material constructs and underlines compositional shape and development, adding a rare compositional richness to environmental-soundworks.
Tsunoda's "Cleavage of Acoustics" stands in close relation to previous works in which he tries to integrate somewhat technical concepts into the everyday beauty of singing birds and chirping crickets. Tsunoda adds to the body of these compositions of the public domain, as Justin Bennett does, but takes a different route to get there. He experiments to find out the musical relevance of technicality for natural sounds and forces a symbiosis between the two. The results still contain the associative character and organic development so typical for environmental recordings, but have a new, more abstract, mimicry. The sometime subtle, sometimes clashing, but always interesting interference between these two worlds, is what gives Tsunoda's work a very unique twist. It can exist as a completely autonomous entity while grafted upon the soundmaterial we all know so well. Tsunoda, like Bennett, makes us hear our surrounding acoustic reality in a different way. Not by fencing off certain parts of it, as Bennett does, but through simple yet very effective technical interventions, making it's appearance shift a bit or two.
"When listening to field recordings, I am always surprised by the richness of it's acoustics. Vibrations echoe from various places, in mixed complexity, changing constantly over time. In some way, it looks like stratum. I would like to sharply cleave the stratum to see the surface of the crevice. This work shows the audibility of sound vibrations through an uncommon process. I tried to cut off the source (field recording) material using a gate device and sine-waves. In each track, specific sine-waves have been mixed with the source-material.
In this work, I regard the sine-wave as the standard speed signal for the source. This has made any alternation within the audio signal detectable for the gate device. The linear audio signal (monoral) is cut horizontally into the advance direction, turning it into two signals. The amplitude of the alternating current has a separated + and - side, with 0 volt as base for the gate device. This split signal is simultaneously reproduced through the right- and left- channel of stereophonic audio equipment. Try mixing these 2 channels. The waveform is almost restored to it's original form, giving a peculiar result compared to the separated signal playback." [press release]
€12.00
The Smeared Cloth
"The Smeared Cloth" is a double CD compilation containing the TUNNELS OF ĀH recordings from 2012-2018, which have not yet been published on any medium. The first disc is filled with compositions from the period before the debut in Cold Spring and outtakes from the sessions for "Thus Avici", the next album for the British label.
The second disc contains tracks recorded during and between the sessions for "Surgical Fires" and "Charnel Transmissions". Although they were created as loose compositions, out of the concepts clearly outlined on each of the mentioned albums, they sound incredibly coherent, giving impression of being part of a concept release, this makes them a pleasure to listen to; especially when we get carried away in the world created by Stephen Ah Burroughs with the sounds characteristic of his work. Sometimes they evoke associations with ancient rituals, intensifying the impression of Egyptian darkness, the feeling of coldness and emptiness coming as if from a deep dungeon, and with them an echo. All this is a superstructure for the 21 tracks filling both discs, outlined and maintained, in a convention that allows them to be stylistically located somewhere between isolating dark ambient and death industrial, where the gloom aura and dense, mechanical structures coexist as if in symbiosis, thanks to which the balance between building the atmosphere and reflecting the true nature of the industrial collision. This release is undoubtedly a must-have for TOĀH fans, but it can also delight those who appreciate death industrial at a high level. The album's released on two CDs folded in a six-panel ecopack.
Tracks 1-11 taken from "The Smeared Cloth" CD1
Tracks 12-21 taken from "The Smeared Cloth" CD2
https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/the-smeared-cloth-2012-2018-unearthed
"In den frühen 80ern gründete Stephen R. Borroughs zusammen mit Justin Broadrick und Dave Cochrane das Trio HEAD of David, das einen der noisigsten Grundsteine dessen legte, das später Industrial Metal genannt werden sollte. Im Lauf der Jahre konzentrierte er sich mehr und mehr auf Soloprojekte, und neben Frag war dies seit etwas über zehn Jahren Tunnels of Āh, mit dem er einen Ritualkosmos von fast räudiger Abgründigkeit entstehen ließ.
Dass Tunnels of Ah trotz der starken Abstraktion seiner ästhetischen Konzepte ein konsequent verfolgtes atmosphärisches Thema hat, wird bereits deutlich, wenn man die mittlerweile sechs Alben, die seit 2013 auf Cold Spring und zuletzt Hypershape erschienen sind, im Vergleich hört, denn da fallen die verbindenden Elemente sehr deutlich ins Auge. Mehr noch beeindruckt einen die musikalisches Stringenz angesichts der jüngst auf Tape und Doppel-CD erschienenen Compilation “The Smeared Cloth 2012 – 2018 Unearthed”, denn hier lassen frühe Stücke und Outtakes aus verschiedenen Albumsessions ein überraschend zusammenhängendes Bild entstehen.
“The Smeared Cloth” ist nichts für Hörer, die Probleme mit Beklemmung, Dunkelheit und niederdrückender Schwere haben. Eine finstere, bedrohliche Stimmung zieht sich durch die oft kreisenden Soundgebilde, lassen durch ambiente Dröhnung, Saitenrasseln oder sirrende Streichersounds filmreife Phasen der Spannung und durch paukende und prasselnde Takte und plötzliche Schuttlawinen aufwühlende Momente entstehen, steigern sich vom subtilen Hauch eines – nur oberflächlich sanft wirkenden, in Wirklichkeit höllischen – Windes zu infernalischen Szenen von hochtönendem, schleifenden Lärm. Klangfarben von Stein und noch stärker Metall prägt das Gesamtbild, doch ist in gewissen Abständen auch immer die Illusion des Organischen spürbar, als würde das harte und kalte Material mit dürren Reiserbesen und ähnlichem traktiert. Auch die entmenschlichte menschliche Stimme ist gelegentlich zu hören, mal in Rezitation, mal als finsteres Growlen und Keifen, mal in Form eines sakralen Gesangs.
Wenn man in den 20 Stücken die Kohärenz betont, sollte man hinzufügen, dass in ihnen natürlich auch Raum für Variation ist. Sollte ich einige herausragende Stücke betonen, dann wären es wahrscheinlich “Keys King At Womb Door Again”, in welchem sich ein anfangs kaum spürbares lykanthropisches Hecheln langsam zu etwas (noch) Monströse(re)m steigert – eine Entwicklung, die vielleicht etwas vorhersehbar ist, doch die urige Soundgestaltung, die durchweg an etwas Altes, seit Urzeiten Verschüttetes denken lässt, fällt weitaus stärker ins Gewicht. Ferner “Fountain of Life”, das nach gängigem Verständnis wohl eher wie das Gegenteil seines Titels klingt und an einen zerbrochenen Brunnen erinnert, dessen Wasser ein paar Erdklumpen mit sich reißt und am Ende im Schlamm versiegt. Nicht zuletzt auch der Titeltrack, dessen Spoken Word-Passage wie das Monument eines sinnlosen Aufwands vor infernalischer Kulisse am Ende von einer Schuttlawine geschluckt wird.
Nach den über zwei dystopischen Stunden scheiden sich wahrscheinlich die Geister: Während die einen fürs erste genug gelitten haben, sind die anderen nun gewappnet für die regulären Alben des Projektes, und “The Smeared Cloth” gibt da tatsächlich einen großartigen Einblick in einen Kosmos, den ich allen empfehlen kann, die frühe Coil, alte Broken Flag-Releases und ausgewählte Death Industrial-Platten nebeneinander im Regal stehen haben."
[African Paper]
"Eager to get back into the Tunnels. Not long ago, I gave 'Deathless Mind' another spin, and I had been looking forward to some new material from Burroughs. Still.. two whole CDs, dearie me. I'm curious if I can make it through in one go. Also, it is not exactly 'new' material, but rather excerpts and unused tracks from two distinct periods: the first CD collects all discards from the Lost Corridors and Thus Avici era; the second contains material from the period between Surgical
Fires and Charnel Transmissions - compiled into this 2,5-hour lasting tour de force. Me, oh my.
Though branded as 'dark ambient' on Discogs, we've come to know Tunnels of Āh for industrial ambient landscapes and complex saturated loops and textures that range timbrally from (seemingly) acoustic in origin to overtly synthetic. Also, the 'loops' here should mostly be taken less literally; there are elements that seem to repeat, but for the most part, the chopped-up complexity of the textures ensures we won't have the typical 'looper' kind of experience in which repetition is often an easy way of tricking our brain into believing it is listening to something musical.
On CD 1, many sounds seem to have acoustic sources, which is much more noticeable than on the more recent albums. We also seem to get a lot more vocal delivery than usual, making tracks like 'Brute World' and 'To the Pschal Victim' almost have an early Current 93 or 'ambient Test Dept kind' of ring to them.
It is also completely dissimilar in many ways, e.g., production-wise, but for fans of those bands, these tracks may be the right point of entry into the Tunnels. The vocals are often mixed in quite deeply, so you won't be listening to poetry with a noisy background.
With the choppy granulated ambient of 'Lost Corridors', a track that did not feature on the eponymous 2013 album, there seems to be somewhat of a 'natural' ending to the first part of the first CD. The subsequent ambient track 'Fountain Of Life' ramps the intensity again with its swirling vortex of delayed grit. Both 'Great Darkness' and 'The Cloth is Smeared' really stand out as two of the more memorable pieces.
Disc 2 starts with the interesting combination of 'To the Paschal Victim' and 'Circumcision', which seem to be variations on the same bass riff/loop - though the latter track slides off into a murky bass swamp about halfway through. 'Red Distribution' and 'White Distribution' wrap this disc up in a
manner that reminded me of Charnel Transmissions. There is a certain kind of dense lo-fi elegance to them, which also made me fall for that album when it first came out.
I've said this before, and I'll repeat it: What I love about Tunnels Of Āh is that though it is clearly tarnished with the brush of industrial and perhaps even reminiscent of some noise - due to its complex textures, it never becomes too harsh or punishing, which given the length of most tracks may be a very deliberate choice either during mastering or in the composition process. Moreover, a wise one, since especially with a leviathan of this length, balance is a thing to aim for.
Does it work as an album, though, or is this merely a release for us to be complete? Tough question. The first CD is consistent, albeit on the long side. With 77 minutes, it is about half an hour longer than any Tunnels release on average, and I definitely had to listen to the whole release in phases. That said, when it
comes to textures and intensity, there seems to have been some thought put into the dynamic distribution of the tracks and though longer than usual, I would say both these discs work as stand-alone albums. Another keeper in a long line of excellent works from the Tunnels." [LdW / Vital Weekly]
€17.00
The Charnel Working + The Klesha File
TUNNELS OF AH. The famous EP "The Charnel Working" will be available on CD for the first time. Now expanded with additional, previously unpublished material from the "Klesha File" session. There are 10 compositions here, almost 70 minutes of ritual music, typical of the British artist's work.The dense atmosphere accompanying "The Charnel Working" is best described by a quote used by Stephen Ah Burroughs to describe the digital version, which leaves no doubt:
"My charming ornaments are made from garlands of human skulls." says the Kāpālika, "I dwell in the cremation ground and eat my food from a human skull. I view the world alternately as separate from God (Īśvara) and one with Him, through the eyes that are made clear with the ointment of yoga... We offer oblations of human flesh mixed with brains, entrails and marrow. We break our fast by drinking liquor from the skull of a Brahmin. At that time the god Mahābhairava should be worshipped with offerings of awe-inspiring human sacrifices from whose severed throats blood flows in currents".
CD edition in a six-panel ecopack.
'THE CHARNEL WORKING': RECORDED IN 2015 AS PART OF THE 'SURGICAL FIRES' SESSIONS.
'THE KLESHA FILE': RECORDED IN 2020 AS THE FOLLOW UP ALBUM TO 'CHARNEL TRANSMISSIONS'. REPLACED BY 'DEATHLESS MIND'.
ALL TRACKS WRITTEN AND PRODUCED BY STEPHEN ĀH BURROUGHS AT THE CRACKED HIVE.
https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/the-charnel-working-the-klesha-file
€13.00
At the Landgate
Drei neue Studio-Stücke des kreativen “weird folk”-Projekts von MARTYN BATES und ALAN TRENCH...romantisch, poetisch, düster, folkig... auf einem neuen polnischen Label.
“This is the latest missive from the otherworldly realm inhabited by Martyn Bates (Eyeless In Gaza) and Alan Trench (Orchis, Temple Music), the first since the splendid Devil In The Grain album and a taster for the forthcoming From the Walled Garden. Twelve Thousand Days have been playing live, and it shows; although this is a studio recording the sound is both immediate and delicate, with Bates’ sublime vocals shimmering over a cornucopia of plucked and blown instruments and ethereal guitars. Clocking in at vv minutes, this is more a mini album than an ep; the first track, Christmas and May is something of an epic, moving through several distinct parts while hallucinatory spoken word parts phase in and out, while the gorgeous title track soughs and sighs with the immensity of loss. The closer is the duos take on the trad I Once Loved A Lass, though with a dark and foreboding air of menace.
The album is housed in a beautifully presented textured booklet with a front cover by Charles Altamont Doyle whilst the back is a detail from the frescoes depicting the descent of sinners into hell from the Rila monastery in Bulgaria, while pictures of Trench and Bates are on the inside pages. The numbered insert (also on textured stock) completes a package which beautifully complements the music., with the whole housed in a plastic wallet. Print throughout is full colour. The attention to detail on ths release is destined to make it an extremely desirable collectable.” [label description]
€10.00
Insect Silence
"MARTYN BATES (Eyeless In Gaza) & ALAN TRENCH (Orchis, Howling Larsons) return after a long hiatus with the fourth TWELVE THOUSAND DAYS album. From the opening “Death Went Fishing” (a free translation of “vgíke o cháros na psarépsei”, the classic rebetiko by Giannis Papaioannou) to the closing, haunting notes of “Red And Golden Fire”, the listener is taken on a journey made up of a thousand journeys, a thousand side trips, a thousand destinations, hinging around the sprawling central trip of “Pathless”, in which the ramifications of choices made swim into hazy view. The 13 tracks that make up “Insect Silence” are a concatenation of dulcimers, whistles, guitars, synths, disturbing digital background noise (“Night Harmonium”) and other instrumentation with slices of pure, aching melody echoing through strange darkened corners, all enlivened and enlit by the wondrous tones of Martyn Bates.
MARTYN BATES is well-known for his brilliant long-time work with EYELESS IN GAZA, for his solo albums and for collaborations with MICK HARRIS and ANNE CLARK.
ALAN TRENCH: co-founder of World Serpent Distribution and musician with brilliant projects/groups ORCHIS, HOWLING LARSONS, TEMPLE MUSIC." [label info]
https://finalmuzik.bandcamp.com/album/twelve-thousand-days-insect-silence
"It's been quite some time since Martyn Bates (Eyeless in Gaza) and Alan Trench (Temple Music, Orchis) have come together as Twelve Thousand Days. It's fair to say much water has passed under the bridge since their last album From The Walled Garden in 2006. Insect Silence follows a ditched compilation release with the same title scheduled for release a number of years back. Insect Silence continues with the folk based music provided by Alan Trench and fronted by the distinctive voice of Martyn Bates but Insect Silence more so than their previous albums doesn't dwell solely in folk music. It may be its starting point but Insect Silence differs with passages of psych guitar and its layering of synths and electronics, as well as in the ambient interludes which feature throughout and often open up the tracks way beyond its grounding in folk music. Lyrically Insect Silence is couched in an English familiarity and in the eternal themes of life, love and death. Just shy of 70 minutes it's a long winding path of 13 tracks involving a large assortment of instrumentation which are woven into a complex and intricate tapestry of sound. You will be surprised by the pathways Twelve Thousand Days roam on .
Insect Silence opens to the spirited acoustic folk and percussive tambourine bashing of 'Death Went Fishing', outwitting death as it rushes onwards, weaving soaring psych guitars, which return throughout Insect Silence, as Bates implores that "he will return again". Its sets the scene for Insect Silence an album loosely based around folk music employing a rich multitude of instrumentation including guitars, dulcimers, harmonium, whistles as well as electronics. Twelve Thousand Days stretch the parameters of folk music with psych-guitar and ambient and instrumental interludes sprinkled throughout the 13 tracks. At times it likes listening to a Krautrock inspired psych-folk album with space rock leanings. In a good way, of course.
Opening to an ambient interlude 'Mad As The Mist' is the first of three musical settings of the words of Irish poet W.B. Yeats. Dreamy folk guitars entwine twang and strum, as Bates in his pure folk tones recalls philosophers such as Plato, Homer, Tully and Cicero, swelling into another passage of soaring solo of psych guitar and back again to dreamy folk song. More restless psych-guitar features on 'A Coat'. There's more of an experimental edge to the Yeats setting here pitching Bates' strained (and occasionally treated) voice to the fore, embellished by the pluck of guitar notes augmented by glinting electronics, bass throb and a needling guitar casting vibrations of psychedelic proportions. 'Arrow', the final piece in the Yeats trilogy is starker and played more straightforward with the beautiful folk voice over ringing acoustic guitar and warm synth backing.
Away from the Yeats tracks, a number of which Bates recorded with Troum in different musical forms, 'Errant Desires' moves to graceful ambience with flourishes of guitar notes. Bates' pure mournful tones add a sleepy lamentful melody, as faint electronics flicker behind the gentle flurry of guitar notes and assorted instrumentation. Beautifully atmospheric, it's one of my favourites on Insect Silence. Bates' voice is measured and melodic illuminating the sense of life passing in the evocative lyrics of rain falling, captured in our hands and gladly falling to the earth. More timeless folk arrives in the form of 'She Raises Her Eyes' where in captivating melodic tones Bates sings of a longing recalling long cold December months over duelling dulcimer chime.
One of the more surprising tracks appearing in the first half of the album is 'Invoke Hecate' where over passages of whistle and rousing, beating strum, Twelve Thousand Days sounding not unlike Ostara invoke the Goddess of Witchcraft, through an assortment of occult techniques. Alan Trench in past endeavours has facilitated many musicians in the apocalyptic folk genre but this rare sojourn, even with it blistering psych solo, can still raise an eyebrow and something of a smirk.
As mentioned earlier, Insect Silence is interspersed with instrumentals taking the music down alternate pathways, straying far off the beaten track. The first of these 'Night Harmonium' carries an air of arcane English mysticism with its loose folk stylings where strings chime and whistle billows merge over background synths and static clicks. The instrumental 'Old Ladies As Birds' is another brooding mystical moment where layers of whistles and flutes cast an age old melody over wheezing harmonium while loose guitar notes chime and ring out as distant electronics shudder underneath. While 'Old Ladies As Birds' is evocative of transforming souls and spirits, the jaunty folk offering of 'Fieldwork' is celebratory. Based on whistles and acoustic strum it comes across like a folk dance or Pagan procession. If 'Fieldwork' revels in a lost Englishness 'Descent' is dealing with nostalgia. A vintage crackling recording of 'See, The Conqu'ring Hero Comes' shrouds the descending organ scales of 'Descent'. Bates' voice is quiet, distant and softly murmured amidst the eerie disembodied voices of the choir as percussion rattles. You can almost picture the landscape on the pastoral 'Red and Golden Fire' another experimental offering mixing lulling electronics with whistles and flutes which closes the album.
Insect Silence hinges around 'Pathless' an epic experimental 16-minute musical and lyrical journey which we all make on our travels through life. Set in the middle of the album it continues the theme first introduced on the opener 'Death Went Fishing'. With the huntsman at our heels, we try to outwit death to no avail. Travelling from ringing guitar with Bates' voice, wrapped in layered accompaniment, veering between passages of Krautrock electronics and wavering synths to psaltery, whistles and location recordings. All the elements of Insect Silence emanate from and come together on this track to great effect. As it flows together seamlessly it's difficult to pinpoint where 'Pathless Part I' ends and 'Pathless Part II' begins but it may be when a heartbeat bass pulses and acoustic guitars ring out and the spoken word of Lisa (I think this is Elizabeth S who features on releases from Eyeless In Gaza) surfaces amidst guitars and layers of spacey synths which lull, crash and wail, before Bates returns, to close this epic track in high registered tones.
Insect Silence bustles with an immediacy, there's a sense of freshness of getting it all down on tape before the additional sound layers of instrumentation are added. Ambient, electronics, psych guitar, whistles, location recordings are all here embellishing the tracks making it intricate and complex. At the heart of it is an open-ended folk sound reflected in Bates' beautiful, distinctive voice which illuminate the timeless themes. Insect Silence is by far the best I've heard from Twelve Thousand Days and though the tracks are disparate there's an arching basis in folk music which traverses into other areas which holds it all together. As we said, Insect Silence is a journey, a pathway laid down just waiting for us to follow. Insect Silence is released digitally and on CD by Final Muzik in an edition of 500 copies. For more information go to Final Muzik and to download go to Final Muzik Bandcamp." [Compulsion Online]
"Man neigt gerne dazu, Bands, die sich nur alle Schaltjahre oder seltener zu neuen Aktivitäten zusammentun, als klammheimlich aufgelöst zu betrachten, erst recht dann, wenn es sich dabei um noch anderweitig aktive Musiker handelt – so wie Sänger Martyn Bates mit Eyeless in Gaza und seinem Soloprojekt und Instrumentalist Alan Trench mit seinen Folk- und Psychedelic-Gruppen Temple Music, Orchis und Black Lesbian Fishermen. Nachdem mit ihrem Duo Twelve Thousand Days wahrscheinlich nur noch wenige gerechnet hätten, steht mit „Insect Silence“ nun ganz überraschend ein neues Album in den Regalen, das fast da anknüpft, wo die beiden vor gut zwölf Jahren mit „From the Walled Garden“ aufhörten. Fast, denn gerade bei Alan sind doch ein paar Spuren seiner neuen Arbeiten herauszuhören.
Wie man es von früheren Aufnahmen her kennt, wechseln sich schmissige, fast frohsinnige Folksongs ab mit verträumt melancholischen Klageliedern und geheimnisvollen ambienten Soundscapes, und zusammen mit Bates’ unverkennbarer Stimme, die so klar und jugendlich wie eh und je klingt, kreiert die Musik ein verzaubertes Setting, das an ein langsam vor dem Auge verschwimmendes Jugenstilgemälde erinnert.
„Death Went Fishing“ und „Invoce Hecate“ zählen zu den eingängigen Folkstücken, die mit feurigem Geschrammel und ekstatischen Rasseln nach vorn galoppieren – mystische oder makabre Töne schleichen sich über sanft gesungene Textzeilen in die Szenerie und bilden mit der harmonischen Musik eine heikle Mischung, und schon mit den allerorts spürbaren heidnischen Untertönen sind die Stücke vor jedem Indie- und Pop-Appeal gefeit. Impressionistische Tableaus wie „Mad as the Mist“, dessen anfangs noch ziellos umhertastendes Gitarrenspiel sich erst nach und nach zu einem anmutigen Stimmungsbild zusammensetzt, bilden einen Gegenpol dazu, ebenfalls das aus einer balladesken Märchenwelt herübergewehte „Old Ladies as Birds“ und das mit Knacken und Knistern leicht verfremdete Zwischenspiel „Night Harmonium“ – beide Stücke gewinnen noch an Charisma durch Alans berührendes Flötenspiel.
In einigen dieser Tracks sind aber auch räudige Psych Rock-Elemente zuhören, die der Musik eine Kantigkeit verleihen, die in den klassischen Zeiten des englischen Folk nichts ungewöhnliches gewesen wären – zünftige E-Gitarrensoli und dröhnende Riffs, die die Folkmelodien, die sie spielen, gleichsam zerschreddern, als wären sie eine nationalhymne in Woodstock. Weder Eyeless in Gaza noch Orchis waren frei von solch rauen Beigaben, doch hier hat sich v.a. die Sprache jüngerer Temple Music in die Stilpalette geschlichen und gibt dem naturverbundenen Sound eine deutliche Prise Realismus.
Es gäbe einiges, das sich in den einzelnen Songs hervorheben ließ, die anrührende Melodie in „Errant Desires“, die cinematischen Verfremdungseffekte in „Red and Golden Fire“ und der melierte Orgelsound in „Descent“, der in ein verwehtes Sample des Liedes „Hail the Conquering Hero!“ (im Deutschen die Melodie von „Tochter Zion, freue dich“) übergeht, sind nur einige davon, doch alles in allem funktioniert „Insect Silence“ am besten als zusammenhängendes Werk, das mit mehrmaligem Hören immer mehr zu verzaubern weiß." [U.S., African Paper]
€13.00
New Lost Knowns
*Edition of 200 housed in silk screened jackets, white vinyl - One of our favourite labels, Planam, pulls out a real time-and-space bender from James Twig Harper, who's perhaps best known for his collaborations with Nate Young in Nautical Almanac and alongside Daniel Higgs for Thrill Jockey. Theres some genuine weirdness within, some of the strangest we've heard since Planam first gave birth to Pat Murano's Decimus series, but with a distinctly unique fidelity and gyroscopic dynamic that makes for a deliciously disorienting experience all of its own conception. There's an animalistic or perhaps even plant-like bio-logic to its devolved, dubbed-out arcana, a grunting, scraping, grubbing ecological complexity of sounds that grows, twists and bifurcates at seemingly haphazard junctions to catalyse chain reactions of constant change and multiple layers of surreality. The 2nd side in particular enters passages which sound almost like a primitive take on Florian Hecker's plonging, rubbery computer music or Rashad Becker's perplexing notional folk music." [Soundohm]
"in the beginning of what exactly was this beginning that has remained one of the mysteries ever since? in this beginning the year might or might not be 2011 and the whole practice could still be in-process now (though we firmly reject the meaning of the meaning as an open forma s we consider it more a time-binding). it is doubtful if this sonic process would have ever evolved beyond the animal stage suspended as it is in a fragile balance between sounding familiar to the nervous system and unfamiliar and alien. this process is wholly dependant upon the integrity of the system and its necessary environment. an extermination program created by working multiple channels, reducing mixes, removing sections, adding segments, layering inversions under continual growths and constant changes, until we can no longer recognize the original source or process itself. a very limited unit of sound and image biologically activated to act as communicable dizziness existing in the past present and future when listening to it. let's turn it on. lp record and silkscreened sleeve are the access, your playback new "reality". edition of 200 copies which will turn your eyes and ears inside out, upward, backwards and in all directions." (label info)
€21.50
Asimilacionismo
"Twelve years separate the debut mini-album "Huffduff" from this solo LP titled "Asimilacionismo". Tzesne’s new vinyl is not a peaceful continuation of the last. Rather that being produced using drone-ambient techniques, his new work is atypical. Perhaps the easiness to find opportunities, or the hodgepodge of media used to register these intermediate materials, was the trigger to question where these methods occur and how to confront them by injecting some type of risk. This meant including a concept when composing, and opening a door to a game of possession-dispossession, implication and subjectivity; the one that has served to shape this story is the one named "assimilationism". All authors own tools and personal style are yielded to another authors, so that in turn the speech of the first one can be constructed. The result is the work itself, which emerges from a movement of resistance, widening as far as it is allowed to, considering the compositional margins, and reaching places where previous works have never ventured. But it is also possible to leave this information to one side and focus on listening alone, as it still holds the possibility to transform the place and the moment in which you are.
Tzesne | "Asimilacionismo"
seriesnegras | 2016
12” l white viny l 180 gr.
200 copies pressed
Contents: 9 tracks
Total duration: 39:18
Composed Amsia * Sounds Tzesne
Recording & Mixing: 2014 - 2016
Mastering: Tzesne & Amsia
Graphic: Jon Martín"
www.seriesnegras.org, www.artoartian.org
"Zweites Solo-Vinyl nach der Drone 7“ von 2005 überhaupt von diesem baskischen experimental Soundartist. Tzesne arbeitet fast immer mit (bearbeiteten) Fieldrecordings, bevorzugt solchen, die auf extra zu solchen Zwecken unternommenen Exkursionen aufgenommen wurden; als Verbindung mit dem Ort (der Aufnahme) oder bestimmten Handlungen, die dann das Thema der VÖ werden. Bzw. in abstrakt abstrahierter Weise an das Thema der Inspiration erinnern und so die Atmosphäre bestimmen. „Asimilacionismo“ führt genau diese Haltung fort und ist trotzdem ziemlich anders; geheimnisvoll, so dass es fast unbefriedigend ist, dass überhaupt keine weiteren Informationen vorliegen; auch über „Amsia“ nicht, der / die hinten auf dem Cover im Kleingedruckten Credits für Komposition bekommt (und Tzesne für „Sounds“). Neben dem Titel steht auf dem Cover vorn dann aber allein Tzesne… Wer soll das durchschauen? Was bleibt ist die Konzentration auf die Musik an sich, die auf „Asimilacionismo“ tatsächlich so erscheint wie eine Art von Erweiterung der undergründigen Soundpalette von Tzesne: Seite A dieser auf weisses Vinyl gepressten Platte, deren Labelartwork zusammen mit der Vinylfarbe diese Bezeichnung auch tatsächlich verdient, entwickelt ein zunehmend unruhiger werdendes Gespinst aus industriell anmutenden Loops, die über vier Etappen in ein immer elektronischeres Alter-Eho morphen, mit ebensolchen Sounds; definitiv neu im Hause Tzesne. Auch Seite 2 zeigt diese leichte Verschiebung der musikalischen Akzente, nutzt fünf Etappen, durch nahezu identifizierbare Fetzen von Gesprächen auf eine Art fast wie ein Hörspiel erscheinend, die jenseits von Fieldrecordings liegenden Elemente so etwas wie eine musikalische Grundierung, als Verstärkung der durch die Feldaufnahmen bestimmten Eindeutigkeit. Und am Ende das Finish in einem der für Tzesnes Ansatz typischen Multischicht-Fieldrecordings mit ihrer Vexiergestalt zwischen Versprechen und Auflösung (des Rätsels…). Sehr empfohlen, definitiv ganz oben / perfekt. Gerade auch, was Spannungsbogen und Dynamik betrifft. …wahrscheinlich am besten über den Artist selbst zu bekommen." [N / Black Magazin]
€20.00
Haereo
"Madrid (and Cologne) based Miguel Angel Tolosa has a solid musical background both in electroacoustic & contemporary composition, and he’s also quite versed into sound engineering and producing techniques.
Most of all, he’s the long operating figurehead behind the highly respectable Con-V label.
His area of expertise is drones & field recordings tinted, and he has published works on many labels such as among others : Winds Measure Recordings, Non Visual Objects, Twenty Hertz, Drone Records…
As a dedicated listener/explorer, his music displays a large textural palette, and is infused with that underlying beauty all around us…
This album has been saved from loss and was initially to be released on Asher Tuil’s now defunct & missed Sourdine label.
“haereo” speaks forlorn rainy tales
or exhales morning urban springs…
a sea of untranquility
where small streams abound,
like so many darker veins and obscure skin maps…
Faint echoes exude from exhausted machinery,
a mass of dying waves,
a trail of stars pointing to nowhere, closed doors, and nocturnal flames in the distance,
dead intrepid plants swaying in the wind…
“haereo” is a flux of broken memories,
something reached out for, brushed,
something singularly mighty,
which takes us beyond, deep at heart "
[label info]
www.mysterysea.net
"Miguel Angel Tolosa works as Ubeboet since quite some time and has as such a number of releases, although the word 'overproduction' certainly doesn't apply to him. The cover says he worked on this from 2008 until 2012 and that he takes credit for electronics and field recordings; the latter being taped in Prague, Madrid, Lozoya valley area (Spain), Aguilar de Campoo area (Spain) and Serra San Bruno (Italy), while Ingar Zach plays bowed singing bowls on one piece. What's interesting to note is that in the first piece, 'Eaden', there are indeed quite some field recordings, but all of birds and insects, rather than what we are used to with this label, which is all things aquatic. In 'Umbrae' the microphone is thrown into the deep end and picks up signal below sea-level, along with Zach's bowed singing bowls. Below and above sea-level is where we find 'Sanatorium Rose', the final and longest piece on this release (which is about thirty-six minutes in total length), but there is also the motor-hum from a boat passing as drone music. In all three pieces we find Ubeboet's strong love of all things very dark. Much of the way he processes his sounds is to melt these field recordings by computer means and maybe all things analogue (either, or) and filter out much of the mid-high end until the darker rumble remains. In that way, Ubeboet surely has a strong own voice compared to his peers, which is a great thing and he shows it best in a release like this." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Qul Prad
“Music to Adam Kossakowski's (OKO-Eye) pictures, or maybe pictures to Marek Rybicki/Rafal Dêtko¶ (UCHO-Ear) music. Old & new tracks, solo works & a fragment of only collaboration work with Solaris. Beautiful colours. CDR for PC computers only. Total time 40:40, stereo HiFi.” [Nefryt]
€10.00
Does the Moon not Dream
Elena Botts is American, lives in Washington DC. Matteo Uggeri is Italian, lives in Milan. When this album was conceived, in 2018, she was 22, he was 44.
Three years after its conceiving, the album is now released in Spring 2021 by the historical ADN records (adnrecords.com), that since 1984 has published artists like Pascal Comelade, Merzbow, Pierre Bastien, Tasaday, Riccardo Sinigaglia, Cranioclast, Sigillum S, Christina Kubisch, Third Ear band and many others…
Elena's works under her moniker Mourning Dove are primarily built on her voice and poems, Matteo's ones are usually instrumental releases in the so-called field of 'modern classical/experimental'.
This joint album was made in an extremely spontaneous way, sending files across the Atlantic ocean: Elena recorded a set of spoken poems and three sung pieces, often outdoor, walking in streets and fields, and Matteo arranged them all grabbing mostly acoustic sounds often provided by his long time collaborators.
Due to the strong and at the same time delicate timbre of Elena's voice, in spite of the relatively wide set of instruments, the album sounds minimal and rarefied, as a long gentle suite of sparse notes and occasional rhythms driven by female vocal chords.
Mourning Dove (Elena Botts): lyrics, vocals.
Matteo Uggeri: sounds, composing and mixing.
My Dear Killer: acoustic and electric guitar.
Andrea Serrapiglio: cello.
Francesca Stella Riva: trombone.
alessandro sesana: trumpet.
Maurizio Abate: mandoloncello.
Franz Krostopovic: piano and violin.
Alberto Carozzi: electric guitar.
Cristiano Lupo: bass.
Made in Washington DC and Milan in summer 2019.
Mastered by Marco Milanesio in January 2021.
Photos by Elena Botts. Artwork by Matteo Uggeri.
https://matteouggeri.bandcamp.com/album/does-the-moon-not-dream
"Dass die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Matteo Uggeri und der Autorin Elena Botts alias Mourning Dove so spontan zustande gekommen ist wie es in den Liner Notes ihres gemeinsamen Albums “Does The Moon Not Dream” heißt, mag man sich kaum vorstellen. Meist sanfte Sounds verschiedener Umgebungen und Klangfarben, die bei genauerem Hören eine vielfältige Stimmungspalette entfalten, entspanntes Fingerpicking, stimmungsvolle Pianoparts und wehmütige Streicher, in ernsten Tönen vorgetragene Poesie und ein jazzig eingefärbter Sopran: All dies und einiges mehr fügt sich derart passgenau zum Narrativ eines musikalischen Hörspiels zusammen, dass man die dirigierende Hand einer alles im Griff habenden Personen vermutet. Umso schöner, wenn sich so etwas spontan ergibt.
Die ruhige Gangart, mit der das Album startet, sollte nicht hinwegtäuschen über eine unterschwellige Aufgewühltheit, die nie ganz aus der Musik verschwindet und mit einem gewissen stoischen Charakter in den Dialog tritt. Im Opener, dessen Titel “Modular” bestens zu seinem kollagenhaften Charakter passt, gibt entspanntes, fast pastorales Gitarrenpicking den Hintergrund für den Sound zielgerichteter Schritte, für ein sanft leuchtendes Dröhnen, das bei genauerem Hinhören eher aufgeweckt als entspannt anmutet – und für eine fragile Stimme, die fast erschöpft eine Wahrnehmung beschreibt, die die so fragmetiert anmutet wie die Puzzelteile der Musik. Alles wirkt auf spröde Art organisch, auch der wie von einer alten Shellackplatte anmutende Sporan, der in “Ghosts of Sand” überleitet und diesem – entrückt, verschwommen und abgehoben im besten Sinne einen weitaus songhafteren Zug verleiht.
Jeder der Tracks ist voller kleiner klanglicher und atmosphärischer Ideen: Auf Samples basierende Perkussion, die durch manche Stücke peitscht, mäandernde Sounds aus dem Fundus indischer Instrumente, glasklare Pianotupfer, Wind und quietschende Türen. Gedämpfte Bläser in “Bushwick”, Straßensounds in “An eleven Hour Sleep”, tropfendes Nass in dem berührenden “Mare Aperto” und “Bella Ciao“, von dem ich nicht sagen kann, ob es mehr als nur von Titel her auf das bekannte Partisanenlied bezug nimmt. Orientalisierende Gitarren in “Our Lady” von keinem geringeren als My Dear killer. Dann immer wieder die erschöpfte und doch resolute Rezitation.
Viele dieser Details kehren in der einen oder anderen Abwandlung leitmotivisch wieder, und dies ist nur ein Grund, das Album als Ganzes, als gelungenes musikalisches Hörspiel zu rezipieren."
[Uwe Schneider (African Paper)]
€13.00
VIVMMI
"As mummy thought us: you have to put your money where your mouth is. So when we claimed praise for a small CDR release by a relatively new German composer Mirko Uhlig we dabbled with the idea of releasing it on LP. Now we did. We doubled the edition of 65 to 130 and it has great carton sleeve (like last year's Pick-up LP).
Since 2006 he has retreated to his nom de passport (formerly known as Aalfang mit Pferdekopf), Uhlig has exchanged the naive bewilderment of experimental bricolage with the pursuit of pure beauty and there is suddenly confusion as to his motives: Are these silent outbursts of refined romanticism intended as some sort of clever commentary on the Drone genre, as a neo-conservative return to proven values or part of something different altogether? 'VIVMMI' has been remastered for vinyl." [label info]
www.kormplastics.nl
€15.00
Flowers of Evil
"In the midst of the forest, the floor is littered with monstrous heads and mythical figures, frozen in torturous combat or threatened by wild beasts. A dragon fights a dog and a wolf. A lion sinks its teeth into the fire-breathing monster’s chest.
This sacred grove, near Bomarzo in Lazio, Italy, reveals the nightmare vision of Vicino Orsini, a sixteenth century nobleman. It’s a forest of symbols, suggesting a civilisation overrun by the beasts, demons and monsters of the primordial world. Soon after Orsini’s death, trees began to close in on these many peculiar beings, and green moss would eventually seize them. Slowly, nature finished what he had started.
Flowers of Evil, the new studio album from Ulver, finds the wolf pack exploring the fear and wonder of mankind’s fall from redemption. Visions similar to those of Orsini come to mind, as untamed life abounds:
THEY SPREAD
TWIST AND TURN
IN THE KILLING FIELDS
The threads of haunted places and images entwine. Have Ulver discovered new pastures under the sun? Or scoured the ruins of their own moonlit past? The truth is, they’re closer to their previous purlieu than perhaps ever before.
“Doom dance”, someone dubbed their last studio album, the critically acclaimed, Impala Award-winning The Assassination of Julius Caesar (2017). Flowers of Evil comes across as an unfeigned progression along the course set by that album, revealing a band moving deeper into beats and grooves, hooks and choruses, synths and guitars, yet sounding more stripped back, making room for the distinctive detail. Once again Michael Rendall (The Orb) and legendary producer Martin “Youth” Glover have taken crystalline care of the mix.
As Caesar demonstrated, Ulver haven’t abandoned any of their obsessions, worries or nightmares as they enter the gilded palace of pop. “One last dance / in this burning church”, Kristoffer Rygg announces on the album’s opening track, featuring old friend Christian Fennesz on guitar and electronics. It sees them locked inside their Hall of Mirrors. A slow build brings the music to the album’s pulsing theme:
WE ARE WOLVES
UNDER THE MOON
THIS IS OUR SONG
WE HAVE LOVED
AND WE HAVE LOST
WE ARE READY TO GO
With Flowers of Evil Ulver have fled a burning Rome, only to confront further crime and corruption. ‘Russian Doll’, the album’s first single, moves determinedly through the night, with a story of unfolding tragedy and misery. ‘Machine Guns and Peacock Feathers’ brings fiery end-time imagery – “barrels are burning / great art will be destroyed” – with a disco beat and flashy ’80s synths. Dismal cries resound on ‘Hour of the Wolf’; echoing Bergman’s classic film, the song is dedicated to the hour between night and dawn, “when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are most real”. ‘Apocalypse 1993’ reveals Ulver at their catchiest, its bounding-goat groove running hand in hand with a grand chorus depicting the catastrophic events at Waco, Texas, during the winter of that year – the very same winter that saw the birth of Ulver’s first incarnation. From that thorny undergrowth, this is what they have become: an eclectic, many-headed beast, chanting the ecstasies of the spirit and the senses.
Flowers of Evil unfolds with the shattering second single, ‘Little Boy’. A mysterious beat moves the track towards its thunderous climax, and here Michael J. York’s ominous pipes melt into the softer, moodier ‘Nostalgia’, a ’70s soul shuffle, and the heart-breaking Talk Talk-esque balladry of ‘A Thousand Cuts’. Finally, the wolves are back in the palace of excess, waltzing the night away. Yet around them, the wilderness rises, triumphant; “grass will grow over your cities”, as the Bible says.
– Tore Engelsen Espedal
https://ulver.bandcamp.com/album/flowers-of-evil
€32.00
Acquired Tastes / Lost Tapes 2008-2011
UMPIO 2xCD collects "lost tapes". Couple tracks from rare and nearly impossible to get tapes, several tracks remained unreleased. Quite typical situation that after Freak Animal published Umpio "Muelas" CD, several flakey labels offered him deals for tape releases... that never came out. As enthusiastic noise maker, Umpio took the offers. Now, decade later Freak Animal fills the gaps with the missing parts in lineage of Umpio discography. Since then Umpio moved on to new ways of noise making, yet this "Acquired tastes" will be testament of junk noise era he is most known for.
https://www.nhfastore.net/umpio-acquired-tastes?search=umpio
€15.00
The reversed supermarket trolley files towards the rainbow
Neues Werk des Electronica-Projektes in unglaublicher Aufmachung (wie ein 3D-Kinderbuch mit Elementen zum Hochklappen) !
"This is a unique rare live recording of "Un Caddie Renversé dans l' Herbe" which took place at Iasmos, on Saturday, November 12th 2005
during the birthday party of Amaryllis.
Enjoy the dreamy, surreal, avantgarde, ethnic sounds of Un Caddie mixed with sounds, toy instruments and songs the children perform.
An unsusual & fascinating combination of laptop & traditional instruments as Balaphon, Mbira, Kalimba, Berimbau plus Piano, Cello, Guitar, Bass, Melodica, Chimes and more!
The CD comes in an extremely special design and package which is folded like a cartoon picture toy-book and is limited to 388 hand-numbered copies..." [label info]
€13.00
The Background Noise
"Under The Snow is a project by Stefano Gentile (guitar, objects, field-recordings) and Gianluca Favaron (microphones, field-recordings, processing). Stefano Gentile is well known for his work as owner of the Silentes and Amplexus labels; he is part of Maribor (along with Maurizio Bianchi, Nimh, Andrea Marutti and Gianluca Favaron) and in the past he has collaborated with Aube and Amir Baghiri. Beyond releasing under his own name, Gianluca Favaron collaborates with Ennio Mazzon on the Zbeen project; in the past he has released music as Ab'she and was part of Lasik Surgery along with Pierpaolo Zoppo. Released after a series of works for Silentes and U-Cover, "The Background Noise" is a single-sided 12" record, built starting from acoustic guitar sounds that develop on a background of statics and digital scoriae, where the cold and aseptic electronic frequencies melt with the plucked strings, resonating in a dramatic request for help or, maybe, in the warning of an imminent danger. A welcome release in the fast-growing discography of Under The Snow, that will appeal to fans of other Italian musicians like, among the others, Gianluca Becuzzi, Fabio Orsi, Enrico Coniglio, Stefano Pilia and Giuseppe Ielasi (who took care of the mastering).
"The Background Noise" is released in a limited edition of 86 copies; an additional edition of 13 copies is also available, it includes a 30x30cm reproduction of the cover picture printed on high quality professional photo-paper. Due to the restricted amount of available copies you'd better not think twice about it!" [label info]
http://13.silentes.it
"As Under The Snow Favaron works with Stefano Gentile, who plays acoustic guitar and treated guitar picks, and Favaron is responsible for 'programming, electronics and signal processing'. They have released a bunch of CDs (see Vital Weekly 771, 786 and 826) of their improvised playing, in which the laptop picks up the guitar sound and treats that on the spot. Following a start in which the laptop seemed to prevail, the later releases had a more fine tuned balance of straight guitar sounds and laptop processing. This one sided LP has a twenty minute piece which continues the chosen road of the previous releases and shows us more crackles, static hiss and bangs on the guitar. Maybe a bit more chaotic than before, I thought, bringing out the element of improvisation more than on the previous releases. At the same time there is also a bit more drone like sounds, closing off the LP, and taking away some of the emptiness previously found in their music. I think it's great to see them slowly develop and become more and more like an improvised working unit. The combination of live laptop processing a live guitar is perhaps not something that hasn't been done before, as noted before, but again here, this seems to work rather well." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€16.00
Ceux du Dehors
"Third album (1981) by the Belgian band Univers Zero. The title alludes to the short story of the same name by H.P. Lovecraft; the players read the story in studio, then proceeded to record the piece. A key release for the band. Ceux du Dehors sometimes suggests a darker and more complex version of the motorik minimalism of classical music contemporaries Philip Glass and Steve Reich.
This album finds the group continuing to evolve and return to the more general and varied chamber music sound of their first release, except with more precision and skill. The tricky charts of percussionist Daniel Denis and new keyboardist Andy Kirk are executed with great panache. The labyrinth-like compositions are typically filled with unexpected twists and turns, and angular repetitions of jagged riffs that accelerate, decelerate and mutate in passages of acute tension or quiet but ominous dread." [label info]
€16.00
The frailty of angels, the treason of people
Excellent debut release from this British project, silent but dense & eerie ambience with tension, a very own style...
“Unsong (Mason Ball) is a project interested in producing stark, atypical and emotive audio regardless of logical progression, musicality or continuity. Unsong create rich, layered, instinctive sound works from the minimal to the extravagant, utilising a miscellaneous array of sources: electronically generated tones, processed field recordings, disassembled voices, domestic appliances, stolen sounds, chance; the list stretches on exponentially.The methodology employed by unsong is a simple one: proceed with what sounds right, abandon what doesn't, often producing broken and unintelligible sounds to engage, soothe, surprise and disorientate the listener. Unsong endeavours to fashion disordered audio for gleefully unsound minds. [label info]
“ Dark, atmospheric music, that however doesn't tend towards something like dark ambient (with tons of digital synths), but more into the sound research areas of The Hafler Trio (circa How To Reform Mankind), Coil or Andrew Liles. One of the better pieces on this is the lenghty title piece, which is a slow beast moving onwards until a loop drops in and changes the slightly the atmosphere of the music. Sometimes the music falls below the point of hearing, but it always creeps back from under the carpet, right into your face. Scary music, this is. Music that could be easily used for some thriller film production. Very spooky but very well made. I am told that through the website of Unsong it is possible to order from each song a lenghty remix (one track per CDR), in case this wasn't enough... [FdW, Vital Weekly] Address: http://www.macrophonies.co.uk
€13.00
The Night is yours
"Finally out this mighty masterpiece of dark and wild psychedelia from the Japanese three-piece legends! Fuzz and reverb drenched jamming sounds from the basements of Hamamatsu evoking the always welcomed ghosts of Amon Düül and Les Rallizes Denudes.
Originally released as an instantly sold-out LP edition on Sloow Tapes in 2011, we decided to do justice and make The Night Is Yours available again, this time as a CD edition limited to 200 copies. Housed in our high quality tip-on mini-LP gatefold packaging (plus insert) featuring new sonic treatment by the mastermind Aoki Tomoyuki and expanded trippy artwork by Bart De Paepe!"
“Tokyo psych monsters Up-Tight come out of the classically wasted/drug-damaged school of excessive fuzz and reverb, giving the nod to the endless jam style of Les Rallizes Denudes while spiking their sound with dark downer ballads that owe as much to The Jacks as they do to The Velvet Underground. The Night Is Yours is the absolute apex of their catalogue to date, crossing beautiful comedown folk-psych moves with whole sides of extended scorch. Indeed, there’s a new focus on psychedelic ritual here, especially apparent on the staggering “She’s So Heavy” with choirs of disembodied monks chanting in the background while the bass – played with all of the thunderous power of Mik from Kousokuya – marches the group ever forward and vocalist Tomoyuki hovers over the track like a wraith. If you can picture Spacemen 3 circa “The Perfect Prescription” produced by Ghost circa “Temple Stone” then you’re close to the outrageous levels of psychedelic excess captured here. Tomoyuki’s guitar tone has to be heard to be believed, with tactile garage punk crunch put to the service of endlessly euphoric orbits of three droning chords. Up-Tight have been responsible for a buncha the most memorable releases to come out of the post-PSF underground but this has to be their recorded pinnacle, the perfect balance of two chord Velvet downers and strung-out post-Rallizes string violence. One of our records of the year so far! Highly recommended!” (Volcanic Tongue)
www.essence-music.com
€15.50
ARTIFICIAL MEMORY TRACE presents: Interpretations
Interpretations of graphical works from AMT by: MAISON_MEDICALE, DALE LLOYD, KARKOWSKI, SECRET SOCIETY MUSIC, DAVID MC CARTHY, JEAN LUC GUIONNET, AIOFE MC GOVERN, NOISE-MAKER'S FIFES, and additional tracks by AMT, TBC, SKWI + Y.BUCHHEIM. Quite radical in approach & sounding, between extreme concrete microcospic field / soundobject recordings & instrumental use, electronic noises & drones, everything is possible...
On Hamburgs "Wachsender Prozess"-Label !
€9.50
Guitars undressed
Nackte Kühe auf’m Cover und Gitarren werden hier auch entkleidet... eine schöne Minimal / Microsound – Compilation mit Stücken von meist bekannteren Grössen, die wissen wie man Gitarren allerentrückteste Sounds entlockt: NAOAKI MIYAMOTO, OREN AMBARCHI, SHIFTS, DAVID GRUBBS, RICHARD YOUNGS, LEE RANALDO, RAFAEL TORAL....
“in my quest to bring you, the customer, the most osbscure items in a narrow range of out-sound tactics (amongs the greater scale: conceptual guitar-sound etudes) i came across this disc (well.. i bought a copy of this from rafael when he blew through town a few weeks back). lineup is something to die for in regards to contemporary out-guitar (sem)antics. most (bordering on all) pieces are extended, unreleased forays into the unknown far-reaches of space.
especially nice outings from mr. ambarchi (possibly the last of the stacte variations, and one of the most engaging pieces in his entire gimundo oeuvre) and mr. toral (a 20+ minute bleep-epic verging on near-quietude). controlled coelacanth-removal radiation from mr. ranaldo (hazy scrunge-fest with much echoplexation). plus songs from mr. youngs (bright, acoustic folk-sounding ditty, mildly off-place here) and grubbs (well, more of a kind of restrained volume-pedal improv than a proper “song” per sé). and an ebow bit from franz de waard.
first release on a fresh, young japanese label. all-star lineup. green grass and cows on the cover...” [Mimaroglu]
€12.00
FRANNCE
Ausufernde Compilation auf dem DIY-Label aus Frankreich, wohl etwas ironisch als "Ode an France" untertitelt. 45 Projekte zwischen kraftvoller Drone-Psychedelia, wirbelnden Analog-Electronics & Instrumental-Madness, so ziemlich alles aus dem Bereich "Experimenteller / Impro Folk-Drone" was man sich nur vorstellen kann...
"A quick look at the listing of groups on this super limited triple cd-r collection of songs from France, or about France, or with some sort of French angle, should have most weird music fans freaking out bigtime. All exclusive tracks from tons of AQ faves, including: The Shitty Listener, Quetzolcoatl, Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood, Silvester Anfang, Heavy Winged, Tom Carter, The North Sea, Taiga Remains, Ashtray Navigations, Uton, The Futurians, Mike Tamburo, Tanakh, Black Forest Black Sea, Ben Reynolds, Volcano The Bear, 6majik9, CJA, The Stumps, Gregg Kowalsky, Fursaxa, Seht, Valerio Cosi, Fabi Orsi, Birds Of Delay, Bjerga / Iverson, Robert Horton and more more more. 3+ hours of strange and magical sounds from all over the world, but all centered around France. From the ultra lo-fi barely audible pop genius of The Shitty Listener, the gorgeous mournful steel string Appalachian folk of The North Sea, the washed out murky drift of Quetzolcoatl, some super spare solo electric guitar drift from Tom Carter, a bit of haunting high end tribal buzz from Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood, some gorgeous shuffle and twang, slither and creep from Silvester Anfang, an epic druggy slowburning NZ-style krautrockish jam from The Stumps, some whispered crystalline shimmer from Fursaxa and we could go on and on. Varied and expansive, from folk to drone to noise to pound to swirl to buzz to twang...
As with all RuralFaune stuff, meticulously packaged, each one hand assembled, three spray painted discs, rouge, blanc and bleu (the colors of the French flag), housed in a cool textured red and orange wallpaper cover, in a thick vinyl sleeve, with a sticker on the front. Inside is a huge fold out, 2 sided poster insert, with liner notes on one side and a painting on the other, as well as a bunch of other inserts, stickers, a tiny square of paper hand numbered and a "piece of blotting paper impregnated with red wine"! LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. We will NOT be able to get more..." [Aquarius Records]
www.myspace.com/ruralfaunelovesyou
€18.00
AIRPORT SYMPHONY
Australische Compilation zum Thema "Erfahrungen des Reisens in moderner Zeit" mit Beiträgen v.a. aus dem Microsound und digital-ambience & drone Bereich. Jeder Musiker / Klangkünstler benutzte dabei Original-Aufnahmen vom Brisbaner Flughafen, das ganze kommt in einer Metallbox mit Banderole verpackt.
"With David Grubbs, Richard Chartier, Francisco López, Camilla Hannan, Taylor Deupree, Christophe Charles, Dale Lloyd, Marc Behrens, Toshiya Tsunoda, Tim Hecker, Stephan Mathieu, Fennesz, Burkhard Beins, Jason Kahn, Ulrich Krieger, Keichi Sugimoto, Christopher Willits, Joel Stern. '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." [L. English, June 2007]
€18.00
OEC 100 / THE OLD EUROPA CAFE
OLD EUROPA CAFE fing wie einige andere heute noch existierende Experimental-Labels (z.B. ANT-ZEN, KORM PLASTICS) in den 80er Jahren als Cassetten-Label an, um später auch Vinyl & CDs herauszugeben... Nun gibt es das Label von Mastermind RODOLFO PROTTI bereits seit 25 Jahren, und das wird mit dieser irren Compilation eindrucksvoll zum Ausdruck gebracht. 101 Stücke von Gruppen, Musikern & Projekten die irgendwie mit OLD EUROPA CAFE in Verbindung standen oder stehen sind hier verewigt, und das Thema soll sein: EUROPA. Von Post-Industrial über Harsh Noise, Dark Ambient und Neo-Folk, das Spektrum des Labels reicht sehr weit, die Wurzeln liegen aber ganz klar in geräuschvollen Industrialsounds..
"This compilation was planed during 2007 for the 25th OEC anniversary. For celebrate the label and all the work done over all those years 101 artists / groups / projects which was / are / will be involved with OEC was invited to submit an unreleased or anyway re-worked / exclusive track devoted to the theme :
Europa !
Europe : from Portugal to Russia
Europe : his history
Europe : his culture
Europe : his cities
Europe : his beauty
…. At last, a true Old Europe Cafe soundtrack ....
Tracklisting / in Alfabetical Order :
1. A Challenge of Honour - Iberia
2. Aesthetic Meat Front – Twilight in Berlin
3. Ain Soph – Tra le Rovine
4. Albireon – Un Cavallo Senza Nome (Sonne Hagal’s Italian covered track)
5. Alessandro Pacciani – The Colour of the Human Ashes
6. All My Faith Lost … - Septembre 1871
7. Argine – Risveglio
8. Artefactum – The Night Waltz in Vienna
9. Asianova – Trieste
10. Astro - Old European Son
11. Autopsia & K.Rossmann – Fragment II
12. Bad Sector – Old Europa On Air
13. Beyond Sensory Experience - Fadren
14. Black Sun Productions – Gegen Verfuehrung / Grande Inno di Ringraziamento
15. Bleiburg – Europaean Heartbeat
16. Camerata Mediolanense - Guillotine
17. Circus Joy – Signora Europa
18. Claustrum – Penitential
19. Cristian Renou – U-Rop Impress (heavy version)
20. Cropcircle – The Balkan Doll will never Grow
21. D.B.P.I.T. – Lili Marlene
22. David E. Williams – Erlkönig
23. Dawn & Dusk Entwined – Occident
24. Dead Man’s Hill - Parc Abbey / The Heverlee Lakes
25. Deutsch Nepal – The Lonely Comming Down
26. Discordance – Jokela, Finland
27. Division S – Further Knowledge
28. Dogs Hate Monet - In This Dream
29. Dream Weapon Ritual – excerpt from The Mysteries Of E
30. Egida Aurea – L’Ardente Fiaccola della ragione
31. Folkstorm - United under a black sun of utmost splendour
32. Foreign Trade – With You
33. Foresta di Ferro – Europe Greets the Storm
34. Furvus – Evropa
35. Gerechtigkeits Liga – Controlled Europe
36. Grey Wolves – Decapitation Zone (Euro Carve Up)
37. GX Jupitter-Larsen – Norge Om Polybølge
38. H.E.R.R. – A Newer Rome (2007 Version)
39. Horologium – European Macht Muzik
40. Hybryds – Resistance (Old Europa Mix) with samplefood by Wejdas
41. 40.Jerome Deppe and Gentlemen Oscura – Song for Nero
42. K. Meizter – Prypiat
43. Kallabris – Holzweg , Scherzo for Scandinavian wood winds and tape manipulation
44. Kenji Siratori – Crusade 2007
45. Knifeladder – Warsaw , 4pm
46. Lark Blames – Small Cars
47. Lonsai Maikov & Dissonant Elephant – Occident : 111
48. Lt. Caramel – Estación de Princípe Pío
49. Macelleria Mobile di Mezzanotte- White Jazz (Excelsior Cafe Version)
50. Malato – EU
51. Mauro Guazzotti – Clockwork Europe
52. Moljebka Pulse – Avra
53. Musterion – Underneath Stockholm
54. MZ.412 - Overthrowing European Christianity
55. Naevus – The Petty Task
56. Nazi UFO Commander – Flying Dutchman
57. Ninth Desert – Oscript
58. Njurmannen - Music for an erotic TV show
59. Nocturne – Old Nocturne Cafe
60. Nordvargr - Facing the ghost of the past
61. Northgate – Brief
62. Ô Paradis – Contigo
63. Organisation Toth – Follow the L.ight O.V. .E.uropa
64. Pacific 231 – Mezquita
65. Peter Andresson – Kitchenscape
66. Post Contemporary Corporation – Il Martirio di Wagner (live attack !)
67. Rapoon – We Whisper Revolutions in the Cafe’s of Europe
68. Richard Ramirez – The Colours of Dark Clouds over Italy
69. Roma Amor – Der Treue Husar
70. Runes Order – In the Endless Regions of Europa (Hate IV)
71. S.Q.E. – Shards
72. Sacher Pelz – Pchearsezl
73. Sala Delle Colonne – Scilla e Cariddi
74. Second Amendment – The Stranger
75. Seelenblut – Sudden Light
76. Seelenlicht – Return to Summerisle
77. Selfishadows – Poison
78. Shining Vriel – Of Coin + Ruin
79. Siegmar Fricke - Euroceutik 2007
80. Simulacrum – Naturatum EU
81. Sleeping Pictures – Kiss the Dirt
82. Slogun - Palma:1986-2002
83. Space Alliance – Abduction of Europa
84. Spiritual Front – Funeral Blues
85. TAC - Sixth From Jupiter
86. Tam Quam Tabula Rasa – New Ropes Suffocate my Hopes (Rendhagyò Olasz Dallam)
87. Tears of Othila – Up our Banners ! (Special Old Europa version)
88. Teatro Satanico – Veneto Industrial in Europa
89. The Lindberg Baby – No Promises
90. The Soil Bleed Black - Thou Art Mine
91. Thomas Nola et Son Orchestre – Mother’s Ruin
92. Tribe of a Circle - Demokratür - Final Act
93. Troum / Asianova / Voice of Eye – Dream for a New Europa (Re-Entry Edit)
94. Ventral Metaphor – Lost in Pordenone
95. Vestigial – Substorm’s Curtains
96. Voice of Eye – Inside the Breath of the Adriatic
97. Vox Populi! – Soft entrance to nature’s camino de luz
98. Wermut – Maladia Europa II
99. Wertham – Which Way Western Man
100. Wheian – Europa
101. XX Century Zorro – Phelin Phelix
Cover art-work features reproductions of oil paintings by : Mass Inc.
As you can see this will be a true Mammoth compilation !
We didn't put limits to the sound stiles , so here you can really hear all the sounds
of the Industrial sub-culture featured on OEC !
A BIG document on OEC work ...
A BIG thank you to all the artists who was walking with OEC !!!
A BIG thank you to all who was supporting OEC for such a long time !!!"
[label info]
www.oldeuropacafe.com
€38.00
ELECTRIC LIGHT (COLUMN ONE REMIXES)
"Schon die zweite Compilation auf dem neuen COLUMN ONE – Label “90% Wasser”, “Electric Light” beinhaltet Remixe von Material ihrer CD/picLP “Electric Pleasure”, von ihnen selbst sind alleine 5 Stücke dabei! Herausgekommen sind dabei v.a. Minimal-elektronisches, -technoides und –obskur-surreales, dekonstruktierte SoundWelten.." [Drone Records notes 2002]
”Here comes the long-awaited remix album following Column One's critically acclaimed electro milestone "Electric Pleasure" about which The Wire wrote it was "breathtaking in its thoroughness". Electric Light features remixes by: Column One | Silk Saw | Frieder Butzmann | Marc Wannabe | Mimetic Fake | Rechenzentrum | Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg | CoeUR y NaGL | Afanassi Viebeg | M.O.W.E.”. [press-release]
€13.50
This Infernal Love of Life
Wiederveröffentlichung einer schwedischen Compilation-LP von 1989 mit ELD-OMALA (symphonisch-apokalyptische Sounds), WHITE STAINS (experimenteller Ritual-Folk, waren eng mit PSYCHIC TV & TOPY verbandelt), PHAUSS (lebendiger Infinity-Drone / Noise), Z. KARKOWSKI (schon damals kaum zu beschreibender undurchdringlicher Komplex- & Amorph Noise voller innerer Bewegung)
Thema der Compilation war der "Wille zum Leben", das Feiern der Lebenskräfte, eine entsprechend rituelle & kraftvolle Zusammenstellung ist es geworden... ein sehr lohnenswerter Re-Release, neues Cover, Auflage 500 Stück.
"A visionary showcase of Sweden's finest artists, paying tribute to the mighty currents of LIFE within us all. This album was originally released as an LP by TOPYSCAN in Stockholm in 1989, in a limited, hand-numbered edition. Included was a booklet with texts, artwork and photographs by the artists.
The idea, if any, was to invite artists working with sound and experimental music to illustrate the philosophical, emotional concept of the "will to live". Eld-Omala and White Stains were based in Stockholm, Phauss and Karkowski in Gothenburg. One could say that this album presents a pretty correct picture of what was going on musically in Sweden at the time. Digitally remastered by Thomas Tibert in 2006,
the album comes with new cover,first time in digital format." [label info]
www.monochromevision.ru
€13.00
ERRATUM # 4, Revue Sonore
"Poetry of sound / sound of poetry. Erratum brings together personalities both atypical and unclassifiable : outriders, stalkers, survivors of the sonic crash zone, those transgressing the strictures and clichés of unimaginative sound habits. Visual and sonic artists, bards, iconoclastic noise makers come together to create a subtle, hybrid, ever-changing, disseminated collective sonic psyche. From the time of Marcel Duchamp's Musical Erratum and Luigi Russolo's Art of Noises in 1913 to the latterday recuperation of software bugs, hardware crashes, along with the eclectic array of contemporary poetical noise praxis, there is a rich, complex and poorly understood history. Erratum's aim is not so much to associate poetry and music as to seek out their potential to merge : the crossovers, the openings, the interzones, meetings and fault lines, the ineffable yet tangible open fusion, that blends the different vibrations of voice, noise and electronics. Erratum weaves a lively and diagonal concretion, an alternative to restrictive and mechanical technological visions and it stands out as a realm of a possible Utopia of the indivisible that leads towards active questioning.
with :
AGF
Pierre André Arcand
Llorenç Barber
Stéphane Bérard
Xavier Boussiron
Raoul Beckman
Christophe Charles
Henning Christiansen
Chlorgeschlecht
Ira Cohen
Doc. Courbe
Jacques Demarcq
Le Dépeupleur
Fréderic Dumond
Yvan Etienne
EHB
Vincent Epplay
Joana Preiss
Arno Fabre
Giovanni Fontana
Michel Giroud
Guillermo G.Peña
Guillermo Galindo
Tommi Grönlund
Petteri Nisunen
Charles E.Henry
Gary Hill
Joël Hubaut
José Iges
Jil Keita
Christina Kubisch
Brandon LaBelle
laboiteblanche
David Larcher
Rainier Lericolais
Francisco López
Robin Minard
Joachim Montessuis
Phill Niblock
Julien Ottavi
Charles Pennequin
Finnbogi Pétursson
Cédric Pigot
Jörg Piringer
Lee Ranaldo
Jean Philippe Roux
Erik Samakh
Samon Takahashi
Atau Tanaka
Alexandre Yterce
Randy H.Yau"
[label info]
www.erratum.org
€26.00
Offstrings
"Some guitar players immerse themselves in their instrument's rich and varied traditions, while others exploit innovations of technique and technology to find new expressive possibilities. But regardless of whether they celebrate or subvert its iconic status, they're gilding an aura that makes it ripe for use and abuse as a Duchampian found object. The five guitarists on Offstrings come to the instrument from both sides of the altar. While they can play like virtuosos, recontextualize familiar sounds, or come up with new ones, they know that these are means, not ends. They wield all of the sound-producing and conceptual qualities inherent in the Guitar to play the chords of human experience. They offer you a chance to listen. Various artists featuring new work from Chicago musicians: David Daniell (San Agustin, Rhys Chaham, Daniel-McComb Duo), Mark Shippy (Shorty, US Maple), Travis Bird (Leavitt Ours, Dense Reduction) & Daniel Burke (Illusion of Safety, Cheer-Accident, Tertium Quid), Michael Vallera (Sinkane). 180 gram colored vinyl with download coupon." [label info]
"Its been a while since we last had a new release on Complacency Records, primarily the label of Illusion Of Safety, but here is a compilation that deals with guitarists from the Chicago area. Five artists, of which two form a duo, Travis Bird and Daniel Burke (of Illusion Of Safety), while the other three are new to me: David Daniell, Mark Shippy and Michael Vallera. The guitar is still a machine to play music on, which can be basically anything, from nicely played string to abstract drone patterns. This album seems to be dealing with the latter. The three pieces on side, Bird/Burke (who have two pieces) and Vallera are both great examples of the guitar as a resonating box of sounds, and no doubt sound effects. The second of the two Bird/Burke pieces is a more improvised one and works a bit less but all together they are great pieces though. David Daniell opens up on side B and here it starts with the tinkling of guitars, which are gradually being pick up by various loop devices and the result is a desolate piece of music. Mark Shippy's piece uses also the same idea of tinkling guitars, but are drenched in reverb and is the weakest link on an otherwise fine compilation." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€18.50
Compilation Festival Electronica en Abril * 2003-2012
"To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Festival Electronica en Abril, born in 2003 at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, La Casa Encendida has invited some of the artists that have left their personal mark on the event, right now the oldest music festival in Madrid. All of them have contributed exclusive tracks to this 2LP that provide an insight into the quality and diversity of the festival. These are ten exclusive tracks that research a very specific sound quality (Eleh, Radian, nsi.), take introspective journeys (Thomas Körner, Maja Ratkje) and summon deep rhythmic collisions (Farben aka Jan Jelinek, Dopplereffekt, Elektro Guzzi, Matmos, SND). All of them seem to share a desire for experimentation that encompasses the emotional as a response to a general state of things that hits us with an overdose of data and experimentation. Matmos' track was composed playing around with a friend's new synthesizer. Eleh added field recordings to his usual microscopic sound aesthetic for the first time. Thomas Körner composed this intimate and melancholic piece for his grandmother, and Maja Ratkje goes deep into an alien ambient lullaby of ravishing simplicity and beauty. Farben deconstructs rhythm to build it up again as a pure ecstatic house beat. Nsi., the project of Tobias Freund and Max Loderbauer embark on an abyssal expedition to the far reaches of sound. Dopplereffekt melt their retro-futurist electro into crystalline emotions. Elektro Guzzi, always recording live, without overdubs, was helped in the studio by Patrick Pulsinger, taking the bullet train directly to the heart of their amazing analog techno, where guitar, bass and drums truly count. And SND (Mark Fell and Matt Steel) ride on an oblique and funked-up carousel of their own making, where rhythm and math surf together. And finally, Farben goes deep into glorious house-not-house." [label info]
€29.50
70 Years of Sunshine
"In 1943 a Swiss chemist accidentally absorbed through his finger-tips a tiny amount of a compound he was researching. Later, he recorded the effects in a journal - a document of the world's very first LSD trip: 'Last Friday, April 16,1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.' - Dr. Albert Hofmann - Sandoz Lab Report. 50 years later, in 1993 (the height of the Rave scene in San Francisco) Silent Records released a very special double CD set, curated and produced by Kim Cascone. This was no ordinary release - it was a stellar collection of music from artists paying homage to Albert Hofmann's very first LSD trip. '50 Years of Sunshine received many positive reviews and was praised for being a welcome tribute to the man who changed 20th century human consciousness with a single molecule. The musical homage to Hofmann struck a chord with the public, serving as a reminder to keep the doors of perception open and the creative imagination nourished. Given the bleak times we find ourselves in today, Cascone felt that another tribute to Herr Hofmann was in order. To celebrate the 70th anniversary of the first LSD trip, a batch of etheric lysergic soundscapes were contributed to this project by Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mother's Temple, Robert Wheeler of Pere Ubu, Legendary Pink Dots, Andrew Liles (Nurse With Wound), Andy Rantzen (Pelican Daughter's), various artists from the Silent label and some newer sound artists as well. Consider '70 Years of Sunshine' to be a muchanticipated software update. One that will hopefully make your auditory operating system run smoother and more colorfully. With Kawabata Makoto, Lord Tang, Chihei Hatakeyama, Makyo, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Legendary Pink Dots, Ethernet, Invisible Path, Phil Legard, Andrew Liles, Rapoon, Komora A, (Darius Ciuta), Mike Rooke, Lonely Crowd, Mystical Sun, Mirt, Ceremonial Dagger, Cotton Ferox, Andy Rantzen." [label info]
www.monotyperecords.com
€16.00
DRONE-MIND // MIND-DRONE Vol. 3
Sold outthe NEW LP-series from Drone Records, dedicated to the Drones of the World, and the Drones of our Minds. A kind of continuation of the Drone 7"-series on a more user-friendly format. Each LP features four artists from the international drone-scene and is limited to 500 copies, pressed on four different vinyl-colours. Vol. 3: JIM HAYNES (USA), MANINKARI (France), KSHATRIY (Russia), EXIT IN GREY (Russia). stunning artwork paintings by British artist PETE GREENING, design by TILMANN BENNINGHAUS.
JIM HAYNES: psychogeographical drones of rust and decay.
This highly interesting sound-artist from San Francisco (also active as painter, label-manager, & writer) is focused on the unpredictable processes of rust & decay in connection with the perception of time. For his contribution "He stopped at a picture..." to the re-newed Drone Rec-series he is using field recordings from a world war 2 era radar outpost (located near the Golden Gate Bridge), combined with shortwave, motors, wire-tapping microphones, analogue electric sounds.. => a breathtaking experimental & raw drone-collage, full of tension & almost dramatic suction, sound of " psychic loss & american paranoia" (JIM HAYNES).
EXIT IN GREY: timeless natural drones.
The main project of Russian Sergey [S] from the Moscow-area (who is also active as FIVE ELEMENTS MUSIC & SISTER LOOLOMIE) is mesmerizing the listeners since years with small & handmade editions of emotional daydream-drones, intuitively woven together with guitar, field recordings & analog synths. The long piece "Drawn by Memory/The Wind 2012" is a perfect example of his skills and creates with minimal instrumental & natural sound-sources an atmosphere of timelessness and nostalgia..
KSHATRIY : dark psychedelic (higher?) consciousness drones
KSHATRIY means 'warrior' in Sanskrit and expresses the artists believe in the universal power of sound. Hailing from the fascinating St. Petersburg scene in Russia comes this "fractal dark drone ambient' project, especially focused on cosmic/transpersonal consciousness themes - these "Shifting Waves" sound secretful & mysterious with a phantastic spatial sound-quality (open to both digital & analogue sound sources) for the perfect cosmic mind-movie.
MANINKARI : handplayed / instrumental trance drones.
This French duo (consisting of two twin-brothers from Paris) has blown us away with their captivating "handplayed" instrumental drone music, with influences from various styles like Jazz, Art Rock and Classical Music, combining improvisation and composition. Often based on percussion & strings, they look at their sound as a spiritual tool causing a disorder of the mind, a 'visible' transformation of the uncontrollable dreams & their own subsconscious. The two pieces "Enstase 1 & 2" sound at the same time subtle, airy and dense using a suprising instrumentation, and show impressively one of the possible new directions of drone music.
= four projects that differ considerably from each other, but united through the idea of the power of the Drone.
~ ~ The drones of their minds "materialized" ~ ~ The "intelligence" of drones materialized ~ ~
four vinyl-colours, each 125 x: WHITE & GREEN MIXED // BLACK // MIXED YELLOW RED // CHRYSTAL CLEAR & WHITE MIXED. design by Tilmann Benninghaus (Berlin) using bronce-colour & UV gloss
Mastered by Sergey Uak-Kib http://kshatriy.pro/
€15.00
Wieza Cisnien II
" „Wieża Ciśnień 2” is a continuation of the first volume of the same title, which was released in 2010 under the auspices of CKiS Gallery "Tower". In a sense these two albums summarize nearly ten years of activity of the Gallery associated with the presentation of works of sound artists / musicians looking for innovative forms of creative articulation (individual performances, auditory part of three edition of Permutacje festival – curator: Roman Bromboszcz, three editions of Restytucje retrospective - curator Marcin Olejniczak) .
The common denominator for both sets of tracks is the space where we held meetings of creators, recipients and sounds. The difference between these records refers to the aesthetic coherence of the recordings: in the first case repertoire diversity (or even eclecticism) was shown; in the second case, the selection of recordings belongs with the idea of Restytucje related to the accentuation and rehabilitation of sounds that are not typically treated as music.
An additional advantage of the compilation is the fact that all the tracks on the album (both live and studio) have not been previously released.
The compilation includes tracks by the following artists: Zenial, Sumpf, Demonszy, Monopium, Sambar, Bachorze, KaLeka, X-NAVI:ET, TER, Micromelancolié i Mirt.
The album is released in a 2-panel ecopak with a 4-page booklet in a strictly limited edition of 500 copies. The cover is by Tomek Mirt. It is mastered by Robert Skrzyński (Micromelancolié/ForrrestDrones)." [label info]
www.zoharum.com
€12.00
NEW SONGS OF THE HUMPBACK WHALE
New Songs of the Humpback Whale is a comprehensive investigation into the form and meaning of whale song with graphic visualizations from infographic designer Michael Deal. Liner notes and song selection by artist, scientist, author, and philosopher David Rothenberg. What album was so important that ten million copies of it needed to be pressed at once? Songs of the Humpback Whale, which National Geographic included with every copy of its January 1979 issue, distributed in 25 languages. No human pop star has ever received such magnanimous treatment, so what is it that is so special about the song of the humpback whale? Well, for one, humans knew nothing of this fabulous sound until the US Navy released its classified recordings at the end of the 1960s, at the very moment the world was most poised to listen to the unknown, the psychedelic, and the trippiest of sounds. Humpback whale song fit the bill perfectly. From high wails to deep growls to rhythmic scratches to tearful moans, it encompasses the full range of emotions in the longest song performed by any animal, a tune that can go on for nearly 24 hours at a time. The stereotypical long moan of whale song is only one note in a complex composition, with distinct phrases, repetition, structure, organization, shape, and form akin to many kinds of human music. This is no random outburst of cries and whispers, but a song with power, verve, identity, and design. New Songs of the Humpback Whale aims to gather the best recordings since 1990 by scientists and whale-listeners the globe over, offering a chance to assess what has happened to whale song since 1979. Infographic designer Michael Deal has designed colorful glyphs based on sonograms familiar to sound scientists, making the structure of this grand underwater music easier to understand than ever before. Though humpback whale song did not evolve for humans to appreciate, it may be no accident that humans do. Upon hearing the great song for the first time, whale scientist Roger Payne said he heard the size of the ocean, "as if I had walked into a dark cave to hear wave after wave of echoes cascading back from the darkness beyond ... That's what whales do, give the ocean its voice." Includes recordings by made by Salvatore Cerchio near Madagascar in 1990, Olivier Adam near Madagascar in 2007, Glenn Edney near Tonga in 2008, and David Rothenberg near Maui in 2007 and 2010.
Track Listing:
Disc 1
01. Madagascar Whale One (recorded by Salvatore Cerchio, 1990) 10:08 listen
02. Madagascar Whale Two (recorded by Olivier Adam, 2007) 10:28 listen
03. Tonga Whales (recorded by Glenn Edney, 2008) 09:45 listen
04. Maui Whale One (recorded by David Rothenberg, 2007) 11:40 listen
05. Maui Whale Two (recorded by David Rothenberg, 2010) 08:01 listen
06. Madagascar Whale Lower, Faster (recorded by Olivier Adam, 2007) 05:11 listen
- Recordings of humpback whale song from 1990-2010, with graphic visualizations from infographic designer Michael Deal.
- From high wails to deep growls to rhythmic scratches to tearful moans, humpback whale song encompasses the full range of emotions in the longest song performed by any animal (up to nearly 24 hours long); the stereotypical long moan of whale song is only one note in a complex composition, with distinct phrases, repetition, structure, organization, shape, and form akin to many kinds of human music.
- A follow-up of sorts to National Geographic's Songs of the Humpback Whale, which it pressed in an edition of ten million and included with every copy of its January 1979 issue, distributed in 25 languages.
- Liner notes and song selection by artist, scientist, author, and philosopher David Rothenberg.
www.importantrecords.com
€15.00
Dark Ambient Radio Volume 3
"This compilation lets you know what it is right up front, and in some ways it flows together like a good radio show should. If you didn't know it was a compilation, it would be easy to think that it was the work of the same artist for several tracks. I had not heard of any of these artists, so I was interested to see what this group had to offer. Aspectee, Nepenthe, and Valerio Orlandini open the disc with three tracks respectively of nice spacey ambient. Mortaja mixes it up a bit with some ritualistic chanting. Crepuscular throws down some crunchy ambient with the feel of tectonic plates shifting. Myth Industries and Sjellos also departs from the space ambient feel with slow waves of rattling and light drumming. Sjellos takes on his own track with some drums that I didn't really expect to kick in, but it worked. Then he goes back to the comfort of droning ambiance. Winterbound provides the base for your next Halloween mix ' this has a nice horror movie soundtrack feel to it. Mytrip finishes us off with 'Small Humyn,' which has a nice heaviness to it. There is a feeling of pressure and depth, like the thick drone that you might find in the inside of a beehive. For me this was one of the standout tracks on this disc. Overall this was interesting dark ambient and it was curated well. If you want to hear some new blood in the dark ambient scene, this is one to pick up. This compilation is limited to 500 copies and weighs in at around 72 minutes." [Chain DLK]
www.darkambientradio.de
€13.00
Thousands of Eyes in the Dark
"For two decades, Ghostly International has functioned at the joints of genre, distinctly connecting many, demarcated by none. Among the more curious throughlines in the label's stylistic architecture is its use of the tag SMM. Launched discreetly in 2003, the undefined acronym has designated calm, slow-moving music that straddles the synthetic/organic divide in surprising ways. 2011 compilation SMM: Context pieced together landscapes imagined by the likes of Leyland Kirby and Christina Vantzou. 2013 follow-up SMM: Opiate proposed the evocative possibilities of sound with artists such as Noveller and A Winged Victory for the Sullen. The letters have since emphasized releases ranging from harpist Mary Lattimore to synthesist Steve Hauschildt. In 2019, alongside the label's 20-year milestone, Ghostly extends Thousands of Eyes in the Dark, a collection celebrating international talent with an outward gaze. Ten original works of contemporary melodic and incidental electronics — fragments, moods, vignettes — sequenced as one continuous suite, a pairing of personal expression with wide angle vision.
Submissions stretch far beyond Ghostly’s roster and roots. Tracing the tracklist on a map, we begin in the Netherlands with Suzanne Kraft operating under his SK U Kno alias. Stabs of guitar mingle with washes of restless sound design on “Cut and Faze,” a gripping, asymmetric opener. Pan over to Los Angeles next, where emerging modular synth practitioner Emily Sprague patches “Mesa,” lightly coiling the tonal hymn skyward. The third track, “This Was Us,” belongs to Berlin-based Dutch-Italian composer Aimée Portioli aka Grand River. She says the tender, strolling piece references the dissolution of a relationship and was improvised on a Yamaha DX7 following a night with friends; “I just sat with the instrument and started to play. I kind of needed a moment to myself.”
Back in Ann Arbor, Ghostly’s first home, label mainstay Tadd Mullinix renders an oscillating study of sensations titled as a nod to the film Woman in the Dunes. In his words: “I was inspired by the beautiful imagery and mood of the film which conveys, very sensually, passion as a consolation for life's looming impasse of bondage and drudgery.” Closing side A is Canadian composer Sarah Davachi, who drafted her cathedral-filling drone for Mellotron and Hammond organ. She explains, “The title is multivalent: taken in the middle ages from Latin origins, a Sybil was a sort of pagan fortune teller; in recent history, it refers to a psychiatric disposition to feel away from oneself.”
The entry point to Side B hazily stirs and crackles in the care of Orcas, the collaboration between veterans Rafael Anton Irisarri (The Sight Below) and Thomas Meluch (Benoit Pioulard). They cite a lineage of classic ambient inspirations: Mark Hollis, Pieter Nooten & Michael Brook, Fennesz & David Sylvian. Vancouver producer and recent signee Dylan Khotin-Foote provides one of the series’ sweetest moments yet, “Angel Epicenter,” his signature dream-like climes anchored by a steady pulse. Immediately following is its twangiest, “Shepherd Canyon” by Saariselka, the meditations of Oakland, California composers Marielle Jakobsons (Fender Rhodes, organ, synthesizers) and Chuck Johnson (pedal steel guitar and treatments). That pastoral terrain is left to linger a moment before into turning to concrete, courtesy of Manchester duo Space Afrika, known for their vast, disintegrating urban dubscapes.
Thousands of Eyes in the Dark finishes its first cycle in Japan, as producer and field recordist Yosi Horikawa leads listeners through a lush forest of sound, outlining every step with melancholic piano phrasings, inching into the sublime. Designed for repeat play-through, these ten tracks from some of the world’s finest sound artists double as a worthy metaphor for Ghostly’s 20-year run with SMM: a discerning set keeping us engrossed and guessing."
https://ghostly.bandcamp.com/album/thousands-of-eyes-in-the-dark
€20.00
Bookwar Records - Famous Lathe Cuts
"This collection of tracks has been gathered from the original masters of the extremely limited 7" lathe cut editions produced by Bookwar over the past few years. Features some of the best and most obscure Russian Post-Industrial / Noise / Experimental / Post-Punk music from: Cisfinitum, YAO 91404 D, Grazhdanskaya Oborona, Dao De Noize, Post-Materialists, Obozdur, Ivan Bookwar, Electro-Haram, ADMI, Mount/Ant, Pichismo, Junkmeat, and more. Ltd x 100 copies in a j-card cover."
€18.00
DRONE-MIND // MIND-DRONE Vol. 8: AUME, K. ISHIGAMI, HIROSHIMABEND, BALDRUIN
Four "Drones" on one record! Volume EIGHT (MIND-08) is OUT NOW (11/2021) feat.:
KAZUYA ISHIGAMI ҉ AUME ҉
HIROSHIMABEND ҉ BALDRUIN
Drone on! We're finally back with a more 'pulsative' and post industrial-influenced issue, presenting the following artists: KAZUYA ISHIGAMI (*1972 / Osaka / Japan) is a prolific composer, engineer, sound designer and performer active for many years (also under the name DARUIN), with broadcasts of his works around the globe. His track 'Clean2020' works on the theme of 'memories" and is based on the idea to accept and acknowledge even the painful memories to reach a state of ease and to transform the subjective past...
AUME is the duo of SCOT JENERIK (23five Inc. / Mobilization Records) and ALEPH OMEGA (ex CHROME), from the US west coast, both also active in F-SPACE before, creating stunning audio-visual 'immersion dark ambience" with true archaic energy..
HIROSHIMABEND (aka 'puppy38') hails from Austin, Texas but has been based in Vienna for many years now, and has impressed with many long-form works in the field of electronic / esoteric emanations, mostly self-released via Opiumdenpluto. He is also active as a visual and mastering artist...- "Listening to the music of hiroshimabend has been likened to swimming in a milky lake of black ink."
BALDRUIN is a German project with a very electronic and musical edge. His pieces appear to be like excursions into a (bad) fairy-tale world.. - "well constructed cosmic ambient-scapes with a dark psychedelic / cinematic / surrealistic touch; when strange voices, subtle percussion and whistling noises enter the scenery.."
Let your MIND be surrounded by adventurous sonic landscapes - organic repetitions as coming from a ghostly otherworld, oriental field recordings, layers of pipe organ-like drones, mysterious electric ether-potentials etc..- "Vier feine Synapsenputzer machen einem mal wieder so manches klar.." [Bad Alchemy}
cover-art & mastering by puppy38 using two paintings by British artist PETE GREENING
https://www.saatchiart.com/Pete_G
Edition of 400 copies on VELVET PURPLE (solid purple and solid red mixed) coloured VINYL.
listen: soundcloud.com/drone-records order: www.dronerecords.de
basic concept:
DRONE-MIND // MIND-DRONE - Volume 8 LP
The series shows the various sides of today's experimental drone-music
This LP-series from Drone Records is dedicated to the Drones of the World, and the Drones of our Minds. A kind of continuation of the Drone 7"-series, with artwork based on paintings by British artist PETE GREENING.
Drone Music is seen as more than a mere 'music style', it expresses an approach to perceive and understand the world. DRONE-MIND and MIND-DRONE build a circle of diverse inter-relations. The Drone as a metaphor for everything that vibrates, that releases energy - from atoms and elementary particles to the hum of the earth and the universe. The Drone as an entity that connects everthing that exists within our own "mind-space", perception and self.
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"Würden Drone Records den Begriff, der von Beginn an so etwas wie ihr Motto werden sollte, enger fassen, dann wäre ihre Reihe “Drone-Mind // Mind-Drone” wahrscheinlich auf viel weniger Interesse gestoßen und vielleicht sogar eine kurzweilige Angelegenheit geblieben. Stattdessen setzte das Bremer Label von Beginn an auf eine Idee des Drone, die, wie es in einer früheren Besprechung bereits zitiert wurde, pars-pro-toto für verschiedene Arten der Vibration und der Freisetzung von Energie im buchstäblichen wie im übertragenen Sinne stand. Und so sind auch auf dem gerade erschienenen achten Teil der Reihe wieder vier Geheimtipps aus drei Kontinenten vertreten, die die Dröhnung als eine Art verbindendes Element gemeinsam haben, diese jedoch in ganz unterschiedlichem Maß und auf unterschiedliche Art mit anderen Aspekten verknüpfen.
Bereits in der Ankündigung hieß es, dass die neue LP pulsierender ausfallen und Einflüsse des Post-Industrial aufweisen sollte, und den Opener “Clean2020″ des aus Osaka stammenden Sound Designers Kazuya Ishigami kann man da bereits exemplarisch anführen. Der Track, der sich mit dem Thema (auch schmerzhafter) Erinnerugen und ihrer Akzeptanz befasst, entwift ein über zwölf Minuten langes, ansatzweise episodisches Narrativ, das mit Samples und zahlreichen Effekten ein veränderliches Stimmungsbild entwirft. Das an Zikaden (vielleicht nicht nur) erinnernde Zirpen zu Beginn zieht sich durch weite Teile des Stücks, lässt ein durchaus angenehmes Alltagskolorit entstehen, doch ein zwiespältiges Gemisch anderer Sounds – mechanisch anmutendes Klappern, beklemmende Hochtöner, Vögel, das Dudeln einer versteckten Melodie – kommt hinzu, und da die eizelnen Sequenzen in ihrer Dauer und Veränderlichkeit kaum vorhersehbar wirken, ist eine der zentralen Stimmungskomponenten Spannung.
Ein ähnlich veränderliches Soundpanorama entwirft das amerikanische Duo Aume – namentlich Scot Jenerik und Aleph Omega aus dem F-Space-Umfeld. Ihr Beitrag wirft die auditiven Antennen mit rauem Knarren in die Mitte eines Geschehens, dessen Richtung man in den Sprachsamples und dem industriellen Hantieren zunächst noch nicht ausmachen kann. Während es unablässig reibt und schabt und knackt und ein unterschwelliges Dröhnen immer mehr anschwillt und irgendwann den ganzen Raum ausfüllt, treiben die Stimmen einen merkwürdigen Schabernack, scheinen wie Schafe zu blöken, bis alles in Kriegsgeschrei mündet. Doch in der zweiten Hälfte bekommt der Track noch einmal eine überraschende Wendung und prescht mit monoton-rhythmischer Perkussion dem Horizont entgegen.
Insgesamt ist die zweite Seite um einiges “schöngeistiger”. “Puppy38″ des in Wien lebenden Amerikaners Hiroshimabend beginnt mit entrückten Orgelsounds, in die sich ein undefinierbares Summen mischt. Just wenn sich eine hypnotische Wirkung einstellt, setzt eine eindringliche Melodie ein und entführt den entsprechend angefixten auf einen Trip durch einen imaginären Raum voll mit plastischen, knisternden, vibrierenden Sounds und etwas, das wie menschlicher Atem klingt. Hier scheint jede Raumwahrnehmung (bzw. Projektion) so unsicher, das sich kaum sagen lässt, ob die so entrückt anmutenden Sounds nicht doch der Sog eines abgründigen Höllenschlundes sein könnte. Rituelles Pochen holt den Hörer zurück auf vertrauten Boden, wo ein beruhigender Abspann erfolgt.
Baldruin ist das Projekt des deutschen Künstlers Johannes Schebler, der auch musikalisch – sowohl solo als auch mit seiner Band Diamantener Oberhof – sehr umtriebig ist. Seine drei etwas kürzeren Track offenbaren eine Schlagseite in Richtung Psychedelic und World Music eine weitere Facette offenbaren. Fast wie eine perfekte Miniatur führt das mit mollastigen Bläsersounds (einer Duduk?) beginnende “Die Katakomben von Tesco Libra” mit entspannten Handdrums zu einem kleinen Höhepunkt hin, kein Ton ist hier zu viel. Elektronischer und von einer gefahrvollen Spannung durchzogen mutet “Verstecken” an. Die schöne Loungemelodie, die einen mit Lärm, basslastigem Knarren, fiesen Hochtönern und Stimmen gefüllten Raum in einen Traum aus Plastik verwandelt, reizt fast zu einem NWW-Vergleich. Das abschließende “Klima und Psyche” dagegen zeigt Baldruin hier von seiner folkigsten Seite und lässt die Sammlung mit tremolierenden Bläsern, Saitenpicking und klapperden Handdrums in wehmütiger Heiterkeit – falls es so etwas gibt – ausklingen.
Es scheint, als würde dem Phänomen Drone vielerorts eine große Ausschließlichkeit angedichtet: Musik ist entweder Drone oder nicht, und wenn, dann ist sie nur dies. Tatsächlich aber kann Drone sehr unterschiedliches bedeuten und in sehr unterschiedlicher Musik eine Rolle spielen – eine Rolle, die keineswegs an Bedeutung einbüßt, wenn sie ein Aspekt unter mehreren ist. Drone kann den Aufbau einer Musik gestalten, ihre Materialität prägen, eine Musik hypnotischer machen und ihr Rückgrad verleihen, und immer besteht eine starke Wechselbeziehung zwischen dem Dröhnen und dem suchenden, repziperenden und interpretierenden Geist. Dies unter der Formel “Drone-Mind // Mind-Drone” zu vereinen, ist auch beim achten Teil ein starkes Argument gegen alle, die behaupten, Drone hätte sich über die Jahre totgedröhnt." [U.S. / African Paper]
€16.00
TIME ENDS - A Tribute to J.G. Ballard's Tetralogy of Transformation (special ed.)
Desiderii Marginis, Troum, Martin Bladh & Karolina Urbaniak and Anemone Tube have gathered to pay homage to the first four novels of British writer J.G. Ballard: The Wind From Nowhere, The Drowned World, The Drought and The Crystal World, which are often seen as disaster novels. Each of the four projects presents a very unique take on the chosen work, using the respective text as a starting point to offer sonic representations of and (further) perspectives on these books, using drones, field recordings, words and much more to create evocative and richly layered soundscapes.
Adorned by a painting of German artist Alex Tennigkeit depicting a sphinx-like hybrid creature, a phoenix rising from the ashes of our civilization, the double album also includes an in-depth essay by Michael Göttert (African Paper) on Ballard's works in which he argues that the novels can best be understood as texts of transformation, as well as texts by the sound artists.
The double album starts with Desiderii Marginis' track “The Wind From Nowhere”, on which field recordings and intense drones suck the listener into a stormy vortex. Troum interpret The Drowned World, and their two dynamic tracks illustrate both the changes happening to the (outer) landscape and the (inner) world of the protagonists. Martin Bladh & Karolina Urbaniak make use of sound and words on “The Poisoned Well”, their interpretation of The Drought, referring to Shakespeare, the Bible and scorched earth policy amongst other points of reference. The album closes with Anemone Tube's take on The Crystal World, using field recordings made in Japan’s Mount Fuji forest. “Sea Of Trees” aims to show a devolutionary process, in which man gains access to his actual spiritual home – a primordial wisdom, which lets him discover an internal non-dual space, allowing to ultimately becoming one with the earth as body-being consciousness – the ‘perfect dream’ landscape.
Format CD | Double LP & download | Playtime: 79:27 min
CD Edition CD in oversize 148x148mm sleeve including postcards & foldout poster, limited to 140 copies.
Regular Edition Regular edition double LP in sci-fi neon yellow vinyl limited to 250 copies.
Special Edition Special edition double LP & CD set limited to 150 copies including A2 poster signed and hand-numbered by artist Alex Tennigkeit.
€36.00
Visions of Darkness II ( (In Iranian Contemporary Music )
When the anthology "Visions Of Darkness (In Iranian Contemporary Music)" was released in 2017 (co-published in collaboration between Cold Spring and Unexplained Sounds Group), it was immediately clear that the Iranian music scene was not just promising, but already a rich chest of treasures. Years later we have further confirmation of the creative excellence and variety of musical languages that flourished in the Persian land.
In spite of the title, this second volume of the legendary anthology also gives us a broad picture of the musical experience of the Iranian underground that is not limited to the dark ambient, but explores sonic territories that reach concrete music, electroacoustic experimentation and sonic abstractionism. Persia, the cradle of a millenary culture, is teeming with young talents who continue their musical research with enthusiasm, pride and self-denial in the territories of drone music, as in electronic experimentalism and in the contamination of genres.
To some familiar names already present in volume I (Xerxes The Dark, IDFT, Reza Solatipour, etc ..), new discoveries are added that contribute to making the journey through the new Persian music exciting to the point that we can no longer speak of an emerging scene, but of a consolidated musical reality akin to others in the West.
Presented in a double digipak.
https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/visions-of-darkness-volume-ii-csr316cd
€17.50
Ode to MARCO VERONESI
"A compilation dedicated to the late Marco Veronesi, who founded the ADN label, in the 80's with Alberto Crosta, Piero Bielli and Rudy Pavesi. Without ADN and Marco the Italian / International experimental scene would have been much less important and relevant than it was, including releasing the very first Sigillum S LP, "Boudoir Philosophy" and introducing thousands of people to endless examples of gorgeous noise and industrial provocation. This compilation features a number of artists who were fundamental in the development of ADN during the 1980's: Angelo Avogardi, Bene Gesserit, Cellula Ascolto Attivo, Christina Kubisch, DDAA, Francesco Paladino, La 1919, La STPO, Merzbow, Ralf Wehowsky, Riccardo Sinigaglia, Sigillum S, T.A.C., Tasaday, The Motor Totemist Guild. Ltd x 300 copies in poster cover."
https://adnrecords.com/album/vv-aa-ode-to-marco-veronesi/
"Marco Veronesi was one of the founders of the Italian underground ADN label, who passed away in 2013 after a lengthy illness. This compilation (a limited edition of 300 copies) features various outtakes by a number of artists who were fundamental in the development of ADN during the 1980s. The set opens with “An Elegy” by the experimental electronic ensemble T.A.C. (Tomografia Assiale Computerizzata), an eerie five-minute piece featuring haunting wordless female voice backed by multi-layered pulsating and incidental electronics and metal percussion. Riccardo Sinigaglia offers “Magik,” a piece of haunting Middle Eastern exotica where Sinigaglia plays all the instrumentation (an experimental cauldron of strings, percussion, winds, and electronics) with beautiful wordless vocalizations by Lilli Coda. Jumping forward a bit, we have “Fetides Humbert et Jacques” by La STPO, the typical craziness one might expect from this French band, a mix of spoken parts, odd vocalizations, mallet and metal percussion, saxes, and low growling bass with strange electronic sounds in play that, all taken, really sounds like nothing else. Following up on that we have “Black Phoebe” by the Motor Totemist Guild sans Grigsby, an odd and quirky chamber-rock piece for flute, piano, trombone, and percusion. Italian duo Sigillum S guides us forward with “Happiness in the Kooky Cracks among Dimensions,” beginning as an airy and peaceful keyboard piece with much added ambience, adding many strange electronic embellishments as it goes toward an almost frightening end. Jumping forward again, La 1919’s offering “Hcabial” approaches near symphonic proportions using layered keyboards, electric guitar, and percussive loops, all twisted up in a stew of musical madness. Jumping further forward, Merzbow offers a pulsating electronic rhythm overlaid with mega-blasts of snarly grating noise with “Mix 05.23.” The set closes with “Japa(n)chinko” by Cellula Ascolto Attivo, a nine-minute piece mixing industrial sounds and field recordings with voices, loops, odd instrumentation, and more. There are fifteen tracks in all, I’ve only detailed about half of what’s here, but if one appreciates challenging and experimental musical styles of all kinds, then you can’t go wrong with this one! The CD is packaged in a huge poster that folds down to roughly the size of the disc." [Expose]
€13.00
Sintomas de Techno: Ondas Electronicas Subterraneas Desde Peru
Síntomas de techno : Ondas electrónicas subterráneas desde Perú (1985-1991)
Symptoms of techno:
Underground electronic waves from Peru (1985-1991)
This compilation presents for the first time various underground techno groups and projects that emerged in Lima in the mid-1980s. Projects such as Disidentes, Paisaje Electrónico, T de Cobre, Meine Katze Und Ich, El Sueño de Alí, Cuerpos del Deseo, Círculo Interior, Ensamble and Reacción were responsible for introducing styles such as techno-pop, EBM, industrial and minimal synth in Peru. Coinciding with the explosion of punk in Lima and the appearance of the so-called Rock Subterráneo [underground rock], these techno groups shared the same DIY spirit, performing in many punk concerts and even creating their own fanzines, and, above all, opening a space for other types of sonic experiences. Meine Katze Und Ich, El Sueño de Alí and Paisaje Electrónico were also the parallel projects of the members of Narcosis, the iconic punk band, one of the founders of Rock Subterráneo.
Disidentes and T de Cobre brought extreme sounds to local electronics: viscerality, mechanical rhythms and the use of Casiotones or synthesizers, which resulted in an atypical sound that, in turn, portrayed a critical time in Peru, and which has made them an unavoidable reference for any historical account of techno and industrial music in Latin America.
The title of this compilation is inspired by the name of a concert held in Lima in 1991, considered to be the first techno concert to have taken place in Peru. Even though not all intervening groups were doing techno at that time, they did share the fact that they all used keyboards. Four of them, however (Cuerpos del Deseo, Ensamble, Círculo Interior and Reacción), were in fact affiliated to an electronic sound (techno-pop, EBM). The concert was a sign of the diversification of musical styles in Lima's alternative scene, and in particular of the emergence of a micro scene, for which the concert Síntomas de techno [Symptoms of Techno] represented an important step towards the development of a local culture of electronic music during the 90s.
Many of the recordings included here are extracted from demos with limited circulation, practically impossible to find. Other tracks are unpublished pieces which come from the private archives of the artists themselves. The compilation has been made by Luis Alvarado and is part of the Essential Sounds Collection, with which Buh Records is making available a vast archive of avant-garde Peruvian music. This compilation is published in vinyl format in a limited edition of 300 copies, with extensive information and visual documentation. Mastered by Alberto Cendra. Art by René Sánchez. Cover photography by Rogelio Martell.
This project was awarded with funding from the Economic Stimuli program of the Peruvian Ministry of Culture.
Limited edition of 500 copies, booklet with extensive information in spanish and english, and visual documentation
https://buhrecords.bandcamp.com/album/s-ntomas-de-techno-ondas-electr-nicas-subterr-neas-desde-per-1985-1991-essential-sounds-collection
€25.00
Музыкальное Приношение (Musical Offering)
listen:
https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/musical-offering-csr326cd
Available on CD (or any other format) for the first time outside USSR, five Soviet composers perform their works on the legendary ANS synthesizer.
Recorded in 1971, "MUSICAL OFFERING" is 6 tracks (42 mins) of experiments on the unique machine by: Eduard Artemiev (2 tracks), Oleg Buloshkin, Sofia Gubaidulina, Edison Denisov, and Alfred Schnittke.
"MUSICAL OFFERING" demonstrates a 'musical' machine unlike any other and has long fascinated cutting edge, modern electronic composers, notably COIL and THE ANTI GROUP COMMUNICATIONS (TAGC) / CLOCK DVA, that have both released recordings utilising the ANS.
Try to imagine a score sounding by itself without a conductor; an orchestra without musical instruments. This magic is possible by using the musical ANS synthesizer. Created by Soviet scientist Evgeny Murzin over the course of 20 years, ANS is an instrument with which a composer can not only create but also draw their music without notes. You can see the twinkling of different lamps, the rotation of grooved glass discs... The drawings on the glass are 'sounding notes'. To listen to the drawn picture, press the button and a wonderful transformation will begin.
Inside the ANS are five rotating glass discs with 144 tones printed (by hand) on each one. Light is projected through the discs and onto photovoltaic cellbank which converts the light into electricity and sends signals to the ANS's amplifiers and bandpass filters. The ANS can generate 720 tones this way and, unlike a human musician, play them all at the same time.
Murzin dedicated his photoelectronic apparatus to Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin, hence the name ANS. Scriabin, the creator of the 'Poem of Ecstasy', and a famous explorer of synesthesia, used in his works a highly chromatic, new type of harmonic style designed to express his beliefs, views and wishes. Soviet music lovers will already know recordings made on ANS from Tarkovsky's films Solaris, The Mirror, and Stalker, Konchalovsky's film Siberiade, and others.
Presented in a digipak with the new artwork by Abby Helasdottir (who also created the compelling promo video), complimenting the ANS process perfectly.
Officially licensed from Russian state label Melodiya.
Watch promo video (YouTube): bit.ly/Musical-Offering
Copyright © – ВТПО "Фирма Мелодия" (Melodiya)
All-Union Recording Studio. Recorded in 1971.
Recording supervised by Юрий Богданов
Mastered by Martin Bowes at The Cage
Track listing:
1. OLEG BULOSHKIN - \'Sacrament\' (3:32)
2. SOFIA GUBAIDULINA - \'Vivente-Non Vivente (Alive And Dead)\' (10:44)
3. EDUARD ARTEMIEV - \'Mosaic\' (4:05)
4. EDUARD ARTEMIEV - \'Twelve Looks At The World Of Sound\' (12:53)
5. EDISON DENISOV - \'Birds\' Singing\' (5:04)
6. ALFRED SCHNITTKE - \'Stream\' (5:57)
######################
"A new batch of Cold Spring CDs, and I must say... At least with one of them, they stole my mathematic sound nerdish heart. "Musical Offering" is a sampler with Russian composers using the ANS, probably entirely up to its limits. Two tracks by Eduard Artemiev and one track each by Oleg Buloshkin, Sofia Gubaidulina, Edison Denisov and Alfred Schnittke. I only knew about Artemiev on this list because of his movie soundtracks. So to hear his work without a movie and, of course, images of empty landscapes, a brutalist-themed forgotten society and demise and a void enter my head, but fair is fair: all images were in colour. Nothing bleak or grey but the richness of the ANS is all over the place.
So for those who don't know what an ANS is all about, it's a Russian synthesizer designed over 20 years by Evgeny Murzin, and there is only one. It works with drawings on glass plates and devices that transform light into voltages, and those voltages create sounds. The glass discs spin, and well ... Wiki / YouTube is your friend here. Many artists have worked with the ANS, including Coil, The Anti Group Communications. Yes, [law-rah] also used original sounds from the ANS on their split with Cisfinitum (released on Fario). Maybe working on that release is the reason why I have a personal
weakness for this machine. I just couldn't get over how rich the sounds were that we got to use. Sure: A completely different thing than Coil being in the museum and drawing on the discs and us 'just' working with some recordings one of the museum guys did for us. Yet still ... I was impressed then, and I'm still impressed now.
For this disc, I am keeping the review smallish. Why? Because you already know if you are a) interested in neo-classical compositions by Russian composers. If you are, you will get this release and not be disappointed. It's as simple as that. If you are b) a nerd who loves different forms of synthesis like me, this album is one to consider. Because it's very varied and shows a lot of the ANS in 'its original environment': Russian composers on a Russian synth, and if you are c) curious about composition techniques, this will break your mind. Because from the ritualistic rhythmic parts in "Sacrament" (by Buloshkin), the 'voices' in "Vivente-Non Vivente" (by Artemiev) and the birds and frogs in "Birds Singing" (by Denisov), can you tell what is the origin of the sound? Is it a bird? Is it a recording? Or is it super ANS?
For me, it's not one of those reasons to love this album, and it's d) all of the above." [BW / Vital Weekly]
€15.00
DAIS223 (DAIS X RETROSPECT) COMPILATION
Dais Records, das in LA/NYC ansässige Label, das klanglich ausdrucksstarke und visuell dynamische Künstler vertritt, ist mit dem analogen Innovator und Produktdesignstudio Retrospekt eine Kooperation eingegangen. Das Vermächtnis und die Tradition von Dais passen hervorragend zum Leitbild von Retrospekt: "Wiederbelebung von Retro-Tech für eine neue Generation". Das Ergebnis ihrer ersten Zusammenarbeit ist ein schickes, weißes, limitiertes Exemplar des tragbaren Kassettenspielers CP-81 von Retrospekt, das eine exklusive 19-Track-Kompilationskassette mit unveröffentlichtem Material aus den Reihen des Labels mit dem Titel DAIS223 enthält. Nathaniel Young, Kreativdesigner bei Dais, hat die Standardpräsentation des CP-81 sowohl für den Player als auch für die Verpackung neu gestaltet. Die weiße Dais-Edition des Kassettenspielers wird in einer weißen Schachtel mit schwarzem Text verpackt, zusammen mit einem Satz weißer Dais-Kopfhörer und dem C23-Compilation-Tape. Das Gerät verfügt über alle wichtigen Funktionen eines Kassettenspielers: Abspielen, Vorspulen, Zurückspulen, Aufnehmen und wird mit einem verstellbaren Dais-Kopfhörer geliefert. Der Dais x Retrospekt Kassettenspieler ist auf 1000 Stück limitiert - die Kassette wird nicht separat verkauft. Zu den Funktionen gehören: Wiedergabe, schneller Vorlauf, Rücklauf, Aufnahme, Mikrofonbuchse, Kopfhörerbuchse, Typ-C-USB-Stromversorgung, Batteriebetrieb möglich Enthalten sind: Tragbarer Kassettenspieler, C23-Kassettenband, 2x AA-Batterien, Verstellbare Dais-Kopfhörer, Benutzerhandbuch Der Compilation-Titel DAIS223 bezieht sich auf die Katalognummer (DAIS223). DAIS223 enthält unveröffentlichte Tracks von High Vis, High-Functioning Flesh, RIKI, Private World, Helm, Tor Lundvall, CoH, AURAGRAPH, ADULT., Drew McDowall, SRSQ, Cold Gawd, Remixe von SPICE und Cold Showers sowie Demos von Body of Light, Choir Boy, VR Sex und Xeno & Oaklander.
https://daisrecords.bandcamp.com/merch/dais-x-retrospekt-collab-limited-cp-81-cassette-player-and-compilation
We are proud to announce our collaboration with analog innovators and product design studio: Retrospekt.
The Dais x Retrospekt Portable Cassette Player is a limited edition release of Retrospekt’s CP-81: reimagined with a new graphic design in white, with rose-adorned artwork by Dais creative director Nathaniel Young. The device features all of the core cassette player functions, packaged with adjustable Dais branded headphones and an exclusive 19-track compilation cassette of unreleased material from our roster.
Limited to 1000. Tape not sold separately.
DAIS223 Tape Compilation
Listen to Sampler: found.ee/DaisXRetrospekt
SIDE A:
High Vis - Forgot To Grow
High-Functioning Flesh - Down To Sense
Riki - SAS (For Those Who Speak And Spake)
Private World - Through The Distance
Body of Light - Out of Season (Demo Instrumental)
Helm - Evil Ceramics
Choir Boy - Happy to Be Bad With You (Demo)
Tor Lundvall - Black Fly Day
CoH - Vow a Vow
SPICE - I Dont Want To Die In NY (Remix)
SIDE B:
VR SEX - Runway Runaway (Demo)
Xeno & Oaklander - Hoplite (Demo)
Tempers - Camino Del Sol (Antena Cover)
Cold Showers - Sliver (Inner City Remix)
AURAGRAPH - No Control
ADULT. - Few Warnings Are Important (2003)
Drew McDowall - Animals Will Sing
SRSQ - Phantasmata
Cold Gawd - Gin (At The Mountain)
Contents include:
- Portable cassette player
- Dais Records "C23" Compilation Tape
- 2x AA batteries
- Dais adjustable headphones
- User guide
Tape Player Features include:
- Play, fast-forward, rewind, record
- Microphone jack
- Headphones jack
- Type-C USB power supply
- Battery operable
€100.00
Anthology of Experimental Music from Indonesia
https://unexplainedsoundsgroup.bandcamp.com/album/anthology-of-contemporary-music-from-indonesia
For many centuries Indonesia, from the Malay Peninsula throughout the vast archipelago, has been subjected to successive foreign cultural invasions which have left their deep imprint on the indigenous way of life. Among the first was the Mongolian intrusion from central Asia. A later cultural wave came from India when Hindu merchants and immigrants introduced Hinduism and Buddhism into the islands. Subsequently, about the 13th century A.D. Islamic influences penetrated the archipelago. Finally in the 16th century, Western culture and Christianity came into the picture. Although, after four centuries, Western civilization has by no means superseded the Islamic hold on Indonesia (90% of the population are Muslims), it has already reshaped the outward appearance of Indonesia life to a considerably extent. The cultural diversity is naturally reflected in the music.
In the current globalized and digital communications-dominated era, influences from the Western world become more and more evident, in everyday life, as well in popular art and music from Indonesia. But listening to the tracks included in this compilation presented by Unexplained Sounds Group, you’ll discover how traditional Indonesian music, even in its more 'primitive' forms, as well in the very elaborate and developed ones from Javanese and Balinese tradition, are still very much recognizable. The current mix of influences in the experimental and avant-garde music from this region has resulted in an extremely fascinating kaleidoscope of sounds.
€14.00
Электронная Музыка АНС (ANS Electronic Music)
1. Eduard Artemiev, Stanislav Kreitchi - Music For The Film "Cosmos" 12:17
2. Stanislav Kreitchi - Intermezzo 02:23
3. Alexander Nemtin - Chorale Prelude In C Major (J S Bach) 02:32
4. Alexander Nemtin - Tears 04:44
5. Sándor Kallós - Northern Tale 05:41
6. Stanislav Kreitchi - A Voice Of The East 02:04
Available on CD (or any other format) for the first time outside USSR, Soviet composers perform their works on the legendary ANS synthesizer.
Recorded in 1969, "Электронная Музыка АНС (ANS Electronic Music)" features 6 tracks of experiments on the unique machine by: Eduard Artemiev, Stanislav Kreitchi, Sándor Kallós, and Alexander Nemtin.
A 'musical' machine unlike any other which has long fascinated cutting edge, modern electronic composers, notably COIL and THE ANTI GROUP COMMUNICATIONS (TAGC) / CLOCK DVA, that have both released recordings utilising the ANS.
Try to imagine a score sounding by itself without a conductor; an orchestra without musical instruments. This magic is possible by using the musical ANS synthesizer. Created by Soviet scientist Evgeny Murzin over the course of 20 years, ANS is an instrument with which a composer can not only create but also draw their music without notes. You can see the twinkling of different lamps, the rotation of grooved glass discs... The drawings on the glass are 'sounding notes'. To listen to the drawn picture, press the button and a wonderful transformation will begin.
Inside the ANS are five rotating glass discs with 144 tones printed (by hand) on each one. Light is projected through the discs and onto photovoltaic cellbank which converts the light into electricity and sends signals to the ANS's amplifiers and bandpass filters. The ANS can generate 720 tones this way and, unlike a human musician, play them all at the same time.
Murzin dedicated his photoelectronic apparatus to Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin, hence the name ANS. Scriabin, the creator of the 'Poem of Ecstasy', and a famous explorer of synesthesia, used in his works a highly chromatic, new type of harmonic style designed to express his beliefs, views and wishes.
These tracks have only ever been available on vinyl pressed by the state-run Soviet Union label Melodiya over 50 years ago. Soviet music lovers will already know recordings made on ANS from Tarkovsky's films Solaris, The Mirror, and Stalker, Konchalovsky's film Siberiade, and others.
Presented in a digipak with the new artwork by Abby Helasdottir, complimenting the ANS process perfectly.
Officially licensed from Russian state label Melodiya.
Copyright © – ВТПО "Фирма Мелодия" (Melodiya)
Recorded in 1969.
Mastered by Martin Bowes at The Cage
Graphic Design by Abby Helasdottir
coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/ans-electronic-music-csr307cd
"After the simply gorgeous sampler 'Musical Offering, ' which Jo and Justin of Cold Spring released in July 2023, this is the second album about the ANS synthesiser. I can't tell you much about the ANS other than the basics I've written back then, so as an introduction, I'll simply copy and paste my own words. 'The ANS is a Russian synthesiser designed over 20 years (between 1937 and 1957) by Evgeny Murzin, and there is only one. It works with drawings on glass plates and devices that transform light into voltages, and those voltages create sounds. The glass discs spin; Wiki / YouTube is your friend here. Many artists have worked with the ANS, including Coil, The Anti Group Communications.'
The advice to check out YouTube and Wiki to learn more about this machine still stands if you are interested. Or maybe check the particular releases of the projects that worked with it. Some additional technical data from the promo sheet already dives deeper. Inside the ANS are five rotating glass discs with 144 tones printed (by hand) on each one. Light is projected through the discs and onto the photovoltaic cell bank, which converts the light into electricity and sends signals to the ANS's amplifiers and bandpass filters. The ANS can generate 720 tones this way and play them all simultaneously, unlike a human musician.
"??????????? ?????? ???" is the original title because yes, this sampler is a rerelease from 1969 from Melodiya. And don't tell me you have the original album; I simply don't believe you! On this album, we can find compositions by Eduard Artemiev, Stanislav Kreitchi (with two pieces and a collaboration with Artemiev), Sándor Kallós, and Alexander Nemtin (twice). "Music For The Film Cosmos" by Artemiev & Kreitchi is a great soundtrack and fits the Russian cinema of the 60s. "Intermezzo" seems a bit carnevalesk; it reminds me of an organ player, but it would also fit an ice cream truck in a horror movie. Alexander Nemtin performs "Chorale Prelude In C Major" by Bach, and both of these tracks show that the ANS could also be used for 'normal' music.
The following "Tears" and "Northern Tale" show some of the more extreme sounds the ANS is capable of. Don't forget we're talking 720 voices that could be played simultaneously, so yes. This will rumble on a proper audio setup. The closing "A Voice Of The East" by Kreitchi is filled with weirdness again. No idea how or what, but it holds the midst between an experimental composition with a non-western scale and even has a bit of jazzy melody lines in there.
Closing statement: I love it. Many thanks to CSR for finding this gem. A must-have for people who like 60s experimentalism like White Noise (Vorhaus / Derbyshire), Wendy Carlos and/or Russian soundtracks and movies. Oh, and sound nerds and/or geeks. And if you fit more than one category, well... *hint* " [Vital Weekly]
€15.00
High Intolerance toward low Energies
"Van Der Vleuten, 1967 geboren, veröffentlicht mit der "High Intolerance Towards Low Energies" LP sein erstes Album unter seinem Geburtsnamen, den er fortan für seinen musikalischen Output verwenden will. "High Intolerance Towards Low Energies" ist eine von Tonefloat sehr ansprechend gestaltete LP, limitiert auf 500 Exemplare, und auf 180g Vinyl gepresst. Das luxuriöse Gatefold Cover mit einem eher rostig anmutenden Artwork trifft gut den submarinen Charakter des Albums: Man meint von der Wasseroberfläche des Meeres langsam abzutauchen, Druck baut sich auf, je tiefer man sinkt. Dröhnen in den Ohren und plötzlich sieht man in der Tiefe ein altes, mächtiges Schiffswrack auf dem Grund liegen. Der Rost zeigt, dass es da schon gar Jahrhunderte liegt. Neugierig und interessiert umkreist man es, aber irgendetwas scheint nicht zu stimmen. Flüstern und Murmeln, wabernde Stimmen und rhythmisches, maschinelles Stampfen. Nervöse, pulsierende Bass- Frequenzen und seltsame, gebrochene Melodiefetzen. Halluzinationen? Tiefenrausch? Man weiß es nicht. Maarten Van Der Vleuten gelingt es auf "High Intolerance Towards Low Energies" ein eigentümlich dichtes Gewirr aus Drohnen und Ambiancen zu schaffen, das in seiner Gesamtheit zu überzeugen weiß. Dass Van Der Vleuten mit dieser LP ein anderes Bild im Kopf hatte als mein submariner Eindruck, ist nicht weiter schlimm. Er legt den Fokus der Interpretation eher auf eine radikale Darstellung unserer sich immer schneller beschleunigenden Umwelt und will diesen Eindruck mit "High Intolerance Towards Low Energies" eingefangen haben. Diese Intention passt auch wunderbar zu dem unruhigen, fast bedrohlich wirkenden Charakter des Albums. Die enthaltenen 4 Stücke offenbaren eine nervöse Welt in der man entweder immer wieder ob der Bildhaftigkeit paralysiert und staunend stehen bleibt oder eben wie im Fieberwahn durch einen Irrgarten voller unruhiger, fremder Stimmen stolpert." [Creative-Eclipse]
"Amidst an infinite ocean of information, finding yourself is turning into a complex mission nowadays. On his latest full-length, ambient house pioneer Maarten van der Vleuten is returning to the memories of demolished Dutch monastery Regina Coeli, his head still spinning from the confounding excess of images and impressions. on his long and winding journey, he has come a long way from his early dance singles to being recognised as a widely respected, colourfully uncompromising personality. High intolerance towards low energies, pressed in a limited edition of 500 copies in a luxurious gatefold sleeve, has consciously been conceived as a radical representation of our rapidly accellerating environment: nervously pulsating bass frequencies and frenzied percussion are underpinning shattered sonic figments like the ground drone of a surreal urban raga, with shardes of song and prayer forming broken melodies. Finding his way through this menacing maze has certainly paid off for van der Vleuten: after releasing under 26 different pseudonyms over the last two decades, he has found his definitive musical identity on this haunting soundscape, with future works to be published exclusively under his common name. The album is pressed as a 180 grams black vinyl lp in heavy gatefold picture sleeve." [label info]
www.tonefloat.com
€16.50
Concrete
"Jason Van Gulick is one of the most inventive drummers on the contemporary music scene. For more than a decade, he has used his education as an architect to explode the foundations of drumming. Maintaining a distance from all aesthetic, disciplinary or formal limitations, he has developed his artistic approach in the confrontation between the acoustic character of his chosen instrument and architectural resonant spaces.
This piece is the result of several years of research on the deep existing connection between the production of sounds and their dffusion in space.
It has to do with our primitive bond to music, with the concrete experience that is specific to every diffusion of sound and explores the acoustic specifities of an architectural space through percussions.
The work combines, through the process of improvisation and of composition in situ, the idea of the metamorphosis of material : « Halle B » due to its volume, its ability to reverberate the sound and its echoing faculty, transforms the sound of the percussions following the example of former places of worship. This industrial nave made of concrete has forged the creation of the music by imposing to the latter a specific temporality and an almost spiritual depth." [label info]
2More along the lines of Vital Weekly is the work of percussion player Jason van Gulick. I didn’t review his previous release, 'Entelechy' (Vital Weekly 930), so this is the first time I hear his music. I believe he is from Belgium, but recorded his CD in Halle B of the 'La Condition Publique' in Roubaix. It is apparently a space with some great acoustic proportions and Van Gulick has an interest in using sound and the way it travels through a space. Interestingly enough not all of the five pieces here have this massive, natural reverb. In the opening piece everything is very close and quite direct. The ringing of cymbals open up and at one point in this (untitled, all are) piece the sound is being picked up from a bit further away and we hear a massive drone like. Van Gulick shifts back and forth with his playing,
using sticks, bows, and objects on the entire kit. This results is an occasional thick, massively sound, in which Van Gulick's playing blends refined with the travels of those sounds through that space. I can imagine he used quite a bit of microphone set-ups in this to come up quite close or, as a total opposite very far away and in the process of making this CD, Van Gulick mixes these recordings together. While
it may sound like a 'live' record, I am pretty sure it isn't. Quite a bit of work went into balancing the various recordings and Van Gulick delivers a beautiful record. Loud and dark, light and quiet; he knows how to built excellent soundscapes in space, but also he knows how to transfer these to the listener and give him a similar experience." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€20.00
Only Lovers left Alive (OST)
"Soundtrack for the critically acclaimed Jim Jarmusch film Only Lovers Left Alive, starring Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton. The score for Only Lovers Left Alive - a collaboration between SQÜRL (Jim Jarmusch, Carter Logan and Shane Stoneback) and Dutch lutenist Jozef Van Wissem - serves as a reflection of the distinct textures of Detroit and Tangier, bridging ancient and modern sounds, entangled and timeless. Avant-Baroque lute weaves through twenty-first century guitar grit, heavy back beats, Moroccan percussion, synth bass, field recordings, and numerous sonic effects to create a cinematic tapestry. Guest vocalist Madeline Follin (Cults) appears on SQÜRL's syrup soaked re-interpretation of the Wanda Jackson hit "Funnel of Love". Zola Jesus' commanding vocal soars through Van Wissem's "In Templum Dei". And Yasmine Hamdan's intimate and evocative "Hal", recorded on the set of the film and mixed by SQÜRL. The film and soundtrack album were released worldwide in 2014, and quickly earned the group the Cannes Soundtrack Award from a consortium of film and music critics. In the years that have followed it has remained a favorite of critics and fans alike, who have continued to hunt down the limited vinyl copies in existence."
https://squrlnyc.bandcamp.com/album/only-lovers-left-alive-original-motion-picture-soundtrack
€29.50
Shift Coordinate Points
Schon mit “To shape volumes, repeat“ (CD, Robo Records] war diese belgische Komponistin aufgefallen, jetzt erscheint diese sehr konzeptuelle Soundart-Platte als erste LP-Veröffentlichung auf dem britischen ENTR’ACTE, die ominöse Spionage-Radiodurchsagen als Soundquellen benutzt.
“Composed and produced by Esther Venrooy in 2005. Commissioned by Happy New Ears with the kind support of the Flemish community. In 1997, British maverick label Irdial-Discs collected a selection of so-called ‘numbers stations’ or ‘spy stations’ recordings under the title The Conet Project. This plays like a ‘best of’ of more than 30 years’ worth of secret radio and contains fragments of American, German, Swedish and Russian transmissions. Belgian composer Esther Venrooy was given permission to work with the material and for the occasion of the celebration of 75 years of Belgian radio created a highly personal interpretation of the medium’s secret history. Using manipulated sound and collage techniques she manages to distill an abstract poetry of sounds and thereby succeeds in extracting some meaning out of these hermetic transmissions.K9 moved back into the combat area ‹ Standing now in the Chineseyouth sent the resistance message jolting clicking tilting through the pinball machine ‹ Enemy plans exploded in a burst of rapidcalculations ‹ Clicking in punch cards of redirected orders ‹
Crackling shortwave static ‹ Word falling ‹ Photo falling ‹ Break through in Grey Room ¬ Pinball led streets ¬ Free doorways ¬“ [label description]
“About nine years ago, Irdial Records released a four CD 'The Conet Project', collecting sounds from number stations, or spy stations: transmissions found on radio waves of various secret services. A great and no doubt worrying work, if you understand the consequences of it, but also a wealth of great sound. I believe it is not allowed to use these sounds at will (I forget what the fuzz was all about, but somebody got sued for sampling some of it), but Esther Venrooy asked and got permission to use the material to create a sound piece for Belgium radio, which existed seventy-five years. If one is familiar with the original 'Conet Project' recordings, then it's easy to spot all the original voices ('five - three - two - zero - five'), but Venrooy knows her classics in music, especially that of musique concrete: the sudden shifts in sounds, the gentle gliding electronic tones, but also incorporating a little melody at the beginning of the second side. There is nothing really frightening about these voices anymore, they are isolated from the original context, and placed in this new, abstract picture, where they become voices of the unknown. They no longer have their original meaning, but rather a new one. This is a more than excellent record, and by far the best work by Venrooy to date.” [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€15.50
Lost Lake
Lost Lake sees the return of the collaborative project between sound art duo Vernon &: Burns (Mark Vernon and Barry Burns) and Lied Music (Luke Fowler and John W Fail). It is a sequel to the long-sold out LP Lied Music vs.Boy-Band Tax Returns (released on Ultra Eczema, 2006). This LP merges musique concrète compositional approaches with absurdist improvisational strategies. The four artists met in Glasgow where they recorded a series of sporadic improvised sessions using a diverse array of sound-making instruments (amplified toys and objects, guitar, analogue synths, percussion, squeeze box, field recordings and found tapes). Improvised sessions from 2008 were subsequently manipulated, tortured and caressed, both individually and collectively, into a series of highly idiosyncratic song-forms and sound collages.
https://vernonandburns.bandcamp.com/album/lost-lake
"The latest entry in the Vernon & Burns catalogue sees this Glasgow duo teaming up with Lied Music, the duo of Luke Fowler and John W. Fail. Lost Lake (SHADAZZ SHA.11) is one of the stranger and darker emissions from these talented creatives, particularly if you care to compare it with the sometimes more playful assemblages of V&B, or the deliciously offbeat melodic avant-pop tunes created by Fowler as part of Rude Pravo. At first spin the record is a near-bewildering toasted-cheese sandwich, a concoction which contains at least a zillion ideas apparently thrown together any which way. Faced with such an array, discerning avant-LP listeners may want to reach for The Faust Tapes as one touchstone, but another credible precedent is the unearthly Bladder Flask LP 1, that ne plus ultra of cut-up sound art put together by a teenaged Richard Rupenus as if possessed by some fevered desire to surpass the worst excesses of the lunatic fringe end of the United Dairies catalogue. But the Bladder Flask release had the underlying sinister aim of sending all those who heard it mad, through highlighting the complete absurdity and futility of everything. Lost Lake has a more benign mission, thankfully. The album has been very carefully crafted, using sets of recorded improvisation sessions produced by the four players, aiming to resculpt the near-chaos of that source material into a coherent structure. Within that structure, fractured songs and equally fractured stories emerge; yes, a scrambled form of a radio listening or cinematic experience, which is an effect Vernon & Burns have striven for with a good deal of their work (and have produced many items expressly in radiophonic mode). As to the cinematic, Fowler is also a film-maker. There is a logic to this scheme, but it is hard to follow and weaves its way around in a highly secretive and intuitive fashion, like an errant underground stream full of eccentric fish and darting river-insects stained in unnatural colours. We could account for some of this quirkiness by pointing out that all four creators were involved in the refashioning process, rather than a single editorial hand behind the editing knife; one can imagine the clashing dynamism generated by four powerful personalities, each of them bending the path of events in their favour. Additionally, the source material itself was not exactly straightforward music to begin with, but created using the now-virtually-standard set-up of the modern improviser, that is amplified instruments, toys, found tapes, field recordings, and live electronics. From this rich stew, voices and tunes emerge from amid a varispeeded and highly layered humid aggregation of extremely strange sounds. And yes, like the Rupenus LP, it is quite absurdist, but I like to think it’s a fun and cartoony absurdity, rather than bleak and Beckett-like. That said, this aural bric-a-brac crawls out from a dark attic of the mind, and is as much an unsettling listen as it is entertaining. Corin Sworn’s cover art encodes all the above information quite perfectly. Using collage technique (naturally), it depicts a figure sitting on a sofa surrounded by hideously “tasteful” drapes and furnishings. This image of bourgeois normality is thoroughly disrupted by replacing the outline of the figure with fragments of urban horror and machinery, then further scrambling the visual schema with concentric rings and diagonal bars, suggesting the power of the aural emanations on the record. The album is, we are told, a sequel to a 2006 release called Lied Music vs Boy-Band Tax Returns, which we reviewed in our Vinyl Viands issue." [Ed Pinsent, Sound Projector online, December 15, 2012]
€16.00
An Annotated Phonography of Chance
"An Annotated Phonography of Chance expands upon the soundtrack to an uncompleted 16mm film made in collaboration with English filmmaker Martha Jurksaitis and the Portuguese artist duo Von Calhau! The film ‘Nossos Ossos’ (which also lends its name to one of the tracks on this record) was shot largely on location in the Alentejo region of Portugal in 2013.
Sites visited included Evora, Evoramonte, the bone chapel ‘Capela dos Ossos’, Almendres Cromlech and many other castles, churches and megalithic sites in the area. These locations were used to make experiments with natural reverbs, for the most part sounding out the spaces with voices. Along with location field recordings and found tapes this provided the raw material for much of the soundtrack."
https://markvernon.bandcamp.com/album/an-annotated-phonography-of-chance
https://misanthropicagenda.bandcamp.com/album/an-annotated-phonography-of-chance
“Glasgow’s radio producer/sound artist Mark Vernon is about to release his follow-up to the incredible Ribbons of Rust (Flaming Pines, 2019). His sound is intensely intimate, one might think their own pipes are dripping as each droplet is painstakingly captured with precise fidelity. These ten tracks that span forty minutes are woven with zags and fluctuating warp that brings to mind the inversion of a jazz trumpet, its brackish and suspenseful.
The Consensus is to Delete sounds like one of those lost Coil tracks that continue to permeate the underground, paced and plotting, a bit of the spirit world and low in timbre. Perfect for the bewitched season of hallowed souls (and all that jazz). He tends to his set of reels with a real vision, one based on “a soundtrack to an uncompleted 16mm film made in collaboration with English filmmaker Martha Jurksaitis and the Portuguese artist duo Von Calhau! The film ‘Nossos Ossos’ was shot largely on location in the Alentejo region of Portugal in 2013.” It’s as cinematic as it sounds.
Still, Vernon, while capturing the spellbinding echoes of cathedral oration, songbirds tweeting and other street noise, this is far from the typical field recording document, not only in form, but much more deeply in nuanced atmosphere. The slow-churn of ‘scenes’ like Revolving Rivers is almost numbing as a retrospective snapshot in time. Yet it dances in the moment via its sing-song visceral qualities, obliterated transmissions and melodic wooziness. Only at marked times does one feel ‘cozy’ here, due to the carpet being psychically unfurled from under your feet, sending the listener adrift into new atmospheric scapes. A visionary tale of chance and observation.”
[T.J. Norris, Toneshift, October 28, 2019]
€18.00
Sheet Erosion
Audio Archaeology Series Volume 3: Brest. Sheet Erosion is the third episode in a series of works based around ideas of audio archaeology and found sounds. The setting this time is the city of Brest in France. It is composed of field recordings made in early 2020 during the storms Ciara and Desmond plus a batch of found open-reel tape recordings dating from the '70s and '80s. The tapes include domestic home recordings but mostly document recordist Michel's tastes in music and radio programs of the time. Daily life bleeds into these lo-fi recordings of radio and TV shows. Captured with a mic in front of a speaker rather than directly cabled, ambiguous activities can be heard in the background; babies crying, feedback, chairs scraping and muffled conversations. In the composition, family histories and musical tastes are transposed over a more contemporary soundscape of Brest. Over-saturated tape distorts time as well as sounds. Speeds change. Chronologies become confused. Different instances in time are blended and fused. What seeps through these chronological crevices are events and incidents unmoored from linear time taking place in a chimerical non-space.
https://www.sonoris.org/product/mark-vernon-sheet-erosion/
Mark Vernon is a Glasgow based artist who explores concepts of audio archaeology, magnetic memory and nostalgia through his sound works. At the core of his practice lies a fascination with the intimacy of the radio voice, environmental sound, obsolete media and the reappropriation of found recordings. A rich collection of domestic tape recordings; audio letters, dictated notes, answer-phone messages and other lost voices often find their way into his unorthodox soundworlds. These diverse elements are distilled into radiophonic compositions for broadcast, multi-channel diffusion, fixed media and live performances.
His solo music projects have been published through labels including Kye, Glistening Examples, Flaming Pines, Discrepant, Entr’acte, 3Leaves, Misanthropic Agenda, Canti Magnetici, Granny, Calling Cards Publishing, Psyché Tropes, Persistence of Sound and Gagarin Records, as well as a series of small CDR and LP editions on his own Meagre Resource imprint.
https://markvernon.bandcamp.com/album/sheet-erosion
€13.00
Return of the Interrobang
VERTONEN gehört mittlerweile zu den interessantesten US–Elektro-Geräuschmusikern, tönt stets abwechslungsreich und überraschend. So auch hier, ein übergreifendes „Thema“ sind repetitive Klangstrukturen..... so gibt es ein langes welliges Drone-Stück, welches sich gut entwickelt; pumpende Sinustöne- und Gameboy-artige Sounds beim nächsten, repetitive Orgel-artige Loopmuster, Samples von lockerer Piano-Barmusik, etc. etc.
“Produced with support from a CAAP grant, this disc highlights three aspects of experimental audio I have been exploring over the past years: deep drone washes, throbbing, lurching activities, and manipulated turntables/vinyl.” [Vertonen] “Have seen a lot of Vertonen shows here in Chicago, bumped across a comp track or two, heard him on the radio twice, but this is surprisingly the first time I've sat down at home with a Vertonen release. So far the live stuff has come across as great loud deep-flow crash-sizzle, often with a nasty beat orientation wrecking through it, but on wax it's been unpredictable, softer but somehow heavier--and Return of the Interrobang surprises me further with deep glacial industrial dare-I-say-mellow textures. First track is a rather gorgeous and fairly soft (but thick) drone, not completely unlike something you'd hear from Birchville Cat Motel.... Great tones, glowing embers with doom undercurrents, packed with a sci-fi title: "Toroidal Circulation 1 & 2." (Never mind, I just looked it up and it's a science fact title.) Second track comes in with a hard beat, your basic urban alarm siren drill kind of thing, with mysterious sounds floating in the background, and it's pretty heavy, but ends up the most 'typical' track on the CD, because the remaining three, a trilogy called "The Medical Turntable Variations," are just lovely little subtle stumbling loop miniatures. I mean, sure, you can infer a creepy entropic 'broken machine' connotation with all three tracks, and the title of the third part, "Deplete To Ruination, The Wide Shift," is of course something scary to contemplate, and topical too: the ostensibly approaching era where dystopian science fiction becomes dystopian science fact. (There's that "it's not science fiction, it's science fact" thing again, he's good with that.) Possibly the loveliest of the three, but it does have a haunted piano thing going on...like, say, the haunted piano bar of a big-city luxury hotel in ruins, long abandoned by human life, now a bizarre gargantuan relic of the oil age...oh, and hey, what's an interrobang?! Is that science fiction or science fact?!—[Blastitude 18]
€12.00
The queen of guess
“While certainly VCO's most upbeat and percussive music, the nine tracks on this immense, visceral slab of rackety action run through a wide range of styles. "Ramshackle Sunrise" has a gamelan-like, five-note melody overlaid with a hovering drone. "The Silent Socket" rocks with "Sister Ray"-style guitar careening along side actual drums. The two 20-minute epics that bookend the record are a study in contrasts: "Your Head Shone Like A Stone" has a heavy, excited buzz, while the closing "Goodnight Stars Goodnight Air" is a gentler acoustic epilogue, gliding into the rosy future.” [press release]
€14.00
Versatile Arab Chord Chart
Zweite CD der drownig-dronigen Impro-Combo aus UK...
"Versatile Arab Chord Chart is the second full-length outing by the quintet of Neil Campbell, Michael Flower, Julian Bradley, Bridget Hayden, and Adam Davenport. Like their UK cousins and fellow VHF recording artists Sunroof!, Vibracathedral Orchestra usually works from a base of modal improvisation. Led by Campbell's sawing violin, tracks like 'Wearing Quid Frock' and the epic 'Japan Banjo' build up arcs of lingering overtones beneath an undercurrent of melody. They cut the drones in their life with extremely effective bursts of near rock, in a style reminiscient of the pre-Nico Velvet Underground (circa 1966 or so). The band's combination of clattering percussion, droning strings, and considerable sense of where to put the 'groove' on tracks like 'Catching Loners With Blank Arms' makes them unique among their peers. Versatile Arab Chord Chart follows the band's previous Lino Hi outing on Giardia and a series of intriguing and extremely limited self-released titles, including the currently available Filling Sacks With Leaves 10-inch. New work for VHF and live work around the UK are planned for the near future, if there is one." - label press release.
www.vhfrecords.com
€14.00
Joka Baya
"The ever-mysterious Vibracathedral Orchestra returns from another relatively quiet period with an uncompromising set of outre jams on a trio of limited-edition LPs. Slightly reorganized around a line-up of stalwarts Mick Flower and Adam Davenport with frequent collaborators John Godbert (Total) and John Moloney (Sunburned Hand of the Man), the band here stretches way, way out over these six sides. Joka Baya offers up a set of shorter pieces on the A-side in a high-fidelity style that contrasts the dark, smoky sound of the rest of the tracks. The percussive grooves are overlaid with Sunroof!-like shimmer, stabbing electric leads, gentle acoustic rain, and droning organ peeking through at opportune moments. The roaring side-long epic on the flip is a droning, phasing slice of psychedelia with Moloney's drums battering the tape in between long stretches of humming stasis." [label info]
www.vhfrecords.com
" It's been a while since we've heard from UK ur-drone spacelords
Vibracathedral Orchestra, founder Neil Campbell took off on his own a
while back, and now kicks up a ruckus as Astral Social Club, but the
Orchestra is still going strong, fronted by long time members Mick
Flower and Adam Davenport, who for this new set of THREE (!!) full
length releases, is joined by John Moloney of Sunburned Hand Of The
Man and the mighty John Godbert of the legendary Total.
Each of the three, Joka Baya, The Secret Base and Smoke Song,
function on their own as fully formed proper albums, but the three
also seem to fit together into one expansive whole, a sweeping
sprawling songsuite, that seems to drift from one lp to the next, and
in fact, although we didn't try it, we imagine you could probably play
these records simultaneously in various combinations and the results
would be even trippier.
Needless to say, most folks will most likely want all three,
but no harm done in starting with one, and then grabbing the others
later, unless they sell out that is, which seems very likely
considering that these are quite limited.
Up first is Joka Baya (in the black cover) beginning with a bit
of African drumming, which gives way to some gorgeously glimmering and
glistening prismatic dronemusic, swirling effects, all dreamlike and
bleary eyed, with what sounds like birdsong mixed into the chiming
notes and extended tones. The record shifts gears after that into
something much heavier and more blown out, a full on psychedelic post
Hawkwind spacejam, a heavy krautrock rhythm beneath a flurry of
tangled psych guitars. The African drums return briefly before the
band lock into a throbbing processed minimal looped dronescape, murky
and washed out, dark and hypnotic.
The flipside is a single side long epic, a slow burning cloud
of processed guitars, cymbal shimmer, glitched out FX, building to a
pounding psychedelic crescendo before slipping into a propulsive muted
buzzdrone raga outro.
The second lp is called The Secret Base (in the white and red
cover) and begins immediately with a total Spacemen 3 / Loop styled
drug rock jam, repetitive, mesmerizing, super hypnotic, the guitars
smoldering and incendiary. The next track is an Eastern tinged
spacekraut groove, strangely Southern sounding as well, a bit twang
flecked, a little dubby even, melodic, and major key and surprisingly
playful. Like the first record, The Secret Base also fills its second
side with a single extended track, this time, it's all clattery and
ritualistic and tribal, shakers, bells, hand drums, moaned and chanted
vocals, very reminiscent of Avarus, NNCK, Sunburned Hand, eventually
the sound locks into a skeletal groove, hypnotic and propulsive, but
still abstract and way loose.
Finally, the third art in the trilogy, Smoke Song (in the
Orange cover), which begins with a sprawling bit of Clattery, twangy
tribal free drift, fluttery flutes, lots of percussion, a sort of wild
and wooly drum circle, laced with woodwinds and swirling effects,
before slipping into a muted spacey jam, all subtle drumming, wheezing
chords, little bits of guitar jangle, warm whirring keyboards, druggy,
psychedelic, and just a bit Doors-y (or Wooden Shjips-y, for a more
contemporary reference).
Smoke Song too offers up a side long closer, this one ending
the whole trilogy, and it's a doozy, full on droned out drug rock,
cyclical, mesmerizing, sitar-like buzz wrapped around a simple, but
pounding motorik beat, while all around it a swirling cloud of hiss
and buzz and shimmer.
Needless to say, all three are recommended, and again, not sure
how limited these are, or how long they'll be around..." [Aquarius Records]
€16.00
Rec Blast Motorbike
"Return of the mighty “classic” lineup of the VCO with their first new music in many years. Here the quintet of Michael Flower, Neil Campbell, Bridget Hayden, Adam Davenport, and Julian Bradley (joined by raconteur John Godbert) feature in a set of upbeat tracks that put the group's radical instrumental strategies into a package of full on rock action. Recorded live using a binaural head system, the sound is nicely ragged in a you-are-there way, with scouring guitars and bleeping electronics riding atop the band’s signature grooves. As with some of the band’s other records, there’s more than a hint of the early Velvet Underground spirit here – if you wish that Cale and Reed would have been more into being an instrumental band, here it is. Includes download code." [label info]
"We’ve long worshipped at the altar of these psychedelic shamans, dutifully prostrating ourselves before them, and bathing in the luxurious glow of their din, a din that has constantly evolved over the years, sometimes pure, cosmic ur-drone, other times, free-from, avant rock space-psych, and at others, a sort of mutant electronica. But in each incarnation, the group never failed to conjure up a sort of transcendental soundstate, the music, whether caustic and chaotic, or moody and minimal, always evoking a tranced out sense of mesmer, a true psychedelia that is rare, even amongst proper ‘psych’ bands.
Rec Blast Motorbike, finds the group’s original line-up together again (Michael Flower, Bridget Hayden, Neil Campbell, Adam Davenport, Julian Bradley and John Godbert) and it sounds like it. If we didn’t know better, this could easily have been some old self released cd-r, which is fine with us, the sound raw, and free, lo-fi, yet somehow lush and epic, beautiful blustery blowouts set alongside fractured folkiness, essentially rhythmless, but the rhythms that are present are more spluttery and loose, sounding like an errant snare rolling down an immense flight of stairs one minute, a field recording of someone bored restlessly tapping a tabletop at others, some tracks are driven by what could be a junkyard wind chime, and others, by a veritable hippie percussion ensemble. All the while, the rest of the crew are unfurling streaking arcs of distorted guitar buzz, rippling sheets of feedback and grinding FX doused riffage.
It’s hard to define exactly what would qualify as ‘classic’ Vibracathedral’, but to our ears, this is pretty much it. The old gang together again, making a glorious noise, like they never stopped in the first place." [Aquarius Rec]
€20.00
Musiques pour Garcons et Filles
After the experience of Camizole, Dominique Grimaud began a new (and different) adventure in 1979 with Monique Alba.
Alongside Gilbert Artman (Urban Sax), Guigou Chenevier (Etron Fou Leloublan), Jean-Pierre Grasset (Verto) and Cyril Lefebvre (Maajun), Vidéo-Aventures is composed of instrumentals capable of reconciliating Captain Beefheart, Henry Cow, Suicide and… John Barry.
All with the backing of Rock In Opposition, which enabled this Musiques pour Garçons et Filles to become known worldwide.
“Let us enter your hearts”: is the request made by Vidéo-Aventures, and how can we refuse?
Especially as Musiques pour garçons et filles, recorded by Dominique Grimaud and Monique Alba fifty years ago along with handpicked colleagues, is as fresh as ever.
1979: having improvised a huge amount (and how!) with Camizole, Grimaud tried his hand at composition and studio recording with Alba. Their first instrument was the AKS synthetiser, with which the duo recorded the instrumental tracks that were then offered to their comrades Guigou Chenevier (Etron Fou Leloublan), Gilbert Artman (Lard Free, Urban Sax), Jean-Pierre Grasset (Verto) and Cyril Lefebvre (Maajun).
At the end of the year, they all came into the studio for a week to record the eight tracks of this mini album that Chris Cutler would issue a few months later on his label, Recommended. In France it was the beginning of the agitation around Rock In Opposition, to such a point that Musiques pour Garçons et Filles would rise to second place in the NME independent Charts. And this is hardly surprising…
For these instrumental miniatures (here with the bonus of rare archives, some of which are previously unpublished) are uncontrollable: electronics augmented by lap-steel guitar (“Tina”),
cunning pop (“Zazou sur la piste”), mechanic sound (“Une vie moderne”), street piano (« French Kiss »), disturbing atmospheres (“La ballade des cardiaques”) or something like a TV theme tune capable of adjusting all the colours (“Telstar”)… With such promising ingredients, why stop Vidéo-Aventures
from entering?
Carefully remastered from the master tapes by Gilles Laujol
Graphic design by Stefan Thanneur
8 page booklet - Heavyweight 180 gr. LP
425 gsm brownboard outer sleeve
Licensed from Dominique Grimaud
https://soufflecontinurecords.bandcamp.com/album/musiques-pour-gar-ons-et-filles-in-dits
€34.00
Totem
New full length album by one of France’s most singular contemporary composer. Reflecting on ancient culture’s use and reverence for emblematic monuments which most often represent myths and stories, the album’s narrative has been infused with such symbolic and depicts an envisioned mythology, unfolding through it’s 10 aural pieces. Franck Vigroux‘s music is unique and comprised of tectonic tension, pulsating rhythms and abrasive analog textures like few can produce. Applying his own calculated personal signature in his sonic explorations his distinctiveness comes not only by his unique approach to sound but also by his incorporation of new media practices and performing arts into his A/V work.
Mastering by Denis Blackham.
Cover Photography by Emile Barret, model Armand Yerly / 2010
Double Vinyl Edition of 500 copies in matt laminated Gatefold Sleeve.
10 Tracks. Running Time 55:10.
https://aesthetical.bandcamp.com/album/totem
"With a title like Totem and its evocation of Native American traditions and the stereotypical association that evokes of nature and animals one could be forgiven for assuming French producer-composer Franck Vigroux has gone down a folk road. Instead his collision of musique concrète and electronica reasserts folk’s relationship to both the avant-garde and dance music, albeit in brutalist and abrasive fashion. This isn’t music for a campfire sing-song or to be played in a pub at midsummer but its rugged vigour nonetheless stretches away from modern production tools into something more primeval.
Totem features some of the most uncompromising and colossal electronic music you will hear this year. In a manner not a million miles away from the later work of the great Scott Walker, Vigroux builds up and juxtaposes hefty blocks of sound, often alternating between moments of calm and seething noise, as on ‘Capaupire’ on which a metronomic, minimal backbeat and ambient textures are sporadically interrupted by walls of abrasive white noise. On ‘Tropiques Tropiques’ these slabs of noise come close to echoing the caustic doom metal of a SUNN O))) or a Wolves in the Throne Room, another North American pagan leitmotiv to chime with the album’s title even as it slyly confounds any expectations of the tropics.
For all the sturm und drang, however, Totem is a subtle and intricate album that owes just as much to Wolfgang Voigt as it does Throbbing Gristle or Merzbow. Tracks like ‘Rhinocéros’, ‘Frontières’ and ‘Baron’ are low-key electronic explorations, hypnotic beats and looped synth patterns building quietly, with the expected explosions of noise kept at bay. The joy is in delving into the sonic depths Vigroux plunders to parse out hidden melodies and meanings. ‘Cris’ and ‘Chronostasis grand finale’ meanwhile are redolent of Ben Frost’s epic constructions but with the Australian’s bombast stripped away to reveal a moody, haunted core. ‘Elephant’ takes this mood to notable heights as synth lines and disembodied voices swim in and out of focus like ghosts pleading to be noticed before a wave of drone swallows them whole like a tide.
On Totem, Franck Vigroux’s take on folk traditions sees him heave up almighty boulders of sound to unearth the hidden ghosts underneath. Quite how they relate to a notion of totems remains somewhat out of reach, as do the animals evoked in certain track titles. Is this a form of unpleasant cultural appropriation or a case of sardonic humour? Such questions can make it a frustrating experience but on the other hand Totem certainly towers like its namesakes tend to and between this scale and the mysteries it contains, it’s an album that lingers in the memory even after the last notes have faded away." [The Quietus]
€13.00
Les Ephemeres
The lost masterpiece Les Éphémères by the self labeled ‘sound painter’ Knud Viktor (1924-2013) now sees its first ever release by Institute for Danish Sound Archaeology – 40 years after it was conceived. Viktor’s pioneering work – his Images Sonores – are composed of field recordings of insects, animals and the his surroundings.
A finished master tape and even a complete cover layout for Les Éphémères was found in Viktor’s archives after he passed away in 2013. The phenomenal piece was originally commissioned by the French radio station France Musique in 1977. The twenty short ‘sound images’ of Les Éphémères were originally broadcast as vignettes in-between other radio programs.
From the middle of the 1970’s Viktor began composing almost exclusively for four channels. He invented his own intuitive quadraphonic mixer – the Tetramix – to realise his spatial visions for his Image VI – The Lubéron Symphony, and from then on worked with quadraphonic sound, thus making the release of his works difficult. Les Éphémères is close in time and also holds close ties to The Lubéron Symphony, which Viktor considered his magnum opus. Perhaps most strikingly is the shift in the way he uses the recordings of insects, birds and animals in both The Lubéron Symphony and Les Éphémères: Often untreated and clearly recognizable, the field recordings leave the inherent melody and rhythm of the animal sounds to sing for themselves, layering recordings to create simple and elegant sound images. In two of the twenty pieces Viktor’s own voice blends with the animals, as he recites two poems. One about the singing vineyard populated by musical crickets, the other painting an autumn picture with wine bubbling in the barrels as we hear the wine flies humming.
Viktor’s work emanates with a tremendous love and fascination with his companion species and the landscape and geology that surrounded him. His works are devoted to depicting the life on the mountain where he lived for fifty years. Hearing how the ecology of the landscape changed as commercial farming and pesticides took effect, a larger perspective in his work became clear to him:
"As it turns out, my work has actually set many things in motion; it touches upon something universal that I feel I have a duty to convey to others. A duty that I feel as a citizen of the earth. Not as a human citizen, but as a citizen of the earth. It may sound pretentious, but this is a question of generations to come." – Knud Viktor
The world has seen dramatic ecological change since Viktor recorded his sounds. Not only have the individual insects and animals that he recorded vanished from Lubéron, so too have entire species. Like fossils, their imprints now exist only in his works, in the recordings stored on tape. In the midst of our planet’s sixth mass-extinction event, the growing silence that Viktor heard in his immediate surrounding is now global: scientists estimate that half of the planet’s animal life has already disappeared. Viktor’s sound works allow us to borrow his ears. They convey his love for the animal worlds that surrounded him and perhaps we too can see our companion species differently through his works.
€24.00
Unfinished Devastation Narrative
lim./numb. 689 copies with many full colour postcards SPECIAL OFFER
Sehr ruhiges, spirituell-meditatives Album des St. Petersburger Projekts mit vielen Harmonika-artigen Sounds, gewidmet der Heimatstadt. Beeindruckende Aufmachung mit vielen Vollfarb-Postkarten....
"Unfinished Devastation Narrative\" is probably the most notable album in VK's discography, of course if there are any unnotable. It is a very personal work and it's the best recommendation for fans of the author. This album is not similar to his previous releases neither in style or sound. Listeners will find here a sort of cosmic-music, played on a physharmonica (portative organ), singing bowls, accordion, various handmade and analogue instruments, Sounds of nature, recorded in sacred places on uninhabited islands of Ladoga lake, where author has been meditating for a long time, have also been used in the album.
The album includes:
- 5 11-minute tracks of assembled acoustic ambient
- new ways of playing various handmade instruments & natural sound sources
- conceptually re-worked melodies, structures & streams, creating
endless mystique moods & dreams.
- quality sound and professional mastering
- a luxurious conceptual package art
The pictures must be noticed individually. All of them are reprints of the author's drawings, reflecting his esoteric experiences. Each picture adds new sense and depth to the corresponding track. In this sense there are no analogues to this release. The album is very deep and extremely conceptual in every point, there is not a single accidental sound or design element. Every listener will enjoy the album, everybody will find something interesting in this release. Limited edition of 689 copies, and this number also represents a deep conceptual idea. Number 6 symbolizes the beginning, 8 - the infinity and 9 - the ending.“ [label description]
€13.00
A fire is meant for burning
Ähnlich wie THIS MORTAL COIL eine Art 4AD-Supergroup waren, bestehen VLOR aus Musikern des Labels SILBER aus North Carolina.
Die Musik: Minimale Gitarrenpickings & -riffs vermählen sich mit Electronics und anderen Instrumenten, einsame driftende & melancholisch schöne Instrumentals mit Drone-Folk- & Wave-Nähe sind dabei entstanden.... einmal singt auch JESSICA BAILIFF...
"Vlor is Silber's This Mortal Coil-like supergroup, featuring members of the roster in collaboration with label head Brian John Mitchell. Joining him in the jam-sessions are Rivulets' Nathan Amundson, Jessica Bailiff, Aaartika's Jon DeRosa, Remora's Jesse Edwards, and Lycia's Mike VanPortfleet. The music found on a fire is meant to burn is mostly instrumental, all guitars, and fits nicely between the folk/rock/drone stylings of the collaborators. At times the music is rough, such as on "Houses Not Homes" and "New Machine," other times, it's extremely hypnotic, such as on "Wires" and the rare vocals of Bailiff on "Suncatcher" makes for a nice treat amongst the focus on instrumental acumen. This is mood music for the thinking man; it's never too dull, never too flat, even though it is mainly an instrumental collection. Best moment: the gorgeous ambience of "Days Like Smoke," where Mitchell and Mike VanPortfleet turn in a Lycia-like soundscape that's extremely lush and utterly beautiful." [Joseph Kyle, Mundane Sounds]
€12.00
Substantia Innominata
"geistermusik aus der wüste... oder der wind in den felsen... voice of eye's beitrag zur substantia innominata serie auf drone.
voice of eye haben schon ganz am anfang dieser anderen serie auf drone-records, der 7” reihe (genauer: im november 1994; dr-09), einen beitrag bringen können, der das ganz eigene drone-verständnis von diesem us-duo noch immer perfekt mitteilen kann. einer der gründe dafür mag sein, dass voice of eye (immer noch) zum teil selbstgebaute geräte nutzen, oft in form von streichinstrumenten, deren klang, zusammen mit flöten, stimmen und fieldrecordings quasi aus dem stand eine eigenartige stimmung evozieren kann. vor allem aber vermeiden sie dabei jede art von bombast oder auch nur das endlose übereinanderschichten von einzelnen spuren. die beiden haben, mit anderen worten, einfach ein sehr gutes gespühr für aufbau und spannung und eine sehr eigene vorstellung von klangästethik: einzelne töne sind in ihrem sound in einer form texturiert, die unmittelbar anspricht und voice of eye erreichen das, meiner meinung nach, neben der nutzung dieser wirklich ausgefallenen, exotischen instrumente, gerade nicht durch geheime effektgeräte, sondern vielmehr durch eine eher fast karge bearbeitung, durch ein rohlassen des klangs. daran hat sich seitdem (zum glück) nichts geändert, die “substantia innominata” 10” baut in allen drei stücken (“vira”, “dhyana”, “purusa”) auf dieses klangverständnis und webt (und das ist hier mal fast wörtlich zu nehmen) ein sehr zartes und transparentes gespinst mit einer, technisch gesehen, für eine 10” geradezu unglaublich langen spielzeit. musikalisch / atmosphärisch dann mit diesem zeit-ausschalt-faktor, den nur wirklich packender ambient schafft. daher: volle empfehlung (auch wenn die superlange spielzeit ihren vinyltribut fordert)." [N, Unruhr.de]
"This release marks the comeback of the legendary duo from New Mexico, USA, consisting of BONNIE McNAIRN and JIM WILSON! Over a decade ago (1992-1995) VOICE OF EYE released three albums with their unique style combining ethnic, ritualistic & folklore influences in an experimental and highly organic way to create a kind of "transcendental drone ambience", using only "real" instruments & self-built devices and an array of electronic effects. In November 1994 they released an EP entitled "Sprocket" on Drone Records (DR-09), which is still one of the absolute highlights in the Drone series.
After this first phase of musical creation VOICE OF EYE focused on building an incredible "Earthship" house in the deserts of New Mexico. In 2007 they returned doing shows in the States, Germany, France & Italy and releasing two limited CDRs. This 10" has 3 tracks with NEW material (entitled "VIRYA", "DHYANA" and "PURUSA") inspired by the wisdom of Buddhist / Advaitic meditation & philosophy, where the contemplation within music & sounds appears as a tool to reach a higher consciousness & awareness of reality.
This highly sublime & emotional "other-dimensional" ambience is based on lots of ethereal vocal material, flute-sounds and their typical self-built string-instruments, full of yearning and beauty - almost 39 minutes of material coming on clear vinyl with golden striae, with superb artwork by THOMAS DOHMEN.
This is the celebration of the "Unknown", seen as a state of mind where the Ego dissolves into a timeless universal consciousness." [label description]
€12.00
Seven directions divergent
Endlich das erste offizielle "volle" Album nach der Wiederbelebung des Ethno-Drone Paars, die stets alle Instrumente selber einspielen. Sie erweitern hier ihren Transzendental-Ambient mit psychedelischen und Song-orientierten Einflüssen, es wird gesungen, alles versinkt in wattigen Echo-Effekten und halluzinogenen Klangpulsen. Die sieben Stücke wirken in der Tat wie sieben verschiedene Richtungen ihres neuen Musik-Kosmos. Perkussive Bass-Gerüste bilden oft die Basis für die höchst harmonischen, warmen Stücke, die einen stark indisch-orientalen Touch aufweisen. Wunderbar z.B. das fünfte Stücke OM SHANTI, ein dronig-sanft & sphärisch-melancholisches Sehnen... engelshafte Gesänge und butterweiche Instrumentalparts bilden oft einen fast ozeanisches Flair, das letzte Stück "Transformational Birth " ist ein grossartiges schamanistisches Geister-Drone-Stück (18 Minuten) mit unheimlicher Sog-Wirkung !! Zwischen Transzendental-Pop und drone-basierter Psychedelic, VOICE OF EYE's Musik bleibt faszinierend spirituell & kontemplativ !
"Seven Directions Divergent (2009) is the latest release by Taos, New Mexico based artists Voice of Eye. Taking over a year to produce, Seven Directions Divergent is the third CD to be released on Conundrum Unlimited, and the fifth full-length Voice of Eye CD.
As artists experimenting with sound we have been inspired by many different styles of music and noise. Seven Directions Divergent pays homage to some of the diverse musical sources that have influenced us over the years from traditional Sanskrit chants to Steve Hillage to cute Euro pop to shamanic transcendence. This is an ambitious project melding many different sources together with the ethereal beauty and yearning magnificence you expect from Voice of Eye. This CD transports the listener along a narrative history of our personal journeys of change and transformation as told through the medium of sound. Seven Directions Divergent was mastered by award winning engineer Jon Gold for the best sounding Voice of Eye release to date. Comes in a Digipack with beautiful full color artwork by Jim Wilson.
Voice of Eye formed in 1991 out of the ashes of experimental bands Esoterica Landscapes 7 and Cruor. Through Voice of Eye, members Bonnie McNairn and Jim Wilson explore profound aspects of consciousness as the music is shared as a tool for entering different states of consciousness. The motivation behind forming Voice of Eye was to connect to a deeper truth we first sensed within our music. This unformed presence first revealed itself to us through music and has continued to manifest taking shape throughout our life’s journey leading to profound mystery.
Voice of Eye’s modus operandi is to take sound sources that are acoustic in origin, then process them through little black boxes to warp time and widen sonic perception. Voice of Eye’s sound shifts from gentle soundscapes to primal wrenching malevolence with such ease that the listener is unaware of the transition until it is too late and they are fully immersed in the voyage.
Voice of Eye took a hiatus from music in 1997 to build an off-the-grid sustainable home and studio in Taos, New Mexico. The process would take the next ten years. The result is an enormous sculptural free flowing work of art built entirely by the hands of Jim and Bonnie. Living in the open and empty spaces of the desert had the additional effect of deeply connecting them to the truth of their being as begun through music. The desert is the fire that burns away everything. Both members are now focused on the healing arts. Their journey has transformed what was begun through music into a way of life. Please see www.voiceofeye.com and www.myspace.com/voiceofeyemusic for discography, photographs and more information" [label info]
www.voiceofeye.com
"Since some time Jim Wilson and Bonnie McNairn, together known as Voice Of Eye are back. In 1997 they stopped creating music to 'build an off-the-grid sustainable home and studio in Taos, New Mexico', which took them ten years to build. Since their return their have been a couple of releases, which saw them return to their fine of lengthy, warm ambient electronics with great emphasis on the psychedelic quality of the pieces. Maybe therefore the opening piece here on their twelfth CD 'Seven Directions Divergent' is quite a surprise: its almost popmusic, slow rhythm, e-bow on the guitar, and Bonnie McNairn on some heavenly voice trip, and sounding a bit like Cosey Fanni Tutti. Laid-back popmusic. Almost. This is continued in the following piece 'Where Are You?', which is, me think, even better. Voice Of Eye changed that radical? Hard to believe, and no, they didn't. At least not to that extent. Throughout it seems indeed that elements of popmusic have been brought in, without losing the original ambient sound. 'Transformational Birth', the piece that closes this CD is one of those typical lengthy Voice Of Eye ambient excursions. A bit without any sense of direction, sounds flowing about, like being in space. They drift in and out of the mix, without any synthesizers (according to the cover), like the real cosmic music thing. That makes this a great CD. Drifting, flowing in all pieces, bouncing back and forth towards the more 'pop' like tunes and lengthy, atmospheric excursions. A great album, I'd say, an excellent combination of both ends, making a very mature album. Great psychedelic music." [FdW / Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Classic Erasmus Fusion
Was soll man zu dem britischen Quartett VOLCANO THE BEAR noch sagen? Wer auf der Suche nach überraschender & neuer, (noch) nicht klassifizierbarer Musik ist, die nicht am Computer entsteht, muss hier einfach mal reinhören!! Ihre Musik mit Einflüssen aus Folk, Drone, Avant-Rock & Impro-Jazz ist nicht nur oft irgendwie “weird” und verquer, sondern weist auch streckenweise grosse harmonische & elegante Schönheit auf... wie immer ist vokales Material omni-präsent!
“.... zeigt Antifolk flippernd zwischen Didgeridoo und Handy, Daumenklavier und elektrischer Störung, als Folklore des Absurden, die es fertig bringt, in raffinierter Unschuld zerebralen Goldstaub aufzuwirbeln..” [Bad Alchemy # 51]
„...Describing Volcano the Bear's music is about as difficult as identifying the instruments. The quartet's arsenal of gear is transcendant of time and space, culled from different cultures and different eras, from classically orchestral woodwinds (albeit sometimes just blowing through the mouthpiece) to African thumb piano, helicopter sounds, thunderstorm and rain and running water, medieval squeeze boxes, squeak toys, chirping or crying bird sounds, and Asian stringed things. While improvisation has been integral to the band's development, Volcano the Bear can always be counted on very cold-calculated and composed songs appearing on their official studio albums. Their arrangement is loose but never wanky or show-offey. Perhaps it's this lack of soloing and pretention that has kept them from appropriate recognition by some of the major experimental media in favor for a whole "free folk"/"weird rock"/"new weird America" obsession.“ [Brainwashed]
"VTB have crafted a strange geometry in their musique concrete between celestial duck honks and what sounds like a flood in the living room, there are more than a few occasions of heads cocked at the speaker in mundus caninus. Of course, this bodes well for humans, too. Augmented by all the dog friendly moments is a double album of sprawling musical invention. Record one births gently into a lo-fi-adelic Comus-like saline that even might even win over the Devendra crowd, if the Devendra crowd had ingested just a little too much mushroom tea on that day and left their ironic trucker hats at the door. Song becomes fever dream and then pitches into a barren place of low estate and low chanting whose Residents might well be Eskimos. With typical minimalist pageantry, VTB mutate from piece to piece, punctuating along the way with surprise sounds that the aforementioned dogs love so well; the kinds of quirks that make Nurse With Wound and P16.D4 records such fun listens. VTB spin some very melodious tales, which are subliminally hooky, after a fashion. Spiritual and surreal are sisters. Quiet ritualism queues with dadaistic and with progressive harmonies, together on the same fractured, out world, sing-along journey. And that's just record one. Record two crawls slowly from the echoey ooze, grows legs and then presents as a different and, in many ways, more dramatic creature. A long, shifting organ drone becomes a deeply psychedelic statement that bleats loud and strong like an acid bleached Spiral Insana or a sneaky This Heat.” [label info]
www.blrrecords.com
€14.00
Amidst the Noise and Twigs
"Die vier buchdeckelartigen Hochglanzseiten mit surrealen Bilderwelten des Nick Mott – Würfelkopfgestalt, gesichtslose Männchen fliegen durch die Luft, eines legt seine Stielaugen vor sich auf den Tisch – würden den Kauf von VOLCANO THE BEARs Admidst The Noise and Twigs (mt204a) fast schon alleine rechtfertigen. Umso besser, wenn dann die Musik auch noch überzeugt. Neben dem Artworker zeichnen für diese wieder Aaron Moore, Clarence Manuelo und Daniel Padden verantwortlich. Sie jagen den Hörer durch eine scheinbar zufällig chaotische Dadaund Patchwork-Welt, die bisweilen Dilettantismus höchst gekonnt suggeriert und mit allen musikalischen und technischen Tricks Illusionen aufbaut und zerstört. Hippiegeschrammel trifft auf orientalische Flöten und Gongs der Chinaoper. Dann paaren sich Flötengedudel, Geklapper und Geknarze ’Before We Came To This Religion’. Auf ’Larslovesnicks Farm’ steht ein altes verstimmtes Klavier, auf dem ein Langweiler vier Töne tonleiteraufwärts stetig wiederholt, dazu scheinen Türen zu knarzen und Wasser wird verspritzt. Ein Banjo beschränkt sich auf 2 Töne, die während des Anschlagens getunet
werden. ’Cassettes Of Berlin’ ist eine negativländlerische Collage aus Geräuschen, Stimmfetzen und Radioeinspielungen, abgehackt, weil am Frequenzeinstellrad weitergedreht wird. ’Splendid Goose’ ähnelt den langen Mothers-Stücken der zweiten Freak Out-Scheibe. Das Schlagzeug unterbreitet den treibenden Rhythmus, über dem sich monotone Frequenzteppiche ausbreiten, gestört und unterbrochen von Kracheinspielungen und begleitet von brummiger Stimmakrobatik oder Flötengequengel. ’She Vang Moon’ kreiert eine Atmosphäre tibetanischer Klöster mit Mönchsgesang, Harmonium, Gonggeschepper, verzerrt dann immer mehr durch unsaubere Frequenzen. Es geht auch gefühlvoll, wenn die Trompete zu einer Art Hymne ansetzt, aber dann wird gegrunzt, gejammert und durch den Kamm geblasen. Das letzte Stück, ’The Three Twins’, beginnt in getragenem Tempo mit 3 Tönen und der tiefgreifenden Aussage “Hi-a-o, Hijä-jah...“ (oder so ähnlich), geht über in dilettantisches Geklopfe, Kindergeschrei, Klaviergeklimper - das Schlagzeug wuselt im Hintergrund – und entwickelt sich tatsächlich noch zu einem Song, der am Ende vom Sax regelrecht ’zerquetscht’ wird." [Bad Alchemy]
"The first 1000 copies are packaged in a full color book bound case with an eight page booklet. Volcano The Bear "Amidst The Noise And Twigs" is the follow up to the critically acclaimed "Classic Erasmus Fusion" album. Who knew that amidst the noise and the twigs there was music…sweet, sweet music?! This world is Volcano the Bear’s womb. At last, the year that VTB gets a shot at Top Of The Pops, assuming the pops finally snaps out of its vapid trance and embraces the standards of Comus, 3 Hurel, early Residents and 12th century Arabo-Andalusian music. As usual, our heroes are found keeping things stripped to the bone trumpet, but dripping with a juicy, melodic marrow. The record pours slowly and resolutely like a folk-psych dream urn, loaded with full metal banjoes; crumhorns at 12 O’clock; and autoharps at defcon 5. The experimentalism is this time couched in shifting tides of self-spun acidic harvest ballads that noisily well up into proto-Kraut thrums and tribal night t rips around the pyre. A rural, squelchy, DIY delicacy which stinks of occidental embouchure so crystal crisp that every skkrrrr, pphaaapph and brrruuuummmm resonates like a small, sound-specific god, intertwined with beautifully skewed notes, voices and rhythms. "Amidst The Noise And Twigs" plays like a recently discovered field recording of some obscured Celtic clan who accidentally stumbled onto psychedelia 600 years ahead of its time. These pipers truly rock the gates of dawn." [label notes]
www.blrrecords.com
€13.00
Golden Rhythm / Ink Musik
"Das brandneue Studioalbum von VOLCANO THE BEAR ist eine kalkuliert-hysterische Verschmelzung von THIS HEAT, ROBERT WYATT, FAUST und THE RESIDENTS, aus Musique Concrete und Ethnofolk, gesehen durch ein Kaleidoskop aus theatralischer Improvisation. Gegründet 1995 waren es VOLCANO THE BEAR, die Steven Stapleton von NURSE WITH WOUND derart in Aufregung versetzten, dass er sein United Diaries Label wiedererweckte, nur um 2000 ihr erstes Album ,The Inhazer Decline" herauszubringen. Seitdem haben VOLCANO THE BEAR Alben auf einer ganzen Stange von Labels (und ihrem eigenen!) veröffentlicht, von denen ,Classic Erasmus Fusion" von 2006 ein definitives Highlight ist. Wenn die Band aufnimmt, dann geht es darum, krasse Absurditäten auf bizarr-schönste Weise darzustellen. "Golden Rhythm/Ink Music" ist ihr erstes "richtiges" Studioalbum seit "Amidst The Noise And Twigs" von 2007. Das neue Album konzentriert sich auf die soundtechnische Trennlinie zwischen Aaron Moore und Daniel Padden und dürfte das fokussierteste Album von VOLCANO THE BEAR überhaupt sein. Es zeigt ,Rockmusik" aus der leicht verdrehten Perspektive von VOLCANO THE BEAR und wartet mit mehr Schlagzeug/Gitarren Kombinationen auf als jemals zuvor. ,Golden Rhythm/Ink Musik" übersetzt die bizarre Energie der VOLCANO THE BEAR Liveperformance in die Umwelt des Studios.
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Rune Grammofon presents the brand-new studio album from Volcano The Bear, a calculated, hysterical melting-pot of This Heat, Robert Wyatt, Faust and The Residents, of musique concrète and ethno-folk, all seen through a prism of theatrical improvisations and unhinged set pieces. Formed in 1995, and after several self-released tapes and CD-Rs, VTB so excited Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton, that he brought his United Dairies label out of cold storage to release their first album proper, The Inhazer Decline, in 2000. Since then they've released music on such labels as Misra, Beta Lactam Ring, Textile, Digitalis, Pickled Egg, Alt Vinyl as well as their own imprints Volucan and Volfurten with the exceptional Classic Erasmus Fusion from 2006 being a possible highlight. On record, VTB offer stark and stunning absurdities in the most bizarrely beautiful way. Recycling and re-contextualizing their material is an innate habit, and the variety of recording options they might choose (be it a highly-equipped professional studio or a second-hand dictaphone) allows their craft to be formed in a myriad of different ways. VTB have toured extensively throughout Europe and North America and in concert they are the duo of Daniel Padden and Aaron Moore. Absurd humor and eclectic ways of producing sounds are characteristic of their live performances and their extensive knowledge of the traditions of experimental and folk music makes the band difficult to categorize. The band record everything they play and will often use these recordings as raw material for their albums. VTB have released a number of records since the start, often mixing studio, live and home recordings. Golden Rhythm/Ink Music is their first more or less "proper" studio album since Amidst The Noise And Twigs back in 2007. Largely based on the sonic fault-line between Aaron Moore and Daniel Padden, it's also the most focused and driven of VTB's prolific output so far, showcasing the duo's unique musicality and interplay, while retaining their trademark eccentricity and humor throughout. It presents "rock music" as seen through VTB's skewed eye, featuring more of Padden and Moore's drum/guitar combination than on previous albums. Taking the bizarre energy of their live duo performances into a studio environment, and combining it with VTB's eclectic instrumentation and Clarence Manuelo's singular audio-work, GR/IM shows VTB making their most vital work to date. Includes mp3 download code." [label info]
www.runegrammofon.com
€20.00
Yak Folks Y'Are
Nefryt - N 029
Format: CD
Country: Poland
Released: 26 May 2018
Genre: Electronic, Rock
Style: Avantgarde, Experimental
Tracklist
1 Where Are The Bounds?
2 Banket Ball
3 Nobody's Falling
4 Egg Knowledge
5 Oslo Top
6 Hello Graham
7 My Favourite Lungs
8 Massive Furniture Invasion
Notes:
Yak Folks Y'are originally issued by Pickled Egg in 1999 as a mini LP. My Favourite Lungs & Massive Furniture Invasion originally issued by Alt.Vinyl in 2006 as a lathe cut 8".
Thank You Alan Jenkins, Stew Brackley, Steven Freeman, Steve Hill, Alan Freeman, Kev Reverb.
Copyright Volcano The Bear 1998
4 panel gatefold sleeve.
Limited to 444 copies.
"Out on Pickled-Egg from the UK, Volcano's first LP consists of 6 new songs by these growing and mind-expanding UK surrealists. On a whole, the release is filled with a bizarre emotion that leaves a sinking feeling in your stomach.
Side A ("Yak Folk") starts with the low-fi, reverb-drenched track, "Where Are the Bounds?," which is reminiscent in feel of the first track ("Planetary Bethlehem") from The Inhazer Decline. The second track is a short snippet of eerie noise, leading into "Nobody's Falling," which utilizes their eccentric—but extremely compelling—vocal work. With a very psychedelic-rock sound, they play horns, organs, and consistent high hats, which blend to conjure up a surrealist lounge. Side B ("Y'Are") has some beautiful, brilliant work—the best VtB I've yet heard. "Egg Knowledge" makes me feel as if I am in the presence of ghosts. The vocals are haunting and extremely bizarre (comparable only to a dying elderly), and combine with the tension-building noises and tribal-esque drums to leave a queasy, almost painful mindset. Next is "Oslo Top," made of twinkly noises with demonic vocals. And finally, "Hello Graham," the long ending track, tops the album with its usage of slurred vocals and beautifully simple acoustic guitar overlayed and interchanging, putting emotions out for grabs that are both frightening and captivating. The feeling for most of the LP is, in fact, a strange, ambiguous line between comforting and terrifying; but it is executed in such a manner that is purely hypnotic." [Brainwashed review on the original LP edition from 2000]
nefryt.bandcamp.com/album/volcano-the-bear-yak-folks-yare
€13.00
The Shy Volcanic Society at the Beat and Bird Parade
"A split CD containing five tracks from Volcano the Bear and four by STPO. The French group STPO is a long existing and very underestimated group with limited releases over the years. Their history of dadaist and experimental music started in 1984. Beta-lactam Ring released and re-released some of their older material. For this release they choose four tracks that were recorded in 2003 and were not included on earlier releases. These tracks again illustrate their very odd musical universe. I admire them for staying close to their unique musical vision and language. For Volcano the Bear things are opposite in at least one aspect. Namely, they released already a bulk of records in the past. Less bizarre then STPO Volcano the Bear refer in their experimental music to folkmusic. Their compositions stay somewhere in the middle between song-structure and soundcollage. Also they are one dimensional compared to the compositions of STPO that are structured along the inimitable logic of their musical fantasies. The same for their carefully worked out arrangements. The over the top and very expressive vocal work by Pascal Godjikian is the heart of most of the tracks on this CD. Can't get enough from them." [DM, Vital Weekly]
"CD issued early May 2009 as an edition of 500 copies in a full color gatefold sleeve. A split album with Volcano the Bear and La STPO. VTB tracks 1-5 and STPO tracks 6-9. Bears and Birds, oh my! One side keeps the hot hot. And the other keeps the weird weird. VTB’s typically atypical entomological set scratches like a hive that has evolved just to the point of thumping out tribal fealties to its giant insect God-Thing. Environmentally ritualized sub-rhythms mix musique-concrete with actual concrete, forming freakishly minimal foundations for the hive of whatevers to swarm within. Noise, once again, for heroes. All this, of course, juxtaposed against France’s hidden reverse: La STPO, who absolutely let it blurt. Their pounding system of post-post-punk-neo-Zeuhl cracks the mantle, with bass lines thicker than Sequoias. And louder than screaming Sequoias. La STPO vacillates between two extreme extremes: something approximating a kind of industrial strength nouveaux bâtiments s'effondrants (German buildings are not the only ones susceptible to collapse), and crushing riffs ala SunnO))). Pascal Godjikian’s fierce grunts and barks keep the hive on the other side believing he is their God-thing. He is someone’s God-thing, that’s for sure." [label info]
www.blrrecords.com
"Diese Split-CD vereint Stücke zweier experimenteller Bands, Volcano the Bear aus England und La Société des Timides à la Parade des Oiseaux aus Frankreich. Beide bieten, so viel vorweg, alles andere als leichte Kost.
Volcano the Bear zeigen sich bereits reichlich unkonventionell. Die bis auf einige textlose Lautäußerungen instrumentale Musik wälzt sich wie ein zeitlupenartiger Klangstrom aus den Boxen, ohne dabei eine rechte Form anzunehmen. Streich- und Blasinstrumente mäandern entlang, allerlei Schlagwerk rumpelt vor sich hin, dazu knurrt oder brummt ab und zu jemand, was letztlich wie ein weiteres Instrument klingt. Einige undefinierbare Geräusche vervollkommnen das Ganze. Da hört man gelegentlich schrilles Kreischen wie von einer Kreissäge, oder wurde da ein Instrument malträtiert? Wer weiß. Ein andermal spielt eine einsame Flöte (oder ähnliches) eine seltsam schiefe Melodie, nur von sporadischen Beckenschlägen begleitet, oder Blechbläser stimmen eine Art ländliche Weise an. Äußerst kurios.
So strukturlos diese Klänge sich über weite Strecken zunächst präsentieren, herrscht doch nicht völlige Planlosigkeit, es scheint doch irgendein System dahinterzustecken. Auf jeden Fall entwickelt diese Musik nach anfänglicher Skepsis eine starke Faszination.
LaSTPO agieren hier noch ein ganzes Stück avantgardistischer als auf ihren mir bisher bekannten Alben. Vor allem die Stimme von Sänger Pascal Godjikian schlägt hier noch wildere Kapriolen, es ist kaum möglich, dieses permanente Knurren, Bellen, Heulen, Brüllen, Würgen mit Worten adäquat zu beschreiben. Da glaubt man, der selige Demetrios Stratos von Area sei wieder auferstanden! Dazu liefern seine Mitstreiter Klänge, die mit dem üblichen Verständnis von Rockmusik, auch von progressiver, kaum noch etwas gemein haben. Das ist zu großen Teilen schon radikale Anti-Musik! Da knarzen Streicher in Zeitlupe, als würde ein alter Holzschrank quälend langsam über einen Dielenboden gezerrt, Bläser schnarren, Schlagwerk rasselt, bis unvermittelt eine gigantische Lärmeruption einsetzt, in der die einzelnen Instrumente nur noch durcheinander purzeln. Les Oreilles Internationales treibt es in dieser Hinsicht auf die Spitze, es wirkt wie ein einziges Konglomerat unterschiedlichster Arten von Lärm. Und immer wieder die brutalen Lautäußerungen, als deren Urheber man kein menschliches Wesen annehmen möchte.
Diese Lärmorgien sind wirklich so ziemlich das krasseste, das ich je gehört habe. In Worten lässt sich kaum beschreiben, was hier auf den Hörer einprasselt. Grandios! Mehr davon! Warum gibt es nur so wenige CDs von LaSTPO? Tipp für alle abenteuerlustige Hörer! Und wer die Gelegenheit hat, die Band live zu sehen: Hingehen! Es lohnt sich!" [Jochen Rindfrey / Babyblaue Seiten]
€14.00
Pomol
Trancig-tribale, durchaus ungewöhnliche hypnotische und z.T. sehr wuchtige Beats, ost-europäisch anmutender weiblicher Gesang, harmonische Flächen & Instrumenteneinsatz, manchmal hat das sogar einen Orient-touch, manchmal klingt es mehr nach Electro-Wave der 80er.. . Atmosphärischer, einnehmender Avant-Pop aus Russland!
"VOLGA stammen aus Moskau, kamen 1997 zusammen und arbeiten seitdem extrem hart: auf Touren haben sie einiges der Welt gesehen und zehn Jahre nach ihrer Gründung steht mit "Pomol" ihr insgesamt siebtes (und fünftes Studio-) Album in den Startlöchern. Mit Alexei Borisov, der als bekannter Solokünstler elektronische Soundkunst erschafft, weben VOLGA einen dichten Electronica-Klangteppich, der mit bunten Mustern aus elektroakustischen Elementen, mantrischen Tanzrhythmen und traditionellen, schamanischen Folktexten glänzt. Die Texte von Sängerin Angela Manukjan stammen aus der russischen Folklore des 19. Jahrhunderts und lässt die Volksgesänge umso einzigartiger wirken. ,Pomol' ist auf der einen Seite eingängig und heimelig, auf der anderen Seite düster und akustisch kontrovers; aus den beiden Polen entsteht Musik, die das lose Konzept des Pop gründlich auf links zieht." [Cargo]
"The latest album by this Moscow-based group, scheduled to go into production anytime shortly, alongside the above release. Thirteen wonderful tracks that, helmed by the powerful, dynamic, expressive and unique voice of Angela Manukjan, sway between electronica's moody yet accessible outer reaches, folk and other traditional music, plus the same kind of sensibilities ensnared so well by
contemporary pop's more wayward souls such as Bjork and Sigur Ros." [label info]
www.lumbertontrading.com
€14.00
Arbeit Nr. 23 - Ich arbeite mit Frequenzen Teil 1 - 3 (ansteigend / abfallend / 2600 Hertz / Phreaking)
The last part of the trilogy Ich arbeite mit Frequenzen forms a trilogy in itself: it is made up of three tracks while its two predecessors only contain one long track each. And while parts 1 and 2 work through a frequency grid of apparently mathematical rigour, this one focuses on the particularly distortion-rich frequency band around 2600 hertz. The two 2600 Hertz tracks are live recordings of a performance by Carsten Vollmer. Here, and on the opening track Phreaking, the first non-electronic sounds of the whole trilogy can be heard: the performer's screams put into relief the expressive quality of noise that was consciously underexposed on the 'antihumanist' parts 1 and 2.
The fact that all of Carsten Vollmer's releases come as numbered Arbeiten (works), but in particular the verb arbeiten (to work) in the title of this release, emphasise the (physical) labour of building up his walls of sound. Thus, part 3 of Ich arbeite mit Frequenzen once more enacts the drama of 'man vs machine' or 'body vs bodily harmful frequencies and volumes' through which the noise genre time and again confronts existential and social alienation with an ecstatic, but 'parole-less protest' against it (to borrow a phrase from Carsten Vollmer's fellow noisician Anton Kaun aka Rumpeln).
The first track of the album, Phreaking, also features a list, but not one of frequencies, but a list of textual references to Ron Rosenbaum's classic 1971 feature story The Secrets of the Little Blue Box about the hardware-hacking network of the Phone Phreaks, who built a counter-network within the official telephone network of the U.S.A. From the vantage point of the officially sanctioned telephone signals, these subversive actions were undoubtedly noise, and it is plain to see that Carsten Vollmer's Phreaking is a sympathetic homage. In a 'communication guerilla' practice such as this, Michel Foucault's basic tenet 'Where there's power, there's also resistance' meets the axiom of information theory: 'Where there's a signal, there's also noise'. The fact that this third and final album comes not as one monolithic track, but as an object fragmented within itself, is programmatic for ways in which noise can stand for the freeing of spaces in political contexts: instead of the monologue of an author(itarian) voice – 'I, and only I, work with frequencies' –, this album signals within itself the clamourous debate of different, dissenting voices, which in the political field is always preferable to the undisputed monologue of an absolute power. At the end of the live recordings, one eventually hears the voices of the audience; the author is no longer alone within his work, and someone says: 'It continues here, in the next room.' Thus the album ends with an invitation to claim new spaces of possibility.
File under: Noise
https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/arbeit-nummer-23-ich-arbeite-mit-frequenzen-teil-1-ansteigend
https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/arbeit-nummer-23-ich-arbeite-mit-frequenzen-teil-2-abfallend
https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/arbeit-nummer-23-ich-arbeite-mit-frequenzen-teil-3-2600-hertz-phreaking
***
Der letzte Teil der Trilogie “Ich arbeite mit Frequenzen” bildet selbst eine Trilogie in sich – anders als die beiden Vorgänger, die jeweils nur aus einem langen Track bestehen, umfasst er drei Stücke. Statt ein mathematisch-kalkuliert wirkendes Frequenzschema durchzuarbeiten wie Teil 1 und Teil 2, wird hier auf 2600 Hertz in einem in Sachen Verzerrung besonders effektiven Frequenzbereich gearbeitet. Die beiden “2600 Hertz”-Tracks sind Livemitschnitte von einer Performance von Carsten Vollmer. Hier, aber auch auf dem Opener “Phreaking”, sind erstmals auch nicht-elektronische Klänge zu hören: Schreie des Performers rücken jene expressive Qualität von Noise in den Fokus, die auf den beiden “antihumanistischen” Teilen 1 und 2 betont ausgespart blieb.
Nicht nur die Titulierung von allen Veröffentlichungen Carsten Vollmers als durchnummerierte “Arbeiten”, sondern speziell das Verb im Titel dieser Veröffentlichung betont die (physische) Anstrengung, die in die Errichtung seiner Klangwände einfließt. So führt auch Teil 3 von “Ich arbeite mit Frequenzen” das Drama “Mensch vs. Maschine” bzw. “Körper vs. körperfeindliche Frequenzen und Lautstärken” auf, mit dem das Genre Noise immer wieder existenzielle und gesellschaftliche Entfremdung sowie den ekstatischen, aber “parolenlosen Protest” dagegen (eine Formulierung von Carsten Vollmers Noise-Kollegen Anton Kaun aka Rumpeln) inszeniert.
Das erste Stück des Albums, “Phreaking”, führt ebenfalls eine Liste auf, allerdings keine mit Frequenzen, sondern eine mit textlichen Anspielungen auf Ron Rosenbaums klassische Reportage “The Secrets of the Little Blue Box” von 1971 über das Hardware-Hacker-Netzwerk der “Phone Phreaks”, die im offiziellen Telefonnetzwerk der USA ein Gegen-Netzwerk aufbauten. Aus Sicht der offiziell im Telefonnetz vorgesehenen Signale waren diese subversiven Aktionen zweifellos “Noise”, und es ist unschwer zu erkennen, dass Carsten Vollmers “Phreaking” eine von Sympathie geprägte Hommage ist. In einer “Kommunikationsguerilla”-Praxis wie dieser trifft sich Michel Foucaults Grundsatz “Wo Macht ist, ist immer auch Widerstand” mit dem Axiom der Informationstheorie: “Wo Signale sind, da ist immer auch Rauschen”. Dass dieses dritte und letzte Album nicht als ein monolithischer Track, sondern in sich fragmentiert daherkommt, kann dabei programmatisch dafür gelesen werden, wie Noise auch im politischen Raum für das Schaffen von Freiräumen stehen kann: Statt des Monologs der Autor(itäts)stimme – “Ich, und nur ich arbeite mit Frequenzen” – wird hier innerhalb des Albums der lautstarke Widerstreit von verschiedenen Stimmen angedeutet, der im politischen Feld allemal wünschenswerter ist als der unumstrittene Monolog einer absoluten Herrschaft. Auf den Liveaufnahmen hört man dann am Ende auch die Stimmen des Publikums, der Autor ist nicht mehr allein in seiner Arbeit, und jemand sagt: “Hier im nächsten Raum geht es weiter.” So endet das Album ausdrücklich mit der Eröffnung von Möglichkeitsräumen, die es zu nutzen gilt.
File under: Noise
-----
VITAL WEEKLY
Origami derives from ori, meaning "folding", and kami meaning "paper". The mathematics of the fold is relevant, is analogical to 'the fold'. This can be understood as the new mathematics of the curve, of changing quantities which is often difficult for non-mathematicians, of which I am one. Put simply in simple geometry of a flat surface, say a chessboard, a piece, pawn, knight etc. can be located by two coordinates. These are static set properties, which Deleuze via Leibniz relates to Descartes. Complex curves, changing velocities, cannot be precisely modelled using such a method. This was accomplished by using mathematics to model dynamically changing events, the Calculus. If modernism in its linear development fixes and finalizes itself in a Cartesian / Euclidean fixed point, a null event, the Baroque does not. The metaphor of calculus is useful, for around it are mathematical objects such as the limit. In simple non-mathematical terms, a series of calculations can approach a limit but never reach it, and in getting closer, to a potential infinity of numbers. For non-mathematicians, this is best seen in the obvious Baroque of The Mandelbrot Set. Folding can produce an infinite variation. Associated with 'folding' in Deleuze derives the aesthetic, especially the visual aesthetic in the Baroque, one of the dynamic curves and dramatic events. “Leibniz is endlessly drawing up linear and numerical tables. With them he denotes the inner walls of the monad. Folds replace holes...” (The Fold). Elsewhere (in The Logic of Sense) Tenth series of the ideal game -”of which we speak cannot be played by either man or God. It can only be thought as nonsense. But precisely for this reason, it is the reality of thought itself and the unconscious of pure thought. This game is reserved then for thought and art.” Baroque music of the 'classical period' - (late 17thC- 18thC) used accomplished improvisation, complex polyphony, multiple independent melody lines, the fugue and ricercar (which explore the permutations of a given motif). The 'metaphysics' that the Baroque produced was significant in music. Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Monteverdi, Scarlatti, Purcell, Telemann... such that with Bach there is the deployment of a pure abstract formalism which could be regarded as a metaphysics of the free play of the potentialities of the abstract (windowless) structures of music. And in thinking the Baroque we also arrive at Leibniz and German Idealism, but also the more recent 'idealism' of Deleuze and the Speculative Realists and Object Oriented Ontologists. To judge these metaphysics in 'scientific', empirical terms, would then be to miss the point. They are not in all cases Monads, as they are not closed off to ourselves. They are like Monads in that they seem closed in on themselves. The point is that 'Baroque Folding' is an internal programme. Thus it typically appears when genres become exhausted or fully mature. A very early classical example is the development of Corinthian Architecture from that of the Doric & Ionic, or the much more recent, post-modernism, especially noticeable in Architecture. A certain playfulness which can and does in Po-Mo reduce, at times, to mere sensation and irony. Within contemporary music, 'noise music' and 'harsh noise' was to lead to a reductionist, 'analytics' of the extreme minimalism of Harsh Noise Wall's monolithic unchanging noise. This cul-de-sac has an obvious problem, and various methodologies have evolved in order to circumvent its effective closure of the noise genre, from abandoning noise altogether (Wolf Eyes), to alternatives, such as shit folk and ultra shit folk (Romain Perrot). The process of 'folding' is synthetic, not analytic (reductionist, minimalist walls). Both processes are to be found in Metaphysics and Art. In The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant sets out to establish an a priori basis for his transcendental metaphysics and makes two distinctions, that of the analytic a priori and the synthetic a priori. The philosophy of this needn't concern us. What is useful is concerning the idea of The Fold. The epistemological, philosophical implications disputed by some also need not bother us here. For us, what is significant in Kant is that Kant maintains that the Synthetic can produce (a priori) new objects without recourse to finding them in the outside world. In Analysis, something is broken down or examined to find its fundamental form or origin (The Wall of Noise). This is normally regarded as a task that will arrive at something fundamental. In early philosophy – the Atom – in Jungian analysis the archetype. It may well be that such a final analysis is not possible, that analysis is potentially infinite, or results in a void. Synthesis is the reverse. Given some fundamental objects, we can create new objects and structures – out of what is already given. A triangle can be analyzed into its basic three sides of straight lines, but we can synthesize new objects given a triangle. We can make a quadrilateral with two triangles and continue – pentagons, hexagons, and no limit – and no recourse to anything external to our basic element. And whereas Analysis is contained by the analysis of 'what is there' synthesis creates new objects that are not 'already there'. The Baroque is this distinction between the Analytic A Priori and Kant's idea of a Synthetic A Priori. An example in the arts is that of Analytic Cubism and Synthetic Cubism. Whereas Analytical Cubism broke up the picture plane into its elements, Synthetic Cubism used these basic 'elements' to synthesize new compositions. The tendency in modernism was analytical. “What is painting?” “What is music?” “What is Art?”, the analytical desire of what is “essential”. In Cubism, the 'Analytical' phase was relatively short-lived, the Synthetic move allowing Picasso and others an alternative continuous productive methodology. The (Baroque) fold is a synthetic methodology. At the most pedantic Origami – (from ori "folding", and kami "paper"). An origami Swan is a synthesis of a flat sheet of paper. All creations of Origami are in the last analysis, flat sheets of paper. The methodology of Origami, of 'folding', is Synthetic and offers an infinity of productions. Which is occasioned in Noise – here! which is not the abandonment of noise or a retrograde movement back into music. The baroque fold, abstractly using the tropes, forms etc., of noise music not as an external expression but as internal work exploring the permutations and improvisational possibilities of a given motif. The tropes of Harsh Noise, the motifs of feedback, oscillator sweeps, distortion, white noise etc. Abstract sounds, found in Harsh Noise before its collapse into a minimal wall. What is removed is the idea of a linear 'progress' (modernism) replaced by that of infinite synthesis. Ansteigend, Abfallend and 2600 Hertz_Phreaking are 3 parts of Arbeit Nummer 23 - Ich Arbeite Mit Frequenzen.
www.vitalweekly.net/1316.html
"Steht 'Frequenzarbeiter' schon im Duden? CARSTEN VOLLMER arbeitet jedenfalls daran, mit seiner Arbeit Nr. 23: Ich arbeite mit Frequenzen (3xCDr, jeweils in DVD-Schuber). Dieser nächste Arbeitsschritt nach der bad alchemystischen „Arbeit Nr. 22“ (BA 103) ist ein in strenger Schwarzweiß-Optik vereinter Triptychon, den drei Labels stemmen: Teil 1 – Ansteigend (ACU 1027), Teil 2 – Abfallend (Cat Killer), Teil 3 – 2600 Hertz / Phreaking (Krater Recordings, KR05-010). Das oft genug unangebracht verwendete 'experimentell' ist dabei halbwegs gerechtfertigt durch die demonstrativen 'Versuchs'-Reihen mit 55 – 77 - 160 – 300 – 666 – 800 – 1000 – 2000 – 4400 – 5000 – 9000 Hz rauf und runter ('Ansteigend'/ 'Abfallend') sowie drei Episoden mit 2600 Hz. Darunter, neben zwei Live-Exzerpten vom Schrei/Ende/Ohren-Festival, eine Hommage an das in den 70ern popularisierte und bis in die 90er mögliche Phone-Freaking in den USA, wo die von Hackern entdeckte, von den Yippies popularisierte Freischaltung auf eben der 2600 Hz-Frequenz als Akt des zivilen Widerstands aufgefasst wurde. Aber diese Frequenz-Folklore erscheint wie ein narratives Surplus in Vollmers bildlos purer Darbietung eines Blizzard-Kontinuums, in dem McLuhans 'kalte' und 'heiße' Medialität verwischt. Indem ein schrillendes, zerrendes Zuviel mit myriodophonem Rausch überwältigt und lähmt, doch in seinem informatorischen Überschuss zugleich nach Kryptologen schreit. Für einen auch merkwürdig flötenden Code. Aber vor allem für ein Unsagbares, das sich als kataklysmische Schallmauer zeigt wie bei Wittgenstein das Mystische. Dass in allem, was der Fall ist, atomare Niagarafälle toben, die jedes menschliche Maß übersteigen. Der infernalische 'Gesang' der Neuronen, das heulende Elend der Elektronen, das universale Alpha, Vollmer hat es zwischen Infra und Ultra brachial orchestriert als kakophon schillernde Metapher für das Mega-, Giga-, Tera-Chaos im elektromagnetischen Radio- und Mikrowellendschungel. Als Sturz der Erkenntnis über die Marmorklippen durch die Stahlgewitter ins Spektrum der Strahlungen, als total mo-bilgemachter Black Metal vor einem Schwarzlicht-Horizont. Das von Ernst Jünger immer wieder gebrauchte Tat Tvam Asi [Das bist du] zeigt dazu seinen technologisch fitten 'Ar-beiter', der als 'organische Konstruktion' mit der technoiden Mobilmachung heißläuft. Und einige wenige, die, obwohl gleichermaßen involviert, in kühler Desinvoltura dazu Distanz halten. Vollmers akribische Abbildungen, 48 + 48 + 50 Minuten intensive Immersion, können als stoischer Härtetest erscheinen. Als stockholm-syndromatische Affirmation eines Factum brutum. Oder sogar als akzelerationistisches Vorwärts (Nick Land), das die transhumane Umgestaltung des Menschen (durch die aggressiven Metastasen des Kapitalismus) ins Auge fasst. Mit der Utopie einer KI-generierten 'technologischen Singularität' würde Jüngers 'organische Konstruktion' zum Pionier der transhumanen Erlösung. Jede durchgestandene Noisattacke wäre, gerade indem sie das hinfällige Fleisch von den Knochen schabt, ein Evolutionsschritt dorthin. Der Geist, schon bei Hegel ein harter Knochen, steckt seinen Kopf, wie sein Renaissance-Vorgänger durch die Käseglocke seiner Scheibenwelt, unter die Bremsscheiben eines endlosen Güterzuges, in einen brausenden Bienenstock, der Züge von StanisławLems Partikelschwarm auf Regis III trägt. Steht Hz auch für neuen Horizont, für abenteuerliches Herz? Vollmer gibt sich, wenn er 'ich arbeite...' sagt, beeindruckend cool und souverän. Oder verdolmetscht er so bloß die Mutter der Teilchen und Wellen? Alan Moores Parent of suns and substance, she! Womb of all possibility! Als menschliche Spur im Dauertrommelfeuer der Klangpartikelstrahlung bleiben dann nur die Schreie, die Vollmer zuletzt, von 2600 Hz-Stacheln an die Wand gespießt, ausstößt. Kein 'Banzai!', aber doch wie mit geballter Faust und mehr als nur Schmerz und Angst. Noise als Waffe der Kritik an Betonköpfen, verkrusteten Strukturen, Kalk, Rost, marmornen Popanzen. Als, o Killer-Kaninchen von Caerbannog, o schwarze Bestie von Aaa, als Speer, der die Wunde heilt, die von ihm herrührt?" [Bad Alchemy]
€20.00
Knüllungen, Wulstungen, Klumpungen
Geierberg Sterben Sie Bitte!
Und Ist Kein Jammer In Der Welt
Wahres Gegen Nichtwahres
Die Schläferfalle Vom Ende Der Zeit
Studioaufnahmen 1980-82, geringfügig überarbeitet und ergänzt 2012. Recorded 1980-82, slightly enhanced and added to 2012
© MOLOKO+ 2015
MOLOKO PLUS 080 PICTURE DISC
donnersperg@web.de
www.molokoplusrecords.de
„Wer Versucht, Den Menschen Mit Seinem Tiersein Zu Versöhnen, Wird Selbst Zum Menschen.“
KLOPSTOCK
„The One Trying To Reconciliate Man To His Beastly Existence, Is Doomed To Become a Human Himself.“
KLOPSTOCK
VIRB:
Ein grauer Knurrhahn und Grummelsack, der eine Schule für Honiggewinnung und Schnittblumenzucht in Alt Wrietzen im Oderbruch betreibt. Steht neben Dr. Kurt Euler, dem Vorsitzenden der Parteikommission für Volksbildung und Kulturkampf beim ZK der Kommunistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands (KED) in dem (ungerechtfertigten?) Ruf eines im Geiste Johann Gotthilf KLOPSTOCKs, des Lehrers einer irrenden Menschheit, wirkenden, sinnenfrohen Zuchtmeisters fehlgeleiteter junger, mitunter auch alter Menschen, welche in hemmungslosen Daseinsirrtümern schwelgen und ihr Leben von dessen Ende her betrachten. Tritt seit dem Rübenwinter 1946/47 als Sachwalter des Werkbundes und des traditionsreichen Tonverlages Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien unbedingt gegen Wirrnis und verstocktes, kleinbürgerliches Schwarzsehertum auf und betreibt unter den Leitgedanken Verdunkeln! Der Feind sieht dein Licht! Beginne den Tag mit Sterben! Das „Scheitern als schöne Kunst“.
Im Jahre 1980 gründete Euler-Donnersperg die WALTER ULBRICHT SCHALLFOLIEN Hamburg, welche sich im Geiste Walter Ulbrichts, des damals meistgehaßten Menschen der Erde, des Erbauers des Berliner Antifaschistischen Schutzwalls, unbedingt der Langsamkeit verpflichtet fühlen und unter dem Leitwort NEU KONSERVATIW die ehernen Werte des klassischen „Industrials“ zu pflegen bestrebt sind (vgl. SPK: The Cathedral of Death - Die Kultur der Todesverdrängung). Bis Ende der 80er Jahre des 20. Jahrhunderts veranstaltete Euler-Donnersperg zahlreiche Auftritte mit geistverwandten Klanggestaltern, u. a. mit Illusion of Safety, Jim O’Rourke, The Hafler Trio, Bourbonese Qualk, Nocturnal Emissions, Whitehouse, Gerechtigkeitsliga, The Legendary Pink Dots, Laibach, Asmus Tietchens. Gleichzeitig geben die Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien Dokumente der Gruppen SPK, Throbbing Gristle, Laibach, John Watermann, Asmus Tietchens, The Hafler Trio, Werkbund, Mechthild von Leusch, Column One, Evapori und Hyph heraus. Im Nebenamt Sachwalter des WERKBUNDES tritt Euler-Donnersperg mit Lesungen und Klangschöpfungen eigener Werke hervor – unter anderem mit Michael von Hausswolff, Leif Ellgren, Kent Tankred, The Hafler Trio, Asmus Tietchens, Dan Burke, Organum, John Duncan. Seit 1996 jährliche Herausgabe eine Heftes der Pelzwurstlieder, Bildschallplatte im handgestalteten Portfolio, Reimdichtungen im Geiste Klopstocks mit elektronischem Zuspielband: Zustandsbeschreibung der Welt mit den Augen der Listspinne, der Trugnatter, der Assel, der Klappnase, des Stachlers.
www.molokoplusrecords.de
€18.00
Weisheit aus des Kindes Mund tut uns stets die Wahrheit kund
Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg, also known as Uli Rehberg and most certainty other names, is a mythologized figure in Germany's industrial underground. The man behind Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien, a label responsible for early releases by Throbbing Gristle and SPK and for being the home of the enigmatic Werkbund, it is long believed that Ditterich is part of, or completely behind, Werkbund himself. A Colourful Storm presents another piece of his puzzle.
Wisdom from the child’s mouth always tells us the truth.
It’s hard to overstate the influence of Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg on A Colourful Storm; indeed, it’s almost impossible to imagine the label’s existence without it. A figure whose movements within Germany’s industrial avant-garde span almost forty years, it would be in 2010 that he unknowingly entered our orbit through two important releases. At the time, SPK’s Auto-Da-Fé and Throbbing Gristle’s Journey Through A Body left some impression on us, their discovery propelling an interest in the possibilities opened up by industrial music that we still explore today. Responsible for publishing these releases was Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien - who, or what, were they?
Founded in 1980 by Hamburg-based Uli Rehberg, Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien was a base for Laibach, Asmus Tietchens and Werkbund as well as Rehberg’s own artistic endeavours: the most devilishly humorous his adopting of the name Dr. Kurt Euler, spokesperson of a satirical political party comprised of musicians Felix Kubin and Gregor Hartz. The project would foreshadow the life of Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg, an alias unveiled in 1998 with the first in a series of spoken word 7” picture discs that have since become highly collectable.
Attracting an enviable list of collaborators throughout his career (John Duncan, Thomas Köner and Column One have all lent their expertise), it is perhaps the enigmatic Werkbund project that remains most coveted within the world of von Euler-Donnersperg. Cloistered and clandestine since their inception in 1987, their brooding, synthetik atmospheres have long been speculated to be the work of von Euler-Donnersperg himself. Listen to Werkbund’s Skagerrak or Stahlhof and tell us we’re wrong...
The culmination of decades of sound research and electroacoustic investigation, Weisheit aus des Kindes Mund tut uns stets die Wahrheit kund is significantly also a tribute to von Euler-Donnersperg’s children, their voices and spoken word hocus-pocus conjuring clairvoyant visions amongst soaring metallic sheen and spectralist digital debris. Cybernetic ooze spilling into servers and causing subdued bleep signals and static. A slasher film soundtrack starring the German avant-garde dressed in laboratory coats. The latest piece of von Euler-Donnersperg’s peerless, endlessly imaginative puzzle.
https://acolourfulstorm.com/album/weisheit-aus-des-kindes-mund-tut-uns-stets-die-wahrheit-kund
€20.00
NNOI#01
NNOI#...
In this series, the recordings and documents of the actors of the NNOI Festival gather and reveal the primitive anatomy of the NNOI that sinks onto the frosted glass of nature, like the printing ink unconscious in the letters of the newspaper.
The design of the entire series is based on drawings by Frank Diersch - made for this project.
forthcoming: NNOI#2: Rashad Becker & Robert Schalinski, NNOI#3: Asmus Tietchens & Frieder Butzmann, NNOI#4: Air Cushion Finish
D.v. Euler-Donnersperg - side: unreleased tracks from his wild beehive.
Felix Kubin - side: Felix Kubin accompanies René Clair‘s silent film »Entr’acte« from 1924 live with a new electro-acoustic soundtrack, which refers to the surreal choreography, the contrasts in content and the fast editing sequences of the film in rhythmic cut-ups.
Rene Clair‘s film „Entr‘acte“ from 1924 is a real jewel of surrealism and is largely unknown to this day. The director radically experiments with cinematographic effects, provokes absurd exaggerations, which sometimes take on blasphemous proportions, and is not afraid to commit violence. The staff of actors is made up of famous artists such as Erik Satie, Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp, who, quite self-ironically, bounce through the image rather than stride. Men and women roles are reversed, a death procession turns into a roller coaster ride. The bizarre humor of the film also testifies, among other things, to the artistic daring of its time.
Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg
»I hate long announcements now. Everyone writes something and brags about all kinds of information (especially celebrity names). Something has become completely uniform over time. I hate that. Simply state briefly: „The old gray gurnard from the Waterkant creaks and growls its funny and less funny ways ..“ GLÜCKAUF!
Felix Kubin„I am a child living in the body of Juri Gagarin. He is empty like a corpse. His eyes move slowly like radars. First comes the idea then the technology. Children are angels, sometimes they fall into nothingness. I am Juri‘s ventriloquist.“
Felix Kubin, messenger of exploding lungs, lives and works against gravitation. At the age of 12 he started composing electronic 4-track music. His activities comprise futurist pop, electroacoustic and chamber orchestra music, radio plays, lectures, workshops and his label Gagarin Records. He has been involved with the noise project Klangkrieg, the communist singing group Liedertafel Margot Honecker and the tetchy teenage bands Die Egozentrischen 2 and x2.
Frank Diersch - a German draftsman and painter.
NNOI - festival for 12,756 tone music, obscure teaching & organ of the world-ventriloquist-lodge.
https://www.facebook.com/donnersperg/
www.frank-diersch.de/
www.felixkubin.com
www.nnoi.de
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YxuYqL52is
https://www.facebook.com/nnoi.festival/
NNOI - festival for 12,756 tone music, obscure teaching & organ of the world-ventriloquist-lodge
"In der NNOI Festival-Reihe werden Aufnahmen von Künstlerinnen und Künstlern veröffentlicht, die auf dem gleichnamigen Festival , “für 12,756 Tonmusik, obskure Lehren & Organ der Weltbauchrednerloge”, gespielt haben (u.a. werden noch Asmus Tietchens und Frieder Butzmann folgen). Den Auftakt macht eine Split-Veröffentlichung: Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg, Sachwalter des Werkbunds, selbst so titulierter „Knurrhahn“ hat mit den zwischen 1996 und 2014 erschienenen “Pelzwurstliedern”, sogenannten „Reimdichtungen im Geiste Klopstocks mit elektronischem Zuspielband“, originellste, kaum kategorisierbare und von beißendem Humor durchzogene Lyrik herausgebracht. Felix Kubin hat neben zahllosen musikalischen Veröffentlichngen, auf denen auch immer ein absurder Humor deutlich wurde (im Presseinfo heißt es: „„I am a child living in the body of Juri Gagarin.“), eine ganze Reihe von Hörspielen produziert.
Auf der ersten Seite befinden sich acht bisher unveröffentliche Stücke von Euler-Donnersperg, bei denen sich das Ausgangsmaterial, was bearbeitet wurde, nur erahnen lässt: „Krebs im Schlafrock“ beginnt mit einem ratterndem Loop, man hört zerhäckselte Stimmen. Einem Teil der Stücke haftet etwas Fragementiertes an. So auch bei „Kleiner Irrtum“ mit den hektischen Wassersounds, flirrenden Tönen und dann so etwas, das sich wie ein Echolot anhört. Auf „Mit geknickten Dichterschwingen“ hört man einen Loop, der an Jahrmarktsmusik erinnert, auf „Ein letzter großer Seher“ muss man zwischenzeitlich an Vogelkreischen denken. Die drei dann folgenden Stücke nehmen das Hektisch-Fragentierte zurück: „Verlangen, den Regenbogen zu fangen“ ist von ruhigen, kristallinen, flächigen Sounds durchzogen, die teilweise an ein Theremin denken lassen. Auf „Verknausertes Korn“ dröhnt und knistert es. Bei „Angenehm müde“ meint man das Ticken eines Metronoms zu hören, am Ende scheint eine bearbeitete Stimme aufzutauchen.
Kubins Beitrag ist ein langes Stück, das als neuer Soundtrack für den 1924 entstandenen Stummfilm “Entr’acte” von René Clair konzipiert ist. Bei dem Film wirkten damals Erik Satie, Francis Picabia und Marcel Duchamp mit und gerade durch Clairs Einsatz von Effekten wie Zeitlupe und Überblendungen (ein Gesicht starrt einen aus dem Wasser an, ein Papierboot durchpflügt die Dächer von Paris) erzeugt Clair eine durchaus kurios-absurde Atmosphäre (Puppen verlieren ihre Köpfe, der Rock einer Tänzerin scheint eine Blume zu sein, ein Zauberer entsteigt einem Sarg). Der Track beginnt mit kuriosen Knarzen, Brummen, Loops, Fiepen, am Ende meint man ein Sample aus Coils “Things Happen” zu hören – in Passagen ist das durchaus nicht so weit entfernt von manchen Arbeiten Steven Stapletons und von der Stimmung und Herangehensweise ist das ein mehr als passender Soundtrack zu “Entr’acte”." [MG / African Paper]
€20.00
Perhaps I Arrive - music for Atatürk Airport, Istanbul
"This double disc set includes some of the most unusual sounds you will have heard from Carl Michael von Hausswolff. The story goes like this. Von Hausswolff was chosen by the 1997 Istanbul Biennal to create a sound installation for Atatürk Airport. His classic sound combining low frequency rumblings, very monotonous oscillations and hissy non-narrative sequences was deemed too confusing for the commutors. It was feared, von Hausswolff’s sound installation might be mistaken for an alarm and would be capable of causing serious panic at the airport. Hence the original soundtrack for “Perhaps I Arrive” was neglected. This music can now be heard for the first time on disc 1. Carl Michael von Hausswolff’s response to the artistic restrictions was to produce the four tracks you hear on the second disc. These only make use of the very basic pre-set industry sounds included in the Yamaha QY22 and show a new side to the von Hausswolff sound. Very simple, post-nuclear lounge music. These four tracks you guessed it! ¬were happily used in the context of the Biennal exhibition. Art is a three-letter word (William S Burroughs)" [label info]
"Nothing is for a musician more annoying than a response like: whatever you are doing, it sounds like a test tone, alarm signal, hiss or worse: I think your equipment is broken. So when Carl Micheal von Hauswolff was asked by the Istanbul Biennale to make a site specific work at their airport, he was probably very annoyed when they turned down his piece of low rumbling, because it could have caused alarm. So instead he created something else, on a Yamaha QY22, using preset sounds only - probably to annoy the organizers. Now both versions are released as part of this double CD - the rejected piece on one CD, and the accepted on the other. The rejected piece is indeed a piece of low rumbling, a bit of hiss sounds (long waves picked up from the ether I think) which may not have worked at the airport - depends of course on how things are presented - but for home listening I must say this is quite nice. Perfect Hauswolff styled hiss music. And what a difference indeed with the accepted version. Four pieces there of lounge like music, but with a more forceful rhythm underneath, so it wouldn't entirely work in lounge bar. But you can imagine people at an airport, hastily walking along Hauswolff march like beats and bittersweet keyboards with a vague trace of arab-like sounds. This is a side that we haven't heard from him before, and it's not something he should do a lot (or in fact never did again, as far as I can recall), but it's surely a curious album. " [FdW / Vital Weekly]
www.aufabwegen.com
€18.00
Terra Prosodia
"Sound composition with dialects and disappearing languages from Europe
With: George Cadéac, Nesa Engler, Don Eoil, Remy Graillon, Ingvar Larsson, Peter Meyer und Ingrid Wahlgren
1. Rumansch
2. Gutamal
3. Provencal
4. Wallis-Deutsch
5. Provencal
6. Gascon
8. Scottish-Gaelic
8 Tracks (33′46″)
CD (500 copies)
Currently about 6000 languages are spoken on the world. Most of them will disappear soon – and together with them a meldodic richness of human expressivness. However, the fact, that dialects and disappearing languages are only spoken by a few people has one advantage: only if one does not understand the contents it is possible to really listen tot he sound, saying far away from their homeland these languages unfold their musical enchantment (charme?). What you find are melodies that nobody invented (conceived of?). They arise in the process of impulsive speaking, on the grounds of oral tradition. Landscapes seem to continue there with melodic heights and valleys. Often single sentences remain in our heads as catchy tunes.
In Terra Prosodia people tell a short spontanuous story based on a personal experience. Stories about storms, excursions, accidents and so on. Particularly speakers who have spent their lifes in remote valleys or islands often speak with much more distinct modulation. This expressiveness gets lost quickly one cou live in a big city.
In the compositions the contents of these stories do not matter any longer. The pieces focus on the melodies in the dialects and add second instrumental or humed melodic voice. By this also the melody of the speaking voice is underlined. In the beginning the second voice will imitate the speaking voice, later becomes indpendent and follows own directions. As soon as the focus of perception is on the melody, you can listen to both lines as independent voices.
During my work I found out, that an even more exact decoding and mapping oft he intervalls (which would be possible technically) on no account lead to better results. Quite the contraray the effect of a catchy tune that occurs when you remember the melodies is based on the fact the our brain is already during hearing looking for characteristic figures and intervalls. Our ear behaves like the eye in a stalagtite cave. In a vast array of stalagtites and stalagmites we always remember nothing then typical single shapes. „Look, that looks like….“. Only this mechanism allows us to remember something of huge amount of shapes.
(Antje Vowinckel, translation: Chris Heenan)
Text by Christina Kubisch:
Many things disappear and only then gets attention. Images, texts, sounds appear in archives in audio-visual documentations in the net.
But archiving the no more living existence is partial maybe even sometimes absurd or naiv. Language only can remain vivid and interesting, if it is spoken everyday. When it is staying in a process of change, articulated by different persons, when it is depicting facts, information, thoughts, emotions and so on.
Antje Vowinckel’s Terra Prosodia makes happy and sad at the same time. The musicality of the spoken word sinks in even more by the melodical adaption as in case of pure listening of an unknown lanugage. You admire the beautiness and complexity. You instantly wish to speak one of these languages yourself for not leaving them to archivars and linguists but forward them to people who would use them in future.
In Terra Prosodia Antje Vowinckel succeeds in a wonderful mixture of a political important theme, a formally convincing process and a subtle and profound humour, that is hard to find. Once you have listened to the voices you will listen differently to spoken language in every day life." [label info]
www.gruenrekorder.de
www.gruenrekorder.de
€13.00
Psyko Tropix
Touch Sensitive is honoured to dig into the vaults of legendary cult French group Vox Populi! with a collection primarily pulling from their creative highpoint of 1986-1990. The vast majority of the works are unreleased and all make their first appearance on vinyl. The recordings have been licensed from the group's extensive archive, mastered by Rupert Clervaux and cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnitstelle. The release is completed by liner notes focusing on Vox Populi!'s creative process and prolific output. Springing from the rip it up restart of post-punk in 1980 and primarily active throughout that decade, Vox Populi!'s discography is a perfect showcase of an almost unclassifiable group. The often-used 'ethno-industrial' tag - even if not approved by the group - goes some way to describing a melting pot of primarily self-taught techniques and vast cultural influences. Founding member Axel Kyrou's parents were avant-garde musicians and filmmakers resulting in a heavy cultural immersion from a young age. His partner and bandmate Mitra moved from Iran to Paris in 1978 - followed a few years later by her virtuoso brother Arash who joined the group at the age of 14. Based in their 14th arronidissement studio - previously Axel and his brother's family playroom - Vox Populi! quickly became a lynchpin in the Parisian experimental scene and beyond through the burgeoning mail-art scene. The group contributed work to a huge number of independent labels. Their music and approach quickly progressed from rudimentary experiments to harness transcendental spiritual qualities and moments of intense beauty. In this collection, we can feel the vibrations of Don Cherry's Organic Music Society, Faust's communal explorations and King Tubby's forward-thinking studio experimentation. "We recorded everything - every idea. We would always have a cassette or a reel running. We made such different styles - freaky, alternative, experimental, industrial etc. We had no rules and no plans - our main motives were play and pleasure. I think that many people can feel that in the music." Three tracks recorded in 2017 by a reconfigured Vox Populi! sit perfectly with music from 30 years previous - "We were never defined by fashion or the zeitgeist. So we remained ourselves. Our sound is still natural. We had to be turned on by our own music and we wanted the music to have an impact on consciousness. We were the subjects of our own experiments and there was also a kind of mystery - even for us." The Psyko Tropix collection is another magical and mysterious addition to the open-hearted and open-eared world of Vox Populi! "The music of Vox Populi! found me several years ago and it was one of my record digging highlights. Their stark contrast of dark and light paints a beautiful picture of the physical and mental world we all live in. This new album doesn't miss a step in exploring further in both directions" Cut Chemist
https://touchsensitiverecords.bandcamp.com/album/psyko-tropix
€29.50
Rayons
Konzeptuell und musikalisch wieder überzeugend – das neue VROMB-Album beschäftigt sich mit der akustischen Umsetzung von STRAHLEN...
“ vromb's intention on 'rayons' is to translate several kinds of rays into music - ranging from sunbeams to optical rays. so, 'rayons' can also be seen as an aural sight-seeing tour. the 'speed' factor is that of a person moving (whether by foot or in different vehicles). this movement was transformed into rhythmic patterns. imagine the aural equivalent of taking a walk during a thunderstorm ('éclairs') or feeling the sun peaking through a clouded sky while window shopping ('boulevard'). all sounds were generated with analog and digital synthesizers. the listener might believe that they are hearing modulated samples but this is not true. it is once again, an example of girard's virtuosity in creating 'naturalistic' soundscapes with pure electronic equipment. for the images on the album cover, girard gave the photographer, alain gauvin the basic audio tracks for inspiration. the final musical structure on 'rayons' is based on inspirations from gauvin's pictures which were taken in the montreal area. so close your eyes, let yourself go and feel the rays coming out of your speakers.” [label info]
€8.00
Rayons
"Konzeptuell und musikalisch wieder überzeugend – das neue VROMB-Album beschäftigt sich mit der akustischen Umsetzung von STRAHLEN..." [old Drone info]
“ vromb's intention on 'rayons' is to translate several kinds of rays into music - ranging from sunbeams to optical rays. so, 'rayons' can also be seen as an aural sight-seeing tour. the 'speed' factor is that of a person moving (whether by foot or in different vehicles). this movement was transformed into rhythmic patterns. imagine the aural equivalent of taking a walk during a thunderstorm ('éclairs') or feeling the sun peaking through a clouded sky while window shopping ('boulevard'). all sounds were generated with analog and digital synthesizers. the listener might believe that they are hearing
modulated samples but this is not true. it is once again, an example of girard's virtuosity in creating 'naturalistic' soundscapes with pure
electronic equipment. for the images on the album cover, girard gave the photographer, alain gauvin the basic audio tracks for inspiration. the final musical structure on 'rayons' is based on inspirations from gauvin's pictures which were taken in the montreal area. so close your eyes, let yourself go and feel the rays coming out of your speakers.” [press release]
€13.50
Chorégraphie. Electro-Bruits et Tonalites Low-Fi
"for more than twenty years the canadian project vromb a.k.a. hugo girard has masterly transformed a plethora of different inspirations into sound, resulting in a multitude of releases based on many topics. for the realization of his recent opus, girard drastically changed his approach: instead of choosing an exterior subject he wanted to transcribe the tones and voices generated in his own mind, keep hold of them and etch them onto record, and thus he is the choreographer of imaginary sounds which become physical musical entities.
'chorégraphie' demonstrates vromb's incredible skills at handling his' analog electronic equipment, which means in large part the sound manipulations are created by directly using the machines with only a little part of computer assisted sequencing, audio montages and overdubs. subliminal trance-inducing beats, mighty pulsating sub basses and repetitive sequencer textures enriched with surrealistic ambient dronescapes and hugo girard's recognizable voice generate a steady but everchanging semi-ritualistic flow which was, is, and will be associated uniquely with the sonic world of vromb.
a wonderfully composed album which allegorizes the disposal of the sounds created by an artist's inner self, and at the same time an essential listening for those with a different view. highly recommended." [label info]
www.ant-zen.com
€13.00
Copal Flow
"In November 2011, after 20 years, the Italian band TERRORITMO became "WAKINYAN". "Copal Flow" is the first step in Wakinyan's exploration. Like the strong scent of copal brings ancient memories and visions, each track here depicts a scenery and involves the listener directly, totally. Introduced by the obscure night of "Notturno", like in a wood, crowded with spirits and animals, you're guided through 9 gates, each one opening on a different space and time. As if the purpose was to awake the slumbering ancestral memory of man, this record is fundamentally based on the dualism of elements strictly relating to the human being: "voice" and "iron". Whispers and screams, heartbeats and metal clashes, pulsing rhythms and voodoo drumming, ancient chants of the earth. Anything takes place all around you... and inside you.
Enjoy your journey!
Backwards released this record in a limited edition of 350 copies as gatefold sleeve. First 50 copies are in coloured vinyl with a special silkscreened insert and an additional DVD by Davide Pepe. The remaining 300 copies are in standard black wax." [label info]
about the band:
"In November 2011, after 20 years, Wakinyan became the new name for Terroritmo. Since the very beginning, in 1991, this Italian collective has explored unconventional music, using any kind of instruments, objects and tools to create its distinctive sound, with roots in industrial music and musique brut. Metal pipes and springs, glasses, Tibetan bowls, gongs, metal sheets, oil bins, knives, custom drums, rattles create hypnotic rhythms or powerful crescendos, while subtle drones made of processed voices, harmonics and noises fill up the atmosphere. Chants inflate Life in these layers of primal cadences. The industrial meets the organic. Fire and darkness.
Wakinyan's act is a modern ritual. What's below and what's above get connected. The emotional and the spiritual, the individual and the shared, they all melt into each other. Sounds perceived physically, almost unconsciously, take the listener into a mysterious place, the unknown, the hidden. Out of space and time."
€15.00
Soused
"Freigeister unter sich: Der US-Chansonier trifft auf die Drone-Doom-Band: Als Sunn O))) im Jahre 2009 erstmals bei Scott Walker anfragten, ob er einen Beitrag zu ihrem Album "Monoliths & Dimensions" beisteuern wolle, ahnte niemand, dass es einmal eine echte Zusammenarbeit geben würde. Vier Jahre später meldete sich Scott Walker schließlich bei der US-amerikanischen Drone-Doom-Band: Er habe neue Musik geschrieben und dabei stets eine Kollaboration mit Sunn O))) im Sinn gehabt. "Soused" ist das beeindruckend wuchtige Ergebnis einer Kooperation zweier Freigeister. Scott Walker feierte in den 60ern weltweite Erfolge mit den Walker Brothers, veröffentlichte in Folge viel beachtete Soloplatten und etablierte sich als Chansonier mit teils bitterböser Lyrik. In den 80ern erfolgte ein radikaler Stilwechsel und zudem eine Änderung seiner Arbeitsweise. Alben wie "Climate Of Hunter" (1984), "Tilt" (1996) und "The Drift" (2006) zeigten einen wandlungsfreudigen Künstler, der 2013 mit dem komplexen Meisterwerk "Bish Bosh" seinen Weg fortsetzte. Mit "Soused" folgt die logische Konsequenz Walkers künstlerischen Schaffens. Das Vinyl erscheint mit Downloadcode.
///
When Sunn O))) first approached Scott Walker about appearing on their 2009 album Monoliths & Dimensions, little did they know what it would actually lead to. Four years on, Scott was back with something even more enticing, collaborating on Soused, a body of work he was writing with them in mind.
Recorded in London in early 2014 and produced by Scott Walker and long-time ally Peter Walsh with the assistance of musical director Mark Warman, Soused is a 5-track 50-minute body of work that cements both acts’ wide-reaching and otherworldly renown." [label info]
www.4ad.com
"When we first heard about the collaboration, it sounded like a joke, like some internet meme. It did seem crazy, and on the surface, pretty hilarious, but eventually it was proven to be an actual thing. Then when we first heard a little snippet online, we weren’t entirely sold, Walker sounded even more over the top than usual, and the title Soused seems to indicate that maybe Walker was in fact completely wasted when he recorded his vocals, cuz it definitely sounded like it. But when we finally got to hear the whole thing, it suddenly all made sense, Walker’s vocals, while still insanely dramatic and over the top, were somehow perfect, and SUNNO))), instead of just doing the guitars-against-the-amps drone thing, really seem to be working way outside their comfort zone, and in fact, lots of this record sounds extremely, sonically uncomfortable. Fantastically so. We were so smitten by opener “Brando”, we had trouble digging any deeper into the record. Right from the get go, opening with Walker crooning over a whirring organ, shimmery and sun dappled, and what sounds suspiciously like the Guns ’N Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine” guitar lick, but then the thick, viscous drones creep in, accompanied by strange ticks and pulsations, as well as what sounds like a bull whip, as well as the occasional burst of distorto guitar, the combination of that low end creep, and Walker’s vocals, as well as a cool feedback/high end that seems to echo the vocal melody, it’s pretty powerful, and stunning, weird, but also weirdly beautiful. “Herod 2014” was our next obsession, with it’s weird squelchy electronic rhythm, buried in thick rumbling thrum, it’s Walker who carries the song, some sort of demented, and yeah, likely seriously soused, torch song, flecked with static, and driven by a slo-mo Sabbath riff stretched out into near static sprawl, Walker’s vocals wreathed in lots of mysterious noise, the whole track peppered with what sounds like some strange banshee wail, or pterodactyl cry, but it’s somehow so perfect, that it becomes as integral to the song as any other element.
“Bull” is downright balladic after the previous heaving monoliths, but not for long, the song exploding into some serious Swans like pummel, with Walker kicking it up a notch, some loose chaotic drum damage, some junkyard percussion, and a ‘hook’ that manages to be the catchiest bit on the whole record, the song slipping into slo-mo somnambulant creeps, before launching right back into that ‘chorus’. We have to be honest, the first three songs are so perfect, it’s not until maybe the 20th listen that we even made it to the last two, but they’re similarly broody and bombastic, “Fetish” featuring some seriously buzzed out bass (assuming that’s a bass), and like “Bull” before it, another killer ‘chorus’, that sounds like Swans gone haywire, dosed on some serious narcotics, a wild cacophony of elephant like electronic bleats, churning metallic riffing, monstrous drumming, before settling into what sounds like some sick, mutant strain of kraut-doom. And don’t even get us started on Walker’s INSANE lyrics, in this case, a refrain of “Choo Choo, Choo Choo mama”, which sounds ridiculous, but in the context of the song, it sounds mad, maniacal, and like some sort of twisted genius, which we’re assuming it is. Finally, there’s “Lullaby”, which is one, at least for a moment, until another blurt of atonal, moaning, keening, doom cabaret explodes from the murk, only to settle right back down, most of the track spent in hushed lowercase mode, finishing off super dramatically, a field of barely there guitar rumble, distant sonar like pings, ominous swells, mysterious insectoid clicking, and one final, haunting stanza from Walker. Most definitely a twisted outsider masterpiece, and considering how skeptical we were, it’s even more surprising that this might just end up being a record of the year contender for some of us!" [Aquarius Records]
€29.50
Calcutta Gas Chamber
Wiederveröffentlichung dieses Klassikers, jetzt als picture Vinyl!
"....ein dunkles, dichtes Werk mit elektro-akustischen Qualitäten, viele konkrete Geräusche & Sounds & Cut-ups, meist undefinierbar, aber voll von unheimlich beseeltem maschinellen Leben... absolut packend!" [Drone Records]
"Re-release of the long out-of-print album by the late John Watermann. The idea for this project came about after a visit to Calcutta in 1990, and through the nightmarish experiences during that short visit. The concept of aurally conveying the horror of a gas chamber was realised through field recordings in an abandoned electrical power station in Brisbane in 1992. The sounds are grating and harsh, a mixture of field recordings and electronic manipulations. One can rarely pinpoint a location or action but the images the sounds conjure up are of all sorts of nefarious activites related to death by machinery. The sleeve notes take you into the horror that is the Calcutta Gas Chamber. John Watermann started the re-design for this re-issue (originally released in 1993 on US label ND), but tragically passed away in 2002 before its realisation. A beautifully composed and produced album, completely remastered and feat. new artwork. This special picture LP is limited to 444 numbered copies. A CD version of 'Calcutta Gas Chamber' was released by Cold Spring in late 2006." [label info]
€18.00
Raaswater
“In 1871, Thomas Baines, on his way back from visiting Lobengula and the Tati Goldfields, crossed the Limpopo on Mmabolela, and camped near the “Raaswater” where the Limpopo tumbles over granite rocks polished smooth by the passage of water over thousands of years.”
www.mmabolela.co.za/history
Raaswater is a seamless album of compositions using sound recordings made whilst participating on the 2018 Sonic Mmabolela residency for sound artists and composers in the Limpopo province of South Africa. With a small group of likeminded people led by Francisco López & Barbara Ellison, I spent countless hours exploring the dynamic environments of the Mmabolela reserve by walking, resting, listening, interacting, experiencing and recording a plethora of environments, objects, phemonema, structures, fauna and phyla unique to the area. Raaswater is a personal aural reflection depicting a rare, isolated and complex sonic environment rich with life, death and enlightenment.
(Clinton Watkins, 27 November 2019)
LOCATION : Mmabolela reserve, Limpopo, South Africa.
Written and produced by Clinton Watkins 2020 @ small window studios,Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand.
~
Special thanks to :
Francisco López, Barbara Ellison, Neil Lowe, Mark and Lesley Berry, Roché van Tiddens, Andy Martin, Jun Mizumachi, Luke Pearson, Kim Foscato, Steve Norton, Jim Speers, Tim Checkley, Starkwhite Gallery, Auckland University of Technology (NZ), my wife and children AD, Moss & Winter, and the environment of Mmabolela.
https://unfathomless.bandcamp.com/album/raaswater
€14.00
Locations, Processed
"Chris Watson, a.o. known as the keyboard player of Cabaret Voltaire and a founder member of The Hafler Trio, creates an all new sound journey in honour of Bob Moog via a series of his own location recordings, subtlety processed through The Moog Sound Labs System 55. It's almost a return to the principles that birthed Cabaret Voltaire's earliest experiments."
"The cover and series name shout “Moog!” Yet the sound is what we’ve come to expect from Chris Watson: field recordings treated with love. The fact that the chapters were filtered through the Moog Sound Lab’s System 55 seems incidental, but widens the understanding of the processing tool. This 12″ is part of a new series that also includes entries from Hieroglyphic Being, Charlemagne Palestine, Mika Vainio, Gazelle Twin and The Grid, a remarkably diverse group ~ our only quibble being the consistent, yet unrevealing cover art.
Watson’s set concentrates on New York City, and offers a sonic window into the experience of visitors. “Grand Central Terminal” offers the hum of human traffic, along with gentle specific reminders: the announcement of a train, the departure from the platform, a child’s voice. A clear contrast is made by “Rockefeller Centre” (using the British spelling) as the hum disappears but the other sources remain. This time the journey of the train claims the ear, including the distinctive two-note warning tone, somehow devoid of the ubiquitous warning, “Watch the closing doors.” The sound of running children in “Central Park” is particularly endearing, as is a hint of birdsong, although less than one might expect considering the location. Still, those who have visited New York without living there are likely to be able to relate to the dominant soundscape of traffic and transit; they have not yet discovered the city’s hidden places. The intrusion of airplanes, sirens, and fire horns makes a good case for the city as the antithesis of Olympic National Park. Abandon all hope, those who seek one square inch of silence.
Watson makes an interesting sequencing choice with “Times Square,” as the earlier pieces progress from south to north. Times Square is actually south of Rockefeller Center. But as the loudest of the tracks (by virtue of conversation, honking, bicycle bells, passing bass, cries of “Taxi!” and more), the sequencing makes sense. Just as one seems to have escaped to relative peace, the real world rushes in with a vengeance. Some grow acclimated to such sounds, but the noise levels remain at dangerous levels throughout most of the day. This makes “Jamaica Bay to Leigh Valley” seem a welcome escape. The sirens can still be heard in the distance, but the waterfowl drown them out. The finale serves as a litmus test for the ears: if one were forced to choose between extremes, which would one prefer?" [Richard Allen/ A Closer Listen]
€20.00
Time is Local
Time is Local is a project by Danish collective We like We and sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard built around a 12-hour live sound installation and performance at Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen.
The piece was initiated and performed by the artists during the G((o))ng Tomorrow Festival in 2017. As they slowly wandered the halls and rooms of the museum for a whole day, they performed extended sound compositions for a visiting audience at each of the 12 chambers for a longer session - a haunting experience as the outside world disappeared and the focus was on quiet sonic moments unfolding in midst of the grand, reverberous space. For this album they have collected 12 fragments revolving around the chambers in the museum. Each chamber is being represented by its own handful of tones, instruments and voice. The statues within, depicted by neo-classicist sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen get their own soundtrack of quiet emanating gusts. Barely heard frequencies reflect through the walls. The marble carved busts of Greek gods that line the museum hallways gaze eternally with a blank stare as decades pass and new audience arrives.
Although We like We should need no introduction to followers of the Sonic Pieces label, the Danish all female sound quartet consists of Katrine Grarup Elbo (violin), Josefine Opsahl (cello), Sara Nigard Rosendal (percussion) and Katinka Fogh Vindelev (voice). Together they have forged a dynamic and intuitional sound beyond genres through the last decade. Only two years ago they released the nordic neo-classical opus Next to the entire All. This time they emerge in collaboration with sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard. Jacob’s works are sonic reflections on complex aspects of the human civilisation, treating themes such as radioactivity, melting ice, border walls and tones emitted by the ears. Through the last decades he has released records and sound documents through labels such as Touch, Important Records and more. As a document of their 12h performance, Time is Local is a beautiful sonic evocation that shines as a bright line of sun through the cracks of a tomb.
https://welikewe.bandcamp.com/album/time-is-local
€29.00
Hydrostatic
" ‘Hydrostatic’ was commissioned by the McNeill Street Pumping Station New Music Festival, Shreveport, Louisiana, USA in November 2011, and presented as a multi-channel performance.
Simon Whetham spent more than a week exploring the site, capturing the sounds of the space, the vibrations of the buildings, the spirit of the community and perhaps the echoes of past activity…
Mastered by Miguel Carvalhais..
Simon Whetham – Biography 2013
Over the past eight years Simon Whetham has developed a practice of working with sound recordings as a raw material for composition. These are often environmental sounds he has captured employing a variety of methods and techniques, in order to obtain discreet or obscured sonic phenomena.
In removing sound from it’s source, sometimes amplifying it significantly, it becomes abstract – familiar yet otherworldly. More recently, when presenting work in a performance or installation, for him the space and the objects within become instruments to be played.
Simon has a large number of works published through many specialist organisations, including Touch Music, Cronica, Dragon’s Eye, Monochrome Vision and Entr’acte; has performed extensively internationally; collaborated with artists from musicians to performance artists, painters to video artists, dancers to poets; has run listening and field recording workshops in UK, Colombia, Chile and Australia; and received a large number of commissions and awards for projects and installations – notably ‘Active Crossover’. Supported by the Arts Council England and PRS for Music Foundation, the project comprises sound installation, performance, collaboration and workshops. ‘Active Crossover’ has toured six cities in the UK, and also been hosted in Estonia, Argentina, Australia, Chile and Colombia, with future residencies in Germany and Norway in 2013." [label info]
www.aufabwegen.com
"SIMON WHETHAM, dem wir zuletzt als Eyjafjallajökull-Gestrandeten im April 2010 in Lissabon begegnet sind, treffen wir wieder im November 2011 in Shreveport, Louisiana. Das dort stattfindende McNeill Street Pumping Station New Music Festival hatte ihn mit einem Beitrag beauftragt. Er verbrachte eine ganze Woche in dem einstigen Pumpwerk, um den hydrophonen und postindustrialen Genius loci oder Hausgeist zu begegnen. Das Rauschen von Wasser, der Geschmack von Eisen, Rost und Patina wurden zu Ingredienzen seines Dröhnscapes Hydrostatic (aatp39), den nicht zuletzt der Fluss der Zeit durchströmt. Pfeifende Laute und geisterhaft summende evozieren dabei etwas Älteres als das Industriezeitalter. Hölzernes und metallisches Gestöber suggeriert eine verlassene Geisterstätte, eine Ruine, die nach noch Brauchbarem durchsucht wird. Organum hat schon auf Vacant Lights solche Klänge eingefangen, Ephraim Wegner hat kürzlich ähnliche in verlassenen Hotelruinen gefunden. Immer ist damit ein ‘Danach’ verbunden, ein ‘Vorbei’. Latten scharren über den Boden, der Wind faucht, als wollte er noch den letzten Eindringling verjagen. 1887 in Betrieb gegangen, wurde bis 1980 dampfbetrieben, heute ist das McNeill-Pumpwerk ein National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. Whetham erschafft mit droneüberwölbtem Getröpfel und Geplätscher die Illusion einer Quelle, des verborgenen Anfangs einer Lebensader, die hier mit nahezu kultischer Aura widerhallt und wieder als pumpende Mechanik zu ‘atmen’ beginnt. Das Elementare, das das vermeintlich so rationale und funktionale Maschinenzeitalter ignoriert und verdrängt hat, kommt wieder im Denkmal zum Vorschein, nachdem die Funktionalität modernisiert und inzwischen noch unbewusster geworden ist. Ich glaube, es war Ernst Jünger, der zuletzt Zweifel an einer Freiheit hatte, die davon abhängt, dass Wasser, Strom und Gas in unsichtbarer guter Hand sind." [Rigobert Dittmann, Bad Alchemy]
"The ever so busy bee Simon Whetham and his multiple travels around the world. Here we find him guest of the McNeill Street Pumping Station New Music Festival in Shreveport, Louisiana in November 2011 where Whetham spend a week going about this pumping installation to create a multi-channel performance of his music. It's not only the pumps, but the complete site, the buildings and the people around it that have been captured by him and collages into five pieces of music, totaling around 53 minutes. With Whetham, I must admit, I am never sure what it is that he does. Obviously he picks up sounds from the environment, that's hardly a secret, but then what does he do? Is he playing them one at a time (which I doubt), is he layering them together, or is there any sort of electronic treatment going on? I assume the latter is the case, but I might be wrong altogether. Whetham does apply 'musical' techniques to create his music, like using loops in the fifth part of a jackhammer, the
melodic drone touch in the third part and such like. He creates all these little touches which stretches it far beyond the mere documentation of a certain area. Spooky and mysterious at times, this is another fine addition to what mounts to a vast amount of releases by now. It's almost on par with his recent 'Never So Alone' (see Vital Weekly 870), which I thought was his best so far. This one is almost as refined I am to say. It's only in the smaller, somewhat untouchable details that I think this is just a bit less. Just a bit, I may add. If the name Whetham is new to you, then 'Hydrostatic' is an equal fine starting point." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
"The globe-trotting British sound artist Simon Whetham found himself in Shreveport, Louisiana in 2011 where he was commissioned to develop a body of work based on the defunct MacNeill Street Pumping Station. This artifact of the 19th Century was the last known steampowered water plant in the United States and has been a historical site for several decades now. He was one of many acclaimed artists asked to contribute to the seemingly inactive MacNeill Street Pumping Station New Music Festival, alongside Tim Hecker, Lawrence English, Mark Fell, Eli Kezler, and about a dozen other denizens of avant-garde soundcraft. It was a great idea to have all of these artists develop compositions, installations, and performances within such an interesting space; and we can hope that the festival is merely on temporary hiatus. Needless to say, here we have the stereo mix of Whetham's multichannel installation that he presented at the festival. His source material consists of drones from the huge metal pools and the network of pipes from that space, focusing mostly on the resonant frequencies of the ghostly drones and watery tones. Overlapping, sinewy electric vibrations tumble into a pool of isolationist dank at the beginning of the album before a reverberant flute utters a solitary bellow amidst the metallic klang reverb articulating two of the techniques of Whetham's sound-hunting - that of the contact microphone on sonorous objects and the open-air recordings of those reflective surfaces. Deep, low-end rattlings gird the bulk of Hydrotasic with wind-swept thrumming, agitated found objects, and plenty of nocturnal clutter being moved around by the ghosts that lurk in the sticky humidity of a Louisiana swamp, or at least that's what it sounds like. Brilliantly akin to the processed field recording work of Jonathan Coleclough, Thomas Koner, and BJ Nilsen." [Aquarius Records]
€13.00
Never so Alone
During an extended stay in Lisbon, courtesy of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland erupting and causing european airspace to be closed, Simon Whetham explored the sonorities of city, and the surrounding countryside, using the various microphones he employs in his work. In addition to a Sennheiser shotgun microphone and two Tram lavalier mics, which capture ambient sounds we all hear, he uses contact microphones and hydrophones to expose sound vibrations that travel through objects, an electromagentic coil pickup and a radio receiver.
Simon then composed with these sound materials, in part responding to the geography and architecture of the location, the inhabitants, the weather even, but also the broad spectrum of feelings and emotions felt while investigating the place.
Field recordists tend to work alone when gathering their recordings, entering a state removed from their surroundings, but simultaneously absorbing them and becoming part of them. The loneliness alluded to in the title should therefore not be read as negative, but positive, and essential for the creation of this work.
https://cronica.bandcamp.com/album/never-so-alone
"In 2010 the volcano Eyjafjallajokull erupted and made air traffic impossible for some time in Europe. Simon Whetham was in Portugal and has to extend his stay. He decided to capture the sounds of the city, using a Sennheiser shotgun microphone, two Tram lavalier mics, contact microphones and hydrophones, and later on composed pieces of music that are now released by, how appropriate, a label from Portugal (though not Lisbon). The title of the CD reflects the lonely state the field recordist does his work with, but it's not to seen in a negative way. This is a long album, close to 80 minutes and that is a bit much, considering the careful nature of the music, I think. Whetham does a fine job capturing sounds from the city and melting them together into seven pieces of music. Whetham knows how to create sustaining sounds from those city sounds and waves in between, down there and on top smaller blocks of sound, crackles, someone walking a tunnel and that sort of thing in single play mode or in loop form and makes some beautiful collage of sounds. Whetham has a particular interest in the world of ambient music, rather than just pure field recordings or heavy computer processing. This makes his music very delicate and spacious even at times. It's long, but it's great. I almost track of time when I was playing this, dreaming away. Maybe of a sunny city as opposed to a grey day in February. Very delicate, very refined indeed. Maybe the best thing I heard from him so far." [FdW /Vital Weekly]
€12.00
Dreams Shall Flesh (redux)
https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/dreams-shall-flesh-redux
"Dreams Shall Flesh" (redux) is the second chapter in the series of WHITE STAINS publications reissued by Zoharum. It is also the second studio album in the band's discography. As indicated by the note "redux" in the title, this edition has been enriched with bonus recordings, found in Carl Abrahamsson's private archive, which have never been published before. We are still dealing here with dark wave music with elements of gothic rock. However, unlike the compilation containing vinyl EPs, a new direction is increasingly felt here, which will be fully developed on the next albums. In these songs with a verse-chorus-verse structure typical of rock music, there is more and more space for a slightly atmospheric, slightly psychedelic aura, which is reflected in the final sound that the band achieved on this material. This is especially noticeable on the additional songs, which they perfectly complement the new version of "Dreams Shall Flesh" (redux).
The material has been remastered again and has a new graphic design. Edition of 300 CDs folded in a six-panel digipack.
€13.00
In the Library of Dreams
"I was going to write about how this is an absolutely beautiful and disturbing record, but I think quoting from the liner notes of James Pritchett really does sum it up. 'Frances White invites us to take a walk through her Resonant Landscape. Where are we going? We are walking through the woods, marshes, and streams of New Jersey. She points out the birds and frogs that make their home there, the water that flows through it and the wind that shakes the trees. But then we turn and there is that other sound world, the one in which these woodland sounds are transformed, or in which we find sounds altogether new: spectral birds singing to us through a sparkly haze; distant colored winds, like the breath of giants; the air around us, alive, charged with long, low drones and sudden electric crashes. There is something magical about this other world, and (like most magic) there is something disturbing here as well. We move between the two worlds almost at random, bumping into one sound after another. We find ourselves rising off the path and floating, then falling abruptly into silence, reappearing in a marsh full of geese and blackbirds. This is more than a sonic postcard from Princeton: it is a journey into the inner world of Frances White. We could call it an electroacoustic dream drawn from her memories of hikes in the woods. As in a dream, real experience is placed in a surreal context, a play of inner and outer. We fill in the gaps, supplying connections among the random fragments of reality, memory, and imagination. This gets to the heart of White's music. She has made a body of work in which she takes the real, brings it into her being, transforms it there, and then brings it out again in her compositions. Technically, she works by using the computer to manipulate recorded sounds and to synthesize wholly new ones. She mixes her timbres by hand as a painter would mix colors, and she applies them lovingly and painstakingly to her canvas of silence. But the power of her work comes from her ability to take listeners on journeys through her inner sense of sound, finding something luminous, exalted, dramatic, and at times frightening there. Her music is like the work of dreams, both the pleasant ones and the nightmares. It is not by accident that Gus Van Sant set the calmly-executed bloodbath of his film Elephant to one of White's Walks through 'Resonant Landscape'. White's unsettling juxtapositions of real and imagined sound work well with Van Sant's matter-of-fact treatment of almost unwatchable violence. Frances White studied composition at the University of Maryland, Brooklyn College, and Princeton University. She has received awards, grants, commissions, and fellowships from organizations such as the Guggenheim Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Alice M. Ditson Fund, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Prix Ars Electronica, the International Computer Music Association, ASCAP, the Bang On A Can Festival, and the Other Minds Festival. Ms. White's music can be heard on CD on the Wergo, Centaur, Nonsequitur, Harmonia Mundi, and Bridge Records labels. A CD devoted to her chamber works, Centre Bridge, was released in August of 2007 on the Mode label. Ms. White's music was featured as part of the soundtrack of three of Gus Van Sant movies." [label info]
www.pogus.com
"This new Pogus release is a work of a composer who is completely new to me. White studied composition at the University of Maryland, Brooklyn College, and Princeton University. Some of her work has been released by labels like Mode, Bridge, Harmonia Mundi, etc. This new release gathers six compositions for very different line ups. The first one, ‘Chosi’ is for solo shakuhachi, beautifully played by Ralph Samuelson. White studied Shakuhachi herself and feels inspired by traditional music that has shakuhachi in a main role. Also she feels inspired by nature. No wonder that she often uses natural field recordings in her electronic work. Just like Jonas Braasch, White has a comparable fascination for space and environment in her musical output, like titles as ‘Walk through Resonant Landscape 5.1’and ‘Walk through Resonant Landscape 5.2’ indicate. Both titles provide a picture or metaphor that describes how one can experience these pieces: it feels like a travel through different parts of a jungle. Here birdcalls dominate, there sounds from insects. The works are built up as a series of waves of manipulated environmental sounds. The works have a fine balance of acoustical natural sounds and electronics. White builds successful imaginary landscapes and surroundings. Also I would say she is searching for some spiritual quality in sound. The title piece ‘In the Library of Dreams’ is written for viola d’amore played here by David Cerutti, against a background of electronic sounds. Only one piece is for an ensemble, ‘The Ocean Inside’ played by Eight Blackbird, an ensemble of six musicians. It is a romantic piece of work of slowly moving patterns that disappear in a background of fragile sounds. The closing piece ‘The Book of Roses and Memory’ has very sensible playing by Liuh Wen Ting on viola and Thomas Buckner as narrator. The electroacoustic music of White takes you into dreamy atmospheres, with compositions that are not extremely complicated. In fact her work is very accessible. It is also very solid work and far from some easy romantic pastiche." [DM/Vital Weekly]
€13.00
Ravenscar
“Ravenscar stands 600ft above the restless North Sea. To many it is simply a stopping off point between Whitby and Scarborough, commanding expansive views of the beautiful North Yorkshire coastline. Yet this place is also a canvas on which the overlapping layers of history have left their fingerprints.
The recordings that form this work were collected over two years during various seasons and in a range of weather conditions. Natural materials collected from the site were manipulated in several ways to add a sense of intimacy and perspective.
Although the piece is intended to be listened to as an unbroken whole, five distinct phases are passed through:
Wind: A consequence of Ravenscar’s exposure is its surrender to the wind which sculpts the cliff top trees and relentlessly batters the sparse buildings. Much the same prospect must have confronted the Romans when they built a signal station here in the 4th century AD.
Alum: In 1640 alum was discovered in the rocks, the production of which became the first British chemical industry. An alum works was built on the cliff top where the complex production process took place. It involved fire, seaweed and huge quantities of stale human urine.
Tunnel: When the railway came to Ravenscar in 1884, W. H. Hammond paid for a 279 yard tunnel to be built so that the view from his house was not compromised. The line closed in 1965. The disused tunnel now remains as a dark and baleful monument to the ghosts of steam.
Grass: In 1897 the Ravenscar Estate Company Ltd. began building roads, laying sewers and creating gardens. Their optimistic vision to fashion a holiday resort rivalling nearby Scarborough bore little fruit. Few plots were sold, and in 1913 the company folded leaving nature to reassert her dominance.
Radar: The stark remains of a Second World War radar station stand at Bent Rigg. Operational from 1941 to monitor shipping and aircraft, these long redundant concrete buidings are now used by sheep as a welcome refuge from the unceasing winds.” (Chris Whitehead)
www.unfathomless.net
"This Whitehead is not to be confused with the other, Gregory (of whom we haven't heard much lately, sound wise that is) and I don't think I heard music from Chris Whitehead before. He did his bunch of field recordings in a place called Ravenscar, in North Yorkshire but he also uses materials which he retrieved from the site. I looked the place up on google maps and it looks like a quiet small place near the coast. But maybe that was something I could have told you from listening to this forty-three minute work. It starts out with sea waves, it has the cracking of leaves, rusty agricultural devices (which occasionally buzz), all melted in a fine long piece that has somewhere between the twenty and thirty break (indicated on the cover as 'Tunnel') some hollow sounds, the tunnel probably, and some close range fire like sounds. It has a nice drone like texture to it. Towards the end the live farm stock plays a small role too, as well as a bit of street sounds. This is not the work of pure
sound documentation which we sometimes see in the area of music, but Chris Whitehead has perhaps (!) processed a bit of the sounds, and if not, then he surely did a more than fine job in putting all of these recordings into an excellent audio picture of that area." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€14.00
live
Atmosphärische, experimentelle Gitarren-Pickings für Freunde von TORAL, MAZZACANE-CONNERS, KRANKY Records..
“ this is the second release by keith fullerton whitman as keith fullerton whitman - and it's a beautiful diversion to his mighty drill'n'bass productions as hrvatski (on his own label reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge) or dj hekla (recently on planet mu). you could witness that already last year on his first release on apartement b, a stunning guitar-cum-laptop cd. although "live (at the tremont theater)" also consists of these elements the result differs from that cd for it's more a coalition between the fragile
sound of the acoustic guitar and the punctual sparkling electronic
interruptions by the computer processing. the sublime beauty of the two long pieces – the 7" contains almost 14 minutes of music - of, say, loren-mazzacane connors or some of o'rourkes early pieces which results in a strumming drone-fest. this live recording was the opening slot for a peter kowald-daniel carter-lawrence cook-jonathan lamaster quartet show at the tremont theatre in boston's thriving theatre district and shows once more whitman's ability to combine different aspects of experimental and electronic music. imagine godspeed you black emperor! stripped down to a solo project - watch out for his longplayer on kranky soon.” [press-release]
www.tonschacht.com
€6.00
Cryptonesia
"Ini.itu is releasing a new vinyl LP, composed by Wíeman (Roel Meelkop and Frans de Waard).
Roel Meelkop studied visual arts and art theory at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He is a member of Goem, Kapotte Muziek and THU20. In the last couple of years, Meelkop has focused on solo works in composition and installation work.
Frans de Waard is making music since more than 25 years under many aliases and in different line-ups, the most well-known being Kapotte Muziek, Goem, THU 20, Beequeen, Ezdanitoff, the Tobacconists and of course Freiband, under which name he already released an LP on ini.itu a few years ago.
Wíeman is their «meltpop» duo, which was previously known as Zèbra.
The project for this LP started when some obscure tapes released under the moniker Cybe in the early 80’s found their way to one of those MegaUpload accounts that disappeared a few months later.
So “Positive Movement Muzak / New Age Synthesis” “Cybernetika” and “Cybonesië -Tropische Klankbeelden” were temporarily out in the world again.
With the help of some synth forums the man behind that name could be located. With his approval and upon request from ini.itu, Wíeman, already famous for their reappropriation of Martin Hannett samples on “Live in Leugen”, used snippets from those Cybe tapes to create new pieces. What you have now with “Cryptonesia” is the unexpected meltpop child of dangdut and krautrock, filtered through electronica and post - exotica lenses. Refusing the temptation of going subtropical gabber, the good-natured beats, boisterous and carefree, exhale a cheerful and joyous mood. The epic 18 minutes long B-side is a freewheeling and energetic construction of meandering and hypnotic pseudo-gamelan riffs, resulting into trippy and lush washes of bliss. A record to enjoy, not only for its hedonistic take on music history reverse engineering, but also for the sake of its ecstatic feeling. The LP was mastered by Taylor Deupree." [label info]
€13.00
The Blue Beyond
Jana Winderen's practice focuses on sound and knowledge production as she seeks to raise awareness of the environmental issues we face as a society. Audemars Piguet Contemporary collaborated with Winderen on two new sound installations compositions. The first, "Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux", was developed during two field trips to Le Brassus in the Vallée de Joux, at the heart of the Swiss Jura, where Audemars Piguet has been based since 1875. On these trips, Winderen captured sounds in the waters of the Lac de Joux and in the Risoud forest. When Audemars Piguet Contemporary invited the artist to present a second composition for exhibition in Miami Beach, Winderen proposed a site-specific sound environment. For \"The Art of Listening: Under Water\", Winderen used sounds recorded in the Atlantic Ocean in the Miami area, as well as sounds from the Barents Sea around the North Pole and the Tropical Oceans to expose the constant underwater presence of human-created sound today. In both pieces, the artist offers a unique opportunity to listen closely to the underwater inhabitants of a specific region and to reflect on how human activity interacts and interferes with aquatic and also terrestrial life in a seemingly beautiful and visually calm environment. Jana Winderen often draws the fish, amphibians and plankton she meets. This release also consists of a drawing of two fish that probably would never meet; the pike from the freshwater Lac de Joux in the Jura Mountains and the snapper from the saltwater environment by Miami.
https://janawinderen.bandcamp.com/album/the-blue-beyond
€26.50
Red Sugar
"Second long awaited album by duo Ruth Rosenthal and Xavier Klaine, actually based in Brooklyn.
A rare and unique audio worldview expressed by the singular approach of Ruth Rosenthal (voice) and Xavier Klaine (harmonium, organ etc..).
From the first bares of Searching Donkeys this new album creates a glowering and intense atmospheric...part nightmare, part uplifting dreamscape. It permeates and builds into a compelling whole. a reference point might be some of the output of Constellation records - indeed GYBEs Norsola Johnson plays on this record..
However it is doubtful whether any of those artists ever produced anything to match the taut tension of the title track Red Sugar..an hymn to absence. The ambition of Winter Family is evident on the expansive, orchestral epic dancing in the sun..crank your speakers, sit back and open your mind.. it WILL blow you away." [label info]
www.subrosa.net
€13.00
Thrice Woven
Now, a portal into the dreamworld of Wolves in the Throne Room opens again with THRICE WOVEN. It is a glorious return to the blazing and furious Black Metal that they alone can create!
The album begins with Born From the Serpent’s Eye a true thrashing black metal epic that is bisected with a haunting northern lament sung by Swedish star Anna von Hausswolff. The band worked with metal documentarians Peter Beste and Nico Poalillo to create a video for this track which captures a bonfire-lit performance in the forest near their Olympia compound.
The Old Ones Are With Us opens with the crackling of a fire and the voice of Steve Von Till (Neurosis) invoking the springtime thaw. It then storms into a dirge inspired by 90’s Finnish doom with lyrics that celebrate Imbolc, the holy day which marks the end of winter and the first stirrings of spring.
Figures from Norse mythology intertwine with personal heartbreak and rebirth in the bleak Angrboda. The song is named after a frost giantess who birthed Fenris Wolf, a beast who was destined to destroy the world and murder the gods. Fenris Wolf also appears on the cover of THRICE WOVEN in a painting by Russian occult artist Denis Forkas. Forkas’ obscure medieval painting techniques perfectly compliment the music of Wolves in the Throne Room.
A raven’s wings stir the air in the interlude Mother Owl, Father Ocean. Anna von Hausswolff returns in a duet with Turkish harpist Zeynep Oyku. Forlorn industrial atmospheres haunt the mix. Hausswolff’s lyrics, sung in Swedish, echo over a barren grey seascape.
Fires Roar in the Palace of the Moon is the classic Cascadian Black Metal epic. The third eye opens to see holy rivers being born from the ice on the tallest peaks. The lyrics offer blessings to the waters of the earth as they flow from the high places to the source of darkness, the ocean.
https://wolvesinthethroneroom.bandcamp.com/album/thrice-woven
€14.50
Red Lion
Londoner Aufnahmen von 2004: field recordings von verschiedenen Plätzen Londons (Red Lion Square, Tate Modern, etc.), feedbackin’ hyper-effektierte Drone-Guitars, merkwürdige Obertonräume entstehen, Daydream-Akustikgitarren verschmelzen mit Environmentals, sowas wie Helikopter-Vibrationen(?), einzelne metallische Töne ziehen Resonanzen wie Schweife hinter sich her, himmlische Vibratos, die in der Luft schweben & zu schimmern scheinen, sirrend-fräsende Klangwolken mit Siren-Effekt...
Wie fast kein Zweiter ruft PETER WRIGHT aus seinen Gitarren manchmal fast aberwitzig zu nennende Obertonresonanzenschwälle hervor, schafft sirrend-schwirrenden Singsang par excellence, der nie in langweiligen tumben Noise oder Drone abgleitet, sondern immer in fein- ästhetischer Balance bleiben....
RED LION ist ein poetisch-verträumtes Werk mit vielen Facetten und sei hiermit allen die PETER WRIGHT noch nicht kennen ans Herz gelegt. 9 tracks, ca. 55 min.
“You can remove a Kiwi from New Zealand but you sure as hell can't remove New Zealand from a Kiwi. Such is the case with Christchurch transplant, Peter Wright. Over the course of a decade, Wright has etched his name in glass in the annals of drone-world superstardom. And while I'm not sure what that really means, the point is that when it comes to soaring dronescapes, few do it better than Peter Wright. He has helped pave the way with contemporaries such as Birchville Cat Motel and Double Leopards, but clearly has his own distinct voice. With his past few albums, Wright seems the logical successor to native Kiwi, sound manipulator extraordinaire, Roy Montgomery.
"Red Lion" is Wright's latest incarnation and, once again, pushes the boundaries of what he can do with his trademark 12 string Danelectro to the absolute outer limits. He pushes the limits of simplicity without ever breaking. Wright's albums are a thing of sheer, pure beauty, existing in a vacuum where nothing on the outside can tamper with their grace. Even with his lofty intentions, "Red Lion" is immediately approachable and grabs the listener from the opening notes. As always, Peter Wright offers up something wholly infectious and undebatably magnificent.
Press about Peter Wright: "The finest in underground free noise / drone...mostly from New Zealand but all around the world as well. For those of you new to the CpsiP label, imagine classic Siltbreeze (Dead C, etc.) mixed with Jewelled Antler (Thuja, Blithe Sons etc.), dark and deep listening that sometimes verges on all out noise, but more often than not remains subtle experiments in avant drone and abstract sound." - Aquarius Records
"This is easily some of the most evocative proto-drone work to reach these ears in a while, with beautiful almost folk melodies that flutter on the edge of audibility cut up with a thick soup of early-evening smog and long forgotten geographies. Somewhere between early Flying Saucer Attack, Mirror and William Basinski. Highly recommended." - David Keenan, Volcanic Tongue
"If Windy & Carl's vision of Antarctica is your idea of bliss, you will drool over this soundscape depiction of Peter Wright's home in New Zealand. Now living in London, these are what the label calls "love-drones," as Wright's memories of his home's wide open spaces inspire slowly unfolding waves of lush guitar." - Jim Steed, Fakejazz “ [label info]
€13.00
Yellow Horizon
Der grossartige Neuseeländer PETER WRIGHT (auch aktiv als POLIO) liefert seit Jahren Gitarren-drone durchtränkte Traumlandschaften ab, die sich dunkel aber unpathetisch in den Äther schwingen. Seine tänzelnden Gitarren-Ozeane sind von besonderer untergründiger emotionaler Spannung und Melancholie beseelt, und wirken doch auch entspannend....keine Oberflächenmusik, sondern der „wahre“ Kern des Selbst scheint hier aufzuflackern..... Demnächst auch eine 7“ auf Drone Records !! NZ-Import.
“New Zealand guitarist and sound-artist Peter Wrights back catalogue stretches to something like 30 releases over the last dozen years. 'Yellow Horizons' is the most recent of these and follows on from 2004's 'Distant Bombs' (Last Visible Dog), and 'Desolation Beauty Violence' (Digitalis). This CD finds him relocated to dirty old London town from where he has written a series of love-drones to the wild South Island of his homeland. Described by David Keenan (of The Wire, Volcanic Tongue) as a "consistently impressive thinker", Wrights guitar craft opens vistas that are as contemplative as they are emotionally engaging. Periods of preperatory silence awaken into long slow shifting drones; layered 'folk' patterns build to an almost psychotropic intensity before being subsumed once more within the drone... These scenes are as varied as the South Island itself. There are glaciers as well as sunburnt plains. Writing about the recording of Yellow Horizons, Peter had this to say: "The nature of my reduced travelling bag of equipment has meant a more concise distillation of sounds than before with the 12 string guitar now dominating. To make things even more cohesive I tuned the guitar to an open C chord and every track on this disc uses this tuning, creating an almost seamless continuity, and an overall foundation". [press release]
“Another fucking stunner from this re-located New Zealander, Desolation Beauty Violence is mostly based around various manipulations of Danelectro 12-string guitar using minimal effects and field recordings but for the most part the source feels supremely dislocated. This is easily some of the most evocative proto-drone work to reach these ears in a while, with beautiful almost folk melodies that flutter on the edge of audibility cut up with a thick soup of early-evening smog and long forgotten geographies. Somewhere between early Flying Saucer Attack, Mirror and William Basinski. Highly recommended.“ [David Keenan/ Volcanic Tongue]
www.pseudoarcana.com
€13.00
Objects wrapped in Objects wrapped in Objects
"james wyness is a rare scottish sound artist with only a handful of releases on various labels like gruenrekorder, conv or mystery sea.
for "objects wrapped in objects wrapped in objects", james has gathered two delicate and precise compositions.
"the hearth" was composed in response to the theme of sound and rural architecture following a three week residency in northern portugal with "binuaral/nodar" in april 2012 as part of the "festival som e arquitetura rural". the piece investigates the sounds of open and closed hearths recorded in the san macario region of northern portugal. it reveals the dense dynamic textures and sonic morphologies of one of the fundamentals of architecture.
"foil" is an investigation of materiality and recursive procedures in which tin foil was set in a picture frame, played by hand and recorded using contact microphones. the recorded sounds were then played back through the foil using transducers, the foil was performed simultaneously and the results mixed live to tape.
www.taalem.com
"James Wyness has a great title of his release: it leaves stuff to imagine. He has two pieces, of exactly ten minutes each. In the first he uses 'metal wood burning stoves, open domestic fires and domestic utensils' and in the other 'tin foil, transducers and contact microphones'. I don't like long quotes, but the website says it better than I can do: "the hearth" investigates the sounds of open and closed hearths recorded in the san macario region of northern Portugal. It reveals the dense dynamic textures and sonic morphologies of one of the fundamentals of architecture. "Foil" is an investigation of materiality and recursive procedures in which tin foil was set in a picture frame, played by hand and recorded using contact microphones. The recorded sounds were then played back through the foil using transducers, the foil was performed simultaneously and the results mixed live to tape." In the first of these pieces we hear something of light crackling nature, the burning of something inside a small hollow, metallic space, whereas in the tin foil piece it becomes all a bit darker and even percussive, slowed down. The tin foil has great sonic qualities but here it sounds very much unlike that. Dark and obscured sounds, but with a fine imaginative headspace. Two excellent pieces and also perhaps something that sounds less like what you would expect on Taalem." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€5.00
Threads Rope Spell Making Your Bones
Bemerkenswertes Album einer Combo aus Baltimore, läuft lt. press-release unter "psych-rock", ist aber vielmehr eine Art komplexer Impro-Drone, wo sich vielerlei elektronische und instrumentelle Quellen zu rauschenden Soundformen vermählen.
"The second full-length from Baltimore’s WZT HEARTS (pronounced “wet hearts”). Threads Rope Spell Making Your Bones is an album of improvised electronic psych-rock action at times reminiscent of sound sculptors like Fennesz, but with a nice krautrock touch throughout. A blend of the organic and synthetic, digital and analog, difficult and easy." [label info]
"Baltimore band bundles digital noise and tasteful drumming with unstable organ drones and long stretches of shaped hiss, evoking urbanity with a loose, folk-like quality.
There's a boring trope in responses to noise-based music that goes something like, "You won't get it unless you turn it up so loud that," and follows with the grisly description of a physical ailment or violation of a city ordinance. But the logic of only understanding music when it inspires you to nausea is about a step away from saying it's easier to agree with conservatives on C-SPAN if you vacuum while they talk-- volume can obscure as much as it might reveal. Listen to Baltimore's Wzt Hearts loud if you have an arbitrary preference for loudness.
But there's nothing on Threads Rope Spell Making Your Bones that suggests you have to, and there's plenty to suggest you shouldn't. Though at times trenchant and aggressively noisy, there's nothing particularly bodily about the album. So, caution to the horror and viscera freaks, who won't find anything that sounds like a yeast infection (too sexual and gross, too intimate) or the breaking of a fever (too glorious and climactic, too confused). Instead, Wzt Hearts bundle digital noise and the tasteful drumming of Shaun Flynn with unstable organ drones and long stretches of shaped hiss. Though the record evokes urbanity, the feeling isn't industrial or militaristic-- there's a loose, folk-like quality to it.
In that sense, it's just as reasonable to listen to it at a normal volume, to let its waxes and wanes crest at the level of distant traffic. But listening to it as ambience-- admittedly, this is a very tough quality to talk about-- reveals a certain "unstickiness," for lack of a better term. Though Wzt Hearts clearly suggest a chromed-out, decaying city through their sound, it's painted to varying degrees of clarity; as a listener, I find myself sliding around under the drum flutters of "Hearth Carver" or the terminal wooziness of "Viszla", but other pieces remind me that I left the oven on or that it's sunny outside. This might have something to do with inertia, it might have to do with composition-- Threads isn't exactly a record of discrete or easily articulated qualities. And for however refreshing the digital ambience is-- the elements on Threads pickle in static but never surrender to a big, warm, nasty picture-- much of it feels curiously stuck in 2D.
But there's no point in harping on the band's shortcomings considering how great how great "Hearth Carver" and "Viszla" are, and how much better they sound than on last year's live Heat Chief (Zach Baron, in his Pitchfork review, rated it higher than I would have). Though it's not something you'd often say about doomsayers, with Wzt Hearts, it's worth hoping for the future." [Pitchfork]
€16.00
Early Singles
"Gothics” - a time before the word goth had even taken shape - believed in the do-it-yourself punk ethos that anyone could pick up an instrument. Gray clouds were starting to form and in the unlikely city of Hamburg, a brazen and haunting gang of five women formed Xmal Deutschland. As any true punk would, Xmal Deutschland’s members Caro May, Rita Simon, Manuela Rickers, Fiona Sangster and Anja Huwe, started the band despite any previous musical experience.
The “Schwarze Welt” seven-inch was released on the local punk label, ZickZack, in 1981 and introduced the band as an unsettling swarm of intensity. There’s an urgency in its repetitive dirge, a swirling mania that persists on the b-side with “Die Wolken” and “Großstadtindianer” whose crude synthesizer noises escalate intention. Most of all, Huwe’s uniquely venomous German vocals quickly became embedded in the unbridled and burgeoning scene of glamorous gloom.
Punk’s independence from the stiff grip of tradition allowed the band to find solace in anti-establishment art and music, far from the conventions of the past.With their peacocked hair and thick kohl-lined eyes, Xmal Deutschland’s music retained both a restlessness and delicacy, transcending any confines of the “Neue Deutsche Welle” movement (much like their colleagues and friends DAF and Einstürzende Neubauten) with the release of the “Incubus Succubus”single in 1982. It instantly became a post-punk classic. The guitar’s buzz ransacks through the melody as the ghoulish primitiveness of Huwe’s voice teases that maybe, just maybe, she is the nightmarish creature of which to be aware. The b-sides, “Zu Jung Zu Alt” and “Blut Ist Liebe,” keep strict militaristic dance beats as they teem in agitation.
That same year, the band performed in London as support for the Cocteau Twins; it was the platform they needed to ricochet into the arms of the ripped fishnet masses. Early Singles (1981-1982), is a map of the foundational movements of Xmal Deutschland, just seconds before takeoff. Bonus tracks on the compilation, “Kaelbermarsch” and a gritty live version of “Allein,” further accentuate their fusion of toughness with the quixotic decadence of atmospheric synthesizers.
The band’s pursuit of something greater is palpable with this release, a reflection of a time that introduced accessibility to new means of making music following the onset of punk.
https://xmaldeutschland.bandcamp.com/album/early-singles-1981-1982
€25.00
Brain Overloaded
"The album is dedicated to William S. Burroughs - one of the most enlightened minds of the era in which we are to live. The author of the paintings used on the cover is Ewa Bińczyk, an artist from Toruń.
Performed, recorded and mixed by Rafał Iwański
2008-2011, studio Eter, Toruń, Poland
limited to 444 hand-numbered copies
packaged in ecopack + postcard" [credits]
www.zoharum.com
"Rafal Iwanski is the man behind X-Navi:et, but also the man behind Hati and to his personal use he has analog filter machines, analog synthesizer, digital drummer, electronic effects, sampling unit field recordings, acoustic objects and microphones. All of the pieces were recorded over a period of three years before it was finally edited to this release. Like Rale (see elsewhere) this is at that same cross road of noise, improvisation, musique concrete, drone and such more, but throughout it doesn't seem to match Rale (or various others). X-Navi:et's music is a bit more noisier, a bit more single minded and a bit less worked out. X-Navi:et goes for the bigger picture, in single colors and lacks the refinement of others in this field. However I thought this was quite a nice one too, as it moves around, shifts that particular field of music upwards and towards the area of noise perhaps and makes a release that I do quite like for what it is: a sturdy, monolithic work of mild noise." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€12.00
Dead City Voice
"Dead City Voice" is the second vinyl album by Rafał Iwański aka X-Navi:Et(of HATI, Voices of the Cosmos, KAPITAL, Innercity Ensemble fame). It's the follow-up to acclaimed "Soundtracks for the Dying Moments" LP released on Instant Classic last year. It contains 6 new electroacoustic compositions recorded from 2010 to 2013.
The theme of the city has appeared in the modern art territory quite a few times before. Wim Wenders, a cult German director, once said that "thecity shapes people, leaves its stigma on them and deforms them to its own likeness." Murray Schafer, a Canadian composer, while working on the concept of "soundscape", claimed that many of the surrounding sonic incidents infiltrates the music of our times. Following the footsteps of Charles Baudelaire among others, urban artists, Rafał Iwański and Ewa Bińczyk, replayed the city, penetrated its spirit and echoed it in their activities. Telling the city by means of sound and vision is becoming an inward journey as well.
Inside the cover one can also find the literary text by Dariusz Brzostek (Ph.D. at the University of Toruń, Poland) - a literari, anthropologist and music journalist who has collaborated with many magazines, such as Glissando, Trans/Wizje, Antena Krzyku, Teksty Drugie, Magazyn Fragile.
Visually the album is of the highest value. The gatefold cover is adorned with works by Ewa Bińczyk. Additionally, a special edition of 33 copies will include genuine intaglio prints signed by the author making it a true collector's item.
The album was released by Zoharum in collaboration with Eter Records, a label set up by Rafał Iwański to release music by his projects X-Navi:Et, HATI, Voices of the Cosmos in digital and analogue formats.
The album is released in a gatefold cover in a strictly limited edition of 250 copies." [label info]
www.zoharum.com
"On vinyl, in a fine fold out cover, we find Hati's Rafal Iwanski's solo project X-Navi:et. Both this and his Hati project are quite active when it comes to releasing music, so you could wonder: do they ever sleep? The main concept behind the six pieces on his new LP is the 'city', but not in a very strict sense I would think. This is not twice 20 minutes of city sounds, or something like that set to music, but pieces that depict the sounds of city through musical means. He uses analog filter machine, analog synthesizer, sampling pad, loop system, hulusi, bells, rattles, metal objects, field and found recordings and effects. Me think that a lot of the acoustic sources here have been sampled and treated extensively before finding their place inside a composition. Take for instance 'Tinnitus Auris': the tinkling of bells are the sounds that a lorry makes when trying to park. Next to that we hear a conveyer belt like sound - the other cars on the same street. Below that is a fiery drone-ventilation shafts on the side walk. That's what I heard. In the other pieces there is a similar liveliness, which we find a big cities - not in the street where I live, and not many cars or people pass on an ordinary working day. But of course all of this is easily said, when you look at the title(s), the picture, the text and such like and make these connections with a big city. I wonder what someone would imagine playing this music as it is, without knowing these references; it might not be the city. But who cares about that? We know what it is about and it's the gesamtkunstwerk that counts. This is a beautiful record of some fine, dark ambient music, with a nice industrial touch to it, very occasionally. Great release!" [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€16.00
Oniro
Zoharum is proud to present “Oniro” an extended 2CD reissue of 1996 classic previously released by World Serpent - home to projects like Current 93, Death In June, Coil and alike.
Leen Smets aka Yasnaia - vocalist of Hybryds project (until her departure in 2000) takes us on a great journey through many states of consciousness and dimensions. Her haunting and hypnotising voice guides us through 10 tracks of the album. Chants and incantations keep us captivated from very beginning to the very end. Dark rites and ethereal psychedelia. A sexual energy channeled in rhythm driven magical tribalism.
Exclusive to this release is a second CD containing live performance recorded at "Wolfsmond", München, Germany on 16th of August 1997 giving you a pretty good impression of how the whole ritual conducted by Yasnaia might sound and look like. The CD ends with 3 tracks, two of which were previously released on 7” vinyls courtesy of Ant-Zen and Spectre (Nexus) and third has been unreleased - until now.
A great testimonial of '90s Art of industrial music. Unparalleled and essential.
2CD edition of 500 copies comes in 6 panel digipack.
Tracks 1-10 taken from the original album released by World Serpent in 1996.
Tracks 11-17 Live recordings
Track 18 taken from 7" Picture Disc (AntZen 1997)
Track 19 taken from 7" split with Hybryds / P.A.L.(Spectre 1997)
Track 20 unreleased
https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/oniro-extended-edition
€17.00
An Uns Memento
Re-Release einer Cassette, die 1996 in einer 100er Auflage auf Subterranean erschien.
“Best known for his innovative percussive work, Z'EV's short-lived (1980-82) uns project combined his interest in sound poetics and voice treatments with dense sonic landscapes; the result was-and still is-challenging, unique, and rewarding. This 70 minute CD features two long-unavailable recordings: Life Sentense, originally released in 1986 in a cassette-only edition of 100, and "Save What?", a document of the final uns performance, originally released in 1982 in a cassette-only edition of 50. 100 copies (sold out) were specially packaged, signed and numbered. Both editions come with a complete Life Sentense "texts" and the first-ever extensive writing by Z'EV on the uns project.”[label info]
“In the early '80s, Z'ev had developed the Uns persona to stand outside of the percussive heavy physicality of Z'ev. Uns built a portable unit of 4 Lenco turntables (which have the unique ability to pitch speeds from 0 - 78 rpm), a few tape decks, echo-plex, and a fire-damaged organ to generate a scraping mid-range rumble over which he barked out a cyclical stream of fragmented vocal elements. While the noise elements definitely predate / parallel some of the early noise constructions from Merzbow, the vocals are what keep this record interesting-as Z'ev would rant and mumble as if caught in a manic fit of Tourette's Syndrome, before catching one interesting phrase in a lock groove for a four or five repetitions ("and you don't know my problem - and it's like crash grass - it's like crash glass - it's like crash glass - and it's uh a clean cut") before continuing on the strange vocalizations. While the noise elements from all of the tracks retain a very similar timbre, the vocals offer the major differentiation for Uns. Fortunately, this piece has ample room between the numerous (99?) tracks for the audience to catch its breath before Z'ev picks up with another semi-comprehensible ramble. This holds up quite well under the test of time, in spite of / because of the fact that Uns sounds like any of the totally flyin' speed freaks that buzz around the 16th & Mission Bart station.”[Aquarius Records]
€13.00
Heart Beat Ear Drum
“Heart Beat Ear Drum” is a feature length documentary about the late artist and musician Z’EV (1951-2017), known for his punk era scrap metal music – an extraordinary range of acoustic phenomena resulting in trance-inducing sounds.
This documentary shows how his music changed and grew and how his personal journey led him to the margins of art and the depths of heart. From 2007-2015, director Ellen Zweig followed Z’EV, shooting concerts and interviews, and collecting archival footage. In addition to interviews with Z’EV, there are interviews with a community of artists who have known him since the 1970’s, curators who have encountered him in the 1990’s, and younger people who have only heard his recorded music or read his philosophical texts (Bob Bellerue, Bow Gamelan Ensemble, HATI, Barbara Stevini, Simone Forti, Zach Layton, Carl Stone, Ned Sublette, Johanna Went and more).
Z’EV began with a “wild style”, crashing and throwing pieces of metal to make sound. He collected the materials for his art at scrap yards. 30 years later, almost all the scrap yards are closed. Z’EV now uses mallet percussion to explore acoustic phenomena. Z’EV was a crusader: for art, for trance meditation, and for living a thoughtful life. His found object aesthetic made us see art in all of the objects around us. His art activities included drumming, sculpture, gardening, even cooking.
This film is divided in chapters and organised with both a narrative and a digressive structure. The structure is topic based, not strictly chronological. The first half of the film uses archival concert footage and interviews to establish Z’EV’s place in the world of art and music. The second half uses contemporary concert footage and interviews to explore the changes that led Z’EV to a more contemplative style. The film ends with an extended concert.
There is music throughout the film, but at the end, you are immersed in the music and in Z’EV’s exploration of resonance.
Director: Ellen Zweig
Co-Editor: Lili Chin
Sound Design: Ron MacLeod
DVD case with inserts. PAL, Region 0.
https://coldspring.co.uk/2019/12/zev-heart-beat-ear-drum-dvd/
€17.50
Ankoku
"... »Ankoku« entführt den Zuhörer auf eine filigrane, düstere Reise zwischen flirrenden Feedback-Drones, den für Z'EV typischen, aber sehr zurückgenommenen Stahlpercussions und der traumwandler-ischen Stimme Ponzinis, die klingt, als ob es sich dabei um eine Geisterbeschwörung einer japanischen Yūrei oder um mit Schattenwesen aus der Zwischenwelt bevölkerte Filmsequenzen handeln würde: Wenn schon Magick, dann so etwas wie »Ankoku«, dessen spirituelle Kraft an Coil erinnert und auf der die italienische Sängerin/Musikerin ihr Debüt gibt." [Skug]
"ANKOKU: Ramona's personal touch is certainly her own particular Japanese chant, together with the use of traditional percussions, bells and cymbals from Japan. Z'EV has been enchanted by all those elements (listening to Praxinoscope), asking to Ramona for this cooperation. This is the result of this "long-distance encounter". ANKOKU is a Japanese word which means "deep darkness". For this debut Ramona's voice and percussions has been registered by My Cat is an Alien in their mysterious studio, placed somewhere in Western Alps, adding some field recordings. Recordings has then been sent to Z'EV who has processed them with some of his typical percussions. Z'EV deconstruct the sweetness of Ramona's chants, enfolding the pieces with a darker atmosphere. We have an obscure 5 tracks album, structured on charming vocal melodies moving out from a "haunted house"." [label description]
www.asilentplace.it
€12.00
Walking East
GINO ZARDO ist ein Fotograf, der für dieses Projekt beeindruckende Fotos und Feldaufnahmen von seinen Reisen nach Indien, Nepal und Papua-Neu-Guinea mitbrachte. JANEK SCHAEFER hat das akustische Material zu einem 21.40 minütigen psychogeographischen Eindruck verwebt, der Musik & Gesänge, Alltags-Geräusche, Natur und Sprache zu gleichen Teilen im Wechselspiel aufscheinen lässt.
GINO ZARDO ist kein Tourist auf voyeuristischen Pfaden, sondern hat dort monatelang in Familien gelebt und mitgearbeitet – so ist ein einmaliges & authentisches Dokument aus Klang & Bild entstanden, welches uns das „andere Leben“ der Menschen dort wirklich näher zu bringen vermag! Digipack incl. 24 p. Booklet.
“Gino Zardo is a photographer and field recordist born to Italian parents in Australia in 1968. He lives New York and has worked along side with some of the most prominent photographers in the world for 15 years. Walking East is his debut release. ‘Walking East is a photographic sound portrait of my travels through the North Western provinces of India, the Himalayas of Nepal and the Island of Papua New Guinea. I set out to explore, through the people I met, the way in which my photographs and sound recordings could magnify the sense of time and place. I began the project in January 1999. Covering 50,000 miles over the next 12 months. I found myself trekking for days through the vast contrasting of landscapes, a western desert, a tropical monsoon, and a dense jungle before I would reach a remote village. Camping along the way and living amongst the families and tribes, I was able to experience their daily lives and acquire an understanding of their histories and cultures. Documenting a variety of people as they performed in music festivals, worked in steel mills, sold their wares in markets, and celebrated their tribal rituals together, I found many similarities. The presence of community; joy, hardship and survival are universal. My thanks to everyone I met throughout my journey who shared their homes and lives with me.’ “ [from the liner notes]
€12.00
The Black & White Album
Das "Pop"-Projekt (sozusagen die Nachfolge von den eher technoiden GOEM) von FRANS DE WAARD und ROEL MEELKOP überrascht mit zum Teil sehr gradlinigen Beats, Pop-Versatzstücken in neuem Gewand, einem 70er Jahre Disco-Feeling, Glitch-Effekten und weiteren Dingen die nicht unbedingt zusammenpassen, aber es darf hier auch mal etwas "unseriöser" zugehen, oder???
"The long awaited debut album of Roel Meelkop and Frans de Waard's post Goem project. They show their love for a good pop song and their love for a bad song also - hacked and spliced together, held together by a set of groovy beats (beasts?). They call it 'Meltpop', symphonic macrosound disco glitch. Includes new versions of their hit single 'Leif Is Leif/Last Night A DJ Saved By File' (final copies of the 7" still available). Great liner notes, great cover by Meeuw." [label info]
"Zèbra's The Black & White Album is something of a shaggy dog stray finding a welcome within the SI homestead. According to Roel Meelkop and Frans de Waard (the man who gave you Goem, Kapotte Muziek, and Beequeen, among others), the recording was passed on by any number of potential patrons for being too off-kilter. And in fact much conceptual mischief and general oddity manifests, initially in external dressing, e.g. in scientific graphs with impenetrable textual commentaries, and track durations misrepresenting actual times. The set itself is a collage of techno and disco, noise-mongering, and sampledelic antics, “Dream Music for Diamand Redheads” being representative; it makes a tentative gestural nod towards Romanticist euphony before morphing into a marching slab of upright techno and a looped voice sample. “Last Night A DJ Saves My File” digitally as well as morphologically mangles Indeep’s 80s classic, peppering it with telephone rings and sundry spicy interpolations. In terms of sonic-conceptual forebears, de Waard and Meelkop's exercise in bricolage-styled playroom mischief - self-styled “meltpop” - bears a loop-y stamp that nods clearly towards the spirit of :zoviet*france, while the loony leaps from avant- to electro-/disco to pop remind of the likes of KLF or 808 State, or, in brief orgies of low-end technoid minimalism, nudge towards Pan Sonic." [Ear-Rational]
www.kormplastics.nl
€12.00
Zeitkratzer performs Songs from 'Kraftwerk' and 'Kraftwerk 2'
Format: 180gr LP incl. DL code + insert, 500 items
Release date: march 24th 2017
#DOUBLE BIRTHDAY RELEASE !! KARLRECORDS celebrates its 10th birthday, ZEITKRATZER even its 20th! And the party starts with the necessary re-interpretations of early compositions by electronic pioneers KRAFTWERK.
Founded in 1997 by REINHOLD FRIEDL, ZEITKRATZER have since been creating an impressive catalogue of recordings that embraces 20th century avant-garde composers (CAGE, STOCKHAUSEN, LUCIER) as well as electronic artists (CARSTEN NICOLAI, TERRE THAEMLITZ) or underground experimentalists like THROBBING GRISTLE or COLUMN ONE. In their 20th anniversary year, the critically acclaimed ensemble will release a series of diverse albums that will explore new grounds in the typical, adventurous zeitkratzer way – the first of these albums is dedicated to KRAFTWERK and their early, kraut-esque albums “Kraftwerk” and “Kraftwerk 2”. As KRAFTWERK never re-released these albums, ZEITKRATZER gave its best to cover the first tranche of the songs (second tranche to come…).
Recorded in Marseille / France in May 2016, the six tracks reveal a bucolic and even psychedelic aspect of the ensemble that’s mostly known (or feared) for its interpretatory and aesthetic acerbity. And yet there’s no doubt that “Songs From The Albums „Kraftwerk“ And „Kraftwerk 2“ turned out a true ZEITKRATZER recording in the best and full meaning!
zeitkratzer directed by Reinhold Friedl
Frank Gratkowski / flute, clarinets, Elena Kakaliagou / french horn, Hilary Jeffery / trombone, Reinhold Friedl / harmonium, piano, Didier Ascour / guitar, Maurice de Martin / drums, Lisa Marie Landgraf / violin, Burkhard Schlothauer / violin, Elisabeth Coudoux, violoncello, Ulrich Phillipp / double bass
Recorded and mixed by Martin Wurmnest
Mastered & cut by Mike Grinser at D&M, Berlin
www.karlrecords.net
€18.00
Serbian War Songs
zeitkratzer and its special guests SVETLANA SPAJIĆ (voice), DRAGANA TOMIĆ (voice) and OBRAD MILIĆ (voice, diple, gusle) present traditional Serbian songs from and about World War I.
Within its 20 years of existence, REINHOLD FRIEDL’s ensemble zeitkratzer has proved its interpretatory mastership on a wide range of fields such as contemporary / avant-garde composers, electronic artists, industrial underground – and, probably most surprising on this list, also in traditional music / folklore as documented on the two albums “Volksmusik” and “Neue Volksmusik” . For “Serbian War Songs”, a selection of traditional songs from and about World War I, the “modern composition supergroup” (THE WIRE) have invited some special guests: the renowned singers SVETLANA SPAJIĆ and DRAGANA TOMIĆ (who both worked a.o. with ROBERT WILSON) and the diple / gusle player OBRAD MILIĆ. REINHOLD FRIEDL and SVETLANA SPAJIĆ (probably the most acknowledged expert for traditional songs in Serbia) selected some traditional Serbian songs from and about World War I, and OBRAD MILIĆ contributes „Assassination In Sarajevo“, a song in the classic epic form he had learnt from his father Bogdan, a famous gusla player at the beginning of the 20th century. Commissioned by Berlin’s Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt, the performance was recorded and mixed by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer MARTIN WURMNEST and mastered by MIKE GRINSER at D&M.
zeitkratzer
directed by Reinhold Friedl
Frank Gratkowski, bassclarinet, clarinet I Hild Sofie Tafjord, french horn I Hilary Jeffery, trombone I Reinhold Friedl, piano I Maurice de Martin, drums, percussion I Lisa Marie Landgraf, violin I Burkhard Schlothauer, violin I Nora Krahl, violoncello I Ulrich Phillipp, doublebass
+
special guests:
Svetlana Spajić, voice
Dragana Tomić, voice
Obrad Milić, voice, diple, gusle
recorded and mixed by Martin Wurmnest at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, January 16, 2016
produced by Reinhold Friedl
mastered by Mike Grinser at D&M, Berlin
€18.00
Electronics
"This cd documents the cooperation between Zeitkratzer and Carsten Nicolai, started nearly a decade ago; a cooperation between an avantgarde ensemble and a non-academic electronic musician. The electronic music of Carsten Nicolai - partly being of even aseptic clearness and quality suddenly becomes sensual and physical through Zeitkratzer's instrumental sounds. Inversely, Zeitkratzer sounds different too: in '5 min' the musicians play only electric sound generators: humming of plugs, the peeping of the synchronised Zeitkratzer-clocks, white noise, TV cheeping at 10 kHz. 'Synchron Bitwave', the latest piece is the most sensual and warmest; no other sounds than a small third and its electric derivates, finally leading to high, dabbed string spiccati. While 'c1' transfers electronically conceived asymmetrical loops into a 19-16th rhythm. A strange undertow results, partly because of the pieces' grounding with merging split sounds. Here, Carsten Nicolai virtually becomes metaphysical, perhaps even romantic...'
[label info]
".. So, when taking on a collaboration with Carsten Nicolai, who is best known for his swaggering rhythms for pure tone and minuscule glitches as Alva Noto, we had to ask how this would work. Well, essentially, Nicolai has adapted his sound for Zeitkratzer, not the other way around, which might have been a real challenge for Zeitkratzer to attempt to adopt the thud and rumble of something like the Transall series. Instead, Nicolai and Zeitkratzer pursue long-form compositions, mostly for electronics, but occasionally with the assistance of a particular instrumental coloring from say a clarinet, a cello, or a piano. Each of the three pieces here were performed live, commissioned for this sound art festival or that in Europe. The first of which swarms around static-laden drones and crackling hiss which spirals around a Niblockian drone from a sustained clarinet, eventually a rhythmic undercarriage from a softly tapped piano ebbs against the slow- building arc of sound. The second piece seems to be staged from prepared piano, amplified televisions, and tone generators, offering another skeletal rhythm to the clinical frequencies. The third piece returns to the ideas of the first with the reprise of that piano, but here a semblance of a melody encroaches the slow-motion raga drone from low-thumbing electronics and rasping sustained strings. It's not all that far from another of Nicolai's storied collaborations, with Ryuichi Sakamoto. Both Zeitkratzer and Nicolai are guilty of playing it safe on these three pieces, but the results are striking and lovely nonetheless." [Aquarius Records review]
€15.00
Foil Punk
https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/foil-punk
The new album by Łukasz Szałankiewicz aka ZENIAL contains a total of eight tracks, ranging from broadly understood experimental electronics, which is the result of his experience gained in numerous musical projects. You can hear here echoes of previous achievements under ZENIAL, but with the influence of music previously known from, among others, Angst’78, NOR_POL or Aabzu. The subsequent issues close with a clasp outlined by the topic, which is also a tribute to cyberpunk culture, with all its character, philosophy and formula, often drawing a dystopian, slightly post-apocalyptic vision of the future, but also engaging in a discourse on issues related to conspiracy theories arising from in a wide stream, as a reflection of the fears that consume communities in the face of the unknown. The musician does not provide answers, but invites us to a discussion about AI and the dangers lurking in the near future, in which scenarios caused by fears and ignorance are to be realized, while presenting the point of view of a person who is more aware of the futuristic model in which humans are only the mode of the great dehumanized wave of the universe.
The material was recorded at the French institute Center National De Création Musicale in Reims.
Music by: Łukasz Szałankiewicz
Mastering by: Rafał Sądej
Front cover by: Łukasz Pazera
"In a world brimming with uncertainty and quickening paranoia, Lukasz Szalankiewicz - known to the realms of experimental electronic enthusiasts as Zenial - has unveiled a dystopian soundtrack for our times, one that smacks of cyberpunk echoes, metallic ghosts, and the palpable tension of a future where humanity grapples with its own obsolescence. "Foil Punk" is an album forged in the unsettling hum of machines, where each track feels like a sonic fragment from a fractured, possibly doomed, future.
Recorded at the prestigious Centre National De Création Musicale in Reims, and heavily influenced by cyberpunk aesthetics and conspiracy theories, "Foil Punk" invites listeners to engage in an uneasy discourse about artificial intelligence, human fear, and the inexorable march of technological dehumanization. The album is an experience where fear is not merely a backdrop - it is the architect, the engine, and the very air we breathe.
From the very first track, "Katedra 2.11" a rapid-fire flurry of glitchy, otherworldly pulses, Zenial doesn't hold back, pulling the listener into a world that is both harsh and hypnotically alluring. There's an overwhelming sense of urgency, as though the machinery of the universe is accelerating past our comprehension, leaving us in a state of perpetual catch-up. The track lasts just over four minutes, but it feels like a condensed eternity - sound unfurling like an unraveling narrative of our technological plight.
"I'm Yours" follows, with its ethereal, almost romantic quality. A deceptive track, it might first sound like a reprieve from the chaos, but in typical Zenial fashion, it quickly becomes disorienting. The melody collapses into a stuttered rhythm, like a heart skipping beats, a metaphor for a world where control is a façade.
Track 3, "Access granted" feels like an invitation - and a warning. Its cold, mechanical voice proclaims permission granted, but the warm rush of relief that accompanies the words soon morphs into something unsettling. The tone suggests that in the near future, our access to everything we desire will come with a price. And who is in charge of granting it? This question lingers, even after the track ends.
And then comes "Deckard" - a sprawling 13-minute epic that calls to mind the towering, sterile landscapes of Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner". The track is built on low, rumbling bass and erratic, fractured rhythms that stretch across the entire piece, as though the machinery of this dystopia is malfunctioning, pushing through systems that were never meant to interact. Zenial’s knack for weaving tension from silence and noise is unmatched here, as the soundscape builds relentlessly, like a machine on the brink of overload.
When you reach "Leon Kowalski, serial number N6MAC41717", the longest track of the album, you're deep in the belly of the beast. This 14-minute piece feels like an odyssey, a journey through the decaying underbelly of a world run by algorithms, surveillance, and a profound sense of human alienation. The name itself - a nod to "Blade Runner" - suggests that this track is more than just a sonic exploration; it's a tribute to the forgotten souls in a post-human landscape. Zenial’s use of sound here is almost cruel, pushing the listener into an emotional corner where the lines between synthetic and organic are no longer distinct.
"Upgrade" follows with its eerily smooth synths and sharp percussion, a soundtrack to an ascension that feels as much like a surrender as it does a technological upgrade. The track flows into "Bialy Szum" - White Noise - which lingers in the air like an afterthought, like the hum of a world that's too saturated with information to ever pause for breath. The rhythm is sparse, minimalistic, as if representing the stillness before a storm of bytes and signals.
Finally, "Event Horizon" closes the album with a slow, creeping dread. The title alone brings to mind the edge of a black hole - the point of no return - and as the track moves through low, vibrating drones and distant metallic rumbles, it’s impossible not to feel a sense of inevitable collapse, as though there’s no way out. Time stretches and warps, much like the concept it’s named after. Here, Zenial pulls no punches, leaving you in a state of suspended finality.
What strikes you as you journey through "Foil Punk" is Zenial’s skillful weaving of sounds that both engage and alienate. He draws from his deep well of experience, particularly from projects like Angst'78, NOR_POL, and Aabzu, but here, he steps into new territory - where cold, analytical sound meets a very human, very emotional landscape of fear, anxiety, and the unknown.
As much as this album is a tribute to the culture and philosophy of cyberpunk, it is also an invitation to discuss the ways in which humanity is at the mercy of the technologies we’ve birthed. But Zenial, like the best experimental musicians, provides no clear answers. Instead, he invites you into the conversation, asking you to reflect on the dangers that lurk just beneath the surface of our ever-connected world.
In a world increasingly defined by machine learning and artificial intelligence, "Foil Punk" is a prophetic soundtrack for the not-so-distant future, where humanity may find itself as mere passengers on a ship piloted by algorithms. What happens when we lose control? What happens when we can no longer distinguish between human and machine? These are the questions "Foil Punk" dares us to consider, all while delivering a listening experience that is as mesmerizing as it is unnerving.
It's a dark, compelling, and, at times, absurd journey - a punk manifesto for a new era, where foil hats and neon-lit streets are as real as the machines that will one day rule them." [CHAIN D.L.K., Vito Camarretta]
€13.00
Zimiamvian Night 2
"Mike Bennett's guitar-based ambient drone is draped across sounds created on the other side of the world. Using New Zealander Christopher Orczy's harmonium works from his October release as a basis, Bennett recreates an entirely new majestic work. The result is a chilly, nearly mournful depiction of the sound of northern lights as they ascend and fall in the night sky. Bennett previously released his debut, Zimiamvian Night 1 on Infraction Records in 2005. It was a dark cavernous foray into Zoviet-style old-school ambient with tape loops and guitar-based drone. This new work is a leap forward in texture and atmosphere two years in the making." [label info]
www.infractionrecords.com
€13.50
Tables are Turning
"Somewhere in the rainy, misty forests of the Pacific Northwest of America, three ladies have the unlikely task of sewing together the packaging for a new album by :zoviet*france:.
:zoviet*france: are releasing ‘The Tables Are Turning’ on compact disc and double LP through Soleilmoon Recordings. The music was composed as the soundtrack to ‘Designer Body’, a dance that toured England from 2008 to 2009. The work explores the transformational relationship between humans and the clothing they wear. Seven dancers, performing on continuously rotating plinths, slowly remove layers of their costumes, revealing the sensuous nude bodies beneath. The music accompanying the dancers is by turns dense and moody, then lyrical and soaring, underlining the mounting vulnerability of the dancers as they undress.
Liv Lorent, balletLORENT's artistic director and choreographer, spoke with Kelly Apter, writer for The List, saying “At the beginning, the body is the most designed it can be. They’re wearing hats, coats, heavy costumes and make-up – all the man-made and artificial things we do to disguise ourselves everyday. Then, over 50 minutes, we take it all away. And because there are several layers, there’s a real sense of metamorphosis.”
The members of :zoviet*france:, who prefer to remain annonymous, write “We've known Liv Lorent for a long time. When she started to conceive 'Designer Body', which she wanted to be a hybrid of contemporary dance and performance art, she decided that an unconventional performance needed an unconventional soundtrack. The composition of the soundtrack and the choreography evolved alongside each other so it became a dialogue between Liv and ourselves. The main inspiration that we took from the production's concept was rotation; throughout the one hour performance, the dancers are located on turntables that turn continuously, at varying speeds and changing direction. We mirrored this in much of the soundtrack, with circular and rotating sounds.”
Both formats (CD and double LP) are presented in a deluxe dual-layer green satin bag with fold-over flap. The letters ‘ZF’ are hand-stitched into the flap in white thread, and a two-sided color insert printed on sturdy cardstock completes the package. There are 400 LPs and 600 compact discs in the first edition. The LP, with music on three of the four sides of the records, will go out of print when the initial pressing sells out." [label info]
www.soleilmoon.com
"With hindsight it is of course not easy to tell when you first heard something, let's say the music of :Zoviet*France:. I think, in my case, this must have been at my friend Peter, when staying over one night after a concert, and he would proceed to play me records, as that was the kind of stuff he was into, unlike me, who was more into cassettes (and waking up, always, to the sound of 'Erector' by Whitehouse). I am however pretty sure I knew the name before as their records where sold by the then existing mail order of Ding Dong Records. Slowly over the years in the mid 80s I got to hear and see those crazy packed records and was immersed by them. In 1990 or so I saw them play live, in the UK, where Peter's band was due to play also, in a multiple day event. I think one night just had :Zoviet*France:, and they played for what I remember as two hours in a seated theatre. Their extended sound tapestries of acoustic sounds, lots of electronics went on and on, from mood to mood.
A bit later I remember them playing at the Dutch radio station, VPRO in this case, for a recording that later turned out to be 'Mort Aux Vaches'. They were downstairs fiddling with the soundcheck and I was up in the control room. 'You can start the recording', one member said, and after 90 minutes the DAT was full. One of the radio people went down and told them it might be time to stop, which they did with a quick fade out. Now I could have been disappointed by that, being cut out of such beautiful music, but I wasn't. Seeing them playing around with the simplest of means, tea cups, flutes, and electronic devices was great. Following the extreme productivity of the 80s, there were some releases in the 90s, and in the 00s? One CD, and one 12"/10"/7"if I recall well. Zoviet*France, since many years a duo do play live and share live recordings easily but for whatever reason it never comes to a release that easily. Maybe they foresee that physical releases may disappear, maybe their sometimes complex packaging proofs to be difficult (this new one comes in a 'dual layer green satin bag with fold over flap') but more realistic: :Zoviet*France: are no longer part of the world of concerts, CDs and such like. For quite some time now they create soundtracks for dance companies and performances, and you don't sell CDs at those gigs (I guess, actually). 'The Tables Are Turning' was created for Ballet Lorent in 2008 and I am sure this is not a live recording, but I am also not sure how it works. There are twelve pieces here, quite distinctive pieces, so maybe these are used in this order, no breaks in between or maybe in some other configuration. There is an interesting distinction between the live releases by :Zoviet*France: and their studio work. A typical live CD has one or two pieces in which everything flows right into each other, like an endless stream of subconscious sounds. In their studio work they perform much shorter pieces which occasionally have an odd start or ending , like it's being cut out of a bigger whole. In the dance piece, the dancers are located on turntables - hence the title - and the revolving sound, the looping sound is something that returns in the music. From spacious and melodic in 'Prophecy Loved A Child' to the processed music boxes of 'Green Air' to the gritty organ opening of 'The Grit In The Cloud'. In the past :Zoviet*France: would refer to this as 'songlets', as opposed to real songs, but the shorter ditties here like 'The Fire Of Revolution', 'Sandbox', and 'A Moment Of Film' hark back the best days of 'Popular Soviet Songs' or 'Lohland'. I played this pretty much everyday for a week, and decided this is a great :Zoviet*France: release; not their best, which would be for me 'Mohnomishe', 'Shouting At The Ground', 'Digilogue' and 'What Is Not True', but it's up there with pretty much everything else I know by them, and which is a lot. This christmas will be spend with an entire day of :Zoviet*France: music." [FdW/Vital Weekly]
€65.00
The Decriminalisation of Country Music
" * 300 copies * As Glasgow\'s Tramway building evolved from train station into arts space, Zoviet France were present recording the ambient sounds for use in their commissioned themes for the Scottish Arts Council. Though you\'d hardly believe it from the mostly non industrial nature of these very comfortable soundscapes. Five tracks range between five and twelve minutes apiece and the remaining four serve as in-between filler. In \"Something Spooked the Horses\" a constant warm drone and panning scratchiness are overlaid with yearning strands of pedal steel guitar. \"Electron Gate\" gently pulsates a bass loop as microscopic bits click and fuzz. \"Pyroclastic Flow\" is noisier with some possible power tool abrasion honed into layered drones. \"Spiiltek\" is dancing plastic chips and electronic blips which relinquish to the deep bass waves beneath.
\"Light Abrasion\" closes with a higher pitched wall of sound and occasional cricket like chirping. All in all \"Decriminalisation..\" is an engaging work of auditory art. And it\'s as suited for busy high brow art rooms as it is lonely late night bed rooms.
€35.00
The Tables are Turning
"With hindsight it is of course not easy to tell when you first heard something, let's say the music of :Zoviet*France:. I think, in my case, this must have been at my friend Peter, when staying over one night after a concert, and he would proceed to play me records, as that was the kind of stuff he was into, unlike me, who was more into cassettes (and waking up, always, to the sound of 'Erector' by Whitehouse). I am however pretty sure I knew the name before as their records where sold by the then existing mail order of Ding Dong Records. Slowly over the years in the mid 80s I got to hear and see those crazy packed records and was immersed by them. In 1990 or so I saw them play live, in the UK, where Peter's band was due to play also, in a multiple day event. I think one night just had :Zoviet*France:, and they played for what I remember as two hours in a seated theatre. Their extended sound tapestries of acoustic sounds, lots of electronics went on and on, from mood to mood.
A bit later I remember them playing at the Dutch radio station, VPRO in this case, for a recording that later turned out to be 'Mort Aux Vaches'. They were downstairs fiddling with the soundcheck and I was up in the control room. 'You can start the recording', one member said, and after 90 minutes the DAT was full. One of the radio people went down and told them it might be time to stop, which they did with a quick fade out. Now I could have been disappointed by that, being cut out of such beautiful music, but I wasn't. Seeing them playing around with the simplest of means, tea cups, flutes, and electronic devices was great. Following the extreme productivity of the 80s, there were some releases in the 90s, and in the 00s? One CD, and one 12"/10"/7"if I recall well. Zoviet*France, since many years a duo do play live and share live recordings easily but for whatever reason it never comes to a release that easily. Maybe they foresee that physical releases may disappear, maybe their sometimes complex packaging proofs to be difficult (this new one comes in a 'dual layer green satin bag with fold over flap') but more realistic: :Zoviet*France: are no longer part of the world of concerts, CDs and such like. For quite some time now they create soundtracks for dance companies and performances, and you don't sell CDs at those gigs (I guess, actually). 'The Tables Are Turning' was created for Ballet Lorent in 2008 and I am sure this is not a live recording, but I am also not sure how it works. There are twelve pieces here, quite distinctive pieces, so maybe these are used in this order, no breaks in between or maybe in some other configuration. There is an interesting distinction between the live releases by :Zoviet*France: and their studio work. A typical live CD has one or two pieces in which everything flows right into each other, like an endless stream of subconscious sounds. In their studio work they perform much shorter pieces which occasionally have an odd start or ending , like it's being cut out of a bigger whole. In the dance piece, the dancers are located on turntables - hence the title - and the revolving sound, the looping sound is something that returns in the music. From spacious and melodic in 'Prophecy Loved A Child' to the processed music boxes of 'Green Air' to the gritty organ opening of 'The Grit In The Cloud'. In the past :Zoviet*France: would refer to this as 'songlets', as opposed to real songs, but the shorter ditties here like 'The Fire Of Revolution', 'Sandbox', and 'A Moment Of Film' hark back the best days of 'Popular Soviet Songs' or 'Lohland'. I played this pretty much everyday for a week, and decided this is a great :Zoviet*France: release; not their best, which would be for me 'Mohnomishe', 'Shouting At The Ground', 'Digilogue' and 'What Is Not True', but it's up there with pretty much everything else I know by them, and which is a lot. This christmas will be spend with an entire day of :Zoviet*France: music." [FdW/Vital Weekly_ review to the first edition from Soleilmoon Rec.]
€31.50
| Artist | Album | Format | Description | Year | Price (incl. 19% VAT) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [LAW-RAH] COLLECTIVE, THE | Field of View | CD | the latest album by the dutch "experimental drone" project comes as a surprise, incorporating female singing & spoken voice & slow minimal rhythmic elements with the typical atmospheric drones... | 2012 | €13.50 |
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| 1000SCHOEN | Moune | CD | back in stock the first proper CD-release (after numerous CDRs) by the musical side of HELGE SIEHLs project (once a member of MAEROR TRI) who is also active as painter and multi-media artist; three long tracks of mysterious & deeply floating ambience inspired by the "moon"-topic; lim. 500 | 2010 | €13.00 |
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| AALFANG MIT PFERDEKOPF / EMERGE | Die kosmische Zygote / Hináphapi | MC | two Drone Rec. 7" artists in a surrealistic marriage: first re-issue by the fine taalem mCDR from 2006 (23 min, re-mastered 2023), plus lots of unrelased stuff: a new epic collaboration piece called "Hináphapi" was created in 2023 (36 + min!), and two mysterious "intermissions" ("Pausenmusik") fill the gaps and sublime black holes (another 30 min)...lots of unidentifiable drone objects surrounding your ether synapses.. C-90, handpainted cover | 2024 | €9.50 |
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| AF URSIN | Itinera | LP | this is the first AF URSIN album created entirely on analogue synths - and if you know AF URSIN it should be clear these are not the typical "minimal synth" or "cosmic" sounds, but more mysterious surroundings: like stranding on an alien planet, finding strange hieroglyphs from an archaic past, listening to space winds, waving sinus tones and choirs of unknown beings, at the same time melancholic and full of nostalgy.. lim. 250 copies on clear vinyl | 2017 | €19.00 |
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| AKITA, MASAMI | Wattle | pic-LP | the series of picture discs on Elevator Bath (with visual artwork by the artists themselves) finally continues with a release by MASAMI AKITA aka MERZBOW, who re-worked photogrraphs of a Turkey; on the vinyl two tracks of "unidentifiable metallic clanging, crushing feedback, jagged white noise, and various effects...There are no drums, no guitars, no vocals; just scorching electronic mayhem of the highest quality..." lim. 270 copies | 2016 | €20.00 |
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| ALIO DIE | Standing in a Place | CD | music for crossing a magic forest, filled with strange mushrooms and creatures... two new long tracks (69+ min. playtime) based on warm zither-sounds, female vocals in the backgorund, field recordings from nature & addtional electronics of LORENZO MONTANA => most peaceful Ambience filled with transcendency and tenderness that seems to completely stand still, experiencing endless moments of existence... lim. 300 with georgous cover pics by LINDA SERRA | 2016 | €15.00 |
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| Imaginal Symmetry | CD | four long tracks (77 min.) including the epic title-track, creating an extremely full and wide aural space (never sounded STEFANO MUSSO's zither so symphonic), often reaching a choral like beauty and sublimeness... feat. LINGUA FUNGI and AGLAIA (kantele, organ, electronics, effects), recorded in Oulu (Finland) and Tuscany 2011-2015; lim. 300 | 2016 | €15.00 |
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| ALIO DIE & AGLAIA | Vayu Rouah | CD | their second collaboration CD, back in stock, contains one epic one-tracker, broad + spacious dream-muzak that transcends time, endless washes of soundclouds + layers.... very minimal & very complex at the same time, on a micro-level.... perfect nightshade music... lovely album, 67 minutes | 2011 | €15.00 |
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| ALTIERI, CORRADO / GIANLUCA FAVARON | To Found | CD | third Italian collaboration by ALTIERI (aka UNCODIFIED), and G. FAVARON who created again eight highly dynamic tracks from pulses, short sequences and object samples, with 'microscopic' view on tiniest details and lots of energy transmitted.. think of PAN SONIC or some DEISON works; excellent stuff, absolutely to discover ! Lim.200 | 2020 | €12.00 |
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| AMINI, SIAVASH | A Mimesis of Nothingness | LP | already the fourth album on H.G. for this high-class "exp.-drone" artist from Tehran, transfering the photographs from NOOSHIN SHAFIEE into six stunning sound pictures.."..führt sein Publikum in ein Teheran, durch dessen Häuserschluchten und Alleen, über dessen weite Plätze, Parks, Fabrikgelände und Ruinen ein eisiger Wind weht, ein Wind, der Hagelklötze und Staub und Erinnerungen transportiert und all dies sprunghaft in die unterschiedlichsten Richtungen weht" [African Paper] + 8p booklet, on white vinyl | 2020 | €22.00 |
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| AMK | Caravan | 4 x MC - BOX | last copies of this lovely 4 x cassette box by the long standing project by A.M.KING who ran one of the best tape labels around, BANNED Production => "Caravan" consists of four C-10 tapes and is based on found sounds from unknown sources, probably records, radio, processed field and object recordings, typical for AMK it has a repetetive and bizarre flair, think of BIG CITY ORCHESTRA, etc.. - U.S. import !! | 2017 | €22.00 |
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| ANDERSON, ANDREW | Vagrancies | CD | debut CD for this sound artist from Austin, TX, who ceates superb \'transcension drone\' muzak, completely ghostly and cryptic..- \" Mangled tapes, unidentifiable instruments, electronic wizardry, and wide-ranging found sounds / field recordings join forces here to create a kind of audio journal of paranormal phenomena... This album offers a sonic depiction of those barely perceptible footprints left by unseen specters.. \" - lim. 150 copies, 6 panel digipack, spot gloss printing | 2022 | €13.00 |
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| ANEMONE TUBE | The Three Worlds - Allegory of Vanity | CD | first part of a trilogy collecting rare cassette-only material from 1997-2013, summarising this under the existentialist worldview of the Theravada Buddhism of the 14th century, containing the three levels of existence of all beings; the 5 older tracks on this CD are "a perfect representation of Anemone Tube’s early old-school industrial / power-electronics phase, and yet proof that both the musical approach and the topical background were already fully developed at that stage." lim. 300, excellent artwork | 2017 | €12.50 |
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| The Three Worlds - Forget Heaven | CD | second part of a trilogy collecting rare cassette-only material from 1997-2013 (plus unreleased tracks), summarising this under the existentialist worldview of the Theravada Buddhism of the 14th century, containing the three levels of existence of all beings; "Forget Heaven" presents very raw and bleak noise ambient tracks, most coming from the MC with same name (1997), plus rare compilation and other materal from about the same period that forms an authentic picture.. lim. 300 | 2017 | €12.50 |
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| APPEL, KAREL | Musique Barbare | LP | "my paint-tube is a rocket!" Re-issue of this rare musique concrete LP from 1963 by radical Dutch painter and sculptor KAREL APPEL, who created three tracks for this LP at the Instituut Voor Sonologie by violating electric organ, kettle drum and other percussion instruments, and using his voice&screams, processed through extensive use of tape manipulation techniques ... it still sounds absolutely great after so many years! Comes in gatefold-cover with lots of pictures, liner notes, etc. | 2016 | €16.00 |
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| ARANOS | Alone Vimalakirti Blinks | CD-R | "Message is: do not bother dreaming about promised land, work thee not in a silly factory making somebody else rich, have a nice picnic, include a vintage bike if you like" - comes with special cover (full colour) | 2008 | €12.00 |
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| ATAVIST | II:Ruined | do-LP | known from the NADJA split albums, "epic suicidal sludge doom metal".. lim. 500 gatefold cover | 2009 | €16.00 |
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| B°TONG (B*TONG / B-TONG/ BTONG) | {Mass} | do-CD | epic double album by the versatile Swiss composer (also member of BU.D.D.A.) => 6 long tracks, developing an exceptional, captivating exp. ambient style (with guitars, vocals..) - *fieldrecording phrases, drone structures to guitar, almost post-rock quasi songs... - it is a soft and tender twilight harbouring secrets and mysteries- and the potential of light. The hopefulness of a vessel traversing the nigh-on infinite seas of blackness towards some distant star" - 300 copies | 2024 | €17.00 |
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| BAD SECTOR | Storage Disk 1 | CD | Great collection of older, rare material in the typical BAD SECTOR-style the Italian project got known for, also the B-side of the Drone EP (DR-18) is included ... raw and archaic sounding electronic synths, otherworlds of pulses and harmonics, at the same time melancholic and cold... 10 tracks, almost 55 minutes. Comes again in a very special cover-sleeve on the prolific labe from Moscow; - lim. 500 special cover & booklet | 2007 | €13.00 |
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| Dolmen Factory | CD | re-issue of this long deleted album (Membrum Debile Propaganda, 2000), new artwork (the typical Faria-styled oversized cardboard cover) and one bonus-track (rec. 1999, remixed 2008), edition of 500 | 2008 | €12.50 |
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| Kosmodrom | do-CD | re-issue of deleted 2005 release (Waystyx) dedicated to Russian space missions + cosmonautic topics, using sounds from original Soviet synths like the ANS & radio signal recordings... comes with the rare bous mini CDR and 5 more bonus-tracks in box with 12page booklet => ground-breaking work of electro-acoustic drones on the border of science & sound ! BACK IN STOCK | 2013 | €18.00 |
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| BAD SECTOR / TOMMASO LISA | Rebis / Periferiche | CD & book | surely one of the most unusual BAD SECTOR-projects, this comes with a full A5 book of Italian "cyber poetry" by TOMMASO LISA, whose texts also appear on the 12 track CD combined with sharp & experimental rhythms & cuts, as computerized / alienated male & female voices... the digitalized futuristic sounds merge with typical B.S. dark ambience, and the words.. still pretty unique, BACK IN STOCK! | 2005 | €14.00 |
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| BAILEY, BANKS | The Pool | CD | BANKS BAILEY captured the magic and aural mystery of a certain place in the Madrona Canyon in the Rincon Mountains of Arizona; these 5 pieces were constructed from field recordings made between 2009-2015; there are subtle 'near silence' drones and rumbles and extremely microscopic object sounds from nature (stones, sand, insects, animals).... "A very quiet CD but it captures a lot of beauty." lim. 200 art-cover | 2017 | €14.00 |
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| Mountains and Waters | CD | recordings from different quiet, untouched places in National Parks in the USA, with the focus of exploring the "Holocene epoch" (11700 years ago before the Anthropocene began), BANKS BAILEY managed to find beautiful 'droning' nature sounds (often it's not really clear what it is) along with the more typical environmental noises you can capture.. filed under: nature immersion sounds | 2019 | €14.00 |
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| BAILEY, THOMAS BEY WILLIAM | La Production Interdite | MC | highly interesting work by this researcher and writer who often cares about the 'threshold states' of consciousness, this is about the phenomenon of "Autoscopy" (i.e. the visualization of phantom doubles / Doppelgängers)... "Split into a purely instrumental half-hour side and a vocally-enhanced side in which TBWB narrates accounts of autoscopic events, this new album oscillates between moments of narcotic consolation and moments of sharp poignancy... " C-60, lim. 50 | 2018 | €10.00 |
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| BAKER, AIDAN (WITH RICHARD BAKER) | Smudging | LP | two long epic droney percussive tracks by AIDAN BAKER with drummer RICHARD BAKER, not so far from the ARC project... elegant.. subtle.. flowing.. lim. 400 (+45 art ed. handpinated) | 2012 | €15.00 |
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| BASINSKI, WILLIAM | Watermusic II | CD | back in stock, originally a CDR from 2003, with a long (66 minutes) one-tracker...- "Some pieces don't necessarily have to 'go' anywhere in particular, their existence is simple enough in that it presents a mood, a moment, a place and encapsulates it. Think of still-images for the ears as opposed to moving-pictures for the eyes... " - comes in translucent shell case | 2005 | €16.00 |
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| Variations: a Movement in Chrome Primitive | do-CD | re-issue of epic album from 2004, using fragile piano figures in endless repetition, evoking a feeling of timelessness and slow decay.. | 2013 | €24.50 |
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| BAYLE, FRANCOIS | Electrucs ! | LP | lost tapes/unpublished material by the GRM master composer (and designer of the 'Acousmonium') with the main pieces "ELECTRUCS" from 1974 (10 tracks) and "Cinq Dessins en Rosace" (1973, consisting of 5 movements)), plus two shorter pieces from 1973 & 1995; some astonishing electronic and treated acoustic sounds and arrangements from 45 years ago! printed innersleeve with exclusive liner notes and pictures | 2018 | €24.50 |
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| BECKAHESTEN | Svältens Tid | CD | the Swedish project feat. PER AHLUND (DISKREPANT, SOPHIA) with a refined new album, their third one...- *an intense journey through the depths of the human experience. The album's lyrics paint a vivid picture of struggle and introspection. Each track is meticulously crafted to convey a sense of urgency and raw emotion, making this album a standout in Beckahesten's discography. "The wolf has woken up" – these words encapsulate the essence of the album, a stirring metaphor for awakening and transformation.* - CD version lim. 300 copies | 2024 | €14.00 |
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| Svältens Tid | LP | the Swedish project feat. PER AHLUND with third album, black vinyl lim. 200 - *an intense journey through the depths of the human experience. The album's lyrics paint a vivid picture of struggle and introspection. Each track is meticulously crafted to convey a sense of urgency and raw emotion, making this album a standout in Beckahesten's discography. "The wolf has woken up" - these words encapsulate the essence of the album, a stirring metaphor for awakening and transformation.* | 2024 | €22.50 |
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| BEGG, MICHAEL | Sonambulo | CD | MICHAEL BEGG (FOVEA HEX, HUMAN GREED) is back with a more experimental and conceptual solo album with a surrealistic touch that was created & performed in Mexico end of 2018 during a residency, a kind of melancholic aural picturing 'dreamscape' of British painter LEONARA CARRINGTON (who lived in Mexico after WWII)... ed. of 150 copies only | 2019 | €13.00 |
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| BIANCHI, MAURIZIO (M.B.) | Verfall | CD-R | album based entirely on floating piano-tunes; sounds at times more like a wild ROBERT HAIGH than typical M.B. - 8 different tracks, all with german titles; rare CD-R on this label from Hongkong | 2010 | €10.00 |
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| BIRDS OF PASSAGE & LEONARDO ROSADO | Dear and Unfamiliar | LP | second album for the "dark poetique" singer/songwriter from New Zealand, collaborating with LEONARDO ROSADO; vinyl-version lim. 300 in the typical DENOVALI deluxe style ! | 2011 | €19.50 |
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| BORGA, ASCANIO | Altered States | do-CD | the Italian composer is back after a long release break, on ALTERED STATES twelve epic guitar drone pieces ("live in the studio") are presented, effected and multi-layered , reminding us on works of "N" or AIDAN BAKER, though BORGA can become quite noisy and furious at times... "The cumulative effect is volcanic, droning, sputtering worlds being formed, others being pulverized down to cellular level, ancient in gut feel, ablating all other thoughts." [S. Fruitman] lim. 100 only | 2015 | €12.00 |
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| BRASIL | Wander till spring | CD | large fold-out cover in the typical NEFRYT design ! side-project of ONE INCH OF SHADOW and first fabric-pressed (non-CDR) Nefryt-release ! | 2006 | €13.00 |
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| BRODERICK, PETER & GABRIEL SALOMAN | same | LP | collaboration by these two artists known from EFTERKLANG and YELLOW SWANS - basic source material recorded together was later shaped into 5 pieces:' Broderick’s side brings together elements of modern compostion, electronic music, dub and vocal-oriented songwriting, while Saloman’s side is an epic 18-minute journey that builds into a gorgeous crescendo before gliding away on plaintive cries of a violin'; lim. 350 copies on black vinyl | 2015 | €19.50 |
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| BRUME | Anastomose | CD | this release collects the legendary pic-10" for Ant-Zen from 1996, a very unknown 7" EP called "Charlemagne" from 1997 (Membrum Debile Prop.), and as a bonus the recent "Seven Trumpets" album (MC only, deleted, 2012); lim. 444 copies, oversized art cover! A great chance to re-discover some deleted BRUME-works! | 2013 | €12.00 |
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| Landed | mCD & OBJECT | long new BRUME piece (22+ min.) that shifts for the most part in subtle & droney regions (with surrealistic strangeness), but also has BRUME's typical breaks and cuts... awesome electro-acoustic / "intelligent" drone... lim. 100 only, comes in a plexi glass / glass frame cover | 2016 | €10.00 |
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| BRUNNEN | The Beekeeper's Dream (subscribers edition) | LP & pic-LP | we got few sets of the lim. pic-LP-set edition, usually only available if you subscribed to the whole RANFB-set !! LP and bonus pic-LP entitled "TIPPPOO's TIGER", with signed insert ! | 2005 | €30.00 |
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| BUNKER CITY VS. CARSTEN VOLLMER | Antarctica / Antarktika | pic-LP | "ANTARKTIKA: Wilde weiße Schönheit - Für alle Ewigkeit - Hast du dich zugedeckt - Mit einem Schleier aus Kristall"- nicely designed split picture-LP with 6 songs from BUNKER CITY (Oldenburg, Germany) on one side, and one long track by Germanys most incorrigible harsh noiser CARSTEN VOLLMER, inspired by the 'Antarktika' theme: feedbackin' white noise in different high frequency shapes, and melodic power punk-pop on the flipside - what a combination! Lim.100, with inlay | 2019 | €18.00 |
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| BURIAL CHAMBER TRIO | Wvrm | pic-10 | great looking pic-disc design by SELDON HUNT, lim. ed. of 3000 | 2008 | €15.00 |
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| CAPELLE, MIREILLE | Anello. Naga. Sunyata | 3 x CD | epic release by this singer, actor & music professor from Belgium, constructed 'geometrically' due to a mathematical scheme based on the symbolism of numbers, all pieces can be played seperately or together to build a complete 'Sonic Architecture'; => very dense meditative music using electronic sound drops, mysterious overtune drones, whispers, percussion, instruments (strings, flute, gongs), field & object recordings (water.. ). very otherworldy, captivating, somehow esoteric! MASTERPIECE!!! | 2009 | €25.00 |
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| CHALK, ANDREW | Ghosts of Nakhodka | LP | a different album than the "Ghost of Nakhodka" CD on Siren Records (2010/2011), these 13 miniatures are based on synths and field recordings, use backwards sounds and form nice varified drone pieces, interwoven in the typical CHALKian way... ed. of 300 copies, inlay | 2015 | €19.50 |
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| CHAMBERS, IAIN | The Eccentric Press | LP | PERSISTENCE OF SOUND is a new interesting British label for experimental musique concrete (so far 4 LPs out): IAN CHAMBERS presents two radio pieces, "The Eccentric Press" uses industrial machine noises and typical working sounds from bells, etc.. recorded at the LWL-Industriemuseum in Dortmund, commissioned by WDR; "Maudslay Engine" is composed with various airplane, steam engine and machine-sounds... two very nice sound art pieces to discover, comes with DL code | 2019 | €23.50 |
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| CHAOTALION | Asabjaris | CD | nine cryptic titles with names like Z7000GATE0007Z or Z7000MOON0007Z are to be found on CHAOTALIONs second CD, a trip into old school analogue "ambient industrial" soundscapes reminding on TELEPHERIQUE or AUBE, with a more surrealistic and dark touch... "The collage-like soundscapes of Chaotalion are always arranged with great detail; with an enormous archive of field recordings, his typical analogue sound and unique references to the occult.." | 2019 | €12.00 |
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| CHASSE, LOREN | Characters at the Water Margin | CD | finally a new release by LOREN CHASSE (who was once active with ID BATTERY, COELACANTH, and in THUJA) who assembled field recordings from the Olympic Rainforest in Washington, USA, near the Pacific Ocean; you can hear his activites and interactions merging with the pure sounds from air, ocean, wind, stones, wood, etc. etc... very pure "exploring sounds" in this series of MYSTERY SEA, dealing with "spirits of specific places", lim. 200, full-colour cardboard-sleeve, inlay | 2014 | €14.00 |
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| CHION, MICHEL / LIONEL MARCHETTI / JEROME NOETINGER | Les 120 Jours | do-CD | back in stock this most intense / dramatic and epic Musique Concrete work ("monster")- composed 1997/98: 'Ausufernde Electro-Akustik und Musique Concrete der drei französischen Komponisten, wo sich Kriegs/Kampf-geräusche, orientale Gesänge, Stimmen und found sounds und massenhaft konkrete Geräusche aller Art zu einem dynamischen, intensiven Ganzen vermengen.. ein wahrhaft monumentales Werk!' [Drone Rec] | 2003 | €15.00 |
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| CHORE IA | Postscriptum | do-CD | the Polish cult label OBUH released cassettes of this project in the 90's, in the typical style for that time - instrumental ambience, sometimes weird and with psychedelic / avant rock influences, with spoken words or more expressiveness... - here are now 5 new dark tracks, plus material from two long deleted more wild OBUH cassettes - "This is a great slab of weird electronic drone that should find favour with fans of creepy atmospheric horror drones as well as fans of avant garde rock." [Musique Machine] | 2023 | €16.00 |
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| CHRIS & COSEY | Exotika (violet vinyl) | LP | re-issue of album from 1987; futuristic danceable electronica in the typical CTI style; re-mastered by CHRIS CARTER, this limited re-press is available on transparent VIOLET vinyl and comes with insert | 2019 | €23.00 |
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| COIL | The New Backwards (special edition) | 3 x pic-LP | collector's edition! 3 x pic LPs, lim. 555 copies, hotfoil embossing, handnumbered, looks great! -> the sister album to "Ape of Naples" from 2008, with diverse unreleased bonus tracks ('rough working stages and surprising remixes') from DANNY HYDE's archive.. *These songs are as diverse and wild as the places they originated from, partly infamously spawned in Sharon Tate's former home in the Hollywood Hills, the Nine Inch Nails home base in New Orleans and London's Swanyard* | 2022 | €79.00 |
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| The Ape of Naples (special ed.) | 3 x pic-LP | collector's edition! 3 x pic LPs, lim. 555 copies, hotfoil embossing in GOLD, handnumbered, looks great! - 'This version is the third Coil record receiving the fully remastered and enhanced 3LP/2CD treatment supervised by Danny Hyde. Includes 9 additional rare or unreleased tracks.* + insert and slipmat | 2022 | €76.50 |
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| COMES, MARTIJN & GIULIO ALDINUCCI | Crystalline Tragedies | LP | strong split LP with side-long pieces by dutch MARTIJN COMES (very minimal drones and pulses based on synths & guitar sounds), and G. ALDINUCCI, who created a stunning ambient collage in his typical choral / spheric way, using field recordings from a Christian procession in "rural Tuscanny"... ed. of 300 copies, comes with DL code | 2018 | €16.50 |
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| COMMON EIDER, KING EIDER | A Wound of Body | LP | lim. vinyl version of this album by the US American "esoteric black ambient" project who mix ritualistic soundscapes, dark ambient/drone, folk and black metal elements to a very minimalistic melange beyond all typical genres...- "a beautifully stark soundscape, dolorously dense, suffocatingly oppressive and utterly claustrophobic. An immersive black hole of bleak, cavernous drone music and disquieting, desolate ambience, each track a hushed and harrowing ritual..." - 300 copies, printed innersleeve | 2018 | €25.00 |
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| CONIGLIO, ENRICO | Teredo Navalis | CD | with "Teredo Navalis" you can dive into the underwater and aquatic sonics of the Venetian lagune, captured in a special way via "electromagnetic sensors, binaural microphones, hydrophones, contact and condenser microphones", building not a typical 'sound-postcard' with lots of water-sounds, but more the normally unheard effects of ships, plants, animals, and water movements inside this elemental medium... very interesting album by this recommdended Italian composer, ed. of 300 copies | 2020 | €13.00 |
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| CONTINUUM [STEVEN WILSON & DIRK SERRIES] | Continuum Recyclings Volume One (expanded re-issue) | do-LP + CD | this expanded re-issue of the first CONTINUUM RECYCLINGS release contains as a bonus the so far unreleased BASS COMMUNION remix "Construct III - Immersion mix" (a remix from one of the pieces of the first CONTINUUM album on Soleilmoon) - a full 60 min. CD !! On the vinyl: four "recyclings" of the CONTINUUM album done by VIDNA OBMANA / DIRK SERRIES, 180 gr. black vinyl and gatefold picture sleeves | 2016 | €32.00 |
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| CONTRASTATE | The Illusion of Power | CD | re-issue of the rare lathe-cut 10" (released for the OEC festival in Italy in 2019) plus unreleased material, inspired by the BREXIT topic - "A sonic soundtrack to an apocalyptic world that is hypnotic, yet still full of dynamic sounds and shifts...- somewhere inside the dark ritual ambience of the electronic avant-garde shot through with a vein of experimental noise and sarcophetic vocals strewn amongst industrial surrealism." - ed. of 300 copies | 2020 | €13.00 |
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| CONTROLLED DEATH (MASONNA) / MAYUKO HINO | Split | pic-LP | Japan (death) noise split picture LP with 6 new C.D. tracks entitled "Devil's Sacrifice" and 2 long MAYUKO HINO tracks on the B-Side... - "Maso's is an uncompromising emotion of slabs of screams and drone, whereas Mayuko's achieves the same emotional frenzy by other means. Both achieve the apocalyptic annihilation of sound.." [Vital Weekly] - 400 copies pressed | 2021 | €26.00 |
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| COSEY FANNI TUTTI | Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes | LP | audio explorations and experiments that lead to the creation of the soundtrack to the film about DELIA DERBYSHIRE (who died 2001) from CAROLINE CATZ... COSEY FANNI TUTTI had full access to DERBYSHIRE's audio archive and her compositional notes..15 tracks & surrealistic miniatures, merging COSEYs and DELIAs sound in a great way...- "the album is a journey through both Delia and Cosey's practise -- to create an audio world for Catz's depiction of the artist to inhabit." - CLEAR vinyl | 2022 | €30.00 |
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| Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes | CD | audio explorations and experiments that lead to the creation of the soundtrack to the film about DELIA DERBYSHIRE (who died 2001) from CAROLINE CATZ... COSEY FANNI TUTTI had full access to DERBYSHIRE's audio archive and her compositional notes..15 tracks & surrealistic miniatures, merging COSEYs and DELIAs sound in a great way...- "the album is a journey through both Delia and Cosey's practise -- to create an audio world for Catz's depiction of the artist to inhabit." - digisleeve CD version | 2022 | €15.00 |
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| CRANIOCLAST |
(THE) L.K.A. SONAR KIT
(SOLD OUT) |
pic-7 | the first pic-7" on Drone Records, 2nd ed. 11/2000, by the legendary post-industrial / ambient band from Germany | 2000 | ||
| CUPPLES, AARON | Island of the Hungry Ghost (OST) | LP | wonderful Motion Picture Soundtrack for the documentary of same name = a film 'moving between the natural, human and spiritual worlds' of the "Christmas Island", located near Indonesia, with millions of red crabs moving from the jungle towards the ocean...- the score consists of many field recordings (ocean, insects, fire, Buddhist prayers) and drones created on a selfmade long-string instruments, for an ongoing powerful immersion... - incl. large 8 page booklet and postcard with link to watch the film!! | 2021 | €24.00 |
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| CURRENT 93 | In Menstrual Night | pic-LP | re-issue of the nightshade-like LP from 1986, for the first time in it's original pic-LP format, performers were: DAVID TIBET, DIANA ROGERSON, HÖH; JOHN BALANCE, ROSE McDOWALL and others, thematically focused on the menstruation / moon cycle..- "Die Soundkollagen als eine Art Archiv geträumter (und gestorbener) Träume zu sehen, ist eine durchaus naheliegende Assoziation, die Tibets Ideen zu dem Album entspricht.." - comes with signed postcard | 2024 | €32.00 |
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| The Long Shadow Falls | 7 x CD BOX + 7inch | epic conceptual release that reminds on THE CARETAKER, using vocal loops from vintage sources, dissolving into hiss and drone.. spread on seven CDs are 41 very similar, unpublished, "redreamt" remixes of the rare 12" lathe cut with the same name, plus hte material from the "Why can't we all just walk away?" 12", a bonus 7" and a 40 page booklet with ghost photos from DAVID TIBET, and booklet in a sturdy box | 2024 | €75.00 |
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| Nature Unveiled | pic-LP | lim. pic LP re-issue (beautiful die-cut print) of the very first full C93 album, feat. ANNIE ANXIETY, STEVEN STAPLETON, JOHN MURPHY, etc.., carefully restored and remastered - "described to myself in a vision as an album which hoped, wished, and made bad trips sound like good trips....I had decided to make a pop album that dealt with my (then-as now!) primary fascinations: Christian apocalyptic and eschatological Christian texts." [DAVID TIBET] | 2024 | €35.50 |
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| Lucifer over London | pic-LP | the 3 track mini-album from 1994 (about 28 min. lenght) in the deluxe pic-12" re-issue series (die-cut sleeve, 1000 copies) - "I was obsessed, am obsessed, by The Groundhogs, so gave C93 a chance to cover their perfect "Sad-Go-Round" from their perfect Solid album. I also loved Black Sabbath, but had listened to them so much that I never wanted to hear them again. So Michael Cashmore's Perfect Playing of their intro to "Paranoid" was Perfect Way To Wave GoodBye to them... " | 2025 | €35.00 |
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| CUSACK, PETER | Favourite Berlin Sounds | CD | an audio book of city-sounds from Berlin with 31 recordings, ranging from city traffic (U-Bahn & S-Bahn stations) over nightly party people crowds to courtyards & animal sounds typical for Berlin, characterizing its aural atmosphere very well... feat. booklet with detailed descriptions of every recording; very nice & cafefully put together | 2013 | €14.00 |
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| DÄLEK {DALEK] | Respect to the Authors | 12inch | a six track mini-LP by the atmospheric hip-hop experiMENTALists, still unique in their genre, vinyl-only release lim. 500 copies; "...being Hip Hop for those who don’t pigeon-hole themselves as typical Hip Hop diehards, attracting those who keep listening outside the box. Subversive. Paradigm-changing. Mindblowing." - no download code, no digital version at all available !! | 2019 | €17.50 |
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| DAUBY, YANNICK | Chant de dune | mCDR | fascinating field recordings from SAND-dunes in the desert, the flowing and rickling of particles that sound almost like water, but also more drone-like phenomena caused by heavy winds and avalanches.. "...unexplained, these singings from the desert are despicted like roarings, voices from surnatural beings or the rumbling of the thunder." [Yannick Dauby] - DAUBY appeared as ENTRELACS with MICHAEL NORTHAM on Drone Records, this early mCDR release is still a highlight in his catalogue; new none jewel-case edition ! | 2003 | €5.00 |
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| Sounds of HORSE. Music for Dance by Yannick Dauby | do-CD & BOOK | pieces taken from six soundtracks for a Taiwanese contemporary dance company named HORSE; excellent field recording based tracks using animal voices, urban soundscapes, electronic processions; comes in a full-colour / glossy book-like fold-out sleeve with pictures of the performances & additional texts | 2011 | €16.00 |
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| 咾咕厝 ló-kó͘-chhù (Penghu Experimental Sound Studio Vol.2 ) | LP | Vol. 2 in YANNICK DAUBY's studies of the sounds and sights on the PENGHU Archipelago in Taiwan - this contains interviews, field recordings, found objects and subtle electronic manipulations, a "sound picture" of a beautiful island is created, a more subtle and earplay like release with a fascinating atmosphere - LAST COPY! | 2017 | €20.00 |
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| DAUBY, YANNICK / WAN-SHUEN TSAI (SHEJINGREN) | Village, Vestiges | BOOK & CD | small full colour art-book, 144pages, & CD; pictures from villages & abandoned houses in France & Taiwan, texts in French & Chinese Mandarin. Very beautiful & poetic | 2009 | €20.50 |
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| DAVIS, GARETH & MERZBOW | Broken Landscapes | LP | after the first successful collaboration "Atsusaku" (2016) here's the follower, with GARETH DAVIS (OISEAUX TEMPETE) on bass clarinet and electronics, using lots of field recordings and focused on the theme "mechanisation of the environment" => "Broken Landscapes is built on impenetrably thick walls of manipulated field recordings while the bass clarinet saturates the midrange, the massive swirling mesh of analogue and digital material painting pictures of the magnified terrain that surrounds us." - lim.300 | 2020 | €18.00 |
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| DE/MUTE | Visual Noise | CD-R & booklet | the german drone/ambient project asked via internet to send art-photographs to create music to it; "VISUAL NOISE" shows the result, 7 tracks for 7 photos, somewhere between BAD SECTOR & dark TANGERINE DREAM maybe, comes in DVD-digipack & 16p. full-colour booklet with texts to the pics; nice idea / project, recommended if you like electronic ambience; lim. 100 | 2012 | €18.00 |
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| DEISON | Magnetic Debris Vol. 1 & 2 | do-CD | old "magnetic" tape sounds and loops form the basis for this mesmerizing and epic doCD : * These processed debris explores drone territories as a concrete atmospheric soundtrack full of tension with a sense of mystery and a melancholic beauty... recorded in various locations using prepared tapes, metals, strings, wires, electronics and various audio generators." - only 200 copies pressed | 2022 | €16.00 |
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| DEISON / GALAN | Cayendo | CD-R | strong electro-instrumental collaboration of DEISON with Spanish Cello player SARA GALAN, at times harmonic, at times granular-microscopic, ambient symphonic, experimental... 8 well arranged tracks beyond typical genres.... the basic improvisations were inspired by the sentence "Earth swallow me (Tierra tragame)" - "And then the concept leads to internal sounds, sound from stomach, sounds from the throat. Visceral sounds also connected with earth, sand, mud and desert." | 2013 | €10.00 |
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| DEISON + GIANLUCA FAVARON | Nearly Invisible | CD | first ever collaboration by these two Italian experimentalists: G. FAVARON has specialized to work in an electro-acoustic way with daily sounds, C. DEISON uses field recordings & electronics for his noise-ambient scapes => on "Nearly Invisible" they created 9 pieces that almost defy categorization, merging ambient industrial influences, electronics and musique concrete to surprising pieces, highly interesting! comes with oversized 16page full-colour book with pics by STEFANO GENTILE, lim. 230 | 2015 | €12.00 |
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| DEUTSCH NEPAL | Alcohology | CD | first new DN album in 5 years, pretty unique slow pounding old school industrial with LINA BABY DOLL's typical voice / lyrics, inspired by an obvious theme.... "a praise to the misery of a meaningless life only decorated with boredom, violence and a lot of alcohol" | 2015 | €13.00 |
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| DEUTSCH NEPAL / MAMA BÄR | Klinik der Reinen Vernunft | LP | amazing release in the FLUXUS +/- series by PSYCH.KG: three rare tracks by DEUTSCH NEPAL, plus one-side long track by MAMA BÄR coming from an ultra rare SHMF LP (2005); hand-clinched full-colour sleeve, numbered and signed, some have handmade (porn-pics) elements / lim. 100 / LAST COPIES!! | 2017 | €40.00 |
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| DEUTSCH, ANDREW | Lung Cleaner | CD | mind-overflooding microscopic ambience, the mergence of electronic & acoustic sounds, hyper-concrete and flowing at the same time! back in stock! | 2004 | €13.00 |
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| DHOMONT, FRANCIS | Birthdays | LP | new recordings (four pieces) created 2007-2010 by the now 85 years old French composer; one sided white vinyl picture disc, with backside screen-printed, lim. 300 only | 2012 | €18.00 |
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| DISSECTING TABLE | Mystical | CD-R | mid range noise consisting of the typical D.T. morphing digital particles that seem to move up and down in endless configurations, like crackling rain showers, but not outside, INSIDE your brain... lim. 20 copies only, DVD sized case, full colour cover | 2020 | €15.00 |
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| DOUMA, MARCO / ROEL MEELKOP / RUTGER ZUYDERVELT | Pierdrie | DVD | a very nice installation film (18 min) that runs automatically in a loop, filmed at the harbour of Rotterdam showing lots of fascinating moving water-surface patterns using also field recordings for the collaged sounds... a collaboration of MACHINEFABRIEK with MARCO DOUMA (images) and ROEL MEELKOP (sounds), comes with option for stereo & stereo surround sound; this brings the typical, contemplating harbour atmosphere into your rooms... | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| DOYLE, ROGER | Babel | 5 x CD | epic work from 1999 by the prolific Irish composer with the tracks / CDs symbolizing architectural spaces and rooms within a fictitious city, along with music from a radio station of the tower of Babel... => strange electronic music with various interconnections and relations, a thoughtful play with music and cultural myths, a very broad musical approach from strange pop music to cut up sounds and musique concrete pieces, challenging and complex!! Comes with 12p. booklet | 2013 | €35.00 |
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| DUBIT | Vitriol | CD | excellent 'alchemical' experimental drone with post industrial touch from this Italian artist on his second full length album, based on analogue sources, self made instruments and gadgets from metallic elements plus digital synthesis, at times with a more electronic / technoid substrate...dark & vivid stuff, "drawing distopic landscapes in the sky"; 10 tracks, almost 74 min. playtime, strongly recommended to be checked out ! ed. of 500 copies | 2017 | €10.00 |
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| EARTH | Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light II | pic-do-LP | limited picture disc edition of their 2012-album, 45 rpm | 2012 | €30.00 |
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| EARTHMONKEY | Alms of Morpheus | do-CD | pure psychedelism for the 2010's, comes in the typical lovely oversized mini gatefold-sleeve the label is known for! Lim. 600 | 2011 | €14.00 |
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| EINHEIT, ESCH & MUR | Terre Haute | LP | collaborative project of legendary German underground figures F.M.EINHEIT (EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN), EN ESCH (KMFDM) and MONA MUR, resurging the typical West-Berlin 80's industrial / new wave / minimal sound with heavy sequencer synths, samples, noises and strong female/male vocals; they call it "German Angst Ridden Art Core"; feat. one cover of a BRECHT / WEILL song ! lim. 299 copies on red vinyl | 2015 | €22.00 |
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| EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN | Phase IV : the box set (Alles in Allem) | LP-Box | back in stock few copies!!! => lim. box edition of the "Alles in Allem" album, with additional CD + LP feat. bonus material and outtakes, a DVD with pictures and audio material from the studio process, and a 164p. book | 2020 | €90.00 |
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| Alles in Allem | LP | the first new regular studio-album after 12 years forms a very lyrical and song-oriented, critical and nostalgic "homage" to their hometown Berlin, and sounds (again) like none of the albums before.. "Alles in Allem is a more pleasant listen than one would typically associate with the Neubauten brand. Within that refined accessibility, however, they remain playful and manically experimental." [The Quietus] - vinyl version with 4 page 12" booklet | 2020 | €22.50 |
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| ELODIE (TIMO VAN LUIJK & ANDREW CHALK) | Clarte Deserte (special edition) | LP | eft-over copies of the special edition with handmade sleeve designed by ANDREW CHALK in the typical FARAWAY PRESS - style; comes with beautiful 12" x 12 " insert on dark blue art paper, with four postcards sticked to it, and on CLEAR vinyl... please note: the insert is SIGNED by both members, but NOT numbered! Only very few of this extra edition exist !! (UK import, directly from Andrew Chalk) | 2023 | €38.00 |
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| ELOY, JEAN-CLAUDE | Etats-Limites ou les cris de Petra | CD | "Borderline or Petra's shouts" - new composition (epic 79+ min. long) combining concrete & synthetic electro-acoustic drones with female vocals sounds & noises (rustles, whispers, breathing, laughter, erotic sighs, shouts), based on older recordings of a special "Borderline" person named Petra, and his huge collection of cow-bells - an absolutely fantastic & intense piece, our highest recommendation!! 28p. full colour booklet with interesting interview about his fascination for the Borderline phenomena.. | 2014 | €16.00 |
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| YO-IN | 4 x CD | first publication of this epic piece composed 1980 - "sound theater for an imaginary ritual" - for electronic and concrete sounds, using about two hundred (!) different percussion instruments; this version was recorded during a public concert at the Warsaw Autumn Festival (Sept. 1994) and post-produced at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht.:.- comes with 20p booklet (this version is without the additional book!!) | 2011 | €30.00 |
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| EMERGE | Contrition | mCDR-box | two long tracks using bass & e-guitar sources to create the typical bleak EMERGE sound, here more reduced & focused & with more attention to harmonic elements; dark electro-acoustic drone-muzak ! comes in mini DVD-box | 2011 | €6.50 |
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| EMERGE / THORSTEN SOLTAU / RLW | Acker und Seche | CD | a very special collaboration by three German underground experiMENTALists: highly ambitious material between earplay, collage, and soundscaping, every second, every little noise, counts = the whole atmosphere is secretful and mysterious, often silent and intimate... - six shorter tracks come from T. SOLTAU and EMERGE (field recordings, instrumental sounds), the one central epic piece "Vor dem Hitzschlag" was end-remixed by RLW - 200 copies | 2021 | €13.00 |
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| ENGLISH, LAWRENCE & WERNER DAFELDECKER | Shadow of the Monolith | LP | first collaboration by these two sound-artists from Australia & Austria, working on "atmospheric, hydrophonic and ionospheric" source materials, resulting in mesmerizing microsound ambience..."a record that drifts from dense microscopic cracks to vibrant shifting frequencies, from sections of profound white stillness to storms of intense activity, from intense light to improbable dark and from immersive macro-spaces to non-spaces" ; lim. 300 on a new Greek label | 2015 | €17.50 |
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| ENSTRÖM, ROLF | Directions | CD | only few releases exist of this highly interesting Swedish composer, known for his stunning LP on Fylkingen, this CD contains the older works: "Directions" (1979), "Tjidtjag Och Tjidtjaggaise" (1986), and the epic " Slutförbannelser/Final Curses" (1981) in eight parts; challenging, lyrical electro-acoustic at its best ! | 1989 | €16.50 |
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| ENTRE VIFS | No Signal | CD-BOX | NEW material from the long active (though only few releases exist) French bruitism noise duo (who ones had their first release as MC on Cthulhu Records in 1989), using all kinds of self-built noise instruments, as "The Shriller", "Rikrokoid", "Kritz & Kratz", "Sturmophon", etc... this is radical, loud, crazy!! Comes in nicely designed 2 colour printed metal box with 16 p. colour booklet with pics of the noise-tools, numbered ed. 200 copies !! | 2015 | €13.00 |
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| ERIK M (eRikm) | Transfall | CD | collection of six works by the highly idiosyncratic french musique concrete composer, incl. the epic AUSTRAL; very challenging & demanding compositions, dense & suspenseful, using ensemble/instrumental sounds & field recordings | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| ESPLENDOR GEOMETRICO | 40 Anos Nos Iluminan | do-LP | 40 decades, 23 albums, now 16 new tracks by the Spanish industrial legends!! - "compositions full of details, sometimes subtle, opening a new path of exploration that goes beyond the typical current industrial music, loaded with clichés. Here, E.G. experiment with noise, recorded voices, striking collages, and their trademark hypnotic rhythms of industrial trance" - numb. ed. 500 copies | 2020 | €35.00 |
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| FAVARON, GIANLUCA | Surfaces | LP | collector's item, lim. 86 only - second release in the 'Private Sounds' - series (one sided, coloured vinyl) => G. FAVARON created digital processed, repetitive, quasi-rhythmic microsound-patterns derived from smallest particles of object-sounds (paper, scissors, stones, daily kitchen things), inspired by a series of polaroid pictures... a very conceptual release with often surprising result !! LAST COPY! | 2014 | €18.00 |
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| FINAL | It comes to us All | LP | first new FINAL album since 2015 (JUSTIN K.BROADRICKs solo project for experimental / ambient tunes), orchestral / epic drone noise with great harmonic undertones, melancholic and emotional...- "Rather than channelling the angst of early power-electronics, the noise here rumbles along blissfully through 8 untitled tracks, sombre in tone and at times beautiful... an exploration of the decay of all living things that we face collectively, day after day.." - reminds on TIM HECKER, TROUM, etc.. - lim. 400 | 2022 | €28.50 |
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| It comes to us all | CD | first new FINAL album since 2015 (JUSTIN K.BROADRICKs solo project for experimental / ambient tunes), orchestral / epic drone noise with great harmonic undertones, melancholic and emotional...- "Rather than channelling the angst of early power-electronics, the noise here rumbles along blissfully through 8 untitled tracks, sombre in tone and at times beautiful... an exploration of the decay of all living things that we face collectively, day after day.." - reminds on TIM HECKER, TROUM, etc. - lim. 200 | 2022 | €16.00 |
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| FIVE ELEMENTS MUSIC | Rishikesh | CD | the favoured Russian project presents field recordings from two highly interesting places in India (Ganges river, Himalaya, and the ancient city of Vrindavan), all recorded in the middle of the night - very special atmosphere; fabric-pressed CD, numbered ed. 200 copies, in the typical artwork-style (beautiful patterns from nature & natural objects) of Daniel Crokaert | 2012 | €14.00 |
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| FM EINHEIT | EXHIBITION OF A DREAM | do-CD | Dream interpretations of 12 artists who tell their dream "fiction" lead by their Unconscious, with accompanying sounds of FM EINHEIT and "band": GENESIS P.ORRIDGE (longest track), LEE RANALDO (SONIC YOUTH), film-maker APICHATPONG WEERESETHAKUL, SUSAN STENGER, etc. - very nice concept / idea with surprising results [ the whole is a re-issue of a rare 3 LP " L'exposition D'un Rêve" from 2018 ] | 2021 | €16.00 |
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| FRANKLIN, MARTIN & MICHAEL NORTHAM | An Opening of the Earth : recovered | CD | re-worked recordings (that appeared originally 1991/1993 on CD / MC - on the legendary SOUNDS FOR CONSCIOUSNESS RAPE-label!) by the TUU-member M. FRANKLIN and the Drone Records-artist NORTHAM; lim. 500 in the typical Faria-design (full colour cardboard cover with postcards) | 2009 | €13.00 |
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| FUJI-YUKI | One Butoh | LP | "BUTOH - The dance of the obscure Body" - impressive ritualistic music by this Japanese vocalist, 4 scenes dedicated to the unique BUTOH dance style... - *FUJI-YUKI is a Japanese vocalist who uses her voice like an instrument. With special vocal techniques, glossolalia and electronic pedals, she creates a wide variety of sounds. Inspired by the spirits of Buddhism and Shintoism... * - lim. ed. with 28 page A5 b/w booklet showing beautiful dance pictures | 2022 | €27.50 |
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| FUNERARY CALL | The Mirror reversed | CD | extremely bleak & haunting sounds for your personal nightmare, this is not the typical dark ambient....one long track (47+ min.) inspired by the 'Tree of Death' (Kabbala) , the counterpart to the divine forces of the Sephiroth; filed under: spooky ghost drones & silences... | 2013 | €13.00 |
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| GAMMELSAETER & MARHAUG | Higgs Boson | LP | incredible collaboration by MARHAUG with vocalist RUNHILD GAMMELSAETER, once singer for THORR'S HAMMER and KHLYST (with JIM PLOTKIN), a dark and haunting, almost occult sounding album, inspired by a large array of topics, i.e.: Japanese cinema, Futuristic comic books, landscape photography, Glass Bead Game by HESSE, the discovery of the HIGGS BOSON and work of quantum physicians like SCHRÖDINGER.. black vinyl ed. | 2022 | €24.00 |
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| Higgs Boson | CD | incredible collaboration by MARHAUG with vocalist RUNHILD GAMMELSAETER, once singer for THORR'S HAMMER and KHLYST (with JIM PLOTKIN), a dark and haunting, almost occult sounding album, inspired by a large array of topics, i.e.: Japanese cinema, Futuristic comic books, landscape photography, Glass Bead Game by HESSE, the discovery of the HIGGS BOSON and work of quantum physicians like SCHRÖDINGER.... CD version, 6 panel cardsleeve with OBI | 2022 | €15.00 |
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| GENOCIDE ORGAN | All is Suffering | CD | this CD collects five rare 7"es released between 2017 and 2023 in their "Religious Extremism" series, portraying religious leaders + organisations in the typical G.O. way... => "Kahane Chai" (2017), "Movement" (2019), "Juhayman Al-Utaybi" (2020), "Khalsa" (2021), and "You're going to be fine" (2023), 10 timeless industrial tracks against religious insanity, packaging: 4-panel matte laminated digipak with spot varnished picture, debossed lettering and embossed band logo | 2024 | €15.00 |
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| GERMAN ARMY | Passage Through Selk'nam Hain Ceremony | do-LP | epic double LP album by the West Coast duo who established their very own style, percussive, hypnotic, full of unusual sounds and arrangements..- *The prolific group once again explores the freaked out fringes of the electronic world where blown out beat experiments stand beside buried guitar twangs, synth drones, and rigged textures, conjuring images of barren landscapes from forgotten far away lands. This is an album that you need to sink your mind deep into.* - comes with fold out poster! | 2021 | €32.00 |
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| GLORY FCKN SUN | Vision scorched | CD | comes as professionally bound 72 page picture book of sun related imagery with hand printed covers. lim / numb. 200. The psych-drone trio of ANTONY MILTON, BEN SPIERS, SIMON O'RORKE | 2007 | €16.00 |
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| GODSPEED YOU BLACK EMPOROR! [GYBE] | Asunder, Sweet and other Distress | LP | "We love you so much our Country is fucked" - already another studio album by Montreal's anti-Major legends, four new heavy rocking & experimental droning tracks..."This new Godspeed You! Black Emperor, stripped of the sidebars, has become the high-volume anarchist epic rock band they've always been in their deepest core" [The Quietus]; gatefold cover, printed inner sleeve, poster | 2015 | €22.00 |
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| Asunder, Sweet and other Distress | CD | "We love you so much our Country is fucked" - already another studio album by Montreal's anti-Major legends, four new heavy rocking & experimental droning tracks..."This new Godspeed You! Black Emperor, stripped of the sidebars, has become the high-volume anarchist epic rock band they've always been in their deepest core" [The Quietus] | 2015 | €15.00 |
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| G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END! | LP + 10inch | "The God's have returned to rain ash upon our graves." - four epic new pieces spread on 12" and 10" vinyls, with wonderful artwork again + DL code... - "Poignant atmospherics, noisedrenched orchestration, drone, hypnotic swingtime crescendos, inexorably-layered towers of distorted clarion sound: STATE'S END encapsulates every beloved facet of the band" | 2021 | €27.50 |
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| G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END! | CD | "The God's have returned to rain ash upon our graves." - four epic new pieces - "Poignant atmospherics, noisedrenched orchestration, drone, hypnotic swingtime crescendos, inexorably-layered towers of distorted clarion sound: STATE'S END encapsulates every beloved facet of the band" / CD version in gatefold digisleeve | 2021 | €14.50 |
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| GOL & GHEDALIA TAZARTES | Alpes | LP | the 4-member "dada-quartett" GOL on "Electric Mandoline, Jew’s Harps, Percussions, Janotron, Flutes, Electric Guitar, Bass Guitar, Electronic Garage and Voice" with G. TAZARTES; recorded on two days in Paris Feb. 2013: "a 'bal musette' (dance event) for mentally disabled. Reaching at some points the sides of rock that doesn’t roll, this sonic attack jumps from topic to topic as a ritualistic anthology of unknown 'ritournelles'.. " ed. of 400, last copies ! | 2013 | €20.00 |
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| GOUGH, HELENA | Knot Invariants | CD | third album by the British digital-drone composer, using here solely sounds from two Cello-players; refined microsound journeys into unknown areas.. comes again in the typical (printed) anti-static bag | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| GRASSOW, MATHIAS | Alchemystery | do-CD | a special GRASSOW work, this "Alchemy Suite" in two parts (4 movements), with the impressive epic (43+ min.) IN A TEMPLE OF LONGING using holy chants & percussive elements! Comes with 16p booklet, feat. a poem by JOACHIM SCHOEPE... the sublimeness of nature experiences leads to inner self-communion and transcendence... | 2012 | €20.00 |
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| GRIMAUD, DOMINIQUE & VERONIQUE VILHET | Iles | LP | the label from Rennes (FR), active since 1989 with the slogan "unusual, unexpected music, off the beaten track, far removed from commercial interests" with the 2nd album by these two veterans of French underground music (VIDEO AVENTURES, CAMIZOLE..) on the topic ISLANDS - "Au final, douze morceaux correspondant à douze îles réelles ou fictives, avec douze contours et douze destins tour à tour cabossé, rouillé, déchiqueté, déroutant, extravagant, accidenté, bousculé, tourmenté, cocasse..." | 2016 | €18.00 |
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| GRUNT | Spiritual Eugenics | do-LP | the Finnish (harsh) noise & industrial project (active since 1993) with a new epic work, spreading on two LPs (80 min.) with 'pure filth & anger', the tracks are short attacks gouging into your brain, and have a nice 'mechanical' and trashy old school touch, analolgue throbbing pulses and cut up distortions, screams and pushed vocals, establishing quite a wide spectrum of noises and sounds in these 20 tracks; - gatefold-cover w. 2 inlays, black vinyl | 2020 | €26.00 |
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| GUTHRIE, ANNE | Gyropedie | LP | ANNE GUTHRIE 'paints' impressionic / hermetic sound pictures (derived from field recordings and French Horn) that are much more than simple environmental recordings, as touching and intimate thoughtful materialisations of moments'.. - "Gyropedie is an album that demands some patience and attentive listening to reveal its full beauty, but its fragile and tender fantasia of memory fragments is well served by that steadily deepening immersion." [Brainwashed] - 300 copies | 2021 | €18.50 |
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| HAYNES, JIM | Flammable Materials from Foreign Lands | LP | a full LP composed from material recorded at a residency in Estonia, taken from abandoned post Soviet-Era buildings and strange radio shortwave transmissions, leading to crackles, mechanical drones, rusty noise and cryptic speech with the typical flair of decay JIM HAYNES is known for... kind of sister-album to the 'Throttle & Calibration' tape.. "somewhat sparser than his other works, but no less fascinating, and with an additional menacing edge" [Brainwashed] lim. 300 clear vinyl | 2016 | €22.50 |
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| HAYWARD, ROBIN | Words of Paradise | pic-LP | the prolific British tuba player (who also plays in CHORA(S)SAN TIME-COURT MIRAGE) with a microtonal album feat. his ensemble ZINC & COPPER => tuba, horn- & trombone tones / drones, slowly interacting for focused and contemplative attention... the picture disc itself replicated the multicoloured circular scores of the piece, with liner notes on the back-cover, explaining the inspiration and concept (through Brabantic language from the Renaissance) behind it; ed. of 300 copies | 2019 | €25.00 |
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| HET ZWEET | Het Zweet | CD | this dutch project released a great tribal industrial LP in 1987, using self-built percussion instruments like shopping trolleys amplified with pickups, or blown cardboard tubes, along with shouted viocals, somewhere between TEST DPT. and Z'EV... this is now re-issued with seven bonus tracks, all previously unreleased (studio + live) - "Unique in the percussive instrumentation that departs from the crude experimental electronic sounds of those days" [Runzio Immorale] | 2022 | €15.00 |
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| HIJOKAIDAN | Emergency Stairway to Heaven | pic-LP & CD | new studio material on the pic-LP (4 pieces with around 50 min.), plus a full CD with recordings from two live shows 2014; the Japanese harsh noise legends still going strong after more than 35 years !! Lim. 750 | 2015 | €25.00 |
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| HOEDH | Universum | CD | the posthumously released second album by this member of ORDO CATHARSIS TEMPLI, who died only few days atter finalizing this album in April 2003 => on nine long tracks micro-pulsative, hermetic drone ambience is wandering through the rooms and spaces of inner and outer reality... comes as bonus with a version of the HOEDH remix from the O.C.T. pic 12" "Variations Ov Templum Comparatio I" | 2004 | €8.00 |
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| HUM | Thunder Arrow | CD-R | 4 track EP with 44 min. length, presenting so far unreleased, older recordings of the beloved project from the Moscow region - "Polyvox synthesizer, radio, damaged tapes - this EP sounds quite harsh and raw, but even in these rough electic loops one can feel this totally hypnotizing effect so typical for Hum." hand-assembled red envelope cover edition, lim. 44 copies | 2016 | €10.00 |
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| ICHIYANAGI, TOSHI | Shikisokuzekuu-Kuusokuzeshiki (色即是空空即是色) | CD | two tape pieces by the Japanese grand master of experimental music, the title piece (1964, 33+ min.), and "Extented Voices" (1967, 11+ min.) => when this was produced it belonged surely to the most experimental and inaccessible stuff you could find, a mixture of feedbacks, crackles of all kinds, clashing field / object recordings and weird electronic morphing sounds, reaching out to microscopic realms... lim. 500, gatefold cover, liner notes in English & Japanese | 2016 | €21.50 |
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| IELASI, GIUSEPPE | MMXX-10: Untitled | LP | 10th release in the new series that presents 20 artists from the experimental sound-art scene with very nice design / concept => dedicated to the year 2020 there will be 20 x 20 min. compositions on one-sided clear vinyl, with laser engraved artwork by the artist on the B-Side, lim. to 500 copies => Italy's prolific composer GIUSEPPE IEALASI formed a piece with many microscopic / delicate sounds and noises (of probably instrumental sources), building weird and beautiful patterns and moments... | 2020 | €23.00 |
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| ILLUSION OF SAFETY |
New Rules, Same Game, Less Instruction
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CD | second release in the new CD series "SYM" from Drone Records, sounds from realms of Symbolization & Symmetrization! => these are new recordings from Chicago's (post) industrial legend: microscopic audio events, loops, heavily processed material of all kinds form seven multi-layered collages that seem to be full of electro-magnetic static, morphing and transforming like a hallucinogenic object... lim. 250 copies, 6 panel digipak, mastering THOMAS DIMUZIO | 2021 | €13.00 |
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| IRM | Virgin Mind | do-CD | IRMs so far only double-CD appeared in 2005 on Cold Meat Industry, the project features MARTIN BLADH and ERIK JARL (aka JARL) and is known for their cathartic performances and exceptional scary, insistent sound and lyrics; "The album marked a radical change in the band’s direction, leaving the power electronics opera of ‘Oedipus Dethroned’ for an even more ritualistic, experimental and epic sound." - ed. of 300 copies of this re-issue with new artwork by MARTIN BLADH | 2019 | €16.00 |
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| IRR.APP. (ext.) |
Are all Things Equivalent?
(SOLD OUT) |
10inch | two new tracks by the master of surrealistic, mysterious sound (and visual) worlds, whose collages and titles often reveal a cryptic and thought-provoking nature => micro- and macroscopic dimensions intermingle and oscillate, multi-layered drone expansions and deep humming drones evoke a strange organic feeling, complex noises and drones that seem to be in a circling state of endless metamorphosis.. lim. 300, clear wax, artwork by MATT WALDRON himself | 2019 | €15.00 | |
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Hymns To The Extrusiarch
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CD | OUT NOW! a surrealistic piece in 5 passages about a 'creator' who is less of an entity and more of a phenomenon, between a thing and a process, a consciousness and an event... - lim. 250 copies - 6 panel digisleeve with four stunning artwork-pics by MATT WALDRON new IRR.APP.(ext) album to be released spring 2026! | 2025 | €13.00 |
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| JARL | Symptoms Variation / Sensory Deprivation | 3 x CD | epic new JARL work spread on 3 CDs ( "Repitition" - "Darkness" - "Conclusion" ) with 8 movements - immediately you are immersed int these complex multi-layered and quickly moving bell/metal-like and synth-shimmer pulse drones, oscillating and waving in endless loopy cascades, meditative and hypnotic.. lim. 200 copies, 6 panel digipak | 2019 | €20.00 |
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| Inner Domain | do-CD | the two deleted cassettes "Hypnagogic Domain" and "Hypnopompic Domain" (Autarkeia, 2016) re-issued with long (15 min.) bonus-track!! - "especially dedicated to hypnagogic states of being half awake - half asleep, also called "threshold consciousness" or "pre-dream condition": rattling analogue electronic drones merge with metallic reverberations and echoes, this is the true and raw ambient industrial trance!" [Drone Rec.] - A Must ! | 2020 | €16.00 |
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| Phonophobia | CD | only shortly after the first release in our new SYM-serie we can offer the next JARL opus: "Phonophobia" is a ghostly drone expanse that shimmers in wide spectrums and circles, with strange psychic effects, inspired by the psychiatric syndrome of "Phonophobia" (=the fear of loud daily noises)... the album contains three long "Scales" with growing intensity, in the typical JARL style.. lim. 300 copies | 2021 | €13.00 |
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| Synapse Variation Report | CD | third in a trilogy of works, together with the two previous albums this forms a microscopic phantasy of being surround by neuron-signals and cell receptor-energies... - "There is a strong cosmic undercurrent in the music, which is also very psychedelic, with Jarl connecting all the dots, creating some drone-heavy music, but the kind of drones are in constant motion.." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2025 | €13.00 |
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| JEHANNE, THIBAULT | Farol | CD | a 'sound portrait' of the monumental '25 ABRIL bridge' (a huge metallic sculpture) in Lisbon, Portugal => known from his great " Eskifjörður" on KAON (Iceland recordings), this French sound artist manages it to form a very structured 'tonal sculpture' ouf of the original source sounds, powerful and eerie... absolutely stunning!! - "It's like listening to a KUBRICK movie. I love it." [Andrewmglaser] - lim. 200 cpoies, numbered, in the typical Unfathomless design (gatefold sleeve and artcard) | 2020 | €14.00 |
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| JULIUS, ROLF | Music for a Distance | CD | kind of farewell-release from this German sound-art & installation artist well known for his microcospic minimal ambience compositions, who died January 2011 | 2011 | €13.00 |
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| JUNZO, SUZUKI | Awake in the Wuthering Heights | CD-R | newcomer from Japan with minimal ambient & dronescapes, based on guitar-picking & feedbacks, creating sublime, at times more noisy & radical overtunes... recorded live in UK & Japan 2011 & 2012; 41+ min., lim. 100, to discover | 2013 | €10.00 |
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| KANTER, ADRIEN | Infinites Reflexions | LP | first solo album for this French ambient experimentalist (aka TRESORS; and also part of EDDIE135 and LE REVEIL DES TROPIQUES bands), who creates a very 'handplayed' & bit obscure ambience with layers of old synths, percussion, guitar... "a kaleidoscopic sonorous dream, a psychedelic hypnotic and sensorial film score on the boundaries of ambient cosmic music, drone, post-rock and experimental music." - lim. ed. multi-colour silk screen cover with postcard | 2017 | €15.00 |
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| KARKOWSKI, ZBIGNIEW | Nerve Cell_0 | CD | minimal & epic power-drone composition for cello & computer, distorted cello-sounds are treated & shaped into a flowing & fuzzing aural sculpture... immersive stuff, play it loud ! | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| KAYN, ROLAND | The Ortho-Project | 15 x CD-BOX | UNRELEASED work from the archives, epic & unfathomless! "The mystery, the grace, the boundless invention -- KAYN's machine music is a vast catalogue of very human wonder." [The Guardian] - *No notes accompany any of this music - no word of explanation or expression of intent. Only the works and their titles remain, the latter often simply deepening the mystery* - comes in sturdy gold stamped box, probably rare soon !! | 2024 | €125.00 |
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| KILLER VS VOLLMER | Noise Generation | LP + pic-LP | curious collector's item which uses a "never seen before" format (ca. 300 gr. vinyl!): a picture 12" sticked on an old (German Schlager or whatever) LP, the old LP cover is combined with a cut-out cover, the pic-LP is fully playable on one side & has a loop from the recycled LP on Side B!! Understandable? No? doesn't matter!! => The fierce & furious noise attacks come from the solo project of "Junge" (the EA80 singer) and endless noise worker CARSTEN VOLLMER; lim. 100 | 2017 | €20.00 |
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| KINETIX | Gestaltsystem 01: Possible Forms | do-CD | early sound art release by GIANLUCA BECUZZI, part of an installation: two CDs that sound completely different (one with digital structures and forms, the other with very intimate, 'concrete' and microscopic noises) with exact the same length, containing both eight pieces with exact 5:20 min. playtime => both CDs but also single tracks should be played simultaneously, but especially the 2nd CD sound also great alone... BACK IN STOCK for special price now ! | 2006 | €8.50 |
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| KINKELAAR, FREEK | WONDERSOUND. Discovering weird, wild and wonderful music | BOOK | a collection of heart-warming and humorous writings (reviews, articles, liner notes) from the dutch musician (BRUNNEN, BEEQUEEN), incl. many cover-picks, feat for example ZOVIET FRANCE, SPK, LA MONTE YOUNG, GEROGERIGEGEGE, VAGINA DENTATA ORGAN, DEREK JARMAN, BRAINTICKET, etc. etc..- with foreword from EDWARD KA-SPEL - 288 pages, hardcover, this is the cheaper standard version with b/w pics !! A must for any collector of obscure music!!! | 2021 | €20.00 |
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| KLEMENT, KATHARINA | Peripheries : Sound Portrait Belgrade 2014-2016 | CD | a soundpicture composition of Belgrade, recorded during a residency in 2014, where KATHARINA KLEMENT recorded sounds and noises of the city and did interviews with inhabitants about the special soundscape of their town; this resulted in an 8 channel composition, based on 8 concentric circles drawn around her apartment;"It takes a rare mind that is able to reach and understand the heart of a place as thoroughly and as sympathetically as Klement has done with this work." [Sound Projector] | 2017 | €13.00 |
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| KNIZAK, MILAN | Broken Music | LP | first ever re-issue of this LP from 1979 by Fluxus artist MILAN KNIZAK, who was a true pioneer in recycling & looping music from damaged and prepared LPs (by scratching them, burning them, putting tape and paint onto them, cutting & re-shape them, etc..), combining loopy fragments of the original content with the new 'broken vinyl' noises, often until the needles of his players got destroyed... nice gatefold cover with many pics from his objects.. | 2015 | €16.00 |
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| KÖTTER, DANIEL & HANNES SEIDL | Stadt (Land Fluss) - A Radio Play | CD + BOOK | "Town-Countryside-River" is work about the sounds of the city, the permanent transformation, construction noises and increasing interconnection of all of its parts: which social dimensions open up? how does the town sound, how could it sound? who has the right to shape it? This radio play was created on the basis of a musictheatre piece of the same name, and uses electro magnetic sounds of CHRSTINA KUBISCH and others, along with quotes / texts about these topics... - oversized package and 16 p. booklet | 2020 | €14.00 |
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| KRIWET, FERDINAND | Hörtexte / Radiotexts | 3 x pic-LP-Box | six radiotexts (created 1969 - 1983) and six so called great looking "viewtexts" reproduced on 3 picture-LPs, comes in box with 12"-booklet, edition of 1000 copies | 2007 | €58.00 |
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| Hörtexte 2 | 2x-pic-LP | second release with truly experimental 'radiotext' collages by this sound artist from Düsseldorf, Germany: contains his first work for Radio from 1961/62, "Offen", "Hörtext 1" (1963) and a newer work from 2012 "Rotoradio", comes on two beautifully designed picture discs on Berlins finest label for contemporary music, Edition RZ | 2014 | €36.00 |
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| KUBISCH, CHRISTINA & ECKEHARD GÜTHER | Mosaique Mosaic | CD | a "sound diary" recorded during a workshop & sound-installation stay of both in CAMEROON (summer 2010), discovering the most unusual places with help of local people.... recordings like 'sunday church service', 'street market' or 'abandoned hotel at night' from a nice aural picture of the environment... | 2013 | €13.00 |
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| KULTHUM, UMM (also: KALTHOUM, OUM) | The Twinkling Star | LP | fully re-mastered re-issue of this extraordinary LP from 1961 - UMM KULTHUM was a legendary female singer, songwriter and actress from Egypt ("Egypt's fourth pyramid"), and this her most well known release => popular 'oriental' music with many strings and the typical harmonic phrases from that time, combined with a pretty low fi recording quality and UMM KULTHUMS vocalizing, for "western" ears this sounds like music from another planet... | 2019 | €18.50 |
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| KÜPPER, LEO | Ways of the Voice | CD | four challenging compositions (created 1984-1998) by the Belgian componist, using the female voice (of Brazilian singer ANNA MARIA KIEFFER) as the only sound-source, along with 'tropical' field recordings... Beautiful, suspenseful, exhausting music.. very unique and stunning stuff !! Finally back in stock!! - comes with 28 page booklet | 1999 | €14.00 |
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| LA STPO (La Société des Timides à la Parade des Oiseaux) | L'Imparfait multiple de Dieu | CD | 7th full length album, with a great epic and very melodic opening piece ("Un Dieu est un Passage dernier"), this French "unclassifiable" band continues to surprise with their mix of Avantgarde-Rock, Jazz, Prog, Ambient... they have been compared to (but nothing really matches): PTOSE, RESIDENTS, THIS HEAT, THE WORK, FAUST, PERE UBU, etc... powerful & expressive stuff, with many many changes, breaks, beautiful moments, crazy vocals.. | 2015 | €13.00 |
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| Les Explositionnistes | CD | the second album by the unique 'surrealist attacks' performance group from Rennes (FR) was released in 1995, unavailable for long - all tracks are inspired by paintings(MAX ERNST, PICASSO, LYONEL FEININGER, etc..) - musically it's an almost unclassifiable experience between TAZARTES, DDAA and prog rock, like visiting a strange circus, but it's also very musical and greatly arranged... sometimes sad, sometimes mad, sometimes violent: RASEREI &ZÄRTLICHKEIT! | 2018 | €13.00 |
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| Les Explositionnistes | LP | the second album by the unique 'surrealist attacks' performance group from Rennes (FR) was released in 1995, unavailable for long - all tracks are inspired by paintings(MAX ERNST, PICASSO, LYONEL FEININGER, etc..) - musically it's an almost unclassifiable experience between TAZARTES, DDAA and prog rock, like visiting a strange circus, but it's also very musical and greatly arranged... sometimes sad, sometimes mad, sometimes violent; vinyl ed. lim. 379 copies w. insert | 2018 | €17.50 |
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| Romanciel | CD | the legendary Italian label ADN (very active in the cassette scene of the 80's / 90's) is back with a new studio album by the true "Avant" Rock band from Rennes, France, who often deal with dreams and neologisms in their lyrics, the surreal and the absurd...- "this music is beautiful, imaginative and free just like a successful picture or like the flight of the birds that paint the sky with their wonderful parade."- four epic + incredible expressive new studio tracks, + 8 page booklet | 2022 | €13.00 |
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| L'Oeil au Centre de L'Oeil | CD | "Ich bleibe dabei, die beste Band, die ich kenne." [Rigobert Dittmann / Bad Alchemy] - five new epic tracks by the "dreaming" Avant-Prog band from Rennes, between rage and beauty there is a wide field of sensations.. | 2025 | €13.00 |
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| LABELLE, BRANDON | Concert | CD | SoundArt: Strange whispering concrete sounds, as a result of LABELLE’s ideas of 'Social Music'... recordings from various installations & physical interactions of visitors happening there, with lots of basic information & pictures in the booklet... | 2004 | €6.00 |
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| LAMI, GIOVANNI | Monumento Fiume | LP | a kind of sound study using the sounds of the "anthropic landscape" of Cotignola (Ravenna, Italy), as result of an artist residency, the 'memory' and character of a certain region is transfered and condensed into electronic sounding structures, atmosperic hissing and animal sounds are present, it's a magic dimension of human and more than human sounds, a meeting point of the "hyper-real" and "sur-real".. - lim. 300 ORANGE vinyl | 2023 | €18.00 |
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| LAMMERS / USENBENZ | Drawing in Sound | LP | after the great 'bell drone' LP this shows ANDREAS USENBENZ in a live collaboration with painter / illustrator CHRISTOPHER LAMMERS - recorded at Städtische Galerie Rosenheim in spring 2018 - about the topic of meadow; by using charcoal, ink, brushes and his bare hands, LAMMERS painted a 7 by 4 metre canvas during the evolving drone-scaping performance of USENBENZ; later a part of the painting has been used to be screen printed on Side B of this clear vinyl; lim. 100, one-sided | 2018 | €25.00 |
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| LAND USE / MAURIZIO BIANCHI / PHARMAKUSTIK | Spülfeld | CD | an epic drone-journey into the otherworld, with mysterious sounds & drones that shift, transform & mutate all the time... minimal but never static.. lim. 223 copies, comes in DVD slimcase with printed covers & inlay, numbered... already the fourth collab release by this dutch project with M.B. (and this time with help of PHARMAKUSTIK) | 2011 | €13.00 |
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| LAVELLE, BRIAN | The petrified Forest | mCD-R | "Brian Lavelle recently surprised us 'Supernaturalist', and the two pieces here were recorded just before that and show the best side of his: manipulating field recordings and very much altering them into microscopic detailed pieces of ambient drones. Slowly changing patterns of what seems to be rain fall, deep bass sounds in 'The Wood Turned Dark And Silent' and more synthetic in 'This Twisting Glade', which sounds like a church organ being dissected. Very nice." [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2008 | €5.00 |
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| LEGENDARY PINK DOTS (LPD) | The Seismic Bleats of Quantum Sheep | CD | remastered, expanded and for the first time on CD, this personally much favoured / experimental album from 2016 (LP on Abstrakce), lim. 399 copies - "the 'secret" sister album to "Five Days", recorded in Spring 2015 - extremely Kaleidoscopic and as far out as the Dots may have gone in their history" [Edward Ka-Spel] - comes with third bonus track not on the LP !! | 2019 | €18.50 |
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| LEGENDARY PINK DOTS / KINKELAAR, FREEK | Close your Eyes, you can be a Space Captain. The Legendary Pink Dots in the 1980s | BOOK + CD | FREEK KINKELAAR who knows the DOTS well since a very long time, wrote this book about their first 10 years (1980-1989), doing interviews with all important members to write the bands story year by year.... also featured: many unique images, covers of early cassettes and releases, composition sketches, concert posters, live pics, full dotsography... 148 pages hardcover book, with CD feat. early favourites of LPD plus two unreleased tracks; 17 x 24 cm in size; a must for any true LPD fan !! | 2022 | €28.50 |
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| LILES, ANDREW | As if Punk Rock never happened / Pretty vague cunt | pic-7" | THE CENSORED DISC ! Released for the "International Record Store Day 2011" and as a 'commemorative" item for the Royal wedding on April 29; one side of this picture disc showed originally distorted pictures of CHARLES & DIANA and has been censored by the manufacturer! You can see the uncensored (& great) artwork at the Dirter-webpage. | 2011 | €11.50 |
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| LLOYD, DALE | Akasha_for Record | pic-LP | new release in the nice "graphic / sound" interaction picture-disc series; lim. 216 copies; first release from DALE LLOYD in three years | 2009 | €17.50 |
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| LOCUSTA MIGRATORIA | same | LP | 'LM likes drone doom with spicy sauce' - project of LA STPO member(s), obscure drone-soundscapes with guitar, distorted bass, bubbling analog synths, percussion & bizare (Spanish) vocals & unidentified instruments..somehow improvised & energetic, highly original & idiosyncratic stuff, no easy listening! Comes with download code, lim. 250 | 2014 | €14.00 |
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| LOPEZ, FRANCISCO | Untitled (2011) | CD | a collection of (un)typical LOPEZian field recordings made around the world (Amazon, Australia & New Zealand, Japan, Spain, South Africa, Costa Rica, Morocco, etc..), rather short acoustic 'snapshots' or processed collages of incredible sounding phenomena from birds-insects- animals, unknown objects, found sounds or mysterious sub-drones and overwhelming weather noises...not one boring moment!!! - 8 tracks 43+ min. playtime, comes in massive, oversized fold out cover, BACK IN STOCK!! | 2014 | €13.00 |
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| VirtuAural Electro-Mechanics | USB card | subtitled 'Machinic Pieces 1995-2018' this is the third USB-stick collection with over 8 hours of material (16 pieces)=> "developed from a myriad of original sound recordings of mechanical machines, electro-mechanical systems and industrial environments gathered over the past 25 years all over the world; from food factories to 'white rooms', from 18th-century automata to computers, from wood and wires to magnetism, from the microscopic to the monumental." - printed Memory Stick, 300 copies, signed | 2019 | €33.00 |
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| Sonic Fields Vlieland | USB card | six compositions made out of field recordings from VLIELAND, one of the West Frisian Islands (North Sea) of Nord-Holland , no cars are allowed... a map shows where these recordings have been made (forest, dune crater, beach, polders..), a truly captivating "new virtual sonic reality" of the Island with so many natural sounds of wind, sand, water, rain, animals, arranged in a new, typical LOPEZian way ("transfigured and dramatically evolved..").. - lim. 300. 3 hour playtime(!), printed USB card, signed | 2018 | €33.00 |
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| LUNAR ABYSS DEUS ORGANUM | Tuntury | CD | six pictures of the world of "thundra-yoga" - *Mit Tuntury betritt man verschiedene Bereiche einer ANDERNWELT, die einen staunen lässt und verzaubert! Zunächst klingt es wie in einer futuristischen Wartehalle einer fremden Dimension, dann wiegt man sich berauscht in allerschönsten Backwards-Harmonien wie im Mutterleib (das wunderschöne "YASNITSA"), bevor verfremdete Gesangstimmen zur rituell-schamanistischen Zeremonie rufen... in der zweiten Hälfte überwiegen dann die eher ruhig-dronigen Passagen. Wir meinen: Ein Meisterwerk des rituell-experimentellen Drone-Ambients, mit grosser surrealistischer, halluzinogener Kraft!* [Drone Rec.] | 2009 | €13.00 |
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| Khara-Khoto | CD | finally a new LADO studio album, inspired by a name of a Tangut / Buddhist city in the middle ages in today's China... psychedelic - kaleidoscopic drone ambience at its best ! => ' multilayered ambiental sketches with flowing chains of samples, voice loops and acoustic instruments; rhythmic percussive tracks with vigorous pulsating energy; abstract collages made of analogue electronics..' lim./numb. 300 | 2019 | €13.00 |
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| LUNAR ABYSS QUARTET | Snovidenie | CD | lim. 323 copies in totally handmade covers (oversized maps in different colours with different pictures sticked on & symbol-paintings), truly beautiful !! | 2006 | €13.00 |
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| M.B. (MAURIZIO BIANCHI) | Bacillusmetrial Entopathogen | CD | the old master of otherworldly ambience shows his timeless significance for the "industrial ambient" realm on three new tracks with analogue ghost ambience as coming from another century.. or dimension! - M. B. : infectronics, muconoises, microbdrones, epithelpictures. - *ambient loops overlap and circulate, pumping sound into the listener's ear like a heart pumps blood into organs..* - lim. 200 numbered copies, 7" sleeve | 2024 | €13.00 |
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| MACHINEFABRIEK | Vergezichten | 10inch | two track 10" with dense rhythmic material in the typical refined MACHINEFABRIEK-droneway, based on saxophon, voice & drumcomputer-sounds that are highly stretched & processed.. | 2013 | €10.00 |
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| The Measures Taken | CD | a score for a dance choreography by ALEXANDER WHITLEY (with the same name) based on the theme "Men versus Machine", apart from the typical delicate MACHINEFABREIK ambience this goes at times into very abstract / electro-acoustic / challenging areas, with lots of concrete noises, crackles and cut-ups, a surprising and intense work for the dutch sound artist! lim. 300 | 2015 | €13.00 |
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| MAEROR TRI | Archaic States | CD | first ever CD re-issue of this cassette from 1993 (M.T. ninth full-length tape), originally released on AUBE's labels G.R.O.S.S. in 1993; it contains with "Blowing Sounds from a Dome" an epic early track from 1989, using raw material from RUNZELSTIRN & GURGELSTOCK; +. one bonus-track not on the original tape; lim. 350 copies, all-remastered and with new cover design | 2018 | €13.00 |
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| MAEROR TRI / CRAWL UNIT | Forazeihan / Broken Books & Wings | pic-7inch | right in time to the relase of the JOE COLLEY (aka CRAWL UNIT) 3 LP-box we got some NEW copies back in of this split picture-disc with two dark noise tracks, feat. the almost last studio-material ever recorded by MAEROR TRI in 1996 !! Lim. 500 | 2000 | €8.00 |
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| MAGNETICA ARS LAB / MAURIZIO BIANCHI | LoopKlängeNoise | CD | the result of a very special collaboration project concept, inspired by the theories of W. KANDINSKY about the contamination between visual art and music (every track has a second title relating to a Kandinsky picture): 13 tracks with lots of guest musicians involved, lim. 300 / incl. 16 page DVD sized booklet with info & photos of industrial mining areas in Sardinia, + quotes relating to JOHN CAGE, WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS, KLAUS SCHULZE, JEAN BAUDRILLARD, LUIGI RUSSOLO, etc.. | 2013 | €12.00 |
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| MAGRINI, MASSIMO (BAD SECTOR) | Vrachnas | CD | this is the very first solo album for MASSIMO MAGRINI aka BAD SECTOR, who impressively steps into new directions here, without loosing the typical B.S. sound completely... "inspired by hypnagogic hallucinations and presents one long track full of drones, noises, distant voices, surrealistic soundscapes, fragmented sounds..., for a real journey into the obscure side of mind." digipak edition of 400 copies | 2018 | €13.00 |
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| MARCHETTI, LIONEL | Mue (la demeure brillante) | mCD | back in stock one of the remarkable releases in the nice Metamkine "Cinema pour l'oreille" mini-CD series; this 21 min long electro-acoustic piece in 7 parts uses extreme poetry/vocals (with texts by french writer WILLIAM PELLIER)and eruptive cut-up/fragmented/processed instrumental and electronic sounds, forming something bewildering beyond all typical genres... special priced now ! | 1993 | €5.00 |
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| MARIN, STEPHANE | Invisible(s) Archipelago(s) #1 - Serendib Rhythms | CD | a collection of field recordings from Sri Lanka, showing a great variety of obscurest sounds from whatever environment and whatever source, all material seems to be unprocessed and pure, but you often don't know what happened; a crazy concerto grosso of dogs, microsound cracking, strange rhythmic knocking and slapping, materials squeaking and hums coming from nowhere... definitely NOT the typical field recording album, this holds lots of wondrous sounds to discover.. lim. 200 | 2016 | €14.00 |
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| MARK SCHAUB | Damaged Future | CD | Italian experimental & dark ambient artist MARK SCHAUB (aka MAATH) created this album as a kind of soundtrack to J.G.BALLARD's dystopic stories with 9 different "scenes" / tracks, showing a wide spectrum of cinematic styles, from strange "electro-Jazz" over electronica-minimalism to melancholic drone fields for deserted landscapes.. an unusual but worthwile BALLARD-tribute; lim.100 copies only | 2019 | €13.00 |
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| MASTER MUSICIANS OF BUKKAKE | Elogia de la Sombra | maxi-CD | mini-album (two long 15+ min. tracks) in the typical LATITUDES design (special cardboard fold out cover with embossing & metallic colour print), numb. ed. 1000 | 2010 | €11.50 |
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| Elogia de la Sombra | mLP | mini-album (two long 15+ min. tracks) with their mixture of trance-inducing drone-orientalism and minimal NEU!-Krautrock-psychedelia (lyrics are taken from a traditional Tibetan Buddhist Mantra and JORGE LUIS BORGES!); comes in the typical LATITUDES design, edition of 1000 copies | 2011 | €14.00 |
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| MAXIMIN, BERANGERE | Land of Waves | do-LP | French composer with a pretty obscure/unique/exotic sound spreading in various directions, absolutely to discover! - "BÉRANGÈRE MAXIMIN explores the idea of a kaleidoscopic world - a sonic aggregation of living creatures, plants, minerals, nature and buildings, using various sound objects, small percussions, synths, electric guitar, voice and electronics." - ed. of 300 copies, DL code | 2020 | €25.00 |
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| MENCHE, DANIEL | Wings on Fire | CD | lim. 555 cardboard cover; two epic tracks of energetic Ur-drones, flickering like an acoustic Dream-Machine! *In MENCHE’s Musik scheinen archaische Urkräfte entfesselt zu werden, die eine sehr direkte Wirkung auf den Körper haben, denn immer hat die Musik etwas extrem physisches, fast unausweichliches.. * (Drone Rec.) | 2005 | €13.00 |
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| MERZBOW | Tamayodo | pic-LP | rare pic-LP with new recordings made 2013, lim. 299 copies only ! | 2013 | €29.00 |
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| Hyakki Echo | HYBRID (CD+VINYL) | startling release on "hybrid" format which has a playable vinyl side on 5" (33 rpm), and a full playing CD side!! And the sounds are very unusual and experimental for MERZBOW, improvised object noises in muliple layers and configurations, no typical harsh noise at all, great one !!! Comes in die cut gatefold sleeve, lim. 500 | 2017 | €20.00 |
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| MEURSAULT, PALI | Stridulations | LP | non-ordinary noises based on: 1) recordings of insects, birds and bats made in different countries; 2) electromagnetic field sounds of prepared fluorescent tubes sonified with pick-up coils.. => obscure mixture of electronic and organic drones, lumbering mechanics, sizzling atmospherics.... very special stuff dedicated only for the advanced connaisseur of sound art !! | 2018 | €18.00 |
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| MILITIA | Ambiorix | CD | the 'Eco-Anarchists' from Belgium are back with a concept album telling the story (based on CAESAR's writing "De Bello Gallico") of the Belgian king AMBIORIX who resisted against the Roman troops; the typical MILITIA sound (martial-percussive industrial) is set against texts sung in different languages, including Latin and Gaul... comes in special eco-leather bags with 4 different logos printed on the cover (12 versions of the artwork exist) + 3 folded insert; 500 copies made | 2018 | €16.00 |
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| The Face of God | CD | "God is a Dictator!" - re-issue of the deleted box-set (2015), a strong concept album with pugnacious industrial fighting against western religion, absorbing some elements of christianity (church bells, choirs) into these hypnotic noise-scapes filled with the typical MILITIA sounds of self-played percussion, vocal attacks, distorted drones, war samples, electronics... the fight is always on, resistance is always needed! Lim. 300 nice 6 panel digipack | 2019 | €14.00 |
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| MOGARD, ABUL & RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI | Impossibly Distant, Impossibly Close | LP | second release on IRISARRI's own label, two side-long epic tracks based on their live performance in Madrid 2023... - COLOUR vinyl lim. 250 (two different colours, please ask) => "If you believe in the transcendent nature and spiritual power of music, with a marriage of the divine and the human, you will be seduced by this album...for fans of Alessandro Cortini, Tape Loop Orchestra, and TROUM (at their most soothing moments). Essential." [IGLOO mag] | 2024 | €30.50 |
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| MOLJEBKA PVLSE | The Distant Past Resound | CD | epic ambient one-tracker (74+ min., three movements) with beautiful harp, piano and double bass harmony parts from guests ISABEL F., KRIS KULDKEPP and HARA ALONSO.. - *outlined in a very expressive way so as to release a whole palette of colors, moods and emotions from the sound matter, allowing you to lose yourself even deeper with each subsequent listening...* - lim. 300, 6 panel digipak | 2023 | €13.00 |
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| The Distant Past Resound | MC | rare cassette version (30 copies) of this epic ambient composition (74+ min., three movements) with beautiful harp, piano and double bass harmony parts from guests ISABEL F., KRIS KULDKEPP and HARA ALONSO.. - *outlined in a very expressive way so as to release a whole palette of colors, moods and emotions from the sound matter, allowing you to lose yourself even deeper with each subsequent listening...* - prof. cover, printed cassette, sealed case | 2023 | €10.00 |
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| With the Passing of Time | do-CD | the yearly "Homework" online compilation of TAALEM became an institution for online-listeners (always released at the end of the year), collecting new material by all artists that have ever appeared on the label, for a voluntary donation price! - This epic double CD collection holds material from 2016-2024 ( 9 tracks) and comprises everything adorable M.P. got known for, hypnotic, rich, dense multi-layers of breezy, pulsing, bubbling drones and "fields"... lim. 250 copies, 4 page booklet | 2025 | €16.00 |
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| MONOCUBE & TROUM // TROUM & MONOCUBE | Contemplator Caeli | LP | the first vinyl release on Transgredient is a 4 track collaboration between Ukraine's experimental guitar drone project and TROUM, working with each other's basic material on the topic of the ancient 'Nightsky-Immersion'; second pressing on black vinyl, numbered ed. of 100 copies with inlay + phantastic artwork by sukkeret.og.pepper studio - "This has got to be one of the more densely atmospheric works to come along in years"[Toneshift] LAST COPIES !! | 2020 | €20.00 |
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| MOORE, THURSTON / JOHN WIESE | Live at MOCA | 7inch | rare 7inch with a collaboration live recording made at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles => THURSTON MOORE (SONIC YOUTH). guitar feedback in the typical S.Y. style; JOHN WIESE: Live electronics; two great eruptive piercing noise moments banned on black plastic!! US-import ! | 2017 | €12.00 |
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| MORI, IKUE & CHRISTIAN RONN | Chordis Et Machina | LP | meeting of two experienced musicians/composers (IKUE MORI was drummer for DNA, inside DEATH AMBIENT with FRED FRITH, etc..) at EMS in Stockholm, for these 5 stimulating 'microscopic otherworlds" improvisations... "Endless probing that hooks into your neurons, this album leaves sonic organisms floating around you. Even if that's merely an illusion, the alchemy of Mori and Rønn’s hyperactive stew is very real." [Marc Masters] | 2018 | €23.00 |
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| MOUCHOIR ETANCHE (=BLACK TO COMM) | Kommunique Zero | pic-12inch | a very special release is this first one from a new project of MARC RICHTER / BLACK TO COMM => a one-sided pic-12" (one side black and playable, other side picture, unplayable) = a "hybryd" format we haven't seen before, with strong 'constructed' music, different from BTC... "Influences are ranging from (French) classical and opera to the anecdotical compositions of Luc Ferrari, Chinese opera, sacred music, collage, and free improvisation" ; ed. of 165 copies only | 2020 | €16.50 |
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| MULTER | Basisrealität/Armutsgewöhnungszuschlag/Wolkenkuckucksheim | 3 x LP | MULTER from Dortmund (see Drone Records DR-50) are back and what an epic and special release it is! => their first studio material in 10 years, spread on 3 albums with their own titles: minimal electronic structures, very personal spoken words, smooth / meditative feedbacking guitar drones, field recordings, object noises, deep philosophical / existential insights into the own strange reality, dreams, perceptions, addiction, depression... - lim. 100 copies only, incl. inlay with lyrics in german/english | 2021 | €46.50 |
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| MUSLIMGAUZE | Khan Younis | pic-LP | stunning collection of rare compilation material 1989-1996 (from Direction Music, Extreme, Gonzo Circus, etc.) - this is the lim. picture disc with die-cut cover, amazingly designed! Lim. 500 - "Unique tribal dub-trance music influenced by arabic culture with a touch of post-industrial.... Hypnotic rhythms mixed with with eastern vibes." | 2022 | €29.50 |
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| Lo-Fi India Abuse | pic-LP | very nice re-issue of praised album from 1999 (BSI Records), very percussive and loopy... lim. 500 picture disc with die cut sleeve - "Nearly all of the tracks have hand percussion in varying tempos and intensities and at least 1/2 make use of electronic noise surges. The sound is very crisp and clean, extremely well produced, recorded and nicely varied throughout the length of the disc.." [Brainwashed] | 2023 | €29.00 |
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| MUZIEKKAMER | I - Kamermuziek | CD | re-issue of the much sought after cassette-only release from 1982 by this band from Leiden, Netherlands, active in the 80's, creating hazy ambience by combining melodic guitar picks, synths, bass tones... : "The first album, 'I' (aka Kamermuziek), is a self-healing calm unified by hushed-toned electric guitars and faint synths, while the second album is a more experimental and pop minimalist/electronic sound, similar to Kubus Kassettes' work.." - 4 long tracks, digisleeve | 2023 | €12.00 |
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| MY BLOODY VALENTINE | EP's 1988-1991 | do-CD | collection of EPs by the unique British dream/drone/noise pop pioneers, who co-establised a new style that was called 'shoegazer': "You made me realise", "Feed my with your Kiss", "Glider", "Tremolo", and some rare extras plus two previously unpublished tracks ! Comes in oversized 8-panel oversized cover, with booklet, new pics & liner notes | 2012 | €15.00 |
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| MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / PESTREPELER | Solar Anarchy / As Wolf | pic-LP | MCIAA side recorded live in Cologne 14.12.2006; PESTREPELLER is a project from UK with SAVAGE PENCIL (who also did the artwork for their side of the pic LP) | 2009 | €15.00 |
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| N[27] / TZESNE | theBelt | LP | second collaboration by the Spanish Drone Rec. artist TZESNE with German epic droner HELLMUT NEIDHARDT (from MULTER) aka N => four absolute stunning pieces of rough & super contemplative transcension drones, combining location recordings and guitar surge waves in a great way; we love this album!! - "Expect something more dark, more heavy but also very alluring... Making you enter the old dark plant, even if you should know better... "- BACK IN STOCK last copies, lim. 100 copies !! | 2014 | €28.00 |
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| NADJA | Bodycage | CD | re-issue of this early and much requested NADJA-album with three epic tracks from 2005; nice letter-press cover | 2013 | €12.00 |
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| NEBELUNG | Mistelteinn | LP | re arrangement of the first EP from 2005 - all songs have been re-recorded and newly treated => this is very emotional German 'nature-mysticism'-folk with a guitarish & almost 'wavey' character; using lyrics by BAUDELAIRE & NIETZSCHE... "The delicacy of the picked guitars, the mournful melancholy of the cello, and the warm sonority of the matured voice": our favourite German neo-folk band! lim. 300 copies, white vinyl | 2016 | €20.00 |
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| NICCHIARELLI, SUSANNA | NICO, 1988 (Movie) | DVD | intense Biopic and Roadmovie about NICOs last year(s) before her death (July 1988) when she was, fully Heroine addicted, touring in Italy and East Europe (!), between complete despair and aggressive ecstasy... NICO is played by Danish acteur TRINE DYRHOLM, who sings all pieces on her own.. English with German subtitles, 93 min. | 2018 | €10.00 |
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| NICOLAI, CARSTEN | Ray Collector | 10inch | lim. vinyl release with pure static noise recordings from magnetic tapes and films used for his exhibition "Strahlen" in Modena, send around to unknown persons ("Mr. NEMO") with special return result (capturing the electromagnetic waves and radiations through transport); - a most conceptual sound art release presented on a lovely x-ray picture disc, w. gatefold cover and full-colour booklet in book-bound style.. amazing release !! | 2023 | €32.50 |
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| NIETO, MIKEL R | Dark Sound | BOOK & CD | impressive / political / unique art-book release by this Basque sound artist about the oil industry, presenting 34 field recordings (as one long track) from the Equadorian rainforest and environment, with sounds of industrial machines slowly destroying it => the completely BLACK book contains 176 pages with essays, documents, pictures, printed with BLACK ink on BLACK pages; the price of the book is not fixed, but depending on the crude oil Brent price (please ask) | 2016 | €44.00 |
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| NOCTURNE | Working Ecstasy | do-CD | epic work from the French cold ambient Industrial project.. -"Two albums full of analogue sounds, droning noises, rumours as building collapsing while bombing, sensations like driving in an endless tunnel, far alarms, electricity, S/M & B/T/K feelings, cold and freezing voids mutating into hot layers of concrete, far sampled voices. and much more." | 2010 | €15.00 |
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| NOGOCIELLA | Satanismo Di Basilica Concattedrale Di San Marino | 4 x MC | epic release (240 min.!) spread on 4 cassettes with recordings of Satanistic rituals (often based on viciously processed and alienated religious chants) by the mysterious CHRISTINE NOGOCIELLA from Italy; lim. 50 and only available from Drone Records !! Comes with 21 x 21cm colour cover & small 'ritual object' made out of metal !! | 2014 | €18.00 |
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| NOISE CLUSTER / STIGMATE | Extreme Sleepwalking | MC | two Italian projects in a doomy, rhythmic, vocalized, apocalyptic noise collaboration, behind NOISE CLUSTER we find DER BEKANNTE POSTINDUSTRIELLE TROMPETER with XXENA, STIGMATA delivers the piercing analog electronics... - black C-40 tape in hand dyed, blue cotton bag with cover art by Fabian Blobel and a card with more pictures inside. Lim. to 50 copies | 2021 | €9.50 |
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| NORTHAM, MICHAEL [MNORTHAM] | Stochastic Embroidery | CD | as big fans of MICHAEL NORTHAMs works in the past we are very happy there's a new CD available now, on Belgiums TAALEM - these three long tracks were recorded when he lived in a tiny container inside the Olympic Rainforest in Washington => hazy, surrealistic dreamscapes made from field recordings of various sites... - lim. 250 copies, numbered, recycled gatefold cardboard with photo sticker | 2025 | €13.00 |
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| NOSTALGIE ETERNELLE | Magie Fragile | LP | second album with new studio recordings by the re-activated German "minimal / industrial / wave" duo, who proceed with their typical 80's sounds in a great way... lim. 300, lyric sheet | 2015 | €16.00 |
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| NURSE WITH WOUND | Chromanatron | pic-LP | "a hallucination on the music of SAND by ANDREW LILES & STEVEN STAPLETON" - long awaited new NWW album that destroys (again) all expectations => a collage made out SAND material (incl. the legendary "Golem") with additional arrangements on guitar, french horn and "atmospheric grooves" feat. MATT WALDRON (IRR.APP (ext.), this is KRAUTROCK pushed to other / new dimensions! Pic-LP version lim. 500 in special die-cut window sleeve !! | 2013 | €24.50 |
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| Lumbs Sister | CD | more than 20 years after the first announcement this (never used) film-soundtrack finally sees the light of day; recorded already 1986 / 1987 with one track being a collaboration with COIL ("How to destroy Angels II"), this is an outstanding dark & dense soundtrack with some typical eerie NWW elements appearing in the mix, really captivating like a bad dream.... length 70+ min. !! | 2015 | €19.50 |
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| Brained By Falling Masonry/Cooloorta Moon | pic-LP | first vinyl re-issue of the praised "BRAINED by.." (1984, L.A.Y.L.A.H. 7), with J.G. THIRLWELL vocals on the title piece, PLUS the "COOLORTA MOON" 12" (1989), both feat. DAVID TIBET... as a bonus, the track "Sarah's Beloved Aunt" from the rare "Rushkoff Coercion" 7" is included; re-mastered by ANDREW LILES, comes as picture disc in die-cut sleeve | 2023 | €31.50 |
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| Alas The Madonna Does Not Function | pic-LP | re-issue of legendary 12" from 1988, marking a new sound direction for NWW... *it brought rhythmic and almost \"musical\" elements into play. Madonna could be seen along with the Soresucker and Cooloorta Moon EPs as the bridge between the old and the new, the natural precursors to Thunder Perfect Mind and Rock'n Roll Station.* - re-mastered by ANDREW LILES, die-cut sleeve, picture disc !! | 2022 | €31.50 |
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| Thunder Perfect Mind (special ed.) | 3 x pic-LP | luxus / collectors re-edition of the legendary 1992 album, for the first time on vinyl since its initial releas, three picture discs containing all the bonus material from the various CD editions, all newly re-mastered + with large poster, numbered ed. 300 copies | 2024 | €88.00 |
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| The Grave And Beautiful Name Of Sadness | LP | two unpublished archive remixes of this very dark, haunting, soundtrackish track recorded already in 1984 - both differ a lot from each other - "This feautures two archive mixes of the original 1984 recording. A 2007 epic variation recorded for possible inclusion in Peter Strickland's film 'Katalin Varga' and a unique 'psychedelic' version from 2012 which until now has never been heard." - comes in green marbled "eco" vinyl | 2024 | €28.50 |
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| NYTT LAND | Odal | CD | second album on COLD SPRING for this Russian shamanic dark ambient ritual FOLK band who performs mainly on old Icelandic language and uses traditional instruments and old overtone singing techniques (Kangyraa), "inspired by the traditional music of the indigenous peoples of Siberia, the Old Icelandic epic and the atmosphere of classic Norwegian black metal"; - very ceremonial & professionally performed, with a focus on polyphonic singing | 2018 | €12.00 |
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| OBJEKT / URIAN | Agitation | CD | second full length album for this German Post-Industrial project, for fans of rhythmic old school industrial & powerelectronics with vocals, analogue sounds & voice samples; very powerful, dark & grim, they are able to transform the classic elements nto a contemporary version of "conscious" industrial without the typical clichees | 2010 | €13.00 |
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| OLIVEROS, PAULINE | Four Meditations / Sound Geometries | CD | two of the more complex and experimental orchestra works by PAULINE OLIVEROS (who sadly died in Nov. 2016), one recorded live at the 'Ars Musica' Festival in Brussels in March 2003, the other a day earlier in a studio: improvised drone-minimalistic pieces that follow special instructions (i.e. the picked-up sounds are processed in geometrical patterns by the 'Expanded Instrument System'), or accompanied by the vocalisations of singer IONE... - CD version now in stock! | 2016 | €13.50 |
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| ONODERA, YUI | Kiso Three Rivers | LP | Onodera's minimalist palette and detailed approach to spatial sound design balances microscopic field recordings and tonally-rich traditional instruments, which he applies with stark focus to the subject of the Kiso Three Rivers across eight extended pieces of music arranged into two distinct parts. | 2025 | €22.50 |
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| ORGANUM | Valentin | 7" | after a long time, a typical "rare & mysterious" ORGANUM EP, a very strong piece coming in two versions using percussion & choir-elements (!) paired with field recordings & piano & noise; a very unusual sound!! 45rpm 7" lim. & numbered 233, exquisite artwork the label is known for, designed by JACKMAN / J. COLECLOUGH | 2010 | €12.50 |
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| ORGANUM ELECTRONICS | Organum Electronics | CD | ORGANUM transmuted into ORGANUM ELECTRONICS, and also the sound became much more complex and noisier as before, without loosing the typical characteristics of repetition and timelessness.., 3 tracks of about 15 min., lim. 500 copies - "..'Electronics' is dense and huge; a roiling swamp of electric din that would appeal to fans of Jackman’s early collaborations with The New Blockaders ('Salute'), and 'Wrack'), though this is more atmospheric than aggressive.." [HS / Vital Weekly] | 2019 | €14.00 |
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| ORSI, FABIO | The new Year is over | 3 x CD | stunning new epic work between cosmic synth-ambience & more powerful hypnotic psychedelism, using guitars, etc... 9 long tracks, among his best material yet! Lim. 300 oversized covers | 2012 | €18.00 |
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| Memory of a safe Place / La Forest a non fa pura | LP + mag | this new series from the Italian ambient label combines acoustic & visual art: a lim. LP + large A4 booklet (16 pages) with b/w photographs of the same artist; FABIO ORSI starts the series with time-suspending dense transcension drones & beautiful forest pictures; lim. 250 copies, white vinyl | 2013 | €18.00 |
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| Qui Vicino | CD & booklet | the Italian master of subtle "intimate daydream ambience" encharms with a melancholic 33 min. piece based on a most sublime & harmonic evolving guitar drone, soft as a summer breeze and going round in slow circles...think of: ULTRA MILKMAIDS, early AIDAN BAKER, STARS OF THE LID, TROUM.... comes with 16 page A4 booklet with b/w pictures taken by ORSI himself, showing the lonely moments of daily life....lim. 250 | 2014 | €15.00 |
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| Uncharted Waters | CD | first CD for the Italian ambient composer on ZOHARUM, going now very much into 'Berlin-school' 70's electronica directions, with one epic track.. "at the core of this record the layers become voluminous, thick with an organ that sounds as if Orsi has slept on the keys and as he breathes and snores the slight alterations develop in the mix quite organically, as if the body is fully orchestrated into the action of the chord progression and descent." [Toneshift] lim. 300 | 2019 | €12.00 |
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| ORSI, FABIO / TEZ | Otto | CD | first collab by FABIO ORSI with TEZ (Maurizio Martinucci), a long active soundartist wh worked with ADI NEWTON, TAYLOR DEUPREE and others => on 8 tracks they spread very electronic, harmonic and outcomposed tracks, at times sacral and suspended towards the sky, at times more mellow and cinematic...."they have created a work as dense as it is intense, with cosmic traits that are aptly depicted in the images featured on the artwork.." - excellent sleeve design, lim. 200 copies | 2022 | €13.00 |
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| ORTMANN, ANDY | Psychoacoustic Electronics | 3 x LP | Chicago based member of PANICSVILLE (known for wild performing) and man behind NIHILIST with a captivating, epic album dealing with "Psychoacoustic Electronics", working with unlistenable (but perceivable) frequencies, binaural and masking effects, etc.. => field and object recordings + found sounds heavily transformed, noises and vocal mutations, an album full of surprises and unusual twists, an aural adventure and experience ! - lim. 300 copies, gatefold cover, inlay | 2023 | €48.50 |
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| OTAVAN VERET | same | CD | debut album of a Finnish duo (with => TERVAHÄÄT connection) producing very refined, perfectly balanced "handplayed" ritual drone with very hypnotic and slow contemplative percussion and spheric electro choirs....this is dark cosmic ambience with the drive to completely dissolve into the universe.. very beautiful, dark, elevating, 3 long epic pieces (49+ min) of superb dark ambience... lim. 500 | 2014 | €13.00 |
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| PACIONE, ADAM | Dobranoc | pic-LP | new release in the nice "graphic / sound" interaction picture-disc series; lim. 268 copies | 2009 | €17.50 |
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| PAIN NAIL | End Times | CD | the first album from 2002, finally available on CD again: *A 40 minute album consisting of a large variety of material... from gloomy brooding heavy electronics to rusty and dark rhythmic metal percussion industrial, and epic atmospheric tracks. Aggressive vocals from Mikko with a dirty analogue sound.* - PAIN NAIL is MIKKO ASPA (GRUNT, ALCHEMY OF THE 20th CENTURY) with MARKO KOKKONEN (FLESHPRESS)- "Creepy as shit, dark and hideous noise." [LinesinWaxxx] | 2024 | €13.00 |
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| PALESTINE, CHARLEMAGNE | Aa Sschmmettrrooossppecctivve | BOOK | from the incredible work & life of 'transitional object' sound artist C. PALESTINE: 1000 pictures and documents on 1132 pages !! 30x30 cm artbook, ed. of 500 copies; "...superimposed in ‘strumming’ layers, weaving the historical & present, works & performance, private & public into a tightly knit sschmmettrroobookk" | 2018 | €35.00 |
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| PERSONAL BEST (MAGAZINE) | N°8 | mag | LASSE MARHAUGs beloved magazine (almost a book) for "noise, music and the cosmic soup" with a new issue: GHEDALIA TAZARTES, JANA WINDEREN, PETER BRÖTZMANN, PETER REHBERG, OTOMO YOSHIHIDE, GX JUPITTER-LARSEN, RACHEL SHEARER, BENJAMIN NELSON - all with extensive interviews incl. many unseen photos, cover pics, posters, etc.. - A4 format, 100 pages, full colour | 2020 | €11.00 |
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| PHILLIPS, TOMAS / LUIGI TURRA | Vignettes Amplifie | CD | microscopic concrete drone ambience, using many "small sounds" objects; first collab by these two sound artists from USA & Italy.. lim. 500 on the rising Russian label NITKIE - LAST COPY! | 2011 | €13.00 |
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| PHRAGMENTS & NEW RISEN THRONE | Between Ecstasy and Death | CD | conceptual/'existential' dark ambience collaboration about the topics "Ecstasy" and "Death", each artist contributed two appropriate tracks which was then remixed-reworked by the other... -*the album masterfully blends ominous drones, classical orchestration and analogue synths to craft an atmospheric odyssey through the depths of the human psyche. A deeply evocative exploration of the human condition, it invites listeners to confront the intensity of life’s most profound extremes.* - lim. 300 | 2025 | €14.00 |
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| PHURPA | Ya Tog Rid Pa'i Gyer | do-CD | after the successful CHÖD albumshere's already another epic double CD with two long tracks of deep throat spiritual vocal emanations.. "the exploration of various techniques and discovering new inspirations in eastern culture makes Phurpa musicians more and more eager to use traditional instruments in addition to their distinctive 'rgyud-skad' singing, thus enriching the already familiar formula" lim. 500 | 2017 | €16.00 |
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| PINTO, JOAO CASTRO | Suntria - Imaginal Sonotopes | CD | the "imaginative journey" of site specific recordings arrives with U43 and JOAO CASTRO PINTO at the mythical forest Sintra and its surroundings near Lisboa, Portugal; in 12 sound pictures he captured the sounds of nature, people and machines, ruptured by loud breaks in between, relating to the notion of a "Sonotope" from the Sound Ecology research; a very versatile and challenging release with many surprising breaks and sophisticated concept; lim. 200 | 2017 | €14.00 |
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| PONS, MELISSA & NILS MOSH | Of Wolves and People | LP | the Portugesian sound designer and field recordist MELISSA PONS followed the paths and sounds of the Iberian wolf, NILS MOSH in Germany focused on the return of the Grey Wolf at the Ruhr area - both created side-long collages filled with howlings of wolfs and other environmental sounds, added musical elements and spoken words / quotes about htis fascinating topic, in order to enhance the respect and the awareness about this animal.. - comes on dark marbled vinyl ! | 2023 | €20.00 |
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| PROCER VENEFICUS | How the Heather Moonlit Shivers | do-LP | this is the first epic vinyl release by this US American dark folk / dark poetic ambient project => acoustic guitars, amorph drones & whispers, melancholic tunes, but this also has a very sensual, erotic, night-shade coloured side... incl.a cover version of an AMBER ASYLUM song; comes in a stunning gatefold cover on RED vinyl, lim. 406 copies | 2009 | €10.00 |
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| PSYCHIC TV | Pagan Day | CD | mythic PTV album from 1984 with early song demos and sketches of ALEX FERGUSSON and GENESIS P.ORRIDGE, recorded on a simple 4-track cassette machine and originally not intended to be released as "finished" material; feat. "We Kiss" and "Cold Steel", one of the most intimate PTV albums - appeared first as TOPY 003 on 23rd Dec. 1984 as lim. picture disc. only available in the shops for one hour! | 2017 | €13.00 |
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| PYRAMIDS WITH WRAITHS | Magpie & Raven | LP | one-sided clear vinyl LP with epic 25 min track - feat. members of BURIAL HEX as well as BEN FLEURY-STEINER (PARADIN) and TARA VANFLOWER; lim. 350 in clear PVC outer sleeve / vellum inner sleeve; incl. download code card | 2012 | €20.00 |
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| RAINFOREST SPIRITUAL ENSLAVEMENT | Venus Flytrap Exotica | 7inch | the highly successful ambient / dub project of DOMINICK FERNOW (PRURIENT) and LOW JACK (who runs Editions Gravats in France): "a tropical spell from on a lights-out dancehall voodoo tip - Powerful spells, strongly recommend to fans of Demdike Stare, Equiknoxx, Shackleton, Burial." [Boomkat] - ed. of 400 copies on GREEN vinyl | 2019 | €13.00 |
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| RAISON D'ETRE | Prospectus I (Redux Version) | do-CD | remastered & remixed '20th anniversary' re-issue of R.D.s first album from 1993, filled with religious chants, choirs, bells & creating a 'gothic' atmosphere, this marked the invention of the typical R.D. sound, somehow a mixture of post-industrial & archaic catholic mysticism... comes with diverse bonus-tracks from the same sessions | 2013 | €17.00 |
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| RAPOON | Time-loop Anomalies | CD | collection of single tracks and remixes, often rhythmic & trancy in the "typical" & adored RAPOON-style (all previously unreleased)... "eerie, ethereal music lingering on the borderlands of dreamworld and reality" | 2012 | €12.00 |
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| Blue Days | CD | RAPOON is productive as ever so this is already the fourth album with new studio material for the Polish label in 4 years: on 60 minutes 14 tracks spread with 'sketches and ideas' that form a wholeness together, relying on the typical sound ingredients (sampled choirs, percussion, exotic drones) but sounding here much more melancholic, slow, and less floating and shimmering, and we also hear Mr. STOREY singing... a winter album that slowly enfolds... lim. 500 oversized gatefold-cover | 2016 | €13.00 |
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| Waiting by the River | CD | RAPOON as you have never heard it before: this is a collection of "songs", with electro-beats, vocals, instruments, guitars, samples, all arranged in the typical hypnotic RAPOON style but still sounding completely unexpected, thematically based on the decline of the "booming 60's" that were filled with huge optimism, but ended up in today's miserable state of the world... a very political, sad and also ironic album about the triumph of capitalism and delusions.. | 2016 | €14.00 |
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| Rhiz | CD | re-issue of this very rhythmic, unusual album from 2002 (Klanggalerie), using also female voice material in the typical RAPOONian way.. lim. 500 | 2017 | €12.00 |
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| Moka 24 | CD | inspired by the ficticious nightclub "Moka Efti" in the "Babylon Berlin"-series, this album interpretates the 1920era in connection to the demise of the West in 2024... - *Tracks vary wildly but are all unified within the same setting. An aural cabaret of sounds that depict and define a certain moment. A moment that has already existed in the past, exists in the present and will exist in the future..* | 2024 | €15.00 |
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| RAPOON + PACIFIC 231 | Tour de Force | CD | the second RAPOON P231 collaboration (after 'Palestine' in 2007) results in long, almost psychedelic electronic soundscapes which are not typical for both artists,...lim. 500 in fragile cardboard die-cut 'box' design with metallic colour, white silkscreen print and a set of 6 postcards, over 70 min. of playtime, lim. 500 | 2014 | €15.00 |
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| RATKJE, MAJA S. | Mara | pic-LP | limited pic-LP feat. a live recording made July 2018 in a church in Lockenhaus, Austria, very much vocal-based and melancholic, using backing material from Norwegian and American tradionals.. | 2020 | €25.00 |
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| RECCHION, TOM | Oaxaca Dawn | pic-LP | the series of picture discs on Elevator Bath (with visual artwork by the artists themselves) continues with a release by TOM RECCHION (co-founder of the LOS ANGELES FREE MUSIC SOCIETY), who captured field recordings from Oaxaca (Mexico) and Hana bamboo (Haiti), lovely obscure recordings (i.e. masses of cocks) with no further re-working; a must for fans of the UNFATHOMLESS / MYSTERY SEA and GRUENREKORDER labels; lim. 250 copies - BACK IN STOCK ! | 2016 | €20.00 |
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| REED, RICK | Dreamz / Blue Polz | pic-LP | two new pieces using EMS synth, 2 sine wave generators & shortwave radio, the picture disc reproducing two paintings of REED, edition of 260 copies | 2008 | €17.50 |
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| RENALDO & THE LOAF | Gurdy Hurding | CD | incredible: 30 years after their last album RENALDO & THE LOAF are back with a NEW studio recording release! "immediately recognizable, with goofy voices and exaggerated accents, bizarre lyrics involving topics like garden gnome bedmates or a hatred of soap, non-obvious chords and melodies, acoustic instruments played abnormally and extreme sound manipulation to make everything sound unnatural." [The Pulse] | 2016 | €14.50 |
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| RITSCH, WINFRIED | Woodscratcher | pic-LP | curious installation of pure sounds from a wood-scratcher machine that cuts tree-trunks into 2,5 cm thick "discs", while being amplified with 4 pick-ups and send to four loudspeakers; so that he machine is 'playing' the acoustic wood-information. astonishing work by this Austrian sound-artist who is known as a collaborator of BERNHARD LANG and PETER ABLINGER; the picture disc has an image of a wood piece on it: a most curious record, very limited | 2012 | €20.00 |
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| RLW / PAAK | Zur Arbeit I | LP | already the third collaboration by RLW with PETER KASTNER aka PAAK, this time on the subject WORK: on three pieces called "Schnaps" (booze), "Kantine" (canteen), and "Gerberei" (tannery) they distill the typical sounds from these "areas" of work in the 19th, 20th, and 21th century with a sarcastic and at times dadaistic approach, using harpsichord, mellotron, rhythmbox, voice and field recordings; a very curious record to say the least !! Lim. 300 colour vinyl & inlay | 2016 | €17.00 |
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| ROIGK, STEFAN | PARKANLAGE | BOOK & CD | BACK IN STOCK this art catalogue (21 x 19 cm, 60 pages) with many colour pictures of installation works, plus texts in German & English, released on the occasion of the PARKPLATZ exhibition (Wolfsburg, Juli-September 2006) from this German soundart artist who was once active as KENOTAPH, K:EIM & SKALP! - On the CD 63 minutes of material with highly abstract and nice droning musique concrete. Still to discover !! | 2008 | €18.00 |
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| ROSS, DAVID & CLIVE BELL | Recovery Suite | LP | British duo also known as TWINKLE with jazz / impro / world music roots, creating hard to categorize ethno-electronica / fourth world ambient landscapes with the extensive use of the Shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute, "dystopic lounge ambiance" the label calls it; very curious, unique music... lim. 250 | 2014 | €15.00 |
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| ROZMANN, AKOS | Mass / Massa | 7 x CD BOX | first time release of this epic, 7 hour work that was created between 1989 and 2004 at the EMS in Stockholm, consisting of 12 electro-acoustic compositions that sound like nothing else with their religious references, vocal material from liturgys, chants, organ sounds and electronic noises, building a complex collage that seems to be in a constant movement of arching and warping... - 7 CDs in sturdy box with two booklets | 2022 | €50.50 |
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| S.E.T.I. | The Geometry of Night | do-CD | re-issue of the second S.E.T.I. album from 1996 with its classic rhythmic sci-fi ambient sound, comes re-mastered and with additional sister album 'Companion' with over 60 min. of new material, with deep space transmission drones, digital glitch noises and crackles from the far beyond, not too far away from the typical BAD SECTOR sound... | 2015 | €16.00 |
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| SAND | Vibrating Cloud | do-LP | finally in stock, the latest "new" album by the German Kraut / Psych / Kosmische / Experimental legends, celebrating their 50th anniversary with 10 NEW tracks, plus 6 tracks that are remakes of older classics; - * Over 5 decades Sand is a timeless narrative machine full of pictures and scenarios, each title a unique piece that stands alone. * - black vinyl ed., numbered, "android" cover art by ENKI BILAL, 200 gr. vinyl | 2020 | €32.50 |
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| SATO, MINORU (M/S, SASW) + ASUNA | Tottering Steps | 7inch | MINORU SATO (aka "m/s", known from releases on Senufo and SPEKK) and ASUNA (who had a 7" on Meeuw with the sound of 100 toy keyboards at the same time) in collaboration again, creating multiple layered drones with a cryptic technical concept through casio-synths, AIR COLUMN RESONATOR und HELMHOLTZ resonator... "and there is some great interaction between all those resonances produced, keys of keyboards taped and motor being picked." [Vital Weekly] | 2019 | €7.00 |
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| SAVAGE REPUBLIC | Aegean | do-LP | the great epic album (19 tracks, 64 min.!) from 2014 now on vinyl! => the Californian cult band goes deeper "back to the roots" with tribalesque percussion, 'oriental' sounding guitar melodies and surprises with female vocals and a wind section even, but also has very powerful 'wall of sound' / post-punk influenced tracks, and a stronger experimental approch as before.... lots of guest-musicians as BLAINE REINIGER (TUXEDOMOON) on violin appear... spreading in all directions... lim. 400 w. wonderful cover | 2015 | €28.00 |
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| Meteora | CD | what started in 1982 with the genius "Tragic Figures" album finds a continuation in 2021 with "Meteora"; although the line-up has changed completely, you can hear in every second that this IS SAVAGE REPUBLIC, rich harmonic instrumental tracks in the typical "desert rock" style change with aggressive, vocalized and more post punking tracks... the power, the emotion, the yearning, it's all still there... one track has been written be E.G. LEWIS (WIRE) - a great comeback once more ! | 2021 | €14.00 |
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| SCOTT-BUCCLEUCH, RUSS / SIGTRYGGUR BERG SIGMARSSON / ANDREW SHARPLEY | Mask of Cheerful | CD | highly experimental nine collage works (55 min) = all kinds of field recordings, object sounds, instrumental / voice sounds (+ reaktor synths) were collected and at the end mixed by ANDREW SHARPLEY, the long active British experimentalist once in STOCK HAUSEN & WALKMAN; it's fascinating how very concrete snippets collide with electronic sounds and micro-drones, always in search for the truly anomalous arrangement; very much recommended for discoverers of the non-ordinary!! digipack with weird collage pictures, probably pretty limited | 2021 | €14.00 |
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| SEETYCA | Lieder zum Summen | CD | a collection of 16 purely electronic 'songs'/ miniatures by the German ambient project dedicated to autumn atmospheres... => soft poetic aural pictures, with track titles like "sonnentropffen", "erde riechen", or "regen gucken"... very subtle and calm, this music mirrors certain 'magic moments' while experiencing nature phenomena... comes with full-colour 16p. booklet | 2014 | €13.50 |
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| Eis | CD-R | a monochrome sound-entity that can be located in the loneliness of the mind, in the mountains of the own brain = in cold delusion (as the german info puts it) => extremely bleak drone- & fogscapes with twinkling shimmers, wide & borderless, we love it ! Six long tracks incl. the epic (37 min) "Plattentektonik"; comes w. handmade cover & on lightscribed CDR | 2015 | €12.00 |
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| Mbira | CD-R | epic one tracker of 80 minutes using sounds of various artists from the MBIRA-label such as VZUSDW, ARTIN MUCHT, MOEDRA, [:kopfapffel:], etc. etc.. => cosmic bubbles drenched in endless reverb, far away sonics waving in slow passages, weird electronic and non-electronic acoustic objects appear for a short time, etc...no rhythms, extremely subtle, real subconscious space - mind music ! full-colour cover, lightscribed cdr, the MBIRA jubilee release ! | 2015 | €12.00 |
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| SERRIES, DIRK / STEFANO GENTILE | The Disintegration of Silence | CD + BOOK | beautiful raw guitar-ambience, transforming tones in slow changes, completely effected in analogue ways... this comes with a 28 page full-colour art booklet with collage works from STEFANO GENTILE, using the washed out fragmentations of female model pictures; another smaller booklet is included too.. pure timeless melancholia and transience, numb. ed. 250 copies | 2023 | €20.00 |
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| SHOEMAKER, MATT | Erosion of the Analogous Eye | CD | lim. 300 letterpress edition with different handcreated cover-pics | 2009 | €13.00 |
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| SIGUR ROS | Von | CD | first rare album from 1997, darker & more experimental than nowadays => hyper-spheric & free floating dronescapes (instrumental sounds, field recordings) with multi-layered elfin-vocals + tracks that sound already song-oriented like a raw version of the typical later SIGUR ROS sound.... great album, available again ! | 2014 | €14.00 |
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| SIJ & SERGEY GABBASOV | Zhang Zhung | CD | collaboration of SiJ with the Russian ethnomusicologist, SERGEY GABBASOV who dive together deeply into the Tibetan & Eastern Ritual Music tradition of the BÖN (the archaic religion of the Tibetan Himalaya), combining sounds from the original instruments (also from Armenia, Moldavia, Tuva, etc..) with foggy transcension drones and chants... two epic tracks, 79 min. & full colour booklet with pictures from the region of the old ZHANG-ZHUNG in Tibet | 2015 | €13.00 |
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| SIL MUIR (ANDREA MARUTTI / ANDREA FERRARIS) | same | CD | melancholic & experimental ambience by this Italian project formed by ANDREA MARUTTI (AMON) and ANDREA FERRARIS (UR, etc.); lim. 500 in the typical nice "cardboard-box" style from Diophantine | 2009 | €12.00 |
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| SKITLIV | Bloodletting | pic-10inch | lim. 3-track pic-10" (777 copies) by the project of ex-MAYHEM frontman with unreleased CURRENT 93 - track & paintings by DAVID TIBET and EDVARD MUNCH on the disc!! | 2010 | €15.00 |
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| SKY BURIAL | Corranach | CD | the second project of MICHAEL PAGE (FIRE IN THE HEAD) now on Reverse Alignment, presenting three epic tracks (57 min total) of unsettling, eerie ambience pulses and waves, a must for any LOKI or CYCLIC LAW fan.. "...one of the craziest, exhilarating journeys I’ve ever taken when listening to dark ambient. Have you ever had that dream where you were flying high enough you never saw the land? Corranach was the soundtrack to that dream." [Resounding Footsteps] | 2016 | €12.00 |
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| SLEEP | The Clarity | 12nch | re-issue of the one-sided 12" from 2014 by the stoner-rock droners who got so famous with their "Dopesmoker" album...one long track, cool as ever; there are several editions, ours: "180 gram GREEN/CLEAR vinyl housed in a plastic picture disc style sleeve with the Sleep logo silkscreened in glow in the dark ink." | 2017 | €20.00 |
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| SMITH, STEVEN R. | Crown of Marches | CD | epic one-tracker, digipack ; STEVEN R. SMITH is a member of HALA STRANA & THUJA | 2005 | €14.00 |
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| SOISONG | XAj3Z | do-LP | debut album from the project by PETER CHRISTOPHERSON (COIL) and IVAN PAVLOV (COH) from 2009, which appeared in an octagon shaped cover originally..* a digital reference to jazz: seemingly acoustic, effervescent, boundary breaking, digital-era entertainment where light rays and tropical heat are backed up by zeroes and ones. The album is a defining statement, and an arbiter of the possibilities in the (then-)developing late-2000s music landscape...* - black vinyl version | 2025 | €33.00 |
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| SOLMANIA | Highdrophobia | LP | re-issue of early cassette (1986) from this Japanese noise project who uses self-built guitars that often take bizarre forms and shapes (extra necks, pick-ups, strings,etc..) - "With his stunning modified guitar, Solmania uses tape, radio, metal, turntable and vocals creating three incredible sound tracks of wild noise madness.." - three ecstatic noise tracks, lim. 199 copies, 12" inlay | 2023 | €24.00 |
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| SONORHC | Purf | LP | re-issue of legendary Avant/Free/Experimental album from 1972, by this French collective ~ *they create a sound full of invention, rich technically, made by many differents instruments which incorporated judiciously elements from the rock music, free-jazz, acid-psych, concrete, ethnic and experimental making them as one of the most atypical French Underground group, and seems somewhere more closer to the German “krautrock” bands like BETWEEN, AGITATION FREE, etc..* | 2022 | €26.00 |
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| STROM NOIR | Jouska | do-CD | favoured Drone Rec.-artist STROM NOIR (originally from Slovakia) is back with an epic and simply enchanting album of timeless droning melancholia, warm and nostalgic, slowly spiraling waves that evolve into something majestic and elevated - guitars (?) that sounds like organs or layers of acoustic instruments, like a dream that dreams itself, a dream that goes around in endless circles... - almost 2 hours playtime, 11 tracks, comes in oversized, 6 panel digipack, lim. 200 | 2024 | €17.50 |
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| SUM OF R | Orga | CD | the Swiss project by RETO MÄDER (URAL UMBO, RM 74) with an impressive album, merging dark instrumental ambience with melodramatic song elements, reminding us on BEYOND SENSORY EXPERIENCE or HUMAN GREED: "The album is a hybrid of ritual drums and eerie percussions, atmospheric analog electronics and epic drones forming a drifting orchestral wall of sound. Darkness, light and its reflections is what emerges from this mysterious aural mist." | 2017 | €13.00 |
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| SUNN O))) | ØØ VOID | CD | CD re-issue of their second album from 2000 feat. four side-long tracks with the "typical" ultra-low guitar-drone sound they got famous for | 2011 | €13.00 |
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| SUPERSILENT | 1-3 (re-edition) | 3 x CD | the very experimental debut for SUPERSILENT - this was also the start for the prolific RUNE GRAMMOFON label, an epic 3 CD release in 1997: improvised, dense jazz-avantgarde with influences from ambient, noise and electronic experimentation, at times wild and ecstatic for a fully percussive NOISE BLAST.... every piece is a surprise, even after numerous listenings; comes in triple digipak with full colour booklet; this is the re-issue from 2002 | 2002 | €32.00 |
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| SWANS | The Seer | do-CD | the praised new epic studio album (almost 120 minutes of material) - the condensation of 30 years SWANS - standard edition | 2012 | €20.00 |
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| To be kind | do-CD & DVD | their new monstrous masterpiece, this is the lim. do-CD version with a bonus DVD feat. a live / festival performance from 2013 with almost 110min. of filmed material in b/w => "epic sonic sprawl, droned out and psychedelic, hypnotic and heavy, more sound than song, impossibly abstract, and yet utterly entrancing, like a twisted, more avant garde abstract GODSPEED mutated into some sort of dense, blackened, gloriously majestic, and yet strangely minimal demonic drone-dirge songsuite" [Aquarius Records] | 2014 | €22.50 |
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| The Glowing Man (special ed.) | do-CD & DVD | "The final album by the Swans. Finally, Peace." [MICHAEL GIRA] - 8 tracks spread on 2 CDs, with three epic pieces over 20 minutes, sounding more atmospheric, dense and hypnotic as before.... "The love in his music is as terrible as it is beautiful, a wrenching act of spiritual determination." [Pitchfork] special editions comes with bonus DVD ! (live 2015) | 2016 | €20.00 |
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| TAGC (THE ANTI GROUP) | Iso-Erotic Calibration (brown vinyl) | LP | album from 1994 by ADI NEWTONs (CLOCK DVA) research project for psycho-acoustic music, for the first time on vinyl! *"Iso-Erotic Calibration" explores the potent topic of human sexuality. Recorded over a period of three years, this could be considered on of their more "accessible" albums.* - lim. 300 brown vinyl | 2025 | €27.50 |
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| Iso-Erotic Calibration | CD | album from 1994 by ADI NEWTONs (CLOCK DVA) research project for psycho-acoustic music => pulsative sequencer electro-waves and exotic samples, a futuristic, tension-filled atmosphere, repetitive structures and quasi-rhythms... *"Iso-Erotic Calibration" explores the potent topic of human sexuality. Recorded over a period of three years, this could be considered on of their more "accessible" albums.* - the CD version has 4 bonus tracks !! | 2025 | €15.00 |
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| TAPE LOOP ORCHESTRA | Interiors Three | LP + CD + BOOK | a meditation on empty rooms once inhabitated by humans, combining slowly fading keyboard sounds with cosmic and choral drift, creates a wonderful, thought-provoking space... three long tracks on LP + CD plus a 16 page art booklet with pictures "a metaphor for the plasmic, entropic energy of human spirits, and their referential ephemera, using the glimpses of other peoples lives" ed. of 300 copies | 2019 | €34.00 |
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| TAZARTES, GHEDALIA | Quoi qu'il en soit | CD + BOOK | first posthumous release by the French artist who died in Feb. 2021 => a small 48 page fullcolour book showing pictures of TAZARTES studio curiosities ("Wunderkammer") filled with sculptures and art objects... on the CD is a document (35+ min.) of the only live performance by the trio of TAZARTES, JEROME LORICHON and QUENTIN ROLLET, recorded in Paris 2019; ed. of 300 copies | 2021 | €20.00 |
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| TELEPHERIQUE | Nerv.Sys | do-CD | epic work about "distress in modern civilizations" by the south-German ambient industrial & cassette-networking pioneers | 2004 | €15.00 |
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| TEMPLE OF TIERMES | Apara | CD | the long standing Finnish ritual / drone noise project, slow and low fi thick walls of otherwordly sounds, often going into almost subliminal areas, with a strange effect on your minds.. - *a mix of beautiful bright moments and dark atmospheres, an epic journey to the depths of human psyche with no option of return... * - 200 copies | 2023 | €13.00 |
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| THIS GREY HATES THE SUN | thisGrey hates the sun | CD | recommended debut for this Italian dark ambient & experimental project, moving between tension filled crunch and grate sounds and harsher ambient suction noises with collage elements, really captivating..." This first album by Giordano Rivolta proves that it is possible to describe darkness, alternating powerful 'sound pictures' with fragmented soundscapes captured in slow motion, where the idea of silence and absence becomes part of the music itself.." | 2016 | €10.00 |
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| THISQUIETARMY | Vessels | LP | lim. 300 clear vinyl - more song-oriented & orchestral material from the Canadian droner, forming a new vision of epic drone-pop using also synths, rhythms & electronics | 2012 | €20.00 |
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| THISQUIETARMY & SLEEPWALKER | 8493 | CD | 'From the forbidden depths of Siberia' - Russian one-man "ambient guitar drone" project SLEEPWALKER in collaboration with TQA on the amazing Ksenza label - both artist met first on a show in Tomsk at the Planetarium in 2018 and have exchanged material since then for this project => four epic tracks emerged, full of immersive guitar drones and dark harmonies, swirling noise spirals... - 4 tracks 49+ min. | 2023 | €13.00 |
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| TIETCHENS, ASMUS | Biotop | CD | re-issue of early TIETCHENS album from 1981 - obscure & pure analog electro-Pop-music, in the typical ASMUS STYLE;) - his second album for Sky Records | 2003 | €15.00 |
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| Eine ganze Menge | mCD | warehous found, this mini CD feat. 3 tracks (about 20 min.) with three "Teilmengen" tracks, the typical *microwave ambience* from TIETCHENS from this time, somehow glitchy and electronic, sometimes on the border to silence, for a concentrated contemplation in sound and beyond sound...- *sinustöne und weißes rauschen modifiziert zu riesigen fast-nichts-räumen, abstrakter menschenleere, in schnüffelndes und knabberndes* - cardboard cover | 2004 | €8.00 |
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| Fast ohne Titel, Korrosion | CD | eight different stages of "Ernste Musik" (serious music) on this new TIETCHENS work, the title-names filled with the typical irony but the sounds build a wonderful journey into unorganic micro-sound drones and a kind of electro-acoustic minimalism, with a development from the 'serious' to the absurd &surrealistic... | 2013 | €13.00 |
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| Abraum | CD | microscopic ambience work based on field recordings of steel tubes transporting waste during the creation of a new subway-tunnel through Hamburg; lim. 300 - "Obwohl »Abraum« gerne aus der Menschenferne zitiert, wirken die vier Kompositionen in ihrer sterilen Offenbarung eingesunkener Materieströme und ziselierten Klangklumpen wie neugewonnenes Gold aus Tietchens audiophiler Alchemie.." [AEMAG] | 2010 | €13.00 |
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| Parergon | CD | 'Sounds from te Vacuum' - TIETCHENS continues here to follow the idea of recycling already recycled material, in order to create something completely new (NO remixes), no moods or 'pictures' should be evoked, the basic intention is: JUST LISTEN! | 2016 | €13.00 |
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| TIETCHENS, ASMUS & DIRK SERRIES | Air | CD | a most surprising collaboration on this disc, with DIRK SERRIES (FEAR FALLS BURNING, etc.) delivering unusual basic sounds from accordeon, melodica, clarinet, harmonica, concertina ; ASMUS TIETCHENS has disintegrated, deformed and reassembled the material in his typical way, adding a most unreal note.. 6 tracks, 47 min., 300 copies | 2019 | €13.00 |
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| TO / THOMAS TILLY | Script Geometry | do-LP & CD | first vinyl release by this French soundartist also known as TO => a work about \'density\', using sounds of a tropical forest as if they were synthetic, as if it was an artificial construct => quite massive, pulsing drone waves with eerie organic sounds inside, arrays of undecipherable microsounds, atmospheric vibrations with strange \'electronic\' sounding animal phenomena and surprising cut-ups; a mysterious sounding album with interesting concept, comes in gatefold cover with additional CD - BACK IN STOCK! | 2014 | €24.00 |
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| TROUM | Ljubimaya / Daur | CD | re-issue of the very first TROUM release (the 3-track 10" vinyl-only "DAUR" from 1998, Cohort Rec), plus the LJUBIMAYA 10" from 2003 (Waystyx 03); cover pictures by Dmitry Chistov aka HUM; lim. 500 | 2009 | €12.50 |
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| Autopoiesis / Nahtscato | CD | finally a CD version / re-issue of the two vinyl-only releases AUTOPOIESIS (pic-LP from 2004) and NAHTSCATO (12" from 2005); plus two unreleased versions / bonus-tracks recorded 2003; 6-panel digipack, edition of 500 copies | 2010 | €12.00 |
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| Autopoiesis / Nahtscato (re-press w. different artwork) | CD | re-press with slightly different cover (glossy spiral on backside) of about 300 copies: the re-issue of the two vinyl-only releases AUTOPOIESIS (pic-LP from 2004) and NAHTSCATO (12" from 2005); plus two unreleased versions / bonus-tracks recorded 2003;.."When suspending their drones as lugubrious slabs of sound, Troum emerge as a brooding doppleganger of the shoegazer ethos." [Jim Haynes /The Wire] | 2021 | €12.00 |
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| TURCOTTE, ROXANNE | Fenetres interieures | CD | the third proper release by this highly interesting Canadian composer from Montreal, presenting 8 works (2009-2014), with the intention to open up (inner & outer) windows: wildlife/animal sounds worlds, memories on lost persons and their acoustics, our relationship with time, studies of vibrating strings, the horror of Fukushima, "protest acousmatics" of the younger generation, => all perceived from a poetic and philosopic perspective and transformed into electro-acoustic pieces | 2014 | €14.00 |
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| UNDIRHEIMAR | Ginnungagaldr | do-CD | epic new work for this occult ritualistic project from Scandinavia who got well known in the black ambient scene through CDs on Zazen and Black Mara - acoustic results of shamanistic acts rather than musical compositions.. - *This offering of sounds and vibrations is an attempt at crafting an audio talisman... No rules. No boundaries. Only pure, introspective experience through the medium of sound and vibration.* - lim. ed. 8 panel digisleeve | 2024 | €18.00 |
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| URENGA | After Rain | CD | perfect chill-out ambient techno from Budapest, this is the first album with a dedication and use of rain forest atmospheres and field recordings... "After the rain stops falling and the storm clouds withdraw beyond the horizon, the tide once again rolls in like a wave of evening colour glow. Hypnotizing and captivating music to spend half-awake in your bed through the thick tropical night." - 12 page full colour booklet, 79+ min. playtime | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| V.A. (VARIOUS ARTISTS) (COMPILATIONS) | Lust from the Underworld | do-CD | comp. dedicated to "Love & Eros in mythology, symbolist & decadent art". With JACK OR JIVE, CHAOS AS SHELTER, MONDBLUT, LEGENDARY PINK DOTS, ONE INCH OF SHADOW, MUSTERION, 4th SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE, etc ...lim. 500 with beautiful art design & big booklet w. 30 "bizarre erotic pictures" | 2004 | €22.00 |
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| RECORDS ARE NOT FOR BAKING [RANFB] (Full Subscription) | 12 x 12inch | subscription ed. lim. 200 / 6 x 12" plus 6 picture LPs only for subscribers!!! Contains also poster & original artwork. with: NURSE WITH WOUND, IRR.APP(EXT.), LA STPO, FRIDAY GROUP, BRUNNEN, CHRISTUS & THE COSMONAUGHTS. LAST FULL COPY IN STOCK - SPECIAL OFFER NOW! (the cover image shown here is from the IRR.APP(ext.) pic ed!!) | 2005 | €300.00 |
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| The Recommended Records Sampler 1982 - 25th Anniversary Edition | do-CD | re-issue of this historic milestone collection - the first compilation Recommended Records released (do-LP in 1982)t, now a collectors item, with exclusive material by: FAUST, ART BEARS, THE HOMOSEXUALS, UNIVERS ZERO, AKSAK MABOUL/HONEYMOON KILLERS, THE WORK, HENRY COW, ART ZOYD, THIS HEAT, THE RESIDENTS, PICCIO DAL POZZO, ROBERT WYATT, HECTOR ZAZOU, and many more... 2 hours of material, BACK IN STOCK | 2008 | €17.50 |
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| Hassaniya Music | LP | Sahrawi music from Western Sahara & Mauritania, recorded in 2006/2007, all based on the 'Hassaniya' dialect; using typical folklore-instruments but also electric guitars & synths; comes w. beautiful gatefold-cover & much background info | 2013 | €27.50 |
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| BALI 1928, Vol. II : Tembanf Kuna - Songs From An Earlier Time | CD | recordings of "Songs from an Earlier Time" made 1928 in BALI - original Balinese vocal music, which was pressed originally on 78 rpm discs in 1929 !! "The lyrics, fully translated, some from the archaic Old Javanese language and included in the liner notes, reveal intensely urgent erotic, mystical and romantic meanings."... comes with 110 page PDF with in-depth essay on the topic.. | 2014 | €14.00 |
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| Insane 80's [EV01>EV10] | CD | collection of pieces from the (mostly deleted) 10 x vinyl 7"es on EE Tapes, + 5 bonus tracks from rare cassettes: NOSTALGIE ETERNELLE, PSEUDO CODE, HUMAN FLESH, OPERA MULTI STEEL, BENE GESSERIT, NINE CIRCLES, etc.. bringing you back to the glorious times of the typical 80's minimal wave & industrial synth pop; liner notes by PETER VERCAUTEREN (GONZO CIRCUS); lim. 500 | 2014 | €12.00 |
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| Musique Concrete | LP | re-issue of this all-time classic from 1960 (!) which contains the results of 2 years of studio-work by the early "Groupe de Recherches des Musique Concrete" (GRMC): through tape manipulations, filters and "phonogenes" incredible pieces were created: XENAKIS "Diamorphoses", LUC FERRARI "Etude aux sons tendus", "Etude aux accidents", PIERRE SCHAEFFER "Etude aux sons", but also lesser known works by MICHEL PHILIPPOT and HENRI SAUGUET, showing the microscopic details & richness of M.C... | 2016 | €21.00 |
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| Avantgarde is happening because.. | CD | special compilation with exclusive material only, released for the re-established "Avantgarde" festival 2017 in Schiphorst, Germany: NURSE WITH WOUND, FAUST, ASMUS TIETCHENS, QLUSTER, V!V!V!, and many more new and unknown names of projects that were performing there with lots of KRAUT and PSYCHEDELIC experimentalism...lim. 500 and almost sold out at the label as many were picked up at the festival.. | 2017 | €14.00 |
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| Escape | CD | we recommend the fine ED.DEGEM compilation series, always centered around one topic and with many (mainly German) new & fresh names, sounds and concepts from the Sound Art and Electro-Acoustic scene , incl. booklet. Theme: ESCAPE : FLUCHT(en): 15 tracks, SIMON VINCENT, JULIA MIHALY, KAI NIGGEMANN, KIRSTEN REESE, CLAUDIA ROBLES-ANGEL, FELIX LEUSCHNER, HIROMI ISHII, STROM, NIKOLAUS HEYDUCK, etc... for explorers ! | 2016 | €13.00 |
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| Drop the Beat | CD | we recommend the fine ED.DEGEM compilation series, always centered around one topic and with many (mainly German) new & fresh names, sounds and concepts from the Sound Art and Electro-Acoustic scene, incl. booklet. Theme: RHYTHMS. 11 tracks: MARC BEHRENS, KAI NIGGEMANN, LINA POSECNAITE, KIRSTEN REESE, MICHAEL HARENBERG, JÖRG LINDENMAIER, etc.. - SPECIAL OFFER now, for explorers ! | 2018 | €7.00 |
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| Transit | CD | we recommend the fine ED.DEGEM compilation series, always centered around one topic and with many interesting sounds and concepts from the Sound Art and Electro-Acoustic scene, incl. booklet. theme: TRANSITION (Übergang, Verwandlung), 8 pieces by some more established composers this time: CLEMENS VON REUSNER, THOMAS GERWIN, MONIKA GOLLA + N: HEYDUCK, HANS TUTSCHKU, KLARENZ BARLOW, DIRK REITH, JOHANNES S. SISTERMANNS, JAN JACOB HOFMANN::: | 2019 | €13.00 |
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| 20_20 | CD | we recommend the fine ED.DEGEM compilation series, always centered around one topic and with many (mainly German) new & fresh names, sounds and concepts from the Sound Art and Electro-Acoustic scene, incl. booklet. theme: this existential year 2020: GERALD FIEBIG (known from Attenuation Circuit), CLARENCE BARLOW, WOLFGANG MOTZ, LUDGER KISTERS, JOHANNES S. SISTERMANNS, MARC BEHRENS, RALF HOYER, 15 tracks in total, so much to discover for adventurous hearts ! | 2020 | €13.00 |
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| VAGINA DENTATA ORGAN | Live in Berlin | pic-LP | lim. 100! NEW recordings by this occult / ritual / experimental project very active in the 80's, running "World Satanic / Surrealistic Network System" who released the legendary "The last supper" pic 12" inspired by JIM JONES mass suicide; this is a recording from a live performance that happened in Berlin at NK, March 31, 2012, available normally only at the "Extreme Rituals" festival by Harbinger in Bristol, UK, 30.Nov-2.Dez. 2012. LAST COPIES ! | 2012 | €23.23 |
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| VAROUTAS, GIORGOS | Chronostasis | CD | guitarist / sound-artist from Greece with very first album - a widely open approach and airy atmosphere, combining acoustic sounds of Ney, Guitar, Flute, Sho, female Voice (ANNA LINARDOU) and Percussion with Electronics, Tapes and No-input Mixer, the 10 pieces are like meditative sound pictures describing a certain moment of time, incorporationg near-silence passages and unusual noises... quite special and very worth to discover !! | 2017 | €14.00 |
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| VELEZ, DAVID | Sonido Descompuesto | CD | DAVID VELEZ captures the "psychogeography" of a certain countryside landscape in Columbia, with an interesting mix of hazy slow-drones & more concrete elemental sounds, melting daydreamlike acoustics from natural, human and animal sources... fabric-pressed CD, numbered ed. 200 copies, in the typical artwork-style (beautiful patterns from nature & natural objects) of Daniel Crokaert | 2012 | €14.00 |
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| VERTONEN | The Broken Air | MC | cassette only release by Chicago's Blake Edwards aka VERTONEN, a work about / inspired through the topics communication, electricity, radio waves, broken equipment... - this noise doesn't sound "noisy", but in a strange way ghostly and mysterious, like an artefact from the ancient past... think of JOE COLLEY, FAMP, etc.. - C-60, 125 copies, prof. cover & duplication, sold out from the label, US import | 2020 | €11.00 |
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| Einige Schadstoffe | MC | Chicago's BLAKE EDWARDS aka VERTONEN with a very dark "industrialized" album, all of the nine titles are entitled on German and remind impressively on industrial classics from M.B. to T.G... - * feverish arppegiations cascading through nervous distortion, followed by plodding rhythms and dead-toned electronics that gird case studies on living monstrosities.. " - prof. printed cover in the typical Helen Scarsdale design with jewel-case, lim. 125 copies | 2023 | €13.00 |
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| VISIONS & PHURPA | Monad | LP | the 100th release for the now maybe most important dark ambient label around: a studio collab between PHURPA and the project of label-owner VISIONS, the typical PHURPA vocal and ritualistic instrumental sounds are drowning in a deep morass of huge reverberations, but there are also moments of complete, rather silent alienation, whispers and winds from unknown spheres, timeless and lonely harmonic rays of elevation.... a very beautiful album, highly recommended! vinyl lim. 200 | 2018 | €20.00 |
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| Monad | CD | the 100th release for the now maybe most important dark ambient label around: a studio collab between PHURPA and the project of label-owner VISIONS, the typical PHURPA vocal and ritualistic instrumental sounds are drowning in a deep morass of huge reverbarations, but there are also moments of complete, rather silent alienation, whispers and winds from unknown spheres, timeless and lonely harmonic rays of elevation.... a very beautiful album, highly recommended! CD version 500 copies | 2018 | €13.00 |
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| VIVENZA | Realites Servomecaniques | BOOK / CD | " Sounds are machines - machines are Sounds" - one of the true "Industrial" records (originally as LP 1984), this is the real machine-sound - now as deluxe CD re-edition with 32 pages hardcover book, with texts in english / french / japanese + pictures | 2015 | €20.00 |
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| VOLLMER, CARSTEN | Telefon / Circuitnoise / Arbeit Nummer 24 | LP | "Eine Reminiszenz an das analoge Zeitalter der Telekommunikation" => artefacts from the analogue telecommunication: recorded answer-phones, audio adverts, pictures, german telephone boxes, silly jokes about blonde wifes with telephones, etc.. and the change to circuitnoise / smartphone, often channelled into noises, comes with a special white oversize cardboard package and 32pp A4 booklet full of obscurities, full colour, numbered.. - a great weirdo musique concrete + noise collage !! | 2024 | €25.00 |
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| VON HAUSSWOLFF, C.M. (CARL MICHAEL) | Cut Down and Re-Order | 10inch | collector's item - lim. 100 w. gatefold cover, feat. two pieces of mysterious hum tones and fizzing drones, based on field recordings from the Swedenborg Chapel in Cambridge, USA, plus other unusual 'esoteric' sources as it's so typical for VON HAUSSWOLFF; the piece on Side B is dedicated to Z. KARKOWSKI | 2020 | €26.00 |
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| WEINGER, LAUREN | Silo | CD | "Aufnahmen für die Installation names PICTURE POWDERHORN dieses Klangkünstlers, welche die Sounds in und um Getreide-Silos zum Fokus hat => rauhe industrielle Maschinen-Klänge sind hier ebenso präsent wie field recordings von Latino-Tanzmusik, Kinderliedern, alte Fiedel-Melodien und vokales Material... ein obskures und fast schon Hörspiel-artiges "musique concrete"- Porträit des post-industriellen mittleren Westen der USA...versetzt einen an andere Orte und Zeiten! " [Drone Rec. info] - BACK IN | 2002 | €14.00 |
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| WESTBERG, NORMAN | The All most quiet | LP + CD | the SWANS guitarist (since 1983!) with his first widely available solo-LP, spreadening hypnotic, subtle guitar drones which slowly change... "The introduction of new layers, textures and tones, shifts in the scale and pace of oscillations change the mood, subtly, inconspicuously, but no less definitely..." [Aural Aggravation] contains CD copy of the same material | 2016 | €22.50 |
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| WHALESONG | Leaving A Dream | do-CD | epic album (their third) from this Polish band, who combine elements of grinding no wave / noise rock and industrial with hypnotic spoken word vocals, a 120 minutes cathartic dream, dark and opressive like SWANS, but also with more harmonic / deeply melancholic passages going into the Post Rock and Ambient direction - even BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE and NEUBAUTEN shine through... feat. various guest musicians this album shows a great development and maturation, absolutely to discover ! | 2023 | €16.00 |
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| WIESE, NICOLAS | Unrelated | LP | second solo-LP for this German artist under his real name (once known as [-HYPH-] ) who works in the field of gallery sound-art, taking samples from various sound sources to treat them "live" with his technique of 'modulated feedbacks' => challenging collages in various shapes, from fast changing, overloaded craziness to abstract drone-scaping, these are highly sophisticated compositions full of microscopic details... comes on clear vinyl, lim. 200 copies | 2018 | €22.50 |
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| WILKEN, ANSGAR | Thank You | 10inch | the Berlin-based filmmaker and musician who creates "songs" beyond all typical styles or genres, has released this impressive 10";, the main instrument used is the Cello, which is played in minimal structures or drone-harmonics, at times enriched with percussive elements, found sounds, strange object noises, musique concrete, film-music... the effect is extreme ly intimate, "hand-made", and exciting, 11 tracks are to be found here that sound all completely different!! Lim. 300 | 2016 | €13.00 |
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| WILL OVER MATTER | Aviation Hypnosis | CD | "Occult electronics, Satanic industrial and sound alchemy since 2008" is the self-description of this Finnish project, founded in rather untypical minimal, creaking loops and pulses, very dry and mechanic, low-fi, somehow "damaged" and old school sounding, for fans of pure analogic structured noises that surrounds you in waves or circles...- think of a more pulsing M.B., old ESPLENDOR GEOMETRICO, etc.. | 2021 | €12.00 |
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| WILLIAMS, EMMETT | Poems 1950-2003 | pic-LP | Colourful picture – disc with 31 obscure / funny / “visual” / concrete / sound-poetic poems by this FLUXUS-artist ! Comes with extensive liner-notes & explanations on the backcover. | 2004 | €18.00 |
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| WISHART, TREVOR | The secret Resonance of Things | CD + BOOKLET | three abstract / microscopic noise compositions derived from 'scientific data' (Supernova explosions, chaotic processes, 'models of imaginary instruments'- for other planets) by the ever interesting concept artist from UK.. " ranging from intense, almost old-school contemporary electronic/musique concrete to percussive interludes to wild simulated impossible brass instruments." - comes with highly interesting / mathematic booklet explaining the incredible working methods - really mindblowing stuff!!! | 2017 | €23.00 |
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| WOMEN IN TRAGEDY | The Shame | CD-R | Experimental one-man project from Canada with limited CDR release on the french Underground-Label RURALFAUNE, comes in handmade cover and reminds on typical 80's / 90's cassette-scene style.. - special green granular paper cover, lim. 81 copies - *Drifted noises, distorted voices & murky electronics in the land of the spectral moose. The ghost of the beast whistles in the tunnel of dark forest. * | 2007 | €8.00 |
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| WYRM |
Divination Bones
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pic-7 | Drone Records DR-99 lim. 250 PICTURE DISC! EXTREME HANDMADE / HANDPAINTED COVER! | 2010 | €8.50 |
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Divination Bones (2nd extended ed.)
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7 | second edition with revised & complete versions of both tracks previously released as a picture-7"; silver coloured vinyl & new full cover design, ed. of 400 (of which only 150 are for sale as single copies); FREE TO ALL (excl. postage) WHO ALREADY HAVE THE PICTURE DISC / FIRST EDITION | 2011 | €6.00 |
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| XENAKIS, IANNIS | Hibiki Hana-Ma / Mycenae Alpha / Polytope de Cluny | LP | this LP concentrates on XENAKIS fascinating POLYTOPE-compositions: "Hibiki Hana-Ma"-created for the Expo in Japan 1970 (Steel Pavilion multimedia installation with lasers, mirrors, etc.), "Polytope de Cluny" (1972)-a Polytope composition presented in Paris, "Mycenae Alpha" (1978)-pure synthetic sounds constructed with his graphic system UPIC | 2022 | €20.00 |
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| Taurhiphanie | LP | this LP concentrates on XENAKIS late electroacoustic works that became purely electronic, four strangely spiralling and staggering electronic pieces (1987-1997), "explicit computermusic'" hardly to compare with anything else: with the UPIC machines drawings are transfered directly into sounds & noises, on the last two electronic pieces he created random-based digital samples which were running through a "composing machine"... | 2022 | €20.00 |
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| Z'EV & JULIEN OTTAVI | Crash & Cross | CD | unpublished collaboration recordings created in Nantes, France (in 2014 when Z'EV performed and stayed there), partly live, partly studio, undergoing a long mixing process after...- the combination of typical ZEV with JULIEN OTTAVI's noise approach leads to interesting results and non-ordinary, abstract (non)-structures... - 7 tracks, 60 min. playtime, very nice 6 panel digipack with 8 page full colour photo booklet , 200 copies ohly | 2022 | €14.00 |
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| ZEITKRATZER | Songs | LP | ZEITKRATZER playing real "songs" with vocals (by MARC WEISER aka RECHENZENTRUM) in their typical way with incredible result; heavily orchestrated, excessive.. "what a beautiful goodbye to Pop" | 2012 | €16.00 |
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| ZOVIET FRANCE | 7.10.12 | do-LP | re-issue of the rare ALT.VINYL "3D"/ architectural cover art release in box (2012) that came out on 3 vinyl formats on 7. Oct. 2012... => "7.10.12" is a very versatile collection of many shorter tracks (18 in total), many field recordings and obscured material appears, but also more typical Z.F. "harmoniques exotiques" pearls, backwards-sounds and 'undecipherable atmospheric noises' (U.A.N.) en masse... a most beautiful & mysterious Z.F. album from their later phase... lim. 300 copies | 2022 | €29.50 |
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| [AD]VANCE[D] | poem#red128dot | CD-R | "Der erste Schritt Mars F. Wellinks nach der Auflösung des Vance Orchesters ist diese vermutlich limitierte CDR-Produktion im übergroßen Cardboard-Cover in Plastik aus Griechenland. Ein gegen 40 Minuten tendierendes langes Stück im entspannten Spannungsfeld zwischen Musique Concrete, experimenteller Elektronik mit ambienten Charakter inkl. wohl eingesetzten Fieldrecordings. Hier findet sich alles wieder, was das Vance Orchestra so unverwechselbar gemacht hat, eine organische Entwicklung, die den Hörer nie ganz losläßt, aber auch nicht knebelt und fesselt. Hervorragendes ambient noir, das aus meiner Sicht gar nicht hoch genug geschätzt werden kann. Gewidmet dem Andenken Geert Feytons (Noisemaker's Five, Negative Entropy und NMT Productions), der im Juli 2006 gestorben ist." [ [cs] / Bad Alchemy] VANCE ORCHESTRA is dead, long live AD]VANCE[D]! This is the first release of the follow-up project of the split-up VANCE ORCHESTRA, Arnhem-based musician and designer MARS F WELLINK does it now alone! "Poem#red128dot" is dedicated to GEERT FEYTONS from NOISE-MAKER'S-FIFES, who died last year. A real sound-poem. "Vance Orchestra from Arnhem are no more, but out of his ashes new paths are chosen. Robert Deters plays around with various people from the local scene, including Machinefabriek, while Mars Wellink goes on solo. As (ad)vance(d) he now presents his first solo work, I think, for the Absurd label. It has been around in their offices for a while, but it's release comes in handy. In various cities (Arnhem, Leiden, Molovos) Mars recorded some field sounds which he knits together to a thirty six minute sound poem. Voices play a role, but more over it's here to create an atmospheric piece of music. The backdrop is a sort of ambient piece of a wall of synthesizers, but it's too angular to be a dull piece of music. On top of that hotbed, Mars lets his recordings drop in and out of the mix, bird calls, insects, people walking and talking. Over the course of the piece things move away from the ambient patterns played at the beginning and moving into the world of strict soundscaping and then spiral back into the ambient backing of the start. A highly atmospheric work that is more like a sound picture, be it of different places, of sound moving in and from various directions than a strict music piece, more like a sound environment." [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2007 | €10.00 |
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| Two Events | LP | Waystyx goes vinyl! Fabulöses neues Werk vom niederländischen Projekt um MARS WELLINK, allerbeste atmosphärische Collagen-Musik und archaische Drone-Fliessmuster, loopig-pulsierende Strukturen in typisch VANCEiger Machart. Bisher seine überzeugendste Veröffentlichung! Limitiert auf 200 im Poster-Cover mit Postkarte! "Not much info on this otherwise beautifully packed LP. The story should be known: following the split of Vance Orchestra, Mars Wellink started (ad)vance(d), together with Jan Dekker. The music of (ad)vance(d) is a continuation of lines set out by Vance Orchestra: that of the cross road of ambient music, bit of rhythm (mainly through samples) and a hint of industrial music. Two side long pieces, an event per side me thinks. The music slowly evolves and develops - the archetypical form of drone music, which is in these four hands in great form. Deep rumbles from below the earth's surface, which grow in intensity and take a big shape, almost without the listener realizing this. Voices (?) seem to mumble, the rattling of a bike, all against a nice, thick brick wall of sound. It reminded me of some of the best work of zoviet*france. The rotating swirls fit the medium, or the medium fits the swirls of sound. Two particular great pieces that one keeps rotating on end. Fabolous headspace music." [FdW / Vital Weekly] www.waystyx.com | 2009 | €16.00 |
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| [LAW-RAH] COLLECTIVE, THE | Vesuvius | 12 | Neues US-Label mit neuer 12“-Serie, wo um es die akustische Darstellung von Naturkatastrophen geht. Den Anfang macht das [LAW RAH]-COLLECTIVE aus den Niederlanden mit einer bedrohlich-dark ambienten Umsetzung des Vesuvausbruchs! Goldenes Vinyl. “...'vesuvius' is the second vinyl release on force of nature and the first in a series, where each release will be describing a different natural disaster. both tracks are around fifteen minutes in length and created with analog sound sources only. while the first side of the 12" describes the expulsion of volcanic gasses - solfataras - poisoning the air, the second side sketches a picture of Pompeii, herculaneum, oplonti and stabiae, each hidden under 10 to 75 feet of tephra (ashes). two days of volcanic activity killed over 3300 people. the design and packaging of 'Vesuvius' is explosive itself; slightly transparent golden vinyl resembling the power of the magma hidden deep inside the earth. An ash and smoke colored cover insert designed by dominick fernow of hospital productions not only gives a brief history of the volcano; it also acts as a guardian protecting the gold of an once so prosperous city which is no more.” [label info] | 2003 | €12.00 |
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| 15 DEGREES BELOW ZERO | Between Checks and Artillery. Between Work and Image | 10inch | https://15dbz.bandcamp.com/album/between-checks-and-artillery-between-work-and-image Exzellente 2-track 10" dieses US-Trios, die sich hier weniger "industriell-elektronisch" als eher minimal Gitarren-dronig mit Hang zum Monumentalen zeigen.... anschwellende Gitarren-Anschläge, tiefe Drones, Rausch-Effekte, allmächtige Crescendi, erhabene Weiten & wuchtige Pulses auf Seite auf Seite B.. "A trio from San Francisco composed of Daniel Blomquist, Mark Wilson and Michael Addison Mersereau, 15 DEGREES BELOW ZERO, with previous releases in CD or CDR format on the FORCE OF NATURE and CRUNCH POD labels, brings us their first production in vinyl format. It is comprised of 2 exclusive tracks, on 10’’ vinyl, released on the Montreal based label .ANGLE.REC., still fond of the vinyl disc. 2 tracks which suggest an even more brilliant and exploded future for this exploratory vehicle born on the ashes of the famous IMPERIAL FLORAL ASSAULT UNIT project. The trio’s most recent CD, ‘’Under A Morphine Sky’’, offered a well-balanced perspective between improvisation and composition, a sound alchemy that is realized without any pretension under a purple and…of course… morphined sky. Power-Electronics in symbiosis with Dark-ambient in symbiosis with Guitar-Noise in symbiosis with various layered and shifting acoustic and electronic elements …The result and the overall feel were stunning. This 10incher is the log ical follow-up to the madness. 2 face(t)s, 2 slices of life. A side, ‘’KRONOS’’, proposes us a guitar-based canvas with multiples effects and spacious microworlds, with an accelerating insanity and intensity, an 8-9 minute segment which flies like the wind. It can also be considered as an extrapolation on the last minutes of ‘’THE RETURNING’’, found on B Side; ‘’THE RETURNING’’ begins with an epic lo-fi martial/neoclassical/doom segment but rather soon, haunting post-rock/shoegaze guitar-based structures come to occupy the main stage, and the power electronics segment also turns up very quickly following that, the whole being accomplished with a constant mastery and concern for texture. It is chaotic, foggy buy damned melodic and moving …and it does not stop gaining in intensity. Towards the final segment, we have samples and then a melodic guitar-based motif with a healthy dose of echo, which reverberates while consuming itself, till the end … 15DBZ has crazy surprises in store for us. Discover why, now. Many ambiences and textures on this 10’’ remind us of the reasons why we got interested, in the first place, in various ‘’nocturnal’’ and/or ‘’subterranean’’ musical universes. The beauty of it all is that here, everything is presented in condensed fashion. 2 tracks which fly too fast despite their relative length. Another welcome add to the .ANGLE.REC. vinyl series." [label info] www.angle-rec.net | 2007 | €8.00 |
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| Open Doors | CD | 15 Degrees Below Zero is Mark Wilson, Daniel Blomquist, &Michael Addison Mersereau. The first release by this project was in 2000, so 21 years later we get to see how the project has progressed. Despite this album being started over 10 years ago it fully expresses a great maturity and beautiful diversity of styles. This is a truly epic album and I'm proud to present it to the world along with the members of the project. Mastered by Thomas Dimuzio for full effect as well. https://oxidation.bandcamp.com/album/open-doors "For those unfamiliar with this project, 15 Degrees Below Zero is the work of Daniel Blomquist, Michael Addison Mersereau, and Mark Wilson (who also performs under the name Conure). This project began after the demise of Imperial Floral Assault Unit, and the structured improvisations that they have become known for would continue for the next 20 years. This album has been 10 years in the making. To give you a sense of how long it has been, a live version of "Horizon, Skyline" originally appeared on the Conure/15DBZ split cassette that was released on Danvers State Recordings in 2012. Still, this album still holds up as if it were recorded yesterday. I have often enjoyed 15 Degrees Below Zero’s music because of its cinematic qualities. In previous reviews I've compared it to In The Nursery’s Optical Music series. One of the things that is consistent in 15 Degrees Below Zero is, ironically, their inconsistency. One album kind of reminded me of The Durutti Column with a little bit more of an edge to it. Others have a cinematic quality that sounds like it’s straight out of a soundtrack (they have often referred to their music as “cinematic isolationism”). This one is a slight departure in that the soundtrack would be for a very unhappy post-apocalyptic film where there is no happy ending. If you want a microcosm of this album, you can look no further than the first track Horizon, Skyline. This track begins with lush drone combined with a beautiful harmony. However, just beneath the surface is a wall of static that continually threatens to overrun the track. Toward the end we’ve achieved a kind of uneasy equilibrium with equal parts rumbling static and drone. 15 Degrees Below Zero enjoys messing with the listener and giving us what we don't expect. Just when you think they are moving back into beautiful soundscape territory, we find ourselves being slowly dragged back into a sea of squalling feedback and static. Sometimes the static comes completely to the forefront, as in “The Dead Sea.” In this track, we have high pitched squeal and harsh noise that would be right at home on any noise album. This is unsurprising, as I saw both Mark Wilson’s solo project Conure and Daniel Bloomquist’s solo project at this year’s Northern California Noise Festival. This album is the best of all possible worlds in experimental music. In some ways, there is something for everyone. If you have a friend that wishes that bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor would let loose and be more experimental and chaotic, hand them this disk. This is what that would sound like. Do you know someone who is not really into harsh noise because they think it all sounds the same, or they simply want something more to it? Hand them this disk. There is all of the noise, but also all of the beauty. That is precisely what makes 15 Degrees Below Zero such an engaging act. You never quite know what you are going to get but you know it's always going to be worth getting. Highly recommended." [Eskaton, Chain D.L.K.] "Eine offene Tür ist ein ausgesprochen vielgestaltiges Symbol, und das erstrecht, wenn es sich gleich um mehrere handelt. Sie zeigen unmissverständlich, dass der vor ihnen stehende weder ein- noch ausgesperrt ist und dass jede Wand, jede Grenze durch sie passierbar ist. Dem Auge jedoch offenbart sich in einer offenen Tür nur ein rahmenhafter Ausschnitt, der meist mehr versteckt als offenbart. Und mit dem, was man durch die Tür zu sehen vermag, steht und fällt jede Hoffnung, die ihre Offenheit suggeriert. Das Ausschnitthafte, Unbestimmte, mitunter Mysteriöse offener Türen ist beinahe ein perfektes Motto für die musikalische Erkundungsreise, die das Drone- und Noise-Trio 15 Degrees Below Zero auf ihrem vor einigen Monaten erschienenen Album „Open Doors“ unternehmen. 15 Degrees Below Zero ist das Projekt der drei Kalifornier Mark Wilson (besser bekannt als Conure), Daniel Blomquist und Michael Addison Mersereau, die in den 90ern bereits unter dem Namen Imperial Floral Assault Unit zusammenarbeiteten, und machte vor allem in den Nullerjahren von sich reden. Nach Wilsons Umzug nach Berlin und der Konzentration der Musiker auf andere Projekte wurden die Aktivitäten irgendwann seltener, und so brauchte es beinahe ein Jahrzehnt, bis „Open Doors“ fertig gestellt wurde. Wenn es einen roten Faden auf „Open Doors“ gibt, dann dass die in den einzelnen Stücken entworfenen, meist düsteren Settings nie klar definiert bleiben, sondern immer wieder ihre Gestalt durch subtile Überblendungen und Verästelungen modifizieren. „Horizon, Skyline“ – der Opener und gleich längste Track des Albums – startet mit verunsichernden Rumpel- und Kratzgeräuschen, eingehüllt in eine mysteriöse Wolke aus dichtem Rauschen. Doch von titelgebenden Horizont dringt bald ein tief erdendes Ambientdröhnen ins Zentrum des Geschehens, intensiviert sich und verdrängt alle Kantigkeit, um am Ende Platz für weitere, perkussive Details zu schaffen, und so entpuppt sich jeder Moment, in dem man verweilen möchte, als vergänglicher Übergang zu weiteren, unbestimmten Orten. Die abgeklärte Desolatheit, die sich bereits hier erahnen lässt, scheint in den folgenden Tracks deutlicher hervor: Im „The 5:15“ betitelten Stück breiten sich rauschende Wellen wie schwerer Atem über monotones Saitenspiel aus und mutieren zu etwas, das an gequälte Stimmen erinnert – alles scheint sich hier auf eine Eskalation zuzubewegen, während das Gitarrenmotiv stoisch unverändert bleibt, bis perkussives Klopfen für etwas Erleichterung sorgt. In manchen Stücken scheint es in emotionaler, atmosphärischer Hinsicht am Ende doch so etwas wie ein kleines Fazit zu geben. Noch weitaus unbestimmter und wechselhafter offenbart sich der Titeltrack, der sich zunächst als knarriger Ambietdowner in die Gehörgänge bohrt. Hat man sich erst einmal eingelebt in seiner resignativen Statik, so sorgen allerhand kleine feine Bewegungen für Erleichterung: Helle Sounds bimmeln wie abstrahierte Glöckchen durch den Raum, doch das wiederum ist nur die Ankündigung für einen durch donnernde Detonationen eingeleiteten Sturm, der viel ungehörtes aufwirbelt. Interessant ist dass all diese gegensätzlich wirkenden Bestandteile der Kompositionen sich nie gegenseitig in Frage stellen, sondern in all ihrer Ambiguität zu koexistieren verstehen – vielleicht ist dies am deutlichsten spürbar in “White Sands”, dessen treibende Dynamik aus dem Hintergrund wirkt und die anrührende Melodie im Vordergrund nie antastet. es ist eines der kraftvollsten Stücke des Albums. So haben letztlich alle Stücke ihre eigene kleine innere Dramatik, ihre eigenen Brüche und Richtungswechsel, und natürlich auch ihre Schwerpunkte. Lässt der nach dem Roten Meer benannte Track eine wuchtige Ambientwelle eine fast meditative Unbewegtheit in dem mit Klappern erfüllten Raum entstehen, so offenbart sein am Ende des Albums verortetes Pendant “The Dead Sea ” die größte Ambiguität zwischen Ruhe und Unruhe, zwischen getriebener Bewegung, schönen Synthie-Soundscapes und einem rabiaten Noise, der von etwas, das an Schreie erinnert, durchzuckt ist. “Open Doors” ist ein ungemein reichhaltiges Album und jedes enthaltene Stück würde den Stoff für einen kongenialen Filmscore abgeben. Wenn die so untermalten Stoffe – mehrere Kollegen schrieben zurecht über postapokalyptische Dystopien – durch zahlreiche Ereignisse und zugleich durch eine nie zu eindeutige Stimmung auffallen würden, wären sie der Musik am ehesten angemessen." [U.S./African Paper] | 2021 | €13.00 |
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| 2KILOS & MORE | 10 | do-CD | To celebrate the 10 anniversary of 2kilos &More, Audiophob presents a new aspect of the project on a double CD release. The first CD of this set contains live recordings of tracks from the previous releases as well as an unreleased remix the duo created from material provided by Rapoon (founding member of Zoviet France). The live recordings originate from two festival appearances of the band in Nancy and Jouy Le Moutier and feature the guest vocalists Flore Magnet and Phil Von (both Von Magnet) as well as Black Sifichi. Some of the songs can be found for the first time on CD with lyrics, as they have been released as instrumental tracks so far. The second part of the release features new approaches to the 2kilos &More sound as provided by the remixes from a remarkable selection of artists (Rapoon, Imminent, Von Magnet, Bérangère Maximin, The Berg Sans Nipple, Needle Sharing, Roger Rotor, Spherical Disrupted, Muckrackers, Picore and Wild Shores.) Besides different variations of Ambient and Industrial/Noise sounds, more unexpected approaches from Post-Rock and Drum'n'Bass can be found. (auphcd019) https://audiophob.bandcamp.com/album/10 | 2013 | €16.00 |
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| 400 LONELY THINGS | Mother Moon | CD | The new album from 400 LONELY THINGS, produced by WILLIAM BASINSKI, is a dark ambient, sample-based séance to the Banning Mill - a real-life decaying \"mansion\" and haven for artists, freaks and misfits in the backwoods of the American Deep South in the 1970s-1990s - and an extraordinary piece of art that lived there. An archaeological excursion in found sound - wandering through the art and memory of a real place, \"Mother Moon\" is an origin story for 400 Lonely Things. In the 1990\'s, Craig Varian was fortunate enough to frequent the Mill in the years before it closed. It was here that he was exposed to the artwork of Richard Scott Hill. The impact is hard to overstate. Built on the Snake River in the early 1800\'s as a textile mill, it operated until the late 1960\'s and when its doors closed on that era, and reopened on another. In 1971, the Mill was purchased by a young wealthy \"eccentric\" (to use the vernacular of the time). He was openly gay in the deeply bigoted Old South, a collector of fantastic and surreal art, a drug enthusiast, an owner of at least one mental illness, and a self-described entrepreneur with a vision. In the years that followed, he turned this sprawling, mildewed structure into a private hippie art collective, music venue and refuge for Southern misfits - gays and gender-benders, visual artists, musicians, mystics, ghost-hunters, wizards, pagans, intellectuals, poets, nerds and psychedelic explorers by the dozens drifted in and out, creating their own alternate universe in its hundreds of rooms. One of these artists was Richard Scott Hill. Hill\'s work stood apart from everything else at the Mill. It was all black and white or hand-coloured photography - typically stark portraits of people - almost always wearing masks. These photos were disturbing and disarming, hilarious and crazed, unsettling and aggressively surreal in their confrontational simplicity. His work both captured and fed into the Mill\'s sinister yet playful undercurrents of mania and depression. By the conservative 1980\'s, the Mill became a very different place. A dark and quiet ectoplasmic hangover haunted its rooms with just a handful of tenants, remaining so until its doors closed for good in the late 90\'s. Varian had friends that lived there, and after hearing quiet legends of the Banning Mill since the late 80\'s, was finally able to visit. While the Mill itself was transformative enough, turning down a disused hallway, Varian encountered the image on the cover of this album and quite simply became a different person. A lifetime spent as a Southern misfit had led to fruitless artistic, philosophical, spiritual and psychedelic pursuits as relief. At this time, an obsession with visual collage and audio sampling had been brewing and upon seeing this image, boiled over. He realized that the sounds and images he\'d been seeking had been sought by many others and that for a time, these seekers had lived here in the secret winding halls of Banning Mill in the wilds of the Deep South. In particular, this nude cow-faced woman was the Minotauress who sat at the heart of that maze. Since the days of the Mill (and Varian\'s subsequent purchase of Hill\'s \"Minotauress\" shortly before the Mill closed), Varian, along with best friend and musical partner Jonathan McCall, found a thread of music they\'d been consistently making yet had previously failed to notice - melancholic instrumentals with weathered sampling at its core - going back to their earliest recordings in the late 1980\'s. Eventually, this music was called 400 Lonely Things, and eventually an album would be attempted to honor both the Mill and Richard\'s \"Minotauress\". The Mill has been closed for about 25 years now and all that remains of it is a gutted skeleton covered in yellow caution tape. After a dozen albums, Jonathan McCall has since passed on to the next realm. But this album, born out of that first visit to the Mill, is finally here - an imaginary soundtrack to the many years of solitude the Minotauress spent hanging in that musty hallway. For this album, Varian reached out to Mr. Hill and a friendship and artistic relationship has developed. Richard - now in his 80\'s and an established figure in the established art world - still creates fantastically bizarre works daily from his home studio, just a mile from the remains of the Mill. He says that the music of 400 Lonely Things is from another dimension and he hopes you enjoy it and his previously unpublished art gracing the cover. Presented in a 6-panel spot-varnished digipak. credits released April 11, 2023 Produced by William Basinski Additional Mixing and Mastering by Preston Wendel Covert art by Richard Scott Hill \"Mother Moon is a cypher that saves an important hidden fragment of cultural history from erasure.\" Ben Ponton, Zoviet France. \"Mother Moon is darkness calling. It will take you to the outer limits and leave you there. Guaranteed to twist your mind.\" Andrew Hulme, O Yuki Conjugate. \"A wistful, burrowing, beautiful nightmare.\" Daniel Kraus, NY Times Best Selling Author of The Living Dead with George A. Romero, and The Shape Of Water with Guillermo Del Toro. https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/mother-moon-csr319cd "It's one of those weeks... Being a former ginger/redhead, I have problems handling the moist 25-30 Celcius) heat in the Netherlands. So I hardly get to do anything, and I get distracted all the time, like work and such. So I have been trying to start a review of "Mother Moon" by 400 Lonely Things several times, and each time I end up just listening and floating away, Drifting on the waves ... And I didn't even feel bad about listening to it over and over and over ... Produced by William Basinski, 400 Lonely Things is a project by Craig Varian inspired by recordings around, based in, or related to an old mill. A beautiful PDF was sent to us, and it might well be part of the Bandcamp download, but how you get your hands on it when you get the CD: I don't know. The 400 Lonely Things concept focuses on the arrangement of lost and found sounds, and the melancholia is certainly audible in the release. Also, the journey aspect is very well set in this release, the journey being the descriptive part of environments through sound as a medium. So in many areas where the boxes should be ticked to make a release interesting, those boxes are actually ticked. Musicwise, "Mother Moon" is an absolute beauty. Almost 80 minutes, with deep drones, minimal melodic lines, scarce structural sounds (no rhythms), ambience and, on occasion, a mesmerizing voice preaching solitude and melancholia. And here and there, an ever so slight 'touch of Coil' (for example, in "In Darkness"). So at this point, I would say: Get the album and don't worry too much about everything else. But the booklet and combined conceptual approach is a bit of a downer for me, as it turns out. I mean: Concepts make many releases I know/heard/have enjoyable, and I know all about it as an artist myself. But in a weird way the conceptual approach is so elaborate and massive that it almost forces me to think about it. And all I want to do is just enjoy the flow, as a psychonaut, ride the waves and not be bothered too much with all that mumbo jumbo. But that's just me. I think... I hope... Other than that: Go Flow, Go Dream, Go Listen, Just 'Be' ..." [BW / Vital Weekly] | 2023 | €15.00 |
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| 5UU'S | Hunger's Teeth | CD | Die 5UU’s gehören zum Aushängeschild neuer “Avant-Prog-Rock” oder “Art-Rock”-Bands und wurden oft mit den genialen ART BEARS verglichen....oder als zeitgemässe Nachfolger von YES. Diese Musik ist schwer zu beschreiben: perfekt eingespielte Genre-sprengende Rockmusik, manchmal sehr strukturiert und mit Refrains die man mitsingen kann, i.d.R. mit disharmonischem oder neu-harmonischem Gesang & alles auf den Punkt gespielt; unerwartete Wechsel, fast-Krach-Parts, sehr ruhige experimentelle geräuschafte akustische Szenen, inkl. einem umwerfenden Solo-Stück von THOMAS DIMUZIO; und SUSANNE LEWIS (CORPSES AS BEDMATES) singt auf zwei Stücken. „....Ein Charakteristikum der UU´s-Musik besteht darin, daß häufig Melodien gegen Begleitungen gesetzt werden, die nicht als Unterstützung sondern als Widerpart wirken. Es macht Spaß, beim Hören zu erleben, wie diese Melodik trotzdem als "schön" wahrnehmbar bleibt (obwohl ich mir darüber im klaren bin, daß viele Hörer einwenden würden, die Melodien seien hier als Melodien kaum noch erkennbar).... “ [Ralf J. Günter / Babyblaue Seiten] “The re-formed 5UU's first CD, featuring, one-of-a-kind drummer Dave Kerman with new line-up- Sanjay Kumar (keyboards) and Bob Drake (Bass, Guitar, Vocals) and guests Susanne Lewis, Tom Dimuzio, and James Grigsby. Power, complexity and intelligence - an express train that can pirouette on a dime.” [label info] “....Hunger's Teeth is the most exciting rock album I've heard this year. No, not Anderson exactly, but Robert Drake's vocals do bear a striking resemblance to the Yes man's "angelic" tenor. Is this "progressive rock" for the '90's? A celebration of intricately layered arrangements and polyrhythmic playing, effortlessly combining '70's grandeur with avant-rock, contemporary collage and computing - and only one track in 11 over six minutes! The musicianship (also David Kerman and Sanjay Kumar, plus guests) is superb, not showy, always at the service of the experimental approach to song structure - lots of convoluted instrumental passages that return almost miraculously to "refrains". Brilliant.” [Chris Blackford / Rubberneck] „...."Mangate" is a minimalist, tape-manipulation piece created by Thomas DiMuzio. It has such a hypnotic effect, that I once missed my exit on the highway because that track had lulled me into a semi-trance. Very neat. Those first three tracks are my favorite part of the album, but it continues to maintain its high quality throughout. The ground it covers ranges from a barbershop quartet singing about barbers to philosophy about a bachelor fumbling his way through mending his own clothes. Plus there's a running theme throughout the album that has to do with horses - the one pictured on the cover, the track title "Roan" (which starts with galloping hoof beats), the rocker "Glue" ("in time, sugar and horses will both become glue") that starts with the trumpet call that begins horse races, etc. Even the album title is apparently meant to be the name of a famous race horse. The more I listen to this disc, the more layers and tie-ins to various themes I find. This is definitely a highly recommended album, if you're a fan at all of prog's more experimental edges. For those looking to get their first 5uu's album, this would be a good place to start (if you can find it).” [Ground and Sky] | 1994 | €14.00 |
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| ACCELERA DECK | Ski | mCD-R | One beautiful digitalized guitar-track with nice effects, soft and melodic! “Since 1997 Chris Jeely (who is the man behind Accelera Deck) has utilized the guitar in a variety of settings, draping it over nimble breakbreats, or twisted in with IDM. Sometimes dropping all beats and picking up the acoustic guitar and (gasp!) singing. With the release of 2003’s album “Ipsissima Vox” and the lengthy ep “Sunstrings” in 2004, Chris focused on the extremes of guitar noise. Huge walls of sound, piercing digital feedback and general disregard for the eardrums of those in attendance at any of his shows became the norm. Accelera Deck was a complete live experience, and had most venue soundpersons nervously holding there breath, waiting for a speaker to blow. Chris just smiled and asked them to turn it up just a bit more! But now with this release Chris returns with a melodic directness, and extends the song “Ski” (which will appear in a different form on “Pop Polling”) into a decaying piece of delicate beauty. A very simple and effective guitar line slowly overlaps with other melodic fragments, all the sounds begin echoing, stuttering, and slowly fading from sight. An ephemeral piece that is comparable to the work of William Basinski, or Brian Eno for the digital age. Chris, when asked about this music, replied “I personally do not know how to ski, but I might like to learn how one day.” | 2005 | €5.00 |
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| AEMAE | The Helical Word | CD | Neues "experimental drone"-Projekt aus den USA mit hyper-abstrakten Klängen, metallisch-feedbackend & von halluzinogenem Flair.. "....Throughout the music is quite dark, but not atmospherical in the traditional dark ambient sense. As such his own description is quite appropriate. Not too noisy, not too academic or even too experimental, but Aemae treats a fine line between well defined genres and creates something that is indeed his own and that is these days quite an achievement." [FdW / Vital Weekly] "...a gorgeous and exquisitely crafted abstract free noise drone record. dark and deliriously dense, a perfect amalgamation of the experimental dronework of the hafler trio, the sweeping skreescapes of sunrooof! and vibracathedral orchestra and the abstract minimalism of mirror or jonathan coleclough. as well, this has plenty of distinctly unique sonic elements. heavily reverbed chimes and bells are smeared into a twinkling fog, slowly thickening into a dense slab of electrical impulses, woven together so tightly it resembles a buzzing ball of hornets, a throbbing thrumming drone. strange steel drum like electronic pulses, an alien gamelan, pickes out a tranquil melody beneath swooping and blooping spaciness, sheets of industrial shuffle, scrape and rumble, leaving sparkling trails of dense and complex almost idm skitter in their wake, albeit wrapped in thick gauzy veils of warm reverberant flutter. all stretched into distant, soft focus soundscapes of warbling whir and creaking ambience. quite lovely and sublime!" [Aquarius Records] "brandon nickell, a 23 year-old navigator of harsh synthetic and electronic seas known as aemae, shows his admirable will to construct new kinds of uneasy architectures. the eight pieces of "the helical word" form a pyrotechnic cycle of cascading incidents, timbral shifts and granular abrasions which move like creatures without a preconceived position in an undetermined system, finally finding a way to transform contraptions and extrapolations into rough elliptical shapes and dehydrated approximations of parallel galaxies. nickell starts everything from "a pure exercise in synthesis"; the mobile force of educated noise and a well planned mix, even in absence of natural sources, make this music live its life in full - no dead spots or dull moments. considering the next-to-nil significance of most of today's electronica, not bad at all." [massimo ricci - touching extremes] | 2005 | €13.00 |
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| AERE AETERNUS | Humanity needs no Funeral | CD | From the new wave of 'apocalyptic' or 'doom/death industrial' bands surely one of most interesting and impressive projects, AERE AETERNUS build a de-humanized soundtrack full of dark drones, over-expressive tortured voices, and devastating sounds. There is no light in this hellish Miasma, imagine SLEEP CHAMBER meeting LUSTMORD meeting dark HYBRYDS... The CD Version has video-track as bonus ! "Humanity Needs No Funeral", the first full-length album from AERE AETERNUS, was released on the French label Kaosthetik. With a multi-national and eclectic lineup, the band comprises Alex (MACABRE OMEN, THE ONE, RAZOR OF OCCAM), Claudio Alcara (FROSTMOON ECLIPSE, STROSZEK), Cyr (DARK SANCTUARY, ELKTRONIK SCIETY) and Radu. Drawing on the wide range and considerable musical experience of its members, AERE AETERNUS creates a dark, disturbing atmosphere that probably best fits within the ambient and minimalist genres, and which the band themselves describe as "half misanthropic ritual and half sex ritual." The dominant atmosphere combines a sense of impending insanity with sexual deviancy and a large dollop of occultism, creating a dark and troubling misanthropic sojourn that is relatively unique. The final track is probably the most musical, as it is centred on a guitar arpeggio, but no such concessions to convention are present elsewhere on this deeply troubling disk. The accompanying video (CD version ONLY) of "Invocation" shows a Satanic ritual in all its kitchsy glory. Recommended for those looking for something a darker than the usual entities. "When Dark Ambient meets Industrial Deviance" [label info] | 2008 | €14.00 |
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| AETHENOR | Faking Gold and Murder | LP | "... Diese drei Urprinzipien, das sind hier gleichermaßen STEPHEN O'MALLEY (SUNN O))), KTL), DANIEL O'SULLIVAN (GUAPO) und VINCENT DE ROGUIN (SHORA), die sich mit ihrem neuen Werk nun ein drittes Mal im Æthenor zusammenfinden und mit “Faking Gold And Murder” ein dunkles Manifest alchemistischer Transmutationen niederlegen. Begleitet wird das Trio von den beiden Perkussionisten NICOLAS FIELD und ALEX BABEL, dem Gitarristen ALEXANDER TUCKER und dem hier bereits als ANOK PE auftretenden DAVID TIBET. Was immer sich aus dieser Zusammensetzung bereits herleiten ließe, nichts bereitet einen wirklich auf diese von okkulter Ritualistik geprägten Kompositionen vor, durchsetzt von Tibets apokalyptischen Inkantationen. Tosend setzt in dem ersten der vier übergangslosen und unbenannten Kapitel ein Schlagwerkgewitter ein, umbrodelt von den unterirdisch anmutenden Klängen des Keyboards und der Gitarre, während Tibet zu sphärischen Klängen des Beckens und des Glockenspiels seine mitunter zweistimmig intonierten albtraumhaften Visionen in die Komposition hineinwebt, nur um nach einigen Minuten wieder vom zeremoniell anmutenden Lärmen der Perkussionisten übertönt zu werden. Selbst in seinen leisesten Momenten ist das Ganze so komplex und durchdacht arrangiert, dass es an keiner Stelle seine hypnotisierende Wirkung einbüßt. Längst hat vollkommen unbemerkt das zweite Stück begonnen, traumhaft übergleitend in minimal intonierten Ambient, der nach und nach mit dem Einsatz der regengleichen Klänge des Rhodes und eines anhaltenden Drones an Intensität weiter zunimmt, bis Tibet das Stück mit einer wie aus weiter Ferne gesprochenen Passage zu einem von tiefen Bassfrequenzen dominierten düsteren Ende führt. Spätestens mit dem Beginn des dritten Kapitels wird man gewahr, dass dies alles unaufhörlich in einem stärker werdenden Sog in eine Tiefe zieht, deren Boden unabsehbar geworden ist und in der man längst die Orientierung verloren hat. Eine durch wellenartig geschlagene Handtrommeln aufgebaute Spannung liefert hier die Grundstimmung für die Verstörendste von Tibets Inkantationen, unterstützt und bald überrollt vom infernalischen Rumpeln und Brausen des Schlagwerks und der anderen Instrumente, sich verdichtend zu einem vor apokalyptischer Brachialgewalt starrendem Ende. Wie in einem Nachwort endet mit dem vierten Kapitel das Album im erdigen Drone des Harmoniums und sphärisch darüber flirrenden Keyboardklängen, die den Hörer, zu Tibets fast schon gesprochenem Epilog, auf eine beruhigende Weise erden und das erste Mal nach 35 Minuten wieder frei durchatmen lassen. “Faking Gold And Murder” ist ein für den aufmerksamen Zuhörer ungemein lohnenswertes Machwerk. Wer sich darauf einlässt, dem offenbaren sich die komplexen Kompositionen in einer an Greifbarkeit grenzenden Dimensionalität, der hat Teil an einem archaischen Ritual von schauderhafter Schönheit, gekonnt in Szene gesetzt durch das mal fragile, mal tosende Zusammenspiel der Musiker und intoniert von Tibets geisterhaften Deklamationen. Letztere sind es auch, die “Faking Gold And Murder” eine Dimension verleihen, die die beiden Vorgänger nicht aufweisen konnten und das Album so zum eingängigsten und wertvollsten aller bisherigen Æthenor-Alben machen." [Stefan O. / NONPOP] "Third earth shattering outing for Vincent De Roguin (Shora), Stephen O'Malley (Sunn0))), KTL) and Daniel O'Sullivan (Guapo). For Faking Gold and Murder, the core trio is joined by percussionists Nicolas Field and Alex Babel, as well as renown guitarist Alexander Tucker and the inimitable David Tibet. Faking Gold is Æ’s heaviest outing, driven by a weighty low end and the full fury of Babel and Field’s free-wheeling drums. The trio’s electronics, guitar, Rhodes, and organ ride the waves of sound in a tightly-controlled blare, leaving plenty of space for Tibet’s declarations of the mystical and supernatural. Tibet is on top form here, rising out of the tempest at just the right moment, almost plain-spoken in places – grounding the squall at times, voicing the apocalypse at others. “Brooding, primeval, dark alchemical epics are full of a ferocious intensity, sounding more like a starlit night being ripped open by lightning than a musical group. Intelligent and primal, like a dæmonic workshop, battering up Pandemoniums and dreaming of gold and murder, Æthenor are spectacular.”- David Tibet Cover design by Nicola Todeschini and Vincent De Roguin. CD is in a tri-fold letterpress folio, printed on heavy black art paper by Stumptown. Deluxe LP is 180 gram, pressed at RTI, in letterpress cover on heavy black art stock by Stumptown, with custom gold on black inner. Cut by John Golden. A fantastic sounding and looking item." [label info] www.vhfrecords.com | 2009 | €20.50 |
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| AIR CUSHION FINSH | Gezieferreigen | CD | »Blauholz« ist ein Buch von Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg, gelesen von Lippstueck. Henry Marcuse »Eros y Civilisación«, gelesen von jayrope. Mittschnitt der Radio-Sendung »Biesentales« auf Cashmere-Radio vom 06.01.2018 Musik Daniel Bjarnason »Over light earth« Murcof & Philippe Petit »The call of Circé« * Ju..rgen Ploog »Tapes von unterwegs 1971-1976« Murcof & Philippe Petit »The call of Circé« * jayrope [live] »Einerlirre« Pauline Oliveros & Musiques Nouvelles »Four meditations for orchestra« Dead Mauriacs »Nouvelles fonctions exotiques« * Songs of Norway »Inner arms and legs« Felix »As blue as your eyes lover« jayrope [live] »Zweierfrei« Column One »Cherokee« Felix »What i learned from TV« Dead Mauriacs »Nouvelles fonctions exotiques« * Dan Hayurst »Great day atonal soda« Ellen Fullman & Konrad Sprenger »No home« Murcof & Philippe Petit »The call of Circé« * Dimitris Petsetakis »The prophecy« jayrope [live] »Eisglas« Musik erscheint hier mit Zustimmung der Künstler, insbesondere Murcof & Philippe Petit »First Chapter« [Aagoo Sec./Rev Lab.] * Ausschnitt Lippstueck und jayrope danken Cashmere Radio, Berlin, Robert Schalinski und den Musikern und Autoren. Coverbilder Jan Focke Vorderseite: »Picknick« 2015, Öl auf Leinwand, 120 x 150 cm; Innenseite: »Haus mit Leuten« 2016, Öl auf Leinwand, 140 x 180 cm www.molokoplusrecords.de/finder.php?folder=Label&content=76 | 2019 | €13.00 |
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| AKATOMBO | Sometime, never | CD | Following on from his critically acclaimed False Positives and Editions Mego collaborations with E.G. Lewis of Wire / Dome, ex-pat Scotsman and long-time resident of Hiroshima Paul Thomsen Kirk delivers his fourth album—ten tracks full of atmospheric, powerful, beat-driven, electronic-based compositions. From the persuasively percussive-led to dark ambient soundscapes to sleazy, wide-screen, full-on, bass-bin rumblings, Sometime, Never has it all… just because. “[A] meld of post-punk toxic ambient angst (à la Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire) with contemporary rhythmic models…. Akatombo is big on alienation and … generally conveys a feeling of being close-up to events and places while at the same time feeling disconnected and uncomprehending of them…. [A] brilliantly compelling, adrenalin-soaked antidote to the tranquil hedonism into which electronica has been too apt to lapse in recent years.” —David Stubbs, Resident Advisor “[Paul Kirk’s] beatscapes hearken back to the industrial pioneers of the mid-’80s, but his sound is decidedly contemporary, a mix of drums, bass, bleached tones and samples that veer from dub to club…. The best tracks display more than mood; they reverberate with sass.” —Richard Allen, A Closer Listen “A killer collection of programmed beats, layered samples, dark atmospheres, thick guitars, and droney-ambience, sounding at times like Muslimgauze, or like a more chill Necro Deathmort, or one of those bands who might have shared a compilation with Techno Animal or Sidewinder back in the day. The vibe is definitely on the isolationist tip, murky and claustrophobic, the beats are crunchy and caustic, more often lurching and lumbering than skittering or shuffling, and those beats are set amidst thick swells of grim sinister ambience, and blackened late-night atmospheres….. A sort of dubbed out downtempo dance music that’s not so much for dancing, but lurking, hanging out in the shadows, in empty clubs in empty cities, everything crumbling and decayed, a seriously dystopic soundtrack for some wasted scorched earth future.” —Aquarius | 2015 | €13.00 |
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| ALDEA, ERIC | Saturno o Cipolla | CD | Erinnert sich noch jemand an die hervorragende französische “Rock”-Band (Rock im Geiste von THIS HEAT wohlgemerkt) namens BÄSTARD? Dies ist das äußerst empfehlenswerte erste Solo-Album des ehemaligen BÄSTARD-Mitglieds ERIC ALDEA, der sich hier in drone-ambiente Gefilde begibt und ein meisterliche Atmosphären & Sounds erzeugt, betörende Drones mit orientalen Blasinstrumenten, Resonanz-Loop-Schichten verschmelzen mit field recordings, glitchig-fremdartige Frequenzfelder tauchen auf, getaucht in warme Klangfarben ... bester deep Ambient & atmospheric Electronic! BIOSPHERE meets ZOVIET FRANCE meets GLITCH.? “Eric Aldéa was a member of Lyons based post rockers Bästard, whose collaborators included Chicago luminaries Bundy Brown and Casey Rice, and was previously in industrial hardcore merchants Deity Guns. His first solo record betrays few of those influences though; compiled from various pieces written for dance company La Baraka, Saturno o Cipolla ? delivers a warm, organic take on experimental ambient electronics. Aldéas approach is informed more by the lo-fi layering of industrial types like Zoviet France or the tapeloop outings of Fripp & Eno than by the cut 'n paste glitchscapes beloved by the average bald bloke with a Powerbook, though we do get a bit of digital snap crackle n blip on a couple of pieces. Elsewhere Aldéa delicately weaves together shortwave transmissions, field recordings and acoustic instrumentation with rarely heard skill. While countless TV advertised ambient compilations may promise to, er, take the listener on a journey, Aldéas gradual unfolding of his pieces seems to do just that. The thirteen minutes of "02" are especially seductive; opening with a chatter of shortwave crackles and bleeps, an opressive string figure repeats itself to be swept away by a held, suspended chord flecked with bowed double bass harmonics and gurgling synthetics. A phone goes off somewhere; footsteps are briefly heard. A gentle synth loop fires up eventually to be overrun by glassy digital tones and telex bleeps which swarm and multiply before abruptly fading. Here Aldéa's manipulation of acoustic space recalls David Toop and Max Eastleys classic Buried Dreams, though is less likely to give you nightmares. Less successfully, "03" and "04" stray into more conventional electronica territory, with looped sinewave drones, clicks and metallic synthbursts piling up and receding in typical minimal art techno fashion. The closing trio of pieces save the day though; revolving around mournful, muted strings, alternately decorated with bubbling analogue synth, dolorous cello and distant xylophone figures, they evoke a calm tinted with a vague sense of unease, like seeing a single black cloud in a summer sky.Immersive, often beautiful and with a slightly ungraspable quality that makes you want to stick it on again as soon as its finished, Saturno o Cipolla ? may well turn out to be one of the records of the year...” [Peter Mash, BBC website] | 2001 | €13.00 |
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| ALDINUCCI, GIULIO | Disappearing in a Mirror | CD | talian sound artist GIULIO ALDINUCCI drops his 2nd album on Karl: “Disappearing In A Mirror” is again a truly masterfully composed and sound-designed ambient masterpiece and a more than worthy follow-up to the critically acclaimed “Borders And Ruins” which made it onto several year’s best lists for 2017. Over the course of four solo albums on labels like DRONARIVM plus EPs and collaborative albums (a.o. with IAN HAWGOOD), GIULIO ALDINUCCI successively has been refining his skills as composer and sound designer. His elegant style which blends ambient and field recordings came to full impact on his 2017 album “Borders And Ruins” which gained the Italian sound artist a lot of critical praise and made it onto several year’s best lists, a.o. Acloserlisten.com. ALDINUCCI’s latest effort is again not only a musical masterpiece of sublime beauty and sacral majesty, it also deals with philosophical concerns. Where “Borders …” was a reflection on the instability of borders - borders as an extreme attempt to discriminate and rationalize that turns into a source of chaos and cultural ruins on both sides - and their impact on the relationship between people and territory, “Disappearing In A Mirror” raises the very personal question of identity. In the words of ALDINUCCI himself: “ ‘Disappearing In A Mirror’ focuses on the fluidity of the identity concept, highlighting the harmonious coexistence of contradictory elements and the transitional features that characterize every transformation. It is a reflection on the current situation of change and disruption and at the same time it is a gaze into the human timeless soul and its inner soundscapes.” https://karlrecords.bandcamp.com/album/disappearing-in-a-mirror "Apart from his various collaboration and split releases, Disappearing In A Mirror is Giulio Aldinucci's follow-up to 2017’s Borders and Ruins, and it is his second release for Karl Records. If you thought Borders And Ruins depicted a rather dark view on the state of the world, you’d better be ready for this new album. “Where [Borders and Ruins] was a reflection on the instability of borders and their impact on the relationship between people and territory, 'Disappearing In A Mirror' raises the very personal question of identity." Aldinucci manages to create a sonic version of a hall of mirrors, where you can get completely disoriented from the images of yourself trying to find a way out. In a striking combination of gritty distorted sounds and distant orchestral and choral arrangements that sound like a stretched Beethoven symphony, the first two tracks present a frightening dystopic view. But from there, Aldinucci [somewhat] restores the balance with 'Notturno Toscano', as if he doesn’t want to scare the listener too much. But even in this track the intensity slowly increases again. There’s no way out of the mirror maze, it seems… "Disappearing In A Mirror focuses on the fluidity of the identity concept, highlighting the harmonious coexistence of contradictory elements and the transitional features that characterize every transformation. It is a reflection on the current situation of change and disruption and at the same time it is a gaze into the human timeless soul and its inner soundscapes." If the sweat in the palms of my hand is an indicator of emotional intensity, this album definitely belongs on the top the list!" [Headphone Commute] | 2018 | €13.00 |
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| Real | LP | Italian sound artist Giulio Aldinucci returns with his fourth album on Karlrecords: Real is again a truly masterfully composed and sound-designed ambient masterpiece and a more than worthy follow-up to the critically acclaimed Borders And Ruins (2017), Disappearing In A Mirror (KR 055CD, 2018), and Shards Of Distant Times (KR 076CD/LP), which all made it onto several year's best lists. With now his fourth album for Karlrecords, the sound artist from Siena, Italy has proved a steady and prolific artist on the label roster. And each time, Giulio Aldinucci delivers a new ambient masterpiece that clearly carries his signature as composer/producer and yet reveals a slightly different approach to his modus operandi. Aldinucci's massive layers of sound, built from field recordings and an array of electronic gear, blend drone-y ambient with heavenly voices/sacred music that create an atmosphere of a consolatory melancholy -- alien, but with a graspable presence of human souls. And each album deals with a topic that Aldinucci came across in his observations of and reflections about today's society. In the words of Giulio himself: "The digital media we live with shape and define reality by filtering it, letting us run the risk of living without our personal and unique one. My new album expresses a need of something unmediated and authentic. Real is a reflection on the endless possibility of sonic transformation, the ability we have to create new realities transmuting the soundscape around us and the inner soundscape inside us, even only by imagining it. A (deep)real experience permeated by dreamy lyricism." 180 gram vinyl; gatefold sleeve; includes download card. https://karlrecords.bandcamp.com/album/real | 2022 | €18.50 |
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| ALDINUCCI, GIULIO / MATTEO UGGERI | Bureau | CD | Matteo Uggeri : Field Recordings and Beats Giulio Aldinucci : Field Recordings and Drones In 2016 Matteo Uggeri took hundreds of pictures during his working days in 70’s building aimed at training and desk work located in the surroundings of Milan Later that winter the photographs served as inspiration for this album themed on alienation of offices working life. Tracks are based on outdoor field recordings looped, treated and re-shaped in order to be transformed into beats,rhythms, (Matteo) drones and melodies (Giulio) https://adnrecords.com/album/giulio-aldinucci-matteo-uggeri-bureau/ "An emotionally absorbing, vibrant and sensitive personal voyage Matteo Uggeri is one multifaceted and emblematic sound/noise designer artist from Italy—also one founder member of the chamber post-rock collective Sparkle in Grey. His usual signature can be described as composite ambient sceneries where sonic textures meet story-telling minimal sketches and expanding downtempo vibes. In this new release he collaborates with Giulio Aldinucci, who is a seducing and creative electroacoustic soundscaper whose production (in solo or in collaboration, notably with Francesco Giannico) is largely recognized in the DIY indie community with a fancy for mesmeric, chilled-out then discreet electronic ambient music. Bureau is an emotionally absorbing, vibrant and sensitive personal voyage through a vast array of emotions, tone colors, flexible tones and kinetic electronic impulses. This is mostly one electronic and ambient-centered atmospheric album with a stylistic inclination for hypnotic organic textures (as in the ravishing “Fire Dome”) and minimal-tinged chilled out soundscapes with more abstract sounds and airy clicks and cuts (in “Inceneritore” “Ghiaccio”), even flirting with glitch-esque vibes (“Ghiaccio”) and hauntology (in the eerie and weirdly “Zoo”). An easily recommended listening and catchy electronic effort to consider if you are into post-minimal techno, IDM and syncretic ambient waves. Somewhere between Christian Fennesz, Microstoria, Oval, Hecq, and Beequeen." [Philippe Blache (Igloo Magazine) August 23, 2020] "Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had already registered the return of ADN Records, erstwhile a cassette label with some great releases (New 7th music, Amok, Pascal Comelade, Bourbonese Qualk etc) in the 80s. They were called (not by me) the Italian version of Recommended Records. They have come back, already some time ago and picked up on a generation of ‘younger’ musicians. Matteo Uggeri took hundreds of photos of his workplace in a ’70s building and that became the inspiration for this work with Giulio Aldinucci. They both use field recordings, but Aldinucci melts the re-processed field recordings into drones and Uggeri into beats. These beats should not be understood as a bunch of big 4/4 rhythms, but minimalist drum patterns of a dark nature. It fits the ditto dark drones as produced by Aldinucci, that are sometimes pretty straight forward sustaining clouds of sound, but most of the time also add a small melodic touch to them. I have no idea where these field recordings were made, only recognizing the fanfare on the street in ‘Chinese New Year‘ and some wind/rain/water sounds in other pieces, or vast empty parking space. Sometimes the beats produced by Uggeri seem almost absent, such as in ‘Inceneritore‘, but maybe they are even more spaced out here. I think it is quite a clever move to work with field recordings in the way these gentlemen do; just treating them into big chunks of abstract ambient music has been done quite enough, but adding minimalist rhythms and re-shaping field recordings into lovely chunks of melodic ambient is also perhaps not unique, but it is not done to death yet (at least, not that I know) and as such, this is a great album." Frans De Waard (Vital Weekly n. 1246) | 2020 | €13.00 |
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| ALIO DIE | Hora Aurea | 10inch | Zwei neue ALIO DIE – Stücke auf dieser 10”, wie sie entrückt meditativer kaum sein könnten... ganz sanft und doch mit vielen interessanten Sounds gespickt, breiten sich magische Drones repetitiv aus, betäubend wie schweres Perfüm... “SmallVoices proudly presents the new ALIO DIE work entitled "AUREA HORA". Two exclusive tracks of evocative magmatic soundscapes in the typical atemporal Alio Die aim. The two completely new recordings (with drones, loops, zither and integrated radionoises from an old Valvular model) are similar to early Alio Die experiments or one of his best albums "Sol Niger". Catching atmospheres will bring you in Stefano's magic world, which is an oneiric, dreaming journey to the inner self satisfaction...” [label description] | 2006 | €12.50 |
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| Aura Seminalis | CD | Auf AURA SEMINALIS verwendet ALIO DIE vokales und chorales Material, welches elektronisch verfremdet oder mit elektronischen Effekten angereichert wird. Dabei entstehen zwei lange Stücke von unglaublicher Emotionalität und Tiefe, frei fliessend & sanft wirbelnd um imaginäre Zentren....Die sakralen Choräle verschmelzen auf eine einmalige Art und Weise mit akustisch-elektronischen Sound, vielleicht das beste ALIO DIE -Album bisher, auf jeden Fall aufregend anders als vorherige Arbeiten ! "The new work by Alio Die it is part of the Castle's sonorisation series, titled AURA SEMINALIS. The first track 'Sine Tempore part I-III' it's an epicentre of mystic music carachterized by a gold cathedral's atmosphere, while 'Aura Seminalis part I-II' displays an ascensional soundworld of arcane purity and rare beauty. One of the best works by Alio die so far. CD packaged in an elegant three sides digipack!! HSL 045" [label info] "This latest release in a recent outpouring of creativity from Italy's master of organic drones is possibly the most unique in this artist's long career as a sound sculptor. While most of his recent releases on his own Hic Sunt Leones label have been collaborations, this is his first solo effort since the release of the 10 inch vinyl Aurea Hora. As the elaborate Renaissance style artwork on the cover suggests, this music points in the direction of a more "classical" sound insofar as the utilization of Gregorian style chants. These are successfully incorporated into Musso's customary drones comprised of field recordings, acoustic instruments, and electronic processing, giving this disc a particularly reverent ambience. Don't think Enigma or Delerium, because as one listens to this they may be inclined to bow their head and meditate or pray rather than nod or chill. I imagine that if today's sound recording abilities were available during those times evoked by the artwork or chants, they too would have then added the organic elements that Alio Die does, creating a balance of both the heavenly and the earthbound. Fans of his music may or may not find this approach a departure from what they are accustomed to, but it is certain that this artist is going beyond his previous huge body of work to encompass a broader sonic pallette." [Pauldient / Discogs.com] https://aliodie.bandcamp.com/album/aura-seminalis | 2008 | €15.00 |
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| ALIO DIE / PARALLEL WORLDS | Circo Divino | CD | "This is the first collaboration by ambient master Alio Die with soundscape creator Parallel Worlds. The unique sound achieved could be described as a hybrid sonic world, made out of bouncing electrons and air vibrations. The modular machines of Parallel Worlds are merged with the acoustic instrumentation and drones of Alio Die, joined by the ethereal voice of the Polish vocalist/composer India Czajkowska, resulting in a surreal, yet down to earth, listening experience. The compositions, being, at times, minimal and calm and, at other times, full of mystical darkness and microsound elements, take the listener into a place were mental and physical boundaries have no need to exist. The beautiful Digipack artwork is by the painter Romanie Sanchez. Tracks: 1 Lost Fractales 2 Circo Divino 3 Nuvole di Palissandro 4 Sorinel 5 Electrostatic Forest 6 Slide of Grace All tracks composed and produced by Bakis Sirros and Stefano Musso (BMI) between 2008 and 2009, in Milan, Italy and Athens, Greece. Parallel Worlds : Doepfer A100 modular, Serge Modular Music System, AS Integrator modular, Metalbox/CGS modular, modified Oberheim 4-Voice, modified EMS VCS3, String machines, Tape Echoes, Tone & CV generators, wave shapers and modifiers. Alio Die: Drones and Loops, Zither, Carillon, Effects and Treatments. Voice and effects on tracks 1,3,4 by India Czajkowska recorded in Verezzi, Italy. Mastering by Stefano Musso at Temple Studio, Milan. Cover pictures by Romanie Sanchez www.romanie.net" [label info] www.aliodie.com | 2010 | €15.00 |
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| ALIO DIE & FRANCESCO PALADINO | Angel's Fly Souvenir | CD | Immer wieder kollaboriert ALIO DIE mit neuen, uns noch unbekannten Musikern und schafft so eine Erweiterung seines typischen Ambient-Trance-Stils .... hier besonders bemerkenswert die vollen Zither-Sounds und ost-europäische Choräle, die wunderbar eingebunden werden... “ 'Angel's Fly Souvenir': a CD by ALIO DIE & FRANCESCO PALADINO with contributes by IN GOWAN RING and JACK OR JIVE An album out of any definition, music at the same time dreamy and deep, a concrete and ethereal journey, born from the pleasure to experiment, the project was starting from acoustic sounds and voices recorded throw a long tube with zither loops, flutes, and different sonorous objects not identified at all and from the 'nose' sounds by Francesco Paladino. The album contains seven tracks, two of that are enriched by the epic collaboration track with In Gowan Ring in 'Ancient Consciousness of the End', and with the voice by Chako of Jack or Jive in 'Flowing Out from the Core of the Mountain'. Francesco Paladino apart from his passion with video art, it's active in music from early seventies and was a member of Doubling Riders. The recordings of Angel's Fly Souvenir were started in spring 2003, and now the Cd is finally come out to the light, with its bright and dark abisses, and its own night meditations.” [label description] | 2005 | €13.50 |
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| ALIO DIE & LORENZO MONTANA | The Threshold of Beauty | CD | "On their second collaboration, these cult Italian musicians create an hour of meditative dream-infused soundscapes and beatless mystical textures. Following their 2015 Projekt album Holographic Codex, Alio Die (with 65 releases) and Lorenzo Montanà (with 17 releases) come together for six tracks of deep ambient soundscaping, intersecting a potent alchemical brew of pure organic sounds. The threshold of beauty is a transcendental vision of beauty as an integral part of the cosmos. The connections of the music with nature and human spirituality are mixed in an ineffable picture that create a contemplative frame of mind. The recordings started with Alio Die performing on a psaltery (an ancient medieval instrument like a dulcimer but played by plucking the strings) augmented with real time electronic improvisations & processing by Lorenzo. The tracks were then edited by Alio Die adding layers, additional effects and loops to complete the expansive ritualistic tapestry. Undeniably calming and moving, the breathing slows, the mind quiets and opens. As the introspective ambience washes over the listener, a naturalistic dronescape unfolds with alluring aural scenarios of evolving, intimate sounds. * Alio Die has over 65 releases, 7 on America’s Projekt Records and others on his own Hic Sunt Leones label. Montanà recorded 5 collaborations with Pete Namlook on Pete’s German FAX label, plus released 12 solo albums with various European imprints. Limited edition of 500, May 31 2019" https://projektrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-threshold-of-beauty | 2019 | €15.00 |
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| ALIO DIE & SAFFRON WOOD | The Sleep of Seeds | CD | Sehr entspannte Drone-Improvisationen praktisch ohne elektronische Sounds.. eine weitere neue VÖ von ALIO DIE, hier in Zusammenarbeit mit SAFFRON WOOD. “ The title is also the opening track of this macroscopic journey into a world which spontaneously engages us when we travel through it. A link between life and earth, a passageway between time and change. A melodius itinerary in which a time hourglass often makes no sense but only the sound of articulated and fragmentary notes...50 minutes between a seed and a grain of soil to wander into an infinite space while listening to a far away earth longing sound. Recorded in Savona Italy august 2002, with different flutes, tubes, accordion, various objects, rattles, shells, bells... Drones and loops, effects, editing and mastering on Pro-tools, at Temple studio Milano spring 2003. All the Cds comes in a special artwork compositions with tissues leaves, seeds...” [label description] | 2003 | €14.00 |
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| ALIZADEH, SABA | I may never see you again | LP | Iranian composer and Kamancheh virtuoso, Saba Alizadeh releases his new album "I May Never See You Again"on the newly founded Hamburg label 30M Records. Born in Tehran in 1983 to world-renowned tar and setar virtuoso and composer Hossein Alizadeh, Saba Alizadeh studied the Iranian Kamancheh – an ancient Persian violin – becoming one of the foremost players of the instrument of this day. Alizadeh later studied experimental sound art with Mark Trayle at the California Institute of the Arts and inspired by the conceptual approaches taught there, started composing music that deconstructs and abstracts Iranian traditions and scales into a new musical language and style. Influenced by Iranian harmonics, musique concrète and sophisticated, forward-looking beat science, Saba Alizadeh's "I May Never See You Again" represent an incredibly exciting act of mutual inspiration - when Iranian scales and Western electroacoustic understanding powerfully unite. The nine predominantly instrumental tracks on the album fuse tradition and innovation inspiring meditations on the subject of memory. On the one hand, the credibility and resilience of one's own memory is musically dissected, whilst on the other hand, Saba Alizadeh proceeds conceptually, deploying erstwhile dictators’ speeches in his music as a means to question the course of history. I May Never See You Again also features handpicked collaborations with musician Andreas Spechtl and electroacoustic sound artist Rojin Sharafi. Spechtl, singer of the band Ja, Panik, found fame in the German-speaking world primarily thanks to his song lyrics, in which he deconstructs words in a similarly abstract way as Saba Alizadeh does the music. Spechtl joins Alizadeh on two tracks for the album, while Vienna-based Iranian Sharafi joins on one. https://30m-records.bandcamp.com/album/i-may-never-see-you-again | 2021 | €24.50 |
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| ALLBEE, LIZ | Theseus vs. Luz Alibi | CD | "Liz Allbee's second full length solo unwinds a cozily misanthropic sonic cloth with hidden barbs sure to draw blood. Each track treads further into unnerving terrain: sonar-pings dizzy your ears, unknown nursery rhymes warble from an abandoned tongue, a blur of wings beating in phase consumes all perception until a flat drum slowly summons resplendent horns and vocals rising to dump the entire hell onto its back. Fasten a thread to one finger, but dare to take yourself inside "Theseus vs." Limited edition of 350, packaged in a handmade silk screened box." [label info] www.resipiscent.com "As a women is Liz Allbee, who lives in Berlin and her instruments are trumpet, electronics and voice. You might perhaps jump to the conclusion that Allbee comes from the world of improvisation and that's where she operates. That is only partially true. There is a lot happening on this CD: perhaps somehow, somewhat based in improvisation, but there is so much more, above all: its musical. Sometimes one gets the impression that Allbee wants to play a poptune. I have no idea what her electronics are about but no doubt some form of loopdevice to create rhythms. Perhaps using her voice, perhaps her trumpet, or perhaps there is some rudimentary form of a drum computer. But I think she loops more than just that: also her voice, also her trumpet and thus forms little melodies around she improvises her work. Maybe that seems an odd combination but its one that works surprisingly well. At times a bit noisy, at other times more like serious avant-garde, but always keen to add that (small) pop angle. The tracks are short and to the point. A bit sketch-like perhaps, but due to the variety of approach this is a highly enjoyable and well succeeded hybrid of styles, with Allbee doing something that is surely her own." [FdW, Vital Weekly] | 2010 | €16.00 |
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| ALVA NOTO | Xerrox Vol. 4 | CD | "Alva Noto returns to his much awaited Xerrox project with Vol. 4, the fourth installment of the five-piece intended series based on the concept of digital replication of source material. Using the process of copying as a basis, the Xerrox series deals with the manipulation of data by means of endless reproduction. Due to the inherent fallacy of the procedure involving the making of copies made from other copies, everyday’s sounds become so altered that they can be hardly associated with the source material. As a result, entirely new sounds are created: copies of originals become originals themselves. Following Xerrox Vol. 1 (2007), Vol. 2 (2009), Vol. 3 (2015), Carsten Nicolai continues the pentalogy eluding the accuracy and precise sound design for which he’s renowned, and turning to a more harmony-driven composition technique. Unlike the previous Xerrox albums, whose starting point is a set of samples extracted from external sources and fragments of recordings, Vol. 4 compounds under a unified cinematic soundscape, warm chords, thrumming digital ambiences, liquified electronics, drones, and noise sustained by floods of strings. The tension between the organic warmth and static curves, broads tones into distant roars and electronic cascade of sounds. While Alva Noto's oeuvre is predominantly affiliated with pristine sound design, Xerrox holds more intimate gestures and emotional sensibility. This fourth volume shuns further from the conceptualism and orderliness of prior musical outputs, ranging from heart-warming elegies to mind-bending sci-fi projections in extrasolar territories." [label info] "It took five years for Carsten Nicolai to release the third volume to his five-part series Xerrox, and it took five more to release the fourth. At this rate, it will be 2025 when we will see the final chapter. Although there are rumblings on the intarwebs that the fourth instalment, which should be depicting the letter 'X' again of the typeface 'XERROX', is actually the first one, with the same image on the cover. I guess we'll have to wait and see. Meanwhile, one of the reasons for an interval in between the volumes can be attributed to the split between the Raster and Noton labels, which occurred in 2017, after the Raster-Noton's 20th anniversary. So, although a keen eye may notice that this particular entry in the series appears on another label, the continuity between the music, artwork, layout, packaging, and pretty much everything else, is still intact. For that we thank thee. Whereas Volume 1 was attributed to the "Old World", Volume 2 "To The New World", and Vol. 3 was "Towards Space", this fourth instalment is subtitled as "Transit Extrasolar Territories And Inner Worlds". So the trajectory is further and out, and so are the sounds, depicted within. This fourth instalment is even more 'ambient', if one may call it that. Gone are the digital structures, copied with all of the artefacts of the process, and replaced with warm swells of organic-sounding strings, which breathe with the punctuating deep bass. I would have almost expected the opposite, as we flew into the extrasolar regions of our universe - something darker, colder, and void. But upon another reflection, fundamental sonic expressions within the fourteen pieces of the album totally make sense, since it is the human world, of the old and new worlds, that occupies within the digital domain. The rest of the creation is beyond the numbers. And yet... if digital emerged from minds and will of humans, is it not part of the organic? This, and many other questions, can be but glimpsed by travelling onboard with Alva Noto, who intricately weaves an aural frame which is by far his best in series. Of course, I've got all of the four instalments on CD, and have aligned them all to spell out "XERRO..." but at this point, I'm leaning towards grabbing a 2x12" edition of the album, since its vibrations and pure chime must be experienced through surface listening. It's also worth noting, that this album was originally finished in February, just as the pandemic began to unfold across the globe. And, as my dear friend Peter van Cooten notes on his ambientblog writeup, "this means that the emotional impact of this music is different now than it would have been without the COVID-19 crisis," with which I wholeheartedly agree. Xerrox Vol.4 is an album worth listening to on numerous continuous repeats, and if you prefer, you can lie down and turn off the lights. And as you float out of these outer worlds and through your inner, I hope to see you on the other side." [Headphone Commute] | 2020 | €16.00 |
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| AMBARCHI, OREN | Live Knots | do-LP | "Oren Ambarchi captured in two exceptional live performances. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M. Pressed on double 140g vinyl & CD. Photography by Traianos Pakioufakis and artwork by Bill Kouligas. 'Live Knots, Oren Ambarchi's first release for PAN, presents two live realizations of 'Knots', the epic centrepiece of his Audience of One (Touch, 2012) release. Built on the interplay between Ambarchi's swirling, guitar harmonics and the metronomic pulse and shifting accents of Joe Talia's DeJohnette-esque drumming, the piece merges the organic push and pull of free improvisation with an overarching compositional framework. 'Tokyo Knots' presents the complete recording of a duo performance of the piece by Ambarchi and Talia recorded at Tokyo's legendary SuperDeluxe in March 2013. The performance builds gently on the foundation of Talia's insistent ride cymbal and the shifting tonal bed of Ambarchi's rich overtone-drenched guitar, eventually going into a free rock free fall of buzz- saw harmonics and crashing drums. From within the maelstrom, Talia picks up a pulsing motorik rhythm that leads the piece back to where it began, with the addition of the shuddering, elastic tones of a hand-played spring reverb unit. Krakow Knots' works with the same basic structure but stretches it out to nearly twice the length and adds strings played by the Sinfonietta Cracovia, led by Eyvind Kang on viola. The strings expand the piece's textural range with lush chordal blocks, uneasy dissonances and occasional Ligetiesque swarms of micro-activity, the swelling string tones intensifying the ecstatic nature of the piece as it moves towards its mid-point crescendo in which Ambarchi unleashes a particularly malicious continuum of stuttering harmonic fuzz. The strings then enter with a series of swelling chords, announcing the piece's final movement, and reaffirming the uniqueness of the tonal and compositional language that Ambarchi has patiently developed over the last two decades, in which the influence of post-minimal composers such as Alvin Curran, Gavin Bryars and David Behrman can be felt alongside the inspiration of raw free jazz, harsh noise and academic psychoacoustics. The final moments of the performance pit Talia and Crys Cole's amplified objects and spring reverb textures against a field of gently gliding string glissandi before the audience erupts in much-deserved applause.' Francis Plagne" [label info] www.pan-act.com | 2015 | €29.00 |
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| AMBARCHI, OREN / LASSE MARHAUG | Worried Friends | 7 | "october 2007 release; a pair of “piano music” pieces, acting as the debut collaborative single from two of contemporary experimental music’s most prolific/consistently rewarding practitioners; oren ambarchi and lasse marhaug... those of you expecting something on par with maurizio pollini’s reading of satie’s gnossiennes might be a little shocked to find instead a fierce 12+ minute inside-piano scrape-fest, hedged with bursts of live-electronic feedback & a “hot” fidelity familiar from any number of david tudor recordings... yet at the same time not too far removed from the new blockaders’ whole gesamtnichswerk; this is anti-music at its finest... not something for strict followers of oren’s friendly/subdued sine-guitar throb, nor lasse’s harsh wall of electronic sound; but definitely one for those whose preferences fall in the noisier end of the electro-acoustic composition/improv spectrum... " [Mimaroglu] www.picadisk.com | 2007 | €8.00 |
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| AMBER ASYLUM | Garden of Love | maxi-CD | Nach langer Pause fünf neue Stücke von KRIS FORCEs Band; melodramatische, Kammermusik-artige Elegien wo ein klares Song-Gerüst aber immer zu erkennen ist, eingespielt mit Bass, Piano, Violine & Cello, Bläsern, Percussion, und dazu KRIS eindringliche Stimme; zurückhaltend, slow, so einsam & verloren... bisher ihre ergreifenste, weil ausgereifste Veröffentlichung ! "San Francisco's Amber Asylum return with their first new recordings in nearly five years . Five dark, brooding chamber works of misanthropic resonance and chilling emotional beauty. A blackened neo-classical masterpiece following their previous recordings on Relapse and Neurot as well as their acclaimed collaborations with Neurosis, Swans and Jarboe amongst others. Just under half an hour of new recordings, featuring the bonus soundtrack recording, "Serenade"." [label notes] www.paradigms-recordings.com | 2006 | €10.00 |
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| ANDERSSON, PETER | Music for Film and Exhibition II | CD | "Like baking a sweet cake or cooking an indian dish you need good ingredients and spices to get the right mouthfeel and the splendid flavor of your desire. 'Music for Film and Exhibition II' is just like that: a levelled declitre of raison d'être, a brimful tablespoon of Atomine Elektrine, a couple of teaspoons of Necrophorus and a little bit of this and little bit of that, mixed into a perfect blend of many tastes. Peter Andersson, well-known from projects like Raison d'être, Stratvm Terror, Necrophorus and Atomine Elektrine, shows here broad spectrum of sonic atmospheres, like if all of his different music projects were combined into one. From ambient-drone-textures and electronic chill-out to concrete sounds to even pure atmopsheric piano tunes. 'Music for Film and Exhibition II' is the sequel of 'Music for Film and Exhibition' (Yantra Atmospheres, 2007). While the previous output contains collected works from different exhibition projects and movies spanning from 1999-2005, this sequel is focused on one single project; an exhibition. Peter Andersson has lately worked as a media producer at Swedish Air Force Museum and being involved with their new large permanent exhibiton about the Cold War. Within this project Peter has worked with sound design and movie production in particular. The sonic results are presented on 'Music for Film and Exhibition II'. Some of the tunes are used as soundtrack for exhibition movies while the main part are sonic atmospheres and soundscapes to create the ambience of the exhibition rooms. The music is presented here as stand alone productions, displaced from its original context. To fully experience the music in its environmental Raison d'être there is no other way but to travel to the Swedish Air Force Museum. Until then, you may enjoy the music on its own. The CD comes in a six panel digipak covered with beautiful Sunset painting by italian artist Christian Montagna/FLOODSart. For same samples go here : http://www.oldeuropacafe.com/main.php?nav=pd&prdct=10127" [label info] www.oldeuropacafe.com www.oldeuropacafe.com | 2010 | €13.00 |
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| ANEMONE TUBE | :existence | CD | " A U F A B W E G E N RELEASE INFO cd-audio releaae date: 25.05.2001 artist: ANEMONE TUBE title: :EXISTENCE: order no.: aatp09 time: 50:12 min jewel case / 500 handnumbered copies / fold out colour insert :existence: as a great mix between rumbling noise and floating ambience. four hasrh tracks and three more dense and collage like works make this a varied and thrilling listen! tracklisting: Flesh & Bombs (10:13) Secondary Master (4:43) Choke Down (5:41) Existence (11:10) Red Waves (5:56) Continuity (4:08) The Encounter III (8:19) Anemone Tube was founded in Summer of 1996 by Stefan Hanser who felt the urge to express deeper personal feelings and dreams. The audioworks from Anemone Tube vary a lot along with the different means Stefan Hanser uses as sound source and for manipulation and could easiest be described as industrial-, ambient- and noisescapes of organic and synthetic sounds. The use of constantly shifting and altering sounds and moods is possibly one of the most intruiging things about the audio creations of Anemone Tube with the purpose of trying to put the listener into a delirious mental state, to irritate, torment and caress him no matter if in a positive or negative way: to cause emotional reaction! Over the years plenty of releases, several participations on compilations, split and collaborational releases on tape, vinyl, cd and video have been realised by different labels worldwide such as Transfixional Entertainment/Ravensburg, AufAbwegen/Köln, Solipsism/USA, Loud!/Italy, Napalmed/Czech, Inner Space Records/USA and many more. www.transformed.de/anemone.html" [original press release by AUF ABWEGEN] "German ambient-industrial project Anemone Tube was formed in 1996, and has explored a variety of heavy noisescapes and rhythmic blocks of sound; the Tube's modus operandi has always seemed to focus on putting the listener into a state of delirium caused by constantly shifting sounds and tones sourced from assorted organic and synthetic sounds, and this approach has resulted in a stylistically diverse body of work over the years. On the debut full length Existence, a nearly hour-long disc released in a hand-numbered limited edition of 500 copies, Anemone Tube is at it's heaviest, constructing seven bulky tracks that move from gorgeous ambient dronescapes to crushing, loop-heavy walls of distortion and menacing melodic tracers undulating over grinding rhythmic throb, sort of like what I'd expect a collaboration between Wolf Eyes and Maurizio Bianchi to sound like, although you can also draw lines to Throbbing Gristle, SPK, and violent early UK power electronics when tracks like 'Choke Down' and 'The Encounter III" get into full swing and start obliterating speakers with ferocious torrents of factory distortion. I really dig the way that Existence manages to balance the haunting, atmospheric drones and buried deconstructed rhythms with the louder, brutal passages of rumbling machine filth, making this much easier to digest than many of Anemone Tube's peers. Packaged in an elegant jewel case with a large 10-panel booklet glowing in fiery, fractaled reds and oranges, imprinted with mysterious pictograms." [Crucial Blast] | 2001 | €12.50 |
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| Golden Temple | CD | "anemone tube’s third release of the 'suicide series' tetralogy is an immersive industrial music album and the most ambitious and complex work yet, a long-term project of no less than 6 years, pursuing a highly sophisticated approach full of cross-cultural and historical references. painting a sonic landscape, 'golden temple' is perfectly real and dreamlike at the same time, endorsing archaic, mythological and worldly ideals alike. beauty and evil, the profane and chaos, apocalypse and hope - anemone tube keeps account and observes the antagonist forces of life. composed of raw urban field recordings collected in japan and china, combined with layers of piercing feedback and sinister hovering synth melodies, 'golden temple' confronts you with an all-embracing atmosphere of aggrieving darkness and glorious harshness, fathoming the possibilities of the genre. to ensure due impact, it has been sharply engineered to perfection by mastermind james plotkin. pursuing radical psychological effects of sound, the 13+ minutes initiation 'l`homme et les sirenes' is a mind-bending journey into the human psyche, a slowly emerging sinister landscape evoking man’s intrinsic imbalance with (its own) nature, followed by the noisy debris and crushing buildup of 'apocalyptic fantasy' as well as 'tower of evil', which is the central piece of the album, conceptually and musically, multi-layered and sample-heavy, related to tokyo’s roppongi hills mori tower, which is regarded by natives as a symbol for the uninhibited commercialization of life. 'negation of myth' descends into a barren, metallic darkness, radiating an equivocal sense of melancholy, before 'sea of lights (golden temple)' ascends in sparkling brightness and divinity. the evanescent bleakness of 'anthropocene - the dark abyss of time' finishes the main part of the album on a perversely promising, almost calm, spiritual note. under the heading 'arcadia - dreamland and myth', which constitutes a coherent sequel to the album, anemone tube explores questions pertaining our longing for a return to the realms of myth and emotion. whereas the sinister seething 'i, death, rule even in arcadia' picks up the first piece’s topic of sirens and conjures up the dionysian reunion with the innermost depths of nature and chaos, the psychologically strenuous 'tojinbo - tranquil sea of equanimity' composed by radical sound artist dave phillips (switzerland, schimpfluch-gruppe), using field recordings of the country’s most notorious suicide spot, demands the ultimate choice: how far to go to find your peace of mind. after the purely fantastic 'dream landscape' conjuring up an apocalyptic vision and the dark, brooding landscape of 'death over china' slowly spreading as thick smog (as a consequence for china’s uncompromising economical and societal development causing irreparable environmental harm), the semi-fictional work 'golden temple' is the series’ logical sequel . it suggests a (meta)physical landscape, here in form of global cities and metropolises proudly and brightly soaring in darkness, and bestowing golden radiance and divine beauty. with its alluring metaphorical world of images, symbols and sounds it is the very symbol of our innermost longings, desires and fears and our attempts to escape from a disconcerting reality. the 'golden temple' is comforting and threatening at the same time: consoling as it promises to reveal the secrets of beauty, threatening as it becomes a mirror of our secret death wish. strongly influenced by pasolini’s cinematic masterpiece 'medea', which evolves around the subject matters of estrangement from traditional values, the loss of contact with the mythical and the sacred in an increasingly rationalized and consumerist society, anemone tube brings matters to a head with an invocation of religiously charged symbolism, with the 'golden temple' acting as more than a singular viewpoint, but as a meta-sign, functioning in its paramount acknowledgement and acceptance of complex, sometimes contradictory subject matter. supported by the use of ancient and contemporary imagery, literary and cinematic references reproduced in the lavish accompanying booklet anemone tube creates different narrative levels, juxtaposes contemporary western and long-standing asian culture, plays with symbolic meanings and values - however, while doing so, never takes an unequivocal stand. anemone tube with his varied interests and approaches always strives to present a holistic work of art, and 'golden temple' works on many levels accordingly. the considered use of field recordings and samples, the arrangement of old masters’ paintings, contemporary photos and a variety of quotes from literature and movies - nothing is random, everything is part of the big picture. 'golden temple' is a multi-facetted recording, absorbing and inspiring as well as a complex concept waiting to be discovered. quality time lies ahead for those who get involved and visit the golden temple! the cd comes with a beautifully designed 6 panel digifile with golden print on black paper and a lavish 12-page booklet." [label info] "Im Zentrum von Tokyos Bezirk Minato erhebt sich die Skyline der Roppongi Hills, einer Gruppe von Bürotürmen um den mächtigen Mori Tower, den die kritisch gesinnten unter den Einheimischen in leicht abergläubischer Weise den bösen Turm nennen. In ihrer Wahrnehmung steht er für die Macht, die das Kapital und der entfesselte Konsum auf alle Lebensbereiche ausweitet. Für den Musiker Anemone Tube, der vor einigen Jahren Japan bereiste und am Fuße der Türme das Covermotiv und nicht wenige der Sounds seines aktuellen Albums „Golden Temple“ aufnahm, ist der Ort ein Symbol der kapitalistischen Spatmoderne, der Tower of Evil, den er im gleichnamigen Stück besingt, ist eine Allegorie, die nicht nur in Japan ihre Manifestation hat. „Golden Temple“ – man mag beim Titel an Mishimas Temple of the Golden Pavillon denken, woraus im opulenten Booklet zitiert wird – ist der dritte Teil von Anemone Tubes „Suicide Series“ und somit Nachfolger von „Dream Landscape“ und „Death Over China“. Ein weiteres mal geht es um Landschaften, die sich in der Spätform unserer Zivilisation herausgebildet haben und die zugleich ihren selbst hervorgerufenen Kollaps symbolisieren. Auf „Golden Temple“ ist all dies noch stärker als zuvor mit textlichen und ikonischen Zitaten und Anspielungen unterfüttert, die viele Fragen stellen und gelegentlich auch die eine oder andere Antwort in den Raum stellen. Noch deutlicher als auf „Death Over China“ dreht sich auf „Golden Temple“ alles um das Thema der Entfremdung und ihrer apokalyptischen Dimensionen, und wie es scheint wird ein historisches Panorama entfaltet. Im eröffnenden „L’Homme et les Sirenes“ wird gewissermaßen die Ursünde der Entfremdung abgehandelt, der Trick des Odysseus, dem verführerischen Gesang der Sirenen zu widerstehen, oder allgemeiner: durch scheinbare Disziplin, die in Wirklichkeit eine Selbstfesselung ist, über die Natur und ihre Geister zu triumphieren. Dieser Akt, von Homer gefeiert und noch in der Dialektik der Aufklärung als Sternstunde der Zivilisation gewürdigt, erscheint hier als Auftakt einer fatalen Dystopie, zumindest lässt der knochentrockene Schleifsound, der seine destruktive Wirkraft erst nach und nach entfaltet, nichts anderes vermuten. Von der Irrfahrt des Heroen bis zum finalen Anthropozän in „Anthropocene – The Dark Abyss of Time“ mit seinem an apokalyptisches Flammengeprassel erinnernden Rauschen ist es ein weiter Weg, und der ist mit Marken versehen, die so etwas wie einen Kampf zwischen Sein und Entfremdung anzudeuten scheinen. Auf musikalischer wie textlicher Seite herrscht der Nihilismus des all-encompassing destroyer aus dem zentralen „Tower of Evil“. „Apocalyptic Fantasy“ knüpt mit fatal dröhnenden Kreisbewegungen und einem Sound, der an Gitarrensoli diverser Metalgenres gemahnt, an die vorab veröffentlichte EP „In the Vortex of Dionysian Reality“ an, und schon dass hier auf Fantasy und nicht auf Nightmare verwiesen wird, unterstreicht das Lustvolle, dass dieses Untergangs-Narrativ bis zum kaum verständlichen Sprachample durchzieht – wie im Tarot Crowleys ist der Turm, der hier durch brettharte Noisewände evoziert wird, eine dem Einsturz geweihte comfort zone, deren Implosion gefürchtet und zugleich erhofft wird. Nach einer eindringlicheren Version des schon auf dem Vortex-Tape enthaltenen „Tower of Evil“, hier mit dem Zusatz „The Ultimate Truth“, führt uns „Negation of Myth“ in die etwas filigraneren Regionen der Anemone Tube-Kosmos, was allerdings nur heißt, dass die nosigen Sounds weniger verwaschen und die einzelnen grobkörnigen Partikel deutlicher herausgearbeitet sind. Wer vergleichbare Passagen auf „Death Over China“ oder auf der Split mit Dissecting Table kennt, weiß, dass solche Tracks immer noch niederdrückend sind, und hier ist es v.a. das kosmische Hintergrunddröhnen, das den Eindruck von etwas Verlorenem aufrecht erhält. Vielleicht ist es diese Evokation von etwas ungreifbar Verlorenem, die auch den vielleicht schöngeistigesten Track „Sea of Lights (Golden Temple)“ so eindringlich macht. Anemone Tube war stets an einer angemessenen allegorischen Aufmachung interessiert, doch diesmal ist das Booklet besonders reichhaltig gefüllt. Auf der bildlichen und paratextlichen Seite, die hier entfaltet wird, erwacht eine hetrotopische Gegenwelt, die so etwas wie ein nicht entfremdetes Sein zum Thema macht. Teil dieser Gegenwelt, wenn auch auf sehr radikale Art, ist zumindest der erste der beiden Bonus-Tracks, die wie eine integrierte EP unter dem Titel „Arcadia – Dreamland and Myth” angehängt sind: „I, Death, Even Rule in Arcadia” greift das Motiv der Odysse wieder auf und deutet eine alternative Erzähung an, in der der Held dem Ruf der Geister nachgibt und – auf tragische Weise, der Entfremdung jedoch entrinnend, wieder mit seiner eigenen Natur verschmilzt. „Tojinbo – Tranquil Sea of Equanimity” wiederum ist besonders doppelbödig, scheinen die vom schweitzer Soundaktivisten Dave Philips abgemischten Feldaufnahmen aus der Nähe einer für zahlreiche Selbstmorde bekannten Felsenklippe in Japan doch eher wieder eine Folge der Entfremdung statt ihre Alternative zu beschwören. Letztlich bleibt es eine Frage der Interpretation, ob man die schönen Seiten des in „Golden Temple“ beschworenen als eskapistische Gegenwelt, als Einklagen einer veschmähten Kostbarkeit, als reine Dokumentation oder als vorsichtig hoffnungvolle Zukunftsaussicht auf ein Danach lesen will. Nietzsches Umschreibung des Dionysischen als „Ja zu Leben in all seiner Tragik” kommt mir dabei allerdings nicht aus dem Sinn. Sicher ist, dass das immer etwas links klingende Wort Antikapitalismus und das immer etwas rechts klingende Wort Antimodernismus selten so sehr überblendet wurde, wie auf diesem an Andeutungen und Anspielungen reichen Album, das den Geist Pasolinis wie ein Kontrastmittel über die Goldenen Tempel unserer Zeit gießt – und damit selbst die namenlose saufende Schönheit zu Füßen der Kolosses aus Glas und Beton zum Strahlen bringt." (U.S./AFRICAN PAPER] www.raubbau.org "The second chapter in "the suicide series" from Berlin's Anemone Tube is a suitably grim offering of machined noise, discordant feedback, and industrial field recordings of urban sprawl from a protracted visit to China a few years back. Anemone Tube's inclusion of these Chinese sounds comes from a very conscious decision to express the unfortunate side of the human condition to lay blame of current ills on the foreigner, the other - as Sartre explored in The Stranger. These recordings of locomotive engines grinding against the tracks, jet-engines surging into the sky, and the deafening roar from turbines are not unique to China, but the acceleration of environmental decline through such activities should also be seen as a mirror to the European civilization, whose cities have complex histories to war, famine, death, and disease. Hence, the title refers more to the gleaming optimism of human progress when everything points to another conclusion. Anemone Tube captures this in an immersive construct of these revolving field recordings, compounded by sinister synth passages and haunted drone, that keep us thinking of the likes of Morthound and Megaptera, in the death-industrial realms." [Aquarius Rec.] | 2016 | €13.00 |
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| In the Vortex of Dionysian Reality | CD | Related to Nietzsche`s notion of the Wagnerian music drama as a revelation of the abysmal truth about man, “In the Vortex of Dionysian Reality” allures us into the Dionysian dreamland, where tragedy reigns, in pursuit of the ultimate oneness. With its washes of noise and layers of piercing feedback on a subbase of wavering synths, it is a maelstrom of sound generating a hallucinatory reality. The atmosphere oscillates between destructiveness and aggravating frenzy, between the archaic and the sacral, between frenzied passion and abyssal melancholy, serving the mythical experience of music in a world where language has failed as a method of communication and music figures as the primordial form of expression. As he considers humanities to have reached their limit, young Nietzsche hopes to find ultimate spiritualization and idealization in the reborn myth. Music alone (“our German masters”), as the primeval form of poetry and revelation of true Dionysian wisdom, may achieve triumph over the Apollonian shallow world of apparition. With his timely musical rendition of mythical experience as “In the Vortex of Dionysian Reality”, Anemone Tube conveys an emotionally and mentally charged album which reveals his soft spot for progressive post rock metal acts like Amusement Parks On Fire, Blut Aus Nord or O.L.D. Their special approach of dreamy melodies vs. atonal, discordant sounds is skillfully recreated through polyphonic synths lines, which are then modulated into feedback and added for good measure. Carrying the same title as the 2015 cassette EP release on The Epicurean, this CD with its 40+ minutes total length and five all new, yet unreleased tracks is less a mere re-release, but rather a full stand-alone album, featuring Ukrainian dark ambient artist Monocube on one track, as well as including sounds by Russian avantgardists Post Scriptvm and sound processing by French sound artist Pacific 231. epicureanescapism.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-vortex-of-dionysian-reality-2 | 2017 | €13.00 |
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| The Three Worlds - Vanity of Allegory | CD | Far reaching pleasures will be at hand – Anemone Tube reveals a series of three CDs entitled “The Three Worlds: Allegory of Vanity / Forget Heaven / Vanity of Allegory”, referencing a cosmological treatise on the universe from the Theravada Buddhism of the 14th century, the subject matter of which is the description of three levels of existence of all beings and mythical creatures. This extensive retrospective release contains selected tracks from various tapes released between 1997 and 1999 - mostly rare and unavailable today - as well as yet unreleased tracks recorded between 1997 and 2013, a.o. outtakes from the “Death Over China” recordings, handpicked and recontextualized by Anemone Tube, representing the project’s roughest and most atmospheric material up to date, ranging from depressive ritual experimental ambient over dark rhythmic industrial soundscapes to whirlwind noise. Sharply mastered by Hunter Barr for a powerful, contemporary sound, each CD comes in a 6-panel digifile featuring beautiful photography by Dario Lehner and is available as single CD as well as a limited edition 3 CD set in a lavish slipcase with poster, sticker and patch. “The Three Worlds” is a work about transience on many levels, perfectly elucidated in the Buddhist Sutra “Far Reaching Pleasures”, “The three worlds are transient like clouds in autumn / Birth and death of all beings unfold like a dance / Their lives rush away like a mountain stream / Vanish like lightning in the sky”, which serves as the contextual framework for the CD series and is translated in the most beautiful and poetic fashion with three painstakingly arranged photographic scenes based on vanitas symbolism of old masters’ paintings. The object photograph “Vanity of Allegory” plays with the dissolution of all phenomena, the transience of all things, all allegories, featuring an extinguished candle, jewellery – and the artist himself, vacuously pointing his finger a skull laughing at the spectator from the mirror. All that is combined with poetry suggesting the dissolution of the ego, seemingly closing the circle. Besides collected tracks from old and recent cassette releases and compilations, this also features three unreleased tracks from the “Death Over China” recordings and therefore represents the newest cut from the trilogy and thus musically bridges the gap to the recent works of Anemone Tube with their profound depth and complexity of sound. credits released October 23, 2017 Music composed, mixed & edited by Anemone Tube. 1 recorded 2013, previously unreleased. 2–4 recorded 2007 – 2008 (Death Over China recording session), previously unreleased. 5 recorded 1998, previously released on Deafness Is Not A Gift compilation CD (Deafborn, 2000). 6 recorded 2012, prev. released on the The Transfiguration Of The Image cassette (Danvers State, 2013). 7 recorded 1998, edited 2012, previously released on Anomalous Silencer 3 comp. CD (Napalmed, 1999). 8 recorded 1998, prev. released on the Allegories For The Future cassette (Loud!, 1999). 9 recorded 2008 and 2012, previously released on This Dismal World split cassette with Dissecting Table (Black Horizons, 2013). Concept, art and design by Anemone Tube 2015/17. Photography by Dario Lehner 2015, set design, photo editing by Anemone Tube 2015/17. Mastering by Hunter Barr 2017. The Epicurean . cure.19 La Esencia . NER020/2017 Format: CD & download Playtime: 37:58 min epicureanescapism.bandcamp.com/album/the-three-worlds-vanity-of-allegory | 2017 | €12.50 |
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| ANEMONE TUBE / JARL & MONOCUBE | The Hunters in the Snow | CD | "Inspired by the Pieter Bruegel’s seasons paintings, the three industrial music projects Anemone Tube, Jarl and Monocube developed a cosmos of sound over the course of more than five years. The result “The Hunters in the Snow – A Contemplation on Pieter Bruegel’s Series of the Seasons” is an all-encompassing work of art from every perspective – exploring the seasons paintings through poetry, literature and sound. Originating from a visual piece of art, the musical interpretations meet every aspect of the sceneries, merging their unique approaches and individual styles into one vivid, ever-changing sonic landscape of the recurring cycle of decay and renewal. Sharply mastered by James Plotkin for eternity. The spearhead “The Gloomy Day” seduces us to open up and give in to being carried away, a dream of a barren winter landscape that invites to calm and to rest while the sounds describe the first buds of spring penetrating the icy ground. Life returns with all its wonders. The relationship between man and nature comprises the leitmotif of the work - and is a cruel one: Albeit winter is the season where life slows down and one may enjoy ice-skating, as seen in the title picture, it is also the time where mankind struggles for survival. The need for hunting in the face of scarce resources, the killing of an animal to secure one’s own survival contrasts the peace and quiet. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth: Anemone Tube, Jarl and Monocube directly put their fingers on this ambivalence, aurally contrasting the peaceful scenery with darker tunes, rough electronic patterns that convey tension and unease. These sounds provide a space where we are confronted with the harsh side of the cold, the mere fear of dying while man has no control over the course of seasons. Again, we find rest within more quiet pieces, like “The Return of the Herd”, thus meandering between the sense of natures’ threat and its welcoming, nourishing side. Tunes of silken softness gently touch the conscious and the unconscious, like the autumn sun caressing the golden fields. And while one meditates over the essence of life, surrounded by the vast compositions that reflect the most intimate creative capacities of the three artists, it is where we connect with the core of our humanness and touch upon our own spirituality. The CD comes in a luxurious 8-panel digifile with embossed cover on high quality natural paper, accompanied by a booklet which includes an essay on Pieter Bruegel’s landscapes by Sven Schlijper-Karssenberg & Kim Dohlich, and a poem by Jean Gebser that corroborates the conceptual framework. Conception, music production and art direction by Anemone Tube. The Special Edition CD set comes with obi strip, sticker, moss spores and a certificate for supporting “Ekayana Forest Project” – a Buddhist community sharing a common forest worldwide, located in various reforestation projects. Their aim is to develop a climate-supportive and environmental-friendly spiritual practice. 3€ donation flows directly into the planting of trees. The moss spores are for home gardening – moss binds huge amounts of carbon dioxide and thus also positively influences the climate. | 2019 | €14.00 |
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| ANTIKATECHON | Woe is the Reward | CD | Davide Del Col has been working in the specific and uncompromising ritual dark ambient genre since the end of the 90s, this firstly under the moniker of Ornament for a couple of very rare limited editions then as Antikatechon which now represents the highlight of his artistic and stylistic creativity. A first full length album has been published on Silentes Minimal Editions back in 2011, this one provides a very accomplished effort in the realms of hauntingly dark ambient music with a touch of melancholic-spiritual inflected nihilism. Signed on Rage in Eden, "Chrisma Crucifixorum" is an other eloquent and complex release which oscillates between stately gazing drone sequences and original audio treatments, the whole thing surrounded by a sacral aura. 2013 saw the rise of a collaborative effort with the pioneering ethno-noise ambient act Nimh, also from Italy. This musical meeting gave birth to a passionate and typical dark ambient offering. The conceptual-visual background is connected to the visions and powerful painting works of Goya. Davide Del Col presents here his new catchy electronic dark ambient release entitled "Woe is the Reward", welcomed by Rage in Eden Records. A tremendous, entrancing and blasting dark ambient odyssey full of majestic sound sculptures, huge resonances, bleak noises, metallic reverbs and many more. This sonic, soundtracky and "acoustically haunted" ambient symphony will totally enthrall and ravish the listener. Be prepared to this intense sonorous adventure. -- Philippe Blache | 2014 | €12.00 |
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| APSE | Climb up | CD | "In the fall of 2007, around Apse's 8th year as a band, Michael Gundlach and founding member Bobby relocated to the quiet shores of outer Cape Cod, Massachusetts and began living in virtual isolation. A few months into the move and for various reasons the 2 brooklyn based members of the band were no longer in the picture, leaving only Bobby, Michael and their faithful touring bass player / contributing member John Mordecai, living 4 hours away. Together Bobby and Michael found multi-instrumentalist Jed Armour who joined the band and introduced them to drummer Brandon Collins. Both of them highly talented musicians and long time residents of the cape, the addition of these two members greatly impacted the creative capabilities of the band as well as Bobby and Michael's understanding of - and integration into the year 'round life in the band's new home. After rigorous preparation with the new members rehearsing for an already-booked 6 week European tour that saw them performing at ATP Vs. Pitchfork and several other noteworthy dates across Europe the band returned to Cape Cod and began writing a new album. In August of 2008 during the early stages of the writing process, All Tomorrow's Parties reissued the band's 2006 Spirit to warm critical reception. Labeled as a post-rock record by some, a genre-splicing giant to others, Spin Magazine's Kenny Herzog likely put it best: "Spirit is the deathnail for the labored beast that is "post-rock," revealing the much more alluring potential that always lurked around its sinister corners." Since making Spirit - originally completed in 2006 and after releasing a number of smaller albums both before and after the ATP reissue, the band found itself ready to take on its next major endeavor. Just as a director might make respective films - changing subject matter, approach and format for each - the band was inspired to explore new means of composition, songwriting and production. Its range of members were influenced from a diverse array of art and music, life experience, fiction - and were unanimously uninfluenced by their surroundings - as there were little social distractions or creative camaraderies to be had. The bulk of this writing process then took place between the fall of 2008 and the spring of 2009. Forging the album through long days and nights in the quiet beauty of the winter months on outer Cape Cod. The record that's come out of it, entitled Climb Up is undoubtedly a reflection of the very process that made it - tying into the creative methods as well as the story of the lives of the band's members as they crafted the album. Climb Up was recorded entirely by the band in their homes. The bulk of the arrangements and mixing were authored by Bobby Jed and Michael. Drawing from a mixture of existing demos that were turned into working songs as well as full-band improvised live recordings that Bobby cut up and formed into song structures, overdubbing effects and vocals on top of them - the band ultimately chose and honed in on a final cut of 12 tracks, culled from a larger body of work. The ever-changing obtuse creative strategies of Bobby and Michael, paired with the adept musical knowledge and performance abilities of Jed and Brandon - and the diverse inspirations of all members combined to create an album that bares a fantastic dialogue between imagination and songcraft. Climb Up is wildly unique, versatile, and inarguably the bravest yet most accessible work by the band. The record is a major departure from the band's most notable predecessor, Spirit - which was completed 4 years prior. Where Spirit explored a dark world of reverberant guitars, ambient passages, and minimal, haunting vocals, Climb Up proves a bold step out of that darkness. The intricacies of this new world are depicted as if staggering from the world of Spirit into a very different, more illuminated place. Not to mention its packed with more grooves, a greater use of electronics, a range of instruments both modern and classical and – notably – a much stronger emphasis on voices and melodies. Climb Up is dense, innovative, cinematic. Apse draw from a colourful palette of different genres, techniques, instruments and approaches - and with that have made what is likely to be one of the most curious, and probably largely unexpected albums of the year. Listen, and be immersed." [label info] www.atpfestival.com/recordings.php | 2009 | €10.00 |
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| Climb up | do-LP | "In the fall of 2007, around Apse's 8th year as a band, Michael Gundlach and founding member Bobby relocated to the quiet shores of outer Cape Cod, Massachusetts and began living in virtual isolation. A few months into the move and for various reasons the 2 brooklyn based members of the band were no longer in the picture, leaving only Bobby, Michael and their faithful touring bass player / contributing member John Mordecai, living 4 hours away. Together Bobby and Michael found multi-instrumentalist Jed Armour who joined the band and introduced them to drummer Brandon Collins. Both of them highly talented musicians and long time residents of the cape, the addition of these two members greatly impacted the creative capabilities of the band as well as Bobby and Michael's understanding of - and integration into the year 'round life in the band's new home. After rigorous preparation with the new members rehearsing for an already-booked 6 week European tour that saw them performing at ATP Vs. Pitchfork and several other noteworthy dates across Europe the band returned to Cape Cod and began writing a new album. In August of 2008 during the early stages of the writing process, All Tomorrow's Parties reissued the band's 2006 Spirit to warm critical reception. Labeled as a post-rock record by some, a genre-splicing giant to others, Spin Magazine's Kenny Herzog likely put it best: "Spirit is the deathnail for the labored beast that is "post-rock," revealing the much more alluring potential that always lurked around its sinister corners." Since making Spirit - originally completed in 2006 and after releasing a number of smaller albums both before and after the ATP reissue, the band found itself ready to take on its next major endeavor. Just as a director might make respective films - changing subject matter, approach and format for each - the band was inspired to explore new means of composition, songwriting and production. Its range of members were influenced from a diverse array of art and music, life experience, fiction - and were unanimously uninfluenced by their surroundings - as there were little social distractions or creative camaraderies to be had. The bulk of this writing process then took place between the fall of 2008 and the spring of 2009. Forging the album through long days and nights in the quiet beauty of the winter months on outer Cape Cod. The record that's come out of it, entitled Climb Up is undoubtedly a reflection of the very process that made it - tying into the creative methods as well as the story of the lives of the band's members as they crafted the album. Climb Up was recorded entirely by the band in their homes. The bulk of the arrangements and mixing were authored by Bobby Jed and Michael. Drawing from a mixture of existing demos that were turned into working songs as well as full-band improvised live recordings that Bobby cut up and formed into song structures, overdubbing effects and vocals on top of them - the band ultimately chose and honed in on a final cut of 12 tracks, culled from a larger body of work. The ever-changing obtuse creative strategies of Bobby and Michael, paired with the adept musical knowledge and performance abilities of Jed and Brandon - and the diverse inspirations of all members combined to create an album that bares a fantastic dialogue between imagination and songcraft. Climb Up is wildly unique, versatile, and inarguably the bravest yet most accessible work by the band. The record is a major departure from the band's most notable predecessor, Spirit - which was completed 4 years prior. Where Spirit explored a dark world of reverberant guitars, ambient passages, and minimal, haunting vocals, Climb Up proves a bold step out of that darkness. The intricacies of this new world are depicted as if staggering from the world of Spirit into a very different, more illuminated place. Not to mention its packed with more grooves, a greater use of electronics, a range of instruments both modern and classical and – notably – a much stronger emphasis on voices and melodies. Climb Up is dense, innovative, cinematic. Apse draw from a colourful palette of different genres, techniques, instruments and approaches - and with that have made what is likely to be one of the most curious, and probably largely unexpected albums of the year. Listen, and be immersed." [label info] www.atpfestival.com/recordings.php | 2009 | €17.50 |
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| ARC | 13th | mCDR | ARC ist die 3köpfige “Band” von AIDAN BAKER, der ja schon mit einigen fantastischen solo-releases auf sich aufmerksam machte. Bei ARC vermischen sich ethno-Einflüsse mit ambient-drones, alles live eingespielt. Sanft schwingend & pulsierend, melancholisch-schön.. Schon die Nr. 10 in der schönen low-priced Serie das Pariser Label (ex Harmonies) ! “ Arc is a Canadian trio comprised of Aidan Baler, his brother Richard and Christopher Kukiel. It was formed spontaneously in 1999. Arc's music is based on drones and melodic loops created by Aidan's heavily-treated guitar. Add Richard and Chrisopher's tribalish rhtyhms made with various percussive instruments and you get the picture. When we, at taâlem, first heard Arc, we couldn't help thinking of Life Garden and Voice of Eye, those great US tribal ambient bands from the 90's. But Arc is no copycat !” [label info] http://taalem.free.fr/ | 2003 | €5.00 |
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| ARCANE DEVICE | Devices 1987-2007 | do-CD | Texturen aus Sirenen-Klängen und Sinuston-Feedbacks, repetitive Patterns aus Extrem-Frequenzen, Effektgerät-Übersteuerungen bilden seltsame Klangkegel aus, elektronische Cut-Ups formen Kaskaden aus befremdlicher Rhythmik. Und alles basiert nur auf einer Soundquelle: Feeback! Auf dieser russischen Kollektion des emsigen MONOCHROME VISION-Labels findet sich älteres rares Material von längst vergessenen Compilations, aber auch neue Stücke von 2007, welche nahtlos an die Vergangenheit anknüpfen, insgesamt aber weniger noisig & offensiv klingen. Very special stuff! "Anthology of rare and previously unreleased tracks by Arcane Device, recorded within the 20 years. It is divided into two parts. The first one consists of tracks from compilations issued by Subterranean Records, Tragic Figures, SFCR Tapes, and Generations Unlimited, but also unreleased material remastered and/or remixed in 2007. The second one is subtitled as "Feedback symphony" and based on various recordings, presented in four movements and finished in 2007. One more chance to approve the exceptional skills and compositional/ technical talent of David Myers who can control the electrons by will, creating fantastic soundscapes. Arcane Device is the unique project of american graphic designer and musician David Myers, active between 1987 and 1995. His creative output is going beyond any categorization, because it’s possible to re-arrange and demonstrate such many styles of modern music with only one thing that is feedback. This effect usually happens when you shortcut the input and output of any electric device. It’s hard to believe but this almost uncontrolable beast became the driving force for Arcane Device music, armed by self-made bank of delays and filters. Looking like inward sound research, decorated with finest web of random processes and microvariations, it becames the peculiar feature. Endless circulation of electrons, never repeating routes and always having some chance for individual life inside of any macrostructure." [label notes / credits] "....I might be wrong, but the oldest guy here is David Lee Myers, also known in the mid eighties as Arcane Device and one of my heroes of the time. Myers created his own feedback machines long before someone thought of 'no input mixers'. Myers controlled his feedback with all sorts of sound effects, which made him sound differently than say the average industrial musician. No wonder his first release was on Recommended/ReR records, known for improvisation rather than noise. In the time span of less than eight years Arcane Device released a bunch of CDs, a LP, a double 7" pack and some cassettes (many of them these days available from http://www.pulsewidth.com). For Monochrome Vision, Myers went to his archive to pick some rare (from various compilations on Subterranean Records, Tragic Figures, SFCR and Generations Unlimited) and unreleased for his double CD. I admit straight away that it has been a while since I last played a CD by Arcane Device, but hearing this feast of recognition, prompts me to pull them all out and play them again in the next weeks, when time allows me. The strength of Arcane Device, to work with such unmusical sounds in such a musical form, hasn't lost any of his magic to me. Unlike say the current wave of no input mixers, who like to be microsound, minimal or overtly harsh, but nothing musical, I only know of one equivalent to Myers and that's Marco Ciciliani, who I once saw play a no input mixer in such a musical manner. Great stuff!" [FdW / Vital Weekly] www.monochromevision.ru | 2007 | €17.00 |
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| ARFORD, SCOTT | Radio Station | CD | "Tune into the shortwave bands in and around San Francisco and you're likely to discover little more than static, hiss and electrical interference broken up by an occasional transmission from a libertarian wacko in the Santa Cruz mountains. Scott Arford has spent his entire carrer manipulating a similar static from televisions in his searing audiovisual installations ans perdormances, so it makes perfect sense for him to begin investigating his hometown's cracked ether. Just as he does through his jacked up TV's, he seeks only the most caustic radio signals as his source material and aggresively cobbles together jagged layers of hotwired sound. In many ways, Arford picks up where John Duncan and Daniel Menche - particularly in the use of conglomerates of throbbing pulses and sub-frequency vibrations - Arford manages to highlight the most inherent "musical" nature of a highly fascinating cause of aural enjoyment." [Jim Haynes/ THE WIRE] "In the Bay area he's quite well-known, Scott Arford, operator of the 7HZ label, video artist, musician and collaborator of Francisco Lopez, Randy Yau and Micheal Nine. His output however is quite small. 'Radio Station' is his latest work, and it deals with one of the easiest to obtain sound sources: radio sounds. Not the speech type, or plunderphonica, but everything in between the stations - the cracks, the static, the hiss. Arford is not a sensitive man: whatever he finds on the radio waves he uses, but with a high intensity. His work is not about careful, delicate sounds, but a rather forceful, mean and loud mixture of waves crumbling over each-other, falling apart, chopped up. Not really moments of silence and contemplation here, but on the other hand, Arford isn't interested in doing 'just' a bunch of noise either. He knows how to make a strong, vivid collage of sound out of these radio station and how to make a forceful, interesting piece of music. Energetic and present. The use of radio sounds may not be entirely new, the results of Arford are certainly very very nice." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2005 | €13.00 |
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| ARKTAU EOS | Mirrorion - Telegnostic Edition | CD | After a long period of unavailability we are proud to release the debut album of Arktau Eos 'Mirrorion - Telegnostic Edition' through our Stellar Mansion series. Presented in seventeen chapters that can be approached as singular gateways or a slowly unfolding journey of epic proportions, the debut album of ARKTAU EOS is a challenging, complex work. Born of intense private musico-magical sessions held in places abandoned by man and further refined in the temple-laboratory of the duo, it is the distillation of seven arduous months of work. As the title suggests, 'Mirrorion' is the music of stellar light thrown down from the Heaven's zenith and its eldritch reflections in the depths below, uniting atavistic elemental noise with serene passages of crystalline, spectral ambience. Ultimately, 'Mirrorion' seeks to surpass such earthly definitions in favour of a non-dual vision of reality, hopefully transforming the listener in the process. For this recording ARKTAU EOS have favoured an organic approach with majority of instrumentation being of acoustic variety, including the unearthly choral of the kanglings, piercings blasts of windbones, accelerating steel-plate rolls, singing bowl and various kinds of stringed instruments. The album is enclosed in an oversized screen printed cardboard covers including an 8-panel booklet with historical and other additional notes and eight full-colour insert cards within a stamped envelope. Limited to 493 copies. www.auralhypnox.com "Das fantastische AURAL HYPNOX-Label aus Nordfinnland mit einem neuen Projekt, das wie HALO MANASH und AOEGA mit dem Labelgründer ANTTI HAAPAPURO verbunden ist. Diese Aufnahmen entstanden (man glaubt es beim Hören kaum) ohne elekronische Soundquellen, sondern nur auf archaischen Instrumenten in spontaner Improvisation & an abgelegenen Plätzen... fliessendes Wässer wie aus tiefen Grotten, Gong-Drones, gutturale Gesänge & Anrufungen, Sounds aus Holz- Wind & Metall, das alles in finsterster, ritueller Katakomben-Stimmung, mal sehr mächtig, dämonisch, mal sanfter & dark ambienter.... dazwischen schälen sich als Auflockerung mitunter instrumentelle dark-Folk-artige Arrangements hervor, aber stets im Rahmen der schamanistischen Noises... Der perfekte Soundtrack um mit der "Andernwelt", die auch in uns ist, in Kontakt zu treten..." [Drone Rec. info to the first ed] | 2016 | €15.00 |
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| ART BEARS | Hopes & Fears | CD | "New digipak reissue of the first Art Bears album, originally issued by Recommended in 1978. Fred Frith : guitars, keyboards, bass, violin; Dagmar Krause: voice; Chris Cutler: percussion. With: Tim Hodgkinson: keyboards, woodwinds; Georgie Born: Bass, cello; Lindsay Cooper: bassoon, oboe, soprano sax, recorders. "Originally recorded as a Henry Cow album (but eventually assigned to the trio of Art Bears), during the late 70's this grouping made one of the most powerful statements yet in the world of Art-Rock. Whereas Henry Cow showed an inclination to write long-ish compositions interspersed with improvisational aspects, Art Bears' approach combined a more lyrical display, with shorter, extended-song forms. Typically, the word-strong poetry of drummer Chris Cutler was the impetus for the group's recordings. Once written, it was set to music by multi-instrumentalist Fred Frith, (often in a spur-of-the-moment fashion) and was then extrapolated upon and built up by the group during the recording/mixing process in a way that usually validated the lyrical intent. Hopes And Fears shows the group at its most formidable stage in terms of composition. The pieces are often highly complex, with ideas that zig-zag through a maze of musical imagery, highlighting the group at their peak of virtuosity. Dagmar Krause's vocal prowess is stunningly effective, and the recording itself was edited in a sequence where repeating themes and studio wizardry present the album as a cycle of related, 'songs'. Of the best and most bizarre of the old school of Art-Rock." [press release] | 2003 | €14.00 |
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| ARUM LILIES | Subsurface Aquifers | CD | "The arum lily (zantedeschia aethiopica) is a species of flowering plant in the family Araceae, native to southern Africa. What does this beautiful flower have to do with experimental industrial music? The rather obscure second album of Arum Lilies, a brainchild of Mark Groves (Von Einem etc.), does not provide answers. What it does provide, however, is an album of vaguely unsettling, eerily obscure experimental electronics. Harrowing, subtle atmospherics clash with moments of eardrum shattering industrial noise; warbling pseudomelodies are offset by crackling static and piercing feedback; ominous vocal samples are layered on passages of tightly controlled minimalism. Subsurface Aquifers is a piece of music that migrates between poles, from an almost ambient sparsity of expression to exuberant bursts of chaos. Subsurface Aquifers is not an album of shallow industrial nihilism or typical power electronics misanthropy. It does not allow itself to be defined so easily. As such, it demands more from the listener – but also offers more." ###################### "From the very onset, there’s something delightfully warped and just ever so slightly twisted about Australian Arum Lilies’ second album Subsurface Aquifers. From the covers and packaging to the music itself, it’s all a bit off in a way that’s vaguely disconcerting. And it makes the album intriguing. Painting with broad strokes, it’s easy to pigeonhole Arum Lilies. Industrial of the noisier kind, check. But going beyond that… well, things get trickier and Subsurface Aquifers becomes harder to pin down. Which adds to the intrigue. Discogs, for example, labels Arum Lilies power electronics. And, for sure, there are moments here that are power electronics. And stuff that could be described as noise. And I wouldn’t object if you said of one or the other section that it sounds a lot like death industrial. But on the whole, none of those descriptors apply to the album as a whole. You see, whilst there are outbursts of vicious noise and unsettling layers of feedback, grinding drones and white noise, there are also plenty of warbling sections of hackneyed, distorted pseudomelodies and understated, even minimalist atmospherics. Dark ambient!, I hear you call out. Well… no. Except to the extent that yes, I do think fans of dark ambient will also find stuff here that suits their palate. The genius in Subsurface Aquifers is in how these two work together. Blasting noise melts into a limping melody that sounds like a distorted, broken tape. Beneath a (possbily sampled) melody, layers of subtle electronic noise add a subliminal feeling of unease. The noise subtly grows, only to blast into a satisfying but brief climax at the very end. Over this interplay between chaos and broken order, edited and manipulated speech samples are overlaid, only strengthening the alien feel of the music. I’m loath to use words such as apocalyptic or cataclysmic in regard to this album, but undeniably there’s a strong feel of this album being post-something. Post some fall. Not the end of the world as a glorious explosion, but rather as an afterthought; a banal event, which most don’t realize has taken place. But slowly things start to go slightly left, just a bit wrong; and as the unnerving offness increases little by little, people start to realize. It’s not quite melancholic, either… more like world weary, like a long held in sigh that’s finally released, if that makes sense. That’s the kind of end of the world feeling that permeates Subsurface Aquifers. The most perfect embodiment of this is The Late Great Planet Earth. A slightly pitch-shifted male voice waxes poetic about fabled yesteryear with sickening nostalgia of how things used to be better “back in the good old days” over a warbling melody that just feels off. Beneath, the menacing noise of broken down electronics lurks just at the edge of auditory perception – until it bursts to cover all like a tidal wave. Subsurface Aquifers is a weird little album. But it’s also a rewarding one. And despite its weirdness, surprisingly easy to get into, at least as far as industrial noise goes. And that’s a positive comment. The album has a very sensible running time of just over half an hour, and despite being an eclectic combination of approaches, it’s not obtuse or unapproachable. The initial intrigue of the weird mood naturally segues into an appreciation of just how well-crafted the album is." [Only Death is Real] | 2023 | €13.00 |
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| ASHTORETH | Rites III & IV | CD | Awaited follow up to the 2019 album Rites I & II, we're presented with 2 subsequent aural rituals from Peter Verwimp intricate guitar driven soundscapes. The Rites series touches on the importance of ceremony and ritual in our daily lives. It deals with our interconnectedness with nature as a whole and the necessity to acknowledge and use this connection as an amplifier of thoughts, ideas and emotions. Minimal, meditative ambient drones with layers of meandering guitars and voices mixing elements of doom, drone and ambient experimentation. Rites III & IV expand on the shamanic and animistic path, an ongoing journey through flesh, sound and spirit. CD Edition of 500 copies in 4 panels Digisleeve. 2 Tracks. Running Time 37:24 LP Edition of 300 copies on Black Vinyl. Matt Lamination and black Paper Sleeve. 2 Tracks. Running Time 37:24 https://cycliclaw.bandcamp.com/album/rites-iii-iv "Ashtoreth is Belgian Peter Verwimp, and this release is a follow-up to 2019’s Rites I & II. Here, Verwimp uses overlapping electric guitar, percussion, and voices to create menacing soundscapes. Of note is his broad palette for each of these instruments. The guitar provides heavily distorted chords, drones, and brief melodies with cleanly-picked notes. The voices are both male and female, often wordless or unintelligible, and can be beautiful, poignant, or painful. The percussion is largely based on bell-like sounds. This instrumentation blends into a wafting and moody ambiance. Rites III & IV explore humankind’s relation to nature, evoking ancient rituals and a connectedness that is largely missing from the modern world." [Avantmusicnews] | 2021 | €13.00 |
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| ASPHODEL | Aokigahara, the Black Sea of Trees | LP | "Aokigahara, The Black Sea of Trees is an abstract visual and sonic story-telling which takes place in a forest located in Mount Fuji, Japan. The forest of Aokigahara, has a world-wide fame for the thousands of suicides which took place there and now has an almost mythological statue. The forest is spread all through with ephemera and items such as photographs, letters and instruments left behind by the leavers, all untouched due to respect. almost entire forest is covered with long ribbons people used to be able to return if they changed their mind. therefore, the entire land is embodied with the vicarious objects that depict the sense of memory, loss and hope. The auditory side of this album can be related to musical genres such as ambient and drone, but also of importance to this album is film and film abstraction; the experience of light moving in time, as for example the work of Stan Brakhage. An audio story-telling which derives from the contrast between dark and intense sounds to more delicate and quiet auditory landscapes, where the sense of an intrinsic lament is always present, and stepping into the oblivion gets distilled into pure sensation, that of belonging to life and hope. Asphodel puts an emphasis on the romantic, that of life relived through the forest. Asphodel is a musical and visual project of Atay Ilgün and Alper Yildirim. Asphodel focuses on textural music and it's combination with experimental film. Atay Ilgün and Alper Yildirim run the Turkish label Wounded Wolf Press." [label info] A spooky ambient recording from this Turkish project who conceptually based this album on Aokigahara, a forest near Mount Fuji in Japan which has achieved notoriety because of the large number of people who have committed suicide amongst the trees, leaving behind considerable ephemera of their lives. Notes, pictures, objects all litter the forest floor as the final tracing of a human life. While a cascading horror is evident on the first half of this album, evinced through dynamic, tumultuous roars of caustic rumble and desolate pools of isolated tone, Asphodel conjure a shifting internal drama of emotion not limited to sadness, hope, and loss through flecks of wooden guitars and flutes, eerie reflective modulations from feedback manipulation, disembodied voices crackled through ghostboxes, and a ton of reverb. This is a very complex piece of abstraction that honestly confronts the topic at hand while not forgetting to draw from the existential bleakness in mapping out these very impressive recordings. Originally released on Asphodel's Wounded Wolf imprint as a cd-r, now issued on swank vinyl via Invisible Birds, limited of course. (Aquarius Rec) | 2017 | €18.00 |
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| ASTRID & RACHEL GRIMES | Through the Sparkle | LP | "Through the Sparkle is a collaboration between French ensemble astrïd and American pianist and composer Rachel Grimes. Rachel Grimes is best known for her chamber music project Rachel’s, a hugely influential group formed in 1991 in Louisville, Kentucky, releasing six studio albums between 1995 and 2005. She has also released a string of contemporary classical works in recent years on labels such as Temporary Residence. astrïd is a collective of four musicians based in Nantes, releasing records on Rune Grammofon and Home Normal. After years of mail and email back and forth over the ocean, from Nantes to Kentucky, astrïd invited Rachel to come for a residency to make music together and play shows in France. They gathered for a few days, here and there, in 2012 and 2013 to write songs in Cyril and Vanina's home studio in the countryside. The compositions found on Through the Sparkle glow with a unique, connected energy and a pure, instinctive musical understanding. Considered contributions from all sides allow the pieces to unfurl naturally. Each note and phrase feels like it simply couldn’t be placed anywhere else in the album. Charming, gentle and cinematic sounds are found here in abundance. Melodies circle and reveal themselves without force, allowing the listener to focus and explore the depths of what is on offer. Musically, Through the Sparkle is an expansive and evocative album. There is a presence to be felt throughout, from Cyril Secq’s emotive tremelo’d guitars of M5 to the darker, more haunting mood of The Theme, to the tension in Mossgrove & Seaweed. Strings and woodwind coalesce around intricate piano and guitar movements creating a wealth of harmony and melancholy. Through the Sparkle is a record of miniature symphonies, of elegant restraint. A gracious and generous offering from a group of musicians at one with each other and at the top of their game." www.gizehrecords.com https://gizehrecords.bandcamp.com/album/through-the-sparkle "Man, that’s devastating! If the reverb-drenched guitar on this record’s second track doesn’t move you to tremble with tears, then the soaring strings on “M1” surely will. Pianist/composer Rachel Grimes follows up her best-of-2015 The Clearing solo outing with the magnificent Through The Sparkle, a seven-song collaboration with the French chamber ensemble Astrïd, out today digitally, on CD and on vinyl through U.K.-based Gizeh Records. This thing’s gotta be heard to be believed. Striking, again, with some of her finest work, Grimes’ piano flashes more contemporary flourishes than the heart-wrenching Romanticism of her landmark years with Rachel’s, everyone’s favorite post-classical ensemble. While there are still gentle, lulling notes – I’m looking to the album-closing “Le Petit Salon” and, again, the epic “M1” – Grimes’ metronomic figures on “The Herald en Masse” and “Mossgrove & Seaweed” positively pulsate with life, lending a record laced with restraint loads of emotional force. This says nothing of Astrïd multi-instrumentalist Vanina Andreani, whose violin wraps its fingers around Grimes’ ephemeral melodies in much the way Christian Frederickson’s viola did in Rachel’s. Guillaume Wickel is brilliant on bass clarinet, drummer/percussionist Yvan Ros does a fine job anchoring the melancholy, and didn’t I already mention the eerie repercussions of Cyril Secq’s guitar? This ensemble, featuring Grimes, seems to have a beautiful way of making even the most composed moment seem instinctive, lending a gentle humanity to the proceedings. There are less “classical” and more “post-classical” moments on the record, too, like the haunted “The Theme,” which starts with an emotive bass clarinet figure and kalimba, and expands, more often through the space between notes than the notes themselves, with an electric guitar right out of Hotel2Tango in Montreal. Or there’s “Hollis,” which punctuates Grimes’ refrains with more kalimba, subtle bass, and a shuffling, jazzy backbeat before descending into a field of mathy beeps that could be summoned from piano and, maybe, a Fender Rhodes. The whole record is breathtaking gossamer – definite year-end-list material." [Justin Vellucci/Popdose] | 2017 | €20.00 |
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| ATKINSON, FELICIA | Hand in Hand | do-LP | Félicia Atkinson's new full length album ‘Hand In Hand’ is an expanded development of her musical compositions started with the highly-acclaimed 'A Readymade Ceremony' released on Shelter Press in 2015, and follows her collaborative effort with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma 'Comme Un Seul Narcisse' (Shelter Press, 2016). Composed over the year of 2016 at EMS during a snow storm and at home in Brittany, Hand in Hand could be considered as the most ambitious body of work recorded by the French musician and artist. Doubt and Optimism are the two sides of a same coin. Hand in Hand is arid and warm in its whole synchrony and opposition. Days are burning and nights are made of ice. Coyotes are exchanging sounds with rattles snakes while bunnies are hiding. Strident modular sounds are tearing apart minimal beats and drones. The stories told by A Voice to the auditor are no longer fictions and become slowly reality. Electric waves transmitted by living creatures and machines seem to deliver special sounds and frequencies that only non-human can hear. They grow and vibrate despite of the walls and interdictions. Therefore, the human who is listening to this record might find in it a particular kind of emotion a way to take space in silence, and frame a certain vision of thinking while losing a certain notion of time, acknowledging step by step its universal environment. Plants, galaxies, animals, machines, Hand in Hand. This record is meant to be a moment of common thinking and listening in its diversity and abstraction. In the same way a sci-fi novel by Philip K. Dick or a sculpture by Guy Mees can be percieved: trivial, sensitive and mysterious at the same time. The opening track, I’m Following You is a bleached romantic ballad for Fender Rhodes that could be the ending title of a Martian love story, whereas Visnaga praises the resources of a desert plant through asmr voices, field recordings and evasive chords. A House A Dance A Poem is a feminist hymn composed as a pyramidal structure, referring in the same time to the A-frame houses, the yoga position of the triangle, the first letter of the roman alphabet and the feminine sex. In the closing song, No Fear But Anticipation, Atkinson offers an open hearted plea about the existentialist necessity of finding desire even when the times seem too dark to think about it. A telepathic and non-scholastic anthem for Don Delillo, Joan Didion and Jean Paul Sartre. The final Buchla sounds that close the record seem to deliver an unspeakable message that only birds and aliens could transcript. The echo of the 80’s sci-fi anxious aethetics resonates with today’s transparency of digital sounds in the whole record. The cohabitation of simple midi textures and historical Serge and Buchla signals are convoked and confronted together by A Voice. The human instrument appears here as the epicenter of the recordings, giving to the others instruments a gravitational point. Joan La Barbara, Robert Ashley or Delia Derbyshire are the main influences of Atkinson in their own way of inviting fiction, composition and abstraction as the essential materials of composition. For Hand In Hand, Félicia Atkinson used different sources for the lyrics and scores of her tracks: house plant instruction books, Desert Magazine old issues, architecture manuals, JG Ballard and K. Dick’s books, as well as her own poetry. https://shelterpress.bandcamp.com/album/hand-in-hand | 2017 | €25.00 |
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| ATOMINE ELEKTRINE | The Antikythera Mechanism | CD | "A container of all the knowledge about the universe. The motion of the gears deeply intertwine a link between micro- and macrocosm. A mechanism that simulates cosmology and senses characteristics of an eclipse, with color, size and associated winds. Define a question, and there will be a calculated answer, even capable of astral divination. Is it an all-seeing eye, or perhaps something beyond even that; a magic entity capable of creating the cosmic events that it is supposed to measure and foretell. If so, is it by nature auspicious or ominous. Or is it merely a representation and extension of ourselves and our senses, trying to reach both the celestial and the intrinsically unobtainable. Winter-Light warmly welcomes Peter Andersson to our label, with his 'Atomine Elektrine' project and a stunning new studio album 'The Antikythera Mechanism'. Here we are invited or compelled even, to delve deep into the intricacies and finely tuned mechanics of this mysterious, all-encompassing machine. Infinitely extending it's influence across multi-dimensions of time and space, constantly calculating, cogs ever turning, gears whirring, mapping, learning, storing and moving ever onwards. Leaving in it's wake, a vast ocean of unimaginable cosmic events, left to ripple through time until they too fade away to become yet another click in the eternal cycle of 'The Antikythera Mechanism'. Difference between the CD/Digital and vinyl version 'The Antikythera Mechanism' has a small degree of randomness built-in to the sounds which means that the output of each rendering becomes slightly different. The tracks on the vinyl are of a different rendering than the tracks for the CD/Digital version. This is a natural glitch in 'The Antikythera Mechanism' and it is more or less noticeable. The sounds are the same but the positions in the sounds are time offset in an arbitrary mode. Any further inequalities are due to the fact that a different mastering technique has been utilised for the vinyl version, than for the CD/Digital version. As well as there being a different final rendering for the vinyl version, the DLP also comes with an additional and exclusive track, which clocks in at 19:52." https://winter-light.bandcamp.com/album/the-antikythera-mechanism "This mechanism Peter Andersson is referring to in the title of the new Atomine Elektrine offering is considered as the first analogue computer. The device was constructed by the ancient Greeks to predict future astronomical occurrences and phenomenas. Even this day it’s an object of scientific researches and studies as its technological sophistication is still unexplained for XXI century scientists and scholars. One of the greatest enigmas in the history of mankind and… what an inspiring theme for a dark ambient artist to explore through music. It’s not a secret that Peter is a truly versatile musician within the electronic underground, always efficient, no matter if he seeks more noisy approach or more atmospheric one. Atomine Elektrine was born of his fascination of science and instead of wandering through lost cathedrals and desolate wastelands we explore the secrets of space and quantum physics. Clearly, it’s not just the words in the titles and press releases, but the music is unlike his other projects as well. For 25 years the foundation of Atomine Elektrine sound was the use of analogue synthetisers, the old-school instruments cherished by the German masters from the 70s. His music was constantly developing over the years, in all projects, apart from Atomine Elektrine also Raison d’etre, Necrophorus, Bocksholm and several others. Often the inspirations were morphing one through another (for example Necrophorus’ “Imprints” has a one hundred percent Atomine Elektrine vibe), but in general high quality is practically always guaranteed. I have to admit that while my favourite Peter’s “non-raison” release is “Drifting In Motion” by Necrophorus, it is Atomine Elektrine I value the most as a whole. Maybe not exactly the very first albums, like “Elemental Severance” where it was Jean Michel Jarre a godfather rather than Klaus Schulze, but “Nebulous” or “Laniakea” are very frequent guests in my CD player, up to this day. Can’t declare today that “The Antikythera Mechanism” will also regain its place in my personal pantheon of all Peter’s releases as it is quite crowdy over there, but yes, it is good, it is goddamn good! The opening dark space of “Arcturus Alpha Boo” made me think of the cosmic vacuums generated by some of the Loki Foundation maestros as the deep rumblings and the feeling of an infinite expanse made me feel small and irrelevant. It calms down after a few minutes and brings a mystery of a titular mechanism to the forefront. From the universe entirety to this tiny device that can capture its secret. I’m in love with “Metonic Spiral”. You know why? Because it’s like taken straight from “Drifting In Motion”, those delicate synth passages combined with weird bubbling and swirling sounds recall the atmosphere of that masterpiece. Yet while that one had this overwhelming aura of sadness and solitude, in “Metonic Spiral” I hear… a hope that the wonder of what hides behind the ionosphere can be comprehended by the human mind. That feeling is intensified by the second half of the track where these slow melodies and analogue sequences take it one step closer to the old-school German electronica. In the following track, “The Exeligmos Pointer” all these rhythmic pulsations may recall a working mechanism, while the majestic background textures compliment the structure as a subject of that work. They’re huge and beautiful, they can be compared to the sun/moon eclipse, watched by you, predicted by the device. Subtly disturbing “Time Dislocated By The Mechanism” is. It may sound bizarre, but this piece have something in common with what Penjaga Insaf did on their “Sama Sadja”. While conceptually both projects couldn’t be more distant one from another. The organic aura of “Epicylic Gearing” is represented by these cyclic sequences, coming and going, pulsating like a bloodflow, later that bass rumblings appears, like a heartbeat. And that simple repeated melody, combined with the mentioned elements develop a tremendous track, which brings another name to my mind. Predominance. Remember that one? Yes, as you can see, that Loki reference few paragraphs ago wasn’t accidental. Such albums like “The Antikythera Mechanism” deserve an epic ending, yet one must have in mind that Peter Andersson doesn’t really like to finish his albums with a bang. “Fragment F” is not a praise of a human mind, the awe of its endless powers and capabilities. No, it’s a cosmic space, quiet, soulless, without beginning nor end.It’s like the blackest shade of black, it’s probably Peter’s most oppressive finale since “The Eternal Return And The Infinity Horizon”. And probably one of his best works, at least within the last couple of years. This reference may sound funny, but he’s like Stephen King of dark ambient and I know that a lot of folks grumble that “it’s not the same, his older novels were classic and now he’s just reaping the benefits of his older efforts.” Not true, “The Outsider” or “Sleeping Beauties” are as good as the novels from his so-called “golden era”. Same goes with Peter Andersson, I heard more than once that what he does now is not the same as 20-25 years ago. Wrong. Don’t let nostalgia speak for you. He’s still in a very good shape and the astounding sound of “The Antikythera Mechanism” is its brightest, or rather darkest example." [Santa Sangre] | 2019 | €13.00 |
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| AUME (SCOT JENERIK & ALEPH OMEGA) | CQ CQ | USB-stick / wood-box | AUME’s first album Agere Urendum Mentis Epode was described as “the soundtrack playing in my head while I’m falling through a wormhole on my way to creation… to rebirth…” Their second full release, Elemental, extended the wormhole to the visual realm through non-representational film and surround sound. Their new release CQ CQ continues to explore the abstract non-representational aural/visual realm through the use of headphones. Though the album sounds great on speakers, the immersive environment created from deep listening in headphones once again sends the listener through a visual wormhole. CQ CQ refers to the shortwave radio abbreviation for “calling any station”. This theme came about from a disillusionment created by the overwhelming amount of information being transmitted. That any individual voice falls on deaf ears in the midst of a maelstrom. That one is never more isolated than when everyone is talking at the same time. CQ CQ is full of vocal transmissions, most of which are indecipherable. They are failed attempts at communication. Those voices that are understood depict unintended mutations that lead to the disintegration of communication. Despite this, humans have the ability to adapt and resonate in the physical world. To transform isolation into a breath of silence. USB Flash Drive + Digital Album Handcrafted Box with USB and scroll. 24bit album, 16bit album, Transmission video, Transmission video Mix audio, and more. Listening Instructions 1 - Substance of choice (optional) 2 - Put on headphones 3 - Turn out the lights 4 - Lay down 5 - Hit play 6 - Enter the wormhole 7 - Regain consciousness 8 - Repeat Transmission video: youtu.be/7F5mFP9C65w Featured in the 2018 International Drone Cinema Festival produced and curated by Kim Cascone of Silent Records silentrecords.bandcamp.com Cover image: Radio transmitter of Che Guevara Photographed at the Museum of the Revolution, Cuba https://aume.bandcamp.com | 2018 | €30.00 |
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| CQ CQ | CD | AUME’s first album Agere Urendum Mentis Epode was described as “the soundtrack playing in my head while I’m falling through a wormhole on my way to creation… to rebirth…” Their second full release, Elemental, extended the wormhole to the visual realm through non-representational film and surround sound. Their new release CQ CQ continues to explore the abstract non-representational aural/visual realm through the use of headphones. Though the album sounds great on speakers, the immersive environment created from deep listening in headphones once again sends the listener through a visual wormhole. CQ CQ refers to the shortwave radio abbreviation for “calling any station”. This theme came about from a disillusionment created by the overwhelming amount of information being transmitted. That any individual voice falls on deaf ears in the midst of a maelstrom. That one is never more isolated than when everyone is talking at the same time. CQ CQ is full of vocal transmissions, most of which are indecipherable. They are failed attempts at communication. Those voices that are understood depict unintended mutations that lead to the disintegration of communication. Despite this, humans have the ability to adapt and resonate in the physical world. To transform isolation into a breath of silence. https://aume.bandcamp.com | 2018 | €14.00 |
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| B°TONG (B*TONG / B-TONG/ BTONG) | Un_b°tong | mCDR-box | "B°tong’s second release on Attenuation Circuit is, as the title suggests, quite atypical for the dark ambient soundscapes the Swedish-Swiss artist is best known for. In six rather short tracks, B°tong explores the sonic possibilities of digital audio manipulation of several sound sources, mainly recorded voices used as sources of pure sound, not linguistic information. The results feel somewhat like an unlikely combination of lowercase electronica and Mille Plateaux-style cuts’n’glitches and updated audio poetry in the tradition of William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Henri Chopin. “Un_B°tong” opens up a new direction in the artist’s work while remaining true to the spirit of experimentation with non-musical sounds that has been informing cutting edge music for about a century now, including the original practitioners of “industrial” music that have been inspiring B°tong’s work. Those with ears tuned to today’s rather limited definition of the genre as “dark” music of some sort or other may find the intellectual playfulness of B°tong’s approach on this release too lighthearted, even humorous, considering titles like “Colourful, Comfortable, Weatherproof” or the tongue-in-cheek combination of biblical quotes about the devil with the “subliminal” message “B°tong isst heimlich” (“B°tong eats secretly”) almost hidden in the cover copy. For those interested in truly contemporary audio experiments, however, this crisp little outing has a lot to offer within the space of its 18 minutes." [label info] www.wix.com/attenuationcircuit/attenuation-circuit | 2011 | €6.50 |
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| BABYLONE CHAOS | Les machines ecarlates | CD | The project of BOTCHAN KARISEN (Belgium) with a new work, a deep tour de force into a electronic / technological chaos-music, with influences from Industrial, Collage-Sounds and even Electro-Acoustic, dark & ecstatic & dangerous ! "A man with a fish eye stared at me when I satisfied my computer with this CD. The artwork on this release is awesome, something which is thoughtful to do when you release your CD in a DVD case. On the front of “les machines ecarlates” stands a man pierced through his forehead with a huge piece of piping. On the back a man with a fish eye gives me a look, which keeps me away from the track listing underneath it. I must say, it pleases me to receive such artwork, I could write a good review about the artwork alone. Babylone Chaos is new to me, not only as an artist, but the music is very new to me too. Listening to the first track “Dissect me” I got very enthusiastic. This artist knows how to frighten someone with sounds. Electronic heavy sounds flow back and forth while strange ‘ahhh’s and ‘oohh’s can be heard. A shivering breath, winds and strange electronic drums complete the picture. Shocked awake by a heavy pound on a barrel and a cracking door. Where am I at this point? The gruesome sounds I heard before are overtaken by heavenly sounds, birds and some vocals. But it was a short victory, the dark sounds kick in again and the beat starts to get back at me. I am stunned, this is not music, this is straight on sound-engineering! The second track “Scared datas” goes like the first track, but gets more of a triphop sound. Dark triphop, that could become a trend. Count me in for that genre, because what Babylone Chaos is doing here is new, refreshing and awesome. The third track “Blood on thorns” gets a lot noisier than the previous tracks and is suddenly petrifying when circus music starts. (I always had something against the circus and clowns, don’t ask why.) Listening to the CD I found that Babylone Chaos can be compared, in a strange way, with Aphex Twin. You can hear beats, but they never last longer than a few measures. That is one of the reasons why this CD sounds so great. Babylone Chaos doesn’t care about being tagged with a genre; the artist just does what he wants. The CD isn’t one you listen to on a regular occasion. Listening to “les machines exerlates” is a trip. A trip to the beautiful, the ugly, the frightening the heaven and the hell. As I continued my exploration, I found even more interesting material. The piano pieces in the fifth track “Death crusade” are so strange. It doesn’t fit with the music, but in some way it jet [i]does[/i] fit. The tender background sounds are divided and shattered to pieces by deep noisy scrapes, pounds and scratches. This is music which can be compared with using acid. But please dear reader; don’t use it at the same time! The tracks go well into each other, although that isn’t hard with such experimental music. Track eight, “Paranoiac morons”, made me think of a scene in the Kubrick movie “Full metal jacket”, where Joker tries to find the sniper who turns out to be a woman. I’ve always found that scene and especially, the music, incredible. But I think “Paranoiac morons” would be even better as a soundtrack to that scene. As an overall thought I must say that this release surprised me muchly. The packaging is awesome, although I can’t stand it when a CD doesn’t fit between the regular jewel cases and digipacks. The music is refreshing and “les machines ecarlates” is more like a piece of art then a CD filled with songs. “Les machines ecarlates” brings you to the verge of your life, a leap of faith, a trip to hell and back and leaves the unprepared to wonder. This isn’t my regular “sing along in the shower” CD, this is something I admire, treasure for the special moments and certainly use in tiny portions. All those experimental fans out there, beware! “Les machines ecarlates” gives you the journey of a lifetime." [Heathen Harvest] label-website: www.opn.fr | 2007 | €8.00 |
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| BAD ALCHEMY | No. 104 (Dez. 2019) | mag | "Artrock Festival 2019 mit Theo Ceccaldi Freaks und Ryorchestra; Freakshows mit Tatvamasi, White Pulse, Albatre, Welcome Inside The Brain, Alex's Hand, La STPO; W71: Rodrigo Amado's This Is Our Language; Geoff with yer Head!: Geoff Leigh; Hackepicciotto; Kamilya Jubran & Werner Hasler; Go: Organic Orchestra - Sirkis/Bialas IQ - Audiophob / Krater - Gruenrekorder - 90 % Wasser; Feature: Norwegen - Ja, Vi Elsker Dette Land!; Internationales Festival für Experimentelle Musik in München ... 88 Seiten, keine Werbung" | 2019 | €4.00 |
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| BAD SECTOR | Chronoland | CD | "This new album of Massimo Magrini is the soundscape for a mind movie and another masterpiece that picks up where the previous work CMASA left off. Twelve beautifully crafted chapters of music segueing between morphing layers of thick drones, haunting melodies and crackling vocal transmissions. Chronoland unfolds a fascinating and cineastic atmosphere of frightening ambient melodica with dark soundwaves deeply imbedded in the music and bursts of electro-acoustic effects. This release is another step forward into the sound cosmos of Massimo Magrini with new directions but always in the unique way of BAD SECTOR." [label info] www.loki-found.de | 2011 | €13.00 |
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| Ampos | do-LP | This was the first full-length album released by Masimo Magrini as BAD SECTOR in 1995 as a CD on STAALPLAT. For the 25th anniversary of that album we are proud to go for the re-release into vinyl format of such a masterpiece. Including some bonus material of the same era. This album became an Instant-CULT immediately after its release and still truly is a masterpiece of Dark-Ambient Industrial! An album without age somehow reminding to best Psychadelic and German Space-Muzak but with his own and very tipical and inconfondible Bad Sector aproach and trade-mark. To the original recordings we added as bonus on 4th LP side 4 additional tracks from the CDr album "Transponder" released as a CDr on BLADE RECORDS. Comes on good, old black vinyl - Limited to 300 copies. | 2021 | €33.00 |
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| Ampos | do-LP | This was the first full-length album released by Masimo Magrini as BAD SECTOR in 1995 as a CD on STAALPLAT. For the 25th anniversary of that album we are proud to go for the re-release into vinyl format of such a masterpiece. Including some bonus material of the same era. This album became an Instant-CULT immediately after its release and still truly is a masterpiece of Dark-Ambient Industrial! An album without age somehow reminding to best Psychadelic and German Space-Muzak but with his own and very tipical and inconfondible Bad Sector aproach and trade-mark. To the original recordings we added as bonus on 4th LP side 4 additional tracks from the CDr album "Transponder" released as a CDr on BLADE RECORDS. Comes on good, old black vinyl - Limited to 300 copies. | 2021 | €42.50 |
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| BAD SECTOR & ASTRO | Idioblast | CD | "In 2005 a small Russian label, Insofar Vapour Bulk, proposed to Massimo Magrini to work on a recording made by Hiroshi Hasegawa (Astro). It was a "drone-like" sound of a few minutes, Despite the difficult nature of the assignment, Massimo loved the very static and cryptic structure of the original. So, starting from this basic recording (without using additional sounds) he developed a 45 minutes long suite: it was like using a magic audio lens which revealed a myriad of hidden details in a microscopic world. The original Astro sound can still be heard at the beginning and at the end of the suite. The re-edition comes in beautiful cardboard case with silver-embossed printing." [label info] www.loki-found.de "... IDIO BLAST verzaubert mit drones und regelrecht glitzernden Klängen, kristallin-klar und glasig-summend und mit seltsame Zwischentöne versehen..." [Drone Rec. 2006] | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| BAKER, AIDAN | Liminoid / Lifeforms | CD | "While Alien8 Recordings has had the pleasure of releasing three full-length albums by Aidan Baker's ambient doom project Nadja, as well as his collaborative effort Fantasma Parastasie with Tim Hecker, this marks our first solo release with the artist. Although we consider Liminoid/Lifeforms to be a solo effort, there are in fact no less than eight guest musicians helping out on the recording. These include Canadian noise legend Knurl (a.k.a. Alan Bloor) who has been released three times on Alien8 Recordings prior to this recording, as well as members of Arc, Picastro, Forest City Lovers and Whisper Room. Liminoid is a composition for large ensemble exploring sonic immersion in drones and textures, rhythms and pulsations. Incorporating composed and improvised segments, the piece uses elongation of sound and layered polyph- ony in an attempt to create a liminal and/or numinous state. This recording of Liminoid is from its premier at The Music Gallery's X-Avant Festival in Toronto, October 25, 2008. The piece features a powerful vocal performance with every member sharing the vocal duties. The lyrics have been adapted from 5th-8th century Coptic Christian texts and inspired by the book Ancient Christian Magic by Marvin W. Meyer & Richard Smith. The ensemble members for this performance were: Aidan Baker (guitar/ voice), Clara Engel (guitar/voice), Nick Storring (cello/voice), Jakob Thiesen (drums/voice), Richard Baker (drums/voice), Tillman Lewis (cello/voice), Laura Bates (violin/voice) and Jonathan Demers (guitar/voice). Lifeforms is a composition for strings, prepared/effected guitar, and amplified metal works. Likewise incorporating written and improvised material, the piece was originally commissioned and performed by The Penderecki Quartet in 2003. This recording was made in August 2008 at Commonwealth Studios in Toronto. The performers were: Aidan Baker (guitar), Nick Storring (cello), Mika Posen (violin) and Alan Bloor (metal works). This recording has been both skillfully mixed from multiple recordings and mastered by James Plotkin." [label info] www.alien8recordings.com "The latest from the always impressive, and always prolific Aidan Baker, who creates thick wall of sound doomgaze in the duo Nadja, and much more personal, hushed drone music under his own name, but more and more has been expanding his scope with various collaborations and large ensembles. This might be the biggest ensemble he's worked with, 8 players, all contributing vocals, three guitars, two drummers, violin and two cellos. And it does sound like what you might imagine, a sort of Aidan Baker drone record / chamber music hybrid, long languid tones, plenty of cymbal shimmer, the strings moan and sing, the sounds ebb and flow, swelling ominously, building to swirling crescendos, before slipping back into something more minimal and contemplative, "Liminoid" is split into 4 movements, and is about as close to classical music as Baker has come, at least in the first part, the second part shifts gears dramatically, transforming into something more jazzy and propulsive, a sort of krautrock thing, but with a jazzy slow shifting Necks vibe, eventually building to a dense tribal workout, before slipping into part 3, all shimmery blissy drift, soft focus and sun dappled, the drums an understated slowcore shuffle, leading up to the 15 minute final movement, where the vocalists team up for a haunting bit of choral drama, which explodes into full on free jazz freakout wall of sound, finishing off with a long form spaced out drone jam, that definitely reminds us of a super stripped down White Hills, psychedelic and washed out and very hypnotic. The second piece, the nearly 30 minute "Lifeforms" is a smaller ensemble, Baker on guitar, with violin, cello and 'amplified metal works', the metal works had us expecting something clangy and bombastic, but instead, it's almost all warm whirling ambient shimmer, much more in keeping with Baker's solo sounds, near the end, the sounds shift, and the strings move to the fore, weaving dramatic melodies over the slow burning drone underneath, the result very cinematic. Quite nice." [Aquarius Rec.] "One of my favorite noise albums, "Frequency LSD" by Japanoise artist Masonna was released on Alien8 Recordings in the mid-90's. With this in mind, and in combination with the release of present two albums, there shouldn't be any questions about the the great span of styles released by Alien8 Recordings - Canada's probably most interesting label of the underground. Aidan Baker is a Canadian multi-instrumentalist and sound artist that creates music in the field from post-rock across drone ambient to modern classical. His latest release "Limonoid / Lifeforms" roughly comes across all aforementioned styles. On the album Aidan Baker has allied with concrete noise artist Alan Bloor alias Knurl / Pholde, Richard Baker on drums plus a number of other acoustic members on instruments such as cello, violin and guitars. As the title suggest the album is divided into two main sections: A section called "Limonoid" consisting of four intersections and the long and final piece titled "Lifeforms". "Limonoid" is as mentioned earlier an interesting crossover between neo-classical chamber music, noise-rock, post-rock with associations of earlier Krautrock (first of all Amon Düül I + II) and neo-folk with elements of middle-age expressions. Quite interesting and very trippy psychedelia with vocals from Clara Engel is what the first four chapters of the albums presents. But in my opinion, the true gift is the second main section of the album titled "Lifeforms". "Lifeforms" is a lengthy piece clocking approximately 30 minutes. Where the aforementioned section was a crossover of a number of styles "Lifeforms" mainly focus on ambient-expressions but with clear interventions of classical instruments such as violin and cello meanwhile aforementioned noise artist Alan Bloor controls his usual ultra-aggressive sound equipments being amplified steel and metal as sound sources into more subtle and very attractive noise drones. The piece is quite repetitive with a long hissing drone of amplified strings but with organic interventions of concrete sounds of aforementioned instruments. Halfway though the track, hissing drone fades away giving way to more plain acoustic ambience until another drone appears. The atmosphere is hypnotic and very intense through out the running time of the piece. Very interesting album showing the wide span of Aidan Baker." [NM / Vital Weekly] | 2010 | €13.00 |
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| BAKER, AIDAN / N / DIRK SERRIES | Enomeni | do-LP | Some years ago, when we (Cosima & Dimi) visited a live performance of Dirk Serries Microphonics, he asked us, if we ever will marry and we answered, that if we do, Dirk had to play a wedding concert for us. Back then, it was just a running joke. Well, finally we ended up with a wedding band consisting of our three favorite artists Dirk Serries, N and Aidan Baker. “Enomeni” (which is greek and means “connected”) is a document of a very special live performance. Aidan Baker, N and Dirk Serries came together for the first time to play an improvised live session. The result is an one hour session, divided into four tracks, which show up an impressively increasing soundjourney with accentuating moments, ending up in a massive drone with squeaking and buzzing guitars. The set starts very cautious and you can hear how the three musicians are coming together to build up an epic track, in which they find their perfect roles. Aidan Baker takes over the rhythm section by looping some sweeping sounds, N builds up a valley of ambient and drone sounds with hills, mountains and endless horizons and Dirk Serries rounds up everything by accompanying both or bringing in some accents like bowed guitar sounds. Like mentioned before everything ends up in an encore which also could bring you in mind, that they were joined by members of Sunn o))) or Earth for a big drone finale. The set was mastered for vinyl by Fear Falls Burning (Dirk Serries), being divided into four tracks, each one hosted on one 12inch side. The artwork is made by N, using photos by Cosima made in Greece during the church wedding vacations. The record comes as a double vinyl in an edition of 250 copies, housed in a gatefold sleeve, printed inside out with an incredible hand feel. We have 150 copies on black vinyl and a limited edition of 100 coloured copies. www.midirarecords.com | 2016 | €27.50 |
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| BAKER, AIDAN & JAKOB THIESEN | A Bout de Souffle | CD-R | "keine intros, keine outros, kein einfaden, dito raus. mit schöner brutalität mitten ins geschehen: das platten manchmal unvermittelt anfangen ist so manchmal ja nicht unbedingt; bei einzelstücken sogar noch mehr; eine ganze platte, bei der jedes stück sich darstellt, als bekäme hörer und -in immer nur einen (besonders interessanten?) ausschnitt eines (unbekannten?) gesamtwerks präsentiert, ist dagegen alles andere als die regel. vielleicht habe ich das in dieser konsequenz das letzte mal allen ernstes auf der "guitar" von frank zappa gehört (auch eine gute platte, übrigens), die mal eben lässig nur die gitarrensoli zusammencuttete. hier also aidan baker mit jakob thiesen (drumkit, percussion, processing; auch in kanada tätig, auch ambient-ping-posse) und ausschnitten (zwischen 4.33 und 10.39 min) aus "sporadic sessions", die, live aufgenommen, von aidan baker gemixt und, ganz offensichtlich, gelayert wurden, so wie er es beispielsweise bereits bei der "at the base of the mind is coiled a serpent" getan hatte. mit einem entscheidenden unterschied: das, was aidan baker und jakob thiesen hier vorlegen, verlässt die reine drone oder ambient schiene oder zumindest deren engere definition und geht durchaus in richtung "arc", einer weiteren (gruppen)aktivität von aidan baker: #1 + #7 mit rollendem, (nicht nur fast) groovingem bass, sehr deep im untergrund schiebend, die percussion tief eingebettet, die darüber liegenden gitarren oft (!) akustisch und bei ausschnitt #2 z.b. in einem laid-back bluesfeel (nicht erschrecken, vertrauen in aidan baker hat sich doch bisher fast immer ausgezahlt) mit archaisch marschierender rudimentär-percussion und x-ebenen darüber und dahinter. der elektro-akustische eindruck und die verwebung einer vielzahl von ebenen, innerhalb derer mal nicht ausnahmslos flächen generiert werden, um diese dann gegeneinander laufen zu lassen, sondern wo eine diktatur der mikroereignisse herrscht (listen to #5, "the end of breathe 2", dann weist du was ich meine), die sich zu einem 3D kosmos ergänzen und, egal wie hibbelig das einzelne sein mag, im zusammenhang dann eben doch einen grossen, fast meta-zusammenklang schaffen, dieser eindruck bleibt auf voller lauflänge erhalten und lässt zumindest assoziationen in richtung oren ambarchi's "sun" zu, deren ebenfalls mysteriöse elektro-akustische melange eine sehr ähnliche stimmung evoziert wie eben "a bout de souffle". und noch mal die #5: lang vorbereitet, dieses kippen um die 10.00 und perfekt in die #6, "take a breath". keine ahnung, ob die familienzugehörigkeit der titelgebungen genau dieses phänomen unterstützen soll oder ob zufall: weite teile der 7 tracks nehmen mit ihrem ende bzw. anfang bezug aufeinander; eine weitere rätselhaftigkeit dieses releases, werden doch die abstände zwischen den tracks auch dann eindeutig als pause markiert... ein überraschendes kollaborations-release im schicken digipack mit naturinspirations-makrozoom-coverbild, angeraut durch kontrastkorrosion. + übrigens: auch am ende keine fade-out gnade..." [Hellmut Neidhardt, www.unruhr.de] "A Bout De Souffle is a 54 min Collaboration between Aidan Baker (who is also known as Nadja together with Leah Buckareff) and Percussionist Jakob Thiesen (who recently joined baker live on stage to play live drums). Aidan baker is famous for his experimental guitar music. This time things are a bit different. You wont find the typical aidan baker drone stuff here, but instead both men created an incredible journey through the fields of krautrock, Psychedelic and drone music. The Percussion of Jakob Thiesen adds a certain deepness to Bakers guitar explorations were he also uses bass and acoustic guitar to build an mind blowing album full of surprises and wonderful melodies." [label info] "Waterscape is a new label, owned by Martin Fuhs, whom we also know as Seconds In Formaldehyde and it's mission is to release ambient music made by guitars. The first release is by Aidan Baker, our highly productive guitarist, who teams up here with Jakob Thiesen, who plays percussion, like he did on 'Desire In Uneasiness' by Nadja. Despite his many releases, Baker is a man to find new forms and shapes. On this release things are more experimental and improvised as opposed to being the more ambient player he is on some of his earlier solo releases. Baker tinkles away, sending his guitar through his many devices while Thiesen supplements nicely with percussive sounds, but it's more a supportive role than an active one or playing a 'solo' himself. The ambient element is not entirely gone, as much of it stays on an equal dynamic level and could perhaps pass on as a sort of rough shaped mood music. Nice stuff." [FdW / Vital Weekly] www.waterscape.de | 2008 | €9.50 |
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| BAKER, AIDAN & TIM HECKER | Fantasma Parastasie | CD | Die beiden ungekrönten Könige des kanadischen Drone-Ambients in Kollaboration! Trotz ihres sehr unterschiedlichen Backgrounds (der eine v.a. analog mit Gitarre arbeitend aus der Jazz & Impro-Szene stammend, der andere mit rein elektronischem Hintergrund eher aus Techno & Noise-Gefilden) treffen sie sich in einer fast undefinierbaren "Mitte", wobei unklar bleibt wer wessen Material bearbeitet hat oder ob es zu real-time Zusammenspielen kam. Frei flottierende Gitarren-Drones, teils ultra-sperrig verfremdet, teils subtil & beruhigend, dann wieder ausserweltlich und überbordend. Sehr variantenreich und ausufernd. Ungewöhnlich auch die Indexierung auf der CD: Die 7 Stücke verteilen sich auf ganze 66 Indexe! "Fantasma Parastasie sees the pairing of Aidan Baker, of the ambient doom band Nadja, and Tim Hecker, two of Canada's brightest musicians in the world of abstract electronic music. Tim Hecker has been enjoying the rewards of a stellar career and discography, devoid of filler, due to his incredibly high quality control. His full-length Harmony In Ultra Violet was viewed as a major release in the genre of experimental electronic music. Aidan Baker, on the other hand, works under very different circumstances, releasing material both as a solo artist and as a member of the duo Nadja. His prolificacy is on par with that of Merzbow and the late Muslimgauze. Thankfully, Aidan Baker is one of those musicians with the ability to record and write new music quickly and without sacrificing the quality of his art. Anyone familiar with both Aidan Baker and Tim Hecker is more than likely familiar with Alien8 Recordings as the two musicians have collectively released seven records for our label thus far. While Baker has collaborated with the likes of John Duncan, Black Boned Angel and Fear Falls Burning, among others, this marks the first collaboration to be released by Hecker. This release, divided in eight movements, blends together to form a fluid example of a collaboration that works. Unlike one of those collaborations where artists throw some sound files back and forth via the internet, this release is the fruit of various real-time recording and mixing sessions the two artists worked on in Tim Hecker's Montreal studio. The pieces on the record blend seamlessly into one another, creating a deeper listening experience, as is the case on a number of Tim Hecker's solo outings. While Baker and Hecker share a penchant for creating a powerful blend of ambient noise, Fantasma Parastasie finds the more dissonant elements tempered by an emphasis on ambience and even occasional melody. This release is available on CD in a digipak packaging." [label info] "... But somehow, the sounds on Fantasma Parastasie manage to transcend, allowing glimpses of familiar sounds, hints of each artist's own work, but woven into a whole that is unto itself, a gloriously abstract swirl of sound, longform landscapes of bliss and blur, of buzz and even roar, extended movements, in which the various elements drift and shimmer, overlap and intertwine, melodies and songcraft meet texture and soundscapery, guitars unfurl tangled melodies one second, bleary eyed chordal blurs the next, harmonics glisten and hover amidst deep soft swells, distortion and buzz build into fierce walls of blown out psychedelia, the sounds crumbling and decaying before our ears, threatening to collapse, and in this fragile state lies the beauty of those sounds, effulgent, incandescent, but at the same time, blackening, beginning some unnamable process of inevitable decay. And eventually it does decay, those thick roiling sounds dissipate, leaving something soft and shimmery, glistening on a bed of shed buzz and crumbled crush, floating heavenward, its notes and melodies catching the sunlight, and offering up prismatic reflections. The strange thing about this record is that each song is separated into super short pieces, eleven in most cases, each part between 15 and 45 seconds (it's obviously much more noticeable on the cd). We tried listening to it on shuffle, presuming that was perhaps the intention, and while it still sounds cool, it was a bit too and took too much away from the overall effect. Instead, the various parts, played in order, slip seamlessly into one another, so much so that if you weren't watching the tracks tick by on player, you wouldn't even notice. The two work amazingly well together, bits of guitar, fragments of riffs, looped and repeated, swathed in thick smears of digital crunch, of buzzing rumble, much of the record sounds like a heavier William Basinski, as if the two were experimenting with they own Disintegration Loops. A few of the tracks are quite tranquil, abstract and minimal, but for the most part, Baker and Hecker seem more interested in distressed sounds, in distortion, in pushing the limits, composing in the red, needles pegged, but taking what in other hands could be harsh and abrasive, and crafting those sounds into something simultaneously soft and dreamlike. Even the various movements, drift smoothly into one another the entire record almost like a single piece, expansive and varied and sprawling, epic and majestic, but inward looking, introspective, melancholy, imbuing the crumbling crunch and blown out minimalism, with emotion, with distinctive mood, at once dark and mysterious, but also strangely hopeful. The album closer and title track, is the only one not split up into movements, and is easily the most abstract, the most minimal, a stretch of lugubrious low end, so soft, so weightless, a hushed musical murmur, no distortion, no buzz, just a simple swell and sway, drifting fading, and finally disappearing. Absolutely breathtaking."" [Aquarius Records review] www.alien8recordings.com | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| BARBANERA, ALESSANDRO | In Darkness let me dwell | CD | An epic imaginary soundtrack for an imaginary film noir. Something happened, titles can suggest a story that the listener can make up... An old unsolved case. A tormented detective on the trail of a missing girl. Someone is in danger. A showdown with inner demons. Maybe it was all a dream. "In Darkness Let Me Dwell" is a quote from a piece by Renaissance lutenist John Dowland (1563-1626). In a dreamlike and nocturnal atmosphere, filled with rain and decaying sounds, the album deconstructs, reworks and wants to pay homage to the imagery and clichés of cinema noir, ranging from classic 40s and 50s movies, up to the works by David Lynch ("Twin Peaks", "Mulholland Drive", "Blue Velvet"), passing through films such as "The Element of Crime" by Lars von Trier, or "Cure" by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Alessandro Barbanera (ROHS! Lontano Series) is a musician, composer, sound artist, guitar maker from Assisi, Italy. 'It’s a lovely album, best played at the end of the day; the lights are still out when the day turns into evening, and darkness slowly falls". - Vital Weekly credits released March 7, 2025 Composed & produced by Alessandro Barbanera (May-September 2023). Mastering by Francis Gri at KSND Studio. Released by Owl Totem Recordings, OTR-02 Distributed by Fonodroom, FD-28CD ~ linktr.ee/fonodroom https://owltotem.bandcamp.com/album/in-darkness-let-me-dwell | 2025 | €13.00 |
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| BARBIERI, CATERINA | Fantas Variations | do-LP | Fantas" is the epic opening track on Caterina Barbieri's acclaimed 2019 release Ecstatic Computation (EMEGO 259LP, 2019). The original "Fantas" laid out a magical path of patterns leading the listener on a journey into the sound itself. Fantas Variations maps out eight new potentials sprung from this initial path as constructed by a diverse mix of artists lending to a wide spectrum of new works extrapolated from the original work. For this project Barbieri invited friends and long-time collaborators from a variety of musical backgrounds to create a more sustainable and inclusive landscape in terms of stylistic, geographical, gender, and generational balance. The results are a diverse array of approaches and instrumentation which blur the boundaries between the acoustic and electronic. Fantas Variations embraces a platform for mutual exchange and support between like-minded artists, where active and collective re-imagination is prioritized over the traditional model of remixes, which is often strategic, functional and more passive. Longtime friend and collaborator Kali Malone rearranged "Fantas" to a slowed-down, austere and eerie version for two organs. Evelyn Saylor created a piece for a vocal ensemble consisting of her, Lyra Pramuk, Stine Janvin, and Annie Garlid, joining forces to express the choral, psychedelic and vital nature of the piece. Barbieri's former guitar professor at the Conservatory in Bologna, Walter Zanetti, composes "Fantas" for electric guitar, by translating every single gesture of the original electronic piece into a personal, nuanced and detailed interpretation. Bendik Giske's reinterpretation for saxophone and voice captures the atmospheric essence of "Fantas" and its psychic meteorology. Longtime collaborator and along with Barbieri the other half of the outfit Punctum, Carlo Maria, resynthesizes "Fantas" for TR808 and MC202, bringing a more club-oriented dimension of the piece to life whilst unveiling the sonic continuum between rhythm and pitch through a sensitive timbral approach. Jay Mitta's Singeli reinterpretation of "Fantas" transpires with pitched-up percussion and turbo-fast polyrhythmic patterns unleashing the frenetic, shifting, transformative matter within the piece to a higher plain of euphoric dance. Baseck's variation is a rave fantasia, where the prismatic trance of the original is channeled into fierce, uncompromising hardcore, whilst Kara-Lis Coverdale's take is a phantasmagoria for piano that gently, yet inexorably, captures the relentlessness chimerical qualities of the original, unveiling its spectral backbone. Mastered by Rashad Becker, February 2021. Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnittstelle, Berlin, February 2021. Artwork and typography by Ruben Spini. Lettering by Alice Fiorelli. 01. Evelyn Saylor (feat. Lyra Pramuk, Annie Garlid and Stine Janvin) - Fantas Variation for Voices (7:38) 02. Bendik Giske - Fantas for Saxophone and Voice (7:31) 03. Kali Malone - Fantas for two Organs (10:21) 04. Walter Zanetti - Fantas for Electric Guitar (7:27) 05. Jay Mitta - Singeli Fantas (12:03) 06. Baseck - Fantas Hardcore (4:44) 07. Carlo Maria - Fantas resynthesized for 808 and 202 (4:29) 08. Kara-Lis Coverdale - Fantas Morbida (3:04) https://editionsmego.bandcamp.com/album/fantas-variations | 2021 | €25.50 |
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| BARDOSENETICCUBE | The Other Heaven | CD | Zweite fabrikgepresste CD für BARDO.. und wieder klingen sie anders als noch zuvor, hier setzen sie auf monotone loops die mit rituell oder sakral anmutenden Sounds versetzt werden - eine unheimliche, beschwörende, z.T. auch sehr religiöse Stimmung wird erzeugt... wieder sehr gut ! Neben REUTOFF, CISFINITUM und LUNAR ABYSS QUARTET z.Zt. wohl die beste russische „post-industrial“ oder „experimental ambient“-Band ! “ Fascinating second opus from the russian (St Petersburg) dark ambient masters. This time atmospheres are developed in a less abstract way than the first CD on Athanor. Bardoseneticcube use of percussions, bowls, bells and ritual chants are mixed with strange ambiance to give it an exquisite and mysterious martial and virile mystical touch. The progression of the album invites us to be a part of the mystery, like we were witnessing the surrouding and the heart of an ancient religious secret society order, whose place could be the monastery hidden in the blue fogged forest depicted on the cover. A new sound approach for BSC, not far away from some early ritual Coil or Deutsch Nepal recordings.” [label info] | 2003 | €13.00 |
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| BARDOSENETICCUBE & SHINKIRO | Inner and Outer Space | CD | This is already the second collaboration album of Bardoseneticcube from Russia and Shinkiro from Japan, this time under their own names. The first disc "Four Noble Truths" was released under the combined title of Bashin on the French label Athanor in 2011 and was dedicated to the basic principles of Buddhist teachings. The meditative and contemplative subject continues here as well, now being focused on the aspects of inner and outer space. We submerge in the dark thick matter of sound, fluid, transparent and stratiform. Woven from abstract electronics, omnifarious samples and transformed voices, textures are smoothly interchanging, always showing new visions in the black mirror of our viewport. Makes you wonder - does the perceivable exist separately from the percipient? In any case this is dark, nocturnal, cosmic music, not devoid of epicism and dramatism. Worth having in your playlist for the next space travel! The disc is packed in a matte 4-panel cardboard digisleeve with artwork made by Vitaly Stromchinsky (X3D5, Eternal Return Records). http://zhb.radionoise.ru/ | 2015 | €12.00 |
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| BARTC | Insubstantial as Ghosts | CD | BArTc is London based experimental electronic audio visual artist Jason Barton, with his nom de plume comprising the symbols for three chemical elements - Boron (B), Argon (Ar) and Technetium (Tc) - while also giving nods to both Hungarian composer Béla Bartók and his own surname. 'Insubstantial As Ghosts' is Barton’s debut album and contains fourteen highly atmospheric soundscapes. Taking the title from a William Gibson novel that was also used in a citation about Sleeping Sickness (‘they neither conveyed nor felt the feeling of life; they were as insubstantial as ghosts, and as passive as zombies’), he comments that “I have always loved the phrase as for me it perfectly describes minimalist, other worldly dark ambience.” Initially inspired by instrumental electronic records in his father’s record collection by titans such as Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre, Barton soon gravitated towards underground ‘industrial’ icons such as Coil, Einstürzende Neubauten, Chris & Cosey and Skinny Puppy, as well as digging deeper into the work of early German electronicists such as Cluster, Musique concrète pioneers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, plus the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Citing sound recordist (and Cabaret Voltaire co-founder) Chris Watson as another influence, adding that “I have always loved environmental sounds and often carry a field recorder on my travels which I use to create texture in my pieces.” Further explaining his modus operandi, Barton explains: “I build layers to create something abstract yet strangely beautiful, mixing source material, organic and experimental sounds plus field recordings that are heavily distorted with various effects. For me, creating music is a form of meditation, and to lose oneself in an improvisation is a wonderful experience. I just need to remember to hit record!” Having collected synthesisers and made music (both alone and with friends) for several years, Barton subsequently started the project Less Than One to create accompanying videos that he began posting on Instagram. Initially solely for his own work, he soon earned plaudits from a worldwide community of electronic artists that in turn has led to commissions from the likes of Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini. Much of ‘Insubstantial As Ghosts’ was recorded in January 2021 while the UK was in lockdown. “I participated in an annual Instagram music making challenge, where artists post a short piece of music every day using the hashtag #jamuary2021. Recording my contributions at the same time every evening (22:23), I amassed many minutes of music and ideas. Some of these were expanded to become tracks for the album or inspired further recordings through the dark winter nights.” ICR's Colin Potter heard some of Barton’s work and agreed on a releasel. He has handpicked several of the pieces included on ‘Insubstantial As Ghosts’ and also mastered the album. https://icrdistribution.bandcamp.com/album/insubstantial-as-ghosts | 2021 | €13.00 |
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| BARUCH, BEN | The complete Recordings 1949-1950 | do-CD | "This box set reissues the complete recordings of Yitshak Jacques Zaludkowski (Ben-Baruch) published on 78-rpm picture discs by "Saturne" in 1950. born on 1914 in Stawiszyn, to a religious family of eight children, this singer's repertoire is diversified: synagogal-like religious songs in Hebrew, Yiddish songs, songs about religious and about the inception of the State of Israel" [label info] www.subrosa.net | 2007 | €16.50 |
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| BASINSKI, WILLIAM | A Shadow in Time | CD | "World-renowned as one of experimental music's most vital and impressionistic composers of the past few decades, William Basinski’s tape loop works have been especially influential, particularly on the historic series, The Disintegration Loops, where distorted, orchestral tape samples burrow deep into the listener's psyche through meditative repetition. On his new album, A Shadow In Time, Basinski plunges deeper than ever for the plaintive, solitary eulogy to David Bowie, aptly titled “For David Robert Jones.” Conversely, the title track, “A Shadow In Time,” is a subtle, celestial escalation of melody and drone. The result is one of the most truly transcendent pieces of music he has ever committed to – or wrung from – tape." [press release] "Basinski's new album A Shadow in Time contains some of his strongest work since The Disintegration Loops introduced him to the world at large. In the fifteen years since William Basinski released the debut installment of his Disintegration Loops series he has been rapidly, and rightly, lionized. But for two decades prior to that, he was just another eccentric artist in New York, a tinkerer who built his own instruments, ran a venue and experimented insatiably with tape loops. He would tune in to the easy listening piped out by CBS and record snippets of it, creating a massive archive of schmaltz that, through the alchemy of sampling, could be transfigured into something infinitely more haunting. “I would set up loops, get them going, put on the tape recorder and let it go for the length of the cassette because if it was going, it captured this eternal moment,” he told The Quietus in 2012. That eternal-moment is quintessential Basinski; his work has been uniquely fixated on time and loss, his compositions heaving with longing, melancholy and a sense of impenetrable mystery. At its best, Basinski’s music inspires the sort of rapturous testimony usually reserved for peak experiences, cult leaders and the dead. When it’s not working as well, it can feel not unlike so-called “ruin porn” or the photography of Edward Burtynsky: lovely aestheticizations of late-capitalist collapse that comfort more than they confront. Thankfully, his new album A Shadow in Time contains some of his strongest work since The Disintegration Loops introduced the world to the artist. The two pieces on A Shadow in Time offer contrasting entry points into his work. The title track is a richly layered composition for the archaic Voyetra 8 synthesizer that was a year in the making and showcases Basinski at the height of his compositional powers. David Bowie tribute “For David Robert Jones,” on the other hand, is an off-the-cuff tape loop piece commissioned by LA’s Volume gallery in the weeks after the artist’s death. Built with re-purposed tape fragments that had been chewed up by a former roommate's cat (“this big, fat motherfucker,” he called it) “For David” exemplifies the entropic decay he’s most known for while adding specific, Bowie-riffing details. As with all Basinski’s work, there’s a tantalizing juxtaposition between chance and intention (the Voyetra 8 wasn’t even guaranteed to turn on, and when it did, it “was already doing some weird shit so we used it and more”). But on “A Shadow in Time” this tension plays more of a supporting role than a lead. The piece opens with a slow-motion cascade of shimmering high harmonies and murky, shifting lower tones. In its austere beauty, it calls to mind Pauline Oliveros’ landmark Deep Listening, but with an added dash of dread. Clocking in at just shy of 23 minutes, “Shadow” spends its first half stretching towards infinity and its second collapsing on itself. Around the seven minute mark (amazingly it only feels like three), the piece begins to hollow out. Gradually those glassy high notes drift away like the dust tail of a comet, and tape hiss overtakes the piece. The sense of deterioration is palpable, made more dramatic by distant synth moans and weird bursts of chirping noise that poke through just as “Shadow” drifts into silence. It’s the kind of ending that makes one feel less like a listener and more like a witness. In the wake of the A-side’s descent, “For David Robert Jones” feels like a cool down for the audience and a victory lap for Basinski. An orchestral clip that could easily be a Disintegration Loops outtake opens, circling around itself and never quite resolving. We’re on more familiar footing here, and the emotional tenor of the the piece, though engaging, is less arrestingly in-your-face than “Shadow.” Six minutes in, a gnarled saxophone juts through rudely, throwing the chilled out transcendence pleasingly off balance. A nod to Bowie’s own saxophone honking on “Subterraneans,” it’s an amusingly punk bit of sabotage, but it fails to develop into something more. Over fourteen more minutes the tension dissipates and “For David” runs out of steam. Discussing The Disintegration Loops in 2012, Basinski told the Quietus “Over the period of the hour, that melody just decayed right in front of my ears… and eyes… I remember thinking, 'This is not about you.’” While this sense of riveting discovery isn’t fully achieved on “For David,” the album nonetheless offers a stunning journey into a vast, ink-black void." [Pitchfork] | 2017 | €15.00 |
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| BASINSKI, WILLIAM & RICHARD CHARTIER | Divertissement | LP | "Divertissement is the third collaborative full length from minimalist composer William Basinski and sound artist Richard Chartier. The duo utilize electronics, piano, tape-loops and short wave radio to evoke a dense atmosphere suggesting hundreds of years of history rising up from the depths of a reverberating cathedral. Subtle, buried and intense murmurs of melody morph through this deeply consuming and slowly evolving composition in two parts. Pressed in an edition of 500 with beautiful cover drawings by artist James Elaine. William Basinski is a classically trained musician and composer who has been working in experimental media for over 30 years in NYC and most recently, California. Employing obsolete technology and analogue tape loops, his haunting and melancholy soundscapes explore the temporal nature of life and resound with the reverberations of memory and the mystery of time. His epic 4-disc masterwork, The Disintegration Loops received international critical acclaim and was chosen as one of the top 50 albums of 2004 by Pitchfork Media. The Temporary Residence deluxe LP box-set reissue from 2012 was awarded best re-issue of the year and a score of 10 on Pitchfork. Installations and films made in collaboration with artist-filmmaker, James Elaine have been presented in festivals and museums internationally, and his concerts are presented to sold out crowds around the world. Most recently, Basinski was chosen by Music Director, Antony Hegarty to create music for the new Robert Wilson opera, The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic which had its world premiere at the Manchester International Festival in July 2011 and toured Europe in 2012 and North America in 2013. Orchestral transcriptions of The Disintegration Loops by Maxim Moston have been performed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Queen Elizabeth Hall and La Batie Festival in Geneva, Switzerland. Basinski is currently touring the world in support of Cascade and The Deluge, his latest works which will be released in Spring 2015 on 2062/USA. Richard Chartier (b.1971), sound and installation artist, is considered one of the key figures in the current of reductionist electronic sound art which has been termed both microsound and Neo-Modernist. Chartier's minimalist digital work explores the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception and the act of listening itself. Chartier's sound works/installations have been presented in galleries and museums internationally including the 2002's Whitney Biennial and he has performed his work live across Europe, Japan, Australia, and North America at digital art electronic music festivals and exhibits. In 2000 he formed the recording label LINE and has since curated its continuing documentation of compositional and installation work by international sound artists/composers exploring the aesthetics of contemporary and digital minimalism. In 2010, Chartier was awarded a Smithsonian Institution Artist Research Fellowship to explore the National Museum of American History's collection of 19th-Century acoustic apparatus for scientific demonstration." [label info] www.importantrecords.com | 2015 | €25.50 |
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| BASS COMMUNION & FREIBAND | VL Tones | 3 x CD BOX | How does an invitation to create a one minute long piece of music based on a single instrument source become a two and a half hour 3CD epic? Towards the end of 2018 Frans de Waard of Freiband was invited by a Japanese label to create an album of one-minute pieces using only the Casio VL-Tone 1. The VL-Tone is perhaps best known as being the first commercially marketed digital synthesiser, a cheap plastic instrument barely a foot in length. The idea was for each track to be a joint effort with a different collaborator from Frans’ past musical career. One of those collaborators was Steven Wilson of Bass Communion – the two over the years have recorded two 3inch CDr’s, an LP and a flexi disc. Steven had no VL Tone, but Frans sent him a few raw recorded sources made using the two that he owned. Using these, Steven quickly created five one minute pieces for consideration. One was selected for the compilation… … And that might have been the end of the story. Except that Frans suggested using the other 4 pieces as source material for further collaborative work. Subsequently, over the next few months several hours of music was generated, with each musician processing what the other would send, using both digital and analogue technology, resulting in a plethora of mixes. The only rule was that the only sound sources allowed were the original VL Tone recordings, now twisted, reshaped, and reprocessed beyond all recognition. Once the 2 musicians had decided enough was enough, the final selection was made, edited and sequenced to create the listening experience found on the first 2 discs in this set. The 4 original miniature pieces are heard both in their original form, and then processed through many transformations; from dark ambient to musique concrete collage-style pieces, from rhythmic to drone-ambient, from brief interludes to lengthy journeys. The third disc comprises additional pieces that didn’t make the main selection, but nevertheless the 2 collaborators liked them enough to include them on a bonus disc. Cover design by Carl Glover. The sleeve notes comprise a time-line conversation between Bass Communion and Freiband during this project. https://tonefloat.com/2019/11/07/bass-communion-freiband-vl-tones/ | 2019 | €29.00 |
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| BATES, MARTYN | Unsung | CD | "Unsung – the new solo album by Martyn Bates (voice/guitar) completed September 2012 and produced by Alan Trench & Martyn Bates. Released on November 13th. 'With Unsung Martyn Bates takes on the more traditional role as a singer-songwriter, armed solely with his guitar for accompaniment, save for the occasional sparse colouring. At this time — when this particular role has been explored and done to death & beyond by long lines of both old and young musicians — one would think that there possibly could not be much to add (not that singer-songwriters generally are out on a mission to add something to the format). But as we know from the past history of Martyn Bates and Eyeless In Gaza, they do invent, they do new things, they sound fresh over and over again. So this is exciting, indeed! From initial listenings to the album, one happily fails to find anything reminiscent of the new breed of singer-songwriters that tend to sound so same-ish, even when they try to sound “alternative”, “sensuous” and “independent” suggesting the listener would be convinced that it (albeit artificially) “sounds so right”. Here, in contrast, you find someone who plays and sings as if no one has ever done any singing accompanied only by his own guitar playing before. The lyrics are thoughtful, the music is lush and different, the voice is superb and the music is respectful of the intelligence of the listener. Still the music is certainly not dull or gloomy, but spirited and infectious. I think you will agree.– Jerry Nilson" [label info] www.eyelessingaza.com/asr.html "These acoustic guitar based songs largely came from sessions relating to the Twelve Thousand Days project in which Martyn Bates collaborated with Alan Trench of Orchis in the 2000’s. Though it’s also produced by Trench , Unsung has a very different feel, and it finds Bates at his most concentrated and immediate. Bates is essentially a singer songwriter but his work in Eyeless in Gaza and other collaborations reveal he’s also adept at improvisation and manipulation of sonics. Here the latter is limited to some ambient drift and phantasmal backing vocals, which sound particularly strange on ‘’And This The Day’’. But essentially Unsung relies just on his voice and acoustic guitar, which is beautifully recorded with a big , full sound. At times his expansive picking recalls Bert Jansch or Roy Harper. As a singer-songwriter Bates has a wide stylistic lexicon, ranging from soft susurrations to notes that feel wrenched out from somewhere deep. On ‘Muted Music’, he evokes the heightened poignancy of its inevitable transience. One of the album’s loveliest melodies, ‘Caustic’ is, however, a bleak look at how memories of events can differ between two people, with the song’s narrator the one left with nothing of comfort to recall. His love of traditional music was first overtly stated on the Murder Ballads series he made with Mick Harris in the 1990’s, and the influence of Martin Carthy suggests itself here. But his own work is more in tune with the unfettered feelings that run through folk song. On Unsung, he seals his engagement with tradition on ‘’Love Came To My Door’’, an a cappella tale shaped as a disquieting visitation rather than a cause for celebration." [Mike Barnes, THE WIRE] | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| Fireworks & Jewels / The Colour of Amber | CD | "Fireworks & Jewels is the 3rd solo album in as many years from Eyeless In Gaza’s Martyn Bates – being a collection of mostly voice/guitar pieces with a focus on the SONG – words and music stripped to core elements. Working with these elements, Elizabeth S. and Alan Trench introduce subtle colours to the body of these performances – with Trench adding particularly deft applications of electronics & tape treatments – creating a whole other supporting soundworld for the seeming fragility of Bates’ apparently often elusively private world of words & music. As Bates’ states, for him, the whole process of music-making is cathartic. On this occasion the resulting songs address some elusive and mercurial ideas and concepts. According to Bates: “ … I wanted to put across … the way that during heightened moments in everyday life – within those moments where there are “fireworks & jewels” as you might say – there’s always a spark or a thought there that flashes the colour amber – an elusive, tantalising light that you know is eternal, and forever, and yet … it’s somehow, always, always held out of reach … .” The appropriate watchwords here might well be, perhaps, Process & Effect, Illusion & Reality, or feasibly, in keeping with the album’s title, Shadow & Substance. Fireworks & Jewels / The Colour of Amber was completed July 2015 and recorded at Bridge House Studios, on the Greek isle of Evia – the atmosphere of whose current social and political situation of doubt and uncertainty could perhaps be said to have had a noticeable influence upon the brooding & unsettled spirit at work throughout this album." [label info] www.eyelessingaza.com/mb.html#1 "Looking back to the year of twenty-fifteen, my audio intake was considerably pepped up by the appearance of the "Mythic Language"/"Egg Box Mask" triple c.d. set. So much so that this retrospective from British post punk/art pop duo Eyeless in Gaza was made number one with a bullet by yours truly on the Terrascope yearly poll. So now, only a matter of months later, the Becker/Bates family tree (pictured as an ancient yew in an English country churchyard of course...), has sprouted an extra limb with the emergence of "Fireworks..."; Martyn Bates' sixteenth (!) solo outing (on almost as many labels, I might add). To discover that was certainly a surprise (thank you Discogs!), as I simply had no idea he was that prolific! This beautifully artworked/six-panelled disc (his third in as many years...), finds Martyn joined by Alan Trench ('tronix/sundry percussives/field recordings/kitchen sink) and the mysteriously named banjo player and backing vocalist Elizabeth S. It's a baker's dozen of dream pop constructs in which a slight sense of unease might be detected which, according to the accompanying cribsheet, could be due to the fact that the recording took place on the Greek isle of Evia, during Greece's economic/political upheaval(s). Things mostly focus on Martyn's acoustic guitar work and vocalese and emphasise a concept of pure songcraft, where certain emotional states are laid bare for all to experience. Introspective soul transmissions, if you will, that come nuanced by a number of impressionistic backdops that thankfully, don't overpower the proceedings one jot. Whichever way you huffle the pack there's always seems to be something of genuine worth. Take for example an adaption of a Walter de la Mare poem "Embers, Starry Tapers"; a vision of otherworldliness, which largely comprises of solo vox humana and layered, lighter than air vocal atmospherics. Then there's the finger-cramping banjo exercises underpinning "Belong" and "The Fall", a personal favourite in which a rhythm bed of stately piano lines is deftly overturned by what appears to be a splurge of sustained feedback/sheet metal that has the signature of Master William Reid; late of the J.A.M.C. imprinted upon it. Excellent. Copies are available through the Eyeless website (see above) and also through the auspices of Rough Trade, i-tunes (who they?) and Amazon. Order early to avoid disappointment... accept no imitations etc etc... "[Steve Pescott, Terrascope UK] | 2015 | €13.00 |
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| BAUMANN, FRANZISKA | Eternal Ice melts | CD | Faszinierendes Gletscher-Dröhnen & erhabene Voice-Poetry von FRANZISKA BAUMANN, dazu 5 Remixe ihres Stückes von MICK HARRIS, SEETYCA (soon on Drone Rec!), SUBMERGED.... "...Highly recommended compilation to anyone interested in contemporary electronics from subtle field recordings to expressive breakbeat-science." [NMP / Vital Weekly] "In the fall of 2003 Franziska Baumann performed at the Matrix Festival of contemporary music, in Leipzig, Germany. Her manipulated recordings of melting glacier ice wowed the audience, but just as memorable were the 125 copies of a remix CD distributed at the event. Noted artists Lull, Seetyca and Clemmens Presser were drafted to compose pieces based on her works. For Mick Harris (Lull) fans, finding a copy of this CD has been their holy grail. On October 16 Soleilmoon puts an end to their frustration, and does it in typical over-the-top Soleilmoon fashion, with a hand numbered limited edition presented in a silkscreened vellum slip cover. Fortunately, the quantity is more reasonable this time: 500 copies will be made. And finally, just for this new edition, Kurt Gluck (Submerged) has contributed a heart pounding new drum’n’bass track. Lull is the name of the dark ambient side project of Mick Harris, former drummer for Napalm Death and current leader of challenging industrial music band Scorn. German artist Seetyca is a prolific artist who records his bleak, isolationist soundscapes music for many labels, including darkwinter.com. Clemens Presser, another German artist, has contributed to several compilations and is now working on his first solo album. Kurt Gluck runs the Ohm Resistance label and is a famous drum’n’bass DJ. He has collaborated with Bill Laswell and John Zorn, and regularly moves back and forth between the dance and experimental music scenes. Franziska Baumann is fascinated by the glacier as a listening space. She has been examining the forms of sound in and upon the glacier, inspired by the enormous tide of ice and its multilayered temporal and spatial dimensions, and she sets her own voice in a dialogue with its icy spaces Using stereo, zoom and contact microphones, Franziska Baumann senses the aliveness and dynamics of ice and the poetry of the sounds that live in glacial crevasses and grottos. The sounds of the glacier (creaks, drips, rumbles, shuffles etc.) were recorded at different times on and within. Her voice touches the icy crevasse walls in their various states, from karstic to icy smoothness. Warmth and cold produce different sound pictures. In collaboration with glaciologists from the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and the Swiss Computing Center in Zurich, she has transformed seismographic recordings of glacial movements into sound paintings. A portrait of this work was broadcasted on Swiss television in December 2001." [press release] | 2006 | €13.50 |
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| BECUZZI, GIANLUCA & FABIO ORSI | Dust Tears and Clouds | do-CD | "Following the previous albums released, among others, by Last Visible Dog and Digitalis, "Dust Tears and Clouds" is the fifth full-lenght work born from the collaboration between Gianluca Becuzzi and Fabio Orsi. Becuzzi is an electronic / electroacoustic composer and sound artist active since the first half of the ’80s. Founder of the historic Darkwave / Industrial project Limbo, since 1999 his artistic production is characterized by a strong experimental imprint and by a clear tendency toward abstract aesthetic forms and micro/macro noises/sounds. Among his recent artistic production - in addition to what he has published under his own name - we should at least mention his projects Kinetix, Noise Trade Company and Grey History. On the other side, Orsi sits among the most interesting names of the European electronic and experimental scene. Following his early output on A Silent Place and Smallvoices, his music works have been published by many other labels worldwide, including Porter Records, Boring Machines and, of course, Silentes. His talent has become an estabilished reality thanks to his abilities in finding a nice balance between experimentation and melody. “Dust Tears and Clouds” combines two CDs in a single release. The first disc, entitled “Dust Tears and Skinny Legs Poets”, was recorded in 2007 and remained unreleased until now. It contains eight highly evocative tracks that feature American Folk samples recorded by Alan Lomax mixed with guitars and electronics. This work can be seen as the ideal follow-up to the acclaimed “Muddy Speaking Ghosts Through My Machines”. The second disc collects the three long tracks previously released by Foxglove back in 2007 as a 3x3” MiniCD-Rs extremely limited edition, with the welcome addition of an unreleased fourth track. Here Becuzzi and Orsi offers two solo efforts and two collaborative numbers; the voices and samples that graced the first disc are absent and the musicians create denser experimental plots soaked with field recordings, synthesizers and effects. Overall, the two Italian artists showcase a broad range of solutions and, once again, they create a rich work whose repeated listening will reveal more and more details." [label info] www.silentes.net "Deceivingly simple. That's what I thought when I noted on the cover 'contains american folk samples by Alan Lomax'. Lomax recorded a whole bunch people singing traditional songs, usually without any instruments, and that's true treasure vault if you want to spice up your abstract music with a more musical element. It almost immediately turns your music into a movie soundtrack or radio play. Easy stuff? The easy road of Moby? Perhaps, perhaps, the eight pieces recorded by Gianluca Becuzzi and Fabio Orsi, who use a lot a of guitars and field recordings here, and seem to have reduced the electronics, create some great music with not just their instruments, but use the Lomax archives with relatively fine sparseness. Not too much, not too little, and sometimes it seems they process a bit of that too, or just the insects in the background and create perhaps indeed easy music, but easy music that works very well. In the two parts of 'Talking With Ghosts' the original Lomax recordings are a bit too much with not enough 'anything else', but these are with three minutes each also the shortest ones. The other six pieces are longer, but are more in favor of new music with the Lomax samples to support it. Nice stuff, relaxing, ambient, micro sounding but with an odd twist. Just why did it take so long, as this was recorded in 2007, to release it? Maybe Becuzzi and Orsi weren't that sure either? As a bonus (?) there is a second CD with four longer pieces of which three were released in 2007 as three 3" CDRs by Foxglove, with one piece by Becuzzi and Orsi each solo and two duo pieces, of which one is previously unreleased. This is more familiar territory for both artists. Long pieces of ambient like sounds, in which all of the sources - field recordings, guitars, electronics - are further processed and make up some dark ambient music, but not in the strictest drone sense. It moves about in a calm and gentle way, but is perhaps also a bit long here and there, and a bit with form. It moves in irregular shapes and colors and is alright. Not great actually and perhaps a bit too much common ground?" [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2013 | €16.00 |
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| BEEQUEEN | Sturmwind and Gilbert | 7inch | "The time has come: Beequeen’s final single “Sturmwind” is now available on Tonefloat records! With this single, surely our most ‘pop’ release ever, comes an end to nearly 30 years of Beequeen. What a beautiful and fun ride this has been, so much we have seen, heard and learned for which we have so many people to thank. Do things really end here? Who knows? As always, I keep working on new material. “Sometimes my arms bend back” – to the future… Meanwhile, the “Escape” CD, featuring covers of the songs on “Asylum”, the 1985 album by The Legendary Pink Dots will be released soon. It features my solo version of “Golden Dawn” of which I’m actually quite proud😉 THE PRESS BIT: Achtung! Beequeen (Olga Wallis, Freek Kinkelaar and Frans de Waard) goes pop. But Beequeen being Beequeen, it is not pop as we know it. Sturmwind, as the title suggest, is sung in German and probably the first single in history to paraphrase German Dada artist Kurt Schwitters in the chorus of “Du, deiner, dich, dir” from his famous poem An Anna Blume. Couple this with an existentialist lyric about overwhelming all-consuming love at the end of the world and an uplifting melody and rhythm and you end up with the typical surreal-twist that was also present on Beequeen’s latest album “Around Midnight”. The other side of this single tells the story of Gilbert; who hungers for love, but fails to understand what the concept of ‘love’ actually is. Gilbert is set to an 80s shoegazing tune where desperation gets mixed-up with hope. And with this single the Beequeen bids us, after more than 30 years, goodbye. Sturmwind/Gilbert was written by Freek Kinkelaar and Beequeen, produced and mixed by Peter van Vliet (The Use Of Ashes) and mastered by Raymond Steeg. Sturmwind/Gilbert will be out on March 19 as a limited edition 7inch (300 copies) in a numbered sleeve designed by Carl Glover." [Freek Kinkelaar web & label info] "Achtung! Beequeen goes Pop. Aber da Beequeen Beequeen ist, es dabei kein Pop wie man ihn kennt herausgekommen. Sturmwind ist, wie der Titel bereits suggeriert, Deutsch gesungen und wahrscheinlich die erste Single in der Geschichte die den deutschen Dadaismus Künstler Kurt Schwitters mit seinem berühmten Gedicht An Anna Blume im Chorus "Du, deiner, dich, dir" frei aufgreift. Verbinden Sie dies mit existentialistischen Texten von überschwänglicher, alles auffressender Liebe am Ende der Welt und einer aufbauenden Melodie und Rhythmus und man landet bei dem typisch surrealen Schwung, der auch auf Beequeens letztem Album "Around Midnight" präsent gewesen ist. Die andere Seite dieser Single erzählt die Geschichte von Gilbert; der nach Liebe hungert, aber nicht versteht was das aktuelle Konzept von Liebe ist. Gilbert ist an eine selbstverliebte 80s Melodie gebunden, bei der Verzweiflung und Hoffnung eng beieinander liegen. Und genau mit dieser Single sagen uns Beequeen, nach mehr als 30 Jahren, Goodbye. Sturmwind wurde von Peter van Vliet (The Use Of Ashes) gemischt und produziert." [label info] www.tonefloat.com | 2016 | €9.50 |
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| BEGG, MICHAEL | Titan : A Crane is a Bridge | CD | TITAN - WINNER of the New Music Scotland 2018 Award for New Electroacoustic / Sound Art Work. This original commission, for Cryptic Glasgow, premiered at the Sonica '17 Festival in Glasgow. Begg’s extraordinary electronic sound installation... with huge, swelling harmonies, occasionally building to moments of ecstatic beauty... its slow-burn, cumulative effect is one of uncompromising power and inevitable decay, both a celebration of enduring strength and a memorial to its demise The Scotsman Begg’s installation is perhaps the standout at Glasgow’s Sonica… The wheelhouse becomes the humming dark heart of the crane as Begg’s electronic enfolding and eroding of the raw sonic materials sets a rich and taut piece in perpetual motion… turning the iconic structure into a gently haunted compound of wind and noise. The Wire With Michael Begg’s instrumentation, the Titan Crane feels like a living creature. One that tells us an important story.. if only we listen. Ambient Blog Michael Begg makes architecture sing like no one before him. Stephen Fruitman, Igloo https://omnempathy.bandcamp.com/album/titan-a-crane-is-a-bridge "For TITAN: A Crane is a Bridge, sound artist Michael Begg enlists the gigantic, titular Titan crane of Clydebank in Scotland both as a performance space and as an instrument. In the windy, beefy lattice frames and oily joints of the towering device, Begg teases out all sorts of metallic resonances and ironclad drones. Over these, he layers his own gentle instrumental additions - to great effect. At times, it resembles ‘dark ambient’ music. Only actually good. A Sonica Festival 2017 commission, the work is available on CD through Omnempathy in a glossy Japanese digipak." [Norman Rec.] "By now there is quite a bunch of Michael Begg releases, twelve it seems, under his own name and as Human Creed and also from the group he’s a member of, Fovea Hex. A busy man, but he also finds time to create audio-visual installations and one of those was in the wheelhouse on to the Clydebank Titan, as part of the 2017 Sonic-a festival. That was quadrophonic, reduced to stereo (obviously) for the CD release. The music is made from field recordings in the area, as well as Aeolian harps Begg build over the years. The wind around the wheelhouse playing those harps is also at the foundation of the music. All of this is very ambient and as such it may seem odd (or at least I thought so) that the eight pieces are not very long; from a mere one-and half minute to six, but around four is the most usual. It’s good to see someone who believes less is more and not plays out his ideas too much and thus spreading it thin. In all of these pieces there is an endless amount of drone material, but of a lighter nature. Delicate and sparse, rather than full and dense. I had the impression that some of these pieces consisted of just a few sounds, rather than a multitude of sources. Begg’s music may be ambient and quiet, but it is not always very gentle, which is exactly how I love these things. He knows how to add a sharp edge to his sounds, almost as if he’s aware of the hole that he can fall into, the dangerous shady world of new age music. Begg stays safely away from that world with his ringing and singing overtones, like singing wine glasses and loops of obscured field recordings (in ‘It’s All Triangles’ for instance), topped with a fine spice of dark reverb and, as easy as that may sound, that’s all you need for great album by Michael Begg." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2017 | €13.00 |
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| A Moon that Lights Itself | CD | During the 1870s, Charles François Daubigny, in the last years of his life, took increasingly to painting nocturnal scenes en plain air from his boat studio, Le Bottin. This was a period in time when the idea of the musical nocturne had progressed from being an indication of what point during the evening a particular piece of music should be played, towards becoming an articulation of the unique atmosphere and emotion occasioned by moonlight. Elsewhere in France, Edouard-Lean Scott de Martinville conceived and produced the phonautogragh. This device, appearing years before Edison’s phonograph, enabled sound, for the first time, to be captured. Unlike Edison, however, de Martinville neglected - or saw no need - to provide the means to playback the recording. Rather, a visual representation was captured on a lamp black cylinder. It wasn’t until 2008 when researchers at Berkley University used digital technology to recover the audio. The recording, the first ever made, was of a human voice singing Au Clair De La Lune. Written and produced by Michael Begg Mixed and mastered at Captains Quarters, East Lothian A Moon That Lights Itself was premiered at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh on September 16th 2016, with cello accompaniment from Clea Friend The work was commissioned by National Galleries Scotland, in conjunction with the major exhibition, Inspiring Impressionism: Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh, and was completed with the generous support of the Hope Scott Trust. https://omnempathy.bandcamp.com/album/a-moon-that-lights-itself REVIEW: "A Moon That Lights Itself was commissioned by the Scottish National Galleries as part of the Inspiring Impressionism exhibition, focussing on the works of Charles François Daubigny, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh. On September 16th 2016, Michael Begg (of Human Greed / Fovea Hex) performed the work, amidst the exhibition space, in the auspicious surroundings of the Royal Scottish Academy situated on the Mound in Edinburgh. Drawing on the works of French landscape artist Charles François Daubigny, Begg's commission was described as a "work for electronics, strings and moonlight". I must confess that of the three artists featured in the exhibition I wasn't at all familiar with Daubigny. Consider Begg's work with Human Greed where their first release Consolation featured a moonface in Deryk Thomas's artwork on the cover; Black Hill: Midnight At The Blighted Star, the title of a later album which included 'Dalkeith Night' speaks for itself; and even Dirt On Earth featured a blackened nightscape on the cover it's perhaps particularly apt that Begg focusses on Daubigny's later work and specifically the twilight and nocturnal scenes of his later years, from which he painted while ensconced on a studio boat on the Oise. A Moon That Lights Itself is set in the context of mid to late 19th century France, and the cusp of impressionism, modernism, together with the earliest known sound recordings by Edouard-Lean Scott de Martinville and his phonautograph invention. A Moon That Lights Itself moves from dusk to dawn in the course of its 9 tracks. From tranquil drones overlaid with tumbling piano notes and solemn cello movements the opening track 'Le Crepuscule' moves into drifting drones before 'Moonrise' which like many of the tracks on A Moon That Lights Itself blends location recordings into the compositions. Here water in the form of lapping waves and crashing waves, bird chatter and the quack of ducks - ducks were a recurring motif within Daubigny's impressionist landscapes - are found amidst passages of glistening drone and moments of sombre piano and cello swell. Still and serene, glinting flourishes merge with stirring movements, its lapping waves resembling the tidal pull, and backward spinning electronics. 'Moonlight' bathes in the glow of light glistening sound textures set against deep reverberating rumbles and piercing glassy shrieks. Bells ring out before it moves into quieter echoed atmospherics. Daubigny often painted from his floating studio on a boat on the River Oise, and 'Le Bottin' aptly illustrates this with watery ripples dappled with tender piano notes and broader sound shudders, flowing into an end section comprising elegiac strings and melancholic synths. With its rippling metallic sounds, harsher noise elements and sluggish voice recordings 'The Birth Of Modernism' is much more abstract in composition. Those voices, taken from the 1860 phonautograms of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, like modernism are almost blown in on a wind like drone. Scott de Martinville's recordings, sensitively mixed as another layer of sound here, were never intended for playback but recent research managed to transform these into playable sound files, discovering a male voice, probably of Scott de Martinville, singing a partial segment of the French folk song 'Au clair de la lune', which fits nicely here as in English it translates to 'In the Moonlight'. Elsewhere on 'The Birth Of Modernism' voices and bird calls are rendered as electronic squiggles, reflecting the movement away from realism to abstraction, perhaps. Begg returns to his palette of location sounds on 'Daubigny's Reverie' where lapping water and duck quack augment the shimmering sound spans. The drone filled atmospherics create a sense of melancholy; a captivating dreamspace only broken by the call and sing of birds in flight. Those flying birds could be seen as sound metaphor for the transition from Daubigny's impressionism to a new world of abstract representations, something furthered on 'Between Two Movements' which unfurls to a two pronged approach where undulating drones and glassy shrill frequencies are cast against evocative classical strings. It could even be electronics, Begg has an uncanny ability to sidestep the listener with his use of instrumentation that sound like something else. 'A Last Dance Under The Moon' moves to doleful cello sweeps and forlorn nocturnal electronics, achieving a graceful and mournful presence, largely due to the Clea Friend's cello score. A Moon That Lights Itself closes with the arrival of 'Dawn', a classy ensemble piece of piano score and cello, contrasting sombre cello movements with more optimistic and joyful piano notes, and as the sounds coalesce it seems to herald the new whilst paying homage to the past. Begg referred to this in a blog for his performance at the Royal Scottish Academy as being a "pochade", a sketch, "for Daubigny, for the moon, and for an extraordinary time in the development of European culture, when our sense of capturing the world around us and within us took extraordinarily bold, though markedly sensitive, steps forward." Recorded immediately after the performance, Begg once again proves himself to be a superlative composer, with a suite of evocative atmospherics using electronics, classical strings and location recordings to evoke the nocturnal workings of Daubigny. A Moon That Lights Itself is bathed in a liminal essence; a quality that defines all his work. From the Human Greed releases Black Hill: Midnight At The Blighted Star, Fortress Longing, World Fair to the Fragile Pitches collaboration with Colin Potter, Michael Begg has been behind a number of great releases. A Moon That Lights Itself now sits alongside those titles as one of his finest solo offerings in a release that is sombre, inventive and utterly captivating." [Compulsion Online] | 2016 | €13.00 |
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| BEGG, MICHAEL / HUMAN GREED | Let the cold Stove sing | CD | "These recordings comprise work conceived for theatre, gallery and installation contexts. They are concerned with defined and definite spaces, places and absences. These places arise both from nature and through construction. In turn, the construction may be natural or virtual. They are informed by the great divorce of music and context occasioned by the birth of recording, and by the 20 year fermata occurring after the invention of recording and before the discovery of the means of affecting playback. This was, by definition, the period where we began to conceive of the need to listen repeatedly, in the way an archaeologist brushes repeatedly at the desert, for clues, details, and, possibly, reason." [label info] www.omnempathy.com "East Lothian based composer Michael Begg has quietly but steadfastly released (in this listener's humble opinion) some of the finest and most affecting albums of the last decade, such as 2008's dark and yearning 'Black Hill: Midnight At The Blighted Star', 2011's melancholic masterpiece 'Fortress Longing' and 2014's career best 'World Fair'. Along the way many noted and esteemed collaborators have added their voice or presence to proceedings such as Julia Kent (Antony And The Johnsons), David Tibet (Current 93), Chris Connelly (Ministry) and Clodagh Simonds (Mellow Candle, Fovea Hex). Working in the realm of drones, electronica and modern experimental composition to create vast, atmospheric and hugely evocative pieces of sound and melody, Begg has little in the way of contemporaries although aficionados of the windswept work of Richard Skelton, 'On Land'-era Eno, the dark soundscapes of Andrew Lilies and the classic recordings of Reich, Glass and Popol Vuh will find much to fall in love with here. Referencing both, according to Begg, 'gallery, theatre and installation works, as well as my preoccupation with defining space, place and time with sound' this is an essential and crucial work that needs to be heard and experienced. The album begins with 'Hopetoun Tower Before The Harvest', named after a forbidding and lonely construction that stands defiantly on a hill near Begg's Captain's Quarters recording studio. As befits its namesake, the track rumbles with exposure to some building and growing winds as snakelike electronics creep and wisp into view. A beautiful and tentative string section enters, trembling emotively as bowed strings and bowls resonate. It feels sacred, like a storm has suddenly and dramatically silenced leaving a hushed and perceptible sense of being in the universe. The title track follows, piano and droned strings echoing out into darkness, both tangibly lonely and filled with a gorgeous sadness. There is something deeply existential about this work, one feels small in the face of the space and sounds that evoke the surrounding skies and landscape. 'The Children Will Wet The Academy Floor' adds some truly lovely chamber strings that reverberate and haunt, a spectral symphony of lamentation and grief whilst 'Paris is Closing' is a field recording of chatter and metro sounds that are pleasingly though disturbingly disorientating. Next, 'Pendrachin Wood: Pollen And Frost' is a frozen and glacial layered piece of orchestral electronica, reminiscent of Bowie's Berlin experiments; this literally lifts the hairs of one's arms and neck as it swells and recedes with visions of snow covered pines in the darkening Scottish winter afternoons. Human Greed are no simple drone or electronic act; these are carefully wrought and constructed compositions that evoke and emote in an almost avant classical sense. They are almost unique in working in this field and are creating pieces of heartbreaking genius that this listener implores you to discover and fall in love with; it is criminal that Begg is not more revered outside of the underground as the pioneer and composer that he is. 'Francis Bacon; A Room' is as complex and unsettling as the British artist himself, a corrosive drone and buzz hovering over the mutter of voices whist a sister song 'Louise Bourgeois: A Cell' allows chimes and electronic hums to flutter and slither malevolently throughout. 'Leisure In F' glides majestically into being, epic and choral strings ebbing and flowing until ominous notes and birdsong float into focus; reminiscent of charcoal skies passing by overhead with the threat of snowfall as nature and animal life reacts accordingly this is an incredibly moving and transportive piece. 'Made And Unmade In Europe' rasps and buzzes as a bird's lonesome call cries out against the imperious landscape, an unforgiving wind suddenly giving way to a soprano song and weeping strings in a genuinely breathtaking moment. 'Cunny For Thine Mountain Penne' almost silently emerges on delicate notes and drone sounds, distant percussion and mournful brass reminding this listener of Gorecki's 'Sorrowful Songs'. Stately, graceful and melancholic this regal and funereal piece stays with the listener long after the album has finished playing. Next, 'Intermission For Blisters And Russian Weddings' is driven along on wary and eerie violin bursts, a solar echo resonating and unfurling slowly and perceptibly whilst gentle bass notes hold anchor. This is music to play when the sky is huge, dark and forbidding, to watch the stars blink on and off with cosmic indifference to us watching. 'Studies In Space And Density' is equally massive in scale and suggestion; a cold, sad throb through the universe that becomes increasingly distorted and growling before returning to an icy, repeating refrain of solar wind. A sudden warmth enters with 'Let The Cold Stove Sing Within Reason' as a bass throb and beautiful melody grows and layers over a distant electronic howl and circling strings. Hugely affecting, there is an integral human component at the heart of everything Human Greed or Begg does, this is music about the human condition, about what it is to be in this casually cruel and beautiful universe. 'Whiteadder Water After The Harvest' brings us full circle and close the album with the burble of streams and rivers, metallic and windswept notes sweeping overhead. I cannot recommend this album highly enough. There is more detail, more arresting and heart-rending moments, more creativity on this album than there is in some other artist's entire oeuvres. One for those lonely, late night listens or for accompaniment of solitary walks and dérives, 'Let The Cold Stove Sing' is a heartbreakingly beautiful and important album, perhaps quite easily already my album of the year. The cold stove is singing, now one must listen." [Grey Malkin/The Active Listener blogspot] active-listener.blogspot.de/2016/06/michael-begg-human-greed-let-cold-stove.html | 2016 | €13.00 |
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| BELLERUE, BOB / HALFNORMAL | Threat Level Charlie | CD | BOB BELLERUE aka HALF NORMAL ist ein Sound-Tüftler aus Los Angeles, auf "Threat Level Charlie" schafft er einen dichten, detaillierten Geräuschteppich gegen alle "unternehmerischen, spirituellen, und politischen Machtsysteme". Diverse Objektklassen & Materialien setzt er ein (Glass, Metall, Papier, Holz), seinen Körper, Röhren (via Kontaktmikros), eine Bambusflöte, Radiosounds und verzerrte Stimmfetzen von den mächtigen Leuten dieser Welt. Fünf sehr unterschiedliche Stücke entstehen, im Spektrum zwischen Noise und ruhigerer, aber immer rauen, Feedback-Resonanzen ausstrahlenden & höchst energiereichen & lebendigen Geräuschmusik. To discover! "Threat Level Charlie is a composition for material, space(s), electronics, programming, body, sound and power.(Tube microphones or other prepared acoustic mics; sheets of glass, metal, paper, wood; mixer; laptop; dynamic microphones; contact mics, including one loose on a long cord; PA or speaker cabinet, homemade metal speakers; bamboo flute; radio.) Microphones are placed inside of tubes and made to feedback, and filter a portable radio that wanders in between stations. The performer plays non-musical instruments made with common materials representing consumer protection and comfort (panes of glass, metal, paper, wood), using hands, bows and feedback. A contact mic is place in the mouth, played with the tongue and gluttoral palette; it is held to speakers and plays them with feedback. A bamboo flute is played; stomping and clapping occur: these sounds are filtered through the various systems in action. Broadband noise is generated from ambient and prepared-ambient recordings; speeches by George Bush and Osama bin Laden are shredded together. The result is a visceral wail against corporate, spiritual, and political power systems, using organic and alleatoric rhythms, melodies, textures; chthonic sounds, oppressed signals." [artist description] | 2002 | €13.00 |
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| BENEATH THE LAKE | Silent Uprising | CD | Zweites Album vom Projekt um NICOLAS LAMPERT, der eine Hälfte der Monumental-Noise-Droner von NOISEGATE war! Ausgefeilter dark ambient mit vielen Details und melancholischen Passagen... “A truly stunning follow up to their debut 2002 "Inside Passage" offering! "Silent Uprising" features five flowing & meditative compositions clocking in at 70+ minutes. A demanding engagement from drifting drone composers Nicolas Lampert & Dave Canterbury. An alchemical mixture of lulling musical melodies & dense cinematic environments. BENEATH THE LAKE embrace a forlorn melancholia of haunting, whispering memories & organic soundscapes. A beautiful album with a distant hope, forged through nature's sadness... “....Beneath The Lake is a project based on creating soundscapes combining minimal ambient music and found sounds, with an emphasis on composing the music to compliment the sounds instead of just using the sounds as a backdrop. Where their first record focused more on nature, Silent Uprising shifts the focus a bit more toward the increasing influence of the urban landscape as cities continue to encroach on nature and change the balance forever. The record begins with the clatter of trains rushing past, the receding sound of the train is soon joined by a simple strident guitar riff, accompanied by a mournful wooden recorder. The two drift and shift and slowly build in intensity. Very reminiscent of Neurosis at their most mellow, surprisingly enough. The riff shifts and twists, shadowed by the recorders melodies eventually being joined by the sound of another train and eventually being drowned out by the roar of the wheels on the tracks. The second track is a simple, gorgeously melancholy guitar melody, slowly and deliberately picked, over a bed of crackly static that could be either the sound of rain falling or the crackle of a fire, or both. The sound on Silent Uprising is much more musical than on Inside The Passage with the drone being relegated to just one of many instruments / approaches as opposed to the very dark and slow shifting all encompassing drone of the earlier record. Here, it's -that- guitar, all dark and shimmering and reverberant, and the brooding slow building melodies that creep across the sonic landscape. It sometimes almost sounds like the slow core of Low being performed in a steel mill or a rail yard, the band struggling to be heard over the sound of rain and wind and trains and passing cars. Strangely powerful and poignant. Packaged in a gorgeous oversized sleeve with breathtaking images of winter foliage and urban landscapes, printed in all muted browns and tans. So lovely.“ [Aquarius] | 2005 | €13.00 |
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| BERNIER, NICOLAS | Usure.Paysage | LP | "usure.paysage combines the strongest particles of Bernier's kaleidoscopic oeuvre: an expressive mix of lively field recordings, tiny and massive electronics and sparkling relocations. The docker barks out aloud, the little insect crawls through the 19th century woodworker's atelier, forgotten voices vanish and the rest is no silence. This is truly some of the finest musique concrète ever released on vinyl - very charming. Nicolas Bernier: electroacoustic artist, surround sound composer, occasional curator, old typewriter aficionado and sandcastle manufacturer. Careless about aesthetic tags, Bernier navigates through live electronics, installations, musique concrète, art video, performance, music for dance, theatre and cinema. In the midst of this eclecticism, his artistic concerns remain constant: the balance between the cerebral and the sensual, and between organic sound sources and digital processing. He is the founder of the sound art microorganism Ekumen, member of the media art organization Perte de Signal and the art director of Réseaux, a major Canadian electroacoustic concert producer. His works have been awarded or broadcast in festivals around the world including ZKM, Transmediale, Prix Ars Electronica, Akousma, Mutek and DotMov. Artwork by urban9 Mastered & cut at D+M Berlin Vinyl only, 300 copies http://www.nicolasbernier.com" [label info] www.hronir.de | 2011 | €16.50 |
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| BERRY, KEITH | The Cartesian Plane | pic-LP | "Elevator Bath's ongoing series of picture disc LPs (each record being adorned with full-color artwork by the recording artist) continues with Keith Berry's debut appearance on vinyl: An absolutely mesmerizing cycle of deep, meditative tranquility inextricably linked to Berry's otherworldly painting which appears behind the record's grooves. The soundscapes along The Cartesian Plane are beautifully absorbing, heavy with the slow unraveling of emotions, almost beyond belief. There is an immense weight to these recordings, the richness of which belies the careful subtlety of the compositions. The sound is expansive and unreal, a perfect complement to the record's visual aspects which seem to describe a kind of alternate existence. Like bookends, the colorful images house a wealth of experiences, wonderful and frightening. As you gaze upon the rotating colors and Keith Berry's dense dream-sounds pour out of the speakers, total immersion in The Cartesian Plane is more than probable, it is certain. Five years have passed since Keith Berry's masterful The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish, a disc that was something of a revelation for the lucky few who were able to obtain a copy of the original release. Since that time Berry's reputation has steadily grown, even though his discography has not. Aside from a few compilation appearances (including Elevator Bath's A Cleansing Ascension), he has remained silent. The release of The Cartesian Plane then truly calls for celebration, as it is precisely the record those of us who admire Berry's work have longed for. Keith Berry's music has been released by such labels as Trente Oiseaux, Twenty Hertz, and Crouton. He resides in London. This picture disc LP has been released in an edition of 233 copies. Total running time: 47 minutes" [label info] www.elevatorbath.com | 2010 | €17.50 |
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| BESTIA CENTAURI | Teratogenesis | CD | oversized digipack Bedrohlich klaustrophobische Welten beschwört "Teratogenesis" herauf, einengend nah und intensiv scheinen elektronische Drones & Sounds wie Waffen anzugreifen, wie eine Psycho-Geisterbahn der völlig derangierten, morphenden Art... kein typischer dark ambient, eher düster-industrielle Elektro-Akustik ! "Bestia Centauri is a solo electronic music project begun in 1999. "Teratogenesis" is its fourth release after "Ubbo-Sathla" (Somnambulant Corpse Recordings, 2002), "The Antideluvian Earth" (Afe, 2003) and "The Self Immolation Rite" (Somnambulant Corpse Recordings, 2004). The aim of Bestia Centauri is to create sonic landscapes that convey a sense of the numinous, the horrific, and the extra-human. Its sounds have much in common with those of electroacoustic music, but the compositional structures generally display a much greater sense of flow. Although Bestia Centauri's music is (to put it mildly) very different, the early releases of Tangerine Dream (circa 1972-1975) remain a tremendous source of inspiration for the composer, along with the orchestral, choral, and organ works of the composers Gyorgy Ligeti (Atmospheres; Lux Aeterna; Lontano) and Giacinto Scelsi. Older works of electroacoustic or tape music, such as the compositions of Basil Kirchin, Tod Dockstader, and Iannis Xenakis, offer the listener another frame of reference. With the new release, "Teratogenesis", Bestia Centauri defies once and for all the persistent mischaracterizations of its sound as belonging to the "Dark Ambient ghetto". Electroacoustic and computer music elements come brazenly to the foreground, and contribute even more so to the flow of "crawling chaos" that has always characterized and inspired Bestia Centauri’s compositions. The genesis and development of a monstrosity is the theme of this new work, which charts a course from mutated unicellular sonic DNA to the resultant life-form that reaches "from the jaws of the dragon, from the depths of the abyss". With "X" and its deranged rhythmic outbursts, which suggest a creation gone radically wrong, with "Nebular Embryo", a microtonal and minimalist homage to the work of Giacinto Scelsi, and with "E Faucibus Draconis, E Profundis Barathri", a pure electroacoustic work of epic scope, Bestia Centauri demonstrates a new-found range and mastery in its work. Four years in the making, "Teratogenesis" represents Bestia Centauri's most mature mating to date of flowing soundscapes and electroacoustic sound design. It also represents a point of departure for even more radical works, to come. This albums comes as an Eibon Records / Afe co-production whose artwork was designed by Chris Donovan of Somnambulant." [label description] www.eibonrecords.com / www.aferecords.com | 2007 | €13.00 |
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| BETTIS, CHUCK | Sonic Sigils | mCD | Wieder eine empfehlenswerte Ausgrabung auf SCARCELIGHT aus der sich permanent erweiternden und weiter verzweigenden Geräusch- & Experimental-Szene. CHUCK BETTIS benutzt die psychologische „Spiegel“-Technik als Inspiration und schafft hier digitale Klanglandschaften von höchster Abstraktheit, für die Begriffe wie „Noise“ oder „Ambient“ nicht mehr relevant scheinen. Das Ganze fängt eher hektisch-dissoziiert an und bewegt sich langsam aber stetig in pulsierend-meditative Bereich.....digitale, metallische Klänge überwiegen. TIP for Explorers ! “There is some kind of menacing magic at work here. The magickal intonations captured on this disc were inspired by the acifist/psychological technique of calming people in heated conversations by catching up to the breathing of the upset person, then slowly, by utilizing your own breathing, slowing down their breathing by slowing down your own. This deluxe 3" CD features scratchy, fuzzed and distressed scrapes and burbling skittered fragments. Gorgeous graphics by Chuck himself. Contrasting mechanical whines, and tones, tiny microscopic signs of life all darting around in their droplet universe” [George Parsons./ Dream Magazine #5] | 2004 | €8.00 |
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| BEYOND SENSORY EXPERIENCE (B.S.E.) | Korrelations | CD | Vierte CD des B.S.E.-Projekts, welche eigentlich Bestandteil einer Box werden sollte. Unveröffentlichtes Material plus einige Remixe, teils rhythmisch, teils eher krachig ausgerichtet.... “The production of the anounced special box was cancelled ! but we will now produce a 4th CD in the BSE series with unreleased BSE material plus remixes by Mr. Nordvrgr, Alk0, Do Shaska, Alexxx & more” [label info] “....Obscure, rumbling, subterranean noise, typically BSE, can become trance, as disenchant, light or classic melody, in a gloomy crescendo like a mute horror soundtrack, in a powerful proceed comes close to martial cavalcades.”[Tanks] | 2004 | €13.00 |
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| Faint | CD | "With their new full-length album "Faint" Beyond Sensory Experience are back revisiting ghosts of the past to create memories of the future. Eleven divergent studies of transformation elements result in BSE’s most complete and intriguing album to date; full of liquid dark ambient soundscapes, salient samples and entrancing melodies. Hold your breath and close your eyes, when winter turns to water, day turns to Faint. Edition of 500 copies in 4 panel digi sleeve with 12 page booklet. 11 Tracks. Running Time 60:00" [label info] "They didn’t make us wait very long for a “Modern Day Diabolists” follow-up. Along with “Faint”, we have the opportunity once again to move away from the senses under the watchful eye of Drakh and K. Meizter. And because they’re fully fledged professionals, in this case also the trip on the edge of and even beyond the human self turns out to be very fruitful. Fruitful, but somehow familiar. Our fellow Swedes have defined their specific path for quite a while, they have their own unique style and sound and are sticking to it, leaving the battering down of this already open door to younger and more hot-headed travelers. It’s an experienced project, their aforementioned style is usually recognizable after only a few sounds – “Faint” isn’t at all different. I think even woken up in the middle of the night it would take me maybe a few seconds to pinpoint whose creations are filtering from the speakers. I never meant what those two nice Swedes do as dark ambient does. Certainly, the genre’s characteristics have always been to a larger or lesser extent present on previous albums, but they were never incorporating a typical, textbook darkness with particular relish. And with each consecutive release its amount becomes lesser and lesser. On “Faint” you practically won’t find the typical background-filling drones. This role is ascribed to either a stretched echo single guitar or piano tones (just listen to “Blank”), or simply silence which operates here on the same basis as the specific sounds, instruments, field recordings or samples. I always appreciated musicians who can play with silence. As for the album’s atmosphere, I could actually copy-paste here what I wrote about “Modern Day Diabolists”. Ethereal, dreamy parts, mesmerizing in a way, sometimes serene (“Bystanders”), sometimes pulsating with a distant, uncertain threat (such as in my favorite piece, “Legacy”). Sometimes it feels as if the Swedes deliberately want to lull the listener, so that all external protective barriers are down and then hit with horror, war or apocalypse. But it never happens, though you never know what lies beyond the horizon. Calm down, you can safely turn off for those few minutes. Beyond Sensory Experience doesn’t interfere with the bliss. It only gently wags its finger at us at times, saying that “next time there’s going to be a nightmare” (“Exhausted”), and we don’t have to believe the Swedes anyway. Probably in a year or two they’ll release another album, and again we’ll allow ourselves to be seduced by those ambient spaces, a pinch of post-rock atmosphere. We’ll smoke another cigarette, listening to the yearning, aching samples spoken in different languages… Another successful, very solid release by Beyond Sensory Experience and another – which one is it already – strong position in the Cyclic Law roster." [Stark/Santa Sangre] | 2013 | €13.00 |
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| BIANCHI, MAURIZIO (M.B.) | Celtichants | CD | "Lost and found all of a sudden, this album is the exploration made with the chanting voices of unknown nature. Choral fragments were decomposed and restructured, arranged with the effects and atmospheric shifts, creating the mysterious soundtrack to the otherworldly ceremony. These echoing voices are going directly from the lost memory or the daydreams, nobody can tell you where they are from, where they are calling you. Here are some words of the author, giving you just the hint but not the clear explanation. Postface : The knowledge exemplified affect distress to their natural peduncle environment. Destructive invention progressed towards purposes in some external fumes surroundings and deplete globalization performance bloody resources applied precipitous challenge. Developed simple efficient disrupt generations usually prominces changed damned systems especially from tightness with instrumental reason practical poisonous organized inorganic entities immaterial in the compulsive habitat. Wooden marginalization virtual techniques combine to produce skills processes for neurotic medical combined with additionally oppression formalize endeavor output engineering parasites investigation for principles among exclusively retrieve the challenge development advanced research in the excessive leading towards primitivism to dissolve the molesters emergence earliest alienates shape. Discovery allowed early multimedia digestibility progressivism sophisticated retractile for misanthropic domain transition with prominence contribute specialization adjacent a role processing alloys utensils near the harness evidence inhuman innovations borrowed structures. Advancements countless transit miniaturized resulting alienating after complex treatments support them, microfractures perform the entirety existence proponents morally pessimistic are increasing serious disarticulation chained with passionately communicate infrastructure to describe mortal lethargy perspective unique overall for muscular lucubrations. Limited edition of 500 copies in special packaging - custom made of textured paper with black/silver print, assembled by hand. Different colors available: china white, pearl white, lemon yellow, mallard green, lime green, concrete grey, dark grey, dark violet. Comes with the set of 3 photos of miocenic basalts made by Siegmar Fricke in Maspalomas (Gran Canaria Island)." [label info] www.alone-at-last.com | 2013 | €15.00 |
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| BIANCHI, MAURIZIO (M.B.) & CRIA CUERVOS | Azazel | CD | "Three long and “majestic” tracks where Maurizio Bianchi’s typical deep and reverberated sonorities, full of crepuscular melodies and subtle dissonances, get enriched by more electronic elements and fascinating elaborations, sophisticated manipulations and strong dynamic interventions operated by Crìa Cuervos… Three touching compositions built on progressive “crescendos” and a raging of slow sonic stratifications that lead to real “explosions” of sounds, drones, pulsations, frequencies, vibrations… A new, magnificent and very successful collaborative experience." [label info] www.silentes.net | 2009 | €13.00 |
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| BIANCHI, MAURIZIO / JAN-M. IVERSEN | Rekviem MB-JMI | CD | "A "classic" minimal ambient album; just one long track, a bit obscure, of a static nature but unarrestable as a matter of fact and slowly developing, built with layers of soft and “round” sounds, heavily processed and effected, whose origin seems to be an organ... "Atypical" for sure, if confrontated with the huge and widely diversified productions of Maurizio Bianchi, this new album is probably one of the last and not to be missed releases signed by “M.B.”, since he has already announced his definitive departure from the musical scene. Another extraordinary collaborative CD, involving this time Jan-M. Iversen, an artist of international fame who managed to enrich and elaborate with great effect the "sound materials" provided by Maurizio Bianchi." [label info] www.silentes.net "...Thirty seven minutes pure ambient bliss with a touch of experimentalism. One of the best works from either of them in recent years." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2011 | €12.00 |
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| BIANCHI, MAURIZIO & CLAUDIO ROCCHETTI | Alienation | CD-R | 5 tracks, professionally printed. Exciting tension-bath, deranged synth sounds, rough drones, pulses, microwaves, this is how ambient industrial should sound today. For a BIANCHI release this is highly chaotic and versatile, raw & dark! "Estranging sounds complex in five unusual recordings, edited and assembled in an alienor period of two years. Fantastic collaborative work; file under: experimental, concrete music, deep dark noise ambient.Limited to 700 copies only. Format: special professional silver CDr (= same quality and “look” of a CD) in beautiful digi-sleeve package. Maurizio Bianchi: tapes, radio waves, electronics, samples. Claudio Rocchetti: dusty analog devices. Mastered by Valerio Tricoli. Preface: A DANGEROUS TERMINAL DRAMA UNDER THE ACTUAL IMPROPER REVENUE OF ALIENATION WASTE, OF SOCIAL-CULTURAL SPHERISTERION, WHEN THE MAIN ELECTRONIC TOPICS IN THE VAN OF SHIFTLESS ACCESSORIES WAS PLANNED AS RESTRICTIVE SCULPTURES. THE VIOLATED ACTIVITIES, GRINDED OF THE EMBRYONIC INGREDIENTS REMAINED BETWEEN EXISTENTIAL INDIVIDUALISM AND TRANSFORMATION OF PARASITES WORTH, VISITING A RECREATIONAL ESTRANGEMENT. THE GRAVITATIONAL PEOPLE REMAIN INTERESTED WITH ELEMENTS OF PICTURED INTERIORS INSIDE A REFINED CRUELTY... THE BEST RESULTS ARE A DETERIORATION OF EDUCATION SYSTEM, THE ANALYSIS OF VARIOUS RETICULATED METROPOLIS, IN FRONT OF THE IMPURE HUMANIZATION OF INNOVATOR PROCESSES. THE PARTICULAR USE OF FANCIFUL CONCRETE-TONES LEAVE YOU WITH A GREAT IMPRESSION OF CHROMATIC CONSISTENCY, FAR AWAY FROM BUREAUCRATIC AND COMMERCIAL MORBIDITY." [label info] www.finalmuzik.com | 2008 | €10.00 |
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| BIANCHI, MAURIZIO & SPARKLE IN GREY | Nefelodhis | CD | Das Schwester-Album zu "Erimos" verknüpft melodische und mitunter fast andächtige Instrumentalklänge der italienischen Post-Rock Band SPARKLE IN GREY mit den z.T. obskuren Geräuschsounds von M.B. - das klingt manchmal dann fast nach GODSPEED oder anderen Post-Rock / Psychedelikern, sehr introvertiert und ruhig mit viel Violin-Einsatz... Namensgeber für die 8 Stücke sind Bezeichnungen verschiedener Wolkenformationen, sehr passend !! "Nefelodhis album was then recorded in few days in a totally improvised session where Sparkle in Grey, the ensemble of Alberto Carozzi (guitar, bass), Cristiano Lupo (piano, guitar, drums), Franz Krostopovic (violin) and Hue (laptop, objects), played melancholic melodies on the mysterious analogical and a-rhythmical soundscapes provided by MB. The results of these sessions, recorded into the factory where Sparkle in Grey are used to have their rehearsal, was assembled and mixed by Hue himself. As the sounds coming from MB were mainly analogical (treated guitars, DVD players, tapes and other unknown instruments), and as the laptop was used only in the mixing phase, the result is a dirty but very analogical mixture of sounds, where the concrete drony noises and the textures of violins and guitars melt in a quite uncommon way. Nefelodhis is a desperate but dreamy picture in sounds of the concept of clouds (in Greek 'Nefelodhis' means 'cloudiness') and, after the careful mastering of Giuseppe Ielasi, sounds like a trip through the wet lands made of vapor. Being part of a complex quadrilogy about the spaces Between the Elements, this records inaugurate a series of CDs of various experimental sounds, where Erimos (in Greek “Desert” is the second chapter, already available on the American label Digitalis Industries." [label info] www.freakofnature.it/coldcurrentprod | 2008 | €12.00 |
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| BIOMECHANICA | BM-01 | CD | "The 'BioMechanica' project marks the first collaboration between FRANCISCO LOPEZ and ARTURO LANZ (founder and member of the current ESPLENDOR GEOMÉTRICO tandem) after thirty years of an ongoing relationship. Their debut album, "BM-01", is the outcome of years of intense work in multiple cities across the world, from Beijing to Reykjavik all the way to Johannesburg. Raw power and original rhythms, together with an overwhelming sound complexity, a multi-channel spatial virtuality and a spectacular production come together in BioMechanica, synthesizing the insight and experience of two internationally acclaimed industrial/experimental music makers." [label info] www.geometrikrecords.com "Recently I had a discussion about musicians who produce a lot of work, and in that conversation also the name Francisco Lopez came up. A friend of mine admitted he gave up on Lopez some time ago, as he said there were too many similar works by him. You could, he argued, pick a few of the essential ones ('La Selva' and 'Buildings [New York]' being two that are always mentioned), but it was perhaps not necessary to collect all of his releases. I don't know: I am not really much of a collector but I can see his point. But I didn't hear BioMechanica when we talked about this. Lopez is, besides a producer of many CDs, also someone who collaborates with others, as he does here. Just as with remixes, it's always good to see something moving in a totally different area, and that's something that happens here. Lopez teams up with Arturo Lanz, the only original member of Esplendor Geometrico and maybe an unlikely partner for Lopez. Lanz plays 'germ rhythmic patterns' while Lopez is responsible for 'rhythmic pattern evolution, environmental recording mutations, composition, editing, mixing and mastering'. So Lanz recorded some of his trade mark rhythms, which we love for more than thirty years now, while in return Lopez adds his likewise trademark sound material. However this is not a question putting one and one together in the hope it's going to be two, which usually doesn't work. But that's not what Lopez does here. He cuts his sounds short(er) too, and creates a mechanical rhythm out of that too. His field recordings here sound like they found their origins inside a factory - hissing and bleeping of motors, sustaining sounds from mechanical devices and such like. That gives the music perhaps a sense of old fashioned industrial music but that is maybe the whole idea behind this. It works wonderfully well, especially when Lanz creates those banging industrial rhythms, such as in '01' and '05', which sound almost like Einsturzende Neubauten. A great release, almost like pop music, which is a rare thing for Lopez. So, yes, I can imagine people asking themselves why they should buy every new Lopez (related) release, but this one is actually very good - an essential one even (the future must proof this). And seeing they took a 'band' name, I wouldn't be surprised if there is more to come." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2012 | €14.50 |
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| BIOSPHERE | Dropsonde | do-CD | "Dropsonde was originally released by Touch (UK) in 2006. This is a reissue with seven previously unreleased recordings. Widely regarded as one of Norwegian electronic music's most important artists, Biosphere's [Geir Jenssen] career spans nearly two decades, several albums, lots of remixes, various sound installations, commissions, soundtracks and even the odd Himalayan summit. You may recognise his work without knowing it, so frequently does it crop up on TV trailers and idents. In the early 1990s he was a pioneer of so-called 'Ambient Techno', but since then, he has refined his sound into something more magnetic and enduring. Dropsonde' isn't a soundtrack like the interwoven 'Substrata' nor an episodic journey in the way that 'Autour de la Lune' is. Here Geir Jenssen is pushing new directions towards the jazz colours of Miles Davis and Jon Hassell, whilst re-invigorating the pulse and projection of his signature sound: a hypnotic combination of pleasure and dread. The spatial aspects some have dubbed "Arctic sound" but it summons strong feelings, or as Exclaim from Canada put it, "in order to climb higher, you must first go deeper". Jon Savage adds: "As with all of the Biosphere albums, the music draws you in and makes you want to listen and feel. Jenssen's work acts on a very emotional level, one that encourages you to drift away into a haze of images and scenes brought to you by the music, where spectacular beauty hides unseen danger. Intense and moving, but comforting and soothing at the same time." [A 'dropsonde' is a weather reconnaissance device designed to be dropped from an airplane or similar craft at altitude to take telemetry as it falls to the ground. It typically relays information to a computer in the dropping airplane by radio. The fall may be slowed by a parachute. Information collected by a typical dropsonde may include wind speed, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure.] https://biosphere.bandcamp.com/album/dropsonde-reissue-with-bonus-album | 2020 | €16.00 |
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| Dropsonde | 3 x LP | "Dropsonde was originally released by Touch (UK) in 2006. This is a reissue with seven previously unreleased recordings. Widely regarded as one of Norwegian electronic music's most important artists, Biosphere's [Geir Jenssen] career spans nearly two decades, several albums, lots of remixes, various sound installations, commissions, soundtracks and even the odd Himalayan summit. You may recognise his work without knowing it, so frequently does it crop up on TV trailers and idents. In the early 1990s he was a pioneer of so-called 'Ambient Techno', but since then, he has refined his sound into something more magnetic and enduring. Dropsonde' isn't a soundtrack like the interwoven 'Substrata' nor an episodic journey in the way that 'Autour de la Lune' is. Here Geir Jenssen is pushing new directions towards the jazz colours of Miles Davis and Jon Hassell, whilst re-invigorating the pulse and projection of his signature sound: a hypnotic combination of pleasure and dread. The spatial aspects some have dubbed "Arctic sound" but it summons strong feelings, or as Exclaim from Canada put it, "in order to climb higher, you must first go deeper". Jon Savage adds: "As with all of the Biosphere albums, the music draws you in and makes you want to listen and feel. Jenssen's work acts on a very emotional level, one that encourages you to drift away into a haze of images and scenes brought to you by the music, where spectacular beauty hides unseen danger. Intense and moving, but comforting and soothing at the same time." [A 'dropsonde' is a weather reconnaissance device designed to be dropped from an airplane or similar craft at altitude to take telemetry as it falls to the ground. It typically relays information to a computer in the dropping airplane by radio. The fall may be slowed by a parachute. Information collected by a typical dropsonde may include wind speed, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure.] https://biosphere.bandcamp.com/album/dropsonde-reissue-with-bonus-album | 2020 | €32.00 |
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| N-Plants | do-LP | "Geir Jenssen writes: Early February 2011: Decided to make an album inspired by the Japanese post-war economic miracle. While searching for more information I found an old photo of the Mihama nuclear plant. The fact that this futuristic-looking plant was situated in such a beautiful spot so close to the sea made me curious. Are they safe when it comes to earthquakes and tsunamis? Further reading revealed that many of these plants are situated in earthquake-prone areas, some of them are even located next to shores that had been hit in the past by tsunamis. A photo of Mihama made me narrow down my focus only to Japanese nuclear plants. I wanted to make a soundtrack to some of them, concentrating on the architecture, design and localizations, but also questioning the potential radiation danger (a cooling system being destroyed by a landslide or earthquake, etc). As the head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said: the plants were so well designed that 'such a situation is practically impossible'. The album was finished on February 13th. On March 17th I received the following message from a Facebook friend: 'Geir, some time ago you asked people for a photo of a Japanese nuclear powerplant. Is this going to be the sleeve of your new coming album? But more importantly: how did you actually predict the future? Kind regards, David." [label info] "Obviously we have to believe Geir Jenssen when he writes that in February he decided to make an album about Japanese post-war economic miracle, found a picture of a nuclear power plant, and wondered why so many are close to the sea, and what would happen if a tsunami would sweep the land? We know the answer by now. I assume Jenssen didn't make this story up as good line to sell a CD. Its been a while since we last heard Biosphere, a new work that is, as 'Patashnik' is still an ipod favorite here, and a work that breaks away, it seems, with the more recent ambient works. 'N-Plants' sees a return to the world of rhythm and that makes this quite a remarkable work. Biosphere going back to the world of dance music, although its hard to imagine people actually dancing to this. But if my crystal ball gazing is right, ambient house is soon to be on a revival trip, following the recent explosion in cosmic music, and then Biosphere can't do wrong. He plays here with the elements of cosmic music and adds nice minimalist beats to it. Loops of keyboard sounds, spiced with 4/4 minimal beats (more Cologne than Berlin) as well as layered drones of what might be more keyboards, or heavily processed field recordings, make up some great music, returning to his earlier music, but expanding it. Out are the voice samples, the beats are reduced to the bare minimum, the ambience is more to the foreground, making this another essential Biosphere record." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2020 | €32.00 |
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| Substrata (Alternative) | CD | Substrata was the third studio album by the Norwegian electronic artist Biosphere, released 25 years ago by All Saints Records in London. In 2016, Pitchfork ranked it at number 38 on its list of the 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time. Here are ten alternative versions picked from the Substrata recordings sessions that took place between 1995 and 1996. David Stubbs´review of the original album in Melody Maker ,July 12th 1997: Biosphere, aka Norwegian Geir Jenssen, is transmitting from a cold, polar outpost of the imagination. "Substrata" is the best ambient album I've heard in an ice age, an album of terrifying, desolate and all-enveloping beauty, the music of a man who's stared too long and too hard at the Northern lights, a music of distant rumbles, tremors underfoot, stray radio signals, yawning chasms and indistinct, grainy images in the half-light when the mind begins to play tricks. "Poa Alpina" reminds me of recent, frightening TV footage of vast chunks of iceberg cracking and falling away into the sea under the duress of global warming. As for "The Things I Tell You", imagine what Oasis would have sounded like had they been born Eskimos. "Sphere Of No Form" is shot through with a frantic peal like the Mayday song of the world's last whale and, best of all, "Kobresia" looms with a vast, mournful, symphonic motif, like the ghost of the Titanic. Chill out has never been this chilling. https://biosphere.bandcamp.com/album/substrata-alternative-versions | 2022 | €15.00 |
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| BIOTA | Object Holder | CD | “Stunning thorough worked piece that breaks new ground altogether; an extraordinary achievement, 3 years in the making and rewriting a lot of rules. Text and singing (Susanne Lewis, inimitably) Also features Charles Vrtacek (Piano), Andy Kredt (Guitar) and Chris Cutler (percussion, electrics, texts). A Dense, profound field of sound, music, silence.” [label info] " “Object Holder” is Biota’s 12th release and as we celebrate the origins of Biota with the re-release of the Mnemonists “Horde” (see AAJ April 99’ review) it seems appropriate to shed some light on Biota’s latest release. Analogous to the music and era depicted on “Horde” which was recorded 20 years ago, “Object Holder” is a fascinating endeavor that illustrates the impetus and cutting edge strides this band has made since the early 1980’s. Released in 1995 and recorded between 1992 and 1994, “Object Holder” contains 23 tracks that interweave, ultimately representing a series of dreamlike pieces as the musicians incorporate a vast array of acoustic, electronic and exotic instruments. Forever Einstein’s C.W. Vrtacek lends a helping hand on piano along with percussionist-composer Chris Cutler who handles percussion and electronics duties. The press kit alludes to the music being that of “a half remembered dream”. Prior to reviewing this CD and reading the press release, this writer immediately conjured thoughts or impressions that parallel that notion. Vocalist Susanne Lewis of the fine band “Thinking Plague” makes her debut with Biota on this release and supplies an angelic and multi-colored balance that rides on top of the textured yet highly abstract thematic developments and unusual rhythmic patterns. Unusual instrumentation such as Steve Scholbe’s use of a marxophone and rubab compliment the guitars, electronics, horns, accordion’s and pump organs. A hodgepodge of diverse instrumentation all add to the uniqueness of these pieces yet the blending, coloration and skillful implementation is what makes it all work. The music is dense yet prone to delve into ephemeral passages that catch the listener off guard. Biota explore different diatonic and chromatic regions by fusing or meshing sounds of instruments that emit unorthodox voicings as the outcomes are frequently compelling and quite interesting. Overall, Biota provides enchanting dreamscapes supplanted by odd thematic developments that contain elements of elasticity and musical shaping which adhere to a formula that is unique to this band. Comparisons are tough. Biota has created a deeply personalized style that has evolved over many years and needless to say; the music is enticing and picturesque which coincides with the colorful CD artwork by the Mnemonists. “Object Holder” gets **** ½ out of 5 stars." [All About Jazz] https://biota.bandcamp.com/album/object-holder | 1995 | €15.00 |
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| Funnel to a Thread | CD | "Gut zwei Jahre nach „Cape Flyaway“ meldet sich das amerikanische Avant-Rock-Kollektiv BIOTA mit einem neuen Album zurück. „Funnel To A Thread“ erscheint als CD auf RER. Seit ihrer Gründung 1979 (unter dem Namen MNEMONIST ORCHESTRA, später MNEMONISTS) beglücken BIOTA ihre weltweite, treu ergebene Fan-Schar mit in unregelmäßigen Abständen erscheinenden Alben, die stets als Gesamtkunstwerke aus Musik und Artwork zu verstehen sind. So vielseitig wie die musikalischen Einflüsse ist auch das Instrumentarium der elfköpfigen Formation: elektrische und akustische Gitarren, Hammond-Orgel, Micromoog, Trompete, Geigen, Bass, Akkordeon, Klavier, Percussion und gelegentlich Gesang schichten sich zu frei fl ießenden, kollagenartigen Songs, wobei Folk-Elemente als Leitmotiv dienen. BIOTA kreieren ihre ganz eigene Musikform, in der Zeit als dauerhaftes Kontinuum erscheint und nicht als stringente Abfolge von Ereignissen - experimentelle Psychedelia der ganz besonderen Art. Kristianne Gale: voice, strumstick; James Gardner: trumpet, kim; Tom Katsimpalis: electric, nylon, 12-string guitars, Crown bass, Clavioline, zither; Randy Miotke: Rhodes, trumpet, flutes; Charles O’Meara: piano; Mark Piersel: resophonic guitar, editing; William Sharp: mix, editing, electronic processing; Gordon Whitlow: Hammond electric & Estey pump organs, accordion, kaen, autoharp; Larry Wilson: kit drums, percussion, ranat, xylophone; Randy Yeates: Biomellodrone keyboard, Roland Space Echo; David Zekman: violin, mandolin, banjolin Since the late 1970s Biota has ploughed its own furrow, producing a body of work that resembles nothing anyone else has done or is yet doing. Their compositions evolve in long, constantly shifting timbral blocks filled with fragments and echoes of quasi-familiar musical languages. They use instrumental resources bridging half a millennium and two thirds of the planet to create unique combinations of texture, colour and movement. It’s a music of constant flux, dissolving, re-forming and mutating without agitation or stress, where motion and stasis blend into a single ambiguous condition. And although it will never arrive, the path, with its simultaneous familiarity and strangeness has an eerie power to compel. The recordings, as always from the Dys Studio, are meticulous and carefully constructed - the fused product of generation after generation of processing and mixing. There’s an almost Feldmanesque quality of necessity and unpredictabilty. The band now takes, on average, five years to prepare, record and finalise a new release. They’re in no hurry. BIOTA Founded in Colorado in the late 1970s, Biota's first recordings were released under the name of the Mnemonist Orchestra which, between 1980 and 1984, released five albums on its own label, before linking up with ReR in1984. That was also the year in which they split into an independent visual arts collective - which retained the Mnemonist name - and the recording project, Biota. Since which time, their releases have presented the work of both groups in tandem." [label info] www.rermegacorp.com "We should have known better. If Biota decide to come out with a new CD after “just” three years instead of leaving us to wait for the large part of a decade as always, the occurrence is presumably concealing specific implications. As if they were anxious of re-establishing a connection with preceding issues without losing the grip on the chain of circumstantial matters that originates the current visions. So here we are, celebrating Funnel To A Thread as a foundational chapter in the collective’s history, possibly standing among their all-time best if such prosaicness makes sense. But maybe – just maybe – this will encourage at least a portion of the populations still shamefully unfamiliar with the subject to ultimately deepen it. Let me be straight. Someone as, say, The Residents have managed to reach cult status via marketable mysteries and a body of work which, in terms of musical depth, is mainly insignificant. What are Biota to do – besides producing beautiful, fulfilling, seriously groundbreaking albums accompanied by jaw-dropping artworks – to be formally welcomed in the elite of veritable contemporary innovators? The connoisseur will never cease to fight against the ignorance surrounding this rewarding acoustic macrocosm. A place where past, present and future are literally embraced by the same kind of emotional reverberation. Where conscious species of listeners inevitably find answers to essential questions that appeared impossible to decode before. Where a concatenation of short episodes streaming without solution of continuity leads through a lifetime of intuitions that had been kept for ourselves to date, and now – at last – we can stamp as “right”, not really caring about sharing them. These people produce sounds that naturally regulate our synchronous response to a physical energy directly connected with what the trade brands as “cosmic vibe”, in spite of an external appearance often relating to finely aging forms of folk expression. How they manage to do this remains an enigma. Twenty-one tracks conscientiously played and painstakingly assembled, rooted in clearly perceptible influences, morphing as clouds in an autumn sky. Katsimpalis and Piersel’s guitars are a conspicuously driving presence, textbooks of heartfelt arpeggios and bucolic phrases which made me consider the bygone existence of a John Fahey / Neil Young hybrid. Gale’s vocal shards appear suddenly to instantly run away, a grace too shy to be evaluated. Whitlow’s accordion scientifically places signposts of reassurance when things seem to turn towards a mild turbulence. Zekman’s violin tells of the inevitability of a goodbye, minus the tears. O’Meara’s pianistic interventions are simple and unresolved at once, magniloquence removed from the vocabulary. Sharp’s typically masterful hands and ears exalt details that usually stay unnoticed, the audio landscape disclosing a palette of ineffable amorphousness around precisely defined arrangements and spatializations, more than anywhere else in the band’s recorded output. Mixing skills that nobody knows, except those who smile instinctively hearing words like “Tumble” or “Tinct”. Favorites? Quite absurd to ask: a Biota album is, by definition, a whole movie. However, in truth there are scenes that linger on; were this writer forced to choose with a gun pointed at his temple, the transition between “Understory” and “Numberless Years” might liquefy a hardened heart at any given moment. Biota is an entity that attributes fresh meanings to the concept of altruism, for this music is a richness for anybody willing to dive in. An unpretentious assertion of confidence surrounded by colors conveying humanity and nostalgia, with an unremitting focus on clever ways to distil sonic significance from the forthcoming." [Massimo Ricci / touching extremes] | 2015 | €15.00 |
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| Fragment for Balance | CD | After 4 years of work on their 11th release for ReR, this extraordinary, reclusive, and highly individual audio-visual collective continues to evolve through the painstaking accumulation and disposition of a seemingly incompatible range of both exotic and familiar musical languages, instruments, techniques and studio manipulations into one of the few genuinely original bands at work today. It took a long time to refine their unique process of composition to this level of ambiguity and depth and newcomers will wonder how they strayed so far from orthodoxy and yet managed to retain a lucidity and transparency that is quite rare in contemporary music. Timeless, almost weightless - yet teeming with life, motion and complexity - this is a music that suggests an untroubled world in which nostalgia, tragedy and agon, while rudely present, remain subservient to deeper, calmer currents. Sic transit gloria mundi. The bullet points are that Biota is a unique project, defying genre with, like all such cult artists, a small but extremely dedicated public that, over the last 15 years has grown continuously as new listeners discover them. BIOTA Founded in Colorado in the late 1970s, Biota's first recordings were released under the name of the Mnemonist Orchestra who, between 1980 and 1984, released five albums on its own label, before linking up with ReR in 1984. That was also the year in which they split into an independent visual arts collective - retaining the Mnemonist name - and the recording project, Biota. Since then, their releases have presented the work of both groups in tandem. http://biotamusic.com/ https://biota.bandcamp.com/album/fragment-for-balance "Für ihren 11ten bei Recommended Records (oder ReR Megacorp) veröffentlichen Tonträger (EP, LP oder CD) haben sich Biota aus Fort Collins in Colorado wieder etwas mehr Zeit gelassen. Nachdem 2014 "Funnel to a Thread" erschienen war, legte man erst einmal eine längere Pause ein, um dann vom Frühjahr 2016 bis in den Herbst 2018 hinein das neue Album einzuspielen. Das Ergebnis - "Fragment for Balance" - wurde schließlich im Frühling 2019 veröffentlicht. Das Album kommt in einem bunten Digipack, versehen mit einem dicken Beiheft voller expressionistisch-tiefsinniger Bilderwerke. Die ersten 150 Exemplare beinhalten - wenn man direkt beim Label bestellt - zudem einen kleinen Pappschuber, in dem ein originale, von Tom Katsimpalis gestaltete Bildcollage steckt. Sehr edel! Offenhörlich haben Biota ihren Stil gefunden, bewegt sich doch die auf "Fragment for Balance" zu findende Musik in sehr ähnlichen Gefilden, wie die des direkten Vorgängers. Die Besetzung ist zudem identisch. Allerdings scheint mir "Fragment for Balance" etwas homogener und klangvoller voran zu fließen. Eine recht eigenartige folkig-elektronische Kammermusik gibt es auf "Fragment for Balance" zu hören, oder einen seltsamen elektronisch-kammermusikalischen Avant-Folk, bestimmt von filigranem Akustikgitarrengeschrammel, Violinenklängen, allerlei Blaswerk, analog-elektronischen Tastensounds, Piano, Harmonium, Akkordeon und diverser Perkussion. Deren Tonerzeugnisse werden (teilweise effektverfremdet) mit verschiedensten Elektronikgebilden, komplexen Tonskulpturen und prozessierten Klangfragmenten unterlegt, bzw. von diesen verwoben, so dass sich das Album als lange und vielteilige, elektronisch-akustische Suite voran arbeitet, bei der die einzelnen Nummern ineinander übergehen. Über all dem schwebt Kristianne Gales wunderbarer, gälisch-folkiger und ätherisch-luftiger Gesang. Im Vergleich zu früheren Alben, insbesondere denen aus den 80er- und 90er-Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts, ist die rezentere Musik von Biota eher ruhig, fast sanft gehalten, wobei dieselbe immer ausgesprochen unkonventionell dahin gleitet. Dies trifft auch auf "Fragment for Balance" zu, welches stilistisch Folk, experimentelle Elektronik, moderne Kammermusik und eine Art von Avantrock zu einem dichten, sehr homogenen und seltsam gewichtslosen Ganzen vereinigt. Sorgfältig geplant und komponiert arbeitet sich die Musik voran, dissonant aber friedlich, gleichzeitig erstaunlich harmonisch, rund und vertraut, dann aber wieder sperrig und ausgesprochen fremdartig. E-Gitarre, Bass und Schlagzeug sorgen dafür, dass es immer mal wieder rockt, doch arbeitet sich der Großteil der Musik eher formlos voran, ohne aber auf Struktur und Zielstrebigkeit zu verzichten. Momente unglaublicher, fast absurder Schönheit wechseln sich mit schrägem Plingen und Hallen ab, mit voluminös-symphonischen Tonschüben, wolkigen Klanggebilden, akustisch-kammermusikalischen Abschnitten, dynamischen RIO-Prog-Momentaufnahmen, repetitiv-minimalistischen Exkursen und wirren Tondurcheinandern. Chris Cutler bezeichnet Biota als eine der 'few genuinely original bands at work today', und dem möchte ich durchaus zustimmen. So wie Biota klingt derzeit keine andere Band auf dieser Welt. Wer progressive Musik in einem folkig-elektronisch-freiformatigen Kontext schätzt, der sollte "Fragment for Balance" (und "Funnel to a Thread") kennen." [Achim Breiling / Babyblaue Seiten] "As obvious as this may sound, the years run way faster as one grows older. When Biota announced the release of Fragment For Balance, my delight in receiving a new bulletin from the collective “after not so long” was soon replaced by the mild shock of realizing that their previous outing Funnel To A Thread had been published in 2014. I wasn’t paying attention to all those months flying away (to paraphrase another title from the group’s discography). Even worse, this period was rendered heavier by two major losses in Biota’s universe. In 2015, visual artist Joy Ann Froding left this planet following the successful surfing of an ocean wave; in 2018, multi-instrumentalist Charles “Chuck” O’Meara (formerly Vrtacek) suffered a heart attack while he was cutting wood to warm his winter. In the sadness, it is somewhat relieving to note the natural ambience of these occurrences, presuming that Froding and O’Meara were in a comfortable place inside when the call from nowhere came. The album is dedicated to them, and the artwork commemorating the pair on the accompanying booklet – a flower and a bird embedded in unique Mnemonists shades – nearly caused this writer’s tired eyes to well up. That ear-gracing piano inevitably puts the soul in “still here with us” mode; Chuck was, and forever will be, a certified Biot. Every single snippet of the multitude of sketches, proposals and fully fledged visions represents a piece of fertile ground for sensible roots. Yet the process of absorption doesn’t really happen through the listener’s mind, exploiting instead the most unconventional features of sympathetic resonance. There’s always been a touch of magic in William Sharp’s slight defacement of arrangement and equalization, be it a chiaroscuro of off-key echoes or the enhancement of quietly intertwining arpeggios. Throughout the 26 (!) consecutive tracks comprised by the program – duration from 0’38” to 9’48” – the achievement of a flawless amalgamation of tunings, melodic intelligibility and aural daydreaming remains at the core. The instruments shine brighter than ever, with particular regard to guitars (Tom Katsimpalis and Mark Piersel) and violin (David Zekman). They seem to trace coordinates and paths to places of blinding light amidst the hand-woven textural patchworks and gentle superimpositions informing the orchestration. Apropos of that, flashes of enlightenment are born from the melting of a larger number of voices (including Kristianne Gale’s apparitions, a singing mermaid in a sea of wistful refractions). Keyboard constructions totally deprived of preset futility lie at the basis of revealing harmonic disseminations, Gordon Whitlow’s accordion and Hammond organ strengthening the sonic tissue with typical wisdom. Also notable is the role of Randy Miotke, his trumpet and flugelhorn supporting the contrapuntal constitution, and its various transmutations. Larry Wilson’s drums emerge in unexpected spots, attributing hues of temporal non-existence to otherwise regular rhythmic cells. And so on and so forth, one would have to conclude. It’s been decades by now, yet attempting to describe the essences emanated by Biota’s garden still makes me feel stupid, or useless, or both. Nevertheless, the sensation of understanding a little morsel every time – of the music itself, of the fight against big-mouthed superficiality, of the painful impossibility of communicating with lesser levels of perception – is incomparable. In less than ten minutes, a track like “Walking Is Missing” teaches much more than the millions of words spewed by cretins most everywhere. When that packet from Colorado materializes, my gradually greying beard doesn’t matter anymore. All it takes is sniffing the cover’s scent, observing once again the profound art of human beings who do not accept commands, or foolish indications, by anyone. And, of course, spinning the disc without putting the finger on the whys and the whos. Just intuiting the actual reasons of aliveness, and envisioning our future merging with the meaningful consequences of the acoustic laws. Or, as good ol’ Chuck would have it, “learning to be silent”." [Massimo Ricci] | 2019 | €15.00 |
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| BJERGA / IVERSEN | (Go with the Flow) like a Twig on the Shoulders on a mighty stream | CD | * BJERGA / IVERSEN - (Go with the Flow) like a Twig on the Shoulders of a mighty Stream CD (TIBProd 100, 2008) € 12.00 Zusammenstellung von 12 Stücken von dem norwegischen drone/noise/impro-Duo, die in den letzten Jahren mit ZIG CDR releases präsent waren. Ihre Drones sind nicht edel, harmonisch, oder grossartig strukturiert, sondern low-fi, dreckig, feedbackend, obertönend, als Klangquellen kommen allerlei Instrumente, Objekte und Effektpedals zum Einsatz... das erinnert an ähnliche Sachen von MY CAT IS AN ALIEN oder BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL... als komprimierte Compilation ein kurzweiliger Überblick im Booklet ausführliche liner notes von Tobias Fischer (Tokafi). ".... A fine introduction into four years of hyper activity from two minds from the Nor-scene. Lots of guitars, lo-fi electronics, mild distortion, waving minimalism and lengthy drones, this is what their world is made off. Their selection is very fine, I'm pretty sure I would have picked similar pieces from their catalogue - the more quite lengthy drone pieces of buzzing electronics and fine guitars. I can imagine you can't collect all fifty previous releases, but if you need one, then why not this one?" [FdW / Vital Weekly] www.tibprod.com | 2008 | €12.00 |
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| BJERGA, SINDRE & NILS ROSTAD | Live at Moving Furniture Records | CD-R | "Split album between Sindre Bjerga and Nils Rostad recorded live at Moving Furniture Records HQ on 8-03-2011. The CD-R comes in handmade eco-pack sleeves with pictures of both artists glued on them. The names are handwritten on each side. There is also a hand-numbered pro-printed insert. Includes unlimited streaming of Live at Moving Furniture Records HQ via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more." [label info] www.movingfurniturerecords.com | 2011 | €7.50 |
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| BJÖRGULFSSON, HEIMIR & JONAS OHLSSON | Fur Your Bears Only | CD | Looking for some strange music? Here it is.. Der Ex-STILLUPPSTEYPA hier in Zusammenarbeit mit einem gewissen Jonas OHLSSON quälen uns mit Mutanten-Techno inkl. schnuckeligen BÄREN-Samples, hochabstraktem digitalen Microwave-Gebruzzel, undefinierbaren field-recordings mit hohem Abartigkeitsfaktor, Stille, und was sonst nicht noch alles.. und dann noch solche Titel wie „My Arse Glitches“, und Bären-Collagen auf dem Cover! Coverartwork, Titelgebung, Musik = Popmusik an der Grenze zum Irrsinn, frische Neurotransmitter für eingerostete Synapsen. “heimir björgúlfsson is an ex-member of the longstanding icelandic group stilluppsteypa and jonas ohlsson is a reknowned visual artist, both based in amsterdam, the netherlands. "fur your bears only" is their second collaboration after the "unspoken word tour" album in the brombron series released by staalplaat and extrapool. "fur your bears only" is the most melodic and poppy music ever to have come out of björgúlfsson & ohlsson, providing 8 tracks that show how disco & house can get distorted once in the hands of these two gentlemen. from the epic opening 10-minute title track onwards this work is full of abstract dancefloor sympathies.” [press release] | 2003 | €13.00 |
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| BLACK DICE | Creature Comforts | CD | Noch ein heisser Anwärter für den Seltsamkeits-award; super seltsame, surrealistische Hawai-gitarren, lazy beats, elektronische pulses, schwankend & leiernd der Sound, irgendwo befinden sich auch Stimmen (Gesang kann man das nicht nennen), kurzum: undefinierbar, unbewertbar, unergründlich. Einfach klasse schräg. „Jim O’Rourke hat einmal so boshaft wie zutreffend bemerkt, dass es etwas anderes ist zu improvisieren oder nur improvisierte Musik zu spielen, sprich, sich selbst zu imitieren. Insofern muss man mit Creature Comforts (FATCD32) konstatieren, dass BLACK DICE keine BLACK DICE-Musik spielt, sondern BLACK DICE mit jedem Release neu erfindet. In radikaler Abkehr von der Voodoo-Psychedelic von Miles Of Smiles entfaltet ihre neue CD in unverhofft Miro’scher Heiterkeit eine elektropopig-surreale Skurrilität. Ausser dem Nenner „weird“ scheint die Bandästhetik komplett ausgetauscht. Ein flockiger Cartoon-Leichtsinn kapriolt durch acht Tracks, die aus vielen undichten Ventilen wie Gameboys dudeln und wie R2D2 zwitschern. Es eiert, loopt, wabert und schwip-schwapt auf sämtlichen Synthie-, Chorus- und vor allem Gitarrenspuren, die Percussionabteilung ist dafür weitgehend paralysiert. Das Ganze verhält sich zu Kraut wie Jad Fairs Best Wishes & Half Robot zu Punk. Heftige Dub-Effekte lassen 80s-Elektro-Trash abdriften in Richtung Mondo Exotica 2001 - Odyssee im Kinderzimmer. Vier 1-2-Minuten-Knirpse odradeken um die 6- bis 9-minütigen Freak-Epen „Treetops“, „Creature“ und „Night Flight“ und den viertelstündigen Monolithen „Skeleton“, ein tapsiges Schreckgespenst, durch dessen Rippen Gitarren und Synthies jämmerlich jaulen. Während man vorne ein Mona-Lisa-Lächeln geschenkt bekommt, steigen auf der Rückseite hinter den sieben Bergen Sprechblasen wie Rauchzeichen auf. Genau dazwischen, in der Hirnrisszone, inszenieren BLACK DICE ihr Happening, das die Nerven etlicher Mucker blank legt: „Lärmbelästigung!“ „Hirnmüll“ direkt aus der Klapse... bekloppte Katastrophe für unmusikalische Gefühlsambutierte“... „Musik von und für Nerds.“ (Intro-„Probefahrt“) Köstlich. [BAD ALCHEMY 44] "This is the official follow-up to their DFA debut CD and Double LP Beaches & Canyons. It finds the band pushing in yet another direction, at once unmistakably Black Dice, and noticeably different. Recorded with Steve Revitte (Liars, Kill Me Tomorrow), the DFA & Nicolas Vernhes (Fisherspooner, Fiery Furnaces). Venturing further into their own psychedelic, increasingly electronic world, Creature Comforts is as expansive, experimental and structurally unique as its predecessor, but there is a new sense of playfulness and accessibility mixed with naïve wonder and not-quite-steady rhythms. It is hazy, dreamy, but they have suddenly emerged as a band with an untouchably original terrain, mixing dub, tropicalia and the entire history of psychedelic rock music into one heady concoction." [press release] | 2004 | €14.00 |
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| BLACK SUN PRODUCTIONS | Im Gegenteil | mCD | BLACK SUN PRODUCTIONS beweisen auf dieser 4-track mcd eindrucksvoll, dass sie mehr sind als schwule COIL-Jünger, elektronisch – rhythmisch – experimentell – philosophisch geprägt und sehr eigenständig klingen ihre Stücke, fantastisch das tribal-hypnotisierende „Das Gegenteil“. “Best known in some quarters for their collaboration with Coil in some of the band's most iconoclastic live installations and for their epic performance project Plastic Spider Thing, Black Sun Productions' children of darkness are about to release the official follow up to last year's highly acclaimed operettAmorale. Black Sun Productions' Im Gegenteil unveils new material from the forthcoming full length album The Impossibility Of Silence (A Well Hung Monk; God?) as well as a two exclusive non album tracks (Clear Skies & Dark Skies; Das Gegenteil). "It's musick for the Church Of Body. There is a powerful technotic, entrancing pulse that runs through the session dancing between the sacred and the profane. Sometimes there is a strong tribalistic rhythm, at others a granular flicker of the taste of electrickery. ”Darius Akashic, Crooked Stylus" Written, produced and performed by draZen, Pierce & Massimo. Released by Sheela-Na-Gig Sha-Na Penisring Ning [a sub of DANHUSER Org.] ”Ariot Fleischmann, black-sun-productions.com” [press release] | 2006 | €10.00 |
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| BLACK SUN PRODUCTIONS & VAL DENHAM | Somewhere between Desire and Despair | CD | "After a couple of collaborations on tracks, Black Sun Productions finally get together with Val Denham for a full length release. Val Denham might be best known for her paintings that have appeared on releases by Marc and the Mambas, Psychic TV... but over the past few years she has been releasing short-run CD-Rs of her lo-fi sounds. Homosexual overtones inform much of Black Sun Productions material but with Val Denham, a transgendered figure, the focus moves on to a new form of sexuality. Somewhere Between Desire and Despair opens with the haunting atmospheric drone of 'A Tale of Two Cities' with Denham reciting lines from Charles Dickens. From then on much of the first half of Somewhere Between Desire and Despair flirts with various forms of electronic music. It's clear from 'Cobalt Blue' that Massimo and Pierce haven't forgotten their past association with Coil, as it picks up on the rhythmic shuddering Coil-like electronics with Denham's voice pitched deep and treated, alongside passages of sped-up processed vocals. Val Denham is something of a character and, at times, she sounds like a Northern housewife reared on a diet of glam records. 'Stars', a Denham collaboration with Testing Vault, goes all downbeat with dark electronics, featuring Denham's idiosyncratic take on a pop vocal. Denhams' voice is almost helium-fuelled on the disco-chug of 'We Are The Hydrogen'. 'Eat Us Mother!' foregoes the electronics for a surprisingly sparkly run through post-punk dynamics. Denham picks up on a rock persona teasing the listener with her shrieky and screechy vocal careering over booming bass and discordant guitar scrapes from her longtime collaborator Oli Novadniek. Things slow down in the next half with a collection of evocative tracks, much in the vein of Black Sun Productions fantastic OperettAmoralle. The disorientating queasy electronics of 'Absinthe' has Denham relating a tale of alcohol abuse, evoking the Green fairy alongside some effective harmonium and harmonica drone. Many of the tracks here use mournful orchestration taken from a track called 'Morphium' - though the source isn't given. 'Andromeda' taps into the mind of the transgendered artist. It's almost poetic as Denham delivers a spoken vocal in her homely Northern tones. Much more poignant is 'Flowers In The Trenches' which tells of transgendered and transexual soldiers who fought in WWI. Amidst sombre strings and military snare drum rolls Denham speaks of those unnamed and forgotten soldiers who were, in fact, "women in their heads" fighting in another "man-made catastrophe" and "suffered for nothing". Enlightening stuff. Val Denham really shines on the campy theatrics of 'I Try To Kill The Man' over the Weimar Berlin cabaret sounds of 'Das Lila Lied', an early 20th century homosexual anthem, here performed by the Ophelia Orchestra. Similarly 'Emerald Green' uses the score of Marlene Dietrich's 'Such Trying Times'. Denham is finely positioned to evoke the decadence, sexual transgression and dark wit with her sarcasm and style. Black Sun Productions have, of course, produced their own musical tribute on the works of Bertolt Brecht to tremendous effect and Denham's contributions don't disappoint. Somewhere Between Desire and Despair is much more fun-filled than previous Black Sun Productions. It strikes a balance between electronic music and cabaret music, and a balance between poignancy and absurdity. It's not the most coherent release, partly due to the varied list of collaborators, but Val Denham manages to carry it all off with a verve and panache, informed by her strength of character, her honesty and humour. Somewhere Between Desire and Despair comes in a 6-panel digipak with wonderful representations of Val Denham's artwork." [Review by Compulsion] www.touretterecords.com | 2009 | €13.00 |
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| BLACK TO COMM | Rückwärts Backwards | CD | “Black To Comm is an alias for Dekorder label owner Marc Richter's audio excursions. "Rückwärts Backwards" is his debut full-length album recorded between 2003 and 2005 in his adopted hometown Hamburg and his childhood home in the Black Forest located in the south of Germany. With a background in many musical styles (from Psychedelia to pure Computer Music) BTC's music is never easy to pin down. This album is essentially created from scratchy shellac and vinyl loops merged with ambience field recordings (with some voice manipulations and kitchen gamelan thrown in for good measure). The warm hiss of analogue recording techniques combined with the apparently antique sounds of vintage organs, acoustic & electric guitars, pianos, glockenspiel and mbira used on these tracks generate a kind of hyperreal, fake nostalgia playing with one's perception of a pseudo-recollection. The layering and hypnotic repetition of short loops extracted from old Psychedelia, Free Jazz, Vaudeville and Traditional records reveal a haunting melodic quality sometimes not distinguishable within the original source material, evoking a hovering feeling of bittersweet melancholy with an omnipresent, slightly disturbing atmosphere hidden beneath the surface.The 8 songs constantly sway back and forth between simple, almost naive arrangements and dense surreal drones with rare, yet intense distorted climaxes making this album one constantly absorbing listening experience.” [label info] “First of all this CD is beautifully packaged with a tri-fold disc holder. Each picture bears its own character (blurry forest with handscrawled text, a sleeping cat, and what appears to be an old wallpaper pattern) But on to the music. Black to Comm (aka Marc Richter who also runs Dekorder) knows how to keep it short and sweet with 8 songs clocking in at under 37 minutes. Ruckwarts Backwards opens with the aptly titled 'Bees' some gentle buzzing of said insect is later accompanied by some child-like hums, this gives way to the second song 'Levitation' which is a gentle soundscape of rising and falling organ tones backed by a field recording. 'Lucifer Lacca' ushers in an operatic vocal loop that reaches crescendo and ends with another bit of children's singing. The feel is still subdued and continues throughout the record, I'm reminded at times of Tape, not so much in sound but in how I feel while listening to them. The title track is a series of interlocking vibraphone melodies that are augmented by computer processing. The computer treatments are more of an enhancement rather than something that would radically alter the source sounds. Track 5 is my personal favorite with a minimalist and slightly buzzing drone that cross-fades with a quieter drone. The remainder of the album hits just the right drone spot! Minimal loops with a somber feel, that guides you right to the end. The credits list microphones, voice, and kitchen gamelan, and Marc is good at assembling seemingly unrelated segments into gently blurred landscapes that roll by with an ease and comfort. In a few words..... simple, and elegant. Ruckwarts Backwards follows a self titled 10" also on Dekorder. Very curious to hear to more from this project” [CJ / Vital Weekly] | 2005 | €13.00 |
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| Fractal Hair Geometry | CD | "Black To Comm is the solo venture of Dekorder label boss Marc Richter. Having released two and a half albums on his own label he is slowly establishing himself as one of the more prolific drone artists out there with a forthcoming album on the American Digitalis label, a collaborative CD with Datashock on Ikuisuus, a 7" on the Irish Trensmat label and a collaboration with Xela in the works. "Fractal Hair Geometry" is Richter's most refined and original work to date, picking up where the electrifying drone works of his monumental Double-LP left off. Like the last records this album is centered around recordings of a variety of vintage organs. While "Wir können leider..." often featured pure harmonium sounds and spacious recordings of chuch organ and mellotron, the new album opts for a more electronic, effects-laden sound, sending an old Farfisa Compact Deluxe and Casio SK-5 through an armada of analogue & digital effects pedals. The results are massive one-chord drones layered into dense & ecstatic, flickering & pulsating clusters of psychedelic electronic sound. Additional wordless vocal effects, hyperventilating & sizzling drum machines and hypnotic violin and guitar noises make for a hyperactive sound that never stands still even though most of the music is pure drones (sometimes consisting of more than 50 recording layers). Decidedly simple but gorgeous melodies shine through the mist from time to time, making a Black To Comm record always much more accessible than your average drone album. There's even a heavy 4/4 bass drum smuggled into a track dedicated to the late Leigh Bowery, one of the most enigmatic creative figures of the mid-80's UK club scene (and singer of Minty). Guests include Jonna Karanka (aka Kuupuu) on piano, Guido Möbius on trumpet and current Black To Comm (live) band members Renate Nikolaus on violin and Ulf Schütte (of Datashock, Aosuke, etc.) adding electronic sounds. Along the lines of the music, seminal German artist Oliver Ross has created a massive multi-layered neon-coloured collage artwork which is printed on special ultra-heavy cardboard stock." [label info] "..Chanted vocals, whirring organs, mysterious shimmers, squiggly melodies, buzzing Theremins, electronic glitches, analog synths, wheezing harmoniums, and those are just guesses, cuz just like that museum exhibit, it's difficult to tell what the source sounds are. We also didn't try that hard. It's like trying to peek under the table to see how a magician does a trick. We don't want to know. It's more fun to get lost in these mysterious sounds. One track even introduces a muted techno throb, and for a brief second it sounds like the weirdest record Kompakt never released. It's really hard to describe this stuff, which is probably why we like it so much, check out the sound samples, and hear for yourself!" [Aquarius Records review] www.dekorder.com | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| Alphabet 1968 | CD | "Marc Richter alias Black To Comm ist kein Newcomer auf dem Feld der elektronischen Musik. Als Kopf des in Hamburg ansässigen Labels Dekorder hat der Musiker und Designer die Musikfans schon mit zahllosen Kuriositäten beglückt, mit seinen eigenen Kompositionen machte er allerdings am meisten Furore. Richter ist ein Pionier auf seinem Gebiet: Mit Bandschleifen, alten Orgeln und einer Flut zufällig gefundener Sounds schuf er einen ganz eigenen, organischen Drone-Sound. Mit "Alphabet 1968" indes bewegt sich Richter eher hin zu klassischen Mustern, hin zu Songs (in Ermangelung eines besseren Begriffs). Kurze Stücke, die für ihn Meilensteine repräsentieren, die ihn wiederum an seine Lieblingsplatten erinnern. So entstanden zehn atemberaubende Songs, die über 45 Minuten Weltmusik, Techno, Noise, Avantgarde, Ambient und sogar Exotica streifen, die Reverenzen reichen dabei von Moondog über Basic Channel bis zum Soundtrackkomponisten Bernard Herrmann. Jedes Stück ist mit elektrostatischem Radiorauschen unterlegt, das einen durch das Album wie auf einer alten Senderskala wandern lässt. // A sprawling epic of a record from Hamburg's omnipresent Marc Richter. Marc Richter (aka Black to Comm) is no newcomer to the experimental music scene. As the figurehead of the Hamburg-based Dekorder label, the musician and designer has brought countless oddities to the attention of rabid music fans in the last few years, but it is with his own compositions that he has made the biggest splash. Releasing for a plethora of labels including Digitalis, Trensmat and of course his own imprint, he has pioneered a new, organic drone sub-genre using tape loops, vintage organs and an inexhaustible swamp of found sounds. With this latest album however, it was Richter’s intention to move away from the epic drones he had made his own and into something more ‘classic’. The mission statement for ‘Alphabet 1968’ was to write an album of ‘songs’ for want of a better word. Short tracks which represented genre points, the milestones which stuck in Richter’s mind when he thought back to his favourite records. What we arrive at is an breathtaking ten track album which, over the course of forty-five minutes, explores world music, techno, noise, avant-garde, ambient music and even exotica. Each track is linked with a loose thread of radio static or environmental sound, dragging you through the album as if tuning in to a stray broadcast or a particularly adventurous mix. Richter has pieced the album together from hours of recordings made at his studio with home made gamelan, small instruments and loops gathered from a collection of ancient vinyl and 78 records. The scope of the album is admirable but ignoring this it is simply a shockingly arresting collection of experimental oddities, with references ranging from Moondog to Basic Channel by way of the Bernard Herrmann. It’s not hard to fall in love with ‘Alphabet 1968’, far harder would be to place exactly where the record should fit into your collection." [label info] www.typerecords.com | 2009 | €15.00 |
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| BLACKHUMOUR | Selected Pieces | CD | "since the time i came across ‘romance’ LP (on korm plastics, netherlands) and the ‘two women’ tape (on sph, spain) almost 20 years ago fell in love with the work of blackhumour, and his simple but Immersive way of playing with the human voice (be it found sound or recorded by himself), its transformation and the way he perceived his universe and his approach. in ‘selected pieces’ we find recordings done mostly in the 00’s culled from his archives for this release showing in almost the best way his sound in various manifestations (be it harsh, bizarre or mesmerizing like the ‘incantatory’ piece based upon the sounds of a hypno-dominatrix). and couldn’t find a better release to coincide with the outbreak of my new fanzine ‘emvoes’. housed in a foldout poster this release can be seen either as a cd, an audiopostcard, an audiozine or whatever situation the listener wants to find himself into…" [label info] blog.noise-below.org "probably one of the more curious careers in music: blackhumour, who spells it without capitals, like any thing he writes really. so we humour him with this review without capitals. curious career, since in the late 80s he was active on the cassette scene, released a lp even, and then seemed to have disappeared and releases have become more sparse since then. what i enjoyed back then about the music of blackhumour was the consistent use of only voice material, which he cut into loops and layered them together, very much like steve reich did with his 'come out' and 'it's gonna rain'; in later he work blackhumour cut phrases out of conversations and moved them around, creating new contexts. that work appealed less to me, i must admit. the six selected pieces here are from the period 1996 to 2002 and hold the middle ground between those 'heavy' drone like pieces from the early years and the cut 'n paste pieces of later. repetition plays a big role here, and most of the time it seems like not much is changing here - except for 'arbitrary', which seem to contain glitches from the digital audio tape it was once recorded on (unless this is a dirty cd), which add something to the voice material. Otherwise these pieces are as minimal as you can get, and it's the blackhumour i like very much. it has that fine hypnotic sound, with enough information to concentrate on one thing for a while and then something else. 'le mot juste' is the piece in which things change around into something entirely different. 'revision' adds in density over the course of seventeen minutes before changing over, in order to grow again, which is pretty much a standard blackhumour compositional technique. this is a most wonderful release. it should have fitted on monochrome vision (blackhumour has a strong black and white aesthetic too), but on noise-below is equally in the right place. if you have no idea who blackhumour is or what he does and if 80s unsung cassette heroes is your 'thing', then this cd is the best place to start. my pick of the week." [Fdw/Vital Weekly] | 2014 | €10.00 |
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| BLACKSHAW, JAMES | Litany of Echoes | CD | "Initially inspired by the guitarists of the '60s Takoma label to teach himself fingerpicking, London-based musician James Blackshaw writes pieces primarily for solo 12-string guitar that share more in common with the minimalist works of composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Charlemagne Palestine, as well as French composers Claude Debussy and Erik Satie, than the blues/raga influence of his peers. Using drones, overtones and repeating patterns alongside a strong inclination for melody, Blackshaw creates instrumental music that is both intelligent, hypnotic and unashamedly sentimental. Litany of Echoes, Blackshaw's sixth studio album in five years, shows a more mature, focused and, on the whole, accessible approach to composition. While the album often feels darker and more introspective in nature than on previous releases, many of the songs have a huge-sounding, classical quality to them. With Blackshaw adding some glistening piano work for the first time and Fran Bury returning to play swarms of sweeping string parts for violin and viola, Litany of Echoes is a truly original, affecting and timeless album from a guitarist/composer coming into his own." [press release] "With each new James Blackshaw release, we're always amazed at how someone who works within such a small musical framework can continuously exceed our expectations. Definitely a favorite among favorites of solo guitarists, Blackshaw has bulked up his arsenal of compositional approaches by introducing for the first time the use of piano as a key element. Bookending the album are two long form pieces of solo piano in a minimalist style that remind us of Charlemagne Palestine or Lubomyr Melnyk. When the twelve string is first heard on the second track, it's not before we're set up with a foundation of resonant timbres of violin and viola (played by Fran Bury) that give weight to the airy modal improvisations of the guitar. Adding subtle layers of richness and dynamics, the strings ground and support the ringing overtones of the 12 string creating complex harmonies to the pulsating melodies. We can't imagine we'll ever tire of hearing Blackshaw's shimmering textural pieces. Amazing how sound so deep, dark, damp and resonant can be so transcendentally uplifting." [Aquarius Records review] www.tompkinssquare.com | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| Lost Prayers and motionless Dances | CD | James Blackshaw's second release, originally recorded in October 2004 by John Hannon, NRS. Released as a CD-R on Digitalis December 2004. "An absolutely monumental recording, Lost Prayers and Motionless Dances re-examines many of the themes that were explored on Celeste and distills them into one brilliant 35-minute composition that is full of excitement and surprise. The piece begins with a harmonium drone and acoustic 12-string, tuned to the guitar-unfriendly C-F-C-F-C-F (I can't find any examples of this tuning being used elsewhere) and unfolds beautifully. Blackshaw moves effortlessly from Takoma-inspired picking into electroacoustic improvisation and concludes with 12-string, harmonium and ride cymbal falling into a blissed-out circular folk groove that is absolutely infectious." [Grown So Ugly] www.tompkinssquare.com | 2008 | €13.50 |
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| The Glass Bead Game | LP + CD | "I'm extremely pleased to announce that James Blackshaw will now be releasing his absolutely spellbinding music via Young God Records. He has received attention as a 12-string guitar prodigy / virtuoso. He used to be in punk bands in England, but then he started listening to people like John Fahey, Robbie Basho, etc., and I assume locked himself in a room for 12 hours a day for several years and just played constantly. It takes intense discipline and a religious commitment to get to the place where he's at with his instrument. But his music isn't about his "skill." It's not showy. It's deeply meditative--the secret language of a pre-thought, pre-dream place. "Blackshaw plays soulful and kaleidoscopic, ever-shifting mantra cycles of incredible beauty. Just his guitar by itself, with its swirling overtones, cascading notes, and a thousand points of light, resembles an orchestra, but with further orchestration--piano, strings, wind, and vocals--the music is positively cinematic and mesmerizing. "The 18-minute-plus gem on this record is 'Arc,' performed on piano with the sustain pedal on full throttle. The rush of sound created by the overtones from Heaven, augmented by strings and wind, when played at proper (full) volume, is one of the most thrilling pieces of music I've heard in years. It takes a rare and single-minded courage and commitment to make music with such a powerfully positive force at its heart, especially in these troubled times. This is healing music that reaches for what's possible, just beyond our grasp. It is stellar... "Blackshaw is joined on this record by Joolie Wood (Current 93, Simon Finn) on violin, clarinet, and flute, and John Contreras (Baby Dee and Current 93) on cello. Lavinia Blackwall (Directing Hand) is a classically trained singer and contributed vocals." [Michael Gira/Young God Records] "... We totally love how his style and aesthetic remains intact, whether he’s sitting at the piano or with a guitar on his knee, his close attention to detail and use of hypnotic, emotionally captivating melodies shines throughout. Notes flickering and shimmering about as overtones soar above like clouds. There’s so much about this record that you can get fully wrapped up in, so much detail it would be impossible to absorb it all in just one listen. We’ve already been listening to Glass Bead Game for over a week, and still new details keep popping out of the woodwork. And to top it off, beautifully fitting, earth-toned artwork of various birds of prey perfectly adorns the album with some magical visual hex. By far our favorite Blackshaw album to date and quite possibly his best, highly and fully recommended!" [Aquarius Records] | 2009 | €17.00 |
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| Celeste | CD | "Re-issue)Guitarist/composer James Blackshaw?s 2007 Tompkins Square album, The Cloud of Unknowing, received "Top 50 Albums of the Year? honors from Pitch-fork and Wire Magazine. Fresh off a U.S. and UK tour with Jose Gonzalez, and a bevy of year-end praise from the blogosphere to The New York Times, Tompkins Square reissues four catalog titles previously only available as tiny, limited edition CDR pressings. "Mr. Blackshaw plays 12-string acoustic guitar, picking endlessly circling, intertwining arpeggios: stately, tolling ones on the lower strings and faster ones, verging on tremolo, up above. Yet what usually emerges from the welter of notes is not bustle but tranquillity. The music has the same contemplative scope that turns countless tiny daubs into a Monet water lily." - Jon Pareles, The New York Times, Dec 31, 2007 www.myspace.com/jamesblackshaw" [label info] www.tompkinssquare.com | 2007 | €14.50 |
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| BLONDE REDHEAD | Misery is a Butterfly | CD | Wonderful album by one of the best spheric / emotional and genre-breaking / transcending “Pop/Rock”-bands of this planet, now on the cult-label from the 80’s / early 90’s, 4AD, and working with strings (i.e. played by EYVIND KANG) ! “Freed from all constraints, Blonde Redhead are beautifully reborn on Misery Is a Butterfly. True, feelings of loss, insecurity, and outright alienation do factor heavily into the record's thematic vision (this butterfly isn't called "Misery" for nothing), but the band's sense of assuredness surrounds the album's themes of vulnerability. Misery Is a Butterfly was recorded before being shopped to a label, but judging by the sound of the album, its eventual release on 4AD seems to have been an inevitability. From track one, the record is lacy and moody, perfectly suited to the one-time home of the Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil. The word "lush" doesn't quite capture the fluttering whirls of strings, keyboards, and delicately plucked guitar that open "Elephant Woman"; I'd go so far as to label such enveloping richness of instrumentation "baroque," perhaps even "rococo." For Blonde Redhead's latest incarnation, the softer production simply serves as polish for tarnished, tired guitar, drums and keyboards. Here, the bristling energy that once held would-be sympathizers at bay has been turned inward, resulting in an unprecedented illusion of warmth. "Anticipation", for example, ventures into completely foreign territory for the band; it's vulnerable, yet remains emotionally available, and is breathtaking even in comparison to the band's most typically pretty compositions. Never before have Makino's gentle whispers seemed so genuine or close at hand. The psychedelia-inflected title track and the fractured desolation of "Falling Man" also offer inviting hints of the underlying humanity Blonde Redhead had, until now, been so reluctant to display. Of course, even now, that humanity may be little more than an apparition. Their tales of heartache and desperation have cast Makino and Amadeo Pace-- the emotional heart of the band-- as tragically misunderstood, tortured poets who pin misery on their sleeves, never conceding that anyone else could be capable of understanding their pain. And despite the more inviting nature of Misery's music and production, they remain insular and distant here, as well. Only on "Anticipation" are Makino's vocals as beckoning as their musical surroundings; elsewhere, Blonde Redhead remain as they've always been: beautiful and vacant......” | 2004 | €15.00 |
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| BLOOD RHYTHMS | Heuristics | CD-R | "One day it dawned on me that tons of material over the last 15 years had sort of grown an organic cohesiveness to it that is suitable to be looked at together, both backward and forward. In 2004, I had a dream about a child going through what could be said of a certain toad; that if you put a toad in a pot of water and slowly boil it, this toad would adapt and survive. If you put a toad in an already boiling pot of water, it would die immediately. In my dream, I saw a child suddenly being immersed in a similar fluid, causing him to grow up immediately. When he did grow up so abruptly, the result was a person with writing all over his body and black tar coming out of his mouth. Like the Empress in the tarot, this child lept forward from virginity to creativity. I made this photo shoot happen with my friend and photographer, Iris B., and I never knew what I was going to do with it. At one point, I thought it would be an exhibition of photography. Eventually, though, it dawned on me to de-saturate and sort of purify the images and use it to frame this material. This material, ranging from 2000-2015, represents a lot of things I sort of hoped would be on 7 inches or prestigious compilations, or they were criminally under-released, perhaps prematurely. For instance, I went to a piano class at a local community college to learn just one song; "Viper's Drag" by Fats Waller. My final exam was to be able to get through the first page of written music, and I did it, like a gallivanting jalopy and a horse-drawn carriage of maddening, youthful frustration. My version, "Maggot's Drag (Notte Del Casu Marzu)" tells a short horror story of killer flying maggots. It was meant for a "monster music" compilation I was curating, that was more or less sabotaged by a cover artist whom I paid in advance, who didn't deliver for over two years. I got my money back after a fair amount of doin', but the steam I did not. Also in the picture, is the audio for a performance I did with Right-Eye Rita on 06/06/2006, at a party I curated with Betty DeVoe. It was a ritual performance called "The Stifling Air", supposedly based on some works by Jacques De Molay, Grandmaster of the Knights Templar in the 13th Century. It included a custom made coffin and a nude model, and a king. I always felt it needed to reside somewhere, but only now did it make sense to put it somewhere. I could have produced the piece yesterday. Some of my early performances exhibited a variant amount of sound structures, with me screaming the words "Remove All Doubt" over it until I felt like my vocal chords were bleeding. Featured here is one such piece, some of my more musical work. There is also a track, "Mention This", featuring the vocals of Atalee Judy, a woman who was a kind and passionate supporter and friend early on. She'd given me a cassette of a'capella recordings, and I was inspired for weeks to create music to them. In this case, prior to knowing anything really about experimental music, I made music that is still bizarre, even to me now. Screeching synth-cellos and heavily effected broken glass, sampler percussion, among many other things, provided a back-drop for Judy's incredible voice. I once played this track to a man who did sound engineering for radio plays, and he said I'd achieved sounds and dynamic stereo ranges that he wouldn't understand how to do. Maybe he was just being nice. Another track features Nikola Vasilic, where he and I did another piece for a Halloween compilation, with piano, organ, and lots of samples from horror movies. Yet another track was made by me with harmonica, bass guitar, sampler, vocals, and masochistic microphone abuse. I could go on and on. There is a story to every piece, and it is a diverse listen for sure. It is 60 minutes in duration, and I humbly suggest you give it a try. SHRINK WRAPPED IN A JEWEL CASE, HIGH QUALITY INSERTS. https://nopartofit.bandcamp.com | 2016 | €10.00 |
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| BORGA, ASCANIO | Bad Ground (soundscapes of utter desolation) | CD-R | Great dark drone / isolationism-ambience newcomer from Italy ! "Disquieting homemade isolationism by Ascanio Borga of Rome. "Bad ground" sounds like a biologist´s characterization of what is left behind to rot in the soil by industrial pollution, or confines where something terribly evil has happened, like a death camp. Either way, Borga´s "soundscapes of utter desolation" are no tourist sites. Released last year, this is apparently Borga´s first album in four years, but if a gestation period of that length is necessary for him to conjure up such spine-tingling "untertainment", then I´ll gladly wait until 2010 for the next one. For Bad Ground is a minor masterpiece of hopelessness. The CDR is comprised of two suites. "The Boundary" would have made a highly serviceable alternative soundtrack to Andrei Tarkovsky´s seminal film "Stalker". As in the movie, one should heed the guide´s warning about crossing into this zone - what lays beyond is frightening, inhuman, and beyond reclamation. The scariest thing is that, despite the environment´s utter lack of fecundity, there does seem to be "life" of some sort dwelling inside the drones - but not life as we know it, or would voluntarily choose to acquaint ourselves with. That eleven-and-a-half minute piece segues seamlessly into the thirty-five minute title track. Nothing but hostility here, either, both from above and below. With electric guitars, synthesizers and samples, Borga succeeds in turning the very earth we walk upon and the skies that vault above us into a single, leaden, threatening habitat. Almost disconcertingly, the final ten minutes feature soaring guitar chords over a bed of cozy, deeper note clusters, almost a pick-me-up; perhaps there is some kind of redemption, some sanctuary to be found here after all. An excellent accomplishment and a worthy example of the genre." [Stephen Fruitman / Sonomu] | 2006 | €8.00 |
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| BORISOV, ALEXEI / OLGA NOSOVA / DAVE PHILLIPS | Borinosophil | CD | listen: https://dave-phillips.bandcamp.com/album/--2 Alexei Borisov - Guitar, Electronics, Voice Olga Nosova - Drums, Electronics, Objects Dave Phillips - Bass, Electronics, Voice, Field Recordings released by Monotype Records, Warsaw in an 'Ecopack' sleeve. artwork by dp. source material recorded in Moscow in the summer of 2009. most was improvised in alexei's living-room on tiny speakers with an assemblage of instruments and objects. one track was recorded in a studio with drums, guitar, bass and vocals. the resulting hours of recorded material were analysed - most of it was dismissed - the remains were taken apart and reassembled into 5 distinctive and epic sound-compositions. loud intimate music. arranged 2010/2011 & mastered May 2011 in Zürich by dp. REVIEW courtesy of Frans De Waard/Vital Weekly # 839 (July 2012) This disc has the regular performing duo of Russia's finest, Alexei Borisov and Olga Nosova. Together they traveled the world, playing together but also performing with others, such as Anton Nikkila, Matthieu Werchowski, Dora Bleu, Thomas Buckner, Tom Smith, Jandek, Anton Mobin and a_spirale and somewhere along the lines they bumped into Dave Phillips, who is best known for his radical approach to noise, silence, performance and video. This trio worked together in june 2009 in Moscow and the recordings were later on edited by Phillips. It combines the energy unleashed by Borisov/Nosova together with the more continuous sound world of Phillips and occasional rapid editing from him. It seems to me that all three go off their usual path a bit. Its not as loud as I would expect from Phillips (but maybe I am not listening in the same volume as he plays live… actually I am sure of it) and perhaps also less object based as I would expect and it seems less improvised for the duo, although I am not sure. But that leads however to music that is quite good. Densely orchestrated electronics, in which the voice of Nosova is there, but pushed away it seems, and throughout the music has a hypnotic, psychedelic feeling to it. Great stuff. Includes unlimited streaming of БОРИНОСОФИЛ via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. less | 2012 | €12.00 |
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| BØLTORN (BOLTORN) | Dødsverk (Dodsverk) | LP | skandinavian old-school industrial and power electronics. No warning shots will be fired When you change the law No warning shots will be fired When you steal our freedom No warning shots will be fired As your fortress crumbles around you No warning shots will be fired When you set foot on our property No warning shots will be fired When we let the dogs run https://tescogermany.bandcamp.com/album/d-dsverk "Bøltorn’s Dødsverk is maybe noise on paper, but a thorough and fluent sonic experience when listened to. The trio, also featuring one Nordsvargr, put out a few full-lengths and an EP throughout the year, with Dødsverk being the most impactful of the bunch (even though each of them have their own unique characteristics and strong suits), and I found myself listening to it on repeat for days on end, and still do if I ’mistakenly’ put it on. There’s just something invoking and holistic in their approach to noise, power electronics, and whatever else, constituting of droning walls of varying racket, discernible samples, and intelligible vocals. All in all Dødsverk is probably what I’d pick as my favourite album of the year, with some day-to-day caveats left out of the equation." [Everything Is Noise] | 2023 | €26.50 |
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| BRADLEY, PAUL | Sketches from Dust | CD | Extreme amorph drone-scapes that invite to discover even the tiniest micro-details inside the undulating, waving, floating sounds... very relaxing, meditative, contemplative, tensionless movements.. A one-tracker of 40 minutes. Standard edition. “Following on from ‘Memorias Extranjeras’ (Alluvial Recordings) with ‘Sketches from Dust’, we again have a less ‘typical’ Paul Bradley release. For this CD, gone are the field recordings and over the forty minutes we hear a piece that is mainly constructed from Guitar and Piano (the latter being played by Maja Elliott of Current 93). The recording is augmented by various acoustic sounds and some precise mixing techniques to form an organic and possibly ‘looser’ feeling recording than we might be previously expecting. What we hear is an intimate yet murky, almost eroded sonic journey. A primitive earlier outtake of ‘Sketches from Dust’ appeared on the limited ‘Notes from Past - Sketches from Dust’ CDr released earlier in 2006.” [label info] | 2006 | €13.00 |
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| Sketches from Dust (special) | CD | Extreme amorph drone-scapes that invite to discover even the tiniest micro-details inside the undulating, waving, floating sounds... very relaxing, meditative, contemplative, tensionless movements.. A one-tracker of 40 minutes. Special edition. “Following on from ‘Memorias Extranjeras’ (Alluvial Recordings) with ‘Sketches from Dust’, we again have a less ‘typical’ Paul Bradley release. For this CD, gone are the field recordings and over the forty minutes we hear a piece that is mainly constructed from Guitar and Piano (the latter being played by Maja Elliott of Current 93). The recording is augmented by various acoustic sounds and some precise mixing techniques to form an organic and possibly ‘looser’ feeling recording than we might be previously expecting. What we hear is an intimate yet murky, almost eroded sonic journey. A primitive earlier outtake of ‘Sketches from Dust’ appeared on the limited ‘Notes from Past - Sketches from Dust’ CDr released earlier in 2006. This now fully realized work is released in two CD editions, one limited to 200 copies in hand painted card sleeve and a second unlimited edition with printed card insert in a plastic wallet.” [label info] | 2006 | €17.50 |
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| BROWN, CHRIS | Talking Drum | CD | 27 Sound-Snaps von traditioneller Ethno-Musik und field recordings verschiedenster Lände – CUBA, BALI, TÜRKEI, PHILIPPINEN, KANADA, werden hier verbunden mit live-Aufnahmen einer Computernetzwerk–Installation zur Generierung polyrhythmischer Klänge...klingt etwas arg konstruiert, aber das Ergebnis ist sehr vital, ungewöhnlich und vielseitig ... “Binaural motion recordings composed as a dialogue of distances. Live recordings of music for electronic network music ensemble juxtaposed with location recordings of traditional music and environmental soundscapes. Made in Bali, the Philippines, Turkey, Europe, Cuba and America 1991-99. This compilation/composition documents nearly a decade of work that began with the recording of dense sonic environments, both 'natural' and urban. Talking Drum is an interactive installation made with four networked laptop computers programmed to explore cyclical polyrhythms in large acoustic spaces. While the performance of the entire system is synchronized by one computer, each computer station generates independent results using genetic-programming algorithms which are affected by acoustic musicians' performances. Each station in the space “grows” its own rhythmic response to the situation, like similar plants growing differently in adjustment to their locations in an environment. The musicians improvise with the rhythms, interacting with the response of the computers they play next to, and the whole is a quartet of these human-machine duets. This recording compiles moments from these performances, and the recordings that inspired their creation, into one continuous piece. Electronic music is normally thought of as a medium emphasizing unlimited access to timbre - I think this is often over-emphasized, and that, at its best, it changes our experience of space. The traditional African talking drums are played held under the arms so that their laces can be squeezed to change the pitch of the drum-head as rhythms are played. The changing pitches and rhythms imitate patterns of the tonal languages of West Africa, and can be used like musical telephony to communicate over long distances. This recording follows this design, creating conversations between different places, environments, people, rituals, and parties on a global scale. Chris Brown (b. 1953), composer, pianist, and electronic musician, creates music for acoustic instruments with interactive electronics, for computer networks, and for improvising ensembles. Born and raised in Chicago, he moved to California to study electronic music with Gordon Mumma and composition with William Brooks at Univ. of California/Santa Cruz, and with David Rosenboom at Mills College. He was active early in his career as an inventor and builder of electroacoustic instruments; he has also performed widely as an improvisor and pianist with such groups as Room; and the Glenn Spearman Double Trio. In 1986 he co-founded the pioneering computer network music ensemble The Hub. He is also known for his recorded performances of music by Henry Cowell, Luc Ferrari, and John Zorn. He has received commissions from the Berkeley Symphony, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio, the Gerbode Foundation, the Phonos Foundation and the Creative Work Fund. His recent music includes the poly-rhythm installation “Talking Drum”, the “Inventions” series for computers and interactive performers, and the radio performance “Transmissions” series, with composer Guillermo Galindo. His 1992 epic electroacoustic work “Lava”, for brass, percussion, and electronics is also available on Tzadik. He teaches Composition and Electronic Music at Mills College in Oakland, where he is Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music (CCM)” [press release] | 2005 | €13.00 |
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| BRUME |
Two Characters
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10inch | "Through more than 25 years of existence, the French composer CHRISTIAN RENOU, aka BRUME, has developed a unique 'handwriting' style within the experimental underground, something one may call "atmospheric Musique concrète". It is the marriage of many concrete sounds, hand-played acoustic instruments and electronic drones / noises that are arranged in a manner somewhat akin to a "narrative" - highly emotive and often evolving in a dramatic way. We are delighted to have received two tracks for the Substantia Innominata series that are simply extraordinary: expressing the wordless, indescribable oscillations arising from mental states, the qualia and conditions of two fictional 'souls', the aura of a personality. Compounded by electronics (synths), field recordings (door jarring, water), alto sax, gramophone, tapes, various processed voices, percussion, bass, home-made instruments, both 'characters' start as a rather smooth ambient pieces that develop & expand into orchestral, mysterious post-industrial entities, showing a compelling process of densification. Lim. 500 copies on lovely coloured vinyl (mixed blue, white & black), artwork by Mal Hoeschen (MULTER)." [label info] www.substantia-innominata.de "One of the things I like about Drone Records sub-division Substantia Innominata is that it doesn't exclusively deals with the darker than dark drone/ambient music which one would maybe expect from a series of 'works inspired by or related to "the unknown" around or within us. There is also room for sound collage, such as with RLW, Column One and perhaps to a lesser extent Illusion Of Safety. Not always the most obvious names and Brume is another one of those less obvious names, I would think. Christian Renou has been active since close to thirty years and in his early years was active with releasing cassettes, in the early 90s a bunch of CDs and in the last decade or so a bit more sparse with releases (or perhaps it has moved out of my sight?). In the old days his sound theory seemed 'no silence please', and using electronics in a very raw sort of musique concrete manner. On his new record, he uses "electronics (synths), field recordings (door jarring, water), alto sax, gramophone, tapes, various processed voices, discreet percussion, discreet bass and home made instruments. He paints portraits of two characters, as indicated by the title of the record, and the two pieces, 'Zaklasta-re the beautiful' and 'Glazüük, the dreamer'. In the first the beautiful is unveiled through some dark drones, which move dark and majestically, whereas on top we hear occasionally the alto-saxophone, wailing about, in and out of the mix. This is a fine piece, more ambient and drone like perhaps then you'd expect from Brume, but the saxophone and the occasional electronic sounds add a certain weirdness to the piece. The other side is perhaps less dreamy than it would suggest, and moves in various places, maybe an uneasy night rest? It's in the second half of the piece that we land into a dreamy world via controlled feedback and reverb, and before that, perhaps more the uneasy REM sleep? Here we find voices slipping in and out of the mix; another sign of musique concrete past. An excellent record. It made me lean towards my CD collection and pick some older works of Brume to play in the more quiet hours of the evening." [FdW/Vital Weekly] "One of many characters in the whole post-industrial diaspora who we have not really carried in part due to the difficulty in getting a hold of many of Brume's releases on small European imprints and in part due to not knowing where to start, especially with a catalog that tracks somewhere around 100 releases over 25 years. So, we'll take our cue from Drone Records and their Subtantia Innominata series of 10"s for this introduction into the woolly musique concrete and viral electronics from the French artist Christian Renou. His is a very creepy type of sound design with B-side backmasking, nightmarish vocals all laced throughout atonal, sci-fi tension, squiggled radiophonic explorations, and dark ambient swells, it's almost a cross between the incidental moments of the Logan's Run soundtrack and Coil's Musick To Play In The Dark. The A-side situates a low-end thrumming that's all brooding and ominous in the Svarte Greiner and Deathprod means of shadow-sound manipulation; but out of nowhere comes a crushed horn that's probably a saxophone, but sounds way more like a Tibetan horn with an unkempt scratchiness and apocalyptic fervor made all the more evident through a slow and heavy mechanical iron-on-stone hammering that brings this track to its definitive end." [Aquarius Records] | 2013 | €12.00 |
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| L'ombilic des Rêves | CD | "The nightmare is a theme that interested the medical field very early on. The first mentions in medical texts are already found in the writings of Hippocrates. But the nightmare has also fueled popular folklore from the ancient period to the present day. The meaning of the term nightmare is to be taken here in its original meaning. Etymological analysis allows us to distinguish two elements. The term “cauche” is the Roman form of the Latin calcare, meaning “to crush” The term “mar” derives from the Germanic term ''mahr'', which refers to a ghostly entity riding a horse. This spirit has the habit of surprising the sleeper in his sleep to trample him from his horse and kill him. The horse theme is also found in the English language: doesn’t night mare literally mean “mare of the night”? Nowadays, the nightmare corresponds to the notion of bad dream of the first meaning of the nightmare. From antiquity until the end of the 19th century, nightmares designated a completely different neuropsychological disorder. The constant elements noted throughout the descriptions of the nightmare, whatever the country and the historical period, are the following: sudden awakening, with a feeling of suffocation, chest tightness, heavy feeling and intense anxiety that can be severe, accompanied by a feeling of imminent death. A temporary paralysis of the limbs accompanies the picture. Sometimes the vision of supernatural beings in the bedroom or the feeling of sexual areas being touched completes the picture. Presented in a recycled cardboard gatefold sleeve with a photo sticker on the front and an insert inside. Limited to 250 handnumbered copies." [press release] https://taalem.bandcamp.com/album/lombilic-des-r-ves-alm-145 --- "A few weeks ago, I asked in a review if it’s okay to say one is a ‘fan’ of someone’s work. Because it was a new album by Christian Renou, a.k.a. Brume, and well … I am a fan. And I don’t care what all of you think, but as always, I will write my reviews with a bit of distance towards my own opinion. Because that’s what a reviewer i.m.h.o. is supposed to do. The Taalem label, which we all know from the 3″ CDRs they’ve released for years and years, has stopped doing them, and after a year of silence, they’re now releasing full-length CDs in a minimal brown cardboard sleeve with a little imagery. Excellent and minimal as it was and still is. But instead of the approximately 20 minutes of the 3″ you get ‘full releases’ on CD or even 2CD. The same goes for the side label Kokeshidisk, by the way. Brown sleeve, minimal artwork. And with Desaccord Majeur, Murmer and Brume Taalem set the level high for all future releases. Taalem knows what he’s doing and mark my words: This label will have a catalogue of beauty if they keep building it like this. A paradise for drone heads like us. In my opinion, “L’ombilic Des Rêves” is a complex album. The reason is it’s very strongly themed on the theme of nightmares. But just as nightmares can (will?) be different each time you have them, the music on this album varies a lot. From chaotic ambience with horns to rhythmically driven short interludes, this album is a journey through the insides of your head. This album perfectly exemplifies Renou’s dynamics as an artist and sound designer. Sounds straight out of synths, manipulated field recordings, found footage / spoken word and the before mentioned horns or wind instruments on one hand, and the other side compositions with a lot of erratic changes, ambient approaches, long compositions (11 and 14 minutes) as well as shorter ones – 2 minutes and even one just over 1 minute – harmonics and dissonance … This album is lovely in its variation on so many levels. Personal favourites are “Hot Concrete / Turning To Nightmare” and ” Dreams Are Not Free”, but my oh my … Mr Renou did it again. And Taalem. Both. Chapeau. " [Vital Weekly] | 2024 | €13.00 |
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| Syncronicity & Wandering Current | CD | "Synchronicity & Wandering Current" is a specific concept album by BRUME, based on a compact, closed composition, outlined in a way typical of Christan Renou's work. This suite, lasting almost 60 minutes, divided into 3 parts: 1. "I Know You Well", 2. "Tout peut faire tout" 3. "Iridium", performed with particular attention to detail. Numerous loops, borrowings and cut-up figures seem to create a sophisticated, intuitively readable and exceptionally coherent message. With each successively sounding fragment, a narrative is realized in real time, intended to provoke the listener into multiple, in-depth and multi-layered reinterpretations. Thus, the creator invites his listener to co-create a work that is not completely closed, but with each listening allows for multiple, infinitely different realizations. The recordings were made between January and March 2024, and Christian Renou invited several excellent musicians to make them, including: Jonathan Grieve (Hastings Of Malawi), Pat' Blanch and trumpeter and saxophonist Patrick Mazaltarim. CD in a six-panel eco-pack, designed based on the collages of the French artist Françoise Duvivier, whose works have previously appeared on several BRUME covers Brume/C.Renou, all easy & complicated stuff. Thanks to Jonathan Grieve (Hastings Of Malawi) for voice & electronic sounds, Pat' Blanch for voice/tape and Patrick Mazaltarim for trumpet & saxophone. Recorded between January and March 2024 at Brume Rec sudio, Colleville Montgomery.. https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/syncronicity-wandering-current | 2024 | €13.00 |
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| BRUME & TBC | House Unwillently | CD-R | CDR-Version der vergriffenen LP !! Finally out, the CDR version of the sold out LP !! “This Lp is a collaboration between Brume, aka Christian Renou and Tbc, aka Thomas Beck. I have sent musical material to Brume and he has made five typical Brume tracks out of it. I think I don`t have to introduce him, because over 70 Releases speak his own language.This is the second lp for him and me too. On " House Unwillity" you find all this: a complex texture of soundstructure using drones and enviromental soundscapes from Tbc and abrutlly cuts, "primitiv" percussion and the usual absuse of traditional instruments from the musical talents of Brume. The enviromental recordings was made in a old house near the habour in Hamburg. This house is a part in spectulating with money around this area in Hamburg to get a new architectonic face of happy capitalism. It`s near the wellknow "Hafenstraße", a squat with places for concerts, bars, food on a low profit d.i.y. culture.” [label info on original LP release] | 2005 | €8.00 |
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| BRUNNEN | The Beekeeper's Dream | LP | Eine Art Retrospektive von der BEEQUEEN-Hälfte mit seinen melancholisch-süssen, folk-angehauchten Homerecording-Ambient-Songs… einiges davon ist wohl bereits auf anderen Formaten schonmal erschienen, aber vieles scheint auch neues Material zu sein. Diese limitierte Vinyl-Version ist auch gleichzeit Teil 3 der RECORDS ARE NOT FOR BAKING – Serie, die es im Abo auch mit Bonus pic-12“ gibt! “Brunnen reveals that part of Beequeen's Freek Kinkelaar which is the strange wandering minstrel/alchemist (half-orc cleric with a +2 mace). If only more records were so cogently perplexing. A slightly cinematically arranged, quasi-psychedelic little dear of a hushed pop song opens the album. Freek's vocals sublimate in a pleasant whisper, not unlike (ahem) a quieter Yo La Tengo song. Freek, perhaps true to his name, does not hesitate to then very, very slowly weave together a spacious tone poem whose initial notes live counties apart, concocting an outré sort of high lonesome that might sonically drift across the same sort of plain as Wenders' Paris, Texas does visually. Kinkelaar's vocal delivery tugs at shirt tails ala Just Drifting era Psychic TV balladry or introspective LPD. Subtly amplified guitars chime quietly against slo-mo keyboards, occasional samples, tablas and air. An understated rave-up of Trust In Me from The Jungle Book is a nice exclamation point. A musical sandwich, really, with the outer psychedelic pop buns keeping the avant-garde middle meat warm.” [label info] | 2006 | €17.00 |
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| BURIAL | Burial.Hdbcd001 | CD | „Auf "Burial. HDBCB001" schickt BURIAL die unterschwellig sexy Beats des britischen Garage über den Umweg von Funkstörungen in eine heimelige Gummizelle aus tiefem Bass, nicht ohne auf der Reise noch einen Zwischenstop im Berliner Dub von POLE einzulegen. Dabei klingt es, als würde BURIAL das Südlondon der nahen Zukunft unter Wasser setzen. Das allumfassende Knistern ist gleichzeitg das Statikgeknister eines Piratensenders und der tropische Regen, der sanft ans Fenster schlägt. Die Melancholie der Tracks öffnet ihre Arme und sucht nach ertrunkenen Liebhabern. Der Mix von BURIAL wird von den Echos aus einer anderen Zeit heimgesucht. Signale einer fremden Frequenz strecken tastend ihre Fühler aus. Eine Flutwelle aus Lärm verschlingt alles und lässt nur die schärfsten Beats zurück. Doch der Lärm schmerzt nicht; er streichelt, kitzelt und erregt die Nervenenden. Willkommen in der Welt von BURIAL. This first album on Kode9's Hyperdub label comes from the mysterious Burial. On this self-titled CD debut, Burial carves out a sound which sends the dormant slinky syncopations of uk garage, via radio interference, into a padded cell of cushioned, muffled bass, passing through the best of Pole's Berlin crackle dub. Burial explores a tangential, parallel dimension of the growing sound of dubstep. Burial's parallel dimension sounds set in a near future South London underwater. You can never tell if the crackle is the burning static off pirate radio transmissions, or the tropical downpour of the submerged city outside the window. In their sometimes suffocating melancholy, most of these tracks seem to yearn for drowned lovers. The smouldering desire of ‚Distant Lights' is cooled only by the percussive ice sharp slicing of blades and jets of hot air blowing from the bass. Listen also for a fleeting appearance from Hyperdub's resident vocalist, the Spaceape unravelling his crypto-biography. In its loud quietness, Burial takes his kitchen crackle aesthetic neither from the digital glitch nor merely a nostalgia for vinyl's materiality. Instead, as irates' suggests, Burial crackle mutates the tactile surplus value of pirate radio transmissions. Burial's mix is haunted. Echoed voices breeze in and out, on road to another time. Pirate signal from other frequencies steams in. A tidal wave of noise submerging all but the crispest syncopations. The noise is not violent, but caressing, tickling, exciting the ends of your nerves. Seducing you in.“ [press release] | 2006 | €15.50 |
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| BURROUGHS, WILLIAM S. | Curse Go Back | LP | "William Burroughs was in and out of London from the mid-50s to 1974 and for several years quite settled in a flat near Piccadilly. During this latter time he developed and refined the techniques he used for creating cut-ups on tape. Working closely with Ian Sommerville, who helped acquire, and no doubt maintain, the various tape recorders that Burroughs used and abused in these experimental works. The work here is in two sections, which in their original form lasted for over an hour and first appeared in 1998 under the name Electronic Revolution as a free CD with Issue One of the French magazine Crash. The CD was quickly withdrawn with maybe only 100 copies finding their way into circulation. This edition is edited down to 46 minutes and comprises the core of the original recording. It employs the now familiar techniques of random drop-ins and cut-ups of readings. The readings themselves are also cut-ups of words on the page. The first section of the tape uses further processing by means of a second tape recorder. Recorded in Duke Street in 1968, the tape was then passed on to Brion Gysin in Paris where it remained in his archive until 1998. This is the first readily available edition of an hypnotic and meditative recording that examines the hidden power of words. Closer to work of sound poetry than anything literary. The album includes a 12"x12" insert with an essay by Ben Harper and several previously unseen portrait photos of Burroughs, taken by Harriet Crowder in her Hammersmith flat during a drug experiment. The back cover uses another Crowder image - the very next frame after the famous shot that appeared on the cover of the English Bookshop/ESP Call Me Burroughs LP (1965). Pressed at Optimal on transparent vinyl. Edition of 500 (numbered)." | 2016 | €22.00 |
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| BUT I'M NOT (PAWEL GRABOWSKI) | DAEMON TRANCES I-VI | CD | This album is about trauma and PTSD. The music portrays the emotional loop... the continuous reminiscing about the traumatic event the never-ending anxiety and paralyzing panic attacks... ... from which a traumatized person simply cannot escape. I call this state the daemon trance (and, unfortunately, I know it far too well...) Recorded between January and May 2021 at SINE studio, Ireland. but I'm not is Pawel Grabowski (processed live instruments, field recordings, objects.) Mastering - Colin Potter at IC Studio, August 2021 Cover photo: Artur Mieczkowski (www.instagram.com/anxious_93/) https://silenceisnotempty.bandcamp.com/album/daemon-trances-i-vi "It's been a long time since I heard music by Pawel Grabowski (check Vital Weekly 414, 424, 492 and 508, but following that flurry of releases, it all went quiet for him. That was "mostly due to family, and life in general". Now he has a new moniker and a new label. The new name is But I'm Not (lower case, except for 'I'), and on 'Daemon Traces I-IV' he wanted to compose that captures that unique state is known only to people suffering from the aftermath of a traumatic event". According to the cover, it is something that he is "unfortunately all too familiar with". "Each of the six compositions portrays different aspects of what a traumatized person goes through, often every day - the continuous reminiscing about the traumatic event". This is one of those things of which I think "had I not known this, would I have heard it?". I guess not, but my personal view towards music is a very 'absolute' one. Music is never about anything. Anything attached to music to make it about something is not music; they are words used, descriptions, images (a record cover), that kind of thing. Grabowski explains the nature of the trauma for none of these six pieces, which leaves something to imagine, I guess, but also a hole in our knowledge (why not go all the way). Grabowski uses "processed live instruments, field recordings and objects". It is a pity that these live instruments are not specified. I hear a piano on quite a bit on the pieces, solemnly slow bangs on the keys, Gregorian voices in the first one (which I think that Grabowski went all gothic, but, good news, he didn't), a fair bit of synthesizers and sound effects and the samples of marbles in a bowl (also in the opener). Some of the other sounds are harder to define. Throughout the music solemn, slow and very moody. A bipolar disorder, with some extreme darkness and extreme happiness, is not to be found here. Grabowski reminded me what I thought of his older releases in a private letter, but they are so far away in the past that I don't remember them. Therefore it is not easy for me to say to what extent this new one is different from his previous releases. I think this is a solid album, a severe one, and while the subject is not very well spend on me, I can see that he's serious in creating music that paints a picture of those suffering from trauma and PTSD. [FdW / Vital Weekly] FULL PRESS RELEASE: About daemon trances “Daemon trances I-VI tells a story about experiences of living with trauma and PTSD. My objective when composing this music was to capture that unique state known only to people suffering from the aftermath of a traumatic event. And so, each of the six compositions portrays different aspects of what a traumatized person goes through, often every day – the continuous reminiscing about the traumatic event, the never-ending anxiety, paralyzing panic attacks... For my use, I refer to this state as the “daemon trance,” and the music on this album perfectly represents what I often struggle with in life.” About Pawel Grabowski Pawel Grabowski (b. 1977) – composer specializing in writing deeply personal electroacoustic and drone music. Grabowski uses prepared instruments, field recordings, and objects to create meditative and hypnotic compositions to convey emotions and create unique atmospheres. He refers to his music as Imaginism. Background: ● Although he doesn’t have a formal music education, between 1998 – 2001, Grabowski studied double bass with a famous Polish jazz bassist, Janusz Mackiewicz. ● He also took private tuition in classical composition between 2000 - 2002, first with prof. Krzysztof Olczak, then with prof. Eugeniusz Glowski ● He also participated in international composition workshops at the Academy of Music in Gdansk, Poland, in 2002. ● In 2002, he was selected as one of the artists representing his home city, Gdansk, at the Art Biennale - “ArtGenda” in Hamburg. He wrote music commissioned for various projects of the biennale. ● In the same year, he composed a piece commissioned by the Baltic Cultural Centre in Gdansk, showcased during a presentation of composition students of the Academy of Music. Career: ● Grabowski founded a chamber trio, Miasto Nie Spalo, in 1998 and recorded two albums with the band: Festspielhaus (1998) and Piesni Zalobne I-VII/Threnodies I-VII (2000 - released on the famous polish label, Obuh recs.) ● Between 2001 – 2006, Grabowski recorded solo, publishing his music on such labels as Drone records, Laub records, Cronica, Mystery Sea, Dark Winter, and more. ● Since 2020, Grabowski performs as but I’m not and runs a small, independent record label, Silence Is Not Empty. | 2021 | €12.00 |
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| BÜTTNER, GREGORY | Pochen - - Oder : Mit Nachschleifendem Zwirnsfaden Die Treppe Hinunterkollern | CD | https://gregorybuettner.bandcamp.com/album/pochen-oder-mit-nachschleifendem-zwirnsfaden-die-treppe-hinunterkollern-2 I recorded the sounds for this piece in March 2011 at the "Performance Arts Forum" in France. The PAF is housed in a former convent school, which was built at the end of the 19th Century in the village of St. Erme in Picardy. After the convent school and a hospital during World War I, various temporary uses and a long term of vacancy, the PAF was founded in 2006 as a workplace for artists. During my three-week stay, I kept sneaking through the 6.400 m2 building: From the attic to the basement, from the small private chapel through the various rooms and artists' studios. I examined the old monastery acoustically, recorded sounds and improvised together "with the house". The role of the house kept moving between sound generator, resonant space and instrument. I recorded breathing wood planks or flickering light switches, explored the different resonant cavities, made metal cabinets resonate or prepared out-of-tune pianos. From the recorded material I worked out a composition, which, organized in chapters, permeates the house acoustically and connects found sounds, digital processing and experimental performance techniques into a "throbbing". All music by Gregory Büttner (2011-2012). Another version of the piece was commissioned by WDR3 Studio Akustische Kunst. Premiered July 2013. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Photos and cover design by Gregory Büttner, photo inside middle by Anja Winterhalter. | 2014 | €13.00 |
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| CAGE, JOHN | Complete Song Books | do-LP | “ … to consider the Song Books as a work of art is nearly impossible. Who would dare? It resembles a brothel, doesn’t it?” John Cage. Volume 3 in the Perihel series on Karlrecords is dedicated to one of the most iconic composers of 20th century: John Cage. All 92 pieces of the “Song Books” in stunning interpretations by Reinhold Friedl, recorded at Rashad Becker’s Clunk Studio who also contributed live electronics. John Cage (1912-1992) is one of the most important composers in modern music: with more than 250 compositions, many of which are considered key works of New Music, and theoretical essays on composition he significantly changed the way we think about and perceive music today. But Cage not only left a major impact in the academic world, he is also cited as an important inspiration by a wide range of diverse musicians from a younger generation, be it electronic producers, experimentalists or noise artists. His “Song Books”, published 1970 in three volumes, is a collection of open works that contains not only songs but a strange hybrid collection of compositions, graphic scores, meditation rules, experimental settings, absurd musical instructions, performance settings, musical references, and Fluxus-inspired actions such as eating fruits or drinking cognac (Cage loved whiskey and cognac)… - When Reinhold Friedl (director of the ensemble Zeitkratzer) entered the Clunk Studio to record the whole cycle with Rashad Becker (who handled the feedback cabinet and live electronics), the idea was quite simple: to approach each single piece in an informal way but to do all 92 pieces in the right order. What came out in the end is a kaleidoscopic lecture and interpretation of the compositions with the help of a strange mixture of ancient and modern tools: new electronics, old and special microphones, self-built instruments, arbitrary garbage sounds, sophisticated live-electronics devices, quotes… “Complete Song Books” turns out to be an early hymn for sonic freedom, a sonic promenade full of beautiful references. All music composed by John Cage. Constructed by Reinhold Friedl. Performed by Reinhold Friedl: voice, toys, wooden games, metal objects, complex objects, microphones, garbage… Rashad Becker: feedback cabinet, live electronics. Mastered & cut at D&M, Berlin. Artwork by Lillevan." | 2016 | €26.50 |
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| CAPRICORNI PNEUMATICI | The Erivar | CD | https://adnrecords.com/album/capricorni-pneumatici-the-erivar/ "Historically, Italy is home to not only a large number of respected industrial/noise projects, but also wider experimental music in general. One such project is Capricorni Pneumatici, which has been active since 1987. This is a duet of two musicians, hiding under the names of Pazuzu and Soda Caustica. The project plays gloomy music on the verge of ritual ambient, drone and concrete music. The album was released in 2016 by the Italian label ADN in cooperation with the Russian label Monochrome Vision, in the form of jewel case CD, as well as on tapes, limited to edition of 50 copies. At the moment you can order this album on the websites of labels. The cover of the album is made in blue tones. On a blurred blue background is a pale blue medieval picture of a lion’s head with open jaws, in which there is a tied man. At the top is the name of the project, done in pale blue with a simple font. At the bottom of the cover is the album’s title The Erivar, written in the same font. On the turn of the two-page booklet is depicted a snake-like dragon, trying to swallow a human-like caudate creature, which is in some sort of cocoon or ellipse. The drawing is also made in medieval style. On the back of the booklet is a list of songs and various other information. The back part duplicates the last page of the booklet. The album consists of eight tracks of different duration. The total time of the album is just under an hour. It is worth noting that tracks three and seven, have participation from one of the more famous names with experimental scene Z’EV, who recently left this world…. Of course, I was interested in these two tracks, but about those a little bit later. So, the album begins with the almost five-minute composition ‘Inside Mother‘. Atmospheric pulsating metal Drones are supported by a long lingering vocal and rare ritual blows … A very interesting atmospheric beginning of the album. Next is the track ‘The Erivar‘, which is the longest track here – just under twelve minutes. The tracks constructed around creaking of bass strings, a distant low hum, a metallic grinding noise and a rumbling sound like a low-tuned cello or double bass create an eerie and disturbing atmosphere. Closer to the end, tension builds up, but almost at the very end, everything calms back down. The third track is called ‘Ode to Fortum‘, and it was recorded along with Z’EV, who also did the processing of this track. It is worth noting that the tracks made in co-authorship with Z’EV were recorded in 2009, while the rest of the tracks were made in 2014-2015. Naturally, I expected a big difference in sound. My expectations were justified. The track sounds more raw, it’s almost noise, saturated with delay and reverberation. It is difficult to single out individual sounds, all squeaks, tapping, and drones merge into one background droning noise. The fourth track, called ‘You Are Four And Magic‘, in many respects repeats the string sound of the second track but is more relaxed, and there is also a high male vocals, the manner of which is similar to a spell or mantra. Then comes the shortest track of the album. Its duration is just over four minutes and it is called ‘Mon Fordon‘. We hear reversed rhythmic metal drones, into which, in the course of the composition, a higher hum and a slight rustling and tapping are intertwined. This is the most ambiguous track on the album. It seemed somewhat boring and synthetic. The sixth track, called ‘Ohyf‘, is almost ambient with a touch of drone. By sound, this track is close to ‘Ode to Fortum’, which was made with Z’EV, but not so overloaded by delay and has a more transparent and rich sound. The seventh track ‘Ord Traditori‘ was also recorded and processed together with Z’EV in 2009. Naturally, I expected to hear a more raw sound, similar to the second track. But I heard a crystal clear sound. It’s a dark Dark Ambient with low drones and creaks. There is an ominous voice of an indefinite sex, which very emotionally recites the text unknown to me in French. The last track is called ‘Cyngus Olor’ is a kind of Outro. It’s pretty simple stringed drone, resembling the sound of Indian tanpura. The whole album left a very pleasant impression on me, despite the second track that broke out from the general style, as well as a short but somewhat boring fifth track that could have been possible left out. My favorite tracks are ‘The Erivar‘ and ‘Ord Traditori‘. As a result, we have a good conceptual work in the style of acoustic Drone / Ritual Ambient, which I’m sure I’ll listen to again." [Musique Machine] | 2016 | €13.00 |
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| CARR, KATE | The Story surrounds us | MC | "Kate Carr melds the exquisite details of her field recordings with an ephemeral approach to the song. This Australian has relocated herself to London after many trips around the globe. With each orbiting journey, she has collected innumerable sounds from the urbane to the aqueous and from the frenetic to the sublime, contextualizing all of these into compositions rippling with primordial melodies through guitar, piano, and electronics. The Story Surrounds Us follows her highly acclaimed albums I Had Myself A Nuclear Spring (first released on her own Flaming Pines imprint in 2015) and Carr's debut for Helen Scarsdale in 2016, It Was A Time Of Laboured Metaphors. Emblematic of her work is a gentle dislocation between the environmental sounds and her drone-dub ellipses of somnambulant melody. The clatter of a frozen dock or a vibrational shimmer from rustled objects or the unintelligible whispers displaces the sense of self amidst a sea of disparate symbols and coded thought. More a travelogue in and out of one's own body than to any particular place. Carr suggests "In a way, it is about restlessness, an uncomfortable tossing and turning in all these many different places, a struggle somehow to forge a connection between my own internal world and all these places and persons I have encountered. I think this holds a sense of unease and strain, with both beautiful and failed moments of intimacy and connection which are made either possible or impossible in the difficult and distorted context of being away. It is quite sad, really." Look to Carla dal Forno, Alan Lamb and those moments of clarity in the shapeshifting ethos from Jewelled Antler for neighboring sounds to Kate Carr's chimerical compositions." www.helenscarsdale.com "A rather fast follow-up to her last tape (It Was a Time of Laboured Metaphors, also on Helen Scarsdale), Australian sound artist Kate Carr's latest work is another entry in a rapidly growing discography that blends elements of both traditional composition and the unpredictable nature of field recordings. She does this and merges them together seamlessly, coming together as a beautiful set of sounds and moods from across the globe, yet still unified as a part of the human experience. Elements of The Story Surrounds Us were recorded during Carr’s travels to Iceland, Mexico, Sweden, and Spain, all of which clearly had an influence on the work; most obviously in the natural recordings she utilizes throughout. The tape is bookended by two sets of untreated field recordings from Ólafsfjörður, Iceland that perfectly capture the juxtaposition of her work. The first, "The Creaking Door Of The Abandoned Concrete Factory" is half a minute of just that: creaking sounds of post-industrial decay, capturing the emptiness of what surely was once part of a thriving industry. The end is “Water Lapping at Ice on Melting Lake”: the sound of wet and watery nature decaying, no doubt exacerbated by the same industry. Between these two most obvious field recordings lay eight songs that are never truly a-musical, but never become overly conventional either. "Things That Stubbornly And Resiliently Subsist Without Leave" features a lot of sparse, delicate guitar playing, but the musicality is broken up by mysterious, more synthetic-like passages that never become unpleasant. This combination also features heavily in "I Didn't Get A Lot of Sleep in Mexico", with light floating tones melded with processed guitar-like sounds, peppered with incidental found recordings and hints of music throughout. A brilliant pairing of compositions is the untreated recordings of "Communication Wires In Tropical Storm, Si'an Kaan, Mexico", and their appearance in the more compositionally based "We Were The Pulse Of A Wire Pulled Tightly". The former recordings are simply the sound of undulating metallic cables whipped about in heavy winds, taking on an odd beauty that contrasts their significantly more frightening pedigree. On "We Were The Pulse…" they reappear as overt pulses and jittery echoes resonating within electronic swarms and insinuations of percussion. The final product is moody and expansive, but concludes on a much lighter, drifting note compared to its more menacing moments. Other moments of this tape showcase Carr’s more conventional musical tendencies as well. Gentle melodies are the initial focus on "There Was a Lot of Whispering Involved", with a bit of plucked string being counterbalanced by the heavier subterranean rumble. On the whole it sounds much more traditional, but no less gripping. On the other hand, "1001 (Missed Connections)" begins with crackling voices on a PA system and ugly buzzing noises, but soon is realigned into sustained, yet chilly melodic moments. What even resembles a traditional 4/4 bass drum comes in, but just a bit too briefly. Conceptually, The Story Surrounds Us continues Kate Carr's focus on studying the sounds of specific locations, as well as the effects of social decay and its inevitable renewal. However, the music is captivating on its own as well: a wonderful blend of composed sound blended with the incidental, ephemeral sounds that surround us at all times, culminating in a strange, sometimes almost alien, but never mundane experience." [Brainwashed] | 2017 | €10.00 |
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| CASAS, CARLOS | Mutia | do-LP | https://carlos-casas.bandcamp.com/album/mutia "While developing my last film about the elephant graveyard myth, I tried to imagine what that jungle and landscape that protected it might sound like. To do this, I created a series of soundscapes, atmospheres to help me understand that park, to imagine it; I tried to place it in the near future, around 2046. All the sounds that make up those sound compositions come from my references throughout the project, and from the atmospheres and radiofrequencies captured during the filming in Sri Lanka; the deep jungles and magical places that helped me undertake that journey. When I finally finished editing the film itself, I decided to rework those sessions, to create an album that would recap that entire imaginary world I had created. The album is a way of inviting audiences to undertake that journey." Carlos Casas, 2019 Sound compositions, field recordings and radio frequencies by Carlos Casas Additional sound captured in location by Marc Parazon Mastering and cut by Frédéric Alstadt at Ångström studio, Brussels Layout and pictures by Carlos Casas Thanks to all the partners on this journey. Produced by Christopher Denruyter & Cedric D’hondt for Matière Mémoire Editions MATME002LP © Matière Mémoire Editions - Art Sonore Sprl - www.matiere-memoire.com | 2019 | €20.00 |
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| The Mont Aigu Tapes II | MC | THE MONT AIGU TAPES TAPE 2 Sound and Radio Frequencies captured in location in Mont Aigu Part of Fieldworks#26 Thanks to all the MHArt team. Mastering by Frederic Alstadt Pictures by Carlos Casas Design & Layout by Cedric D’hondt | 2023 | €12.50 |
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| CASPAR, C.O. | Epitaph | CD | Neues Werk des Berliner Künstlers & Musikers auf dem feinen russischen Label WAYSTYX, welches inzwischen von Mikhail Tumanov betrieben wird. CASPAR geht hier (mal wieder) neue Wege, setzt fliessendes Wasser, Kirchenglocken und andere Feldaufnahmen ein, lässt einen „female robot“ BAUDELAIRE zitieren, um dann allmählich in industriellere Gefilde zu versinken, mit verhallten und wummernden Maschinen-Geräuschen, metallischem Quietschen & Zerren, und wieder the robot... experimenteller Industrial zwischen Maschinen- & Natur-„Noise“ und schwarzer Lyrik ! Spezial-Cover ! “Penetrating sound confession from respected german master Co.Caspar, Berlin-based activist of an experimental sound, built with propulsions, sound vibrations from corporal movements, consisting of four tracks, each for 20 minutes. First of which “Benediction” and Replica are composed for a paintress from Quebeck/Canada, based on two field recordings (river & wood) in the canadian nature, used as the soundtrack during the vernissage of her paintings. 'Benediction' origines from the anthology Les Fleurs du Mal by Ch. Baudelaire spoken by the artist. purest drop of human prejudaces, fears, drawbacks essence heavy, humid and clouding impicated by the fistfull of various cuts of everyday life hypnotic song of far away syrene vibrant, graceful, controversive, whispering and shivering......” [label info] | 2005 | €13.00 |
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| CASSIBER | The Cassiber Box (1982-1992): 40th Annniversary Cassiber Box (redux) | 6 x CD + 1 DVD in BOX | Long out of print, this is the definitive Cassiber collection in a solid box and fully documented. Made up of the Four classic studio albums, re-mastered by Bob Drake, two extra CD collections: The Way it Was – an amazing set of studio sketches and live recordings with guest appearances by Dietmar Diesner and Rene Lussier and Collaborations, documenting three extended special projects: Duck and Cover – with the addition of Fred Frith, Dagmar Krause, Tom Cora and George Lewis, Cassix – a recording project from Montepulciano with half of Stormy Six; and one track from Otomo Yoshihide/Ground Zero’s Cassiber Live in Tokyo with Shinoda Masami Remix project, as well as a two hour DVD of live and studio footage from Brasil, Frankfurt and Berlin - including a mini-documentary made during the recording of A Face We All Know. The new edition comes in a sturdy box with 40 pages of documents, interviews, information, photographs, pictures, itineraries and miscellaneous memorabilia. Context: In 1982 Cassiber crashed into the Deutsche Neue Welle. Founded by Heiner Goebbels, Alfred Harth, Christoph Anders and Chris Cutler, they fused experimental rock, fringe jazz, punk, pop, plunderphonics, improvisation and musique concrete into a complex form of studio - and then concert – composition that was unique in mashing experimental form with a risky and expressionist mode of execution. In content and aesthetics, Cassiber tracked and anticipated the political and technological changes of its times, shifting, over its 10 years of existence, from the high stakes energy of the earlier releases to the more composed and complex studio works of its later years. Most impressively, Cassiber opened up song form by abandoning, extending or crashing sideways into it – and by creating unlikely structures from a combination of noise, libido, high musicality, dramaturgy and cultural debris. | 2023 | €50.00 |
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| CATLIN, TIM | Radio Ghosts | CD | "The name Tim Catlin may not be terribly well known amongst the avant-guitarist circles; but his recorded output clearly stands amongst the best that Glenn Branca, Keith Rowe, and Jim O'Rourke have mustered from their six strings hard wired into the histories of electroacoustics, minimalism, and post-punk experimentation. Based out of Melbourne, Catlin is a guitarist who incessantly tinkers with the mechanics of his instrument, envisioning it as alternately as a mimetic sculptural object and a pure sound generator. Through his experiments with alternative tunings, atypical string gauges, and Rube Goldberg contraptions of interconnected motors, speakers, and radios, he seeks out the rasping textures of strings vibrating against each other, the acoustic phase patterns of two microtonally tuned strings, and the electrical purity of circuits feeding back upon themselves, essentially creating a polyglot drone symphony cast in smoldering monochrome. Radio Ghosts arrives nearly five years after his debut album Slow Twitch and showcases Catlin's unassuming expertise with the finer aspects of the mechanically prepared guitar. For all of its dynamic frequencies and crosshatched vibrations, Radio Ghosts is devoid of Marshall stacks, Sunn amps, and stomp boxes, as Catlin captures the acoustic phenomenon of the guitar's transient vibrations and steers clear of any tricked out sonic demolition. Instead, Radio Ghosts focuses upon the minutiae of the guitar: wood, strings, and amplifier. Through his refined, tabletop guitar techniques, Catlin prefers to set his guitar in motion, allowing the process dictate the course of action with minor edits and sleights of hand from the composer himself. Catlin's drone guitar work is simultaneously capable of expressionistic illusions (e.g. cicada choruses, industrial grind, uncanny ephemera from the radio waves, etc.) and a sonic transcendence of pure sonic introspection. Given that the final piece on Radio Ghosts replaces the guitar with a crash cymbal that Catlin agitates through similar processes, Catlin's work shows that Organum does not have exclusivity on the bowed cymbal for creating epic, tactile sound fields." [label info] www.23five.org | 2007 | €13.00 |
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| CHAMELEONS | Arctic Moon | LP | Arctic Moon’ is the first full-length studio album by Chameleons since the release of ‘Why call it Anything?’ in 2001. “There is an obvious maturity to the songwriting on this record, and anyone familiar with our past work will hear that this is a positive step forward. While we’re proud of the band’s legacy, we really wanted to forge something fresh while retaining that profound and imaginative quality we’re known for. We think that we have managed to do that and deliver a very strong record!” Vox concludes. The band will continue to tour extensively either side of album release, with dates in Spain and Portugal between 6th-19th June followed by a set at the Forever Now festival in Milton Keynes on 22nd before a return to the US for headlining shows plus a dozen with The Psychedelic Furs commencing on 26th. A further headlining tour of North American cities kicks off a fortnight after the release of ‘Arctic Moon’, plus mainland European dates in Germany and the Benelux scheduled from late October ahead of a previously announced UK tour in November Long cited as a hugely influential act, having inspired the likes of (The) Verve, Oasis, Interpol, The Killers, Editors and White Lies, Chameleons are renowned for their transformative catalogue and intense, emotionally charged live performances, creating a legacy that extends far beyond their four studio albums to date. Their widely acclaimed debut, ‘Script of the Bridge’ (1983) has been cited by many as a masterpiece way ahead of its time, and was followed by ‘What does Anything mean? Basically!’ (1984), ‘Strange Times’ (1986) and ‘Why call it Anything?’ (2001). Their unique sound quickly won them an audience with its mix of melancholic yet energetic and powerful tunes, hypnotic, ethereal riffs and a potent, timeless lyrical style. They are considered one of the most influential guitar bands of the ‘80s and ‘90s, contributing substantially to the post-punk, shoegaze and indie scenes. 2024 saw the release of two EPs that kicked off a new chapter for the band. ‘Where Are You?’ consisted of three new songs, while ‘Tomorrow Remember Yesterday’ featured five re-recorded archive tracks. ‘Arctic Moon’ sees them propelling forward musically while retaining the essence that originally made them iconic. ################# The legacy of The Chameleons dates all the way back to 1981 when the band were discovered by the legendary BBC Radio host John Peel. Following their debut single In Shreds for Epic Records in 1982, the band released three seminal albums: the widely acclaimed Script of the Bridge (1983), cited by many sources to be a masterpiece way ahead of its time, its follow up What Does Anything Mean? Basically! (1984) and for the US based Geffen Records Strange Times (1986). Their unique sound quickly captivated the public through their very own mix of melancholic, yet energetic and powerful tunes, hypnotic ethereal riffs and the potent, timeless lyrical style. The Chameleons are considered to be one of the most influential guitar bands of the 80s and 90s, contributing substantially to the post-punk, shoegaze and indie scenes and are often regarded as one of the most underrated bands ever to emerge from the city of Manchester England. The Chameleons disbanded in 1987 only to re-emerge in 2000 with the independently release, Why Call It Anything and toured widely across Europe and the United States. However following the tragic death of their drummer, John Lever, and the departure of another founding member guitarist, Dave Fielding, the group disbanded once more. The Chameleons reformed in 2021 with surviving founders and principle writers: guitarist Reg Smithies and bassist, vocalist & lyricist Mark Burgess, joined by guitarist Stephen Rice, Danny Ashberry on keyboards and on drums Todd Demma. Over the decades the popularity and reputation of the band continued to grow leading them to share the stage with the likes of U2, Killing Joke, Bauhaus, Simple Minds, Talk Talk, The Cure amongst others. The Chameleons regard themselves primarily as a ‘live band’, which has earned the fan’s loyalty and respect for decades with their effortlessly intense and emotionally-charged performances. They have been touring extensively in the EU, UK, US and as far abroad as Australia, South America and China. The Chameleons are excited to announce the release of their first new single in over a decade: Where Are You coming out on May 24th on Metropolis Records in conjunction with ‘Strange Times Entertainment. “We are thrilled to be working on our brand new album titled Arctic Moon coming out later this year. We’ve been working extremely hard and we’re really proud of the results so far. We all feel it’s the best work we’ve done so far. Fans might have the chance to hear some of the new songs on the upcoming tour in the United States, Europe, Australia and South America.” https://www.metropolis-records.com/artist/chameleons | 2025 | €26.50 |
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| CHAOS AS SHELTER | Dawn Syndrome | CD | TOPHET PROPHET is maybe the only real dark ambient / industrial-label in Israel at this time. This new CHAOS AS SHELTER-release spreads on 9 tracks lots of very clear metal / bell / glass –sounds & drones, “eastern/oriental” ethnic found sounds and melancholic melodies, wonderful vocals from VERA AGNIVOLOK on one piece, conrete recordings from broken glass, etc... and the epic drones CAS is known for... A high-class release and also perfect introduction into the mystic-drone world of CHAOS AS SHELTER ! [Drone Rec. info 2006] “After releasing over 18 releases since 1999, Chaos As Shelter needs no further introductions. His latest work, dawn syndrome, was recorded in 2001 and is dedicated to the end of Kali Yuge, the age of iron, which is the final and most negative of four evolutionary Yugic cycles, the end of the world, and the dawn of a new golden age - Sataya Yuga (the age of purity). Dawn Syndrome is an eight-track composition of ritual dark ambient crafted in the skillful way Chaos as Shelter is known for. The usage of organic and artificial sound sources which has been his trademark. It is a hymn of submersion and rebirth, of confusion, ambiguity and enigma, of the darkest moment before sunrise. Dawn Syndrome was recorded at new Jerusalem studios and Chaos As Shelter was supported by Vera Agnivolok , Helena Dorsht and an accidentally obtained presto home recorded vinyl disc.“ [label info] | 2005 | €10.00 |
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| CHAOTALION | Tannenholzrauch | CD | "Dark fir woods and weird pentagram-esque runes on the cover: How can the contents of this album not be a clichéd, possibly black-metal influenced rendition of the idiotic “stay true to the soil” creed? Well, Alexander Marco has succeeded in tricking us all. His music on this album under the Chaotalion moniker is a vast expanse of breathing, pulsating ambient dreamscapes, cleverly evoking certain black metal genre elements, but totally eliding its ideology. Marco uses guitar and electronics to create the music on this album, but his textural approach owes a good deal to his work with not-so-musical sounds. A regular participant in the Noise Factory sessions hosted by Y-Ton-G, Marco is also schooled in musique concrète and assemblage of found sounds, and this rather constructivist approach gives this release a refreshingly sober, clear, kitsch-free touch. Actually, the album, with all its packaging and teutonic titles, might well be a conceptual ‘joke’ on certain ‘black’ aesthetics, but the music is too well-crafted to allow for an easy interpretation as a simple parody. File under: ambient" [label info] www.attenuationcircuit.de "Attenuation Circuit Records have been rumbling around for a while. It’s mindblowing how much effort Sascha puts up into his releases, shows, tours, and his activism on the contemporary avant-garde scene skyrocketed the label to the top. It’s no wonder why this is the case considering the number of releases Attenuation Circuit has managed to publish in previous years. The numbers speak for themselves. Tannenholdrauch by Chaotalion is just a tiny particle in the label’s vast universe, but the significant gear on the modern dark ambient scene. The album comprises of nine cleverly layered dark ambient numbers that burst with eerie atmospherics. These eerie atmospherics consist of a wide array of spacey sounds, subtle synthetic drones, occasional guitar experimentations, and delicate non-organic noises. Chaotalion uses calm tones as overtures for his compositions, perpetuated by simplistic ambient keys. The situation becomes complex when the artist includes the mentioned elements to enhance the overall listening experience. The transitions between monotone and polytone sequences are nicely composed, so Tannenholdrauch keeps attention thought complete sessions. There’s a certain accentuation of composite darkness showcased through loads of assorted half-tones. However, Chaotalion maintains a dosage of melody that sounds intentionally odd, but pleasant to the listening apparatus. The artist has also included pulsing sequences at some points to retain listeners’ attention during the exhausting monotone segments. Still, these monotone segments are incorporated to maintain a dark, depressive, obscure ambiance that lurks around throughout the complete album. If that was the intention of the Chaotalion, than the artist unquestionably nailed in his intent to depict macabre imagery through Tannenholdrauch. The album comes with minimalistic photography of the woods, characteristic for depressive black metal bands, and it includes stylized pentagram logo, which serves as a Chaotalion’s symbol. Tannenholdrauch carries the dosage of depressiveness characteristic for the vast majority of dark ambient works, but this particular one provides a more eerie atmosphere than the other artists. Tannenholdrauch has come as a compact disc, and it can be purchased at the Attenuation Circuit Bandcamp page." [Thoughts Words Action] | 2015 | €8.00 |
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| CHASSE, LOREN & MICHAEL NORTHAM | The Otolith | CD | 58 Minuten voller Wunder und Geheimnis! Mehrere Jahre haben LOREN CHASSE (THUJA, etc.) und MICHAEL NORTHAM eine unglaubliche Fülle von Klängen zusammengetragen (Field Recordings, Aussen-Objekt-Aufnahmen, Instrumentalsounds) und daraus auf acht Stücken Räume voller konkreter Details und dröhnender Sphären erschaffen, es tönt so soft und obertonreich und doch nie beliebig, Originalsounds bleiben oft im dunkeln aber betören stets in höchstem Maße. Das ist "organischer Ambient" oder "Microsound Musique Concrete" in Vollendung! "The recordings of Loren Chasse and Michael Northam begin and end with the great outdoors. Yet, the well-documented wanderlust of these two kindred sound artists is only part of the equation. Field recordings of wind, water, and stone intertwine and hybridize within private rituals of droning psychedelic ragas that return as a folklore reiterating the mystery of the natural world around us. Through his numerous contributions to the multi-faceted Jewelled Antler as well his solo work, Chasse has long postulated the microphone as an extension of his ear, which magnifies and probes the surface of the earth for a tactile grit that permeates all of the sounds that he generates. Northam claims his inspiration from vast geographies, microscopic detail, and severe weather, which he compacts through various techniques to explore what is between improvisation and acousmatic composition. Both Chasse and Northam entertain such notions through an alchemy of arcane instruments: autoharps, ouds, flutes, bells, gongs, bowed wires, harmonium, and Northam's magnetic table harp. The Otolith is the result of several years of work, with sounds gathered collectively in the San Francisco Bay Area and throughout Europe. The album speaks as a bramble of fence wire and chaparral scrub oak, acquiring an unkempt collection of rubbish, cobwebs, insects, and soil within its tangle. As the wind pushes in one direction, this mass emits a quite if scratchy melody as if the ghost from a forgotten song; but when the wind changes directions, it bellows a rasping din of metal and vine cracking against itself. This sodden calliope tumbles into a miasma of droning atmospheres, softly rasped distortion, and very subtly rendered lulabies lurking deep within the overgrowth." [label info] " Throughout the Marin Headlands just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, the coastal mountains are dotted with countless bunkers which were built during World War II in anticipation of the Japanese invasion that never came. Nearly 70 years later, these bunkers have been weathered by wind, fog, rain, and of course the sodden folks who tromp through the Headlands on a daily basis. These concrete structures with small portals facing the Pacific all have amazing reverberant qualities; and it shouldn't be a surprise that the more frequented bunkers and passageways inevitably echo with the sound of children dying to hear their own voices tossed back to them. The Headlands have been a favored destinations for Loren Chasse, who has sought many of the lesser known and lesser travelled environs for field recordings and jam sessions that would eventually work their way into all things Jewelled Antler (Thuja, Franciscan Hobbies, The Blithe Sons, Of, Ov, etc.). In his recordings, Chasse extracts a profound mystery and grand sense of wonder from that echo, the bunker's grit, the soft recurrence of surf bleeding through those walls, and the distant bleat of a foghorn. Back in 2005, Chasse took his fellow globetrotting wanderer Michael Northam to the Battery Townsley where the two set up long string wires and various handheld instruments to begin a series of recordings which took a few years to complete after Northam left California. The two did manage to meet up once again in Estonia, there exploring the Soviet industrial ruins that pock the Estonian landscape with similar intentions. Out of the bramble of overgrown weeds, rebar, concrete, dirt, rock, wind, and water, Chasse and Northam straddle those psychedelic leanings of Jewelled Antler and the more studied aspects of minimalism. The Otolith begins with an acoustic clamor, as if billions of iron filings were brushing against each other under the direction of a couple of hefty magnets, before shifting into a harmonium blur of sustained tones hinting at a melody well beneath these clouds of tousled energy. Softer drones and Aeolian fragments flutter forth out of bowed strings and gently tapped gongs amidst a golden hue of opiated atmospherics. Scrabblings across the surfaces of leaves, rocks, mud, and metal fuse with field recordings of wind and water, as a continuing demonstration of Chasse's alchemy with naturalist sound to bring forth stately ragas and dreamtime psychedelic lullabies. Chasse and Northam work amazingly well together, having produced this thoroughly amazing album. Think Popul Vuh, Parson Sound, Pandit Pran Nath, Harry Bertoia, and Eric La Casa. Totally beautiful and mesmerizing." [Aquarius Records review] www.helenscarsdale.com | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| CHORD | Flora | CD | "Neuer Drone-Monolith bestehend aus Kyle Benjamin (guitarist for Chicago´s Unfortunaut), Jason Hoffman (a.k.a. darkwave composer Anatole), Trevor de Brauw (of Chicago instrumentalists Pelican) und Phil Dole (of über-dronists X-Bax). Folgende Herangehensweise: Es gibt einen Chord und jeder der hier Teilnehmenden spielt davon eine einzelne Note - Monotonie in seiner reinsten Form. Da brummen die Boxen, glühen die Kabel, vibrieren die Eingeweide, vorausgesetzt, selbstredend, natürlich, wo denkste hin, ´maximum volume yields maximum result´. Ein ´sonic titan´ zwischen Lotus Eaters und Growing." [Flight 13] "Evanston, IL. - CHORD was formed at Dr. Wax, a once thriving record store (now sadly closed, but immortalized as the title inspiration for prolific casio-rocker Wesley Willis’s 2000 full length) that was an appealing gathering place for musicians and music aficionados alike. Amid endless musings about the finer points of texture, tone, and Jimmy Eat World’s rousing single “The Middle”, Kyle Benjamin (guitarist for Chicago's Unfortunaut), Jason Hoffman (a.k.a. darkwave composer Anatole), Trevor de Brauw (of Chicago instrumentalists Pelican) and Phil Dole (of über-dronists X-Bax) devised an outline for CHORD that lived for many months in the realm of conversation. With a shared appreciation for the works of Tony Conrad, and Glen Branca the group formulated a collective vision: exploit and explore the sonic depth of a single chord. CHORD performances consist of each player being assigned one note from a pre-selected chord. They are then expected to consider all ranges of flexibility concerning octave, rhythm, playing style and effect treatments. The overall effect CHORD generates is that of a single note being rendered into an unsolvable riddle – a harmonic Gordian knot that creates an almost pastoral feel of being blinded by the sun. The rejection of melody and structure in favor of sweeping and epic tones inspires a sense of rousing apprehension. Shrouded in the individual tunings of each player the pieces never become diluted, instead finding resolution in collective dissonance and consonance. To be in the presence of chord achieved is transcendent. CHORD first performed during February 2004 at Evanston's Nevin's Live, stunning a sold out crowd who had gathered on a combination of word of mouth and their appreciation for the other folk-rock acts on the bill. A few select shows followed including coveted opening slots for Jakob, Savage Republic, Growing, and The Austerity Program, as well as a headlining appearance in Brooklyn at a benefit for The American Red Cross. CHORD released its debut recording FLORA on Neurot Recordings in spring 2009." [label info] "...It's all quite dramatic and epic, quite beautiful, stately at certain moments, almost chaotic and crumbling at others, anyone into Conrad, Cale, Maclise, Flynt and especially Branca and Chatham will definitely dig this. As well as guitardrone freaks who count Fear Falls Burning, RST, Seconds In Formaldehyde, Elm, Continuum and the like among their favorites." [Aquarius Records review] www.neurotrecordings.com | 2009 | €14.00 |
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| CHRIS & COSEY | Pagan Tango | LP | Newly remastered reissue of 1991's `Pagan Tango', depicting synth-pop pioneers Chris & Cosey stepping into a new decade with uncanny, atavistic traces of bygone exotica and ritual musicks. CHRIS CARTER & COSEY FANNI TUTTI's remastered limited edition vinyl series continues in 2023 with the release of Techno Primitiv (1985), Trust (1989) and Pagan Tango (1991) - all available on vinyl for the first time since their original release. The remastered albums will be available on coloured vinyl, each with a printed inner sleeve of archival photos, via CTI. Elemental 7, Muzik Fantastique!, and Feral Vapours of The Silver Ether were released earlier this year, and the series has seen many of Chris & Cosey's influential albums available on vinyl for the first time, giving listeners a new opportunity to revisit some of their celebrated catalogue. Pagan Tango - described by Melody Maker as "C&C formulating perfection" - originally released in 1991 on Wax Trax!, and sees the pair once follow their own hypnotic beat in new directions. The album was originally presented ten years after C&C's legendary debut `Heartbeat', a decade in which they deployed no fewer than 10 albums, and acted as spirit-guides for the post-industrial era's phase shift to synth-pop and new wave. In title and function `Pagan Tango' echoes an occult thrust that underlined their music since the beginning and would parallel and dovetail themes of PTV, a rising new age consciousness, and neo-folk. It features Chris Carter continuing to refine his drum programming to whirring, intricate latin trills and triplets best for dancing (and which pissed on anything coming from Gen's apocryphal club projects, for example), and comparable with prevailing energies of body music, latin freestyle electro, Washington Go-Go and new jack swing, as much as the pagan tango of the record's title. Chris' rhythms would nothing without Cosey's sensual vox and cornet, found here like a sleek, gynoid cyberpunk presence mixed beautifully clear and wide across their retro-futurist projections. From the off they move perpendicular to trends, with `Ecstasy' clearly referencing the '91 drug du jour, but quite unlike its conventions, before the album sashays between echoes of `Exotica' in 'Synaesthesia', to the taut EBM of `Take Control' or `Sin' and its kinky title tune, via sultrier downstrokes in `Face to Face', the new jack swanger `Feel to Me', and Washington funk of `Go-Go Latino', with the pair's energies and sound design most hallucinatory in `Sacred Silence'. | 2023 | €30.50 |
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| CHRISTOU, JANI | Enantiodromia | CD | Sieben Werke aus der letzten Schaffensperiode des genialen griechischen Komponisten († 1970), der nur 44 Jahre alt wurde. Ob flirrend-ekstatische Klangfelder, Geräuschkaskadenerzeugung mittels der Klangkörper der eingesetzten Instrumente, ob atonale Improvisation oder „industriell“ anmutende rhythmische Muster mit unheimlichen Stimmen, JANI CRISTOUs Musik zeugt von hoher Intensität und Dichte und einer kaum mehr zu überbietenden, körperlich spürbaren Spannung, die sich z.B. bei ENANTIODROMIA eindrucksvoll entlädt.... Hier enthalten: ENANTIODROMIA (1965-68), PRAXIS für Streichorchester und Klavier (1966-69), EPICYCLE (1968), ANAPARASTASIS III (1969), MYSTERION (1969), ANAPARASTASIS I (1968), PRAXIS for 12 für 11 Streicher und einen Pianisten (1966). Dazu im booklet hochinteressante liner-notes über seine Konzeptionen von Metamusik, Proto-Performance, Klangpatterns und seine spezielle Kompositionstechnik mit eigener Notation...“Er sah die Musik vielmehr als ein Mittel an, uranfänglich gemeinsame Emotionen zu aktivieren, die ansonsten durch Zivilisation unterdrückt sind, und einen mystischen Zustand der Trance oder der Hysterie zu erreichen.“ TIP !!! Seven works from this genius greek composer from the sixties, absolutely intense stuff ! Comes with booklet in german/english liner notes, with many interesting background infos about this conception and philosophy. VERY MUCH RECOMMENDED !! | 2001 | €18.00 |
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| CHROME | Ghost Machine | CD | Chrome was founded in San Francisco in 1975. Their sound wasn't easy to label - being ahead of their time, Helios Creed and Damon Edge created music that featured heavy elements of feedback and distortion.They experimented in mixing synthesized noise with rock instrumentation, therefore they are now seen as part of the post punk movement (even when punk was still in full flow at that time). Their breakthrough came in 1977 with their second album Alien Soundtracks. The band largely abandoned conventional rock compositions, instead employing cut-up and collage techniques and heavily processed sound to create a kind of sci-fi punk style. The album was given 4 out of 5 stars in the UK music paper Sounds, and Chrome began gradually to gain a cult reputation in the UK and in Europe. In the 1980s Damon Edge released several rather electronic records under the Chrome name, but Helios Creed had by that time left the band. He pursued a solo career but picked up the name Chrome again after Damon Edge died in Paris. The album Ghost Machine came out in 2002 on the German Dossier label. It is an often overlooked gem in the band's discography and has been out of print for over a decade. Creed reinstalled all the Chrome trademark sounds mixing electronics with his distinct guitar sound, and unusal production and mixing methods. This new edition comes in a digipack and with remastered sound. www.klanggalerie.com | 2017 | €14.50 |
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| CHRONOMAD | Sayeh | 12" | "Reise in den Klangkosmos des Nahen Ostens: zweite EP des Münchner Elektronikers. Hinter dem Projekt Chronomad verbirgt sich Saam Schlamminger. Der 1966 in Istanbul geborene und jetzt in München lebende Musiker hat sich auf die persische Bechertrommel (Zarb) und die Schellentrommel namens Daf spezialisiert, die er beide elektronisch verfremdet. Er hat weltweit schon mit den verschiedensten Musikern zusammengespielt, u. a. mit Susan Deyhim und The Notwist. 2004 veröffentlichte er ein Album und legt sechs Jahre später mit "Sayeh" seine zweite EP vor: eine wilde Reise in drei Etappen durch den Klangkosmos des Nahen Ostens. Eine eindringliche Musik, gespickt mit Feldaufnahmen, ambitioniert und vielsagend." [label info] www.alientransistor.de | 2010 | €12.50 |
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| Sayeh | maxi-CD | "Reise in den Klangkosmos des Nahen Ostens: zweite EP des Münchner Elektronikers. Hinter dem Projekt Chronomad verbirgt sich Saam Schlamminger. Der 1966 in Istanbul geborene und jetzt in München lebende Musiker hat sich auf die persische Bechertrommel (Zarb) und die Schellentrommel namens Daf spezialisiert, die er beide elektronisch verfremdet. Er hat weltweit schon mit den verschiedensten Musikern zusammengespielt, u. a. mit Susan Deyhim und The Notwist. 2004 veröffentlichte er ein Album und legt sechs Jahre später mit "Sayeh" seine zweite EP vor: eine wilde Reise in drei Etappen durch den Klangkosmos des Nahen Ostens. Eine eindringliche Musik, gespickt mit Feldaufnahmen, ambitioniert und vielsagend." [label info] www.alientransistor.de | 2010 | €9.00 |
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| CINDYTALK | Wappinschaw (lim. clear red vinly) | LP | - For Fans of: This Mortal Coil, Xmal Deutschland, Interpol, Zoviet France, Clan of Xymox - First ever reissue - CD and vinyl download card include three rare b-side bonus tracks // Cindytalk is the mercurial, expressionist outlet of Scottish artist Cinder. An evolution of her early 1980's Edinburgh-based punk band The Freeze, she launched the project upon moving to London, inspired by the crossroads of exploratory UK post-punk and early European industrial. Her work thrives on chance and transformation, collaging elements of noise, balladry, soundtrack, catharsis, and improvisation. After a series of celebrated albums for the Midnight Music label as well as collaborations with This Mortal Coil and Cocteau Twins, Cinder migrated to the United States, becoming involved with various underground techno collectives around the Midwest and West Coast. Subsequent relocations to Hong Kong and Japan further expanded Cindytalk's horizons, resulting in a fruitful partnership with Viennese experimental institution Editions Mego, for whom she released five albums of swooning, granular atmosphere. 2021 finds her as engaged as ever, at the precipice of long-awaited back catalog reissues alongside multiple new works, guided by her lasting love of discovery and deviation: "new pathways always being uncovered." Across decades of activity Cinder's body of work has forever followed its own elusive muse but nowhere is this restless spirit more apparent and ambitious than the 4th Cindytalk LP, Wappinschaw. Conceived as "a call to arms" inspired by Scotland and its struggle for independence, the title refers to an archaic Scottish battle inspection during which clan chieftains surveyed their group's weapons to ensure they were combat ready. A mindset of reflective preparation threads throughout the record, manifested in forms both naked and noisy, ancient and anguished. Opening with an aching solo vocal rendition of the British folk standard "The First Time Ever (I Saw Your Face)," the album then surges into the Cindytalk classic, "A Song Of Changes," sparkling and spiraling in strange waves of sorrow and joy. From there the mood fragments, tracing asymmetrical paths of feverish dirge, pensive spirituals, noir abstraction, spoken word (landmark Glaswegian writer Alasdair Gray guests on "Wheesht"), bagpipe drone, and apocalyptic post-punk. Given its aggressive eclecticism, it's not surprising that Cinder describes the creation of Wappinschaw as a "precarious" process, composed from "scraps" with abruptly shifting personnel - a situation only compounded by the impending dissolution of their label at the time, Midnight Music. Despite, or perhaps because of, these factors, the collection stands as a testament to Cinder's belief that "so-called experimental can only remain so if you keep challenging yourself." This is singular and challenging music, texturally jagged and emotionally conflicted, swimming through shivering darkness into fragile pockets of light. At the time of its recording, Cinder was attempting to leave London after many years in the city, dreaming of an ancestral return. But as much as "ideas of homecoming were percolating," there remained unfinished business, old ghosts to exorcise, culminating in Wappinschaw's heady, harrowing voyage: "An invocation of spirits of resistance - as much a declaration of war as a declaration of love." | 2021 | €23.50 |
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| The Wind is strong (lim. marble smoke viny) | LP | Cindytalk is the mercurial, expressionist outlet of Scottish artist Cinder. An evolution of her early 1980's Edinburgh-based punk band The Freeze, she launched the project upon moving to London, inspired by the crossroads of exploratory UK post-punk and early European industrial. Her work thrives on chance and transformation, collaging elements of noise, balladry, soundtrack, catharsis, and improvisation. After a series of celebrated albums for the Midnight Music label as well as collaborations with This Mortal Coil and Cocteau Twins, Cinder migrated to the United States, becoming involved with various underground techno collectives around the Midwest and West Coast. Subsequent relocations to Hong Kong and Japan further expanded Cindytalk's horizons, resulting in a fruitful partnership with Viennese experimental institution Editions Mego, for whom she released five full-lengths of swooning, granular atmosphere. 2021 finds her as engaged as ever, at the precipice of long-awaited back catalog reissues alongside multiple new works, guided by her lasting love of discovery and deviation: “new pathways always being uncovered.” The 3rd album by Scottish industrial enigma Cinder aka Cindytalk began life as the soundtrack to an experimental film by English director Ivan Unnwin entitled Eclipse (The Amateur Enthusiast's Guide To Virus Deployment), and was originally slated for release via Factory Records' video division, Ikon. Inspired heavily by Alan Splet's eerily disembodied sound design in David Lynch's Eraserhead, the collection's 15 pieces seethe between field recordings, wistful piano vignettes, and lurking metallic haze – a hybrid palette Cinder characterized at the time as “ambi-dustrial.” Unfortunately Ikon collapsed on the eve of the project's completion so the film was never distributed, but the Midnight Music imprint repackaged Cindytalk's score as an LP in 1990 under the name The Wind Is Strong... (full title: The Wind Is Strong - A Sparrow Dances, Piercing Holes in Our Sky). Long out of print, the album remains one of the most elusive and adventurous in the Cindytalk discography, a mix of musique concréte, haunted reverie, and desolate beauty. Even unaccompanied by their intended visuals, this is overtly cinematic music, conjuring forests at dusk and shadowed corridors, equal parts remote and reflective. Cinder cites a belief that “all sound is music,” which fully manifests here, utilizing tape hiss, ticking clocks, flicking flames, and distant whispers as evocative accents in tapestries of luminous negative space. Although Cinder included the subtitle “A Cindytalk diversion” in the sleeve notes, The Wind Is Strong... is crucial to the project's canon, demonstrating the depth and versatility of her unique ear and intuition. She describes each album as a direct response to the previous one, and in that sense The Wind marks a bold break from the coiled song-oriented post-punk of 1988's In This World, venturing into unknown, unnamed terrain, and finding foreboding new futures to call her own. https://www.daisrecords.com/products/cindytalk-the-wind-is-strong Cindytalk ist das quecksilbrige, expressionistische Ventil der schottischen Künstlerin Cinder. Als Weiterentwicklung ihrer Edinburgher Punkband The Freeze aus den frühen 1980er Jahren gründete sie das Projekt, nachdem sie nach London gezogen war, inspiriert von der Kreuzung aus forschendem britischen Post-Punk und frühem europäischen Industrial. Ihre Arbeit lebt vom Zufall und der Verwandlung, sie collagiert Elemente von Lärm, Balladen, Soundtracks, Katharsis und Improvisation. Nach einer Reihe gefeierter Alben für das Label Midnight Music sowie Kollaborationen mit This Mortal Coil und den Cocteau Twins wanderte Cinder in die Vereinigten Staaten aus und engagierte sich in verschiedenen Underground-Techno-Kollektiven im Mittleren Westen und an der Westküste. Spätere Umzüge nach Hongkong und Japan erweiterten Cindytalks Horizont und führten zu einer fruchtbaren Partnerschaft mit der Wiener Experimental-Institution Editions Mego, für die sie fünf Alben mit schwelgerischer, granularer Atmosphäre veröffentlichte. 2021 ist sie so engagiert wie eh und je und steht an der Schwelle von lang erwarteten Wiederveröffentlichungen des alten Katalogs neben zahlreichen neuen Werken, geleitet von ihrer anhaltenden Liebe zur Entdeckung und Abweichung: Immer neue Wege werden aufgedeckt. Das dritte Album des schottischen Industrial-Enigmas Cinder aka Cindytalk begann als Soundtrack zu einem Experimentalfilm des englischen Regisseurs Ivan Unnwin mit dem Titel Eclipse (The Amateur Enthusiast's Guide To Virus Deployment) und sollte ursprünglich über die Videoabteilung von Factory Records, Ikon, veröffentlicht werden. Inspiriert von Alan Splets unheimlichem, körperlosem Sounddesign in David Lynchs Eraserhead, bewegen sich die 15 Stücke der Sammlung zwischen Field Recordings, wehmütigen Klaviervignetten und lauerndem Metalldunst - eine hybride Palette, die Cinder damals als "ambi-dustrial" bezeichnete. Unglücklicherweise brach Ikon am Vorabend der Fertigstellung des Projekts zusammen, so dass der Film nie vertrieben wurde, aber das Midnight Music Imprint verpackte Cindytalks Partitur 1990 als LP unter dem Namen The Wind Is Strong... (vollständiger Titel: The Wind Is Strong - A Sparrow Dances, Piercing Holes in Our Sky). Längst vergriffen, bleibt das Album eines der schwer fassbarsten und abenteuerlichsten in der Diskographie von Cindytalk, eine Mischung aus konkreter Musik, geisterhafter Träumerei und trostloser Schönheit. Selbst ohne die visuelle Untermalung ist dies eine offenkundig filmische Musik, die Wälder in der Dämmerung und schattige Korridore heraufbeschwört, die zu gleichen Teilen entlegen und nachdenklich sind. Cinder beruft sich auf die Überzeugung, dass ügalles Geräusch Musik ist,üh was sich hier voll und ganz manifestiert, indem sie Tonbandrauschen, tickende Uhren, züngelnde Flammen und entferntes Flüstern als evokative Akzente in Wandteppichen aus leuchtendem Negativraum verwendet. Obwohl Cinder den Untertitel "A Cindytalk diversion" (Eine Cindytalk-Abwechslungü) in die Cover-Notizen geschrieben hat, ist The Wind Is Strong... entscheidend für den Kanon des Projekts und demonstriert die Tiefe und Vielseitigkeit ihres einzigartigen Gehörs und ihrer Intuition. Sie beschreibt jedes Album als direkte Antwort auf das vorherige, und in diesem Sinne markiert The Wind einen kühnen Bruch mit dem songorientierten Post-Punk des 1988er Albums In This World, indem sie sich in unbekanntes, unbenanntes Terrain wagt und eine neue Zukunft findet, die sie ihr Eigen nennen kann. Für Fans von: Harold Budd, Tor Lundvall, Lawrence English, Kevin Drumm, Loscil, This Mortal Coil, Drekka, Zoviet France. | 2021 | €23.50 |
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| Camouflage Heart | LP | https://cindytalk.bandcamp.com/album/camouflage-heart Cindytalk is the mercurial, expressionist outlet of Scottish artist Cinder, inspired by the crossroads of exploratory UK post-punk and early European industrial. Her work thrives on chance and transformation, collaging elements of noise, balladry, soundtrack, catharsis, and improvisation. "We were trying to find our own space," says Cinder of the formative period 'Camouflage Heart' emerged from, amidst a move from Edinburgh to London and Cinder's evolving exploration of gender identity, well before culture at large was equipped to understand. With contemporary discourse we see that the project manifested her transgender ideas as visceral music. The guttural, feral sound marked a notably darker turn from The Freeze's six-year run on the fringes of punk. Changing the project's name became vital, not just because they kept hearing the former was already taken, but the desire to embody the spiritual and sonic shift, "to uncover new pathways…to feminize it," she says. Cinder, with bandmates David Clancy and John Byrne, arrived at Cindytalk, a winking nod to Sindy, the British fashion doll rival to Barbie known then for its pull-string talking mechanism. "The goal was to have a more interesting narrative, more interesting dialogue. Music was ultimately my only way of talking to people. That was my conversation with the world, an abstracted conversation…an attempt to make some kind of tiny, tiny mark, if possible, you hope somebody will notice." Over the years, Cinder has heard from fans who did pick up on the signals and find refuge in 'Camouflage Heart'. Subtle then, but she connects the dots more clearly now, playfully suggesting Dais reissue the long out-of-print vinyl in pink — "It had to be Barbie pink" — underscoring the mischief that's been there all along beneath the silvery surface of Cindytalk. 'Camouflage Heart' plays with tension and pace, from creeping to feverish to claustrophobic. The percussion moves between restless marches and barely-there pulses; for some parts, they scratched and hit a tin bath, among other objects. Guitar lines vibrate and stab as Cinder contorts her voice freely. She pulls poetry from a cerebral abyss, like "make the snake in your eye, pierce the camouflage heart" on the slow-droning centerpiece "The Spirit Behind the Circus Dream." In that register is raw power, both vulnerable and menacing, an ability to locate something deep and emotionally charged within. "I still remember that person who was way too intense for their own good," Cinder reflects. "I couldn't make a record like that now, certainly not vocally, while that anger hasn't dissipated; there's still a kind of warrior." For all the destruction and disintegration of Camouflage Heart, Cinder maintains the objective was never full-on fatalistic; these songs seek not to destroy but to poke and provoke, to transform and heal, to find cracks of light in a crumbling world. She points to the last lines of the opening track, "It's Luxury": "Don't look down," the lyric pines through static and rhythm. Cinder extrapolates, "I'm essentially saying, just keep fucking going. As time went on, for me, that falling became flying. Camouflage Heart is the beginning of believing in flight." Cinder - all words Cindytalk - all musics Cindytalk: Cinder - voice and instruments David Clancy - instruments John Byrne - instruments Richard Hurding - cover photography Mick Harvey - drumming on "Under Glass" Bruce Corser - label photograph Cliff Ash - sleeve photography Recorded at Gateway Studio, London, Jan-July 1984 Engineered by David Ros Except "Everybody Is Christ" – Recorded London, 1982 Remastered by Josh Bonati Layout by Vinnie Massimino & Nathaniel Young Dais Records 2025 "for those who came and will come closer" "elizabeth ... is there room in the rosary for three." | 2025 | €25.00 |
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| CIRCLE | Soundcheck | CD | "Recorded in Finland in October 2009, the band describes Soundcheck as “the most contemporary document possible of a Circle soundcheck/concert experience. For this concert Circle was reinforced by the guitars of J. & P. Jaaskelainen, who may be familiar to some from the ranks of Circle’s brother-in-arms Pharaoh Overlord. On the album, this expanded line-up explores the experimental possibilities of concert staples “Virsi” and “Nopeuskuningas” further than possibly ever before.” “The first part offers two new tracks, beginning with the brief “Kukkakaalia Kapteenit!”, a wispy swirl of shimmery synths, laid back tribal drumming and some dramatic, emotional crooning, very cinematic sounding, almost like it could be some lost 4AD single, dreamy and ethereal, giving way to the way more rocking and intense “Tuhatsata”, which takes up most of the side, a slow burning, blackened bit of Finnish krautrock, super epic, with dueling vocals, crooning versus grunted and growled, fusiony keys, still more tribal drumming, spidery guitars, the track pulsing and pounding, building to multiple crescendos, frenzied freakouts that always lip right back into more looped mesmer. The album progresses with two instantly recognizable live set staples, first up, “Virsi”, dramatically progtastic, with that super soaring epic intro, all dynamic shifts and huge bursts of instrumental crunch, with vocals howling and wailing almost operatically, before lurching into some rad atonal krauty, fusiony, jazzy, hypno groove skitter. The second track, another Circle classic, and live staple, “Nopeuskuningas”, explodes right out of the gate, with its chugging almost surfy, ZZ Top-ish boogie riff, locked in groove, the whole thing stretched out over the remainder of the side, the band solid, and hypnotic, and intense, and rocking and tight as fuck. Their showstopper for sure, and it clearly did the job at this show as well. In so much as between albums, Circle, like Grateful Dead, crank out killer live record after killer liver record, often with some of the same songs, always including a few live staples, familiar enough to hit the spot, but different enough that a Circle fan could be forgiven for needing them ALL!” (Aquarius Records) A stunning and truly unique live album approach by the Finnish masters of hypnorock and unusual sounds. Originally released as a very limited vinyl edition via J. Lehtisalo’s own imprint Full Contact Records and instantly sold out, Soundcheck is now back to life housed in our luxurious, heavy tip-on mini-LP gatefold packaging featuring fantastic expanded photography and artwork by Jussi S. Karjalainen. Limited edition of 800 copies. | 2011 | €13.50 |
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| CIRCULAR | Ghostwhite | CD | The fourth album from Circular was arranged and recorded between 2016-2019. It describes the full, unfolding spectrum, leading to the initial shade of Ghostwhite. This release translates the varied colourful and kaleidoscopic spectra into deep audio and sound sculptures. The audio vision of Ghostwhite builds an organic wall of sound as Johannes Riedel starts to add more new elements, such as vocal samples, becoming louder in the mix to match the wailing organs and accelerating synthetic patterns. Circular shines with his new album and creates haunting and gripping sonic works that capture the imagination. Beautiful melodies and rhythms contrast the field recordings and sounds of modular synthesizers to build an abstract image spanning the entirety of the inner cinema. An album to impress and evolve, gathering more elements and styles into the most unique cosmos of Circular’s music. https://loki-found.bandcamp.com/album/ghostwhite | 2019 | €12.00 |
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| CISFINITUM | Monochrome | CD | " ‘Monochrome' is a eulogy to Dmitry Vasiliev, a music enlightener, a label owner, a journalist, an ardent devotee of experimental music. Initially the composer Eugene Voronovsky conceived 'Monochrome' as a futuristic 'hi-res' mass, an alchemical fusion of angelic chorales and dub techno pulsations. A dream-like transparency of the material is deceptive in masking its technical complexity. Thus, the rhythmic canvas is built of "non-square" rhythms - 7/8, 15/16, etc., from which the strong beat gains fluidity typical of Oriental music. Ambient textures are based on the works of the medieval composers Josquin des Prez, Guillaume de Machaut, Pérotin the Great. Through reverberation the sound is "placed" into authentic space of the Great Pyramid of Giza; it's a meaningful reference for the album, entitlted in its draft by Enochian key of the alchemist John Dee. The news of Vasiliev's tragic death caught the author in rendering the final mix. Thus the meaning and the purpose of this year-long work were redefined. ‘Monochrome' became a funeral service for a dear friend, a person whose role for independent electronic music in Russia cannot be overestimated. The album was originally released as a limited edition cassette by NEN Records in October 2018 and now re-issued on CD by the joint forces of Aquarellist, kultFRONT and ZHELEZOBETON." "Back in 2005, a very new Russian label released work by Eugene Voronovsky, also known as Cisfinitum. It was not the first release for him or the label. 'Bezdna' was reviewed in Vital Weekly 478 and more followed from Cisfinitum and the label that released it, Monochrome Vision. In September of last year, Dmitry Vasiliev, the man behind Monochrome Vision (also a mail-order and organiser of concerts, as well as writing about exactly 'this' kind of music), died in a tragic accident in the Black Sea, thus ending the label. About the same time, Cisfinitum put the final touches on this new release, which became 'Monochrome', a fitting farewell to the man himself. Whereas I remember most of Cisfinitum's music as being quite atmospheric, ambient and drone- like, this is not the case here. Rhythm plays an important role here and apparently, these are 'non-square rhythms', 7/8 or 15/16, which again apparently makes "the strong beat gains fluidity typical of oriental music'. These odd beats guide the sampled sounds of choral music from medieval composers and that may seem an odd pairing but Cisfinitum melted the choral voices into something quite abstract and ambient like. The music gets a rather majestically feeling, a sort of massiveness that works rather good with these beats. I am not sure about the fluidity or the Eastern feel (although, I must admit at one point thinking of Muslimgauze; in 'Auyaea', I think), but in terms of dark atmospheric music, hearing something interesting in the world of rhythm, this was all a most pleasant release. It would have been something that mister Vasiliev would have been proud to release; sad to realize this is a reminder he's no longer here. Indeed a fitting musical eulogy." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2019 | €12.00 |
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| CLOAMA | same | CD | This is dark experimental ambient with a very piercing edge, evokes a very unsettling and eldrich atmosphere....the other, dark & abysmall side of CLOAMA... “.....This recording, marking a debut for artist / group on the New Old Sentinel label and for the label itself, is five tracks of experimental ambient music limited to 500 copies. Experimental ambient. Two words guaranteed to send most people running off in sheer apoplectic fright. The fear of the unknown. Ambient in all its forms they can cope with but…‘experimental’…too weird. Too challenging. Never assume. On this recording the balance between the differing genres has been implemented in such a seamless and gratifying manner that its only when the recording has finished do you suddenly realise what a strange aural experience you have lived through. Track one ‘Radiation Amplifier’ starts with what sounds like Tibetan instruments being struck before the piece swiftly introduces musique concrete electronic effects and a sample before ending in something being strummed. Whoa!! Far fucking out maaan. Track two ‘The New Old Sentinel’ throws a whole caboodle of multi effects into the mix merging part drone / part black ambience / part electro acoustic over ghostly voices. Double whoa!! Double far fucking out maaan. I think you can gleam from this what the other tracks are going to sound like. Manipulated electronic sounds and voices resonate predominately. The music continually fluctuates. To move, evolve and grow. Putting out searching tentacles to probe and envelop. Building up pieces which are then demolished before starting anew all within the same track. This combination, which will happily throw dark and light together and damn the consequences, isn’t afraid to take risks. These are minuscule forays into every genre. Picking the finest flecks and combining them into one ethereal state. The music is abstract enough to be confounding and innovative but it never alienates the listener. Instead you feel a guiding hand leading you gently into the more surreal pieces whilst cooing soothing words of comfort are spoken into your ear as you stand hypnotised at the sonic sculptures unfolding. If this is a foray into uncharted waters, away from the normal Cloama sound, then long may it continue. To produce a piece of work that is structurally complex and yet easily accessible, without falling into the pitfalls of self absorbing wankery, is a feat many aspire to. Cloama have achieved this easily and comes highly recommended to the more adventurous spirits amongst you. “ [Auralpressure] | 2005 | €10.00 |
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| COH | To beat | CD | "Recorded May 2013 - January 2014. All music and lyrics by Ivan Pavlov / COH. Picking up right where the last track on the previous COH release RETRO-2038 left off, the new album is focused on the use of beats within the similar aesthetics. While most of the previous COH records openly shy away from accentuated beat structures and instead build up their rhythmical content by layering waves and pulses, every track on To Beat is padded with just that - beats. The music transition is illustrated in the album's artwork, displaying transformation of a sine-wave, a tone, into a waveform which is beat. This mathematical progression is made audible in the album's opening track Wave To Beat. The rest of the album, however, steers clear from dull math and presents the beats in their more traditional context of what could be referred to as adventurous dance music, taking the listener through various examples of beat use with the sense of playfulness and joy. The final piece, Beat to wave, wraps it up by dissolving a simplistic post-techno piece into a tonal chord. This brings back the album's main idea, where tone and beat are essentially one and the same, like vowels and consonants in a language, like Yin and Yang in music." [label info] www.editionsmego.com "I enter the airlock of TO BEAT: an isolated zone away from the logic and consequence of a linear life, where rebellion and transformation materialise in time and then dissipate into the files of forgotten memory. The opening track tracks the compression of a constant sine tone into sharp punctuations of beat – dynamic curvature compacts into sheer right-angles. For the following 45 minutes, the eternal, fluid unwind of being is chopped up into square and unambiguous blocks of rhythm; life pixelates momentarily, and the endless string of insatiable curiosity becomes a finite ribbon of understanding I can hold in my hands. Once it’s over I shall never speak of it again, taking the airlock out the other side via “BEAT TO WAVE”. The album’s interior is a strange emulation of dance music. The melodies are tangible and thick – riding 4/4 like an unforgettable congregative chant (it feels somewhat Eastern at points, although I feel ignorant thinking that) – yet the beat emphasis falls in eerie places, causing my body to jut out in a series of unnatural angles. It’s an inhuman sound but far from clinical, and while the combination of hum and pulse evoke a sort of chorus of stable spacecraft monitoring equipment, none of these tracks are sheened with mathematical precision; there are bubbles of warm mid-frequency and the sliding voices of alien worship, placing TO BEAT in an error void between abstract calculation and the music of corporeal organisms. There are moments that fling themselves into the lust of nightclub strobes: the sterile pump of blood around a dancefloor, puppeteered by rhythms that speak to the instinct to move. For instance, “ungear moi” sends the drip of neon sweat into half-time as rave synthesisers flit between subterranean corners like lasers, or perhaps surveillance cameras. And then there’s “Moonviewhigh”, whose mixture of major-key colour and geometric certainty depicts it as a Rubik’s cube rotating in front of my face – a flicker of squares in digital contrast, punctuated by a sloping reverb that mockingly emulates the spaces that exist beyond TO BEAT’s four titanium walls. It’s a simulated reality, and to step inside is to subvert gravity and co-ordination for just a short while." [ATTN:Magazine] | 2014 | €13.50 |
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| COIL | Musick to play in the Dark | CD | Few groups in recent history forged as confounding and alchemical a body of work as Coil, the partnership of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance. From album to album and phase to phase their recordings spelunk perplexing depths of esoteric industrial, occult electronics, and drugged poetry, both embodying and alienating parallel currents of their peers. The late 1990's in particular were a fertile era for the duo, embracing chance, chaos, and collaboration, enhanced by recent advancements in synthesis and sampling. Fittingly, at the summit of the decade's long, intoxicated arc, their divergent strains of interstitial ritual congealed into one of Coil's most celebrated and hallucinatory creations: Musick To Play In The Dark. Convening at Balance and Christopherson's vast Victorian house / studio in the coastal town of Weston-super-Mare, they began a series of ambitious sessions aided by inner circle associates Thighpaulsandra and Drew McDowall. Although the creative process was admittedly “iterative” and “a bit of a drug blur,” the results are astoundingly inventive and well realized, winding through shades of divination dirge, wormhole kosmische, noir lounge, ominous humor, and black mass downtempo, guided by Balance's cryptic lunar muse, which he announces on the opening track: “This is moon musick / in the light of the moon.” What's most remarkable about the album 20 years after its release is how brazen, insular, and unpredictable it still feels. The songs follow an allusive, altered state logic all their own, warping from microscopic ripples of glitch and breath to widescreen warlock psychedelia and back again, as much hyper-sensory as inter-dimensional. Even within a catalog as eclectic as Coil's, Musick is a mystifying collection, oneiric evocations of desire, decadence, dinner jazz, and dietary advice, far beyond the pale of whatever gothic industrial ambiguity birthed such a journey. The record closes with a slow, starlit shuffle, bathed in seething sweeps of spectral texture and high cathedral keys, like approaching the altar of some arcane temple. As the trance thickens Balance's voice rises, processed into an increasingly eerie, gaseous haze, but he resists these unseen forces, intent on delivering a final sermon: “Through hissy mists of history / the dreamer is still dreaming / the dreamer is still dreaming.” Reissued for the first time in over 20 years, now on double vinyl LP with the complete, unedited versions of each song and an exclusive "D-side" vinyl art etching. Packaged in a sturdy matte jacket with embossed lettering and spot-gloss design elements. The compact disc version mirrors this design, and comes housed in thick tip-on "LP style" package. Both formats are completely remastered by engineer Josh Bonati with restored artwork and layout by Nathaniel Young - all under the project supervision of Drew McDowall and Thighpaulsandra. https://www.daisrecords.com/products/coil-musick-to-play-in-the-dark | 2020 | €15.00 |
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| Musick to play in the Dark (yellow vinyl) | do-LP | "Few groups in recent history forged as confounding and alchemical a body of work as Coil, the partnership of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance. From album to album and phase to phase their recordings spelunk perplexing depths of esoteric industrial, occult electronics, and drugged poetry, both embodying and alienating parallel currents of their peers. The late 1990's in particular were a fertile era for the duo, embracing chance, chaos, and collaboration, enhanced by recent advancements in synthesis and sampling. Fittingly, at the summit of the decade's long, intoxicated arc, their divergent strains of interstitial ritual congealed into one of Coil's most celebrated and hallucinatory creations: Musick To Play In The Dark. Convening at Balance and Christopherson's vast Victorian house / studio in the coastal town of Weston-super-Mare, they began a series of ambitious sessions aided by inner circle associates Thighpaulsandra and Drew McDowall. Although the creative process was admittedly “iterative” and “a bit of a drug blur,” the results are astoundingly inventive and well realized, winding through shades of divination dirge, wormhole kosmische, noir lounge, ominous humor, and black mass downtempo, guided by Balance's cryptic lunar muse, which he announces on the opening track: “This is moon musick / in the light of the moon.” What's most remarkable about the album 20 years after its release is how brazen, insular, and unpredictable it still feels. The songs follow an allusive, altered state logic all their own, warping from microscopic ripples of glitch and breath to widescreen warlock psychedelia and back again, as much hyper-sensory as inter-dimensional. Even within a catalog as eclectic as Coil's, Musick is a mystifying collection, oneiric evocations of desire, decadence, dinner jazz, and dietary advice, far beyond the pale of whatever gothic industrial ambiguity birthed such a journey. The record closes with a slow, starlit shuffle, bathed in seething sweeps of spectral texture and high cathedral keys, like approaching the altar of some arcane temple. As the trance thickens Balance's voice rises, processed into an increasingly eerie, gaseous haze, but he resists these unseen forces, intent on delivering a final sermon: “Through hissy mists of history / the dreamer is still dreaming / the dreamer is still dreaming.” Reissued for the first time in over 20 years, now on double vinyl LP with the complete, unedited versions of each song and an exclusive "D-side" vinyl art etching. Packaged in a sturdy matte jacket with embossed lettering and spot-gloss design elements. The compact disc version mirrors this design, and comes housed in thick tip-on "LP style" package. Both formats are completely remastered by engineer Josh Bonati with restored artwork and layout by Nathaniel Young - all under the project supervision of Drew McDowall and Thighpaulsandra." https://www.daisrecords.com/products/coil-musick-to-play-in-the-dark | 2020 | €32.00 |
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| Musick to play in the Dark (black vinyl) | do-LP | "Few groups in recent history forged as confounding and alchemical a body of work as Coil, the partnership of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance. From album to album and phase to phase their recordings spelunk perplexing depths of esoteric industrial, occult electronics, and drugged poetry, both embodying and alienating parallel currents of their peers. The late 1990's in particular were a fertile era for the duo, embracing chance, chaos, and collaboration, enhanced by recent advancements in synthesis and sampling. Fittingly, at the summit of the decade's long, intoxicated arc, their divergent strains of interstitial ritual congealed into one of Coil's most celebrated and hallucinatory creations: Musick To Play In The Dark. Convening at Balance and Christopherson's vast Victorian house / studio in the coastal town of Weston-super-Mare, they began a series of ambitious sessions aided by inner circle associates Thighpaulsandra and Drew McDowall. Although the creative process was admittedly “iterative” and “a bit of a drug blur,” the results are astoundingly inventive and well realized, winding through shades of divination dirge, wormhole kosmische, noir lounge, ominous humor, and black mass downtempo, guided by Balance's cryptic lunar muse, which he announces on the opening track: “This is moon musick / in the light of the moon.” What's most remarkable about the album 20 years after its release is how brazen, insular, and unpredictable it still feels. The songs follow an allusive, altered state logic all their own, warping from microscopic ripples of glitch and breath to widescreen warlock psychedelia and back again, as much hyper-sensory as inter-dimensional. Even within a catalog as eclectic as Coil's, Musick is a mystifying collection, oneiric evocations of desire, decadence, dinner jazz, and dietary advice, far beyond the pale of whatever gothic industrial ambiguity birthed such a journey. The record closes with a slow, starlit shuffle, bathed in seething sweeps of spectral texture and high cathedral keys, like approaching the altar of some arcane temple. As the trance thickens Balance's voice rises, processed into an increasingly eerie, gaseous haze, but he resists these unseen forces, intent on delivering a final sermon: “Through hissy mists of history / the dreamer is still dreaming / the dreamer is still dreaming.” Reissued for the first time in over 20 years, now on double vinyl LP with the complete, unedited versions of each song and an exclusive "D-side" vinyl art etching. Packaged in a sturdy matte jacket with embossed lettering and spot-gloss design elements. The compact disc version mirrors this design, and comes housed in thick tip-on "LP style" package. Both formats are completely remastered by engineer Josh Bonati with restored artwork and layout by Nathaniel Young - all under the project supervision of Drew McDowall and Thighpaulsandra." https://www.daisrecords.com/products/coil-musick-to-play-in-the-dark | 2020 | €30.00 |
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| Musick to play in the Dark 2 (Black Vinyl) | do-LP | After leaving London in 1999 for the sleepy seaside retiree town of Weston-super-Mare, Coil co-founders John Balance and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson set up shop in a palatial eight-bedroom estate to pursue the outer reaches of the group’s heightening cabalistic chemistry. Among the staggering string of late-era masterpieces they produced is lunar opus Musick To Play In The Dark, widely hailed as an artistic zenith upon its release. The sessions that birthed it were in fact so fruitful that a second LP took shape during the creation of the first one. Aided by the recent addition of Welsh multi-instrumentalist engineer Thighpaulsandra, Coil mined further into the recesses of surrealist eldritch electronica Balance termed “moon music” – post-industrial spellcasting at the axis of narcotic and nocturnal energies. Musick To Play In The Dark² spans a full witching hour of bad acid sound design, synthesizer voyaging, opiated balladry, Luciferian glitch, and subliminal hymnals, alternately ominous, oracular, and absurd. Scottish gothic icon Rose McDowall guests on vocals for two tracks but otherwise the album is a hermetic affair, tapping into the group’s limitless insular synergy. Opener “Something” is stark and incantational, a spoken word experiment for windswept voids. “Tiny Golden Books” unspools an aerial whirlpool of cosmic synth, both whispery and widescreen. “Ether” is an exercise in funeral procession piano and intoxicated wordplay (“It's either ether or the other”), while “Where Are You?” and “Batwings – A Liminal Hymn” lurk like liturgical murmurings heard on one’s death bed, framed in granular FX and flickering candlelight. As a whole the collection skews more muted and remote than its predecessor, as if having grown accustomed to the nether regions of these darkening seances. But music box hallucination “Paranoid Inlay” captures the group’s oblique comedic side, always glimmering beneath: over a warped, wobbly beat Balance intones an opaque narrative of serenity, Saint Peter, and suicidal vegetables, accompanied by spiraling harpsichord and stuttering squelches of electronics. “It seems concussion suits you,” he repeats twice, like a macabre pickup line, before dictating a dear diary entry about risks and failures, finally concluding with as close to a self-portrait as Coil ever came: “On a clear day I can see forever / that the underworld is my oyster.” // Unter der erstaunlichen Reihe von Meisterwerken der späten Coil-Ära gilt das Mond-Opus „Musick To Play In The Dark“ als künstlerischer Zenit der Band. Die Sessions, aus denen es hervorging, waren sogar so fruchtbar, dass eine zweite LP noch während der Entstehung der ersten Gestalt annahm. Unterstützt durch den walisischen Multi-Instrumentalisten und Tontechniker Thighpaulsandra tauchten Coil weiter in die Tiefen der surrealistischen Elektronika, die Bandgründer John Balance als "Mondmusik" bezeichnete. „Musick To Play In The Dark²“ umspannt eine ganze Geisterstunde post-industrielle Zauberei an der Achse von narkotischen und nächtlichen Energien: „Bad Acid“-Sounddesign, Synthesizer-Reisen, opiumhaltige Balladen, luziferischer Glitch und unterschwellige Hymnen; abwechselnd unheilvoll, orakelhaft und absurd. Die schottische Gothic-Ikone Rose McDowall ist bei zwei Stücken als Gastsängerin zu hören." Mastered by Josh Bonati. Double LP, with Side D Moon Etching. https://www.daisrecords.com/collections/releases/products/coil-musick-to-play-in-the-dark-2 | 2022 | €29.50 |
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| Musick to play in the Dark 2 | CD | After leaving London in 1999 for the sleepy seaside retiree town of Weston-super-Mare, Coil co-founders John Balance and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson set up shop in a palatial eight-bedroom estate to pursue the outer reaches of the group’s heightening cabalistic chemistry. Among the staggering string of late-era masterpieces they produced is lunar opus Musick To Play In The Dark, widely hailed as an artistic zenith upon its release. The sessions that birthed it were in fact so fruitful that a second LP took shape during the creation of the first one. Aided by the recent addition of Welsh multi-instrumentalist engineer Thighpaulsandra, Coil mined further into the recesses of surrealist eldritch electronica Balance termed “moon music” – post-industrial spellcasting at the axis of narcotic and nocturnal energies. Musick To Play In The Dark² spans a full witching hour of bad acid sound design, synthesizer voyaging, opiated balladry, Luciferian glitch, and subliminal hymnals, alternately ominous, oracular, and absurd. Scottish gothic icon Rose McDowall guests on vocals for two tracks but otherwise the album is a hermetic affair, tapping into the group’s limitless insular synergy. Opener “Something” is stark and incantational, a spoken word experiment for windswept voids. “Tiny Golden Books” unspools an aerial whirlpool of cosmic synth, both whispery and widescreen. “Ether” is an exercise in funeral procession piano and intoxicated wordplay (“It's either ether or the other”), while “Where Are You?” and “Batwings – A Liminal Hymn” lurk like liturgical murmurings heard on one’s death bed, framed in granular FX and flickering candlelight. As a whole the collection skews more muted and remote than its predecessor, as if having grown accustomed to the nether regions of these darkening seances. But music box hallucination “Paranoid Inlay” captures the group’s oblique comedic side, always glimmering beneath: over a warped, wobbly beat Balance intones an opaque narrative of serenity, Saint Peter, and suicidal vegetables, accompanied by spiraling harpsichord and stuttering squelches of electronics. “It seems concussion suits you,” he repeats twice, like a macabre pickup line, before dictating a dear diary entry about risks and failures, finally concluding with as close to a self-portrait as Coil ever came: “On a clear day I can see forever / that the underworld is my oyster.” // Unter der erstaunlichen Reihe von Meisterwerken der späten Coil-Ära gilt das Mond-Opus „Musick To Play In The Dark“ als künstlerischer Zenit der Band. Die Sessions, aus denen es hervorging, waren sogar so fruchtbar, dass eine zweite LP noch während der Entstehung der ersten Gestalt annahm. Unterstützt durch den walisischen Multi-Instrumentalisten und Tontechniker Thighpaulsandra tauchten Coil weiter in die Tiefen der surrealistischen Elektronika, die Bandgründer John Balance als "Mondmusik" bezeichnete. „Musick To Play In The Dark²“ umspannt eine ganze Geisterstunde post-industrielle Zauberei an der Achse von narkotischen und nächtlichen Energien: „Bad Acid“-Sounddesign, Synthesizer-Reisen, opiumhaltige Balladen, luziferischer Glitch und unterschwellige Hymnen; abwechselnd unheilvoll, orakelhaft und absurd. Die schottische Gothic-Ikone Rose McDowall ist bei zwei Stücken als Gastsängerin zu hören." Mastered by Josh Bonati. https://www.daisrecords.com/collections/releases/products/coil-musick-to-play-in-the-dark-2 | 2022 | €15.00 |
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| Moon's Milk (in four phases) (lim. clear vinyl) | 3 x LP BOX | First compiled as a double CD in 2002, Moon’s Milk (In Four Phases) is a suite of four EPs that Coil released seasonally via their in-house Eskaton imprint across 1998. The line-up for these sessions were John Balance, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, Drew McDowall, and William Breeze. Recorded primarily at their home studio in Chiswick, London on the eve of a permanent relocation to the small seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare, the collection has long loomed as a pivotal and pinnacle work in the group's discography, but has never been officially reissued, or repressed on vinyl. Time has only ripened its tapestry of regal strangeness. Arranged sequentially in tribute to the equinoxes and solstices, Moon's Milk captures Coil at a revelatory crossroads, leaning deeper into improvisation, spontaneity, and sound design. "Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull" initiates the proceedings on Spring Equinox, a two-part netherworld organ séance woven from vocal drones, cathedral keys, seasick strings, and opiated undertow. From there, Summer Solstice skews lighter but no less incantational, with Balance embracing his voice-as-instrument across lucid dream torch songs ("Bee Stings"), purgatorial spoken word ("Glowworms/Waveforms"), sultry chamber pieces ("Summer Substructures"), and falsetto ravings ("A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz)"). Autumn Equinox exudes more of a pensive and twilit mood, from the Rose McDowall-sung folk ballad "Rosa Decidua" ("I hear your voice sing near to me / I've put away the poisoned chalice (for now) / And lie down amongst the flowerbeds") to hall-of-lords hallucination "The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant” to the liminal string-plucked classic "Amethyst Deceivers," featuring excellent alien guitar by Breeze layered with Balance’s oft-quoted couplet: "Pay your respects to the vultures / For they are your future." The album’s final chapter, Winter Solstice, is its most swooning, remote, and ceremonial. Opener "A White Rainbow" stirs strings, layered choral vocals, and shivering rhythm into an imploding burial hymn. "North" oscillates bleakly, a ghost in the machine murmuring opaque prophecy ("This black dog has no owner / This black dog has no odour"), while "Magnetic North" is its inverse, a guided meditation of gently flickering software and surreal chakra poetics ("Red rose filling the skull / Yellow cube in the lower pelvis / Silver moon crescent below the navel"). The suite fades to grey with a traditional English carol ("Christmas Is Now Drawing Near"), rendered like an executioner's song by Rose McDowall’s doomed, beautiful voice. The Dais box set includes the entirety of the rare Moon's Milk Bonus Disc CD-R / 2019 Threshold Archives Copal CD, which includes three collaborations with Thighpaulsandra. This material is as rich and intoxicating as the previous four phases, ranging from electro-acoustic singing bowl rituals ("Copal") to dissonant electronic recitations of visionary Angus MacLise poetry ("The Coppice Meat") to ominous classical melancholia ("Bankside"). Once again, Coil confirm the vastness of their confounding, infinite alchemy, explored and refined across decades of experimentation – both sonic and bodily. From post-industrial to post-everything, theirs is an art untethered, in the wilds of its own design. https://www.daisrecords.com/products/coil-moons-milk-in-four-phases | 2024 | €65.00 |
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| Moon's Milk (in four phases) | 3 x LP BOX | First compiled as a double CD in 2002, Moon’s Milk (In Four Phases) is a suite of four EPs that Coil released seasonally via their in-house Eskaton imprint across 1998. The line-up for these sessions were John Balance, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, Drew McDowall, and William Breeze. Recorded primarily at their home studio in Chiswick, London on the eve of a permanent relocation to the small seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare, the collection has long loomed as a pivotal and pinnacle work in the group's discography, but has never been officially reissued, or repressed on vinyl. Time has only ripened its tapestry of regal strangeness. Arranged sequentially in tribute to the equinoxes and solstices, Moon's Milk captures Coil at a revelatory crossroads, leaning deeper into improvisation, spontaneity, and sound design. "Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull" initiates the proceedings on Spring Equinox, a two-part netherworld organ séance woven from vocal drones, cathedral keys, seasick strings, and opiated undertow. From there, Summer Solstice skews lighter but no less incantational, with Balance embracing his voice-as-instrument across lucid dream torch songs ("Bee Stings"), purgatorial spoken word ("Glowworms/Waveforms"), sultry chamber pieces ("Summer Substructures"), and falsetto ravings ("A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz)"). Autumn Equinox exudes more of a pensive and twilit mood, from the Rose McDowall-sung folk ballad "Rosa Decidua" ("I hear your voice sing near to me / I've put away the poisoned chalice (for now) / And lie down amongst the flowerbeds") to hall-of-lords hallucination "The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant” to the liminal string-plucked classic "Amethyst Deceivers," featuring excellent alien guitar by Breeze layered with Balance’s oft-quoted couplet: "Pay your respects to the vultures / For they are your future." The album’s final chapter, Winter Solstice, is its most swooning, remote, and ceremonial. Opener "A White Rainbow" stirs strings, layered choral vocals, and shivering rhythm into an imploding burial hymn. "North" oscillates bleakly, a ghost in the machine murmuring opaque prophecy ("This black dog has no owner / This black dog has no odour"), while "Magnetic North" is its inverse, a guided meditation of gently flickering software and surreal chakra poetics ("Red rose filling the skull / Yellow cube in the lower pelvis / Silver moon crescent below the navel"). The suite fades to grey with a traditional English carol ("Christmas Is Now Drawing Near"), rendered like an executioner's song by Rose McDowall’s doomed, beautiful voice. The Dais box set includes the entirety of the rare Moon's Milk Bonus Disc CD-R / 2019 Threshold Archives Copal CD, which includes three collaborations with Thighpaulsandra. This material is as rich and intoxicating as the previous four phases, ranging from electro-acoustic singing bowl rituals ("Copal") to dissonant electronic recitations of visionary Angus MacLise poetry ("The Coppice Meat") to ominous classical melancholia ("Bankside"). Once again, Coil confirm the vastness of their confounding, infinite alchemy, explored and refined across decades of experimentation – both sonic and bodily. From post-industrial to post-everything, theirs is an art untethered, in the wilds of its own design. https://www.daisrecords.com/products/coil-moons-milk-in-four-phases | 2024 | €62.00 |
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| Moon's Milk (in four phases) | do-CD | First compiled as a double CD in 2002, Moon’s Milk (In Four Phases) is a suite of four EPs that Coil released seasonally via their in-house Eskaton imprint across 1998. The line-up for these sessions were John Balance, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, Drew McDowall, and William Breeze. Recorded primarily at their home studio in Chiswick, London on the eve of a permanent relocation to the small seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare, the collection has long loomed as a pivotal and pinnacle work in the group's discography, but has never been officially reissued, or repressed on vinyl. Time has only ripened its tapestry of regal strangeness. Arranged sequentially in tribute to the equinoxes and solstices, Moon's Milk captures Coil at a revelatory crossroads, leaning deeper into improvisation, spontaneity, and sound design. "Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull" initiates the proceedings on Spring Equinox, a two-part netherworld organ séance woven from vocal drones, cathedral keys, seasick strings, and opiated undertow. From there, Summer Solstice skews lighter but no less incantational, with Balance embracing his voice-as-instrument across lucid dream torch songs ("Bee Stings"), purgatorial spoken word ("Glowworms/Waveforms"), sultry chamber pieces ("Summer Substructures"), and falsetto ravings ("A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz)"). Autumn Equinox exudes more of a pensive and twilit mood, from the Rose McDowall-sung folk ballad "Rosa Decidua" ("I hear your voice sing near to me / I've put away the poisoned chalice (for now) / And lie down amongst the flowerbeds") to hall-of-lords hallucination "The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant” to the liminal string-plucked classic "Amethyst Deceivers," featuring excellent alien guitar by Breeze layered with Balance’s oft-quoted couplet: "Pay your respects to the vultures / For they are your future." The album’s final chapter, Winter Solstice, is its most swooning, remote, and ceremonial. Opener "A White Rainbow" stirs strings, layered choral vocals, and shivering rhythm into an imploding burial hymn. "North" oscillates bleakly, a ghost in the machine murmuring opaque prophecy ("This black dog has no owner / This black dog has no odour"), while "Magnetic North" is its inverse, a guided meditation of gently flickering software and surreal chakra poetics ("Red rose filling the skull / Yellow cube in the lower pelvis / Silver moon crescent below the navel"). The suite fades to grey with a traditional English carol ("Christmas Is Now Drawing Near"), rendered like an executioner's song by Rose McDowall’s doomed, beautiful voice. The Dais box set includes the entirety of the rare Moon's Milk Bonus Disc CD-R / 2019 Threshold Archives Copal CD, which includes three collaborations with Thighpaulsandra. This material is as rich and intoxicating as the previous four phases, ranging from electro-acoustic singing bowl rituals ("Copal") to dissonant electronic recitations of visionary Angus MacLise poetry ("The Coppice Meat") to ominous classical melancholia ("Bankside"). Once again, Coil confirm the vastness of their confounding, infinite alchemy, explored and refined across decades of experimentation – both sonic and bodily. From post-industrial to post-everything, theirs is an art untethered, in the wilds of its own design. https://www.daisrecords.com/products/coil-moons-milk-in-four-phases | 2024 | €23.00 |
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| COLECLOUGH / MURMER | Husk | CD | Starke Collaboration des field-recording-Spezialisten MURMER aka PATRICK MC GINLEY (er betreibt auch die Radiosendung „Framework“ auf dem Londoner Kult-Sender ‚Resonance104.4fm’) und JONATHAN COLECLOUGH. 4 Stücke, über 70 Minuten Spielzeit, feinstoffliche Resonanzenteppiche verbinden sich mit konkretem Material aus Natur & Alltag und von Instrumenten, der Geist öffnet sich für Mikro-Detail-Geräusche & subliminale Klangwelten... watch out: demnächst (2007) wird es von MURMER eine 7“ auf Drone geben! “They first met in 2002 after appearing on the compilation LP ‘Chaleur’, and soon began work on the material that would become ‘Husk.’ Sharing a fascination with using ‘found sound’ in their music, ‘Husk’ includes recordings of refrigerators, thunderstorms, sheep, car horns, ferryboats, windblown sand, crackling charcoal, as well as more conventional instrumental sounds including a variety of percussion instruments. Much of the music started as live improvisation, in one case during a radio broadcast on McGinley’s regular ‘Framework’ slot on the London-based radioart station Resonance FM. These live recordings have been carefully edited and mixed over several years. ‘Husk’ is packaged in a 6-panel Digisleeve featuring photographs by Patrick McGinley.” [label info] | 2006 | €14.00 |
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| COLECLOUGH, JONATHAN & TIM HILL | Beech for John and Miho | CD | A wonderful and amazing power-drone piece (74min) with myriades of overtunes, like be surrounded by three distorted Monochords at the same time.. “ 'Beech for John and Miho' was originally commissioned as a short piece for 'in return', a private wedding CD, where it appeared alongside music by Joe Weismann (The Jaztronauts), If Thousands, JLIAT, and Space Machine. That fifteen minute version then blossomed into this bold, 74-minute work. An invitation to the wedding spawned a short Japan tour during which Coleclough performed solo and in duos with Aube, Kuwayama Kiyohara, and Narita Mamoru. A limited edition of 150 CD-Rs of 'Beech for John and Miho' were made specially for the trip to Japan, and the piece is now released on CD by Seal Pool. "An epic piece: shimmering and metallic." [press release] | 2003 | €15.00 |
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| COLLECTIONS OF COLONIES OF BEES | Six Guitars | LP | Dies dürft der erste Teil (man könnte auch sagen: das erste Sammlerstück) der neuen "Guitar Series" auf Table of the Elements sein! COLLECTIONS OF COLONIES OF BEES wurden von JON MUELLER & CHRIS ROSENAU 1998 gegründet, hier schichten sie 6 Gitarren im minimalen Breitwand-Modus übereinander, das hat was von meditativem GLENN BRANCA...super! Auf klarem Vinyl, einseitig bespielt mit SAVAGE PENCIL - etching auf der Rückseite. "Their sound is expansive, vast, and billowing; full of ringing guitars, soaring in the best traditions of the Chatham/Branca standoff; meanwhile, beneath the clouds sprawl dewy meadows of gently rolling electronica. Six Guitars is just what its title states, yet so much more. Wildly versatile drummer Jon Mueller follows the rules by hammering on an electric guitar with mallets, enhancing the Steve Reichian vibe (compare this with Mueller's face-melting solo onslaught Metals). The band sparkles accordingly, lifting to a dazzling climax. It's epic minimalism in exquisite registration, and the perfect selection to introduce the Table Of The Elements Guitar Series (fans will be happy to hear that Mueller is on deck with a solo contribution to the series as well). Beyond the music, there's the similarly spectacular packaging. It's a one-sided, 12-inch LP, pressed on clear vinyl; the reverse is laser etched with an original illustration by acclaimed UK artist Savage Pencil, whose credits include album art for The Fall, Big Black, and Sonic Youth. It's a limited-edition pressing, so get it while you can -- disks from the label's original Guitar Series in 1993/1994 are now some of Collectorville's must coveted treasures." [label info] www.tableoftheelements.com | 2008 | €17.00 |
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| COLLEY, JOE |
Acting As If
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10inch | "When Joe Colley speaks about his work and even about his life, he shrugs in an awkward attempt to stave off an existential frustration that not only his work addresses but also seems to consume his identity. There are numerous metaphors through his titles that allude to endless failures and a nihilism full of contempt, but Colley also implores a desperate urgency to express these poetics no matter how painful they may be. For three decades now, Colley has been a central and persistent figure in the California noise community. First recording under the moniker Crawl Unit and running the short-lived Povertech label, Colley presented a preternaturally strong acumen of electro-acoustic techniques and abstraction through a vast language of blistered textures, atonal noise, and gnarled drone. By 2000, he dropped the Crawl Unit moniker in favor of his own name with an ongoing discography of damaged yet exploratory electronics. Colley returns to Drone Records for this 10" on the Substantia Innominata series, many years after his Crawl Unit "Tuscon Mon Amour" 7." In describing "Acting As If," Colley offers a vague series of descriptors: unheimlich, terror of the familiar, and no faith in what is "real." Within the sustained movements of scrabbling textures, motorized abrasions, and uncomfortable harmonics, such conditions are made manifest and Colley amplifies them into something eeriely sublime. All of that held within a self-contained logic that works within and against his deep knowledge of drone-on minimalism, musique concrete dynamics, and the explosiveness of noise culture. His swarming masses, throttled rumbling, and smoldering tension are all encircling and folding in on themselves. Rhizomes of sound that speak poison. Drink up, if it doesn't kill you, it will only make you stronger." [Jim Haynes / Northern California, 2023] listen to various CRAWL UNIT + JOE COLLEY tracks here: https://aftersilencepodcast.bandcamp.com/album/as-31-from-crawl-unit-to-joe-colley https://www.last.fm/music/Joe+Colley "MECHANICAL RITUALS: 23 years after his EP for Drone Records (DR-28, as CRAWL UNIT) we are proud to release another / new work of conceptual / minimal / object drone artist JOE COLLEY from California. We think JOE COLLEY (*1972) is a master of using mechanical object sounds and electronic static, but also strange low fi found sources and field recordings, creating alienating, surrealistic effects, similar to the likes of SMALL CRUEL PARTY, JIM HAYNES, DAS SYNTHETISCHE MISCHGEWEBE or even the more experimental side of ZOVIET FRANCE... His newer compositions seem always to be filled with electro-magnetic hummings, strange hissing and the pourings of metallic objects as a basis, but you never find the use real instruments, synths, or masses of effect procession. Thus a very own scent of mystery appears, as all of these radiations are not really from this planet, without any "cosmic" connotations.. For the creator, these sounds are connected with unreal emotions of "Being Lost", a mistrust in what may be called reality, and a general feeling of alienation... - you can only wonder how this can result in such beautiful droning expanses.. Presented here are over 30 minutes of very best new COLLEY material (entitled "Limit / Limit" und "Always I / Always II") => through these drones of strangeness the mind is thrown inside an unrecognizable and confusing realm of broken electricity and something like audible-made atmospheric pressure.. Lim. 300 copies with artwork by dutch designer and micro label hero MEEUW, using a special silver print (on reverse board), BLACK vinyl. glossy black inner sleeves." [press release] "I don't keep up with Joe Colley's recent releases for reasons I am unsure of myself. Not that there are many of them, but I only heard a few. Maybe his work is these days within installation work or performing? This new record shows Colley as I know him best. He is a man with an ear to the ground or wall; he hears stuff we don't. I believe he uses very few 'real' instruments, and for convenience, I include all things synthesizer (modular, digital, analogue). With his equipment, he records the unwanted sounds from our world. Buzzing, whirring, near broken cables and other forms of electric debris. It's never clear whether his recording devices are great or lo-fi. It could go either way, I think. Maybe you need great some great electro-magnetic devices to pick up these sounds, but at the same time, when they are relatively low-key, they might have another attractive quality. Get my drift here? We live in a world with many sounds, at least many of us. I like to think I live in a quiet street, but here too, there is a lot of noise pollution. This pollution, so I believe, is Colley's playground. He collects and collates this material into pieces of dystopian nightmare. Coley's music sounds like I imagine the sound of a leaking nuclear power plant, the last breath of a machine park, and the death rattle of our post-industrial society. Unlike some of the other work I heard from Colley, this new work is relatively 'smooth', I must say. There aren't many hard cuts to indicate the final breath of a sound (but they are also not entirely absent), but Colley, this time, uses smoother transitions in the music. Many fragments are slowly cross-faded into the next section, revealing a less brutal element in his work. Or, perhaps, one could say, it makes his music all the more gentle? Or even more musical? Colley applies all the techniques from musique concrète here but keeps much of his source material in what seems to be a pretty rough state anyway. It's dark; it's real, scary, weird, haunting and haunted and, ultimately, beautiful music." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2022 | €18.00 |
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| COLOCCIA, FAITH + DANIEL MENCHE | Smelter | CD | The field recordings on this album contain the common theme of water in different states: snow, ice, hail, streams, creeks, in the Puget Sound passing under a ferry boat, pouring from a leaking sea wall, in frozen ponds, as it turns a water wheel, rain in thunder storms, in a pool during winter swimming. These were recorded between 2017-2024. They were usually made quickly while out with my son, and later edited to preserve the sounds of our voices while obscuring the specific content of what was said. In contrast, when Daniel records, he has a predetermined place in mind, and sets off on whole day adventures to document through both photography and audio. Working together melds his high fidelity, pre-meditated recordings with my spur-of-the-moment low-fi recordings. Daniel and I first met in 2011. We became friends through a shared interest in photography, music, hiking, and in subverting expectations and templates. Since then, we have collaborated on numerous visual and musical projects. When we decided to work together on Smelter, I gave him five recordings of my piano compositions which he treated and added his own elements to - turning them into long drone formations. These were then combined with the various water based field recordings we’d made individually. Making records this way creates an aural archive of place/time and environment - in the same way a film photograph holds onto a vision in time: the single moment when light is suspended in microscopic halide crystals which can then be recreated and reinterpreted: a form of time travel, where the past is both fixed and also accessible in the present. Daniel is a great story teller. Every album he’s made holds a narrative, and I have been lucky enough to hear many backstories! With “ Smelter” perhaps we have created a time capsule, an index in which to place our combined story telling for listeners to share. -Faith Coloccia When I was young kid my favourite book in the world was the Dictionary. Hey, It’s the book of life from A-Z! I worshiped the Dictionary like the holiest of books. One Sunday morning I was being bored out of my mind at church. The pastor gave a sermon and preached that “There is no definition in the dictionary for the word “Faith” and that is why it’s so special”. As soon as I got home I cracked open my holy dictionary and searched for “Faith”. Found the word in there but really not much of a definition offered. That mystery of the word “faith" stuck with me all my life and has been a great influence. I’m always searching for the impossible to define things in life. Or even try to create the undefinable! In which I strive for with my own music. What the HELL does this childhood story have anything to do with this collaboration album with Faith Coloccia???? Maybe nothing or maybe EVERYTHING! But this silly childhood church story came to mind when asked to write about our album. This collaboration recording with Faith Coloccia took many years and the longer it took for Faith Coloccia to finish it the better and stronger and even stranger the music became. Whenever Faith would apologise to me for the delay I would respond: “Faith…… I got faith in ya!” And so here we are with a collaboration album that is so special to Faith and myself that I do believe this music cannot be defined or captured by words. And that’s why it’s so special. - Daniel Menche Compositions and arrangement by Faith Coloccia Piano, voice, field recordings and sound treatments by Faith Coloccia 2017-2024 Sound treatments, oscillators, noise and field recordings by Daniel Menche 2023-2024 Mixed by Scott Evans at Antisleep, Oakland CA Stereophonic Mastering by Timothy Stollenwerk Photography by Daniel Menche Photo collage by Faith Coloccia Design by Traianos Pakioufakis https://room40.bandcamp.com/album/smelter | 2025 | €17.00 |
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| COLORLIST | The fastest Way to become the Ocean | 10inch | "The Chicago based Colorlist is comprised of crossover jazz duo Charles Rumback and Charles Gorczynski. Both multi-instrumentalists, Rumback mans percussion, bells and melodica, while Gorczynski plays saxophone, numerous woodwind instruments, synthesizers and harmonium. 'The Fastest Way To Become The Ocean' is a four track EP recorded especially for Serein. Once again joined by collaborators, the EP features guitarist Jeff Parker of Tortoise on 'Nine Lives' (A2), while Liz Payne lends vocals and melodica to the closing track, 'What We Have Left' (B2). The tracks were mixed by long-time Colorlist cohort, Josh Eustis. This work finds Colorlist at their very best - during the twenty-six minutes of run-time we are led through a kaleidoscopic ocean of sounds and ideas. Opening track 'Light Conditions' begins on an optimistic note, all feather-light woodwinds and gently brushed snares, the mood is open and care-free. But, like mist rising on a clear day, punch-drunk harmonium drones and haunted sax phrases permeate the air and hint at something darker, more sinister at play. In the end, balance is restored, and we are led into the second piece, 'Nine Lives' feeling a sense of resolution. 'Nine Lives' is a beast of a track. At just under ten minutes in length, it builds from a growl of low bass and drums like waves crashing on the shore. This tumultuous opening is slowly organised into a labyrinthine but perfectly organised series of repeating phrases, steadily falling in and out of phase with one another. Parker's improvised electric guitar playing contrasts with the purposeful repetition of the other instruments. The track continues to build as more and more elements are added to the mix, until, as if reaching some kind of critical mass, tension is broken and the piece resolves with wave upon wave of blissful melody. It's fitting that this epic track closes the first side of the record - many will doubtless feel the benefit of a prolonged period of silence in order to reflect on this breathtaking piece of music. The perfect antidote to the sheer impact of the pieces preceding it, 'Coming Into Sight' opens side B with an almost hymn-like solemnity. Harmonium is accompanied only by the distant roll of drums and the quiet chatter of birds, it's not difficult to imagine a boat roll in off the ocean bearing a loved one home to shore. The piece, which also falls just short of the ten minute mark, builds until the moment feet hit dry land again, the homecoming heralded by hoarse screams from Gorczynski's saxophone and flurries of thunderous percussion from Rumback. 'The Fastest Way To Become The Ocean' ends on a high with the short, upbeat closing track, 'What We Have Left'. This piece sits slightly apart from the others due to the presence of vocals from Liz Payne – a first for Colorlist and a welcome addition." [label info] www.serein.co.uk | 2011 | €10.00 |
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| COLUCCINO, OSVALDO | Parallelo | CD | "These abandoned ruins of the seventeenth century are located along a path that I often walk on, uphill, in silence, alone. Not exactly on the path but hidden, deeper into the woods, that place lies parallel to the path that leads to the top of a hill. Even if I do not go (necessarily, every time) inside, that place beyond attracts like a magnet, makes its presence felt, launching its resonance up to the place of my steps. That secondary place is not seen from the primary path, but it is there. And it pulsates with life, neither new nor old life. Probably in a short time those ruins of an ancient monastery, located in Domodossola, North West Italy, will be demolished. However, that place will remain, even after its erasure. Parallelo, a work composed between 2007 and 2009, is also an attempt to detect and make feel the coexistence of vital fields ; “places” that exist in parallel but which, thanks to non-ordinary ways, occasionally may touch each other." [Osvaldo Coluccino, May 2014] "There is an approach to field recordings that I like to call 'the empty room' approach: one sets up a pair of microphones in an empty space and simply catches the emptiness of the space in a recording, by using a lot of 'gain', the space becomes alive. Osvaldo Coluccino has had two releases before (see Vital Weekly 748 and 823) of improvised music, playing various acoustic objects and acousmatic music. Here he uses recordings he made in the ruins of a 17th century monastery in Domodossola, North-West Italy. The work was already composed between 2007 and 2009, and for whatever reason wasn't released until now. Two pieces here of exactly the same length and the starting point for each piece seems to me the sort of drone sound one gets from the empty room. That is not yet the complete thing as Coluccino also has a bunch of other recordings to use here: there is dripping of water, objects falling onto the floor, and everything reverberates through this giant space, or maybe even various spaces of varying sizes. Set up one microphone in one room and let the action take place in the room next to it: you get the idea of ancient reverb techniques before they got stuck in binary boxes. There are also lots of rumbling sounds, lots of vague sounds around this place, sometimes leading up to a somewhat messy sound picture. Coluccino uses the collage form, in which he places various bits one after another, sometimes with short silent gaps in between. It's hard to say if he applies any (computer-) processing to his music; sometimes one is inclined to think he does, but it might also be very likely that he isn't. Throughout this is a soft release, I think; I am not sure why Coluccino choose to do that. It all makes up, however, a mighty fine album of a highly varied bunch of field recordings, all trapped inside two lengthy pieces." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2015 | €14.00 |
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| COLUMN ONE | Electric Pleasure | CD | "Formed in Berlin in 1991, René Lamp and Robert Schalinski were working together on short-film projects and decided to expand their scope to include audio and multi-media projects among their repertoire. The next thing you know, Column One was born. On this highly detailed and wonderfully crafted CD (their fourth), the band have dragged the look and feel of 1950s American science-fiction films deep into their underground laboratory, flicked a few switches and have mutated them into an absolute monster of a release, bringing to life a world of Kraftwerkian rhythms and Forbidden Planet background ambience all cohesively joined by an interesting narrative structure; the tracks ebb and flow into one another not as separate entities but as an entire parable of technology overpowering humanity. On tracks like Re-Start To Move, the low-bitrate hip-hop tracks bounce along with a curious intent, just as a determined robot would as it seeks its next human prey, while on MZ4, the mood is much more melancholy, clearly showing the more human side to the mechanical creatures contained therein. The band here have clearly done their homework both in terms of studying classic 80s electro as well as the sounds that brought those tracks to life. The bands label, 90% Wasser is also based in Berlin and is a self described non-profit artist label for electro-acoustic-minimal-spoken-digital-ideological-tonal & atonal-electronic-music plus video-releases, writings & picture-art. It may be a mouthful but this suits the release perfectly as both Column One and their parent label go way beyond the typical concept CD or multimedia project. Column One have come up with a really classy and incredibly detailed release that deserves repeated listening not only because it will make you dance, but to fully appreciate the narrative content. Electric Pleasure works well on its own, but combined with a live audio/visual experience, the band could very well be unstoppable. Just like the robots contained therein. Highly recommended." [BBC Music Reviews] www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/w3n8 | 2001 | €13.00 |
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| CONCERN | Truth and Distance | CD | Neue Drone-Entdeckung aus den Staaten! Nah-Klänge & Vibrationen diverser Instrumente wie Zither, Klarinette, Horn oder Posaune werden mit Kontaktmikros aufgefangen und in obertönreiche, polyphone und recht rauhe Klangfelder transformiert. Drei Stücke mit sehr lebendigen, erhabenen Drones in verschiedenen Färbugen sorgen hier für sonores Entzücken! Zum entdecken ! "...Essential listening for the drone inclined, and any one into Tim Hecker, Aidan Baker, Fennesz, Belong and the like might just have a new favorite record." [Aquarius Rec] "Also Gordon Ashworth, also known as Concern, is a new name for me, who delivers three pieces on his 'Truth & Distance' release, which are alike Darwinsbitch in the field of drone music. He uses zither, lap harp, mbira, banjo, piano, clarinet, alto horn, trombone, accordion and lots of reverb. His instruments are scanned with vibrating objects in order to create overtones and it makes this almost a modern classical release. Somewhere in between music for an installation and Phill Niblock, I'd say. This is more the territory where things are on endless sustain, but perhaps due to the variety of sources and the relative shortness of the pieces things don't leap into static, but are vibrating, changing throughout its minimalist approach to keep things fascinating. Ashworth has plenty of skills to deliver three fine pieces. Not a second too long, not a minute too short. Very nice work." [FdW / Vital Weekly] "Gordon Ashworth is Concern and this is his manifesto. Truth & Distance is a mini-epic, a minor masterpiece. Within these sonic walls lies a stunning landscape, adrift in golden tones and silver siren songs. Ashworth creates beautiful, shimmering music that defies categorization. It stands on its own, droning away into the furthest reaches of the night. Using only acoustic instrumentation, Ashworth conceives pieces of music in which resonance and timbre mutate and in the air and unfold naturally, organically. Hints of piano glisten like night shadows whispering through the leaves. Strings are bowed and plucked into oblivion. Everything is turned into a pile of reverb. Everyone is a ghost. Concern will shine a light on it all. Truth & Distance indeed. It's all coming up roses this time. Co-released with Iatrogenesis. Packaged in custom-designed silkscreened gatefolds by Seizure Palace." [label info] www.digitalisindustries.com | 2009 | €10.00 |
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| CONTAGIOUS ORGASM | Ripple | CD | The always genre-crossing project from Japan with a great album, dark & experimental, more rhythm based stuff, (but these are stranged out rhythms, not danceable ones!), but the usual "unlistenable" collage / found sounds-tracks are present too, the more the album continues, the weirder it becomes... again quite unique & not classifiable. "packaging: special transparent paper booklet w/ inlays + jewelcase. hiroshi hashimoto started releasing music twenty years ago as contagious orgasm. right from the beginning listeners knew that there was something very unique and special about c.o.'s sound - differing from the typical japanese 'industrial scene'. the initial aural transformation of track and release titles were soon replaced by something quite different. themes became more abstract and surrealistic; influences came from various collaborations and often seriousness was undercut with a wink... as on previous c.o. releases you can hear musical and stylistic sources from many cultural areas; for instance on 'ripple' you can hear indian chants, dub bass, electronic clicks/cuts, gongs, a piano, even straight beats and minimal sequencer grooves. styles range from free form to dance music to idm to noise and to ethnic sources. in hashimoto's works these ingredients cease what they were before - they are now transformed into coherent music (without being a eclectic cliché). an example: often many artists use voice samples in their work, to explain or to engross thoughts. hashimoto's usage of samples take the 'instruments of speech' out of their initial contexts - used in c.o.'s metaverse they entirely lose their initial intent and function. if we go further and think about 'rhythms', 'melodies' and 'textures' instead of 'voices', we might have a key to c.o.'s self conception. this album should be experienced with all senses wide open. enjoy this anniversary and look forward to the next twenty years of a great artist." [label description] "Three years ago I had the great honor of reviewing the first album on Ant-Zen Recordings by legendary Japanese sound artist Contagious Orgasm. Since I had always connected Hiroshi Hashimoto ( a.k.a. Contagious Orgasm) with the Noise scene, thanks to his contribution to various Noise compilations, among others Relapse/Release Entertainment's "Japanese/American Noise Treaty", I was quite surprised to listen his "Dessert Addicts Will Return To This" (Ant-Zen, 2004). This latest album continues the strange landscapes of numerous musical styles. Dealing with everything from drone-based as well as collaged noise, across clicks'n'cuts to almost danceable electro-inspired techno and eerie soundscapes of beautiful ambient, it is an impossible task to finish this album only within a few listens. It is a complex musical voyage, that atmospherically varies from icy minimalism reminiscent of Pan(a)Sonic to militant electro of Kraftwerk until towards the end where the album turns more dreamy and dramatic with a mixture between experimental ambience and gentle acoustic post-rock reminiscent of Tortoise. "Ripple" is a continuation of the style of "Dessert Addicts Will Return To This", and the result is even more intense and clever than the aforementioned. Turn off the light and let yourself fall into the psychedelic tones of Contagious Orgasm. Excellent!" [NM / Vital Weekly] label website: www.ant-zen.com | 2007 | €14.00 |
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| Escape | CD | "with 'escape' contagious orgasm continue to plough their uniquely peculiar furrow of audio experiments and self improvement, exploring the strange landscapes of numerous musical styles. dealing with influences ranging from ambient, dub, idm/electronica and electro to dark ambient and noise, it is an impossible task to completely comprehend this album’s scope within just a few listens. this aural voyage atmospherically varies from hypnotic echo-based beat pulses and moony synthesized melodies up to disturbing industrial soundscapes. mighty bass strokes, a multitude of different rhythms, manipulated voices and skillfully applied samples result in an adventurous and enthralling work of sonic art captivating with its deep, transparent production. turn off the light and let yourself fall into this album's very own flow. a quite accessible, multifarious, and yet typical element of contagious orgasm's wide cosmos in its charm, enjoyment and surprise." [label info] www.ant-zen.com | 2011 | €13.50 |
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| Live at Maschinenfest 2018 | MC | raubbau picks up the thread and continues with its quest to make available memorable maschinenfest performances. contagious orgasm was a mf regular, and this perfectly shows the progression from the 2008 performance made available last year: gone are the idm leanings, the co sound of the 2010s (which is presented here) is even more a language of its own, abrasive and accessible, palpable and psychedelic at the same time. get ready for some active listening - “afterglow” and “operation blue” are like a walk over thin ice, with acoustic strings and percussions, intimate melodies, whispered vocals and eerie washes of background feedback. the two parts of “exploration end seeking” are examples of co’s experimental leanings and an appreciation of the musique concrete. “mineral” and “firewalker” sport almost-rhythms and through a psyched-out, spooky back-alley take the performance to its noisy finale. It goes without saying that the sound quality is flawless, representing all the fine details of the truly unique co sound. www.raubbau.org www.facebook.com/raubbau.label credits released November 20, 2019 recorded live at maschinenfest, turbinenhalle, oberhausen, germany, 21. october 2018. performed by h h, s s, marvel. artwork by stefan alt https://raubbau.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-maschinenfest-2018 | 2019 | €10.00 |
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| CONTROLLED DEATH | Ritualistic Mutilation in the Bloody Darkness | do-LP | "Controlled Death is the dark side project by the Japanese noise legend Maso Yamazaki a.k.a. Masonna. In April 2018 he decided to make a shudder debut with 1st album Symphony For The Black Murder then followed at the beginning of 2019 from 2nd work in an astonishing black wooden box that included Journey Through A Dead Body on vinyl and Deathwish Tapes 1-3 on cd and double tape. Now we're thrilled to see yet another mind-boggling work on double LP recorded during this year, Ritualistic Mutilation in the Bloody Darkness. Wild and amazing, this one is absolutely essential for any fan of synth and dark ambient music. Cracked minimal electronic sound by Korg MS-20, unclear and disturbing voice with the influence of primitive black metal and dark ritual in this new double album which developed a moisturized doom world while wearing a raw material texture. While listening to the records, each long track does meander their way slowly through proceedings with silent pauses, but they nonetheless generate a respectably dense assemblage of sounds. The smell of death is soaked in every groove produced by the four vinyl sides. The activities of Controlled Death are like archaic revival to the music experience before Masonna . We can also find the pathology image of the early industrial period and the shadows of Vienna activism such as Hermann Nitsch as well as loose bits of seminal black metal. The existence and art that pierces through conspicuous consciousness and dives to areas of unconsciousness due to death and pleasure. Double LP has been pressed on 140gr black vinyl and comes in a deluxe gatefold sleeve with impressive photography (of a cave church with the remains of the people who were massacred by the Saracens in 999 A.D. during the invasion of southern Italy) by Aldo Volpe. This release is not be missed, and with only 299 copies pressed you'd better grab it now! www.urashima.it https://urashima.bandcamp.com/album/ritualistic-mutilation-in-the-bloody-darkness | 2019 | €32.00 |
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| COOPER, LINDSAY | Rags / The Golddiggers | CD | Wiederveröffentlichung ihrer ersten beiden LPs von 1980 & 1983! "Consists of the whole of the LP previously issued as Re/arc and most of "The Golddiggers". Featuring Lindsay Cooper, Sally Potter, Phil Minton, Georgie Born, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Marilyn Mazur, Kate Westbrook, Collette Lafont, Eleanor Sloan, Lol Coxhill and Dave Holland. Explores the song form as so many of the early post Henry Cow records by ex alumni did. With a full book of texts and pictures (74+ minutes)." [label info] www.rermegacorp.com | 1991 | €14.00 |
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| Rarities Vol. 1 & 2 | do-CD | "This double CD set collects together, amongst other things, all of Outtakes for Other Occasions and The Small Screen, both of which were never commercially released, all four pieces from The Classic Guide to NoMansLand, the subscription 7” Pictures from the Great Exhibition collage, an extract from the Concerto for Sopranino Saxophone and Orchestra, an amazing, unreleased, live recording of Trio Trabant with Alfred Harth and Phil Minton, Education sung by Sally Potter, In the Dark Year, sung by Robert Wyatt, material from the with David Thomas and - the really great discovery - a really extraordinary solo piano performance recorded at Roulette in 1985. Comes with a substantial memorial booklet with newly discovered photographs, and texts by Sally Potter, Tim Hodgkinson, David Thomas and Kate Westbrook." [label info] www.rermegacorp.com | 2014 | €22.50 |
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| CORBO COMBO / DANGER | same | do-CD | CD 1 Recorded live at CCL des Coteaux - Mulhouse by Claude Vorburger - 1978. All the music was played live in total improvisation. CD 2 Recorded live at MJC de la Meinau – Strasbourg – 1979. All the music was played live in total improvisation. Double CD in metal boxes including 12 paged b/w booklet with photos and Bruno de Chénerilles' memories. 200 copies. https://alesiacosmos.com/out-now-alen-disko-corbo-combo-danger/ "Impulsy Stetoskopu is also well-known as a label for re-issuing some of the most obscure music from the past. I must admit I have no idea where the label finds them. On two CDs, we find two groups with a connection. Danger is a duo of Michel Froehly and Bruno de Chénerilles on electric guitars. They both play the same instruments in Corbo Combo, but Froehly adds bass, De Chénerilles, drums, trumpet, and trombone. The other members are Dominique Gasser on alto saxophone, tuyau (whatever that is) and Marie-Berthe Servier on voice and objects. I believe Corbo Combo was there first and existed for a short time. Danger was even around for a shorter period and played only three concerts. The other connection is the free-form music they play. In Corbo Combo, the saxophone adds a certain free jazz vibe to the music, but that doesn’t tell the complete picture. There is also an element of free rock in the music, reminding me of Smegma in similar times; the recordings from both discs are from 1978 and 1979. Danger’s free-wailing guitar improvisations are less jazzy/rockier. Occasionally they slip in a riff or the start of one, and their guitar techniques are not as extended as they would become during post-punk. But there is enough freedom here to enjoy. According to the booklet, some concerts ended in a riot, and it’s easy to hear why this in 1979 wouldn’t go down very well. Of the two discs, I prefer the Danger one, reminding me of seeing Sonic Youth on perhaps their first Dutch tour when Moore and Renaldo did an extensive improvisation at the end. Corbo Combo sounded interesting too, but maybe due to its free jazz connotations not so my thing. I can imagine seeing them live would be great, though!" [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2023 | €15.00 |
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| COSA BRAVA | Z Sides | CD | Cosa Brava is an experimental rock and free improvisation group formed in March 2008 in Oakland, California, by multi-instrumentalist and composer Fred Frith. The band comprises Frith on guitar, Zeena Parkins on keyboards and accordion, Carla Kihlstedt on violin, Matthias Bossi on drums, Shahzad Ismaily on bass and The Norman Conquest on sound manipulation. All About Jazz described their music as somewhere between folk, Celtic, modern chamber, Latin, funk, Eastern, and prog-rock. Cosa Brava recorded their first album, Ragged Atlas in San Francisco in December 2008, which was released in March 2010. John Kelman in a review at All About Jazz said that the album transcends time and genre and is one of 2010's most auspicious debuts. A second album entitled The Letter was released in March 2012. Fred Friths career began as a rock musician with Henry Cow in 1968, but has since diversified into a number of different genres, from avant-garde jazz to contemporary classical music. He has written scores for film and dance, and music for orchestras and string quartets. He became Professor of Composition the Music Department at Mills College in Oakland, California in 1999. The motivation behind the formation of Cosa Brava arose out of Friths nostalgia for rock music. He said, I really miss what you can do with a rock band. I miss developing material through the push and pull of cooperative rehearsals, I miss what happens when you move away from'the parts and start formulating things with a collective ear, I miss the single-minded commitment to a group identity. Z Sides is the groups third album. Cosa Brava may appear from their studio recordings to be all about songs. However, in live performances these songs were constantly interspersed with improvisations of all descriptions. Z Sides, the brainchild of The Norman Conquest, compiles his stunning live mixes of this material into an imaginary stand-alone performance. Bass – Shahzad Ismaily Drums, Voice – Matthias Bossi Effects [Creative Live Sound] – The Norman Conquest Guitar, Bass, Voice, Photography, Edited By – Fred Frith Keyboards, Voice – Zeena Parkins Layout – Lisa Robotka Violin, Voice – Carla Kihlstedt https://klanggalerie.bandcamp.com/album/z-sides | 2024 | €15.00 |
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| COURTIS_MATSUNAGA | same | CD | Die argentinisch-japanische Zusammenarbeit vom ex-REYNOLS-Mann und KOUHEI beschert uns 9 drone-basierte Stücke, vom hyper-tiefen Kontemplativ-Drone bis hin zu komplexen, eher experimentellen Konkret-Material-Drones mit vielen Details. Low-fi, organisch, rauh und mit genügend akustischer Schubkraft und Bizarrheit um immer wieder aufs neue zu überraschen... inkl. einem crazed-out track mit RUDOLF EB.ER. “9 tracks of solos, remixes, telepathy collaboration and real collaborations. 62min58sec landscape of flying drones, electronics, guitar, unidentified objects, uncertain clarinet, voice, distanced meeting and the memories of co-habitation. Intervention of RudolfEb.er for 8th track” [label info] “The disc contains nine tracks of widely varying lengths and collaboration methods. To name a couple: remix of the other's material, telepathic collaboration and real collaboration. Most tracks are of a certain ambient nature, but with enough things going on to definitely go beyond that (strange cuts, sudden outbursts of seemingly random noise, etc.). The overall quality is pretty lo-fi, which is very good, because it is combined with very typical computer sounds. This works very well and adds a warm quality to the sound. For me the most interesting piece is actually the longest one: the telepathic collaboration. Somehow Courtis and Matsunaga seem very well in tune and have created a very good track with so many kilometers between them. Somehow this track is almost a condensation of the whole CD. It will be interesting to see what the Prele label has to offer in the future.” [MR / Vital Weekly] | 2005 | €13.00 |
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| CRANIOCLAST |
(THE) L.K.A. SONAR KIT
(SOLD OUT) |
pic-7 | "CRANIOCLAST–maybe the most mysterious & legendary "post-industrial"- group from West-Germany of the 80's-the German counterpart to ZOVIET FRANCE? As CRANIOCLAST have nearly disappeared over the last few years, we are very proud to release a wonderful designed picture-disc containing two new tracks ("DE ZEESTER" and "THE ANEMONE") taking you closer to a bizarre & breathing aural world – listen to distant floating melodies, droney electronic tunes, exotic instruments (Sitar), voices from nowhere, animal sounds, piano, ether-sinus-sounds...as they all merge & form a perfectly relaxed & timelessly emotional soundtrack. Let the world turn into something different and witness how something alien can grow into sheer beauty. BLACK & WHITE PICTURE DISC, COVERED BY DIFFERENT COLOURED TRANSPARENT PAPER, CLOSED WITH INDIVIDUAL NUMBERED STICKER." [press release] | 2000 | ||
| CRAWL UNIT |
Tucson, Mon Amour
(SOLD OUT) |
7inch | white vinyl, handmade Coverartwork (sticked papers & pictures with coloured wax), edition of 250 numbered copies "This project from Sacramento, CA, has released some of the most exciting experimental music in the last few years, which is documented on some CDs, Vinyls and tapes. CRAWL UNIT has shown many different sides to his sound so far, and this EP is no exception: metallic, high frequent reverberated sounds and low, droning backgrounds, accompanied by some harsh outbursts of noise. Extremely suspenseful and not to be missed by lovers of new & independent music." [label info] | 1998 | €6.00 | |
| CRAWLING CHAOS | Spookhouse | CD | "Remember Crawling Chaos? Debuting post-punk art rock ensemble on Factory UK with the single 'Sex Machine'/'Berlin' (1980). They soon got dumped to Factory Benelux (who released their first LP 'The Gas Chair' in early 1982) for being too unclassifiable. Too weird? What else left but to put up their own Foetus Products for the musical output of Crawling Chaos and their many other disguises.... They reached a modest cult status, especially with the LP albums 'The Big C' (1984) and 'Waqqaz' (1985). 'Spookhouse' is a collection of their last ever recordings from 1987, unpublished so far, except for 2 tracks that were previously released before on cassette compilations by EE Tapes in 1987 and 1990. Hey, this is CD EE25, these tracks are 25 years old and this label is exactly 25 years old too this year! Coincidence does exist, let's throw a party! Jeff, this one's for you! Filed under: art rock, psychedelic rock, avantgarde, experimental" [label info] www.eetapes.be "EE Tapes is a very interesting Belgian label that picks hidden gems from the experimental underground scene and present them for audience of today. Present album was originally released 25 years ago - in fact released by a label that also can celebrate its 25th anniversary. The album titled “Spookhouse” comes from the British band Crawling Chaos. The band is stylishly a hard one to pigeonhole. Many styles are emerged to create this cocktail of experimental rock. Throughout the runtime the listener are confronted with everything from sax-driven ska-music across punk rock to something that could have been born in the age of German Krautrock. Especially krautrock-band Amon Düül II crosses my mind as I listen to the “Spookhouse”-album. The sound production of the album is quite raw and unpolished giving a nice feel of authenticity and improvisation. Yet another pearl from the 80’s experimental scene picked by one of Belgium's premium underground labels. Highly recommended." [NM/Vital Weekly] | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| CRESHEVSKY, NOAH / IF, BWANA | Favorite Encores | CD | Split-Album mit vier Stücken von NOAH CRESHEVSKY und seiner HYPERREALISM-Musik, dazu 3 Stücke vom POGUS-Label Betreiber und experimentellen Urgestein IF, BWANA. Anspruchsvolle & aufregende Neue Experimentalmusik, basierend auf instrumentalen & vokalen Klangquellen.. "A split cd of works by Noah Creshevsky (4 tracks) and If, Bwana (3 tracks). While on the face of it this may seem a somewhat odd pairing, the pieces recorded here comment on and highlight each other. And as the above quotes suggest, an aural adventure is indeed in the offing. Trained in composition by Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Luciano Berio at Juilliard, Noah Creshevsky has taught at Juilliard, Princeton University, and Brooklyn College. He was director of the Center for Computer Music (1994-2000) and is currently Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. His musical vocabulary consists largely of familiar bits of words, songs, and instrumental music that are edited but rarely subjected to electronic processing. The result is a music that obscures the boundaries of real and imaginary ensembles though the fusion of opposites: music and noise, comprehensible and incomprehensible vocal sources, human and superhuman vocal and instrumental capacities. Creshevsky's most recent hyperrealist compositions explore the fragmentation and reconstruction of pre-existing music in combination with original synthetic and acoustic materials. Moments suggest musical environments of indeterminate ethnicity--simultaneously Western and non-Western, ancient and modern, familiar and unfamiliar. Hyperrealism is an electroacoustic musical language constructed from sounds that are recognizable parts of our shared environment ("realism"), handled in ways that are exaggerated or excessive ("hyper"). Hyperrealist music exists in two basic genres. The first uses the sounds of traditional instruments that are pushed beyond the capacities of human performers in order to create superperformers--hypothetical virtuosos who transcend the limitations of individual performance capabilities (e.g., Mari Kimura Redux, Intrada, Favorite Encores). Hyperrealism of the second genre aims to integrate vast and diverse sonic elements to produce an expressive and versatile musical language. Its vocabulary is an inclusive, limitless sonic compendium, free of ethnic and national particularity (e.g., Shadow of a Doubt). Hyperrealism celebrates bounty, either by the extravagant treatment of limited sound palettes or by the assembling and manipulating of substantially extended palettes. Al Margolis has been working under the musical pseudonym If, Bwana since New Year's Day 1984. There are often collaborators in this project‹both knowingly and unknowingly. Both are represented on this recording. Xyloxings was a concept-based work that in the end had the concept discarded for compositional considerations. Lisa Barnard's vocals were recorded with her direct knowledge. Scraping Scrafide uses a portion of Tony Scafide's piano part from a prior work of mine‹3 Out of 4 Ain't Bad‹and processes it. Cicada #4: Barnard Mix is part of my "discipline" series‹an open set of works‹and uses Barnard's vocals from other sessions to create one of many possible versions of this work." [press release] "... Creshevsy choose the term 'hyperrealis' for the typical electro-acoustical music he developed. In three compositions on this cd ('Mari Kimura Redux'‚ 'Intrada' and 'Favorite Encores') Creshevsky "uses the sounds of traditional instruments that are pushed beyond the limitations of individual performance capabilities". Creshevsky is a master in the field of audio-collage and plunderphonic-like procedures and leaves us with many questions. For example we often hear violins in his work, playing in a style that we are used from normal classical music. But I'm not sure whether he takes samples from already existing (violin)works by others, or whether he composes pieces for violin first to be used consequently by him in his collage work. Comparable to how Biota works. His compositions make the impression of staying close to classical musical structures, but transcended to unknown heights through his virtuoso manipulation work. The music has an enormous speed and drive, combined with an enormous flexibility and maneuverability. In each piece we are constantly exposed to an intensity and complexity that we don't often find in music. His works open dazzling dimensions and perspectives. On the other hand the music remains fluent and accessible, very lively and of an appealing dramatic. Great work! 'Intrada' is of special interest because of the use of (samples of) the fantastic voicework by Chris Mann. If, Bwana is the pseudonym Al Margolis uses already since 1984 for his musical output. As a guest he was present on Creshevsky's 'To know and not to know'. Between the highly informed and complex music of Creshvesky, the works of If Bwana offers us some rest. His pieces develop in a slower pace and are built from a smaller set of soundmaterial. In 'Xyloxings' and 'Cicada # 4; Version Barnard', the voice of Lisa Bernard plays a prominent role. For 'Scraping Scrafide' If, Bwana makes uses of the piano playing of Tony Scafide, taking from an earlier composition by If, Bwana. In comparison to maximalistic efforts of Creshesky, the works If Bwana are more of a minimalistic approach." [DM / Vital Weekly] www.pogus.com | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| CRETA | Creta | LP | CRETA is the new project by MASSIMO PUPILLO (ZU, LANIAKEA), electronic artist LUCIANO LAMANNA and string instrument virtuoso ROBERTO ZANISI. As trio they explore an adventurous sonic territory between COIL in their ambient moments, dark bass pulses and bucolic-mediterranean string sounds. CRETA is a new trio of artists coming from very different backgrounds: ROBERTO ZANISI is a finger picking guitar player and a virtuoso on strings of all kinds, including “exotic” instruments like the Turkish Cümbüs, the Greek Bouzouki or the Albanian Cifteli. Since 2003 he has been active in many contexts: he worked with GIOVANNI VENOSTA producing sound tracks for SILVIO SOLDINI’s movies, took part as soloist musician in STEWARD COPELAND’s tour “La Notte della Taranta (Night of Tarantula)”, played with the American musician AMY DENIO and performed with SAINKHO NAMTCHYLAK. LUCIANO LAMANNA’s main characteristics are experimentation, analog synths, vinyl and a big love for techno. In 2015, the resident DJ at Ex Dogana, Roma and member of the Italian artist collective LSWHR launched the modular synthesizer project BALANCE (with DAVIDE RICCI), and in 2017 he released the album “Divus” with ZU member LUCA T. MAI, to name a few of LAMANNA’s many releases on labels like EARACHE, BORING MACHINES, SCUDERIA et.al. And, last but not least, there is MASSIMO PUPILLO, highly acclaimed bass maniac with ZU, LANIAKEA and in countless other constellations (a.o. PETER and CASPAR BRÖTZMANN, FM EINHEIT, CHRIS CORSANO). As CRETA, they create outlandish sonic pieces that blend sci-fi ambient atmospheres with dark bass pulses and bucolic-mediterranean string instruments – an unique and yet coherent mix of elements that adds consequently to the oeuvres of the three artists! Tracklist: 1 … And Everything That Shines 2 Babe In The Egg Of Blue 3 Future Humans In Form Of Aur | 2018 | €18.00 |
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| CRIA CUERVOS | Des tempes qui se vitrifient ou se marbrent | mCD-R | New material by this italian project, very hissy & droney & machine-like an-organic deep atmo-noise.... “this 20min piece could be depicted as the awakening of a mysterious living being, discovering a hostile world... screepy dark ambient! full-couloured printed 3"cd-r in a slim crystal box.” [label info] www.taalem.com | 2005 | €5.00 |
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| CROMAGNON | Orgasm | LP | "Certainly one of the weirdest experimental & psychedelic album with noise and industrial sonorities, first time released by Esp Disk in 1969, an early cult label of free jazz and weird curiosities. An absolute psychedelic tribal UFO and proto-industrial-noise in the story of music. A pioneer touch of Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Whitehouse, Test Department mixed with something full stoned and tribal ... ahead of its time in the 60's !!! This epic album is presented for the first time remastered with the same real rough sound and same feeling seeked at the time. And more volume added" Certainly one of the greatest UFOs in the history of music, Cromagnon and their 1969 concept album “Orgasm” were the precursors of what was to come thirty years later: industrial, metal and experimental music bathed in improvised experiments on lsd. “The project couldn’t be smooth, otherwise humanity would be lost. There’s room for computers, but the soul is gone.” Cromagnon is Brian Elliot (†), Austin Grasmere (†), Salvador Salgado, and The Connecticut Tribe : Brian, Bob and Sal were responsible for lyrics and Brian was the biggest contributor. Bob, Vincent, Peter, Gary & Louie all helped create the music (writing chord changes etc.) Tracks : 1. Caledonia (04:22) 2. Ritual Feast Of The Libido (03:29) 3. Organic Sundown (07:14) 4. Fantasy (07:42) 5. Crow Of The Black Tree (09:54) 6. Genitalia (02:46) 7. Toth, Scribe I (10:36) 8. First World Of Bronze (02:45) | 2015 | €29.50 |
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| CURD DUCA | Waves 3 | LP + CD | Magazine announces the album Waves 3 by Curd Duca, the third and last part of the trilogy Waves: Austrian electronic composer Curd Duca is widely known for his 1990s series of critically acclaimed easy listening 1-5 (Normal) and elevator 1-3 (Mille Plateaux). After a long break from the studio, Duca has issued part 1 of the Waves series in late 2020 on Magazine WAVES 001LP. This was in fact his first album in 20 years. The Waves recordings pick up the thread of his '90s work and open up a new chapter. Again, everything is shifting constantly and all tracks are quite different (soft, rough, melodic, abstract...), but complement each other in a surprisingly coherent way to form an idiosyncratic universe. While other experimental artists can sound as if they're attempting to lift lead weights over their heads, Duca is content flicking feathers into their faces. After his impressive 1990s/00s run on Normal and Mille Plateaux, Curd Duca had disappeared for 20 years before emerging from the aether last year. The albums of the new Waves trilogy represent a flawless examination of sound and texture. The Vienna-based producer still straddles high and low culture, but approaches his sonics with a more historically aware ear. So plain and resonant gong recordings are placed next to pop music loops and DSP-fractured cut-ups, and icy electronic jams nudge up against cassette warped instrumental sketches. Waves 3 is a continuation and culmination of the series. In the final chapter, you're drawn in with church bells on dome, but quickly transported to another era entirely with the crackly bläser and absurd zither, a tongue-in-cheek plunderphonic experiment assembled from zither samples. Duca follows this evocative run of tracks with a machine-gun blast of experimental sound, from the percussive 500 GRM to the ferric ASMR birdsong of "ziegenmelker." This is Duca at his most uncompromising, grabbing central European culture and dragging it through his array of processes. Playing the album from beginning to end opens up a weightless cut-and-paste mixtape, stitched together with expert foresight and a knowing wink to camera. Like the best psychedelic experiences, memories are triggered and turned inside-out, and knowledge is allowed to blossom. Curd Duca has been refining his process for three decades now, and few artists have quite the same ability to challenge, provoke, and inspire. | 2022 | €22.50 |
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| CURRENT 93 | I have a special Plan for the World | pic-LP | I had become close friends with Thomas Ligotti, the pre-eminent writer of Nights and DeadEnds and Doubled Darknesses. I had written him many fan-letters, and we both wanted to work with each other. I Have A Special Plan For This World was our second work together, after our In A Foreign Town, In A Foreign Land. This album Channels an enormous emotional response from me. Ligotti was, is, and will be a huge influence on my work. No-one has seen the bells tolling, tolling, tolling for us all like Thomas. Our house is full of his original manuscripts and typescripts, which I have collected from him for nearly 30 years.Andrew Monster Liles has also ReDreamt, ReDreamed, the track and this new version is on Side 2 of the picture-disc, replacing "Extracts From The Bungalow Tapes", which was on the B-Side of the original vinyl version. "Extracts From The Bungalow Tapes" will appear on the CD reissue of this album, as well as both vinyl versions which are on their picture-disc.Remastered from the original, tapes by The Bricoleur at Bladud Flies!, and with the original artwork refreshed and reborn by Rob Hopeye, this 12" vinyl picture-disc comes in a full-colour die-cut sleeve, which is printed on both the outside and inside.This is one of the second group of 4 reissues of the entire back catalogue of C93 on picture-disc and standard vinyl, in the lead-up to the publication of my autobiography at the end of 2026, whilst I also work on many other recording, publishing, and painting projects, and Watch And Pray! Each release in the picture-disc vinyl reissues series is limited to 1,000 copies, and the titles will not be repressed as picture-discs once they have sold out. David Tibet, Hastings, 3 June 2025. https://current931.bandcamp.com/album/i-have-a-special-plan-for-this-world | 2025 | €35.00 |
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| Imperium | pic-LP | Recorded at the same time as I and Then C93 were channelling Swastikas For Noddy, Imperium was the BackSide GrimStory to the Bright 'n' Breezy (Locust) SummerTime Whistkes of Swastikas For Noddy. I was very ill whilst making both records, and my main memories (along with Speed And Vodka, ThankYou, ThankYou) were lying sick on a grimy couch at the long-gone IPS Studios in Shepherd's Bush. There was a heavy leak in the kitchen and the water was running over the studio floor and up my distressed, distressing leader jeans (with button fly) and Into My Very Soul. Remastered from the original, tapes by The Bricoleur at Bladud Flies!, and with the original artwork refreshed and reborn by Rob Hopeye, this 12" vinyl picture-disc comes in a full-colour die-cut sleeve, which is printed on both the outside and inside. This is one of the second group of 4 reissues of the entire back catalogue of C93 on picture-disc and standard vinyl, in the lead-up to the publication of my autobiography at the end of 2026, whilst I also work on many other recording, publishing, and painting projects, and Watch And Pray! Each release in the picture-disc vinyl reissues series is limited to 1,000 copies, and the titles will not be repressed as picture-discs once they have sold out.David Tibet, Hastings, 3 June 2025. https://current931.bandcamp.com/album/imperium | 2025 | €35.00 |
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| CUTLER, CHRIS | Twice around the Earth. An Experiment in listening | CD | Ein Hör-Experiment vom Recommended Records-Betreiber, diese Produktion fürs ORF Kunstradio (www.kunstradio.at/2003A/cutler). Eine unglaubliche Fülle von field recordings werden quasi als „Reise um die Welt“ verarbeitet: ein Versuch, die Subjektivität und Voreingenommenheit beim Hören zu überwinden... „Out of the Blue Radio ist eine Radiosendung, die in London täglich zwischen 23.30 Uhr und Mitternacht auf Resonance FM (http://www.resonancefm.com), einem unabhängigen Sender für Radiokunst, ausgestrahlt wird. Gestartet wurde das einjährige, budgetlose Projekt im Juli 2002. Meine Idee für diese Sendung war es, den HörerInnen das Ohr einer anderen Person für jeweils eine halbe Stunde zu "leihen"; ein Fenster zu einer anderen Geräuschkulisse zu öffnen - entfernt oder nah -, die nicht ident mit der eigenen akustischen Umgebung ist. Die AutorInnen, die uns ihre Ohren zur Verfügung stellen, gestalten durchgehende, ungeschnittene halbstündige Aufnahmen von einem Ort ihrer Wahl, aufgenommen zwischen 23.30 Uhr und Mitternacht Londoner Ortszeit; d.h. halb vier Uhr nachmittags in Vancouver, 7.30 Uhr morgens in Peking oder 00.30 Uhr in Wien. Sie schicken diese unbearbeiteten Aufnahmen dann nach London, wo sie wie sie sind gesendet werden. Ein wichtiger Aspekt des Projekts ist es, ganze Zeitblöcke in ihrer Entfaltung einzufangen; sie nicht zu verbessern oder umzumodellieren zu versuchen; sie nicht den Vorstellungen eines Produzenten, was gut klingt oder ästhetisch wertvoll ist, anzupassen, sondern einfach nur diese Momente einzufrieren. Ort und Tätigkeit sind gewählt, der Rest sich selbst überlassen. Dies sind allerdings nicht Schnappschüsse aus dem Leben, sondern Hörobjekte: Geräusche, die eingefangen werden und in fremden Kontexten reproduziert werden; Sounds, die gerahmt und objektiviert und unabhängig wiedergegeben werden. Es scheint mir, dass die Beiträge mit ihrer rohen Beschaffenheit, am "Mangel" an Bearbeitung überhaupt nicht leiden - ganz im Gegenteil: sie entwickeln dadurch eine unglaubliche Kraft. Von allen anderen sinnlichen Wahrnehmungen und von ihren lebenden Quellen getrennt, enthüllen sie, was durch die Zwänge des Alltags, durch das wir eilen, unbedacht überhört wird. Geräusche, die instinktiv ignoriert, in Objekten aufgelöst oder absichtlich unterdrückt werden, können durch ihre unmittelbare Irrelevanz und die Gleichgültigkeit von Maschinen, die keine Subjektivität besitzen, zu neuem Leben erwachen. Selbstverständlich "klingen" diese Geräusche, doch das ist nicht deren "Bekenntnis". Sie verlangen nicht, als reiner Sound gehört zu werden. Sie sind, was sie sind: Autos, Hämmer, Atmosphären - zugleich vertraut und rätselhaft. Und - wie Geräusche, die durch ein offenes Fenster dringen - können sie Beachtung finden oder ignoriert werden. Sie können lediglich eine Atmosphäre tönen - oder die Aufmerksamkeit auf sich ziehen und unser ästhetisches, analytisches und sogar narratives Auffassungsvermögen in Gang setzen. Als ich gebeten wurde, diese Kompilation zu machen, wollte ich natürlich die Aspekte des Zufälligen und des Unmittelbaren, die so wichtig für das Projekt sind, bewahren. So, anstatt eine Auswahl der "best of" zu treffen oder besonders "interessante" Sounds herauszusuchen, entschied ich, mich von Geografie und Zeit leiten zu lassen. Ich plante eine akustische Reise zweimal um die Welt, wofür 43 der bislang 230 Aufnahmen verwendet werden. Geografische Angaben bestimmten die Reihenfolge der Stücke; der Zeitfluß welche Abschnitte/Orte innerhalb dieser geographischen Zonen gewählt wurden. D.h. ich nahm die ersten 55 Sekunden von der ersten Aufnahme, dann eine Strecke von ca. 0.55 bis etwa 1.50 Minuten von der nächsten usf. durch die Arbeit hindurch. Ich dies aber nicht so genau und entschied beim Anhören erst, wieviel ich von jedem 55-Sekunden-Abschnitt schlußendlich nahm und wo und wie ich die Übergänge gestalten wollte. Anders als die Überblendungen verweilen die "reisenden" Ohren allerdings immer an einem Ort nach dem anderen. Keine der Sounds wurde bearbeitet oder verändert. Diese freeze-frame Ausgabe von Out of the Blue Radio, die sich eigentlich ähnlich einer Diaschau entwickelt, kann natürlich weder die Ganzheit des Programms noch den kumulativen Effekt, jeden Tag eine andere Welt zu betreten, transportieren; doch ich habe mich an die Priorität des Hörens gehalten, wilde Landschaften zu nehmen, bevor sie gejätet, bepflanzt und verbessert werden. Die täglichen Sendungen, sogar diese Montage, tragen nur leicht die Handschrift von menschlichen Entscheidungen oder Absichten. Der Rest ist, wie er ist. So wie ich das Stück geschnitten habe, passiert alles, was man hört, während John Scott am Londoner Themseufer entlang läuft, in Hörweite des Big Ben. Das Stück geht John Scott los, der seinen Lauf beginnt, holt ihn bei der ersten Umrundung des Globus ein und kehrt wieder zu ihm zurück als er kurz vor Mitternacht seine Aufnahme beendet. Zwischenzeitlich reisen wir mit virtuellen 49.803 Meilen/Stunde (79.500 km/Sek.) in Quantensprüngen von Ort zu Ort.“ [Chris Cutler] “An experiment in listening. These compositions are an offshoot of the daily soundscape programme I ran for Resonance FM radio between July 2001-2002, which consisted of commissioned real-time recordings made all around the world between 23.30 and midnight GMT (the time of the broadcast). This CD begins with material from these broadcasts confecting, as it were, two composites of the Earth and a few of its inhabitants, somewhat analogous to what an impossible satellite ear with pinpoint acuity might hear in transit - plus one ear-cleaning stretch between them, taken from a single hear-point. I have tried to make these pieces both open and to work on parallel levels: not only do they have their own narrative and aesthetic qualities, but I hope they also offer a meditation on listening and not listening, interpretation and structure, chance and microphonics. The list of ears around the world who supplied basic material is too long to print here, but it includes many names familiar from these catalogues, and many from the still young soundscape and phonograpic community. Full details of people and places are given in the booklet, along with artwork and thorough notes. You have to trust me on this, it's a really engaging record. Sometimes unbelieveable. I don't think you'll regret giving it a chance.” [ReR] | 2003 | €14.00 |
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| CYCLOTIMIA | Music for Stockmarkets | CD | Das russische Projekt mit einem kritischen Werk zur Konsumgesellschaft & Finanzwirtschaft, eingespielt auf original russischen "Vintage Electronic" Geräten! "Cyclotimia is a project from Russia and have created some very good and interesting albums. Albums like ‘Same Time Same Place’, ‘Wasteland’ and ‘Celestis’ are a combination of spatial ambient and IDM glitch, aided with the use of lush synthesizers. The music often times is very deep and free interpretable. A recurring theme for this project is the world of stockmarkets. With this new album ‘Music for Stockmarkets’, stockmarkets is the essential theme and motive. Though the album ventures into the typical Cyclotimia topics, it doesn’t sound at all like the former albums. Well, maybe in some places, but its most of all a totally different experience. Gone are the deep soundscapes as the music is stripped to its bare essential. With a fast listening, it reminds me of music created in the Amiga era, but upon closes inspection, the music is rather layered and there is a lot to be discovered here. The album consists of a lot of bleeps and clicks and cuts, but there is also room for the occasional (piano) melody, together with different sampled sources. The great thing about this album is that it’s very subliminal and can sometimes have a rather disturbing feeling to it. A lot of tracks are very clinical in its approach, but it is interspersed with more layered tracks and deeper sounds. This is really an album which should be listened to with headphones and requires your full attention. If listened to rather superficially, the album can seem somewhat boring, because all the details are missed, which is the essential of this interesting work. It is music that can be difficult and cryptic, but that’s also the beauty of this album, which turns the music into a piece of art. The music therefore isn’t for everyone, because it’s not a ‘fun’ album. It’s maybe more academic, but with a more human approach. Hard to describe, you just have to listen to it. The artwork is also very nice and really makes the experience complete. The album gets a high recommendation because of its originality, but only to the more advanced listeners of experimental music, but a great album nonetheless." [Gothtronic] "Cyclotimia is most probably the only project in the world which has chosen the creation of a soundtrack to "globalisation" and life of the "consumer society" as their concept. The project members more than anyone else are immersed into the magic of finance and probably therefore has their creative intuition allowed them to compose the main part of "Music for Stockmarkets" with its unforgivingly precise name "Wallstreet Requiem". Today the whole civilised world is listening to this requiem the first cords of which were played on Wall Street itself... The "Music for Stockmarkets" album with its radically experimental nature stands out in the extensive discography of this Moscow project. The 64-minute album includes 32 tracks divided into three conceptual parts: "Wallstreet Requiem" (25 minutes, recorded in 2004-2007), "Trivial Pleasures" (26 minutes, recorded in 2002, this part was the only one released as a seperate CD in 2003) and "Financial Glossary" (13 minutes, recorded in 2003)... The music material itself is nothing like the one heard in the previous records of Cyclotimia. There is no apocalyptic soundscapes of "Wasteland" times, no cybernetic hi-tech and media madness of "E$chaton", no cosmic downtempo of "Celestis: Space Ceremonial Music"... Minimalism, academic sterility, surgical accuracy and meditative ataraxy prevail on "Music for Stockmarkets". Then again it is not the familiar "idm", "glitch", "noise", "clicks and cuts" and not "minimal techno"... The sound of the album is chrystal-clear and warm at the same time. "Vintage" lovers have a wonderful chance to listen to the masterpieces of Soviet music production (such as Rhythm 1, Rhythm 2, Aelita, Formanta UDS, Formanta EMS-01, Polyvox) in pure sound, unprocessed by effects." [label info] | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| D'INCISE | Rivages sur l'Antipode | LP | "Laurent Peter has produced and released electronic music under the d'incise moniker since 2002, from dub to electronica, gradually opening those styles to electroacoustic experimentations. With his projects Diatribes (an open formation with drummer Cyril Bondi) and Karst (quartet with Bondi, Luc Muller and Abstral Compost), he is also involved in free improvisation, for which he is using his laptop, live treatments and various contact miked objects. These projects have included musicians such as Barry Guy, Keith Row, Jason Kahn, Christian Weber, Norbert Moslang, Hernani Faustino, Joao Pedro Viegas, Tzii and many more. Finally, besides coordinating the insubordination netlabel, dedicated to improvised music, and being a member of the audiactiviste netlabel, Laurent Peter is also active as a graphic designer. Composed on a special request from ini.itu, “Rivages sur l'antipode” (shores on the opposite side of the earth) is his first vinyl LP and is based on similar archival material as the one used by Francisco López in his stunning “untitled #228”. Nonetheless, d'incise has achieved radically different results, combining digitally-processed textures, microsamples and humming harmonics rippling out over broken rhythms. He has collaged the least obvious bits of gamelan, many grainy soundbytes from Jakarta, Makassar, Bandung and Yogjakarta into a kaleidoscopic reinterpretation of these shattered fragments. Sudden transitions, alinear progressions and melancholic, sprawling, autumnal atmospheres reveal a very personal soundworld. This LP could evoke Kim Hiorthoy on sedatives under moist tropics, or an alter-ego of Burial in a futuristic decaying Jakarta won back by the jungle, with hints of digital crispiness from Kid606 période Mille Plateaux; a touch of the microsampling of Akufen, all of this marinated into the experiments in folk deterritorialisation made by some Ritornell artists such as Random_Inc / Sebastian Meissner. Icing on the cake, this LP was mastered by James Plotkin in Philadelphia. 250 copies, hand numbered. Some copies come with a serigraphy made by Laurent Peter himself." [label info] www.iniitu.net "On an entirely different nature is the album by Laurent Peter, finally we have a name for D'Incise from Switzerland, who received slighty similar sound material as Francisco Lopez did for his album for this label (see Vital Weekly 711), but Peter does something completely different with it. His main method is sampling the hell out of anything. It perhaps also reveals a bit more what Lopez used, as that was rather a mystery back then. Percussive sounds from Indonesia for instance, which D'Incise explores these for the lowest, grainy textures, chopped up to form new rhythms, cut from 'real' sound and the hiss between. Ini.itu compares this with some of the older and more experimental releases on Mille Plateaux/Ritornell, and I can see that. It shares that somewhat crude approach to sampling, the click 'n cut approach musicians like Random Inc and Kid606 had back then, but D'Incise never comes close to playing any 'dance' related music. The textures are sometimes pretty 'vague', shimmering perhaps, but I think that kind of adds nicely to the record. Its probably the best record by D'Incise I heard so far. The compositions are worked out better, and never seem to take more time than necessary. Very nice." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2010 | €12.50 |
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| DÄLEK {DALEK] | Untitled | LP | "One track, 40 minutes over 2 sides. The eagerly awaited and legendary Latitudes session finally sees the light of day. Vinyl comes in a limited run of 700 black and 300 purple and includes an insert and a sticker. from the liner notes: July 2005 was a crazy time in my universe. John Loder, my mentor and surrogate big brother, who I had worked alongside at Southern for 20 years, was very ill - battling a brain tumour diagnosed 18 months earlier. Dälek were holed up in my flat, on the sharp end of reducing their number from three to just two. They were recording a session for our relatively new Latitudes imprint - spending days in the studio laying tracks and nights in my living room, working on ideas. We got to know each other, really. (I have the photos of Alap passed out drunk in his boxer shorts to prove it.) I discovered that the hip-hop bravado and crushing beats were only one layer of these guys. They had a secret Metal past, a serious Alt-Country present, and hearts as big as New Jersey. Their love and knowledge of music ran deep. On the 7th, I got up to head into the office/studio, and left them sleeping away. Half way to the bus stop I got a call from Tony saying turn around, go home, don't get on the bus or the tube. He said there had been explosions in the Underground. I turned around, went home and turned on the news. Alap and Will sat with me and watched London's own version of 9-11 unfold, and then, full of determination and grit, headed into the studio to finish recording. And what did they produce? Why it's taken this long for this recording to be released is only down to me, and the battles that I've fought in the intervening five years. In August of 2005, John Loder left us. Since then I've had to work very hard to keep Southern going, and though we had to close our warehouse and as a result lose most of our staff last year, we've survived, and actually come out all the better for it. It's like the old days - we're compact, which means we can fight our battles like guerilla warriors - which is pretty much what you need to do to make ends meet these days. None of this has much to do with the epic grooves that Dälek laid down on this session. And it has everything to do with it, at least when I listen to what MC Dälek is saying. Sonically, this session is a real departure from Dälek's albums. It's a gorgeous, multi-cultural melting pot of sound and space, a serious shot to the head, an opening of the third eye. I strongly urge you to explore the magnificence of this session on headphones, in a darkened room, and let it take you away. I love it so much that I guess I wanted to keep it to myself for all this time. But it's time to share, and to apologise to you all for taking so long. - Allison Schnackenberg, August 2010" [label info] http://blog.southern.com/latitudes | 2011 | €20.00 |
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| DAS AUDIOVISUELLE KOLLEKTIV | Betrachtung | CD-R | "Documenting the sonic side of two audiovisual live performances on the subject of contemplation (‘Betrachtung’), the two 22-minute tracks on this album are remarkably different in character. EMERGE’s samples of breathing sounds, extremely processed, and Gerhard Zander’s prepared electric guitars alternate between near-Cagean intervals of silence, while the second set is a closely interwoven dialogue between percussive sounds and soothing harmonic drones. ‘The Audiovisual Collective’ is an outfit with members from Zurich and Augsburg founded in 2010. While the number of players and the instruments they use may vary, the concept that unites their live improvisations treats the visuals not as an ornamental backdrop for the musical performance, but a visual cue for the sound players to interact with. For “Betrachtung”, the image of a human eye depicted on the album cover was treated to a range of live manipulations, instigating live processing of the samples and guitar sounds. While both of the recorded sets display an astonishing range of textures and timbres given the minimalistic choice of source sounds, each track exemplifies a different approach to free improvisation. Track 1 is a series of isolated events creating an unresolved tension between them that keeps the listener in suspense until the very last minute. Much less ‘noisy’ than track 1, track 2 starts out by defining a clear division of roles between the percussive samples and the harmonic, if not melodic, soothing drones of the e-bowed guitar. The ensuing closely-knit dialogic interplay between the two audible players EMERGE and Zander is a fine testimony to the degree of intensity that can be reached in spontaneous musical communication." [label info] www.wix.com/attenuationcircuit/attenuation-circuit | 2011 | €8.00 |
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| Verwandlung | CD-R | "This live performance from the ‘Elektromagnetischer Sommer’ 2011 festival in Zurich features prepared guitar player Gerhard Zander and ‘musicien concrète’ EMERGE, on samplers and contact microphones, both interacting with the visual cues from Eazy’s live processing of abstract images on the theme of metamorphosis (‘Verwandlung’), an extract of which can be seen in the sleeve art. The 45-minute set is dominated by gently droning ambient textures and looped chords in unhurried pulses while a constant interplay with metallic, rather high-pitched samples originating from guitar and electric bass, but sometimes more reminiscent of saxophones, manages to sustain interest throughout. Formed in 2010 by audio and video artists from Augsburg and Zurich, ‘The Audiovisual Collective’ has since developed towards an ever closer integration of the sounds that are used to communicate a sonic counterpart to the images projected during their performances. With lots of reverb and effects used on the prepared electric guitar, which is frequently played with an e-bow, thus losing its typical ‘plucked’ character, its texture often resembles the droning quality of the time-stretched samples. In turn, EMERGE adds live signals to his mix of samples, picked up through contact microphones and subjected to various forms of live processing. Its idiosyncratic mix of what could be described, depending on the listener’s preference, as aqueous 1960s sci-fi movie sounds or vintage Pierre Henry with mandala-like tranquillity, plus the occasional exhilarating outburst of semi-noisy hyperactivity towards the end, maintains harmonic structures throughout and thus makes for an accessible introduction to the world of free electroacoustic improvisation that still contains lots of interesting details for experts in that field." [label info] www.wix.com/attenuationcircuit/attenuation-circuit | 2011 | €8.00 |
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| DAS SYNTHETISCHE MISCHGEWEBE | Neunundvierzig Entgleisungen | do-10 | "....What you hear on this pack is four delirious sides of hermetically-sealed confusion, playing havoc with your acoustical preconceptions and expectations until you won’t know which way is up. Noise, glitches, murmurs and clicks are abstracted by careful processing, and apparently edited together into microscopic mosaic patterns to stimulate your perceptual receptors in ways you’d never have thought possible. Jean René Lasalle contributes profuse printed texts inside the cover, which are likewise streams of cut-up absurdist poetry containing such deathless observations as “glances irrigates elytrons in a trembling headlight”. Françoise Vigot did the cover paintings, featuring the domestic (and amorous) adventures of the red and blue cipher-like figures whose antics I have seen, I think, on a Hypnagogia release by DSM. Verily, Huebner’s universe is an elaborate many-layered puzzle which is slowly coming together for this listener." [The Sound Projector] "aufabwegen is very proud to offer a new release by what we consider to be one of germany's most important sound projects: DAS SYNTHETISCHE MISCHGEWEBE. DSM is now the sole project of guido huebner, who has been working in the medium of sound and found objects since the early 1980ies. DSM have their very own take on the patialization of sound and the moving around of sonic objects in the stero field. the overall impression is of rawness and fragility at the same time. the music on these two 10" records is super-dynamic and fragmentated and sounds very fresh and alive. DAS have collaborated over the years with artists such as Michael Northam, Frans de Waard, New Blockaders, MSBR and many more and have released material on various labels around the globe. DSM have played many concerts all over and have combined their sound with different art froms, such as projections, film, dance and even conducting workshops fro kids. "neunundvierzig entgleisungen" comes in a full cover fold sleeve and is slipped in a stable plastic seethrough. it plays on 45rpm, even if the label prints instructs you to run it at 33. the record was recorded by guido huebner and features texts by jean rene lasalle and artwork (paintings reproduced) by francoise vigot. it was layouted by stefan hanser (anemone tube), mastered by josef suchy and cut by lupo at dubplates & mastering." [label info] www.aufabwegen.com | 2008 | €18.50 |
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| DAVACHI, SARAH | Long Gradus | do-LP | https://sarahdavachi.bandcamp.com/album/long-gradus A new longform commissioned work for any ensemble of four similar instruments. The definitive string quartet version of 'Long Gradus' is available as a 2LP and CD, and the collection of all four arrangements (strings, woodwinds, brass & organ, choir & electronics) is presented as the 'Long Gradus: Arrangements' 4CD set. 'Long Gradus' began in 2020 when Sarah Davachi was selected to participate in Quatuor Bozzini’s Composer’s Kitchen residency, which was to be a joint production with Gaudeamus Muziekweek in the Netherlands. With the postponement of the residency to the following year, the composer was given the opportunity to take a step back and look at the piece over a much longer period of time than would have ordinarily been possible. The resulting longform composition in four parts, written in its initial form for string quartet, was developed as an iteration of an ongoing preoccupation with chordal suspension and cadential structure. In this context, horizontal shifts in pitch material and texture occur on a very gradual scale, allowing the listener's perceptions to settle on the spatial experience of harmony. A system of septimal just intonation helps to further the production of a consonant acoustic environment. 'Long Gradus' uses a formalized articulation of time-bracket notation alongside unfixed indications of pitch, texture, and voicing that allow the players some discretion in determining the shape of the piece. A sense of pacing that is markedly different from that of mensural notation emerges accordingly, while the open structure of the composition results in each performance having a unique and unpredictable configuration. The piece may be arranged in a quartet format for any instrumentation that can alter its intonation with some degree of accuracy or produce a natural seventh harmonic. Substitution of the string quartet with other instruments as desired or imagined, both acoustic and electronic, is entirely acceptable and indeed encouraged. To this end, Davachi has also offered the 'Long Gradus: Arrangements' 4CD set, which includes the string quartet version as well as arrangements for woodwinds, brass and organ, and choir and electronics. A 'gradus' is a sort of handbook meant to aid in learning a difficult practice; in this case, 'Long Gradus' is designed to considerably slow the cognitive movements of both listener and player, and to focus their attention on the relationships between moments. A rich harmonic landscape that is constantly shifting and which changes with each engagement is the listener’s return. For the player, 'Long Gradus' is an invitation to practice active listening and to immerse oneself in the stillness of psychoacoustic space and time. Davachi comments: “I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Quatuor Bozzini for the opportunity to go through this process together, which is exceedingly uncommon in the context of chamber music. Typically, when writing for an ensemble or orchestra, the composer is given very few, if any, occasions to actually adjust their work in a meaningful way outside of perhaps one or two brief rehearsals of an essentially final score. It is extremely rare and an enormous luxury to begin with simple sketches or ideas and to actually construct a piece over a period of several months or more from a place of sonic assurance – that is, being able to listen and to explore and to continually fine tune in response to the sound itself, in conjunction with the performers. Part of the reason that my earliest compositional efforts arose within the domain of electroacoustic and acousmatic music is because of the control that it offered, to intuit sound in real time rather than through the indirect interpretation of future sound in the form of a score. Even now, when I compose work for chamber ensembles, I typically always start from a recorded version or from a demo – from the sound itself – and then work backwards to generate the score that will result in that music. It seems to be a vestige of conservatory thinking to view music performance, even in relation to new music, as a kind of reading of notes on the page that simply results in things just falling into place as expected. But, when the music goes beyond what’s on the page to include a dialogue with the acoustic space of the performance, and to require a certain patience and concentration on part of the performers, there needs to be a different approach; the Composer’s Kitchen residency offered that respect and curiosity.” credits released November 3, 2023 'Long Gradus' composed and arranged by Sarah Davachi, 2020/21 “Harmonic Observances In Four Parts” for any ensemble of four similar instruments TRACKS 1 - 4: LONG GRADUS (STRINGS) Performed by Quatuor Bozzini Alissa Cheung, violin Clemens Merkel, violin Stéphanie Bozzini, viola Isabelle Bozzini, cello Recorded by Zach Blackstone at the Warehouse Studio in Vancouver BC Canada, 14 & 15 March 2023 Mixed by Sarah Davachi and Sean McCann Mastered by Sean McCann Special thank you to Susan Gibb & Regina Greene Made with the generous support of Western Front TRACKS 5 - 8: LONG GRADUS (WOODWINDS) Performed by Rebecca Lane, flute + bass flute Samara Dunscombe, clarinet + bass clarinet Recorded by Sarah Davachi and Samara Dunscombe at Emmaus Kirche in Berlin Germany, 11 & 12 May 2022 Mixed by Sarah Davachi Mastered by Sean McCann Special thank you to Ingo Schulz, Marta Blazanovic-Drefers, & John Stevens TRACKS 9 - 12: LONG GRADUS (BRASS & ORGAN) Performed by Rage Thormbones Mattie Barbier, alto trombone Weston Olencki, tenor trombone With Sarah Davachi, pipe organ Recorded by Sarah Davachi and Weston Olencki at The Museum Of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles CA USA, 1 & 2 November 2022 Pipe organ recorded by SD at Emmaus Kirche in Berlin Germany Mixed by Sarah Davachi Mastered by Sean McCann Special thank you to David Wilson TRACKS 13 - 16: LONG GRADUS (CHOIR & ELECTRONICS) Performed by Judith Berkson, mezzo-soprano Sarah Davachi, sine wave oscillators Recorded by Sarah Davachi at Alms Vert in Los Angeles CA USA, 13 July 2022 and 23 January 2023 Sine wave oscillators performed on a Korg PS-3100 synthesizer Mixed by Sarah Davachi Mastered by Sean McCann | 2023 | €32.50 |
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| Music for a Bellowing Room | 3 x CD + BlueRay set | »Music for a Bellowing Room« is a collaborative durational work by musician Sarah Davachi and filmmaker Dicky Bahto, both based in Los Angeles. Audio recorded live at The MoMA by Omer Leibovitz in New York, 17 September 2023. With a performance/running time of three hours, »Music for a Bellowing Room« is an exercise in resolution, inviting the audience to shift their concentration and perception through gradual changes in sound and image. This piece was originally commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and received its premiere performance in September 2023. On 8 November 2024, Late Music will release a 3CD+Blu-Ray edition. Sarah Davachi is a Canadian experimental composer and performer who creates immersive, layered drones using a wide range of acoustic and electronic instrumentation, including organs, strings, brass, and synthesizers. Continuing a lineage of minimalist composers such as Éliane Radigue, Tony Conrad, and La Monte Young, her works expand the human perception of sound through subtle variations of considered harmonic structures, exploring overtone complexity, intonation, and natural resonance. Dicky Bahto has exhibited work utilizing still and motion picture photography, sound, and performance at a variety of museums, galleries, microcinemas, alternative spaces, and scenic locations spanning the Northern Hemisphere, from the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles to Life Changing Ministries (a former church in West Oakland). He frequently collaborates with musicians, both as a performer and as a visual artist, including Sarah Davachi, Liz Harris, Julia Holter, and Tashi Wada, and with his cat, Katouche. Packaged in a four-disc, 8-panel digipak. The inside of the digipak, behind the clear CD trays, is plain unprinted white. Disc 1 (Blu-ray) contains the film with full, unbroken audio. Discs 2-4 (CD) contain the audio only, split between the three discs. 500 copies pressed. https://sarahdavachi.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-a-bellowing-room | 2024 | €53.00 |
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| DAVIS, GARETH & DUANE PITRE | Nott | CD | Nótt is a 34minutes long collaboration album, consisting of one epic slowly evolving drone, named after the personification of the night, the grandmother of Thor, taken from the norse mythology. Nótt is a beautiful gathering of two musicians. On the one hand you have the electronic drones of Duane Pitre and on the other hand you have the bass clarinet soundscapes of Gareth Davis. The musicians managed to record something very minimal but also very powerful. limited CD (200 copies) available here: Gareth Davis - bass clarinet Duane Pitre - electronics https://midirarecords.bandcamp.com/album/n-tt | 2019 | €13.00 |
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| DBMG/RAF (DIE BAADER-MEINHOF GRUPPE / RED ARMY FACTION) | same | CD | Radikaler Elektro / Noise / Rhythmic Industrial aus Kanada mit starker politischer, antikapitalistischer Ausrichtung (das RAF-Logo auf dem Cover), dabei musikalisch abwechslungsreich & überzeugend arrangiert, teils fast rockig-tanzbar, teils extrem krachig! "Die Baader-Meinhof Gruppe / Red Army Faction is Joshua David Richardson with a revolving door of collaborators, which include: Scott E. Farmer (Russian Futurists), Sam Devos (For Greater Good), and Edwin Vanvinckenroye (Tribe) amongst others. According to Richardson, DBMG/RAF is a chance for musicians and multi-media artists to explore the use of violence within their chosen medium for the expressed purpose of destroying the economic, social, and artistic structures imposed on them by Late 20th and 21st Century Capitalism. It is inspired by the actions of West-Germany’s Red Army Faction (also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group), which sought the violent overthrow of West-Germany’s post-war governments from the 1970’s until its official disbandment in 1998. Politics aside, this is one freshing new release that actually lives up to being true INDUSTRIAL music. It is noisy, chaotic, harsh, violent, full of anguish and torment while still carrying a strong beat. This is the kind of industrial that will immediate clear the dancefloor at your local goff-idustrial club, will sort out the real rivetheads from the poseurs, and have noise music enthusiasts begging for more. There’s a good amount of variety on this CD too- a post-punk “Peter Gunn” inspired rhythm track with whacked out old school analogue electronics, middle-eastern Indian ambience with the sound of war in the background (perfect for planning your next Jihad), Deutsch Nepal and Memorandum inspired beats with radio transmissions in the background, slabs of whale-toned cries from the deep, broken and distorted sonics over a militant backbeat with appropriately painful processed vocals, wacky distorted rhythmic melodies, and much more. It is experimental without being unlistenable. Alienating while still being engaging. Even when Richardson is using those overly-familiar sounds and elements, they never seem dated or clichéd. When it comes to this kind of music, this guy obviously seems to know what he’s doing and doesn’t wear his influences on his sleeve like so many others who’ve attempted it. If I had one thing to nit-pick about, it might be the use of overuse of spoken word samples, which is a pet peeve of mine in any music genre. Purists can argue as to its appropriateness, but I feel that a constant barrage of it is a bit clichéd. Thankfully, Richard tempers it with other interesting elements. This release has an awful lot going for it and has so much variety that it has a very high replayability factor, something that I haven’t heard in a good number of harsh music projects that I’ve reviewed positively. It is also not a constant torrent of torturous sounds; there are quite a few quieter moody moments. Nothing is overly-long or intolerable. If this was released on CMI, it might be the album of the year in Europe. Red Army Faction is like having the best moments of bands like Mental Destruction, In Slaughter Natives, Esplendor Geometric and Brighter Death Now rolled into one steaming package. Perhaps it’s due to the duality of the name Die Baader-Meinhof Gruppe / Red Army Faction and its association that makes this music project totally oblique in a Google search. If you want this music, you REALLY have to know where to look. You can find it on iTunes (Die Baader-Meinhof) or CD Baby (http://cdbaby.com/cd/baadermeinhof) but I’d recommend just going directly to the website since there videos, more info and purchase options there. Definitely recommended!" [Steve Mecca / CHAIN D.L.K.] www.dbmg-raf.com | 2009 | €13.50 |
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| DE WAARD, FRANS | America’s Greatest Noise | BOOK | The next book on Korm Plastics contains no photographs of the artists, no list of released records, no pictures of record sleeves, and no footnotes. It is not a hardcover, not on glossy paper and is not expensive. It’s… ‘America’s Greatest Noise’ tells the story of Ron Lessard, owner of RRRecords, a record store in Lowell, Massachusetts and, from 1986 to 2009, a record label, releasing the albums of Blackhouse, F/i, PGR, the first Merzbow LP outside Japan and many more, regional compilations, three widely acclaimed lock groove records and a series of anti-records, records with no music but a more conceptual and visual edge. RRRecords is also responsible for the RRRecycled Music series, which has over 300 releases on re-purposed cassettes. Ron Lessard played music with his group Due Process and solo as Emil Beaulieau. Up until his retirement from the noise scene in 2006, he played many concerts and released a string of cassettes, LPs, and CDs. During his concerts, Lessard dressed up like a businessman and used a four-armed turntable, dubbed the Minutoli, and his performances were comical. In this book, he tells for the first time his story in music about the highs and lows of running a label and a record store, weird projects, unfinished projects, encounters with other musicians, being on the road, and much more. Also included are two appendices: one with interviews from the past (fanzines and websites) and a chapter from Michael Tau’s ‘Extreme Music’ about the anti-records released by RRRecords. Images used were sourced from flyers, invitations and fanzines. Introduction by Dominick Fernow (Prurient, Hospital Productions) The first 1000 copies come with an anti-flexi, cutting up a conversation about anti-records between Ron Lessard and the author of the book, Frans de Waard. Cut up by Howard Stelzer. You may use this flexi as a bookmark. Paperback book, 144 pages, black and white images. Design by Alfred Boland Ships after July 1st; official release date: July 5th (if you know, you know) Softcover, 17×24 cm, 144 pages https://www.kormplastics.nl/americas-greatest-noise/ | 2024 | €15.00 |
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| DE WAARD, FRANS / MARTIJN COMES | Various Weights | CD | "Various Weights is the first time the duo of Frans de Waard and Martijn Comes come together to present work. On this album, their uniques styles are combined, where they work with each others sound materials to create truly unique compositions. Various Weights In sound art, concepts often take precedence over the actual music. Here, there were none. For their first collaboration, Frans de Waard and Martijn Comes decided on a strikingly simple approach: Each artist compiled a pool of sounds for the other to use as a point of departure. Comes worked with various analog synth- and field recordings by de Waard (including, among others, a Korg MS20 and Koma Field FX). The latter was sent a processed stylophone recording, a sample loop as well as recordings of the Web’s first Software-Defined Radio by the University of Twente. The results, now released as Various Weights, are two epic and immersive pieces. On “Boundary of Intersections”, Comes focuses on deep sonorities and harmonics, developing his materials into a mind-expanding drone zone. De Waard’s “There are no two pianos” is more subdued, hovering mysteriously at the cusp of acousmatic research and sonic minimalism. Both pieces share a slightly uneasy, surreal feeling – perfectly captured by Bas Mantel’s artwork, which was a direct response to the sounds contained on the disc. The bonus-CD to this release, limited to 50 copies, contains a full 35-minute performance by both artists at De Ruimte Amsterdam after the project had been completed. Magically, the music appears to be a direct continuation of the album tracks. As such, Various Weights ingeniously juxtaposes live- and studio techniques, solo and duo work, spontaneous improvisation and meticulous composition. That, whether the artists intended it that way or not, probably makes it a concept album after all." Tobias Fischer, March 2020 https://www.movingfurniturerecords.com/frans-de-waard-martijn-comes-various-weights/ | 2020 | €12.00 |
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| DEAD CAN DANCE | Dionysus | CD | "This second release from the recently reawakened Dead Can Dance is quite a delightful surprise, radically departing from its uneven predecessor and displaying a striking degree of creative reinvigoration. Rather than another stab at recreating classic DCD fare like Aion, Dionysus is a conceptually rich and structurally inventive plunge deep into the folklore and spirit of Dionysian rituals and festivals. An intriguing concept does not necessarily lead to an intriguing album, of course, but Dionysus finds Dead Can Dance at the peak of their instrumental powers, unfolding as feast of wonderfully vibrant rhythms, esoteric instrumentation, and inspired arrangements. It is quite a remarkable and improbable achievement, as it sounds very little like prime Dead Can Dance, yet absolutely feels like prime Dead Can Dance. If Dionysus had come out in the band’s golden age of the late '80s and early '90s, there would most certainly be a small but devoted contingent of fans that viewed it as dark horse contender for the duo's finest album. If I am being completely honest, I truly did not expect Dead Can Dance to ever record another great album, as the feeling I got from the reunion tour and Anastasis was that Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard are now far more like two loosely entwined solo artists who periodically collaborate than they are a united creative force these days. For the most part, Dionysus does little to dispel that sense, but it definitely seems like the duo have found a way to flourish within those conditions. Based on all that I have read about this album, it is quite clear that Perry was the album's driving force and that it was a labor of love birthed from a deep fascination with how pagan/Dionysian beliefs have spread, transformed, lingered, and evolved in the wake of the Roman Empire. Perry was originally drawn to the theme by European spring and harvest festivals, but the reach of the album seamlessly dissolves boundaries in culture, time, and space like only Dead Can Dance can do. For example, Perry's field recordings alone touch upon South America, New Zealand, and Switzerland and his musical inspirations are even more widespread, delving into traditional instrumentation that spans just about the entire globe. While there some wonderfully exotic and otherworldly sounds occasionally appear, such as the eerily flute-like see-sawing tones and jungle-like chirps in the closing "Psychopomp," that unusual instrumentation is less of a focus than it is a set of specialized tools that Perry used to get exactly the feel he wanted. In fact, Dionysus is largely a very percussion-driven affair, an approach that is especially effective on the muscular and propulsively off-kilter opener "Sea Borne," which abstractly evokes Dionysus's mythical arrival from The East. While the album's bookends are both quite strong and easy to identify, the delineation between individual pieces on Dionysus is quite a purposely blurry one, as the album is structured as a two-part oratorio with different movements that tie to different aspects of Dionysian myth and folklore. For example, "Dance of the Bacchantes" is inspired by a rite in which women "abandoned their domestic duties for trance-like processions and dances," while "Liberator of Minds" celebrates hallucinogens and "The Forest" is a "call to abandon worldly and material pursuits and return to a primeval enlightened state of being." Happily, Perry opted to keep the narrative arc an abstract and impressionistic one, so this concept album deftly eludes the perils of dubious lyrical content or exposition. Curiously, it does sound like Perry is singing actual words in some language in the two closing movements, but the language is a fictional one, as Perry wanted to "convey emotion beyond the boundaries of language itself." In lesser hands, such a conceit would likely end in disaster. In this case, however, it not only flows seamlessly but seems like a crucial part of establishing the timeless and ritualistic headspace that the album inhabits. Recognizable words would have killed the spell. The music is not quite as liberated from the constraints of existing culture, however, as Perry is quite fond of Middle Eastern scales and melodies. The overall feeling is not entirely Middle Eastern though, as some medieval-sounding touches certainly bleed in, as do some sounds that seem plucked from real or imaginary tribes hidden deep in the heart of a tropical rainforest. At Dionysus's best, all of those threads combine into something that resembles an alternately raucous, sensuous, and ritualistic village dance that pulses with visceral rhythms, call-and-response chants, and primal eruptions of ululating yelps. Admittedly, tt feels a bit weird to love a Dead Can Dance album in which Lisa Gerrard plays a noticeably reduced role, as she only takes over lead vocals on "The Invocation" (I think). However, her voice continually surfaces throughout the album as an added choral layer or to echo or harmonize with Perry's own vocals. That might not sound like much, yet her essence pervades the proceedings in a deeper way, as Dionysus bears little resemblance to Perry's solo work. This simply is not a vocal-centric album in the traditional Dead Can Dance sense, nor does the mood quite suit Gerrard's hammered dulcimer talents and the duo have the good sense not to awkwardly shoehorn in touches that do not belong. In fact, Perry and Gerrard show an almost supernatural instinct for avoiding false notes or missteps, favorably calling to mind a time in the distant past (The Serpent's Egg) when they seemed like an absolutely infallible force of nature and each new album felt like a communion with something deeper and more meaningful than anything the present era offered. There is not a weak moment to be found here, as my sole caveat is that the album feels all too brief at a mere 35 minutes. None of that time is squandered at all though, so it is hard to grumble: if the perfect arc is just over half an hour, then that is the proper length for the album to be. I had hoped that Perry and Gerrard might have some more classic songs or a return to form lurking in their shared future, but Dionysus has easily transcended those modest expectations by feeling like the beginning of an extremely promising second act to their long and illustrious career. Nostalgia and welcome familiarity are great, but reclaiming relevance and forging into compelling and unique new territory is far better." [Anthony D'Amico] | 2018 | €16.00 |
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| Dionysus | LP | "This second release from the recently reawakened Dead Can Dance is quite a delightful surprise, radically departing from its uneven predecessor and displaying a striking degree of creative reinvigoration. Rather than another stab at recreating classic DCD fare like Aion, Dionysus is a conceptually rich and structurally inventive plunge deep into the folklore and spirit of Dionysian rituals and festivals. An intriguing concept does not necessarily lead to an intriguing album, of course, but Dionysus finds Dead Can Dance at the peak of their instrumental powers, unfolding as feast of wonderfully vibrant rhythms, esoteric instrumentation, and inspired arrangements. It is quite a remarkable and improbable achievement, as it sounds very little like prime Dead Can Dance, yet absolutely feels like prime Dead Can Dance. If Dionysus had come out in the band’s golden age of the late '80s and early '90s, there would most certainly be a small but devoted contingent of fans that viewed it as dark horse contender for the duo's finest album. If I am being completely honest, I truly did not expect Dead Can Dance to ever record another great album, as the feeling I got from the reunion tour and Anastasis was that Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard are now far more like two loosely entwined solo artists who periodically collaborate than they are a united creative force these days. For the most part, Dionysus does little to dispel that sense, but it definitely seems like the duo have found a way to flourish within those conditions. Based on all that I have read about this album, it is quite clear that Perry was the album's driving force and that it was a labor of love birthed from a deep fascination with how pagan/Dionysian beliefs have spread, transformed, lingered, and evolved in the wake of the Roman Empire. Perry was originally drawn to the theme by European spring and harvest festivals, but the reach of the album seamlessly dissolves boundaries in culture, time, and space like only Dead Can Dance can do. For example, Perry's field recordings alone touch upon South America, New Zealand, and Switzerland and his musical inspirations are even more widespread, delving into traditional instrumentation that spans just about the entire globe. While there some wonderfully exotic and otherworldly sounds occasionally appear, such as the eerily flute-like see-sawing tones and jungle-like chirps in the closing "Psychopomp," that unusual instrumentation is less of a focus than it is a set of specialized tools that Perry used to get exactly the feel he wanted. In fact, Dionysus is largely a very percussion-driven affair, an approach that is especially effective on the muscular and propulsively off-kilter opener "Sea Borne," which abstractly evokes Dionysus's mythical arrival from The East. While the album's bookends are both quite strong and easy to identify, the delineation between individual pieces on Dionysus is quite a purposely blurry one, as the album is structured as a two-part oratorio with different movements that tie to different aspects of Dionysian myth and folklore. For example, "Dance of the Bacchantes" is inspired by a rite in which women "abandoned their domestic duties for trance-like processions and dances," while "Liberator of Minds" celebrates hallucinogens and "The Forest" is a "call to abandon worldly and material pursuits and return to a primeval enlightened state of being." Happily, Perry opted to keep the narrative arc an abstract and impressionistic one, so this concept album deftly eludes the perils of dubious lyrical content or exposition. Curiously, it does sound like Perry is singing actual words in some language in the two closing movements, but the language is a fictional one, as Perry wanted to "convey emotion beyond the boundaries of language itself." In lesser hands, such a conceit would likely end in disaster. In this case, however, it not only flows seamlessly but seems like a crucial part of establishing the timeless and ritualistic headspace that the album inhabits. Recognizable words would have killed the spell. The music is not quite as liberated from the constraints of existing culture, however, as Perry is quite fond of Middle Eastern scales and melodies. The overall feeling is not entirely Middle Eastern though, as some medieval-sounding touches certainly bleed in, as do some sounds that seem plucked from real or imaginary tribes hidden deep in the heart of a tropical rainforest. At Dionysus's best, all of those threads combine into something that resembles an alternately raucous, sensuous, and ritualistic village dance that pulses with visceral rhythms, call-and-response chants, and primal eruptions of ululating yelps. Admittedly, tt feels a bit weird to love a Dead Can Dance album in which Lisa Gerrard plays a noticeably reduced role, as she only takes over lead vocals on "The Invocation" (I think). However, her voice continually surfaces throughout the album as an added choral layer or to echo or harmonize with Perry's own vocals. That might not sound like much, yet her essence pervades the proceedings in a deeper way, as Dionysus bears little resemblance to Perry's solo work. This simply is not a vocal-centric album in the traditional Dead Can Dance sense, nor does the mood quite suit Gerrard's hammered dulcimer talents and the duo have the good sense not to awkwardly shoehorn in touches that do not belong. In fact, Perry and Gerrard show an almost supernatural instinct for avoiding false notes or missteps, favorably calling to mind a time in the distant past (The Serpent's Egg) when they seemed like an absolutely infallible force of nature and each new album felt like a communion with something deeper and more meaningful than anything the present era offered. There is not a weak moment to be found here, as my sole caveat is that the album feels all too brief at a mere 35 minutes. None of that time is squandered at all though, so it is hard to grumble: if the perfect arc is just over half an hour, then that is the proper length for the album to be. I had hoped that Perry and Gerrard might have some more classic songs or a return to form lurking in their shared future, but Dionysus has easily transcended those modest expectations by feeling like the beginning of an extremely promising second act to their long and illustrious career. Nostalgia and welcome familiarity are great, but reclaiming relevance and forging into compelling and unique new territory is far better." [Anthony D'Amico] | 2018 | €28.00 |
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| DEAD GUM | Meta | LP | Backwards proudly presents the new full length album of amazing Greek artist DEAD GUM! "META", Dead Gum’s sophomore studio album, constituted a challenge for its maker. While “GAINER” - its predecessor - hollered for awareness and singularity, this one indulges into multi-layered, ambiguous narratives tracing an impossible duality. With abiding influences that distance him from conspicuous contemporary norms, Panagiotis Spoulos creates a nocturnal, desolate sound collage, invoking a meta-purpose for a/the current status quo. The public character of the endeavour is almost jostled by the privateness of the overall statement; the invitation thus corresponds to a peek into a baffled brain and a rove around gradual levels of muffled alarm calls and grimy smells. "META" is no post-something. "META" merely stands half foot ahead of absolute nothingness, the true end of it all. https://deadgum.bandcamp.com | 2019 | €16.00 |
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| DEAD MAURIACS, THE | Beaute des Mirages | LP | Mysterious French outfit return to Discrepant in full exotic wind force after their sell out cassette, Un Cocktail pour la fin des temps''. Beauté des Mirages picks up on the same themes of frantic, abstract exotica and concrete cocktails the French act is known for. Running for two long 18min sides full of fake(?) vintage atmospheres and armchair jungle hallucinations. An abstract journey into a beautiful (and sometimes scary) world of mirages. All perfectly illustrated by yet another mesmerizing artwork collage by US artists Evan Crankshaw. The Dead Mauriacs : computer, files, fields recordings, cassettes, text, piano, midi keyboard. LP released by Discrepant. 2017. CREP 043 An abstract journey into a beautiful (and sometimes scary) world of mirages. Perfectly illustrated by yet another mesmerizing artwork collage by US artists Evan Crankshaw thedeadmauriacs.bandcamp.com/album/beaut-des-mirages | 2017 | €19.00 |
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| Le Parc, rapport d'observations | CD + booklet | The music and text that make up this record originate from repeated stays in Brussels. They were born from curious observations and daily recordings, which, when assembled and manipulated, became a kind of dystopian mirror game. Some of the sounds on the record were recorded in cafés, streets, a park, the Notre-Dame des Victoires church in the Sablon district, others were made with objects found on the spot, a chair, a table, a shutter, and manipulated with the tools of concrete or electro-acoustic music. Some field recordings, made in other places, were added to create this fiction that the text extends: a sort of dangerous game involving agents, observers and parakeets in a park. Sometimes their respective roles become confused, as do time and space. The Dead Mauriacs entrusted the visual aspect of the project to Evan Crankshaw, with whom they often work. With his collages, he brought a vision that deterritorialises and enriches both text and music. ____________________ Le Parc, rapport d’observations / The Park, observation report. Part 1 -Les perruches (Parakeets), -Les ambassades (Embassies), -Un malaise passager (A passing discomfort). Part 2 -Diversion (Diversion), -Manigances feutrées (Mufled shenanigans) -Soupçons (Suspicion). -Seconde diversion (Second diversion) : -Bifurcations et miroirs (Bifurcations and mirrors). Part 3 -Les observateurs (The observers), -Le kiosque (The kiosk). -Une intrigue chorégraphique (A choreographic plot), -Disparition (Disappearance) credits released April 14, 2023 Field recordings : Brussel (chair, table, rolling shutter, church organ, street noises, people in a café, sounds in Leopold parc) ; Rouen (Corean gathering) ; Saint-Pierre de Varengeville (birds, water, wind in the leaves, ventilation system) ; Figueira (sea). Real and fake piano, strings, and everything else played and assembled through Ableton Live. Music and text by Olivier Prieur Artwork by Evan Crankshaw Layout by Rutger Zuydervelt https://sublimeretreat.bandcamp.com/album/le-parc-rapport-dobservations | 2023 | €15.00 |
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| DEADVERSE MASSIVE | Son of Concrete | pic-LP | Starke 4-track long-play EP einer Art Supergroup des US-amerikanischen Experimental-Dub & Hip-Hop Undergrounds, mit erstaunlichem Ergebnis zwischen melancholischer slow-Dub Ambience und frei flottierenden Experimenten, viel vokales Material & halluzinogene Atmo...und auch ruhig-harmonische parts tauchen auf. Leute von DÄLEK, DESTRUCTO SWARMBOTS, ODDATEE sind beteiligt. Erschien auf dem wahrhaft grenzüberschreitendem Label PUBLIC GUILT aus Baltimore, MD. "The Deadverse Massive 12" picture disc brings together three intense forces in music-- avant hip-hop unit, Dälek, ambient guitarist, Destructo Swarmbots and hip-hop madman, Oddateee. Spontaneity, open-mindedness to the recording process and a collective cohesiveness sprung forth an album that none of them would have every created alone and none of them would have imagined before the moment of creation. Easily, the strangest record any of these artists have ever touched. Artwork from the amazing Paul Romano rounds out the release." [label info] "When hip-hop gets weird, it gets "Deadverse Massive". Mescaline dreams from the deep unconscious rise through psych-ambient guitar drones to meet street socially-conscious poetry and spoken-word in a no less than stellar collision... 8/10 "[Foxy Digitalis] "A stunning mashup of heavy beatscapes, surrealist avant hip hop, and spacey drones from beyond the wall of sleep... a surreal and drifting collage of beats and psychedelic drones, powerful rhymes and voice transmissions, as informed by classic krautrock and cassette experiments as it is by actual hip hop." [Crucial Blast] www.publicguilt.com | 2007 | €15.00 |
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| DEAF CENTER | Low Distance | LP | "Low Distance is Deaf Center´s third full-length studio album and perhaps the most focused effort by the Norwegian duo to date. After their last record Owl Splinters (2011) was quite an eclectic endeavor, Erik K Skodvin & Otto A Totland draw their sound back into something more quiet and minimal. The record starts with a piece of sweeping analougue electronics. It´s a spacious, yet dynamic opener that leads directly into the static tones and piano motivs of Entity Voice, which balances a new sense of abstractation with the classic Deaf Center sound. It´s warm and close while sounding like it´s set in the outer horizon. Overall Low Distance feels both alien and familiar with its atonal synths, close pianos and drowned out noises. After meeting in studio for the first time since 2011, the recordings came out of a 3 day session in 2017. It was then mixed at both EMS Stockholm and at Erik´s home studio over a longer period to create a blend of deeply layered as well as stripped down pieces. Both Erik & Otto have been active individually since their last meeting as Deaf Center: Otto released 2 solo piano albums, while Erik has furthered his descent into musical abstractation both under his own name and as Svarte Greiner. It´s long overdue to hear them connect their personalities into something new. Low Distance is a welcome return replete with beauty, mystery and uncertainty." "So I managed to fall into that pattern again, whereby a long-anticipated album by a beloved project sits awaiting just the right time. I need a "perfect" mood and setting to experience Deaf Center, and I must not be interrupted in any possible way. And so I put it to the side. Meanwhile, I procrastinate with promos and suggestions and releases which are all sub par. Then I finally reach out, and I listen for the very first time. Then the second and the third. And time goes by. A month or two. I play it sixth and seventh time, and no, not yet, I'm not prepared to say the right things... I must find certain words to share my thoughts. And time goes by... That is the pattern. Until I recognize it for its block and rip the bandaid off and share. The time has come. Of this I'm certain. Since their 2014 release, Recount, put out by Monique Recknagel's Sonic Pieces imprint, the duo of Erik Skodvin and Otto Totland have massively raised the bar on their third full-length studio album, Low Distance. I've generally used the word "texture" in the past, to describe the intricate granular details that give a particular recording more depth, complexity and substance, and yet, on Low Distance Deaf Center takes it to a whole new level. Seemingly accidental noises, clips, and circuit howls become the foundation for the platform of this moody record, where Totland's piano finds the courage to reveal its beauty to the world. The heavy fibered bow scrapes at the cello strings to make the instrument convulse and shudder. The sonic gravity of the atmospheric treatments paired with the poignancy of the melodic heartache propels Low Distance into the ranks of albums of the decade, where every coveted position is meticulously picked. A total masterpiece for anyone inspired by the fine details stitched in a microcosm of harmonies and timbres. One which I will treasure for the many years to come, and with these words I hope you'll too. Highly recommended for anyone delighted by reductionist pianism, isolationist ambience, coarse minimalism and granular spaciousness. Yes, I've authored some of those stylistic genres just for you. But seriously, if you're into anything from the amazing Miasmah (which Skodvin runs), dark and organic drone mixed with evolving soundscapes by the likes of Rafael Anton Irisarri, Ben Lukas Boysen, Brambles, Richard Skelton, and Lawrence English, among the many appearing on this site, you'll be in for a treat. Highly recommended!" [Headphone Commute] | 2019 | €35.00 |
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| DEISON | Night Sessions | CD | "A collection of fascinating and obscure "nocturnal sessions” alternated with more "classic" electronic parts based on sequencers and synthesizers, more abstract and minimal sonic sketches, involving and tense deep drones musical mixtures, distorted and dilated electric guitars, deformed human voices, more static and fluctuating typical ambient movements, cold inserts of pulsating and "techno oriented" sounds, suggestive atmospheres built on bizarre loops, flat organ backgrounds and low guitar notes, and then again arpeggios, piano clusters, field recordings, more typical "glitch" inserts and hisses... A wide range of original and catching solutions created with the help of many guests, the album includes contributions by Teho Teardo, Philippe Petit, Under the Snow, Jim Coleman, Franck Vigroux, Testing Vault and Annen Berg." [label info] www.silentes.net | 2011 | €12.00 |
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| DEISON / MATTEO UGGERI | In the other House | CD-R | "It was not born as a concept album, but as it was slowly becoming like the music inside it the sound work of Cristiano Deison and Matthew Uggeri ended up finding itself, step by step, enclosed between the narrow walls of an exceptional home. Arriving there from different places and positions, and never actually meeting, Friulian and Milan found themselves, perhaps in spite of themselves, together in uncomfortable rooms which were populated by dark invisible presences. It is not the scenario of a horror movie, there is no tradegy or fear, just the knowledge that somewhere else or the escape itself may be less reassuring than one has hoped. Therefore Francesca Mele's photos, both a seal of the work and source of inspiration for the music seem to further cloak the place in t that sense of quiet desperation that daily life often implies." https://matteouggeri.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-other-house Zwei jüngere italienische Soundbastler treffen sich hier. Beide haben schon vielfach ein Händchen für atmosphärische Landschaften bewiesen; DEISON (komplett: CRISTIANO DEISON) unter anderem hier auf NONPOP mit "Quiet Rooms", einem Album über die Stimmung in leeren Hotelzimmern. Auch UGGERI (komplett: MATTEO UGGERI) hat sein sicheres Gespür für beeindruckende Klangwolken schon aufgezeigt, unter anderem in Zusammenarbeiten mit DE FABRIEK oder MAURIZIO BIANCHI. Beiden Künstlern gemein ist die wohltuende Zurückhaltung bei Veröffentlichungen, man hat nie den Eindruck, dass sie den ohnehin übersättigten Markt der entsprechenden Genres fluten würden. Ihr erstes gemeinsames Album erscheint nun auf FINAL MUZIK (in Kooperation mit OLD BICYCLE RECORDS und OAK EDITIONS), wobei sich die Musiker kein einziges Mal persönlich gesehen haben – Arbeiten im digitalen Zeitalter. Der Titel des Albums sowie die Namen der einzelnen Tracks geben natürlich eine ganz klare Idee vor, aber – und dies ist das erste Kompliment für ein gelungenes Album – es geht auch ohne. "Fessure" (01) fühlt sich an wie das Hinabsteigen in eine pilzige, fluoreszierende Höhle. Warme, aber gleichzeitig aufschreckende und unruhige Sounds umwabern den Hörer, es ploppt und droned. Sehr atmosphärisch und, außer zu einer Höhle, auch passend zu der wohl toten Frau auf Vorder- und Rückseite des Covers, die ich eben entdeckt habe – Film noir-Feeling. Ein bassiger und unregelmäßiger Beat kommt langsam dazu, ebenso ein schräger Streicher. Und immer kurz vor einer Melodie nimmt die Komposition die nächste Abzweigung. Das äußerst filmische Ambiente bleibt in "So Detached" (02) bestehen. Türen quietschen, Schritte rascheln – hier wird eine Story erzählt, ein ganzer Storyteppich voll von organischen Klängen ausgerollt. Ich höre aufmerksam und angespannt zu, weil jederzeit etwas passieren könnte. Zunehmend freunde ich mich mit der titelgebenden Idee eines fremden Hauses an, durch das wir als Hörer schleichen. Das "Micro Drama" (03) spielt sich in der Küche ab, melodiös liegen gezupfte Piano-Teilchen auf dem Tisch, ein dickes Brummen und Summen zeugt von Insektenleben, und die Streicher quietschen immer wieder dramatisch. Passend zum Besuch im Bad ("Stasis", 04) plätschert Wasser, die Sounds wechseln in noisiges Quietschen und Rauschen, und insbesondere die Cluster aus Blasinstrumenten beeindrucken mich. Menschen räumen Möbel in "Worried Stagnation" (05), verursachen dabei lange, ewige Drones. Und mein Lieblingssound des gesamten Albums erklingt auf der Treppe und im Keller ("Prelude, Largo", 06) – ein Tuba-ähnliches Brummen, welches die sich abwechselnden Passagen zum einen aus ruhigen Ambientflächen, zum anderen aus mächtigen, majestätischen Drones inklusive Piepen und Klingeln umrahmt, wobei sich alle Ebenen mehr und mehr übereinander schieben. "In The Other House" ist ein wirklich beeindruckender Hörfilm, der mich an andere starke filmische Werke wie zum Beispiel die LAND-Trilogie ("Praha | Wien | Budapest", NONPOP-Besprechung) erinnert. Schleichen durch ein fremdes Haus, Erkunden einer dunklen Höhle, Hauptrolle in einem Film noir – das Album ist fast unabhängig vom möglichen Thema eine fesselnde Reise, und zwar von der ersten bis zur letzten Sekunde. Eine der bisher schönsten, weil stimmungsvollsten Basteleien des Jahres. Michael We. für nonpop.de | 2015 | €10.00 |
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| DELPLANQUE, MATHIAS | La Plinthe | CD | Empfehlenswerte CD dieses Komponisten aus Nantes, LA PLINTHE bewegt sich zwischen digitaler microwave-ambience und spannender Electronica. Bedächtig, elegant, intelligent gemacht.. “La Plinthe” opens with crackling and sizzling noises, then settles into a rhythm of subdued explosions, which leave prismic debris in their wake before fading into the void. Instead of introducing a philosophical analysis of the relation between sound and silence, the first track serves as a sort of meditation, guiding the listener into the core of the album and shutting out uninvited outside noises. Even the glistening drone of the second part is merely a messenger, before a delayed bass and rustily breathing ambiances create the illusion of safety in an entirely alien territory. It is here, in the middle section of the work, that Delplanque truly unpacks his talent. Comforting hiss, consoling crackles and flirring chordal fenlights are held together by the power of deep, resonating bass vibrations, as tracks settle into the groove of strangely consoling wordless Dream Dub. By locking the body in subtle movement, he is able to caress the sweetly drugged mind with brushstrokes of abstract noises. Even though the record descends into a dark cave towards the end, the grand, eight minute finale picks the listener up again, shining a path through the darkness with a majestic piece made of nothing but a stoically hit piano key over an undulating continuum of swelling hums, a warm impulse drone and the suggestion of rhythm by means of evolving patterns made from grating and gravelling timbres. [label info] "It has taken some time, but a new generation of experimental musicians, respecting these demands intentionally or by instinct, is making itself heard. Delplanque is one of a few select players who stand a serious chance of reaching beyond the outer edges of a small niche. While his contribution to international trio project The Missing Ensemble may be more pronounced, almost aggressive even in its translation of inorganic sources into emotive compositions, his solo work is fueled by a personal approach capable of touching the listener in the sentive area of his heart. If “Le Pavillon Témoin” (from previous year) sounded as though he were trying to achieve this by means of allowing acoustic instruments and hints of melody and harmony into his oeuvre, “La Plinthe” does away with these luxuries and sheds whatever notion of the old world there might have been. The real aim of this radicality is neither benevolent shock nor progress for progress’ sake, but rather attaining a sense of coherency and of interrelatedness between the album’s building blocks. In an orchestra, there is no intrinsic connection whatsoever between a piano and violin. In Delplanque’s symphonies, however, their faintly shimmering echoes are like brother and sister. “La Plinthe” opens with crackling and sizzling noises, then settles into a rhythm of subdued explosions, which leave prismic debris in their wake before fading into the void. Instead of introducing a philosophical analysis of the relation between sound and silence, the first track serves as a sort of meditation, guiding the listener into the core of the album and shutting out uninvited outside noises. Even the glistening drone of the second part is merely a messenger, before a delayed bass and rustily breathing ambiances create the illusion of safety in an entirely alien territory. It is here, in the middle section of the work, that Delplanque truly unpacks his talent. Comforting hiss, consoling crackles and flirring chordal fenlights are held together by the power of deep, resonating bass vibrations, as tracks settle into the groove of strangely consoling wordless Dream Dub. By locking the body in subtle movement, he is able to caress the sweetly drugged mind with brushstrokes of abstract noises. Even though the record descends into a dark cave towards the end, the grand, eight minute finale picks the listener up again, shining a path through the darkness with a majestic piece made of nothing but a stoically hit piano key over an undulating continuum of swelling hums, a warm impulse drone and the suggestion of rhythm by means of evolving patterns made from grating and gravelling timbres. You need to like these sounds, these delicate crackles and the fireplace-metaphorics they evoke in order to enjoy the album as a whole. It is no longer possible denying their aesthetics by hiding behind a smart concept, simply because there is none. On the other hand, that is exactly why “La Plinthe” works in such a magnetic and rich way: Even though it offers a depth of structures Pop and Rock could never muster, it forces the listener to either hate or love it. Whatever your pick: Kissing your lover to a piece of sound art, no longer seems like a ridiculous thought.." [Tobias Fischer, Tokafi] | 2008 | €15.00 |
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| DEMEULENAERE, STIJN | Latitudes - September 2016 | CD | Stijn Demeulenaere is a sound artist and field recordist from Belgium. ‘Latitudes - September 2016’ is the recording of a live set played in his Latitudes series at Q-O2 in Brussels. Latitudes is a project where he brings sounds from North and South together. On the album, the bulk of the sounds come from South-Africa and Iceland. Further recordings were made in Ostend, De Biesbosch, Amsterdam and ‘t Kuipke (Ghent). The album combines a mixture of natural sound recordings and heavily processed sounds. The album is a cd in a custom A5 sleeve and comes out in a limited edition of 149 copies. Latitudes is a project where Stijn collects and records sounds from all over the world. He brings these sounds together and explores the relation between climate, geology and how a place sounds. He looks for ways to have the sounds interact with each other and researches the ways nature sounds generate expectations and how one can play with these expectations. Stijn uses the material to develop installations and live sets where he explores the sonic material, creating new sonic structures juxtaposing the sounds, or melting them together. Latitudes is a project in continuing development: the sounds from Iceland and South Africa are being mixed with sounds from other spaces, nature sounds with industrial ones. If there is enough time and space, Stijn also makes recordings in the cities and places where he performs, and works this material into his live sets. Amongst others, he made recordings in the northern tundra climate of Iceland and the subtropical climate of South Africa. The recordings in Iceland were made during a Wildeye residency guided by Chris Watson and Jez Riley French in 2015. The sounds from South Africa were recorded during the 2013 Sonic Mmabolela residency under curatorship of Francisco López. Apart from traditional equipment, he also uses a myriad of unconventional microphones and transducers in his search for sound. "You may not know this name, unless perhaps you visit Belgium quite a bit, as that’s where Stijn Demeuelenaere’s activities as a sound artist mostly take place. Not really to release his music on CD but as part of sound installations, video work and dance pieces. ‘Latitudes - September 2016’ is his first release, and it is a registration of a concert at Brussels’ Q-O2, and it uses only field recordings, from his trips to South Africa, Iceland and The Netherlands (that man has time and money to burn, I was thinking!), in this piece, just under twenty-four minutes. That is a bit short, I thought. If I understand well there is not really a narrative Demeulenaere is telling his listeners, but more or less puts together sounds from all over the world, choosing and selecting together what he thinks fits best together. There is, so it seems to me, a love for sounds that involve water. In the opening sequence this sounds like the sound of rowing, along with birds, insects and from there on he expands further into wildlife. It is hard, or perhaps for me impossible, to tell what it is that he’s doing with these sounds, if anything at all that is. This might be a work of pure, untreated sound events stuck together for all I know, but just at the same time it might also be that Demeulenaere creates loops out of his sounds, or uses quite a bit of sound processing. Only towards the end there is definitely loops and processing going as Demeulenaere creates some odd rhythms out of his material, and whatever was the sound originally we no longer know. For much of the rest of this piece we don’t know if that is the case as well. Now, of course, after hearing the whole thing a couple of times, I would think it is the case; everything is some way or another a bit processed and enhanced. Overall I enjoyed this piece quite a bit, but found it perhaps a bit too short. Why not add another recording, from another concert but within the same context and double the pleasure for the listener? Now it’s a fine but short debut, hopefully with the promise of more to come." [FdW/Vital Weekly] https://silkentofu.bandcamp.com/album/latitudes-september-2016 | 2017 | €13.00 |
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| DENIER DU CULTE | Messe Around | do-CD | We are proud to present this compilation release from one of the most unique the industrial avant-garde of rock music acts from France in the 80s. Limited edition of 300 hand-numbered copies double CD in metal boxes. "I must admit I know the name Denier Du Culte ever since much of the stuff was recorded that is now on their double CD, which is from 1981 to 1986, and I have been in contact with some of the members, but I never could figure out what kind of band they were. Now I know a bit more. Denier Du Culte was a trio of Lieutenant Caramel on drums, percussion, bass and vocals, Alain Basso on bass and violin and Sylvie Loquet on voice, bass, percussion and lyrics. Caramel and to a lesser extent Basso went to work with electronics in a more musique concrete-like vein, but as Denier Du Culte they worked as an improvisation trio and as such they were part the worldwide cassette movement, releasing a few works on cassette themselves and contributing to many compilations around the world. On the first CD we find a selection of their cassettes and on the second CD fifteen contributions. It's not a complete picture of everything this band has ever recorded, but it gives a nice over view. I must admit I didn't recognize anything from the ol' days - perhaps my mistake. We hear them move from the very rudimentary earliest pieces of shameful self-indulgence to more complex pieces in their later years. It's these pieces that showed the great strength this band had, when, armed with reel-to-reel machines or perhaps synthesizers to further alienate their rock approach. Some of these earliest moments sound perhaps a bit tedious, and devoid of any context one might scratch their head with this amount of rumble and chaos, but in the light of the time, the early 80s of freely re-organising rock music, post-punk, industrial music and such like. What I perhaps didn't realize back then, or not as much as I do now, Denier Du Culte was a great, unique band, which sounded very different from all the other noise boys. This is a most welcome re-issue of a band that is surely over-looked in a long time. Both of these releases are very limited so act quickly!" [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2015 | €15.00 |
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| DENT, LOREN | Anthropology Vol. 1 | CD | "It's as if Dent had returned, irrevocably altered, from an ambitious and expansive field trip through nothing less than the history of digital and analogue ambience to splice his findings with the DNA of late-modernist classical. Loren Dent's intent is no radical re-think of genre; his bent is more recontextual, a fine tension between the vectors of New Music, minimalism, ambient, post-rock and space music. It's a trajectory traversing considerable terrain. Opener, 'Introduction - Dreams and Concrete,' for example, moves from Feldman to Niblock, before picking up on Pärt, in the transition to 'This Thing We Enjoy,' where the borders of melancholia are skirted, and a quiet glow is flirted with, before abandoning itself to a swooping digi-orchestralism and fibrillating fizz closer to the Kranky oeuvre of Tim Hecker and Christopher Bissonnette on 'Another Rural Fantasy' and 'Winter During Wartime.' The parade of references is by way of a rough guide, but the music of Anthropology is more maximalist in its articulation, more sweeping in its scale than all the aforementioned, with great gushes of tonalism surging through the soundfield. And those influences are dissolved, becoming trace elements in a blend of welling and swollen symphonics wrestling with pop ambient pointillism, all couched by Dent in his own tones." [A. Lockett] "BEHOLD! An offering from the ambient gods of Infraction. Dust off thine finest goblet, pour from your favorite bottle, remove thy clothes and be pure. Get back to nature and absorb the wonder of pure ambient beauty and message from the heavens that is Loren Dent's 'Anthropology Vol.1'. From the moment I hit play and shiver at the beauty of the intro I realize I'm destined to experience a journey into myself and the wonder of life. The tones here are profoundly uplifting (although there are some darker moments of uncertainty) and moving in a way I am simply unable to articulate. Sadly I'm no "Ambient Shakespeare" but I will say that this is like a soundtrack to life itself, one of joy, love, fear, pain, loss, grieving, euphoria and one which transcends time. Emotions that are integral to the human spirit, despite the age/time in which it exists, be it a modern or an ancient world. This stuff is deep, DEEP material. At one point I was almost reduced to tears, as I felt like I was the only living thing on the planet and felt very lonely... Man the power of music, the sound of those strings. Loren Dent is an extremely gifted artist to the point where it almost feels like there has been a divine hand in the creation of his sound world. His wondrous layers of sound are rich and constantly evolving, always emotional and hypnotic. His tools are both analogue and digital and his use of both is a joy to behold. For any ambient music lover that may have been disillusioned lately and possibly feels that the genre has been reduced to mere simple drones, then I'm fairly sure this will restore their faith in the genre. This deserves a prestigious place in the hearts and minds of all music lovers. To reference particular tracks, for me would be a pointless exercise as this really serves as a complete work..." [Norman Records] | 2009 | €13.50 |
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| DESACCORD MAJEUR | La Lumiere des Jours | CD | this is a taâlem release - alm 144 - september 2023 composed and mixed by Jérôme Mauduit - december 2022 text on track 4 by Michel Foucault mastered by Flavien Gillié photography and design by Désaccord Majeur Presented in a recycled cardboard gatefold sleeve with a photo sticker on the front and an insert inside. Limited to 250 numbered copies. https://taalem.bandcamp.com/album/la-lumi-re-des-jours-alm-144 "The Taalem label took a rest after their long line of 3"CDRs but now returns with a factory-pressed CD by the long-running musical project Désaccord Majeur. Jerome Maudit, the man behind Désaccord Majeur has been going for many years, with a debut release in 1989. Yet, there have been only ten releases, this one included. From 2003 to 2020, it was total silence. I know I heard many, if not all, of these releases, and yet, I don't have a clear picture of what Désaccord Majeur is all about. After hearing the five pieces on 'La Lumière Des Jours', I still don't know. The music is all electronic, mostly ambient and usually all in a slightly more sequenced way. Not because there is a lot of rhythm, but through sampling and sequencing, many small and bigger elements repeat. Somewhere in the back of my mind, it says that in the past, Désaccord Majeur's music was heavily influenced by Muslimgauze and Rapoon, and maybe it was and still is, but there is something unique about the music of Désaccord Majeur. Less 'ethnic' (if that is a word we can still use), maybe a bit more 'dance-like', and with sufficient additional sounds, such as the distortion in 'Les Nombres Transfinis'. The music is quite moody and atmospheric, darkish, but it's not for dark for the sake of darkness. We find the shortest piece at seven minutes and almost fourteen the longest. Désaccord Majeur takes his time to let his music develop; it is time well-spend. Nowhere I had the idea that it was too slow (or rushed!), just the right amount needed to let it all develop naturally. Beautiful stuff that made me realize I should, when I have some more time, also return to some of the previous releases." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2023 | €12.00 |
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| DESIDERII MARGINIS | Thaw | CD | "Of the Swedish wave of ambient acts from the 1990s, Desiderii Marginis is one of the few still active and definitely one of the finest of those few. Over the course of 20 years, Levin released 7 full-length albums, a 3-way split and a collection of rare pre-debut demos plus numerous tracks on various compilations. His latest offering entitled "Thaw" compiles the latter and adds 3 tracks from the split "Lost Signals from Unknown Horizons". On the one hand, it is simply a collection of rare tracks, but, on the other, it may serve a purpose of a "best of" album. With the chronology unaltered, it gives you the full picture of the project and its progress. It is a history lesson of the last 20 years in sonic melancholia of Desiderii Marginis. This edition is released in a 3-panel digipak strictly limited to 1000 copies." [label info] www.zoharum.com | 2014 | €13.00 |
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| DIETER MÜH (DIETER MUH) | The Bjorn Tapes | LP | "This is a entire reissue of a limited to 50 copies C45 audio cassette originally released by Xerxes (Japan) as ES-27 in April 1999, later re-released as a limited CDr by Blade Records (Italy) in 2004. All material recorded live on 30 January 1999 in Nottinghem, U.K., edited and produced by Dave Uden during February 1999, re-mastered in September 1999. using electronics, semples, tapes, bass-guitar, vocals, the English duo created here three long tracks of hypnotick electronic music / ambient noise in the "old-school" experimental genre. White vinyl housed in a three-panel folded silkscreened cover released in a limited edition of 320 handnumbered copies. Released in November 2018." "I'd like to think the world has finally woken up to Dieter Müh, the long-running industrial ambient project once consisting of Dave Uden and Steve Cammack, which since 2009 has been the solo project of the latter. EE Tapes recently resurrected Mutus Liber, a 1995 giveaway tape compiled for interested listeners and reissued it on CD. The Bjorn Tapes was another short-run cassette released by Dieter Müh first released on tape in 1999. It was a year that would see Dieter Müh share bills with The Grey Wolves, Con Dom, AntiChildLeague and Colin Potter. Colin Potter had a hand in their debut album Black Square, recording and producing it at his studio in Yorkshire. Dieter Müh at this point were Steve Cammack and Dave Uden, both inspired by the possibilities brought forth by the punk/DIY spirit of the seventies. It is industrial music that seeps into their sound, and you can hear it in the drone and noise ridden layers of electronics, manipulations, tapes and field recordings found within The Bjorn Tapes, which was recorded live and later edited in the studio. The entire Dieter Müh discography is littered with some wonderful short run releases on labels such as Tesco, Hanson Records, Harbinger Sounds. The Bjorn Tapes first surfaced on the Japanese label Xerxes run by Yoshida Yasutoshi of Government Alpha. The Bjorn Tapes was recorded live in Nottingham in January 1999 and edited and produced a few months later. I don't see a show listed in the Dieter Müh gigography so I'm guessing this was a live in the studio affair. It was soon after this recording I first caught Dieter Müh live, where the duo would be huddled over banks of synths, twisting wires and twiddling knobs. I've really no idea how they produced the sounds they did but whatever they did it resonated with depth, feeling and power. The Bjorn Tapes captures the essence of a live Dieter Müh performance. Silence, space and a keen sense of sound gestation play a role on 'Herma'. Distant throbs and samples ebb into windswept drone terrain mixed with shuffling textures before it seeps into harsher drone based layers. It is a fine example of their ambient sound vibrations where nothing is rushed or overbearing and you really need to listen closely to pick up on the dynamics. Even though their sound is based in drone based experimental electronics, Dieter Müh are often regarded as an industrial ambient group. If that's the case then 'Herma' focusses on the ambient side of their industrial ambient sound, while the other two tracks emphasise the industrial side of that description. 'Low Feed' mixes industrial churn mixed with tape manipulations where voices become almost alien. An electronic throb pulses underneath, like blood through coursing through the body. Electronics shimmer, whirr and echo, broken by sudden glints of crashing noise. This is the Dieter Müh I remember from the live shows I witnessed where they slipped seamlessly from subtle drones into denser, harsher sound layers writhing with distended, disembodied voices, sampled percussive clatter and chasms of noise. Unsettling, unnerving and oppressive 'Low Feed' is a great track. The 23 minute side long piece 'Aghor' unfurls in various movements. The opening ambient sonics are laced with taped voices and intermittent bass thuds. It cut to crunchy, textured manipulations, followed by a passage of processed tapes of mutterings, utterings and whisperings shadowed by electronic oscillations, spliced with clicks and micro tone shudders. At this point there's a sense of ritual to be found within the soundscapes and primordial intonations before bass rumbles enter and underpin a dizzying morass of sound, where manipulated and disembodied voices are enveloped in waves of fluctuating distortion and noise and the flickering haze of frequencies. It is an impressive build up of sound, texture and intensity proving Dieter Müh's dexterity and firm grasp of composition. As it unwinds the loose bass tones and taped voices almost take the form of a live Throbbing Gristle performance, surging with brief bursts of vocals, rendered in a power electronics style sinking into silence and then edging out in queasy electronic oscillations. Originally issued on cassette by the Japanese label Xerxes run by Yoshida Yasutoshi of Government Alpha and subsequently reissued on CD-R by the Italian label Blade Records The Bjorn Tapes is now released on white vinyl housed in a three-panel folded silkscreened cover released in a limited edition of 320 handnumbered copies on the Nuit et Brouillard side label Force Majeure. It's a handsome edition and well worthy of your time, especially if you've missed this group whose roots in early industrial inspired some fine releases, such as Cari Saluti and Tertium Organum, which collaged the sounds of industrial, experimental, ambient, ritual and noise to great effect. For more information go to Force Majeure" [Compulsion Online] | 2018 | €18.00 |
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| DIMUZIO, THOMAS |
Amid Zero Echo
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do-10inch | "Thomas Dimuzio's Amid Zero Echo marks the new release from this US underground legend from San Francisco, whose massive hypnotic soundscapes already released in the 90's were much ahead of the time! Four new transcendental drone masterworks abstracted from electric guitar bristle with life through the dense, rich and detailed sonic expanse of Dimuzio's glorious sound world. Vibrating wires of the electric guitar inform a digital musique concrete modus operandi replete with unheard studio techniques which form a music with a strong organic core. These four drones open wide rooms for phantastic aural imaginations: like flying over endless grounds of unknown origin, sensing a heavy suction of extreme gravity, moving towards a black hole center... or driving into a totally dark mining tunnel with all the metallic ore and dust around.... These are drones that LIVE from the inside! Striking gatefold artwork by Mars Wellink showcases two clear vinyl LPs in an equally compelling and beautifully designed package. Thomas Dimuzio is a musician, composer, sound designer, mastering engineer, label proprietor, and music technologist residing in San Francisco, California. Inspired as much by John Cage as Led Zeppelin, Dimuzio's music forms a sonic excursion that transports the listener into other worldly aural realms. “His work has a narrative, filmic tug that will draw you into its dark corners, ears alert… brilliant and rarely less than entertaining.” [Peter Marsh, BBC] Long regarded as a musical pioneer for his innovative use of live sampling and looping techniques, Dimuzio has earned a deserved reputation worldwide as an avant-garde sound artist in touch with the aesthetic pulse of time and technology. A true sonic alchemist who can seemingly create music events out of almost anything, Dimuzio's listed sound sources on his various releases include everything from 'modified 10 speed bicycle' and 'resonating water pipe' to short-wave radios, loops, feedback, samplers, synthesizers and even normal instruments such as guitar, clarinet and trumpet. Dimuzio's eclecticism bespeaks a career equally informed by a profound dedication to his craft and collaborations with friends, artists and technologists alike. Dimuzio's recordings have been released internationally by ReR Megacorp, Asphodel, RRRecords, No Fun Productions, Sonoris, Drone Records, Record Label Records, Odd Size, Seeland, and other independent labels. Among his collaborators are Chris Cutler, Dan Burke, Joseph Hammer, Anla Courtis, Nick Didkovsky, Due Process, Voice of Eye, Fred Frith, David Lee Myers, 5uu's, Matmos, Wobbly and Negativland." [label info] www.substantia-innominata.de "Attending a Thomas Dimuzio performance is like lying underneath a web of freeway bridges with your eyes closed; blocking out all visuals except the brief daggers of light that flicker with each passing car. There is a sense of probable dread—metal, wooden or cigarette debris from the vehicles could fly off and injure you—but also one of hypnotized calm, thanks to the amplified hum of Michelin and Goodyear against greased concrete." [Cameron MacDonald, Pitchfork Media] "While I was listening to this double 10" record, I was thinking that Thomas Dimuzio has a very distinct sound, although I would not go as far as to say that I could pick him blind in a contest. The four pieces on this record are what we know from Dimuzio and what we love; at least that's what I do. It's never easy to know what Dimuzio is doing, and perhaps I have some romantic notion about it: take a teeny tiny fragment of sound and capture that is an endless range of sound effects, samplers, oscillators and filters and what else he got down in his studio. The cover says 'guitar and processing', so there you go: what do I know. Like so many others he knows how to manipulate the guitar beyond - light-years beyond actually - the sound of the guitar and it sounds like this dark, slow moving landmass; Drone Records, who are behind this series, calls him a sonic alchemist, and that term is perhaps over-used, but maybe not in this case, I think. Dimuzio creates the kind of drones that many dream of and few can actually do: that of a constant swirl up, down and side ways spin, always moving and changing, never in state of standstill. It's music that could as easily work for as a soundtrack for a film, but is best enjoyed on it's own, in a barely lit room at night and at a louder volume: only then, I would think, the true beauty will be fully uncovered. Music as a total immersion event. The only downside is you have to get and change the record a few times; on the bright side, you have four pieces and the choice to release this as a double 10" is a great one. One day on CD, perhaps, please?" [FdW/Vital Weekly] www.substantia-innominata.de | 2014 | €20.00 |
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| DIRAC | Emphasis | CD | "Our way to create a record is based on the simple principle of direct-recording – which means the shape and form of our music is basically created within one moment. It is not only about meeting in a studio to do the recordings, but to stay together at one place with a focus on creating music and concentrated listening each day. The isolation from other musical inputs and the reduced input in general, being far off from bigger cities, far off an everyday-live takes you to the point when you don’t want to sound like something you know, you just want to search, experiment and play. John Cage said, that experimental music is where the outcome can’t be foreseen. These things happen through passion and not ambition. For ‘emphasis’, we again went to Salzburg, where we could set up our gear in the basement of Florian’s parents house for one week – the same place we recorded our first album ‘dirac’. We recorded about 4 hours everyday , experimenting with different materials and instruments. We later listened to the results at the studio garnison7 in Vienna and did more editing work in a small hut up in the snowy austrian mountains in February 2008 – it was cold, electricity was short, but it was silent. The record contains many details that have personal aural connections to us. The bell which reappears on emphasis is an old-cuckoo-clock from the hut. The crows that fly away are a field-recording from vienna´s augarten park – we went in there during the night and triggered the birds with a short lightimpuls from a flash light. The kids playing were recorded in a village in northern India were Daniel and Peter spent some time doing field-recordings. The trumpet appearing in Bantu was recorded by Peter on a frozen mountain lake in Austria – thereby the natural reverb of the valley is transferred onto the record. The cover-picture shows the roof of an old abandoned farming-house, close to the mountain hut where we worked on the record." [Peter Kutin, DIRAC] www.spekk.net | 2009 | €15.50 |
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| DISCORDLESS | Fear on Every Side | MC | In the three years since Marius Costache’s previous full-length album for Amek as Discordless, his usual menacing and anxiety-fuelled music has reached even further into the sonic extremes. We can blame it on the world we live in, on the year that just passed or on Costache’ very own distortion-worshipping approach to electronic music and his decades-worth of experience as a sound and recording engineer. Whichever you pick, ‘Fear On Every Side’ will remain a brutal take on contemporary noise music. It is demanding, disorienting and primal work but still captivating and sincere. Every element found on the record contributes to a narrative that feels simultaneously vast and intimate. ‘Fear On Every Side’ can be perceived both from a first person perspective and as an overview of our decaying reality. The record doesn’t want you to overcome the sense of hopelessness, paranoia and tension it unfolds in front of you, but rather to plunge you deeper in this place of no way out. https://amekcollective.bandcamp.com/album/fear-on-every-side | 2021 | €8.00 |
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| DRAFTED BY MINOTAURS | Aversion Therapy | do-LP | "Drafted by Minotaurs mainstays are guitarist Ryan Wilson and Ian Fulcher, who contributes trumpet and glockenspiel. Meanwhile members of a floating cast chip in with added textures from cello and violin. Opener "Blueprints for Sunbuilding" spools out a hail of plucked and bowed strings, webs of sound solidifying then melting into steely flow, stall set out somewhere around cultivated Constellation post-rockeries, a mood and sound that may feel familiar to those acquainted with the new backwoods chamberisms and neo-folk drone of UK cottage industrialites such as Richard Skelton (aka A Broken Consort/Clouwbeck) and Seasons (Pre-din). "Sault Locks" proposes cyclical patterns of stringed things that seem to hover shyly apart, before swarming to swell and billow over the listener - not so much a Storm of Drones as a squall of tones. "Skin the Night and Fog," a more veiled sister of the previous pluckings and bowings, plays out a psych-infused dream sequence. These three tracks forming Side A work with their own distinct harmonic and textural patterns, while seeming like movements of something overarching. Miasmic minor chord tidal flow abounds, the music's motion determined by languorous bow-strokes, its textures by warm-prickly needles of guitar pizzicatos. Side B's single extended track, "Sunday's Morning Ghost," is wrought from similar materials, but aspires to more transcendant levels, led by the celestial harmonics of Fulcher's treated trumpet. It takes on atavistic echoes redolent of some distant Miles Davis or Jon Hassell blowback, as if viewing In a Silent Way through a post-Kosmische kaleidoscope, or channeled through Eno/Budd cathedrals to meet today's psych-drone and ambient trajectories. Overall, Aversion Therapy thrives on such productive tensions between genres and eras, as it does between live and recorded, spontaneous and pre-structured, making for engaging, at times thrillingly psychotropic, listening." - alan lockett " [label info] www.infractionrecords.com "A duo is Drafted By Minotaurs, being guitarist Ryan Wilson and trumpet and glockenspiel (an unlikely combination me thinks) Ian Fulcher, whose 'Aversion Therapy' is their first LP. A great package with a gate fold sleeve - no costs are spared here. Their ambient is much more open and gentle then say Dent, and miles and miles away from the music of Malignant Records. The guitar is clearly to be recognized, even with some folk strumming in 'Sault Locks'. Whatever glockenspiel and trumpet are doing is however a bit unclear. My best guess would be is that are looped through a variety of sound devices and which form the ambient backdrop in which the guitar seems to move so freely. Side A has three tracks, under which the aforementioned 'Sault Locks', which is quite short, which are nice, but the best piece is the side long b-side 'Sunday's Morning Ghost', in which the trumpet plays a more dominant role (or at least can be recognized more), in long sustaining tones, meandering together, merging gently with the guitar sounds, which now are close to the trumpet. The glockenspiel? It plays its own spiel somewhere, like shimmering metallic sounds pushed towards the end of the spectrum, but they haven't disappeared altogether. Great cinematic beauty. Top class ambient album." [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2009 | €26.00 |
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| DRAHOMIRA SONG ORCHESTRA | La Chambre de Stryrene | CD | "This album is the first release of the DRAHOMIRA SONG ORCHESTRA, the musical subsidiary of the multimedia art factory 'INSTITUT DRAHOMIRA'. Eight obscure ambient tracks: bizarre string loops and mysterious unidentified speaking voices create a worrying atmosphere of claustrophobia. So far, their works (about 50 albums) were only produced on CD-R or tapes and distributed randomly by mail, to people picked in the phonebook. Since the late 80's some live performances were also organised in secret places and transmitted by phone to the audience. Weird!" [label info] | 2002 | €10.00 |
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| DROUIN / OLSEN | Snow:Field | CD-R | Schnee-Musik ! Alle Quellen-Klänge auf dieser CD-R wurden irgendwie mit Schnee erzeugt, und dann zu sieben langen Stücken verarbeitet. Sanftes Wummern, typisches Schnee-Knirschen, geheimnisvolles Wispern, eine detailreiche akustische Mikrowelt tut sich einem hier auf! Ein Projekt von JAMIE DROUIN und LANCE OLSEN des Künstlerkollektivs INFREQUENCY. Seven long pieces based on original sounds created with snow... soft vibrations, typical snow-crunching, mysterious whispers, a detailed acoustic micro-world opens.. check: www.infrequency.ca “this 5" full-length cd documents portions of the audio installation of the same name recently seen at the folly gallery, uk. all sounds in this production are the result of the interaction with snow and feature drouin/olsen's best work to date. limited to 200 copies” [label info] | 2003 | €10.00 |
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| DROWNING POOL | Aphonia | CD-R | "Out of the many recordings and releases by this group (comprised of Adam Elesh, Brett Smith, Andrew Crane and Jon Thomas), the main three releases that we have picked to digitally re-master are: "Green" the 1986 debut U.S. and Worldwide release (here available with bonus track "Sparrow"); "Aphonia" the instrumental 1990 release which has been beautifully re-mastered (with added bonus track "Dulce Periculum" 2006); and the digitally re-mastered re-release of the classic opus "Satori" originally released Worldwide by Nate Starkman. This CD "houses" many of the tracks from "Nierika", "Bloody Boy" and "Ultraviolet"." [label website info] www.scarfacecharley.com | 2009 | €11.50 |
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| DUPLANT, BRUNO | Quelques Usines Fantomes | CD | "As a listener, I’m always intrigued as to what attracts me or doesn’t with regard to works in the field recording vein. The same applies to other areas of music as well, of course, but it’s especially interesting in these works composed of sounds generally taped on site and, to a lesser or greater degree, assembled back in the studio. They’re simply sounds, after all, more or less what I could hear on my own by concentrating on my surroundings at any given moment (allowing for different sources from different locations) which I often do anyway. Why be so absorbed by someone else’s impressions? Two things, I think, at least. One is a basic affinity with the assembler as far as particular sounds that he or she finds beautiful, fascinating, notable, resonant. As much as one might consciously think that such hierarchies are entirely beside the point, there remains that nagging tendency, whether culturally or genetically inculcated, to prefer one sound, or combination of sounds, to another, at least to the extent one hasn’t fully assimilated Cage et. al., often a more difficult, thornier task than readily admitted. Second is the way these sounds are ordered, layered and contrasted, certainly as subjective a judgment, but one having to do with an appreciation of the composer’s poetic sense, in the perceived “rightness” of the sequence of sounds, ultimately not so different, I think, to one’s enjoyment of post-AMM improvisation. Though I’d heard examples of this approach since college days, the first such music to really make a strong impression on me was probably Luc Ferrari’s “Presque Rien”, and shortly thereafter, Toshiya Tsunoda’s “Scenery of Decalcomania”. They certainly, for me, contained the two elements described above and, more, evoked an extremely realsense of place, in the manner that I hear things, a very self-centered view, but one I think comes part and parcel when listening to work in this area. Over the years, hearing countless examples of field recording as it has become more and more pervasive (often mixed with live improvisation, sometimes set to disc untouched, often manipulated in the studio), I’ve often questioned myself as to why this example failed to move me while that one did. It’s usually very hard to quantify, somehow even more so than determining the relative value in a free instrumental performance. I was thinking through this while listening to Bruno Duplant’s “Quelques usines fantômes” (which would be translated into English as “some ghost factories”). Why is this particular collection and distribution of sounds so appealing? They seem to have been drawn, largely, from a waterside area, perhaps a canal, not an overly busy one but where a certain amount of activity is taking place, maybe early in the morning a la Ferrari’s classic work. Duplant eschews going for overt watery sounds, contenting himself with low-level, subtle lapping, the soft creaks of hull on wooden piers, the gentle puttering of a small outboard motor, etc. These serve as the spine of the piece and are consistent throughout (after the first few minutes, at least), another aspect I tend to find compelling: choosing a given sound world and sticking to it, investigating its features in detail, allowing it time to generate a larger effect than mere sonics. There are plenty of other sounds, to be sure: metal objects dropping to the floor, unidentifiable hums, an odd, theramin-like wavering tone, wind billowing in enclosed spaces—at least this is how I hear them; who knows their actual source? But that’s of no import; one accepts this world, which is a basic thing for me. As in any good story or film, the reader/viewer has to accept the presented world as valid, as internally consistent, as “real” at least in the mind of its creator. “Quelques usines fantômes”, whether one picks up on the spirits being manufactured or not, readily achieves this. One is immersed in the world, deriving both sensual enjoyment and, more, generating one’s own narrative, trusting that one is on solid ground. The periodic, electronic-sounding hums that surface give the world a bit of a science fiction or otherworldly sheen, perhaps appropriate given the work’s title, though it’s those real world sounds that anchor the piece for me. Duplant has said he wanted to create a “between world” and I think he has. A full, rich work then, one of the better things I’ve heard in this lineage in recent years and very much worth losing oneself in.” (Brian Olewnick, May 2011) www.unfathomless.net | 2012 | €14.00 |
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| Nox | CD | The sound piece Nox (in addition to reflecting the traditional nocturnal effluvia specific to the title) is based on the multiple meanings and interpretations that can be made of the incomplete form of the dactylic hexameter and palindrome In girum imus nocte ecce et consumimur igni. This Latin phrase, pictorial and poetic, most often attributed to Virgil, refers to the moths that circle around the candle before burning themselves, and which means: “We go around in circles in the night and we are devoured by fire “. It is also, much closer to us, a French film directed by Guy Debord in 1978. The film (lasting 95 min) describes the consumer society and capitalist alienation, applying to highlight the condition of modern slaves. Today even more this Latin expression takes on a new meaning with the phenomena of ultra-liberalism and major climate crisis. Man, like moths, burns his wings on the fires he himself lit and continues to maintain despite warnings and threats. Are we witnessing the end of the Anthropocene, of the consumer society and capitalist alienation described by Guy Debord? ~ La pièce sonore Nox (outre le fait de refléter les traditionnelles effluves nocturnes propre au titre), repose sur les sens et interprétations multiples que l’on peut faire de la forme incomplète de l’hexamètre dactylique et palindrome In girum imus nocte ecce et consumimur igni . Cette locution latine, imagée et poétique, le plus souvent attribuée à Virgile, fait référence aux papillons de nuit qui tournent autour de la chandelle avant de s’y brûler, et qui signifie : « Nous tournons en rond dans la nuit et nous sommes dévorés par le feu ». C’est aussi, beaucoup plus près de nous, un film français réalisé par Guy Debord en 1978. Le film (d’une durée de 95 min) décrit la société de consommation et d’aliénation capitaliste, s’appliquant à mettre en évidence la condition d’esclaves modernes. Aujourd’hui encore plus cette expression latine prend un sens nouveau avec les phénomènes d’ultra-libéralisme et de crise climatique majeure. L’Homme, tels les papillons de nuit, se brûle les ailes sur les feux qu’il a lui même allumé et qu’il continue a entretenir malgré les avertissements et les menaces. Assistons-nous à la fin de l’anthropocène, de la société de consommation et d’aliénation capitaliste décrite par Guy Debord ? (Bruno Duplant, May 2022) Release Date : June 20, 2022 Duration : 40:00 Format : glass mastered CD/digital Track : nox Regular Edition : 165 hand-numbered copies Packaged in clear vinyl sleeve with folded insert + additional art card on 350gr satin paper. Cover design, card & treatments by Daniel Crokaert Based almost exclusively on photos by Bruno Duplant and some additional textures from Unfathomless' archive "It seems as if no week passes by without a new release by Bruno Duplant, the French composer of whom I never seem to know much about. Releases for Unfathomless deal with field recordings, and this one is no different, except, perhaps, for the fact that many of these field recordings are made in one place. Duplant recorded his material in Waziers, Berlin and London, without being very specific about the exact locations. That too is sometimes different on this label. And lastly, Duplant uses some instruments here. I believe to hear a piano and some instrument played with a bow; that might strings or a cymbal. The title refers to "the multiple meanings and interpretations that can be made of the incomplete form of the dactylic hexameter and palindrome In girum imus nocte ecce et consumimur igni. This Latin phrase, pictorial and poetic, most often attributed to Virgil, refers to the moths that circle around the candle before burning themselves, and which means: “We go around in circles in the night and we are devoured by fire". I am not that smart. More explanations on the Bandcamp page. Maybe the piece is indeed a palindrome. At least when I opened it in an audio editor it gave that impression. As with some of other recent works, Duplant seems to be layering a lot of sounds that may not have many relations with each other and then finds a dialogue among them. By slowly fading up and down particular sounds, he creates a very rich sound world. I am not sure to what extent this is to be understood as random in the John Cage-sense, or if the composer willingly allows sounds to be louder or quieter in the mix. There are some massive, drone-like rocks, very detailled small field recordings, the occasional piano tone, the bow across the cymbal/violin, crackles and it all works very well. 'Nox' lasts exactly forty minutes, but I am sure this could be twice as long and still be interesting. I know this, because I had it on repeat and didn't notice the change over that much and it wasn't until much longer that I realized it started again. The overall tone of the piece is quite moody and atmospheric, but I guess such is the nature of densely layered field recordings. High quality work, as usual." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2022 | €14.00 |
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| EARZUMBA | Real Ruido Pastizo | CD-R | Embrace the unexpected! Again C.D. manages it to create very unexpected and uncommon soundscapes made up out of found sounds & samples. This has at times even a jazzy & funny feel, but its like being in a totally deranged & transformed reality-system. Collage-music, Loops, all arranged very nicely. Check it out! "Christian Dergarabedian is by now more known through his Earzumba than his previous engagement with Reynols, and releases a great bunch of great CDRs. More and more he relies on the sampler to be the crazy melting pot of sounds and here he seems to be taking matters a bit further. From the field recordings of 'Intro' to a heavily cut up reggae collage madness in 'Descuidado'. Spinning vinyl by hand and picking up crazy fragments, and not by strange coincidence Editions_zero remarks that this is a nice soundtrack to a b-movie. I was playing this a couple of times in a row, and each time I turned it back on and discovered new themes in this crazy road movie. It has a strange appeal, this madness, this hotchpotch of music. A strange kind of radio play even when words aren't really used here to any extent. Not even a real story actually now I come to think of it. Turntablism without turntables. A story of no words, but the perfect soundtrack to out and make your own crazy roadmovie." [FdW /Vital Weekly] "I managed to create a film score sensation giving the dynamic as if it were done strictly following a script. Includes one mash up in between Bernard Herrmann & Silvestre Revueltas." [Christian Dergarabedian] label: www.void.gr/absurd | 2007 | €8.00 |
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| EBSK | Secret Highways | mCD-R | “EBSK are an improvising duo from Washington DC, with a new release, "Secret Highways/Wobbly" (Scarcelight SLR15), a very goddam original take on contempo basement prog (or some such thing). The instrumentation is Casios, drums, bass guitar, and B flat clarinet. If this suggests some kind of Milo Fine or Flaherty/Colbourne action, the direction that they head in is pretty original. Without the help of beats, they manage to create a newish sounding electronic environment, inside of which events happen which eventually coalesce into something that walks, looks and quacks a whole lot like rock. The crudity of the electronics and the sparseness of certain elements brings to mind such small units as Young Marble Giants or even The Method Actors, but the sounds are of such aesthetics placed inside a strange post-Rock In Opposition Prog continuum, then manhandled by picnic apes. Which is pretty cool, no matter how hard you shake it.” [Byron Coley. The Wire] | 2003 | €5.00 |
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| ECHOES OF YUL | Tether | CD | "Zoharum presents ECHOES OF YUL in their new release entitled 'Tether'. After two longplayers ('Echoes Of Yul' and 'Cold Ground') and a split CD, it's time for the next release, atypical in every respect. It's not a full album in the exact meaning of this word. 'Tether' is an extended play which has a record running time for such a release which clocks at 78 minutes. It's a stylistically varied project which is the result of the collaboration with many artists of different backgrounds. 'Tether' contains 4 new tracks full of slow heavy riffs, sounds from broken synths and ethereal atmospheres plus a number of reinterpretations by Different State, iconAclass (MC Dalek), James Plotkin (OLD, Khanate), Maciek Szymczuk, Stendek, Steve Austin (Today Is The Day). All compiled to sound not like a compilation, but a stand-alone cohesive album with many unexpected twists and turns." [label info] www.zoharum.com | 2014 | €10.00 |
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| EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN | Jewels | CD | Kartenspiel als Navigationssystem: 15 Miniaturen der Experimentalband; + Film. "Jewels" ist ein Konzeptalbum mit 15 zwei- bis dreiminütigen Songs, die ursprünglich nur als monatliche Download-Geschenke an die Supporter der dritten Phase des Neubauten.org-Unterstützerprojektes gedacht waren. Die Zeit, die auf den Schliff der Juwelen verwendet werden konnte, war begrenzt: Zwei Tage mussten reichen, um von einer ersten Idee zum fertigen Song zu gelangen. Die Band um Blixa Bargeld suchte also nach einem Verfahren, das die dafür nötige Dynamik entwickeln konnte. Man erfand ein Kartenspiel als Navigationssystem. Jede Karte gab einen kryptischen Hinweis auf Elemente des Neubautenschaffens seit 1980: Instrumente, Materialien und Strukturen, mit Bezug auf Strophe oder Refrain, Intro und Outro, soziale Beziehungen und Bündnisse: Wer mit wem? Wer womit und mit welcher Geschwindigkeit und Haltung? So entstand eine Art Musik des Zufalls, die einige der egofreisten Kompositionen der Band beinhaltet. Die CD erscheint in Ecolbook-Verpackung mit 40-seitigem Booklet, Liedtexten in Deutsch und Englisch sowie dem 40-minütigen Film "Acht Lösungen". [press release] "Much will be made of the strategies that Einsturzende Neubauten used in making The Jewels. Frontman Blixa Bargeld devised a series of arot-like cards which represented the vast collection of materials which are at Neubauten's disposal - steel, tin, zinc, wood, plastic, glass, ceramics. The entire band would then draw cards, and the compositional process would begin. The tracks tend be a bit shorter than the typical Neubauten opus, and the songs follow the recent aesthetic shifts towards quieter, controlled orchestration for their unusual materials. On a few tracks, there are hints of their formerly infernal selves, glancing back to one of the last true masterpieces Funf Auf Der Nach Oben Offenen Richterskala. Originally released as a subscription only download through their website; now available with a 40 minute film as a Quicktime movie and large book with lyrics and Blixa's insight into the process." [Aquarius Records review] | 2008 | €17.50 |
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| ELDAR | The Secret Golden Flower | CD | "ELDAR, the Spanish Dark Ambient/Martial project that once started on Cold Meat Industry, return with yet another conceptual album presenting a wide range of beautiful sounds. The concept of this album is inspired by the mystical and psychological archetypes to explain the universal version of a generic soul that rules from the collective unconscious of individuals in all human civilizations since antiquity. These archaic prototypes were copied, emulated and used since the dawn of humanity, and fantastic dream and images have been represented in myths and symbols, trying to explain these exemplary patterns that are still alive and latent until today. They sleep present in popular folklore, in the psyche of every human being, influencing yourself and collectively in the beliefs and ideas that lead them to make beautiful and creative acts or carrying even their own destruction, evolving or backward from that inexorable shape societies through time and history. This album runs in his melodies and lyrics the long road of archetypes that continue to print his psychological injury in each individual and that shape their behavior in society, determining the fate of humanity. Composed by Marc Merinee & Merce Spica and recorded at Oxid Studio Barcelona 2011. Produced & Mastered by Marc Merinee. Art Work by Alonso Urbanos." [label info] www.oldeuropacafe.com | 2012 | €12.00 |
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| ELECTRIC SEWER AGE | Bad white Corpuscule | CD | "Electric sewer age was thought up in 2006 by a man called John Deek (r.i.p). The original idea was for likeminded souls, amongst particularly the coil fraternity, too compose music, which would be released, with no credits to the creators. This would allow the listener to listen, and not have a preconceived bias, as to which song they liked best, based on their favourite composer etc. While in Bangkok 2006, I talked with Peter Christopherson (r.i.p) about the project and he jumped aboard. He supplied many loops which made their way to Texas and onto the UK. These segments might or might not be used in here, you explore. Danny Hyde continues his fantastical journey in sound with this second release under the ESA name and completely moves beyond expectations. Disproving the doubters, this EP is pretty much just him in his studio wrenching new creations out of his equipment; the trainspotters amongst us will no doubt pick out some of the shards he pulls from his past. But he doesn't make them the focus of what is going on here, they are there merely to accent, to add a bit of depth and help illuminate how many years he's been at this. Does he follow a muse? If so, it must not be one that operates in the traditional sense. Perhaps it is more of a compulsion to create and then endlessly refine what you've done down to the most primal of elements. There are ghosts all over this thing, you can feel the weight of their absence and at some points you swear you can actually hear them. Tricks of the sound field, the mirror casting back shadows. If anyone else is on here, they have come out of the ether to make an appearance. Don't be afraid, put on your headphones and immerse yourself into a symphony that Hyde terms "an ode to loss". He'd know. We can all see from the outside what happened over the last decade but for him, it was all right there. Up close and personal. Through the usage of heavily processed vocals and arcane terrestrial instrumentation, Hyde lives up to his reputation for creating amazingly detailed yet extremely dark electronic compositions. The symbiosis of organic and synthetic influences would be his forte and he's not holding anything back this time out, believe me, there's a feel to what is on here that isn't easily conceived. To just sit down and begin knocking out what 'Bad White Corpuscle' contains I don't think could be done unless you had planned and plotted out every last possible contingency down to the millisecond. I've played this a lot but by comparison he's probably got mixes and additional versions of what's on here that could fill terabytes of hard drive space without batting an eye. Electric Sewer Age exist between two worlds: the one of now and an older, more disturbing place which with the passage of time only becomes more savage and terrifying to visit. As it appears he's chosen to put Aural Rage to bed, we have these excursions to look forward to; every few years Mr. Hyde will come out of seclusion to reveal where he's at and where he's going. Clearly, this project is a form of therapy for the guy and having researched precisely what a bad white corpuscle is there's an uneasy feeling that foreshadowing is being employed here. I'm not privy to whom this refers, I can only hope they know what they're doing. This is so intense, so unflinchingly expressive that I come away completely drained. Up by Sunday. Peter. Very elegant electronica, as you are used from best Coil's albums. Dreamy and doped muzak for the real dreamer. Tracklist : 01. Grey corpuscle 3.56 02. Corpuscular corpuscle 5.11 03. Amber corpuscle 5.12 04. Rising corpuscle 8.40 05. Bad white corpuscle 6.27 06. Black corpuscle 5.20 " [label info] www.oldeuropacafe.com | 2014 | €16.00 |
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| ELECTRIC URANUS / X-NAVI:ET | Voices of the Cosmos | CD | "Project "VOICES OF THE COSMOS" is an educational-artistic initiative created by two artists from Kujawsko-Pomorskie: Rafał Iwański (X-NAVI:ET) and Wojciech Zięba (ELECTRIC URANUS). Both of them have lot of experience in creating experimental and electroacoustic music. In recordings of this album original extraterrestrial sounds captured from space by radio-telescopes (pulsars), sounds from space missions and the space itself. Every artists created 3 tracks that form the 40 minutes album. Instrumental tracks played and recorded in rhythm with tones of "space sounds", are made manually with use of electronic and acoustic instruments. All that makes this project very unique. It is the only type of it in Poland. The project had also gain reputation in science circles. "VOICES OF THE COSMOS" is the electroacoustic dark ambient (although it should not be genered this way), it's music that in 100% the title itself explains - the voices of cosmos. We watch the sky and the stars, we know many photos of heavenly bodies, other galaxies. All that fascinates us, is beautiful and colorful. But those are not environments kind to us. They are terrifying, cold or extremely hot places. And this how this album is. It can take you out there but it can scare you too. As a bonus two tracks are added in video version, made with exclusive video-art by Chris Konky. The "VOICES OF THE COSMOS" is released by Beast Of Prey and Eter Records in a three panel digipack." [label info] www.beastofprey.com "Rafal Iwanski is the man behind HATI, a percussion group from Poland, but in his spare time he is also the man behind a solo project called X-Navi:et, which is all about electronic music. Here he works with Wojciech Zieba, also known as Electric Uranus. They already released an album in 2011, which was more a split album, which each of them playing three pieces. The name, Voice Of The Cosmos, should be taken literally: they use recordings from out space, picked up with a 32 meter radio telescope in Torun. Here they have five pieces which they performed live at the the Planetarium and Astronomical Observatory in Grudziadz, plus two solo pieces each. You could, perhaps all too easily, think this is the kind of early long form synth music, with pieces that last twenty minutes, lots of arpeggio's on the keyboard, bouncing jolly forward. This is not the case here. These men keep their pieces actually quite short for this type, and not exclusively build with the use of synthesizers, but also with samples from space and even a heavily processed voice. This is the kind of music that is actually striving to be a pop song, even when the music is not entirely 'pop' like. The structure of the pieces is all to be a rounded song structure, and not a more open ended free fall of synth sounds. The use of long wave sounds in this music add a nice experimental component to the music. The solo tracks, aren't the divided sum of the total, but more along similar lines, so perhaps you could wonder if perhaps this could have been entirely in solo mode, but of course the element of creating together adds that a bit of extra tension to the music. It's worth picking up their 2011 album, the split one, and get a more complete picture of the development. Excellent cosmos music, something just out of the ordinary, but not too estranged." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2011 | €12.00 |
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| ELIK, YURI / NOISES OF RUSSIA | VOICES OF THE DEAD | DVD-R | "Photographer and videoartist Yuri Elik is primarily known as one of the founders and permanent members of multimedia project 2012, creating audio-video installations on various contemporary art festivals (SKIF, Heilige Feuer, Multivision, etc.). Apart from this Yuri performs on his own making video- and slide-shows for a number of experimental musical bands in St. Petersburg. Yuri is also the video show author for the performances of Simon Magus ballet written by D. Kakhovskiy and the designer of several CD artworks and websites. Gosha Solnzev (also known as "Van Gog" - 1g0g) - big industrial showman, leader of the project Noises of Russia well-known in Russia, organizer of several festivals, such as "Noise vs. Glamour", "Military Days", "Noisy Women", etc. Gosha has always claimed that he plays funeral music, so it's no wonder he showed interest in the phenomenon of voices of the dead, discovered by Friedrich Jürgenson in the late 50s of the past century. Electronic Voice Phenomenon (voices of the dead, Raudive voices) are the voices of anomalous origin appearing while making records on tape recorders or other electronic audio devices. EVP researches claim and have proof that this is a possible way of communication between physical and some other non-physical planes of existence. The exploration of this phenomenon led to an effective cooperation between Van Gog and Yuri which resulted in a series of live performances with the "Voices of the Dead" program and this short film, with 24 minutes an obscure psychedelic drama evolving in front of the spectator. A multi-layered collage of concrete visual images and kaleidoscopic colour fields constantly transforms, accompanied by unusual and uneasy sombre ambient with real voices of the dead samples interlaced in it's structure. As a bonus this disk also contains a 12-min. slide-film "City Spirits": alternation of photos by Yuri Elik with his own soundtrack constructed from city noises. Yuri skillfully focuses attention on subtleties of usual things that remain unseen to the eye of a usual human being, generally too busy with thinking over his insubstantial problems and forgetting about the beauty of the world surrounding him. The release is packed in a special cardboard sleeve and goes with a booklet with an encyclopaedic reference about the phenomenon of electronic voices." [label info] http://zhb.radionoise.ru/ | 2006 | €12.00 |
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| ELLENDE | Growing A Beard, Driving A Bike With A Naked Girl On Your Lap Does Not Make You A Man | MC | "Notes: Side A: Recorded live in New York, US on 17 September 2009 Various analogue instruments used, Mastered at The Plantation Capetown October 2010 on Nakamichi RX50 Side B: Recorded live in Pieterburen, NL on 6th June 2008 Various analogue instruments used Mastered at The Plantation Capetown 2010 on Nakamichi RX505 Both play LOUD. C-60, 100 copies" [label info / credits] www.impulsystetoskopu.pl "In the recent, second, volume of the Encyclopedia of Noise, released by Impulsy Stetoskopu, we find an entry for Ellende. We learn its an anonymous musical project, led by one Wim Bontjes (who died in 1995), an author whose work is the basis of sound material. Musicians from all over the world deliver their sounds to the project and mixed together by the other three members from The Netherlands. Some of their music has been reviewed before. This cassette, also released by Impulsy Stetoskopu, contains two live recordings, one from 2008 (in Pieterburen, The Netherlands) and one from 2009 (New York). No members are mentioned here, but both pieces were created with 'various analogue instruments'. Both were picked up using a microphone, rather than a line recording, which adds a more raw edge to the end result. Probably its fair to say that we are dealing here with a rough form of cosmic music. Lots of synthesizer buzz around, sweep, oscillate and bubble and create fine, dense waves of cosmic music. Effectively it may seem that both concerts sound alike, which made me think that the same musicians are at play here, even when the 2008 concert is a bit more louder. I have no idea which literally references are in play here, but the title is great!" [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2011 | €9.50 |
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| Odyssey, A Sentimental Journey | BOOK + 2 x 10inch | Odyssey, a sentimental journey: Ellende’s latest release sees the band bringing together an album based on a trip Wim took to Japan to visit his cousin in the early 1990’s. Most of the music in the records was recorded live at The Plantation in 2018, with a few minor overdubs added at various locations (Tokyo and London). The music might sound a bit nostalgic, the ambience of warm February nights in Cape Town while the sounds of old French movies seep through a badly tuned piano. Sometimes the doors are shut and large metal sheets are heard processed through guitar pedals. A modular synthesiser, analogue synths (Roland SH-101, Juno 6, ARP Solus, Solina) and guitar have been used as well throughout the album. Dave “Slave” Mbambi: Guitar, Drones, Synths Lodewikus Pretorius: Piano, Modular, String Synths John John: Synths, Bows, Percussion, Martinus Antonius: Recording, Mix, Tapes, Phasers Rafael Anton Irisarri: Mastering Richard Hart: Design and Art Direction https://ellende1.bandcamp.com/album/odyssey-a-sentimental-journey "For quite a few reasons this release is a big surprise. First of all, I had not heard of Ellende in many years. The last time was back in Vital Weekly 772 when I reviewed a live cassette from the group. That was after some hiatus, but between Vital Weekly 346 and 444, there were no less than ten different releases reviewed in these pages (I even wrote “by now Ellende seems to appear in every new Vital Weekly”) including the all-revealing 'Kut Met Peren' 3"CDR. So that is Dutch and so is the word Ellende, which stands for 'misery'. That is one surprise. The next one is that this release doesn't fit the previous somewhat lo-fi aesthetic of the old work, but this a lovely, beautiful release. The records are packed inside the front cover of a hardcover book (actually an oversized dust-cover, and some thirty-six pages of text and images, all in beautiful black and white. The third surprise is that Ellende is still around and still very little is known about them. Wim Bontjes and his cousin Martinus Antonius start it out with tape experiments. Bontjes committed suicide in 1995 and the group continued with his "conceptual ideas", even when these ideas remain unnamed. Over the years many people have been a member, all in steady flux. This new record was recorded in South Africa, as, mystery solved, they are from there and not The Netherlands, with Dave "Slave" Mbambi on guitars, drones and synth, Lodewikus Pretorius on piano, modular, string synths and John John on synths, bows, percussion while Antonius is responsible for recording, mix, tapes and phasers. Bandcamp is a bit more specific: "Sometimes the doors are shut and large metal sheets are heard processed through guitar pedals. A modular synthesiser, analogue synths (Roland SH-101, Juno 6, ARP Solus, Solina) and guitar have been used as well throughout the album. "The release is about a trip Wim made to Japan to visit his cousin (I assume Antonius) and the stories are about a "pitiful chase of sex', portrayed by "women's death-masks-like faces", as such by Richard Hart in the book. I mist admit that I re-read some of the old reviews to remind myself what Ellende was all about; I forgot after all those/despite all those releases. I must say I very much enjoyed this new release. There is an excellent dark mood depicted here, fitting the likewise dark images of the book and the tales of sordid sex. An endless stream of synthesizers mingles very pleasantly with sustaining guitar sounds and sound effects used to place accents in strategic places. Sometimes the guitar is strummed in a more traditional way, such as in 'Girlfriend Experience' but against a doomy backdrop of much reverb. Throughout this album carries on the torch of Ellende's previous work with fuzzy and busy drones, beautifully colliding. This is one damn fine release; one that is just perfect, both in music and packaging. It is almost like a pre-programmed collector's item. I am very curious if Ellende will slip back into another period of hibernation. I hope that is not the case." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2019 | €38.00 |
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| ELODIE (TIMO VAN LUIJK & ANDREW CHALK) | Traces Ephemeres | LP | "An eclectic ensemble of 18 instrumental arrangements evoking an epic and existential soundtrack determined by the power of momentary destiny and reflective sentiment. Music played by Andrew Chalk and Timo van Luijk. Clarinet by Jean-Noël Rebilly. Piano and koto by Tom James Scott. Edition of 350 copies." [label info] www.lasciedoree.be "When not playing his own music, Timo van Luijk is busy with recording music with other people, and with some of them as part of an on-going collaboration, such as In Camera with Christoph Heemann and Elodie with Andrew Chalk. This is Elodie's fourth full length release (see Vital Weekly 781 and 828) and like before the album has rather shortish pieces, even more fragmented, it seems, than before, eighteen in total. It therefore isn't one of those 'one drone, one side, LP done' sort of releases. This is all highly atmospheric music as you can surely imagine given the reputation of both of these composers, but then played on a wide variety of instruments, of an acoustic and electronic origin. The carefully strummed guitar (Chalk), the flute, percussive bits, (both van Luijk) along with electronics - no computers I should think - play short and sketch like pieces. Not refined oil paintings on canvas but pencil sketches on paper. Introspective music, moody, but also airy and light. Moving like clouds on a blue sky, some white, some grey, some times rainy. Textured music, like you have textured paper, with spots of ink on them. Excellent stuff here." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2014 | €18.00 |
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| ELOY, JEAN-CLAUDE | Shanti | do-CD | " “Shânti” (1972-73) for electronic and concrete sounds. Electronic music studio, WDR, Cologne, Germany, 1972-73. Digitalized and revised version from 2001. “The term “meditation music” triggered many conflicting comments including positive ones (“... let us say that Shânti belongs to those very rare works that change you after listening to them. You are not exactly the same before and after.” - Gérard Mannoni, Le Quotidien de Paris, 1974). Others, wondering at the strong sound presence of the piece, consider such aspect as hardly helpful to their own meditation... Let us be clear: “what meditates” here (”that” who meditates) is the composer. He is the one who takes you on his journey and guides you through his work like in a classic or romantic symphony. As a listener you are invited to follow “his” meditation... The composition is the meditation.” " [label info] "Was I recently 'complaining' about 3CD sets with music of people I never heard of, I wasn't perhaps thinking of Jean-Claude Eloy. First time around the mailman decided to keep the CDs, but the second time delivered them duly. I hope he likes them as much as I do. I may have heard the name Eloy before, but not his music, or where to place him, these two sets, six discs in total will set the record straight (pun intended). Eloy was born in 1938 and studied with Darius Milhaud. I believe he composes all sorts of work, but his main line of business is electronic music. I review them in order of composition. 'Shanti', which means 'peace', was composed after 'Kamakala' for three orchestra ensembles, five choir ensembles with three conductors, so it was perhaps 'necessary' to compose an electro-acoustic work at the WDR studios in Cologne, Germany. A work of meditation, or so Eloy tells us. Now this is not a work of pure and solitary drone music, as one would perhaps expect from 'meditative music'. They are here, that's for sure, but there is also an interview with Aurobindo and Mao, as well as a small piece called 'Soldats', with soldiers speaking and 'Vagues Lentes, Boucles De Feux', which takes their singing into an electronic landscape. This is of course an album about 'Peace', but rather then just produce a drone or two, Eloy brings in a political element, the soldiers. However the majority are those various drones, played on those ancient machines (great pictures in the booklet here), the mystical oscillators, wave generators and such like - which defy any laptop, I'd say. Excellent music, although not always exactly as meditative as promised, but that, I thought, was hardly a problem. Unsettling meditation, which is better than just go with the flow." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2009 | €25.00 |
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| EMERGE | Indulgence | CD-R | "There is only one sound artist whose knowledge of the underground is so reliable that it knows out to bring out the best literal sounds of sand, gravel, dirt and mysterious mysteries from the lower levels. Emerge is the artist that I’m writing about. Many of Emerge’s releases are shimmering, softly crawling into the shadows of suburban city lights and below the surfaces within sewer systems. However this time with this new release things are different; here Emerge doesn’t go for the sound of after night city lights, subway systems or drainage, but indeed literally goes under the ground as being the polar opposite of astronauts that would go out into space. Here Emerge explores the sounds of the real underground, as the vast amount of dry dirt and mud is being slit through in order to reveal sound places that nobody (except Emerge) really knows about; underground rooms in which the private artist and explorer hides out in all his privacy; places from which genially engraved holes provide the sounds of a controlled sea, the one that you could hear in snail shelves, or in toilet bowls; but yet never heard before! With the help of Emerge you don’t need to do anything at all; just listen to this release as it will take you deep under the underground surface for your recreational, or even scientifically approved purposes. I say recreational as in one moment of slipping through the microscopic sand rocks the artist seems to handle over a ping pong table tennis racket for a friendly underground game. Afterwards Emerge transforms the audio surroundings into a real cozy one; a pleasant underground cave with a damp feeling and pleasurable water drips & muffled sounds of possibly bad weather above surface; nothing is better than being dry, warm, cozy and among a good friend deep down below; while others are above ground getting soaked while struggling with opening their umbrellas. Emerge will keep us all thoroughly entertained by leading the way through even deeper surfaces, a dense hallway that seemingly picks up the sounds of a long and lost highway now sophistically beamed down in Emerge’s underground network. Let Emerge be the eye opener to a place of the beautiful underground world that we normally just step over." [Yeah I know it sucks] https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/indulgence-2 | 2021 | €10.00 |
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| EMPUSAE | Mortusae III | CD | Mortusae III is the third compilation of songs representing an era of Empusae music. The compilation features songs from: Lueur 2017 Œuvres Au Noir 2020 SHäk 2023 Uzupis (Sieben Remixed) 2018 https://empusae.bandcamp.com/album/mortusae-iii ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Nicolas Van Meirhaeghe, also known as Sal-Ocin, is a Belgian artist who creates music in the genres of Ethnic Rhythm Noise and Dark Ambient. He is active not only as EMPUSAE but also in projects such as TZOLK'IN and formerly THIS MORN’ OMINA. Together with Christel Morvan (Nesisart), they created a sound and visual work that is mesmerizing but also unsettling, forcing reflection on a world where living in darkness is an everyday reality. Nicolas is known for creating multi-layered, magical musical landscapes that blur the boundaries of many musical genres. What always unites them is their incredible energy, the beauty of execution, subtlety, fragility, and delicacy, which have the power to enchant and hypnotize the listener. The disturbing, pulsating, slightly irregular rhythm, slowly increasing tempo, and gradually building layers of sound create an oneiric, mystical atmosphere, cantered around chants. The unsettling ‘Retinae Tenebrae’ develops subtly based on successive layers of sound and contrasts forest and murmuring water sounds with very disquieting musical matter. It is shocking because nature - at least in everyday understanding - is usually associated with calm and positivity, whereas here it bears the signs of entering the darkness, something threatening, unknown, and unsettling. A similar contrast between light and dark seems to be the basis for the slightly more electronic ‘SHäk’, which successfully showcases the transitions between sharp, harsh sounds and fluid, melodic ones. The beautiful, slightly more rhythmic and dramatic ‘Asok’, is full of diverse sounds and ingeniously arranged instrumental / vocal layers, perfectly complementing the soundscape of the entire release. The sound impulses in ‘Obsidian’ electrify and capture attention, unobtrusively piling up instrumental richness and the leading motif of deep, slightly melancholic sound repetition. It intensifies, gains strength and dynamism towards the end of the track and, especially after the contrast with the previous tracks, hits the listener with great force. The album concludes with the track ‘Uzurpis’, where EMPUSAE presents his own version of another talented musician Matt Howden’s piece, known as SIEBEN. EMPUSAE’s version is less electronic, more fluid, trance-like, and hypnotic, losing some of its original sharpness and violence and highlighting the leading sound of the violin. It is very much in keeping with the atmosphere of ‘Mortusae III’ - the leading motif of an uneasy, dark melody that I perceive as wrapping and tying all the tracks on the album together, a bit like vessels in the pupil depicted in the artwork - here too, this black, spreading circulation is exactly illustrated sonically, gradually gaining intensity and darkness. ‘Mortusae III’ has thrilled me. It can be read in multiple layers - as a sound story of the artist’s illness, an amazing sound journey - dark and captivating at the same time, as a display of instrumental skill, or as a showcase of the ability to interpret and shape another artist's work. It is a mature and consistent release, without weak spots and with an unobvious beauty and depth that is worth exploring. Bravo!" [Reflections of Darkness] | 2023 | €13.00 |
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| ENGLISH, LAWRENCE | A Mirror Holds The Sky | CD / BOOK | From Lawrence English: "In late months of 2008, I had the great fortune to spend some weeks in the Amazon. The visit, facilitated through Francisco Lopez's Mamori Artlab residency, remains one of the most deeply affecting experiences I have had . . . Living in Australia, tropical rainforests are not foreign to me. I would even say I am rather at home in them. My family, who lived and worked on the land of the Ngajanji people, had an admiration for, or in the very least a respect of, the rainforest. What makes time spent in the jungles of the Amazon different however is the scale and sheer volume (metaphoric and literal) of the life that inhabits it. Hundreds of thousands of narratives are in play moment to moment, their interactions flow together forming a perpetual cascade of arrival and departure, fertility and decay -- these fundamental states are intrinsically linked and constantly informing one another . . . To listen in the jungle is to listen in close relief -- in every square meter, thousands of insects cry out, their voices reducing the horizon of listening to a matter of centimeters at certain times of the day (and night) . . . The abundance of birds, mammals, beetles, flies, ants and so many other creatures are a source of constant and evolving fascination. In the lakes and rivers too, the hydro-sonic environments are perpetual and effortlessly deep . . . A Mirror Holds The Sky is in some ways an act of acoustic and temporal compression. It is a rendering down of the lived-in moments and environments that became points of intense listenership. If I am to be honest, it has taken me the better part of a decade to know how to approach this archive of materials. I owe a debt of gratitude to Chico Dub at Festival Novas Frequências, who very gently encouraged me to realize a piece for diffusion as part of his program in 2019. That invitation retuned my ears and in the process unlocked a way of approaching the mammoth 50+ hours of recordings I had gathered during my time there. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to my wife Rebecca, who was instrumental in gathering some of these recordings. Her ears reflected an entirely other set of interests than my own and without that, this piece would be substantially less than what it is." 48-page perfect bound book featuring photographs by English, taken on location in the Amazon. https://lawrenceenglish.bandcamp.com/album/a-mirror-holds-the-sky | 2021 | €24.00 |
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| Viento | CD + BOOK | In 2010, Lawrence English made field recordings in Patagonia. You can hear abandoned buildings, lone trees folded over in fields of tundra-like grasses, quivering road signs, wailing fences and other objects shaken into life by the wind. In the booklet, the sounds are accompanied by pictures. Artist statement: "In the summer of 2010 I had the opportunity to visit Antarctica through an invitation extended by the Argentine Antarctic Division. It was nothing short of life-altering, as I am sure anyone would suspect. Upon departing from Buenos Aires for the iced continent the Hercules transport aircraft, under direction of the Argentine military, made a routine stop at an airbase outside Rio Gallegos. What was meant to be a few hours layover turned into several days as, on landing, a strong wind storm blew in unexpectedly. Conditions exceeded expectations, and before long it was clear the transport could not take off. The situation was only compounded by adverse weather along the Antarctic Peninsula. Whilst the scientists and military personnel we were travelling with bunkered down in their quarters, I found myself drawn outside into the howling air. The wind in Patagonia is, well, breathtaking. Literally, there were moments where it was so physical, that it was difficult to catch my breath. Across three days I recorded abandoned buildings, lone trees folded over in fields of tundra-like grasses, quivering road signs, wailing fences and other objects shaken into life by the wind. It wasn't a comfortable experience by any means, but the multiplicity of sounds I was able to capture, I hope, speak for themselves. The Antarctic recordings were made during two blizzards at Marambio and Esperanza bases. During the blizzard in Marambio, the temperature dropped to -40 degrees centigrade (with wind chill) which made recording particularly challenging. The wind battered the base’s structures and telecommunications equipment, making a range of unsettling, phasing choral drones and deep low frequency vibrations that resonated inside the base itself. The blizzard at Esperanza was mild by comparison, but still strong enough to coat penguins in layer of snow as they huddled together during the worst of the storm. This year marks the 10th anniversary of completing these compositions and since that time, I have had the pleasure to diffuse them on numerous occasions. With those experiences in mind, as well as the format on which these works are now being made available, I have revisited them and completely remixed and remastered the pieces. Listening back to these recordings I am struck by the sheer physicality of the wind. It's rare that you feel physically reduced by the motion of air, but in both Patagonia and Antarctica that is just how I felt. A small speck of organic dust in a howling storm." https://lawrenceenglish.bandcamp.com/album/viento | 2022 | €23.00 |
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| ENO, BRIAN | Music for Installations | 6 x CD BOX | Though containing music that goes back to 1985, Music For Installations is hardly a retrospective in any traditional sense. It’s more a whimsical line connecting ideas in Eno's own personal Long Now. Not long after Brian Eno coined the term “ambient music” in the late 1970s, he generated another Eno-ism with an extended lifespan, one with an appropriately slower dissemination.”I want to be living in a Big Here and a Long Now,” the producer wrote in a notebook. He thought of his then-recent recordings as sound “suspended in an eternal present tense.” Perhaps unconsciously channeling Baba Ram Dass's brand/mantra, Be Here Now, the always-conceptual Eno began to expand his sense of scale. Two decades ago, Eno helped start the Long Now Foundation, working to connect the present moment to the far-extended arc of human history. One project was the 10,000 Year Clock, for which he created patterns for the clock's chimes, each to be rung once and never repeated. By the mid-’90s, the period representing the general starting point of the six-disc Music for Installations, Eno's “ambient” work had largely fallen under the subtly different rubric “generative” (that is, music that is created according to a system of algorithms, only partly under its maker’s control). Each piece here represents its own individual slice of one possible Long Now, with Eno providing the finely considered coordinates so that the music itself can run infinitely, changing into new patterns like a river or an ocean. Grown from mid-’80s experiments with four tape recorders looping cassettes of differing lengths, Music for Installations contains what are essentially field recordings from a series of different environments, each its own universe. Filled with gorgeous washes of bells and drones and unidentifiable luminous shimmers, deep vibrations moving across widescreen stereo fields, one might imagine them all as separate galleries and vestibules in a vast museum, each filled with light and sound, running constantly as night and day change outside and the seasons pass. Though Music for Installations contains sound created for specific situations and places, as a box set, it might be used to step outside of time. Of course, a streaming service might still label all of the above as “ambient,” part of the new chill-out economy seemingly driving Spotify to its own kind of generative musak. But what Music for Installations proves beyond a doubt is that, to paraphrase Chevy Chase, he's Brian Eno and they're not. Though containing music that goes back as far as 1985 (”Five Light Paintings”), Music For Installations is hardly a retrospective in any traditional sense. It’s more a whimsical line connecting ideas in Eno's own personal Long Now. Eno is everywhere and nowhere in this music, much of it not so much performed by him as willed into existence, like a character from a science fiction novel who dreams in sound. On several of the longest pieces, such as the 44-minute 77 Million Paintings, low rolling notes played sparsely at long intervals seem to indicate melodies unfolding too slowly for immediate comprehension, perhaps even direct continuations of the similar motifs from 1978's Ambient 1: Music for Airports. Released in DVD editions in 2006 and 2007, 77 Million Paintings constitutes the audio accompaniment of a generative video program Eno created. As he recounts in the liner notes, when he first set it up, he began to document individual frames of it with a still camera, shooting off some 800 pictures before surrendering to the ephemerality. The feeling of listening to Music for Installations is often similar. Its pieces are beautiful and always different, and yet always the same, generic without losing character. Much of it is resolutely not chill-out music. The nearly 40-minute piece “I Dormienti” is filled with a ceaseless moving richness that's hard to reconcile with the idea of machine creation. High-frequency electronic tones and clusters of upper register piano notes flutter between percussive samples of vocalist Kyoko Inatome, amid other layers. Composed for a joint installation with the sculptor Mimmo Paladino in the subterranean space beneath London's Roundhouse, the music is perhaps more suited for the kind of contemplation that goes along with quietly freaking the fuck out, an accompaniment to Paladino's haunted work as it was seen in the darkroom, pieces displayed on the floor like strange creatures preserved after a Pompeii-like disaster. The set's final two discs don't actually contain music for installations, except in ever more conceptual ways. Making Spaces was a CD sold at installations, and little of it feels generative in composition or structure, though the liner notes don't clarify. In the context of the box set, it feels not only like a separate, hidden Eno album of its own, but a brilliant one, demonstrating that Eno is still perfectly capable of seizing the means of production. The nine pieces feel less like spaces and more like the objects inside, sculptures with distinct shapes and boundaries and artistic intentions. The unearthly “New Moons” features a sparsely strummed guitar part with defined chords (and even a bridge), aglow from start to finish, perhaps one haunted vocal away from fitting perfectly onto the song-based album some strata of Eno fans always want dearly. “All the Stars Were Out” contains a background flutter that could equally be the sound of crickets or the flicker of a film projector, but is just one more expressive tone carved out by Brian Eno. Each of the tracks contains its own inventions and deployment of color-forms or unexpected tonal voices or structural turns. The set-concluding Music for Future Installations, meanwhile, is perhaps the box's cheekiest conceit, music for new places, new situations that haven't yet happened.”I often find it helpful to have an alibi for making a piece of music,” he observes, and the seven discs of Music for Installations might serve many contexts. Music For Airports was never for airports (though it certainly is capable of providing calm inside one), and the function of Music for Installations is wherever the listener might like to install it, less about the purpose of the music and more about the listener's desired level of engagement. But no matter what level of engagement one chooses, Eno will be there, too. The set's 60-page liner notes are filled with documentation, though it's sometimes unclear which recordings correspond to which installations, if any. More, though, it acts as a Little Red Book of Eno-isms, where he lays out one deeply awesome hot take after another.”I thought of television as a light source rather than a narrative source,” he writes about his video installations, “at that time the most controllable light source that had ever been invented.” (I… had never thought of it like that.) No matter how vibed-out the music may get, there is always the sense of a voice and mind behind it. Even when trying to abdicate the order and arrangement of the notes being played, Eno's control over sound remains at a practically spiritual level. “Eno is God,” ran the early ’80s graffiti, and depending on how you define his domain it might still be true, manifesting in the smallest of breezes and the tiniest of bleeps. | 2018 | €55.00 |
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| ENSEMBLE NEON - NIBLOCK / LAMB | Niblock + Lamb | CD | A Drone with a View By choosing to combine for this recording two complementary but distinctly different drone-based, immersive pieces by the legendary veteran composer and artist/film-maker Phill Niblock (born 1933, USA), and the younger, Berlin-based composer/violist Catherine Lamb (born 1982, USA), Norway’s Ensemble neoN creates a perfect sense of aesthetic balance. Loud is followed by quiet; what seems like random patterning gives way to orderly design; and the opening instrumental ensemble-setting is transformed by the subsequent addition of guest voices. Listening to both pieces one after another is like experiencing thesis and anti-thesis through the medium of Side A and Side B. The incredible wind-tunnel rush of the Niblock piece, ’To Two Tea Roses’, can feel at first like 23 minutes of head-spinning noise. A combination of microtonal intervals, concert hall-reverb and the interplay between pre-recorded and live performance modules, sets up a maelstrom of sound where it's impossible for the listener to separate auditory fact from auditory illusion. Lamb’s beautifully airy ‘Parallaxis Forms', by contrast, provides a kind of balm for the soul through a delicate but no less immersive combination of voices and instruments: a quietly meditative, almost devotional acoustic world that in he accompanying Artist’s Note from the ensemble is described as “concreteness and chaos sitting inside a cloud of sound”. But the more one listens, the more nuanced the effect of each piece becomes. Soon, the Niblock is neither as ferociously forbidding, nor the Lamb so placidly restrained, as they first appeared. As one’s imagination starts to take flight, and the hallucinatory power of the infinitely suggestible sounds go to work on the brain and senses, each new hearing reveals quite different and even opposing textual details. What can sound, in one Niblock ‘exposure', like ritualistic bells and Tibetan horns, becomes in another the indistinct echo of a free jazz sax and trumpet section. Electronic hum transforms into tamboura drone; noise becomes music, and vice versa. Like viewing a colour-field painting or meditating on a mandala, everything changes yet somehow remains the same, such is the transformative, push and pull power of the overarching drone. An additional clue to ‘To Two Tea Roses’ comes from its title, and the dedication to Niblock’s friend, Walter Branchi, the Italian composer and grower of tea roses. Just as intricately subtle gradations of colour demarcate varieties of tea rose (an illustrative selection of late-nineteenth century descriptions is quoted by Niblock in the notes) so the composition seems to progress through a fluctuating flicker of tonal colours, even if the colour - like most of the music - is all in our minds. Phill Niblock’s customary methods of composition derive from his celebrated epiphany when, as a young motorcyclist overtaking a truck on a steep mountain rode, he experienced the near synchronicity of the two vehicles’ engine-noise (“The strong physical presence of the beats resulting from the two engines running at slightly different frequencies put me in such a trance that I nearly rode off the side of the mountain.”), while Catherine Lamb works with the vibrations of microtonal pitches to produce what she calls “interacting spectra”. Using a variant of just intonation, the ancient tuning system revived and explored by mid-century US composers Harry Partch and Ben Johnston, among others, and influenced by non-western and particularly Hindustani sources, Lamb's works typically explore the interaction of sounds in specific physical spaces or rooms. In ‘Parallaxis Forms’, the phonetic timbres of the two vocalists are expanded and developed by the instruments within the ensemble to create a kind of tonal colour-wash or blur, that is both analogous to, yet strikingly different from, the effect in ’To Two Tea Roses’. For Ensemble neoN, the challenge of performing such physically exacting music is partly to make it seem so effortless. "The "charm" or rather the power of Phill's music lies in the physical effort required to produce the drone-y sound that he is after”, says the Ensemble’s Heloisa Amaral, who plays piano on the Niblock recording, and also took part in a recent performance of ‘Parallaxis Forms' at Phil Niblock’s Intermedia loft space in New York. "In the case of 'To Two Tea Roses’, we are basically doing the same movement for twenty-three minutes, practically non stop. You feel it the day after...The only way to overcome or to forget the physical discomfort is to dive as deep as one can into the sound, and just stay there until the end. Put like that, it may sound masochistic but what it does in reality is make you profoundly aware of the connection between movement and sound.” Of the Catherine Lamb, Amaral says, “What is interesting is the immense listening effort required from the musicians, on the one hand because of the unusual intonation, and on the other because our voices dovetail with each other without being precisely notated rhythmically. Playing this piece is a bit like playing Morton Feldman: the listener may experience it as a long, calm and effortless meditation while in reality we musicians are working like crazy." Commissioned by Ensemble neoN and Ny Musikk Oslo for the Only Connect Festival 2016 with support from the Norwegian Arts Council. The piece was recorded at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, 4 and 5 December 2018. Produced by Ensemble neoN and Lasse Marhaug Mixed and mastered by Lasse Marhaug To Two Tea Roses 2012 Live recording from Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, September 9, 2012 at 1PM. Parallaxis Forma 2016 The piece was recorded at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, 4 and 5 December 2018. https://ensembleneon.bandcamp.com/album/niblock-lamb | 2019 | €14.00 |
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| ENSEMBLE NIST-NAH | Spilla | LP | Black Truffle is thrilled to announce Spilla, the second album from Nantes-based Ensemble Nist-Nah, 48 minutes of music for Gamelan, drum kits, wood and metal percussion instruments, and plucked strings that will surely count as one of the most electrifying records you hear this year. Founded by the Australian drummer/percussionist Will Guthrie in 2019, continuing the explorations begun in solo form on Nist-Nah (Black Truffle, 2020), the ensemble (eight or nine core members with occasional guests) has been consistently active in the half-decade since: composing, rehearsing, recording and touring Europe (with a mass of equipment in tow) to great acclaim. Spilla tracks the continuing evolution of the project since the recording of their first album, Elders (Black Truffle, 2022). The two sides of this record document two different iterations of the group, and the members' compositional input has increased: each side contains one piece by a member other than Guthrie. It has become clearer than ever that Ensemble Nist-Nah is not an attempt at a European Gamelan ensemble but rather a hybrid percussion ensemble that uses instruments from a Javanese Gamelan alongside other percussion to perform original music informed by a variety of South East Asian music but also by everything from free jazz to contemporary hip-hop: while Nist-Nah and Elders both featured traditional Javanese pieces, on Spilla the only tune not generated by a member of the group is by Guthrie’s long-time musical hero and occasional collaborator Roscoe Mitchell. The two short pieces that open the record could almost be the two sides of a wild 7” selected to show off what the Ensemble can do. On opener ‘Gerak Maju’, intricately skittering open-snare patterns bounce over clanging metal, chiming bell-like tones and deep gong hits, adapting the rhythm-register connections heard in traditional Gamelan musics—where the lowest pitched sounds are heard least frequently—to a cut-up breakbeat straight off Feed Me Weird Things. ‘Strollabout’ then moves into an entirely different realm of meditative repeating patterns, performed entirely on Chinese, Javanese and Vietnamese gongs. The remaining seven pieces, ranging from three to twelve minutes, offer up a wealth of different percussive, compositional and arrangement possibilities. On ‘Ghostly Klang’, two drumkits mirror each other’s moves, bouncing hats and snares across the stereo field in a way that recalls On the Corner and the jittering hi hat patterns of trap, while slow moving melodies on the tuned instruments add a sense of majesty contrasted by scurrying details in resonant wood. The epic closing track presents a take on Roscoe Mitchell’s ‘Uncle’, performed by the Art Ensemble of Chicago on their classic Urban Bushmen live album. Where the Art Ensemble used Mitchell’s dirge-like melody as a jumping off point for virtuosic improvisational flights, Ensemble Nist-Nah rethink the piece as a near-static dialogue between the monumental, slow-moving sequence of unison tuned percussion notes and a textural cloud that grows in richness and intensity from whispering cymbal rolls into a mass of gong overtones and bowed metal. Beautifully recorded and mixed, Spilla arrives in a sleeve decorated with core member Charles Dubois’ drawings of cymbals and gongs. Against the backdrop of a wider musical landscape dominated by over-produced electronic slop and bland harmonic wallpaper, Ensemble Nist-Nah stands out as a reminder, vital and unpretentious, of the joys and possibilities of human beings playing instruments together. https://willguthrie.bandcamp.com/album/spilla | 2025 | €28.00 |
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| ENTRELACS |
Cynorrodhon
(SOLD OUT) |
7inch | ENTRELACS ist das neue Projekt von YANNICK DAUBY und MICHAEL NORTHAM, auf dieser Single präsentieren sie detailreiche, hochfrequente mikro-drones.. “Originally our label wanted to present YANNICK DAUBY’s solo work, knowing him from some fabulous field-recordings (unfortunately most of them are still unreleased), he came up with a new project he has put together with “organic-drone-master ” MICHAEL NORTHAM, known from several beautiful installations and field-recording releases. Both are present in their new project going under the name of ENTRELACS. Here they enchant us with live improvisation of high-frequency drones & overtones, some concrete microscopic sound-objects as well as a rumbling appearing from time to time. It’s like millions of small sounds condensed together here... very rich in details. The B-Side is more challenging with a much stranger and darker atmosphere using sharp & sawing clear sounds. Somehow this music seems to reveal no “outer” or “objective” rhythm but rather the ‘inner-essence’ of nature itself. The title of this record ‘Cynorrodhon’ is the name of a plant also named "Rosier des chiens" in French. It develops “delicate flowers in spring time, red fruit in autumn and bears spines the whole year.” (Yannick Dauby) Filed under: organic micro/macro-drones. CLEAR VINYL. BEAUTIFUL PRINTED COVERS WITH PICTURE OF CYNORRODHON. EACH COPY HAS A STAMPED DRONE SUN & AN HANDWRITTEN CATALOGUE-NUMBER.” [press release] | 2003 | €6.00 | |
| Underleaf | CD | "Erste Veröffentlichung des Projekts von YANNICK DAUBY und MICHAEL NORTHAM: magischer Konkretismus von flüsternden Blättern und Ästen, die sich mit sanften Gong-Drones und Metallrauschen verknüpfen." [old Drone Rec. info] "A project that was formed by Michael Northam & Yannick Dauby in 2003 and put out only 2 releases: "Underleaf" CDR on Italian label S'agita Recordings and "Cynorrodhon" 7" single on Drone Records. This CD is a reissue of "Underleaf". Sound sources are a walk along a fallen tree in Corbet, Oregon and a conversation with found objects in Paris, France." [label info] www.semperflorens.net "Entrelacs is the sporadically operational collaboration between longtime aQ fave eco-dronologist Michael Northam and phonographer Yannick Dauby, as Northam is perpetually wandering back and forth between North America and Europe, and with Dauby residing in Taiwan. These recordings actually date back to 2003, made "along a fallen tree in Courbet, Oregon and [at] a conversation with found objects in Paris." The Entrelacs project begins with the collection of found objects, continues through the manifestation of tactile sounds from those objects aided by some use of digital manipulation, and concludes when the objects are returned from where they were found. This lends itself well to the discovery of previously unknown sounds in new regions, especially when these two would perform live. On their website, they site an impressive array of atypical sound making devices that would give Matmos more than a few good ideas for their electro-acoustic madness. Amplified chimney sweeps, bowed escargot, obsidian shards, dried chardons, and needles piercing leaves are just a few of the more interesting ones. We're very curious to know where those bowed snails are in the mix! Underleaf unfurls slowly through a slow crunching of organic materials occasionally jolted with the sharp tinkling of what must be those obsidian fragments. Aggregated masses of those textures blossom throughout the 49 minute track in blurry drones that settle in the background of those tactile sounds, eventually giving way to a bowed metal chorale near the 30 minute mark that has all the right Organum / Andrew Chalk references." [Aquarius Records SF] | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| ERLANDSSON, MATS | Minnesmärke | LP | Mats Erlandsson makes his debut on the Swiss label Hallow Ground with »Minnesmärke,« at once a nuanced sonic exploration of the industrial and political history of his native Sweden and a deeply personal album. One of the key figures of the Stockholm drone scene, the prolific composer worked with The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble’s Hillary Jeffery, violinist and long-time friend Gaianeh Pilossian as well as sound artist and frequent collaborator Yair Elazar Glotman for a two-part composition built around tuned sustained tones performed by electronic and acoustic instruments that were combined with field recordings in order to evoke a psychedelic state of reflection, a dream-like elegy for the acoustic properties of the former iron ore mine Ställbergs Gruva where the music has been conceived and recorded. Following up on releases on labels such as Hallow Ground label mates Kali Malone and Maria W Horn’s XKatedral imprint, »Minnesmärke« is Erlandsson's most accomplished work yet. Originally a commissioned work by the Non Existent Center for a month-long artist residency in Ställbergs Gruva last Summer, »Minnesmärke« conceptually picks up on the socio-political and economic history of the Bergslagen region where the mine is situated. After mining operations had been on-going for decades prior, in the Industrial Age iron became one of the country’s largest exports, making the mining industry an integral part of the country’s progression towards a socialdemocratic welfare state in the years after World War II. With the rise of neoliberalism and the simultaneous erosion of the welfare state however, the mines around the region started closing, which resulted in the surrounding community losing its relative prosperity. Erlandsson’s interest in this story though does not exclusively stem from the historical significance of the mine, that has been re-opened in 2012 as a centre for cultural activities and critical thought. In fact, his grandfather was born and raised in the vicinity of it and thus his life - and, by extension, his grandson’s - was inextricably linked to its fate and the ebbs and flows of the industrial development in the area. It’s no surprise then that the two parts of »Minnesmärke,« which translates to »memorial« or »monument,« is marked by a sense of dislocation and dissociation. »Working in Ställberg was a somewhat surreal experience from the point of view of a musician some one hundred years later,« says the artist. »Being in that environment makes you view time from the side - since the place remains the same it accentuates the deep chasm that separates my perspective from those of my relatives, while at the same time providing a form of intimacy with them.« This naturally shaped the recording process, which saw Erlandsson create an interaction between the acoustic and the electronic, the human and the machinic as well as the natural environment and the technology that has shaped it as much as it has been shaped by it. A combination of synthetic and recorded sound sources was processed by reamping it in various rooms of the vast mining complex. The resulting hybrid field recordings were transferred to tape and have then been treated extensively. An arrangement for Pilossian’s violin, Jeffery’s tuba and trombone playing as well as Glotman’s parts on double bass were recorded separately and similarly manipulated to create an expanded chamber ensemble with a wider range and an ability to transcend the usual temporal bounds of the instruments. The outcome of this intricate working process calls to mind Phill Niblock’s most dense compositions, the iconic yet subtle work of Pauline Oliveros in the field of deep listening or even Jóhann Jóhannsson’s evocative examination of similarly politically charged topics on the »The Miners’ Hymns« OST amongst others. While Erlandsson shows his knack for creating emotive dynamics by bringing the acoustic recordings into a pulsating flow, the manipulated field recordings are used as a counterpoint throughout both parts of the composition, commenting on and fostering the ever-shifting dramaturgy of the record. Most importantly though, the 41 minutes are marked by a continuous tension that almost feels tangible. It’s the looming shadow of history, materialising in the form of a monument, a memorial for the past generations that have etched their hopes and aspirations into the walls of Ställbergs Gruva. Hilary Jeffery - Trombone, Tuba Gaianeh Pilossian - Violin Yair Elazar Glotman - Double Bass Mats Erlandsson - Everything Else Mastering by Andreas Lupo Lubich Artwork by Marijn Degenaar https://hallowground.bandcamp.com/album/mats-erlandsson-minnesm-rke | 2020 | €21.50 |
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| ESMERINE | Everything was forever until it was no more | LP | Deluxe 180gram vinyl edition comes in a foil-embossed and die-cut cardstock jacket with printed inner sleeve and additional 12x12 art cards featuring the collages of Maciek Szczerbowski. All the art interacts with the die-cut jacket framing. Edition of 300. Rooted in a distinct and immediately identifiable sound_with the cello of Rebecca Foon (Saltland, Set Fire To Flames, Thee Silver Mt Zion) and the marimba of ex-Godspeed You! Black Emperor percussionist Bruce Cawdron at its core_Esmerine has long embroidered emotive chamber works using threads of post-classical, post-rock, Minimalism, neo-Baroque, jazz, pop and a wide array of folk traditions. Multi-instrumentalist Brian Sanderson, who joined the group in 2012, has furthered Esmerine's melodic and ethnomusicological sensibility ever since, expanding the ensemble's palette as its third core member with guitars, ngoni, ekonting, hulusi, brass horns of all sorts, and more. Since 2003, six stately and filmic instrumental albums have inscribed compositional landscapes through epigrammatic miniatures, longform multi-movement chronicles, and all manner of evocative musical prosody between. Marked by an inimitably turbid yet tempered pastoralism, alternately lit by dappled dawn and disquieted dusk, Esmerine's musical narratives balance asceticism and romanticism, melancholy and hope, stillness and wanderlust. Esmerine now shares Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More, its seventh full-length album and first in five years. The band surprise-dropped the full album digitally on 06 May 2022, with the CD and Deluxe 180gram LP editions hitting stores on official release date 26 August 2022. Following an acclaimed run of mid-career records on Constellation through the 2010s_the last three of which have all been finalists or winners of Juno Awards for Instrumental Album of the Year and/or Album Packaging of the Year_Esmerine began working on new music at decade's end. Under the auspices of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, and a summer 2019 residency at Le Château de Monthelon (an artist commune in France where the band has cherished long-standing spiritual, creative, and personal connections), compositional seeds were planted_and then pandemic rooted everyone in place. In between lockdown waves, at the respective rural Québec homesteads of Cawdron and Foon, longtime co-producer Jace Lasek (The Bernard Lakes) began capturing the band in various stripped-down configurations with spartan remote equipment. More fulsome arrangement and overdub sessions at Foon's converted barn during the summer of 2021 brought the album to full fruition_where a notable increase in the use of acoustic piano also poured forth, with just about every band member having a go. The record also signals the definitive integration of bassist Philippe Charbonneau_having joined Esmerine as a touring member pre-pandemic, he plays throughout the album on upright and electric bass, with turns on piano and synth, as well as sound design contributions via tape echo and other processing. Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More grapples with the existential tensions between atmosphere and airlessness, seclusion and claustrophobia, forbearance and coalescence. In many ways it is one of Esmerine's most restrained records. Only a few passages are driven by full percussion. There is palpably less Sturm and Drang or overt crescendos compared to its recent predecessors. The new album roils with a different sort of dynamic intensity, where instrumental densities ebb and flow within an overtonal centre, melding into each other with gauzy timbral warmth, sometimes tracing fleeting tendrils outwards, but always rotating around a saturnine gravitational force. Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More is like a dark forest lit by a closely-orbiting opalescent planet; it could be the alternate score to Von Trier's Melancholia or Cormac McCarthy's The Road. https://esmerine.bandcamp.com/album/everything-was-forever-until-it-was-no-more | 2022 | €27.50 |
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| ESOTERIC | Subconscious Dissolution into the Continuum | CD | Langsamer Doom Metal mit extrem melancholischem & düsteren Einschlag von dieser britischen Band, die einen recht einzigartigen Stil begründet haben, die Gitarrenarbeit erinnert an GODFLESH oder mitunter gar COCTEAU TWINS, dann wieder gibt es disharmonische & abgründige Arrangements, immer langsam, schleppend und schwer... an den Gesang muss man sich vielleicht etwas gewöhnen, aber wir meinen der ESOTERIC Sound kann auch für Drone & Dark Ambient Hörer durchaus interessant sein.. "...ESOTERIC befinden sich irgendwo auf der Kreuzung von Noise, Psychedelia und extremem Doom Metal. Da sie mit Funeral Doom Geschwindigkeit mit stark verzerrtem Bass, einer Steinmauer aus Gitarren, verfolgenden Samples und haarsträubenden Vocals spielen, ist ESOTERIC’s Sound mit einem schlimmen LSD-Trip oder einer Überdosis einer harten Droge vergleichbar. Sie sind zweifellos die düsterste, selbstmörderischste, psychedelischste und verwüstendste derzeit existierende Band und schaffen es, mit ihren bizarren Soundlandschaften gleichzeitig zu entzücken und zu bedrücken. Und wenn euch diese Beschreibung nicht ausreicht, um euch ein Bild zu machen, kann ich euch nur empfehlen reinzuhören." [Ben Meulemann] "It's never an easy job to review an Esoteric release. They have gained such a reputation for being one of the most unique and extreme bands in the Doom spectre that it is hard to oppose, they are almost untouchable - and with good reason. The fact is that "Subconscious Dissolution Into The Continuum" is not an easy listen. It's devoid of any pleasant human feeling; it's savagely cold, heavy and droning. It'll put you in a miserable state - yes, it is as fascinating as it seems. The sombre torturous atmosphere of this album left me speechless. This is not typical Funeral Doom; it is basically as slow as you probably expect, but there's this whole psychedelic sense, and really raw and mechanical distortion. As opposed to that more ethereal sound of other bands that rely on keyboards and clean vocals, for example, like Pantheist or Skepticism. Esoteric is closer to bands like The Funeral Orchestra, with their frightening sound and disharmonic, multi-layered structuring [...] Esoteric may seem monotonous at first listen, but you have to let yourself be absorbed by its aesthetics, you can't listen to this on just any day. Once you get past beyond its fever-inducing slowness you'll be ready to realise the true power and beauty of "Subconscious Dissolution Into The Continuum" and actually enjoy everything about it. Even the same slowness that used to put you off. This is truly a devastating and intense experience that I recommend highly to anyone who can appreciate extreme Funeral Doom Metal." [Passenger / Metalstorm] www.season-of-mist.com | 2004 | €13.00 |
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| ESPLENDOR GEOMETRICO | Veritatis Splendor | CD | "SECOND REMASTERED EDITION (nov.2008). Veritatis Splendor (1994) is the first Esplendor Geométrico album recorded in the nineties, after the split work with Most Significant Beat -Control remoto 1.0 -. It sets the beginning of a new period of the band, where the incorporation of digital technology, synths and rythms, can be felt. Veritatis keeps the typical characteristics of EG sound but with a greater production, complex rhythmic structures, and most of all, it achieves an original and personal fusion of classic Industrial sound with elements of tribal music, and also others of avant-garde techno. It has a bigger variety of registers than in their newer repertoire, ranging from the hypnotism of "La radio al día", the classical sound of the duo in "Poder de ruptura", and the bright dance rhythms of "Ensayo de compresión", or "La meta del servicio", an exciting sequence really surprising, with some tribal screams. It is noticeable the constant presence of radiophonic emissions throughout all the album. A classical sold out since 1995 and now available again, remastered and with different artwork." [label info] www.geometrikrecords.com | 2008 | €13.50 |
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| ETANT DONNES | La Vue | CD | "Etant Donnes is a French duo named after Marcel Duchamp's last major work. The group consists of brothers Marc and Eric Hurtado, born in Morocco and working mainly as performance artists and musicians. Their sound can be described as a mix of field recordings, found sounds and sometimes whispered, sometimes violent vocals. They describe their sounds like this: "Through Marc and Eric, it is the volume of each word that becomes an object-sculpture, together with the power of their bodies expressing their voices. Each event is a scream - indeed even the glissando - of the strength of the word that sometimes abruptly becomes a rock, a solid surface, not in the least fluvial, as is the narrative of a tale, novel or poetic epic. With both of them, there is no more trace of ancient prosodies, no more trace of the incomprehensible Sainte-Beuve who could claim: "I have to collect a volume of prose". The word, the voice, the volume take shape with each other, unveiling a theatre that theatre usually ignores, which has given it such things as a Samuel Beckett's Fin de Partie." Over the years Etant Donnes have collaborated with people like Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira, Alan Vega and Genesis P-Orridge. La Vue was the first ever recording, dating back to 1979 and originally issued on French Bain Total label (run by Philippe Fichot of Die Form). For this re-issue, the band has found a longer version than was previously available, so this is a unique chance to hear Etant Donnes in their earliest form in a version that has previously been unpublished." [label info] | 2019 | €15.00 |
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| L'opposition Et Les Cases Conjuguees Sont Reconciliees | CD | "Etant Donnes is a French duo named after Marcel Duchamp's last major work. The group consists of brothers Marc and Eric Hurtado, born in Morocco and working mainly as performance artists and musicians. Their sound can be described as a mix of field recordings, found sounds and sometimes whispered, sometimes violent vocals. They describe their sounds like this: 'Through Marc and Eric, it is the volume of each word that becomes an object-sculpture, together with the power of their bodies expressing their voices. Each event is a scream -- indeed even the glissando -- of the strength of the word that sometimes abruptly becomes a rock, a solid surface, not in the least fluvial, as is the narrative of a tale, novel or poetic epic. With both of them, there is no more trace of ancient prosodies, no more trace of the incomprehensible Sainte-Beuve who could claim: 'I have to collect a volume of prose'. The word, the voice, the volume take shape with each other, unveiling a theatre that theatre usually ignores, which has given it such things as a Samuel Beckett's Fin de Partie.' Over the years Etant Donnes have collaborated with people like Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira, Alan Vega and Genesis P-Orridge. L'Opposition Et Les Cases Conjuguées Sont Réconciliées was the band's second album, originally released in 1981 on French label Bain Total, run by die Form, on cassette only. For this CD re-issue we have added a long bonus track not on the original album." www.klanggalerie.com/gg304 | 2019 | €15.00 |
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| Cinq Portes Soudées | CD | https://www.klanggalerie.com/gg472 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxfX574peL8 Etant Donnes is a French duo named after Marcel Duchamp's last major work. The group consists of brothers Marc and Eric Hurtado, born in Morocco and working mainly as performance artists and musicians. Their sound can be described as a mix of field recordings, found sounds and sometimes whispered, sometimes violent vocals. They describe their sounds like this: "Through Marc and Eric, it is the volume of each word that becomes an object-sculpture, together with the power of their bodies expressing their voices. Each event is a scream - indeed even the glissando - of the strength of the word that sometimes abruptly becomes a rock, a solid surface, not in the least fluvial, as is the narrative of a tale, novel or poetic epic. With both of them, there is no more trace of ancient prosodies, no more trace of the incomprehensible Sainte-Beuve who could claim: "I have to collect a volume of prose". The word, the voice, the volume take shape with each other, unveiling a theatre that theatre usually ignores, which has given it such things as a Samuel Beckett's Fin de Partie." Over the years Etant Donnes have collaborated with people like Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira, Alan Vega and Genesis P-Orridge. Cinq Portes Soudées was the band's fifth album, originally released on Die Form's Bain Total label in 1984 on cassette only. For this CD re-issue we have added a long bonus track not on the original album. Full tracklist: 1. Cinq Portes Soudées Part 1 2. Cinq Portes Soudées Part 2 3. Music from the film Des autres terres souples Part 4 Das fünfte Studioalbum (1984) des französischen Experimental- / Performance-Duos Etant Donnes "Cinq Portes Soudées" erscheint erstmalig als CD im Digipack-Format und mit Bonustrack auf Klanggalerie. 1980 in Grenoble von den beiden Brüdern Eric und Marc Hurtado ins Leben gerufen, legte das nach einem Werk des französisch-amerikanischen Dadaisten und Surrealisten Marcel Duchamp benannte Experimental- / Performance-Duo, das seitdem mit Genregrößen wie Genesis P-Orridge, Alan Vega, Michael Gira, Mark Cunningham und Lydia Lunch zusammenarbeitete, schon ein Jahr später sein Albumdebüt "L‘Opposition Et Les Cases Conjugues Sont Rconcil" vor. "Cinq Portes Soudées", ein zeitlos spannender Mix aus Industrial / Noise, Avantgarde- Klängen und Musique Concrete, war das fünfte Album der Band aus dem Jahr 1984, das ursprünglich auf dem französischen Label Bain Total (unter Leitung von Philippe Fichot von Die Form) nur als Kassette veröffentlicht wurde. Für diese CD-Erstauflage wurde ein langer Bonustrack hinzugefügt, der nicht auf dem Originalalbum enthalten ist ("Music From The Film Des Autres Terres Souples Part 4"). | 2024 | €15.00 |
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| EX COCAINE / YELLOW SWANS | Split | LP | "Two-storied USA duo institutions share war stories across twelve miles of raw wax, and the rest of us are lucky enough to eavesdrop. Missoula, Montana's Ex-Cocaine continue roping that weird rambling wind that seems to stir the soul and keep America mellow, and the pair of anthems they jam out here encapsulates the whole breadth of their sea-to-shining-sea cosmosis. Plainsong guitar lassoes around loose-limbed percussion flame-fanning, building and burning till a boss bonfire glows on the horizon, then they close out the side with a ragged and earnest Meat Puppets cover that's become a live staple of late. Real and roamin'. On the B, Yellow Swans channel a supreme slice of psychedelic eulogy that cuts twice as deep with the knowledge that after many a summer (they birthed in 2002-ish) dies the Swan. Pete and Gabe's DYS saga has spanned the decade and their impending non-existence will be lamented all over the world, so the more 11th hour record books they want to stencil with their electric synergies, the better for all of us. R.I.P.eace out. In a stunning "sexy legs" kaleidoscopic masterpiece art jacket by Religious Knife Maya Miller. Half on bleached olive vinyl, half on black. Edition of 600." [label info] | 2008 | €15.50 |
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| EYELESS IN GAZA | Plague of Years : Songs and Instrumentals 1980-2006 | CD | 'Songs and Instrumentals 1980-2006'. Noch eine EIG-Zusammenstellung, die aber mehr auf die experimentelle Seite zielt, 21 Stücke die die ganze Bandbreite der Band aufzeigen, mit einigen sehr raren Stücken. Special low priced ! "One of the great bands that emerged post punk... They were truly unique.... I still love them..." [Alan Mc Gee / March 2005] "this CD deals with two sides of the group. first is its deeply lyrical vein, with summits like See Red and Lights of April, tracks that have almost never been included on "best-of" projects, despite the fact that they represent some of the most moving songs these musicians ever wrote. this collection also explores the group's more adventurous side through a number of instrumental pieces. this aspect of their output is little known and often neglected, even though it was there from their very beginnings. these two combining currents, where experimentation precedes lyricism (and the other way around), turn this album into a truly new way of (re)discovering Eyeless in Gaza. This unique architecture creates the impression that each side strengthens the other one's presence. probably for the first time ever, the 21 tracks so redistributed provide the band with irrefutable arguments toward its rebirth. Yes, Eyeless in Gaza is one of the most underrated groups. in this world of ours, will integrity finally pay off ?" [label info] "Plague of Years is a single-disc retrospective by Peter Becker and Martyn Bates, aka Eyeless in Gaza. The duo began recording with minimal instrumentation -- Becker's piano and keyboards, some primitive drum machines, a guitar here and there, as well as a traditional drum kit (or at least the snares and cymbals) -- and made music in the post-punk era that was both challenging and hideously beautiful. The reason for that description comes from the sound of Bates' voice: nasal, emotionally overwrought, and often flat, it was a voice that expressed things in his utterly naked and poetic words that the heart could comprehend, but that the intellect often could not. Long before Morrissey ever warbled, Bates ripped the door off the closet of his fear, longing, love, and disappointment, framing it with colors that held many shades of gray, but also held out the glimmer of gold for hope. There are 21 cuts on this set, beginning with their earliest tracks from 1980's debut album, Photographs as Memories ("John of Patmos"), and the amazing "Every Which Way" from 1981's Caught in Flux, issued by Cherry Red, and moving through their utterly brilliant albums Drumming the Beating Heart, Song of the Beautiful Wanton, Orange Ice & Wax Crayons, and Back from the Rains. There are cuts from compilations, such as "To Steven" and "Sun-Like-Gold," that appeared as two parts of a three-part suite on Sub Rosa's Myths. Instructions., singles such as "County Bizarre" on NDN, and the gorgeous "Falling Leaf/Fading Flower" from the 12" Pale Hands I Loved So Well, which was a bonus disc tucked inside the Drumming the Beating Heart CD. There are also cuts here from Bitter Apples, the album they released for World Serpent in 1995, and Saw You in Reminding Pictures from the Ambivalent Scale label. This is but a taste, of course, since Eyeless in Gaza needed to be taken album by album, but one honest encounter with one of their songs will send the listener scrambling for more. The music here is beauty that is so out of place in this world, it can scarcely be borne." [Thom Jurek / Allmusic.com] | 2006 | €12.00 |
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| Summer Salt & Subway Sun | CD | Nach vielen Jahren erscheint zum Jahresende 2006 endlich auch NEUES Material des legendären britischen Duos von MARTYN BATES und PETER BECKER ! "Wyrd Folk" ist in aller Munde, aber EYELESS IN GAZA haben Folk- und experimentell beeinflusste Musik schon seit ihrer Existenz gemacht und einen einmaligen Stil etabliert... die 11 neuen Stücke sind z.T. erstaunlich spröde, einige wirken eher sessionhaft-improvisiert mit langen Instrumentalparts und kontrastieren aufs beste mit den so verehrten melancholischen Gesangstücken von MARTYN BATES.. "Originally, the intention was to put together a double album, centering around an “escalated excitement with the idea of cities as new, blank texts – contrasted with the kind of sense of alienation and loss evoked in such works as J.G. Ballard’s Concrete Island.” The completed Summer Salt & Subway Sun works as a kind of survival or synthesis of these ideas – and also as an illustration of Eyeless In Gaza as ‘studio animal’, contrasted with their (newly re-discovered) life as a regularly gigging band. (– The band has been off the road since the late 80’s, but have recently gigged in Bruxelles, London, and Athens – with forthcoming gigs in Italy, Iceland and the U.S.). The album thus neatly encapsulates two key aspects of the music Eyeless in Gaza are presently creating – offering a balance of atmos/acoustic material and sprawling, rhythmic/semi-improvised spidery electric pieces. This has resulted in a heady blend of song based material juxtaposed with a distinctive brand of kaleidoscopic, “cityscaping” filmic musics. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is the latter, primarily instrumental pieces which gleefully reflect the band’s recent activity in cinema – in Patrice Chereau’s controversial Intimacy, and Jim Jarmusch collaborator Glen McQuaid’s poetic, sub Hammer short, The Resurrection Apprentice. After the plaudits attributed to the 25th Anniversary release of No Noise compilation (“They were one of the great bands that emerged (from the) post punk (period)” – Alan McGee) Eyeless In Gaza continue to display a characteristic “fierce independence” of style and attitude – with the release of Summer Salt & Subway Sun, issued via the band’s own A-Scale label...." [website info] | 2006 | €13.50 |
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| Summer Salt & Subway Sun | do-CD | Erweiterte Neu-Auflage des letzten EIG-Albums, kommt mit einer kompletten Bonus-CD in einer dickwandigen / überformatigen Box mit 16 Seiten Booklet! 600 Stück. "Martyn Bates offers the following commentary on this huge set of recordings. "For me, one of the key impulses at work behind this set of recordings is an understanding of "The City", where individuals are clearly a microcosm within the macrocosm -- a distinct sense of a 'person' as a player on a stage with activity going on below them, around them, above them and also within them. The feeling is of something at work that is always subterranean … a sense of the invisible machinations of men and Gods. This is evidently something material -- namely, work being done in the here and now. It is an expression of something non-corporeal, however … of something bigger than 'spiritual', you might say. And yet it is holistic, and 'of the body' somehow. For me, this is a 'big picture' that makes perfect sense: this context of living, as a body and a sprit -- where the THE CITY is resolutely an outward manifestation of the human psyche. This warming and awe inspiring thought was with me during the writing, arranging and recording of this mammoth set of recordings." [EIG mailing list] "Standard 2CD edition. Standard edition of 600 copies are packaged in a deluxe full color book bound box, 16 page lyric booklet , full color book bound cd cases. Eyeless are an earful. Messrs Bates et Becker have miraculously come trembling through the decades musically unscathed. And yay though it is within the office of many bands to have precedents in other bands, EIG really only sound like Scriabin saw. Or like Stonehenge weeps. Or like cumulus clouds unite to make bunny shapes. Caught in flux, as usual, EIG are absolutely in top form. Martyn is in brilliant voice and sounds like an angel, and the harmonic house in which Peter and Martyn domicile this angel is the Taj Mahal. Or is it as simple and small as a poor carpenter’s cup, which some would call a grail? Either way, this is dope! The familiar old chunking guitar and baleful organ-synth are there as well as the swelling minor chord miasma of texture and noise that no human could possibly evoke. Oh wait, that’s right, humans ARE doing it! Care to go on sublime, long-form instrumental excursions through the centre of the Green Man’s bindu? EIG got it! Been itching to rock out to well written, post punk pop tunes? EIG got it!! Have you and your family been craving that astrally projected experimental fondue pot of swirling beauty and skewed rhythm that makes you feel like you’ve crawled back to the womb and the best chill room ever was there? EIG got it!!! Have you ever wondered if anyone can combine virtuoso musicianship and studio effects in a truly magical way that doesn’t make it seem like everything has been CGI’d in? EIG GOT IT!!!! Ebb and flow; high and low; cooked and raw. See Martyn. See Peter. See Eyeless. GO!!! Pulchritudinous all the way…as in ravishing…as in splendorous…as in metal pipes rattled in a driveway while someone is playing the piano. So many soft little things. So much perfectly appointed emptiness. Such sweetly crafted, quiet headbangers. Prosetry in words and music. Songs and un-songs. Some cadences and atmospheres even smell a bit like cosmic third stream jazz. This must be the 4th stream. Float down it. For once 2 CD’s isn’t even enough. How can it be that 2 people have made their umpteenth truly sublime album? Rumour has it they bought the stratosphere." [label info] www.blrrecords.com | 2008 | €19.00 |
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| Everyone feels like a Stranger | CD | "The edition is limited to 1000 copies and as with other Eyeless In Gaza albums, we do not know when or if there will be more editions coming, so get it now. The album is song-focussed and the running time is 46 mins 52 secs. The 12 tracks are: 1. Voices, 2. Dance of Hours, 3. Much Wants More, 4. Morning Singing, 5. Seeing/Book of Days, 6. Among the Gathering Skies, 7. So You Appear, 8. Slow Eve, 9. Childhood Knives, 10. Dreaming Body, 11. If I Could Live as the Sun Does, 12. Endless Trees. Dance of Hours, Childhood Knives and So You Appear have appeared in pre-view versions on radio programs and on YouTube, but have been perfected for the final release here. Morning Singing is a new take on the Martyn Bates solo classic from 1982, but since Eyeless In Gaza has performed this live as a band several times lately, this reflects how it is interpreted these days as a song by Eyeless In Gaza. Martyn Bates writes about the new album: Through the Summer of 2011 while we were putting together the tunes for Everyone Feels Like a Stranger, an unexpected pattern began to emerge. Clearly, as we were recording and completing pieces, much of this new work was showing a distinct prejudice /alignment to the form of songs, as opposed to instrumental explorations and improvisations, pictures without words. Now of course, all of the music we make has a story to it – much as we are all stories, because, well … that’s all we have really: stories beautiful / terrifying / ecstatic / anecdotal / awake / asleep etc. etc. These particular song-stories all naturally feed into Eyeless In Gaza directly, and, as far as I’m concerned, the songs then go on to take on a life of their own. That being said, I was already aware that these particular songs seemed to have arrived coloured with something that struck me as being particularly inward looking and reflective, for the most part. It was Peter Becker who first suggested that we title this album of songs Everyone Feels Like a Stranger – and initially I was unsure, as I felt that somehow this phrase ran the risk of conveying the ‘wrong kind’ of negative connotations. However, I see now that he was right. What we have here within these songs is a collective meditation upon the double-edged sense of exhilaration and closeness that can occur when one enters that peculiar state of mind and being that being alone can sometimes give. Where to ‘feel like a stranger’ oddly brings about a wayward sense of subtle happiness or comfort. And where distance and separation somehow connect with a sudden elevation and insight, and link in with an unsettling sense of security within that isolation. Where being ‘alone’ takes on an almost religious intensity .Where you are connected to the Quiet, the calm, the silence. Where Everyone Feels Like a Stranger, true … but, at the same time, no-one ever feels like a dispassionate collaborator. Dance of Hours – a YouTube film directed by David Black for Black Creative Limited with additional footage from Elizabeth Bates, recorded at Mont St. Michel out of the shores of Normandy in late August 2011. My own initial reaction to Everyone Feels Like a Stranger – not as negative in mood as the title might suggest. This is an album that is hard to tell why one should hold in high esteem, but one should, because it is greater in some ways than previous albums. It shows a deep respect for the song format and that is at the core here. I might find more improvisational material more exciting, but here they really bring out the best of what is central to making music – melody/harmony, wonderful voice, thoughtfulness, inventiveness, atmosphere, colouring and all without sounding presumptuous, nor trying to live up to what others might regard as great, but rather define it. An album not to be missed!" [website info] www.eyelessingaza.com | 2011 | €13.00 |
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| Sun Blues | CD | "An album of unusual songs, sounding both exotic and as a new take on things, but somehow familiar and the music comes together in a way only Eyeless In Gaza music can. The music often sounds stern and sometimes deeply melancholic, with exciting and successful soundscapes. I am sure this album will stand out as one of the more memorable albums from last 10 years, but we never know where they go from here. Always an exciting adventure to follow as it unravels! Listen to Tamarisk (early version) on YouTube, which gives an idea of what to expect from the album, even if the album cover quite a big territory: https://youtu.be/Lv1uXVByACw Martyn Bates : e-guitars/voices/clarinet/kybds. Peter Becker : bass/drums/e-guitars/voice/percussions/slide-guitar/piano/wasp/drum-machine/tapes/all engineering & recording. ❖ First album of all-new Eyeless In Gaza material since 2014’s Mania Sour. ❖ Completed August 2016 recorded at A-Scale studios Warwickshire, the Bates/Becker produced Sun Blues sees Eyeless In Gaza offering a 2016 styled distant cousin to 1982’s classic Pale Hands I Loved So Well. In an environment where the studio is very much a musical instrument, the band deliver a collection of filigree musics created via an organic osmosis, layering techniques, together with a painstakingly considered collaging of all elements. Here are instrumental discoveries & improvisations/pictures painted with words – songs that have an inbuilt claustrophobia and sonic density – playfully investigating the soundworlds/territories of the kosmische. ❖ On Sun Blues, of particular note is the combination of Martyn Bates’ at times melancholic, sometimes passionate vocals – which come across exceptionally strongly – teamed with the extraordinary, mercurial bass guitar work of Peter Becker. Sun Blues album would seem to be a groundbreaking distillation of everything that Bates & Becker have ever produced during their 36 year lifespan. Quite simply, Sun Blues is already being acclaimed as the definitive Eyeless In Gaza album." www.eyelessingaza.com "Eyeless in Gaza have had several trajectories since their original lo-fi outings in Coventry and Nuneaton in the early 1980s. The duo of Peter Becker and Martyn Bates seemed to be heading towards pop at one point, but en route diverted through textural soundscapes, improvisation, avant-folk, sonic experiment and occult rock; indeed, they still visit these places. Picture the Day is a well-overdue compilation that actually covers all the band’s output, including both the Cherry Red releases from the 1980s and the self-released albums on Ambivalent Scale that have been issued since the 1990s. The story of course starts with Ambivalent Scale and a 7 inch single, following some cassette releases. The edgy, synth-driven ‘Kodak Ghosts Run Amok’ is tucked away here in the middle of the first CD (unfortunately the superb ‘Feeling’s Mutual’ from the B-side isn’t) which selects from the band’s Cherry Red releases. Listeners are edged into the music with some of the more accessible end of things, a quick drift through some folkier songs and then the gorgeous emotive instrumental ‘Falling Leaf/Fading flower’ before restlessly moving on, from genre to genre, or more often falling between genres. The second CD features the Ambivalent Scale recordings, and is a similar mix of work. If more recent work isn’t as familiar to me it’s mainly due to growing up and not being able to spend time with new music in the same way that being a teenage and then a student previously facilitated with the original LPs. It’s clear I need to get my act together and have a relisten – this stuff is great. Together, the two CDs paint a broad, involving picture of this peculiar and engaging band. I like the fact it in no way pretends to be a ‘best of’ or ‘greatest hits’, but simply showcases some of the highlights from their numerous releases. I’d like to have seen the uplifting brassy pop of ‘Sun Bursts In’ here, but otherwise it is a perfect snapshot of one of my favourite bands, lovingly compiled and superbly sequenced. Eyeless’ new CD, Sun Blues, shares one track, ‘Tamarisk’ with Picture the Day and is a set of new music from the more experimental end of things. Having said that it’s more about mood and texture than the wild excesses of the band’s early output, although ‘Ill-Star’ is intense and loud, with some great honking sax in the pulverising maelstrom of sound. Elsewhere, Martyn Bate’s warm vocals are positioned within rich, dense music that both propels and entwines the songs and the listener. There are also three instrumental vignettes, two back to back in the centre of the album, the third a coda or finale. It takes some time to truly ‘hear’ the layers and complexities of this album, in the same way it takes time to grasp the width, breath and achievement of Eyeless in Gaza’s musical history. But time spent will be rewarded: Eyeless in Gaza remain one of the most accomplished and interesting bands to have emerged from the music-making underground post punk and postpunk. Here’s to further decades of experiment and beguilement." [Rupert Loydell/ International Times] "After nearly half a century performing together, Martyn Bates and Peter Becker must seem like a married couple – finishing each other’s sentences, telepathically sensing where their individual muse is leading them and effortlessly hopping on and enjoying the ride. With an extensive catalogue of well over two-dozen releases, they still sound as fresh and invigorating as that ground breaking EP, “Kodak Ghosts Run Amok” that started everything way back in 1980. Looking back to those early releases, the duo suggest their latest is a “distant cousin” to 1982’s classic Pale Hands I Loved So Well. But this is another century, and technological advances have enabled them to use their studio almost as an additional instrument, layering sounds, playing with various improvisational techniques, and offering, perhaps, a third pair of ears and hands to the proceedings. Yet at its heart is the combination of Bates’ breathy, almost theatrical vocal styling (a little Antony Hegarty, a tad Andy McCluskey) and intelligent, thought-provoking lyrics, revealing numerous layers of meaning and intent as each verse trickles off his soothing, emotional delivery, and Becker’s inquisitive bass lines, harmonic tape manipulations, and various percussive effects. While tracks like ‘Solar Logic’ may initially sound like a simple love ballad, further listening reveals intricate harmonic vocal interweaving, funky, almost African percussives, and the perfect placement of bells and tape manipulations that demonstrate how much the studio has been welcomed in to add lustre to their creative juices. ‘Tamarisk’ envelops the listener in swirling effects and percussive embellishments that wouldn’t be out of place on a Peter Gabriel album, while ‘New Take/Notkar’ offers a harsher splash of ice water in the face, evolving out of an almost industrial percussive backbeat and syncopated guitars that push the listener towards Faust or Nine Inch Nails gut crunchers. But never ones to fall into a rut, the following ‘Longing Song’ is an uplifting, lilting lover’s plea that rises from the ashes of desolation “To bring the morning alive...to be amazed/n you’ll be mine....” The duo occasionally include improvisational instrumentals in their albums, and the cinematic, provocative and evocative ‘Wind, Sand, Sea & Stars’ pretty much covers the gamut of the external universe – a breakneck journey through land, sea and sky, while ‘Unborn’ traverses the inner universe, wallowing, swallowing mouthfuls of life-giving amniotic fluids on the 9-month journey into a cold, shattering life that no one asked for or had any choice in bringing to fruition. But before we get too deep, let’s enjoy the sprinkling, sparkling, shimmering flourishes of duelling ukuleles, thumb pianos and glockenspiel on the celestial ‘Juniper’, and the soft, reflective instrumental closer ‘Long Gon Pa’, full of meticulous slide and acoustic guitar and Becker’s fascinating, dreamy devices and tape loops. An imaginative, emotional, headswirling buzz to wrap up another fascinating release from the always reliable duo, who never fail to excite us while eliciting nuances of emotional responses that are all-too-rare in this cookie-cutter, commercial world of Voices, Idols, and other nameless, brainless distractions." [Jeff Penczak/Ptolemaic Terrascope, November 2016] | 2016 | €13.00 |
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| Skeletal Framework (The Cherry Red Recordings 1981-1986) | 5 x CD BOX | • The complete Eyeless In Gaza Cherry Red recordings, compiled and curated by Martyn Bates and Pete Becker. • 5CD clamshell box set featuring sleevenotes and extensive song-by-song reminisces by Martyn Bates. • Their entire 1981-1986 output for the label re-worked into five thematic suites by the band, bringing new life and light to familiar and much-loved material. • Includes the classics ‘Invisibility’, ‘Veil Like Calm’, Kodak Ghosts Run Amok’, ‘New Risen’ and many more. • A brilliant introduction for the curious and a fascinating re-visit for long-term fans. During the first half of the 1980s, few artists cut a path as individual and self-contained as Eyeless In Gaza. Over six albums and several classic singles, the duo followed their muse in multiple different directions at once, unrestrained by any desire to fit in with whatever was going on around them. Bursts of primal electronica sat comfortably alongside reflective ballads and lo-fi recordings and polished productions were equally valued, all of it pulled together by Martyn Bates’ unmistakable vocals and a singular, minimalist approach to songwriting. Curated by Eyeless In Gaza, and accompanied by Martyn Bates’ song-by-song reflections on their work, ‘Skeletal Framework’ presents the band’s entire Cherry Red output re-cast as five themed suites (or perhaps even playlists), each reflecting one of their many sides. The group’s best-known work sits comfortably alongside deeper album cuts and rarities with interesting results, as the duo guide us back and forth across recordings spanning almost six years of one of Cherry Red’s most distinctive artists. Track Listing: DISC ONE VOLUME ONE: LOOKING DAGGERS (ROCK and RHYTHMIC) 1 Looking Daggers 2 Skeletal Framework 3 Half Light 4 September Hills 5 The Feelings Mutual 6 In Your Painting 7 Fixation 8 Continual 9 Scale Amiss 10 Faceless 11 The Decoration 12 Voice From The Tracks 13 Whitewash 14 True Colour 15 Out From The Day-To-Day 16 Plague Of Years 17 Taking Steps (Original Version) 18 A Keepsake 19 From A To B 20 Soul On Thin Ice 21 Seven Years 22 Knives Replace Air DISC TWO VOLUME TWO: ROSE PETAL KNOT (POP TUNES etc) 1 Others 2 No Perfect Stranger 3 Twilight 4 One By One 5 Sweet Life Longer 6 Everpresent 7 Two 8 China Blue Vision 9 New Love Here 10 Speech Rapid Fire 11 Changing Stations 12 Sun Bursts In 13 Point You 14 Clear Cut Apparently 15 Veil Like Calm 16 Welcome Now 17 New Risen 18 Pencil Sketch 19 Picture The Day 20 Rose Petal Knot 21 Invisibility 22 Pearl And Pale 23 Keynote Inertia 24 Taking Steps 25 Kodak Ghosts Run Amok DISC THREE VOLUME THREE: YOUR RICH SKY (Approximate BALLADS and SIMILAR) 1 Drumming The Beating Heart 2 Lie Still, Sleep Long 3 See Red 4 Bright Play Of Eyes 5 Corner Of Dusk 6 Before You Go 7 At Arms Length 8 Catch Me 9 No Noise 10 Evening Music 11 Every Which Way 12 Stealing Autumn 13 My Last, Lost Melody 14 Far Lands Blue 15 Your Rich Sky 16 Only Whispers 17 Leaves Are Dancing 18 Back From The Rains 19 Between These Dreams 20 Flight Of Swallows 21 Catch Me, Count Me, Catch Fire DISC FOUR VOLUME FOUR: STILL AIR (ATMOS-SONGS) 1 Light Sliding 2 Dusky Ruth 3 Ill Wind Blows 4 The Eyes Of Beautiful Losers 5 Inky Blue Sky 6 Throw A Shadow 7 Tall And White Nettles 8 Sixth Sense 9 Lights Of April 10 Scent Of Evening Air 11 Transience Blues 12 Through Eastfields 13 Lilt Of Music 14 To Ellen 15 Tell 16 Still Air 17 She Moves Thru The Fair 18 Blue Distance DISC FIVE VOLUME 5: DREAMING AT RAIN (EXPERIMENTS and IMPROV) 1 Big Clipper Ship 2 Dreaming At Rain 3 Pale Saints 4 Lies Of Love 5 To Steven 6 John Of Patmos 7 Avenue With Trees 8 Sun Like Gold 9 Sheer Cliffs 10 Letters To She 11 Jane Dancing 12 Three Kittens 13 To Elizabeth S 14 Falling Leaf/Fading Flower;Goodbye To Summer 15 Warm Breath Soft And Slow 16 You Frighten | 2022 | €49.50 |
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| FALLEN SUN | Parallel Disalignment | CD | Fallen Sun is the solo noise / industrial alter ego of Y'ng-Yin Siew (Reverse Image) from Malaysia. An intense and explosive affair, the sonics on "Parallel Disalignment" are jagged and abrasive as they collide into each other or assume meta-rhythmic forms which flutter violently into torrents of searing lava. Formed from a pedal noise set-up with the exception of one track which was created with Eurorack, the seven pieces successfully apply new meaning to a genre synonymous with the likes of Incapacitants, Merzbow and Masonna. "Parallel Disalignment" presents the perfect title to an album grand in its quest to reach beyond something it might be seen as being part of. Besides the dynamic interplay at work throughout it, often cut with an edge which at first appears as hostile as it is impenetrable, there's something almost uncontrollably joyous to behold. This is evident on the collaborative piece, 'Session 46', which witnesses the deployment of birdsong by Peter Wullen to help counter the overtly incendiary nature of the proceedings with sounds more organic or celebratory. The final track is taken from a live appearance at the Negative Frequencies show in Malaysia - so powerful you can picture yourself being washed over in this assault of merciless cadences; like being showered in razor blades whilst grinning from ear to ear. Ltd x 300 copies in a digipak. https://fallensun.bandcamp.com/album/parallel- : "Since Fallen Sun’s debut CD, 'Beyond the Flat Earth', which appeared on Fourth Dimension Records in 2024, there have been rare live appearances and collaborative releases by this solo project of Malaysian electronic artist, Y’ng-Yin Siew. She has also released a few albums under the name, Reverse Image, which is a comparatively sedate project given to more atmospheric sounds yet no less metamorphic or unsettled because of that. Fallen Sun, as the name itself alludes to, is a rather more intense and explosive affair, however. As with the debut, the sonics are jagged and abrasive as they collide into each other or assume meta-rhythmic forms which flutter violently into torrents of searing lava that are utterly unforgiving as they burn into the very being of the listener. Formed from a pedal noise set-up with the exception of one track which was created with Eurorack, the seven pieces successfully apply new meaning to a genre that’s already gone a long way since the likes of Incapacitants, Merzbow and Masonna helped render it as one to be considered seriously. While it is true that such music (and, please, let’s consider it thus) first mapped itself via the likes of Whitehouse, Non, Ramleh, SPK, Consumer Electronics and so on, or even arguably Lou Reed’s 'Metal Machine Music' album, its reach has traversed far and wide over the decades since, both globally and with respect to an understanding of composition from more academic masters such as Xenakis. To that end, 'Parallel Disalignment' presents the perfect title to an album grand in its quest to reach beyond something it might be seen as being part of. Besides the dynamic interplay at work throughout it, often cut with an edge which at first appears as hostile as it is impenetrable, there’s something almost uncontrollably joyous to behold. This is evident on the collaborative piece, ‘Session 46’, which witnesses the deployment of birdsong by Peter Wullen to help counter the overtly incendiary nature of the proceedings with sounds more organic or celebratory. To end everything, there’s a lengthy track taken from a live appearance at the Negative Frequencies show in Malaysia whereby everything is so powerful you can picture yourself being washed over in this assault of merciless cadences right there in the venue itself. It’s like being showered in razor blades whilst grinning from ear to ear and, ultimately, proof positive that Fallen Sun is a force to be reckoned with in this setting" - Richard Johnson, Fourth Dimension Records credits released August 29, 2025 Session 46 - Field Recordings by Peter Wullen Session 47 - "Live" at Negative Frequencies Vol.1, Moutou, Kuala Lumpur, 18th April 2025 Mastered by Sion Orgon Artwork by Paul Takahashi Layout by Thomas Bey William Bailey CD Inlay Photo by Fallen Sun disalignment | 2025 | €13.00 |
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| FARRUGIA, ROBERT | Tilwin | CD | Tilwin (meaning 'colouring' in Maltese, Robert's native tongue) started being written during the summer of 2023 and was concluded on the last day of that year. The album reflects some major life events Robert encountered throughout that same year. Tilwin is an attempt at embracing a period of lows and highs, an effort of encapsulating these experiences within recordings. Each event described here is coloured in Robert's mind by a 'hue', that was then reflected in each track forming the album. Tilwin depicts events as varied as a tragic incident endured by a loved one and their period of convalescence, as can be heard on the song 'Long Wait', to the birth of a new family member on the Christmas day, as can be heard on the song 'Post Christmas'. Hence the album name: Tilwin. https://dronarivm.bandcamp.com/album/tilwin 4 panel digipack, soft touch finish - cardboard slipcase (Keaykolour Lipstick, 300 grm), handstamped - all titles written in the original author's handwriting - 150 handnumbered copies | 2024 | €14.00 |
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| FAUST | j US t (Just us) | LP & CD | "Die Hamburger Krautrock-Pioniere mit einem Überraschungspaket aus Avantgarde, Dada und Folk. Die Hamburger Band Faust gehört zu den großen Namen, die der Krautrock der 1970er-Jahre hervorgebracht hat. Als Jean-Hervé Péron und Zappi Diermaier 1971 ihr Debütalbum vorlegten, wollte das in Deutschland niemand hören, im Ausland jedoch verkauften sich "The Faust Tapes" über 100.000-mal. "There is no group more mythical than Faust", schwärmte der englische Musiker und Krautrock-Kenner Julian Cope Jahrzehnte später. Mit "Just Us" setzen Faust ihren musikalischen Weg fort. Während Diermaier seinem Handwerk - Schlagzeug und Perkussion - treu bleibt, integriert Peron allerhand unübliche Klangquellen in sein Bassspiel, verschiedene Streichinstrumente, Klavier und sogar eine Nähmaschine als Metronom. Tracks wie "Nur nous" und "Ich bin ein Pavian" zeigen, dass Faust nichts von ihrer Vorliebe für Avantgarde und Dadaismus verloren haben. Ausflüge ins folkloristische Gefilde ("Cavaqui-ho", "Gammes") runden das wahrhaft faustische Überraschungspaket ab. // j US t - pronounced "Just Us" - is the new album from legendary Hamburg band Faust. Founder members Jean-Herve Peron and Zappi Diermaier have laid down twelve musical foundations, inviting the whole world to use them as a base on which to build their own music. The tracks presented by Peron and Diermaier are clearly, intrinsically typical of Faust in their own right, yet offer enough space for completely different works to develop. Which is exactly what they hope will happen. Whilst Diermaier largely remains true to his habitual handiwork - drums and percussion - Peron, as we might expect, incorporates all manner of unusual sonic sources alongside his bass, various string instruments and piano, even using a sewing machine as a metronome. Tracks like "nur nous" and "ich bin ein pavian" show that Faust have lost none of their predilection for avantgarde Dadaism and improvisation. Peron and Diermaier actually surprise us with folkloristic excursions ("cavaquinho", "gammes"). In short, there is something for everyone to work with here. Peron and Diermaier await the results with bated breath. Faust will follow the same principle on the accompanying tour by inviting local artists to collaborate with them on stage." [label info] www.bureau-b.com "Faust’s intentions have never been easy to discern. Over their 40-plus years of morphing, discontinuous existence, they’ve been so good at dodging expectations and confounding analysis that even when they’re playing it straight, you wonder if something else is going on. So when the press sheet for j US t (pronounced "just us") claims the band is "inviting the whole world to use [the album] as a base on which to build their own music," it’s hard not to get suspicious. Is this a decoy? Do Jean-Hervé Peron and Zappi Diermaier want you to imagine other music so you won’t focus on theirs? Is it simply a way to say "if you don’t like it, make your own"? Perhaps Faust truly are earnest about wanting this album to inspire public collaboration. But the idea does point to something that’s always been intriguing about Faust’s music: it’s often just as much about what they aren’t playing as what they are. Their work is full of implications and innuendos, spaces waiting to be filled in. j US t doesn’t necessarily have more of that than most Faust albums, but implication does seem to be a main theme here. This is music in which every note suggests many more possibilities. j US t begins by proclaiming more than intimating, and in this way it bears an uncanny resemblance to the last Faust effort, 2011’s stellar Something Dirty. That record began with three bold, practically rocking tunes, and so does this one. Based around simple riffs and looping beats, these songs are like free-form post-rock, sturdy in their rhythms but opened-ended in their direction. And despite how well-defined the base of each track is, there’s also tantalizing space in each one. Take "80Hz", whose simple two-note bass figure flows beautifully with the well-timed accents of Diermaier’s percussion and Peron’s sonic grab bag. At times it dips to near-silence, in other places it crests to frantic peaks, but throughout it maintains a tension that compels attention. The balance between action and suggestion tips more toward the latter for the rest of j US t, in ways both fascinating and frustrating. Some songs maintain the attraction of anticipation, hinting at where they might go without ever fully abandoning other options. But others feel more flat than ripe, not so much flirting with tense silence as drifting into empty inertia. One in particular, the seven-minute "Palpitations", is mostly limp. Its intermittent percussion and electronic squiggles sound more random than impulsive, making it the only instance on the album where I find myself wishing I could already hear other bands filling it in. It takes a few tracks to recover from that mid-album drop, but Faust manage to rebound on closer "Ich Sitze Immer Noch", whose slow, rising lope sounds like a sunny homage to Spiderland-era Slint. Like the bulk of j US t, it offers a lot worth hearing and just as much worth daydreaming about—in other words, it achieves the band's stated goals. Maybe Peron and Diermaier really did mean what they said." [Marc Masters / PITCHFORK] | 2014 | €22.00 |
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| FAVARON, GIANLUCA / STEFANO GENTILE / CARL MICHAEL VON HAUSSWOLFF / ROD MODELL | LANDSLIDE (For Fields Recordings and Sine Waves) | do-LP | 2x12" LP + 12" 4-page insert, ltd. 300 copies Side A - Landslide (17’58”) by Gianluca Favaron and Stefano Gentile Side B - Landslide reworked (18’07”) by Rod Modell Side C - Landslide (remix) (17’57”) by Carl Michael von Hausswolf Side D - Landslide (remix) reworked (18’01”) by Rod Modell On October 9, 1963, 260 million cubic meters of rock broke off from the top of Monte Toc. It fell into the reservoir of the Vajont dam, producing an enormous wave of at least 50 million cubic meters of water. The dam, completed in 1959 and one of the biggest in the world at the time, did not suffer any serious damage. However, flooding destroyed several villages in the valley and killed almost 2,000 people. In some ways, it is as if the landslide swept away the past and the future of an entire community. An apocalypse lasting just a few minutes left scars and stigmata for decades to follow. Time is crystallised in an eternal present. Around the Vajont area, you often hear small landslides. Landslide: a natural downwards movement, more or less rapid, of large masses of earth and rock; also the hole created by this movement, and the accumulation of material from this release. Movement and accumulation are two keywords that guided the search for the sounds hidden in the silence of the Vajont landscape. In quiet moments today, the landscape reveals reverberations of it’s past... the movements of downward sliding, crystallized substances, and ghosts of its previous inhabitants. Frozen in time. Exploring the area, one wonders if anything remains under the surface. The original version of Landslide, and the Carl Michael Von Hausswolf version, re-construct nature in a unique and unusual way. Sewn with the smallest amount of sonic fabric. Resulting not in a verbatim recreation of an event, or emotional responses of that event, but rather.... a more intangible interpretation. Impulses that trigger feelings of the fall, the movement of land, and detachment. Expressed with a new code of sound. Mixed together, overlapped, collided, reaccumulated, and merged together again. While the Modell versions offer a more organic approach. Sounds of the valley at night, layered with psychotropic drones and other hovering noises. Echoes of present combined with echoes of the past. CALAMITA/À (2013-ongoing) is a tool for investigating the contemporary Vajont and the topic of catastrophes in general. The project is curated by Gianpaolo Arena and Marina Caneve. “0” is a collaboration between CALAMITA/À and Silentes where visual arts join sound. 13.silentes.it/private_sounds/sps2142_favaron_gentile_von_hausswolff_modell_landslide.htm | 2022 | €36.00 |
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| FEAR FALLS BURNING | Woes of the desolate mourner | 7inch | "it's probably one of the most eerie and atmospheric drones i performed live but one i'm very satisfied with". soweit fear falls burnings selbsteinschätzung zu diesem neuen werk; als 7" auf tonefloat und ein (oder teile eines) konzert(s) im extrapool in nijmegen auf die heimanlage transportierend. und man muss der selbsteinschätzung unbedingt recht geben: sind andere ffb-veröffentlichungen durch eine dichte und extreme schichtung geprägt, so stehen bei der "woes" über lange zeit einzelne bögen im raum, denen sogar die zeit gegeben wird, langsam zu verklingen, ohne das sie (wie sonst) loopartig immer wiederkehren und als grundgerüst des weiteren aufbaus dienen. freigelassen und im sound fast (gitarren-)synth-artig werden erst auf der zweiten seite der 7" die einzelteile zu einem teppich verwebt, der das für fear falls burning so typische dreidimensionale fließen im sound zeigt und sich schließlich in einer tremolo/vibratofläche fängt. unbedingt empfehlenswertes kleinod und in seiner verpackung aus packpapierfarbenem umschlag mit einer typografie in klarlack auch noch extrem hübsch anzuschauen." [Unruhr] | 2006 | €7.50 |
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| FEARTHAINNE | same | do-CD | FEARTHAINNE ist ein Band-Projekt mit den zwei Leuten von FAUNA, die mir ihrem Debut-Album kürzlich beeindrucken konnten. Auch hier sind ihre tracks episch angelegt und minimal instrumentiert, und nicht minder emotional wirkungsvoll. Nach einem fantastischen Poly-Drone Intro setzt sich ihr erhaben trauriger Akustik-Gitarren Folk (der an ruhigere NEUROSIS bzw. STEVE ON TILL oder MICHAEL GIRA erinnert) in Szene, der von Sehnsucht nur so durchdrungen zu sein scheint, begleitet von sparsamer Perkussion; auch Zither & Violine werden sehr schön integeriert. FEARTHAINNE entwerfen hier auf ihren urlangen Tracks die stets mehrere Teile haben, eine Art ambienten "Ritual Drone Folk" mit starkem Naturbezug, der einen nicht kalt lässt.. und wieder glänzt GLASS THROAT mit so einem wunderschönen grossformatigen Doppel-Klappcover aus speziellem Karton.. "I have the tremendous honor of announcing, what is to be our Winter Solstice 2008 release. From Cascadian soil, FEARTHAINNE will bless us with a pure nostalgia for being. A debut full length 2xCD, embracing four deeply potent healing crafts of acoustic mourning & regeneration. Featuring the two spirits of Cascadia's Ritual Black Metal atavism FAUNA. Fearthainne's first release represents the nadir of a journey into earth. Conceptualized and written in wild environments in the West, this collection of songs is a picture of the labyrinth traveled by a human organism, seeking life outside the long shadows of unremitting gray. The seekers masquerading as musicians who have created this document have used these sounds as a conduit for the reconnection with being, and have chosen to make it available to those who might hear the voice of the Others speaking to them from within. Exclusively utilizing acoustic instrumentation, Fearthainne is the unending rain that calls forth the blossom, the harbinger of the organic future we inevitably face. A sonic expression of green in all its capacities, this project is a document of the search for Home, a declaration that we will never settle for existence in the meaningless maze of history. As beings we have struggled for many years to imbue our lives with depth, bending our ears towards the chorus of elders that the natural world is. Brought to fruition in a culture whose theme is loss, we recognize the wisdom of Earth in the various shifts that will unravel these ten millennia of aberration, and celebrate the dawning of day for what is truly human. As participants in this calamity, we call forth those spirits of the land, sea and sky who have always borne witness to our cyclical lives, the deep mind of which we are only a part, to see us and hear our voices as we proclaim our allegiance to Life. May this blood that flows from us cleanse the land of its wounds. May our animal bodies shield our battered hearts as we break the hands of Time. May this be the end..." [label info] "... But in Fearthainne, all of the buzz and lbuster have been replaced by delicate crystalline guitar, gruff emotive vocals, deep ominous drones, all woven into a slow, drifting, meditative mountain folk. On the same label that in the past has brought us mysterious sounds from At The Head Of The Woods, The Elemental Chrysalis, Ruhr Hunter, Alethese and Beneath The Lake, Fearthainne sound right at home, blending dense whirring minimal soundscapes, with gentle meditative folk rituals. Long long tracks that slowly blossom, smoldering, clouded in warm browns and cool greys, strings weep and moan, effects gently cradle the various elements, adding texture more than changing the sound. Mesmerizing, trancelike ruminations on nature, on death, on the beyond. Simple percussion demarcates sprawling folk strum and fields of lilting shimmer and and delicate flutter. The vocals are a strange contrast, almost atonal, moaned more than sung, reminding us of solo records by either of the Neurosis frontmen, giving the proceedings a much more ominous vibe, ritualistic and hauntingly spiritual. Gorgeous in its simplicity, mysterious in its minimalism, Fearthainne is the soundtrack to a land outside of time, of trees towering over a world unspoilt, clouds drifting across empty skies, night turning into day, the cycle of life continuing on, the world and the universe around it gradually moving into a new, more magical existence. Beautifully sublime. Incredible packaging, full color 6 panel oversized sleeve, amazing images of ancient forests, late night rituals, and the band gathered beneath a mighty tree, cradling a baby, dressed like witches, and looking like a band of bearded forest dwellers (which they may very well be!)." [Aquarius Records review] www.glassthroatrecordings.com | 2009 | €18.50 |
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| FEINE TRINKERS BEI PINKELS DAHEIM (F.T.B.P.D.) | Ahuenna | CD-R | "„AHUENNA“ ALBUM INFO: This album consists of a single, 45 minute long title. No computer, no digital sound preparer. Everything live. Contact microphone, sound effect units and various other sources. The entire piece was recorded at home in the studio of “Feine Trinkers bei Pinkels Daheim”. Pure, live produced sound. “Ahuenna” is a typical album but still different. With “Ahuenna” Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim has broken new ground and thus has the history of the project posted on. ABOUT FEINE TRINKERS BEI PINKELS DAHEIM: Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim ist the experimental music project of J. Eberhard and it’s based in Bremen and have toured everything from the Netherlands to Switzerland and Russia extensively over the last 2 decades. In the last 2 decades, the project released unique vinyl CD and cassettes in multiple editions, usually personalised and with personalised hand-painted artwork. Every show of Feine Trinkers bei Pinkels is an experience for itself - it's timeless, it's a feast for the ears, and it's such a pleasure to see him doing all the work on stage when you just lean back staring at him, with his aural earbuds tickling your eardrums. Now, Yesterday or Tomorrow, and why do he have such an attention to detail - that's the question you will ask yourself." [label info] www.format-noise.com | 2010 | €9.50 |
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| FENNESZ | Becs | CD | "The last time Fennesz released an album on Austrian label Mego it was 2001 and the name of that release was 'Endless summer'. Now, in 2014 Editions Mego is extremely proud to release the conceptual follow up that landmark of abstract pop. Bécs (pronounced 'baeetch') is Hungarian for Vienna and is the first full length Fennesz solo release since 2008's 'Black Sea'. Eschewing the more drone orientated works of 'Black Sea', 'Bécs' returns to the more florid pop mechanisms as deployed on Endless Summer. 'Static Kings' features the extra leverage of Werner Dafeldecker and Martin Brandlmayer who deploy a range of atmospheric abstract effects to shape a bewitching sound world. The 10 minute centrepiece 'Liminality' (featuring Tony Buck on drums) is classic Fennesz: epic, evocative, beautiful, impossible. 'Pallas Athene' creates a sanctuary of hovering beauty which leads into the title track. Emotional and assured, the track Bécs' is an astonishing contribution to contemporary pop. 'Sav' (co-written by Cédric Stevens aka Acid Kirk) inhabits a less structural terrain as one enters a forest of small sounds and oblique atmospheres, where the closing 'Paroles', a gentle melody unravels amongst swirls of electronics and fried disruption. Bécs is not just an album or a series of songs, it's a world to inhabit, a landscape ripe with sounds, songs and that esteemed Fennesz signature. A singular work by a singular artist. All tracks by Christian Fennesz, except 'Sav' by Cédric Stevens & Christian Fennesz. Modular Synthesizer on 'Sav' by Cédric Stevens. Bass on 'Static Kings' by Werner Dafeldecker. Drums on 'Static Kings' by Martin Brandlmayr. Drums on 'Liminality' by Tony Buck. Recorded & mixed at Amann Studios, Vienna, 2013/14. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Cover design by Tina Frank." [label info] www.editionsmego.com "Aside from a couple of respectable collaborations and some soundtrack work, Christian Fennesz hasn't released a proper solo album since the album Black Sea, which came out on Touch WAY back in 2008. On Becs, Fennesz returns to the label that introduced him to the world, in Editions Mego; and he pretty much continues along the same path that he set for himself on that last album he recorded for them, the much lauded Endless Summer from 2001. That was a fracturous record of polygonal melodies bathed in a candy-crush fuzz of pixelated, shoegazing blur, always alluding to the sunkissed glow of the California Dream, whatever that may be. Becs may not have the advantage of following up one hell of a single by Fennesz (in the very late '90s, he covered The Beach Boys and The Rolling Stones, the latter of which was originally commissioned for tUMULt's Painted Black anthology!), whereby he contextualized his sonic dislocation within the lineage of rock'n'roll and all of its mythologies of dissent, rebellion, sex, and whatnot. Yeah, it's a tough act to follow; but Becs is a wildly adventurous album with a substantial parity when it comes to the risk/reward equation. A heavily flanged, blindingly bright corona of digital treatments surrounds the Fennesz' guitar sound at the album's introduction, with all of the soft melodies buried in twinkling electronics and mirrored refractions. Fennesz follows this with a detuned alarm-call pulse that forms an insistently crawling rhythmic structure blasted with a malleable distortion, which in turn he counterpoints with a gorgeous, cathedral drone of sustained harmonics. An incremental retinal burn of guitar distortion shapes the brilliant track "Liminality" built upon a beautifully bittersweet, slowcore guitar chord whose roots lie in Slint, Codeine, or maybe even the Durutti Column. Sparkling ambient passages beget discordant piano treatments akin to a computer-cracked Angelo Badalamenti which in turn beget more blossoming noise. Fucking brilliant." [Aquarius Records] | 2014 | €13.50 |
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| Mosaic | CD | This is Fennesz's most reflective album to date. Composed and recorded at the end of 2023 and completed in the summer of 2024, Fennesz set up a new studio space, the third one in four years. He had no immediate concept, this time starting from scratch, with a strict working routine. He got up early in the morning, worked until midday then had a break and worked again until evening. At first, just collecting ideas, experimenting, improvising. Then composing, mixing and correcting. Yet the title came early, Mosaic, which mirrored this process of putting an element into place one at a time to build the full picture, an ancient technique of making an image, before pixels did it in a flash. This "9 to 5" working routine had already been developed on Agora. All the other albums before were done differently; a few weeks work, then months in between and another few days or weeks of work. Mosaic was done from beginning to end without a break. Packaged in the now familiar DVD-style case with artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft, there is an echo to Venice but 20 years later the division between the land, the horizon and the deep blue sea is more extreme. Fennesz experiments with unusual time signatures. It's not obvious, but "Love and the Framed Insects" is in 7/4. "Personare" is somehow influenced by West African pop music from the 1980s. "Goniorizon" originally consisted of six hard rock guitar riffs mixed on top of one another. Then it became this "thing" that somehow opened possibilities for new things to come -- all this adds up to a filmic, highly involving and beautiful score of diverse influences and multiple possibilities to be explored by the listener. Recorded by Christian Fennesz at Seven Fountains/Vienna between January and May 2024. Mastered by Denis Blackham. Photography and design by Jon Wozencroft. https://fenneszreleases.bandcamp.com/album/mosaic | 2024 | €17.00 |
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| FERRARI, LUC | Solitude Transit | LP | NEVER BEFORE RELEASED. Innersleeve with exclusive pictures & liner notes. Transversales Disques is very glad to announce the release of « Solitude Transit » (1989) unpublished archives by electroacoustic music pioneer Luc Ferrari. Music composed for contemporary dance, choregraphed by Anne-Marie Reynaud Musique composée, interprétée et enregistrée par Luc Ferrari. Solitude Transit, 1989-1990. Musique en 3 actes pour le spectacle de la chorégraphe Anne-Marie Reynaud : Roman de gare / Ligne de fuite / On part chez Marie-Christine Chorégraphie : Anne-Marie Reynaud Musique : Luc Ferrari Décors : Claude Meiller Costumes : Jean Pierre Capeyron Lumières : Jacques Roveyrollis Dramaturgie : Michel Azama Huit danseurs (p) 2022 Transversales Disques sous licence exclusive Brunhild Ferrari. Editions : Maison ONA. credits released September 15, 2022 « Affiliated with French Radio’s Groupe de Musique Concrète, co-founder of the GRM with Pierre Schaeffer in 1958 Luc Ferrari (1929-2005) major figure of musique concrète and electroacoustic music broke away to pave his own path of individualistic expressions of minimalist music, musical theatre, field recordings, orchestral music and soundtracks…» https://lucferrari.bandcamp.com | 2022 | €27.00 |
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| FINAL | The Apple never falls far from the Tree | do-LP | https://final1.bandcamp.com/album/the-apple-never-falls-far-from-the-tree "from grind core pioneers napalm death and industrial metal duo godflesh to the wrist slashing sadness of jesu, the twenty-odd year career of justin k. broadrick has spawned a slew of uniquely recognisable formations. despite representing his very first steps on the scene, broadrick’s final moniker, focusing on dark electronic soundscapes, has occasionally seemed a side thought in comparison. after putting the project to rest for almost an entire decade, final however resurfaced stronger than ever in the new millenium with a string of improvisation based works as well as a hypnotic collaboration with fear falls burning. the apple never falls far from the tree continues this gradual return to the limelight, presenting final as an act comfortably sandwiched between uncompromising sonic explorations and the most far out corners of the post rock cosmos. conceptualised especially for the vinyl format and complemented by lasse hoile’s congenial photography, broadrick has envisioned the new final full length as a classic double album, with each side based on a unique mood and compositional approach of its own: from the a side’s darkly glistening, occasionally dub infused soundscapes and the harsh noise propositions of the b side to the more luminous and drone-oriented second half of the album, the apple never falls far from the tree highlights the full scope of broadrick’s work. most of all, it constitutes a showcase of his singular approach to the guitar, which remains firmly recognisable as the main harmonic and melodic instrument despite being sent through a colorful array of effect channels. the diversity and experimental nature of the material notwithstanding, the apple never falls far from the tree has turned out a continuous and coherent journey, eventually culminating in a piece of pure and beguiling instrumental folk. available in three different versions, on marbled (75 copies), clear (125 copies), and green vinyl (300 copies), in a deluxe gatefold picture sleeve. the release date is october 10, 2010, and available from the tonefloat store." [label info] www.tonefloat.com "Its been a while since I last heard Final, Justin K. Broadrick’s solo project, following his involvement with Napalm Death, Godflesh and Jesu (all of which were never really my cup of tea). It was in those years when ‘Isolationism’ was a much used buzz word to describe music that was firmly rooted in ambient but with a noisy edge. Final, along with say Lull, was a project in which the guitar played an all important role. Broadrick didn’t use the name Final for nearly ten years but now picked it up again, and recorded this 2LP, especially for this format. Its like going back to something that you haven’t done in ages, but it still feels conformable. Although I expected four LP sides with a piece each, this is quite the contrary. The pieces are rather short, a few on each side, and each side has its own character. The harsher, analogue synthesizer like sounds are on the b-side, while the a-side is much more mellow, rhythmic even, certainly towards the end. The first record seems to be all electronic, synth based, but the second is all about guitars and effects. Broadrick strums away, while his effects pick up the signals and create long form, sustaining patterns with that. The isolationist music in optima forma (a fine reminder to play that double CD on Virgin again also, come to think of it). As such it seems nothing happened but maybe that’s of less importance: the music is still great. An excellent return. Hopefully more to come!" [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2010 | €30.00 |
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| FINGER / PLOTKIN / ZABELKA | Pleasure-Voltage | LP | BENJAMIN FINGER, JAMES PLOTKIN and MIA ZABELKA craft a mesmerizing sonic world that buzzes and drones, glitches and slithers, eventually careening into unexplored musical territory. “Pleasure-Voltage” was born in the mind (and studio) of BENJAMIN FINGER – a composer, electronic music producer, DJ, photographer and film-maker based in Oslo / Norway who in recent years has become quite a prolific artist, expanding his stylistic palette from piano miniatures and off-kilter pop experiments to lysergic, dream-like sound collages spiced with gentle warmth and sublime melody. These ingredients are also characteristic on this latest work where FINGER set the musical frame before passing it on to his inspired collaborators: MIA ZABELKA who for decades now has been involved in countless projects, be it as musician (violin / electronics), curator or founder of the international sound art centre klang.haus and who has worked with a.o. JOHN ZORN, FRED FRITH, ELECTRIC INDIGO, ROBIN RIMBAUD (SCANNER), DÄLEK or PHIL MINTON. And last but not least there’s JAMES PLOTKIN who entered the scene with his first band OLD LADY DRIVERS (or OLD) on EARACHE in 1987 and later was a member of KHANATE (with a.o. STEPHEN O’MALLEY) while also exploring the areas of dark ambient and electronics by working with or remixing SCORN / MICK HARRIS, K.K: NULL and many more. On “Pleasure-Voltage” which had its live-premiere at the REWIRE festival 2018, the trio crafts a mesmerizing sonic world that buzzes and drones, glitches and slithers, eventually careening into unexplored musical territory somewhere between ambient / drone / psychedelia. https://karlrecords.bandcamp.com/album/pleasure-voltage | 2019 | €18.00 |
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| FIRST HUMAN FERRO FEAT. ALBIREON | Prosa Profana | CD | " "Prosa Profana" is a follow-up to "Guernica Macrocosmica" and the 2nd post mortem dedication by Olegh Kolyada collaborating with Albireon neo-folkers this time. A low-key unison of dissonant ex-Soviet schlager melodies and forefront Italian vocals in a tender naive manner offer a unique nostalghic experience. The release comes in a beautiful digipak with a 12-page booklet. Tribute: Dedicated to my father Vasyl O. Kolyada (1950-2008). Production: Conception + composition + engineering + arrangement + alternative sampling & vinyl scraping (vinyl & tapes restoration, including the 1970-80`s ex-Soviet recordings by Ariel, Tsvety, Sinyaya Ptitsa, V.Obodsinskiy) + vocals engineering + lyrics in English/translation of P.Celan`s 'Die Niemandsrose' poem + improvisations upon Cl.Debaussy and M.Dietrich songs and ex-Soviet ‘Autumnal Marathon’ and ‘The Star Boy’ motion pictures themes by Olegh Kolyada (with Helena K`s contribution in piano & clavier parts), 2005-2008/Zhytomyr, Ukraine. Strings + trumpet + cello by Zhytomyr Chamber Orchestra, early 2000/Zhytomyr, Ukraine. Acoustic guitar on "Eye-Deep in Hell" and "Late August Flowers" by Pavel Voskoboyev, November 2007/Zhytomyr, Ukraine. Vocals in Italian + lyrics renderings + mandolin on "Every Time I Turn around (another Year is over)" by Davide Borghi; vocals recording and engineering + samples editing on "Eye-Deep in Hell" (children’s talking-away), and "Every Time I Turn around (another Year is over)" (rain and wind snippets) by Stefano Romagnoli, summer 2007/Carpi, Italy. Layout & artwork by Katia Ilieva, winter-spring 2007-2009/Sofia, Bulgaria. Conception: Prosa Profana unveils a humane feeling of nostalghia as that of sorrow towards present lack of integrity, commonness, and harmony. Homesickness and melancholy, grief and yearning, but also hope and belief nostalghia is a deep relation one cannot relinquish or renounce since it is the purest sacrificial nature of a man. Sacrifice as a consequence of nostalghia is a verdict to overwhelmingly materialized time, its impiety and de-spiritualization. Nostalghia is a confession, humble declaration of love as generally the highest art manifestation ever possible. Prosa Profana is our verdict to ourselves." [label info] www.nitkie.ru | 2011 | €12.00 |
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| FJERNLYS | Four (One unearthly Room) | do-CD | "Five years after the last full-time album of Fjernlys, the Leipzig based outfit returns with new recordings. Fjernlys’ attention to detail is typically exquisite here: the looped bowing of a cello provides a droning bassline beneath pitch-bent chimes and melodic pads. Clear homogenic sounds creeping deep organic rhythms with lovely effects have been incorporated in a poetic ambiance guided by brilliant vocals. A collaboration with Peter Bjärgö on vocals for 'The Fervid Flood' intoning a new and inspiring way of recordings and production. FOUR appears to have abandoned tracks that aim to move bodies in favour of ambient songs that aim to move hearts. Atmospheric and sensitive Ambientsongs with accented percussion elements, vibraphone sounds and viola supplements to set the electronic soundscapes into wonderfully concentrated and organic pieces. Swimming beneath Fjernlys' ambient arrangements is a primordial cosmos of sonics: the falling of rain outside a window, the tumble of unknown random oscillations, a whirl of ebow guitars. The hustle and bustle of these sounds ground the grandiose orchestration on the record and give it an abstract sense of the transcendental space. On the second CD are remixes of 4 tracks from the album, revisited by Kammarheit, Peter Bjärgo, S.E.T.I. and Herbst9. Every single interpretation these artists made completes the puzzle of this release to its entire form of One Unearthly Room." [label info] wp.loki-found.de | 2015 | €15.00 |
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| FLORES, RAFAEL | Nubes, Cometas, Rumores y Orugas: selected works 1994-2004 | CD | Einer der ganz aktiven frühen Industrial-“Cassettentäter” aus den 80ern war RAFAEL FLORES, der unter dem Namen COMANDO BRUNO arbeitete. Das Moskauer Label MONOCHROME VISION hat nun neueres Material zusammengetragen, welches nur in mini-CDR-Auflagen erhältlich war. FLORES Musik besticht durch die Verwendung mechanischer loops & „industrieller“ Geräusche, metallischer Drones & merkwürdiger verzerrter elektronischer Strukturen.....alles sehr hypnotisch, minimal & repetitiv, und manchmal recht abgründig.... das ist der 80er Jahre Noise-Minimalismus, wie man ihn von M.B., S-CORE oder TAM QUAM TABULA RASA geschätzt hat... “First official CD album of Rafael Flores who hails from the depth of spanish noise underground scene, known for his early works released under Comando Bruno moniker. This compilation presents the latest decade of his sound experimentation, and shows quite diverse sides of his creative efforts, which ranges from collaged field recordings to noise ambient loops, from rhythmic structures to hypnotic electronic passages.“ [label info] “....Rafael Flores first came to my attention in 1984 or 1985 when he worked as Comando Bruno, and was featured on many cassette compilations around the world. I even released a cassette of his, I think in 1986. Despite me xeroxing the cover, it had all sorts of stamps made by Comando Bruno, as he was also heavily into mailart. But my contact with Flores was rather small, and in the later half of the eighties we were no longer in contact and when people started to release LPs and CDs, he seemed to have disappeared. His cassette was re-issued on CDR (and sold really few copies, not that I was surprised), and suddenly Flores knocked on my door asking for a few copies. Since then we are not in contact, but it's good to know he's back. From the lost years, 1994-2004 he now releases a CD - his first in twenty-five years. It's great to hear this music without the hiss and static of a cassette. Flores plays industrial music, but one that strictly along the 'old' rules. He takes he sounds from rather primitive sources (such as the radio depicted on the cover), feeding them through electronics, chopping them into small rhythm particles (such as in 'Boucher 2' which sounds alike Esplendor Geometrico), but never the material dissolves into a mass of noise sound. Crisp clear, layers of electronic sounds, processed field recordings (in 'Para'), this is music that reminded me of the late eighties Asmus Tietchens. Forceful, yet intelligent industrial music. A major step forward and hopefully much more to come.” [Frans de Waard / Vital Weekly] | 2005 | €13.00 |
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| FLYING SAUCER ATTACK | Mirror | CD | Das 2000er Album der Space-Ambient-Rocker, songorientierter und melancholischer als zuvor, Nick Drake-artige Folk-Strukturen mit psychedelischen Gitarren, und sogar elektro-rhythmischen Elementen.. „...it ranges from loud tracks with distorted washes of guitars to pretty, acoustic numbers, and even a couple tracks with a bit of a drum and bass injection. Even with all that, though, it still manages to flow fairly well and Dave Pierce is showing why some are considering him as sort of the continuation of My Bloody Valentines Kevin Shields, perhaps sort of picking up where the latter left off in creating shimmering guitar tracks while not managing to stagnate either.“ [almost cool] | 2000 | €14.50 |
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| FOETUSDREAMS | Brouillard | CD-R | "Winter-Light is extremely proud and happy to announce its very first release on the Winter-Light label by the Dutch dark ambient producer, FoetusDreams. "Brouillard" is the first full length dark ambient album produced by FoetusDreams, who has previously contributed music to compilations. From start to finish "Brouillard" is a real ambient journey; sometimes an introspective one, sometimes a glance from the inside looking out and far beyond the reach of the human eye. The tracks are beautifully sculpted pieces of ambient excellence and from the opening moments of the first you are transported into the world of "FoetusDreams". Rich drones resonate across starkly crafted, ice-cold landscapes where your only companions are the sounds that flow around you. Vibrant musical layers, occasionally punctuated with a clever use of samples, draw the listener ever further away from reality towards a deeper, more meaningful sense of self. You could easily be standing on the edge of the universe looking out, or traversing the caverns of your own mind in a search for that place of inner peace. The title track "Brouillard" is a master class in drone ambient with its ever present trance inducing hum that lowers a mist over the eyes and takes you to a very dark place indeed. If you are looking to go on a journey then it begins right here. The tracks have been mastered by Frederic Arbour from Cyclic Law. "There is only one God and that God is man himself." 1. Way Of Be 2. Abandoned Planet 3. Winter Light 4. Cavern 5. Travel Within 6. Slowly Approaching A Dead Star 7. Brouillard 8. Interference 9. Molecular Cloud 10. Endless Horizon Professionally manufactured CD-r comes in a beautifully produced 6-panel digipack. 10 tracks, total running time 62:51. Edition is limited to 150 copies." [label info] www.winter-light.nl "The dutch label Winter Light comes out with its first full-length release, composed by the Dutch project Foetusdreams. Beginning with the first song, ‘Way Of Be’, we are given a hint to what this opus stands for: sacral, atheistic dark ambient, as suggested by the recitation ‘There is only one God and that God is man himself”, repeated on the droning fluid of a choral-tinged musical line. ‘Abandoned Planet’ is a cinematic picture of an irremediable future, a play on indefinite and elusive notes, as if covered by the very dust that will whip out everything we now observe in such a careful manner. This same absence of light that the music suggests here will immerse into darkness those who once were saints and murderers alike… ‘Winter Light’ contains even more grave accents and sullen notes, a saturnine sense of despondency, as if this light, diffused somewhere in the distance, could be the only real thing between the worthless earth and a sky that simply does not exist. And those piano chords, so naive and worldly, are written like an irrelevant epitaph on the tombstone that spares you from another daylight. From here, a place of eternal farewell, the piece ‘Cavern’ ressembles an invitation to a voluptuous meeting within the caves of the earth and what, by an anatomical reading, should represent traces of the earth’s disease; holes and gangrenas in its crust come now to be the only place still safe and pure. In parallel, the following track, ‘Travel Within’, moves more fluidly: blood here and there, coagulated and bubbling, in response to a personal prophilaxy directed to the external world. This return to the womb imprints a suggestive movement to the music’s metabolism and therefore the drones are let loose to encircle the mind in a hypnotic and quite perverse attitude. Someone said that the dream is the music of the soul. ‘Slowly Approaching A Dead Star’ corresponds to such a dreaming of the impossible. A song built on a catatonic development of dazzling cosmic drones. Out of this dream, from which one should never wake up if they want the dream to really materialize, we are taken to the next song, ‘Brouillard’. Here the sculpture is different, adopting a more industrial style. The pulsating drones reside on flashes of undertones and the musical line is completed by an Amerindian poem interrupted at intervals by a French nihilistic monologue. It should be the album’s pièce de résistance, because it’s simply sublime in its cynical shrewdness of the text, maintained along with that gloomy Dalinian melody, a pure postmodern folk song. I have avoided giving references, but ‘Interference’ reminded me so much of one of the liturgies from MZ 412’s ‘Infernal Affairs’. The crushing feeling of religiousness and demonic energy, which actually translates in meta-nihilism, pervades this song all along. At the hearing of the escalating drones, the great spaces of hollow matter receive a new personality. On ‘Molecular Cloud’ the Dutch artist seems to paint his drones on the very air around him with gentle brushes, in tones of grey that no soon are dried up, remain imprinted solely on the listener’s mind. The massive 63-minute long album closes with ‘Endless Horizons’. This journey between vivid drone sculptures has been a passage between the world as one sees it and the world as one feels it, a walk through this multifaceted corridor that we can take only in dreams, or music, or mist." [Santa Sangre] | 2014 | €12.00 |
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| FOR KINGS AND QUEENS | Marchantiophyta (2nd edition) | CD-R | "The new release is a psychedelic travel to a secret land called Marchantiophyta. It can serve as a journey to our inner state of mind. The combinations of experimental and conventional sounds create massive clouds of sinister atmospheres. The layered textures increase the tensions of exotic darkness. The sinister timbres are seductive and jarring. It is a shocking sample of an alternate reality. The music deeply penetrates into our subconsciousness and can reveal internal pictures. As sound springs served admissions from the rain forest, a coffeemaker, a glas of water, little tubes, contactmics, guitar, various synthesizers and some effects." [label info] www.subterraneansonic.de | 2010 | €9.00 |
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| The Living Room Series Vol. 1: Inland | CD-R | For Kings and Queens – the living room series The new living room series contains three volumes of sound collages exploring the inside and outside environments. Limited handmade edition of 50 with special packaging and artwork. Music and sounds by Jens and Barbara Kindermann Art work by Maria Cutugno Text by Clara Kindermann Recorded between 2015 – 2017 . Vol 1: Inland: Dull summons of the giants from the depths of the tempting vest, pounded and healed the breathing heaviness of the splintering dream. Torn and trembling in flight, the vibration of the wild bird was splashing wet. Vol 2. Ausland: The humming of the air-conditioning and the humming of the cooling-house is represented in a one-dimensional picture, which is represented in a suction of the vacuum of the consciousnesslessness, in a mystery of the intermediate world, in a disturbing friction. The disorientation of the indiscriminate underwater drum repeated backward chirping and rattling of the aircraft march. Vol 3. Umland: Urgingly penetrating, the hard metal saw and scraped the proximity of the radio distance. The popping and balling of the ecstasy, rattling and rattling, approached threateningly. forkingsandqueens.bandcamp.com | 2017 | €12.00 |
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| The Living Room Series Vol. 2: Ausland | CD-R | For Kings and Queens – the living room series The new living room series contains three volumes of sound collages exploring the inside and outside environments. Limited handmade edition of 50 with special packaging and artwork. Music and sounds by Jens and Barbara Kindermann Art work by Maria Cutugno Text by Clara Kindermann Recorded between 2015 – 2017 . Vol 1: Inland: Dull summons of the giants from the depths of the tempting vest, pounded and healed the breathing heaviness of the splintering dream. Torn and trembling in flight, the vibration of the wild bird was splashing wet. Vol 2. Ausland: The humming of the air-conditioning and the humming of the cooling-house is represented in a one-dimensional picture, which is represented in a suction of the vacuum of the consciousnesslessness, in a mystery of the intermediate world, in a disturbing friction. The disorientation of the indiscriminate underwater drum repeated backward chirping and rattling of the aircraft march. Vol 3. Umland: Urgingly penetrating, the hard metal saw and scraped the proximity of the radio distance. The popping and balling of the ecstasy, rattling and rattling, approached threateningly. forkingsandqueens.bandcamp.com | 2017 | €12.00 |
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| The Living Room Series Vol. 3: Umland | CD-R | For Kings and Queens – the living room series The new living room series contains three volumes of sound collages exploring the inside and outside environments. Limited handmade edition of 50 with special packaging and artwork. Music and sounds by Jens and Barbara Kindermann Art work by Maria Cutugno Text by Clara Kindermann Recorded between 2015 – 2017 . Vol 1: Inland: Dull summons of the giants from the depths of the tempting vest, pounded and healed the breathing heaviness of the splintering dream. Torn and trembling in flight, the vibration of the wild bird was splashing wet. Vol 2. Ausland: The humming of the air-conditioning and the humming of the cooling-house is represented in a one-dimensional picture, which is represented in a suction of the vacuum of the consciousnesslessness, in a mystery of the intermediate world, in a disturbing friction. The disorientation of the indiscriminate underwater drum repeated backward chirping and rattling of the aircraft march. Vol 3. Umland: Urgingly penetrating, the hard metal saw and scraped the proximity of the radio distance. The popping and balling of the ecstasy, rattling and rattling, approached threateningly. forkingsandqueens.bandcamp.com | 2017 | €12.00 |
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| FOSSIL AEROSOL MINING PROJECT [FAMP] | Scaath Catfish | CD | Songs about the river are a common trope in the history of music. Psalms of being cleansed, being baptized, being redeemed. There are ballads of murder, lost love, jealousy, and all sorts of rank human emotion reflected in the surface of the water. Respect, praise, and worship of the river are other themes often channeled through music as well. Even in the realm of ambient music, digital mimesis of the aquatic is commonplace. Fossil Aerosol Mining Project, in their ongoing archaeological approach to a post-industrial sound design, offers their own variant on this topic with considerable differences. It is not only the sediment, the debris, the waste, the scum, the mud, and the rot that are the source materials in Scaath Catfish, but also what is preserved in those elements and new forms of life fostered in this conceptual framework. Sibilant mutations from Fossil Aerosol’s multiple sources (field recordings, found sounds, etc.) spill forth as dilated tones, mesmerizing echos, clattering loops, and harmonic distortions. Floods of dense sonic accretion give way to languid mirages with human intervention complicating matters. Fossil Aerosol gives a preternatural language to the river, one that parallels their occasional collaborators in :zoviet*france: as well as the environmental ruminations of Biospshere and the practitioners of power ambient (Rafael Anton Irisarri, Fennesz, Tim Hecker, etc.) Fossil Aerosol addresses the album this way: Scaath Catfish was recorded in the spring of 2016, implementing field recordings made in the Illinois River valley and instrumental material found on a homemade cassette recording. The field recordings were made along the banks of a backwater lake and in the shadow of an aging power plant, following a spring flood. Twenty-six years earlier, one of the members of Fossil Aerosol purchased a homemade instrumental cassette tape recording (marked only “sacred”), at a thrift store in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. In 2016, fragments of the found cassette recordings were mixed with those made in the mud along the river. The result was Scaath Catfish. https://www.helenscarsdale.com/published/famp-scaathcatfish.htm | 2020 | €15.50 |
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| FOVEA HEX + ANDREW LILES | Gone every Evening | 7 | "... Ihr bittersüßes Timbre, die fast mit Händen zu greifende Melancholie, sind einzigartig. Die Musik dazu, nur dröhnendes Harmonium und eine Handvoll schwarzer Pianoperlen, ist wie ein Rabenflügel, ein samtiger Saum, wie der Schatten, den diese Melancholie nicht abschütteln kann. In ‚Gone‘ verschwinden ein Baum, ein Bild an der Wand, die geliebte Katze, sogar der alte Teppich unter den Füßen und auch der Boden selbst. Eine Elegie des Verlustes, der diebischen und mörderischen Zeit. Von Geisterpiano und gespenstischen Stimmen umschallt, rezitiert Fabrizio Palumbo die Strophen, Simonds und Laura Sheeran singen den Refrain: Well well well Nobody can tell Why why o‘ why Nobody knows. Das ist schon sehr tongue-incheek (wie Hitchcock das genannt hätte), purer Edward Gorey." [Bad Alchemy] "DIE STADT is honored to inform you that a limited edition 7" vinyl single "Gone Every Evening" was released today April 1, (and no, we're not having you on...) 2008. The record features two collaborative pieces by ANDREW LILES & FOVEA HEX, with Fabrizio Palumbo as special guest. Featuring Andrew Liles, Clodagh Simonds, Laura Sheeran, Fabrizio Palumbo and Michael Begg, these two strange songs will find the way swiftly to your very core, quite by themselves, to simultaneously delight and only faintly unsettle you. Needless to say that everyone who enjoyed the 'neither speak nor remain silent' trilogy by Fovea Hex will also love this. It comes packaged in an attractive gatefold cover with printed inner sleeve designed by Andrew Liles in an edition of 500 copies of which only 250 copies will be available for wholesale." [label info] "Following three excellent mini CDs produced with the top layer of sonic experimentalism, Clodagh Simonds teams with here Micheal Begg, Fabrizio Palumbo and Laura Sheeran, all under the guidance of Andrew Liles (rapidly climbing up to the top layer) to record two lovely tracks on a 7". 'Gone' is on side a, and 'Every Evening' on the other. The a-side has piano at the hearth of the piece and Simonds heavenly vocals solo with beautiful ambient like electronics humming sparsely about. 'Every Evening' has a strange narrative by Palumbo and multi-layered singing by Sheeran and Simonds and has a fairy tale like atmosphere, but with an unsettling undercurrent in the piece. This is beautiful too but much more spooky. Way too short on this format, one could only want some more after this. Fascinating, beautiful, small treasure." [FdW / Vital Weekly] label: www.diestadtmusik.de | 2008 | €12.50 |
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| FRANCK, YANNICK | Hierophany | Иерофания | CD | "In such conservative genre like ambient there is not easy to find something to discover, but the music of Yannick Franck can change this widespread prejudice. Infuenced by recent trip to Russia and the orthodox culture, he composed the continuous suite of three movements, showing his personal vision of the ancient rite. Release date is 29th December 2012. Limited edition of 500 copies in jewelcase." [label info] www.monochromevision.ru "Oily drones be found on Hierophany, an album released on the Russian imprint Monochrome Vision, inspired by the ancient rites of Russian orthodoxy, and produced by a Belgian on a working holiday whilst touring to the east of his homeland. Over the years, Franck has worked with Pietro Piparbelli (aka K11) with the two of them collaborating on a project based on recordings from Aleister Crowley's Abbey of Thelema (yes, K11 has released at least three other albums drawn from Thelemic residues). Theological differences aside (which are obviously massive), Franck's interest in both Crowley and the Russian Orthodox church seems to find common ground in the gnostic mysticism of meditation rituals and their capacity to introduce the process of transcendence. The massively thrumming drones that Franck presents on Hierophany seem to be based on field recordings made within a cathedral during a service, with the bell tones and chants reflecting into a gray wall of steely reverb and delay. Elements of human speech sporadically bounce within his system of acoustic and processed sound, creating something of a feedback loop of particular sonorous frequencies, reinforced and thickened by Franck's sonic sensibilities. The album quickly hits a uniform plateau of saturated environmental and electronic din, slipping rather subtly from one complementary movement to another. Well executed work that conceptually and aesthetically may have more than a few similarities to Current 93's early tape collage days." [Aquarius Rec.] "More field recordings, but perhaps a bit differently when it reaches the point of release, is the new release by Belgium's Yannick Franck. He's been releasing on various labels before, such as Silken Tofu, Young Girls Records and Silentes, and has worked with K11, Craig Hilton, Alan Trench and Esther Venrooy. Here however he is solo and he uses instruments and 'non musical objects', voice, radio signals and field recordings. Perhaps so far not much difference, but it's the way Franck executes his music. Instead of using the collage form, Franck sets wheels in motion, and when they are all in motion, then he subtly moves them about. Perhaps the word 'drone' music could apply to his music? Derived from various sources, his music is played altogether at the same time, adding and subtracting on microscopic level, all along using minimal changes in the use of sound effects. Quite a dense sound he arrives at here and like with the other release, the three pieces flow nicely into eachother. In the final part, 'Dying Down', you realize you are in a church, with whispering voices, and a far away choir practice. And then it seems like the other two pieces shared that same sort of big hall/cathedral reverb. That makes it perhaps all a bit too religious for my taste, but throughout I thought this was a very refined disc of challenging drone music." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2012 | €12.00 |
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| FREIBAND | Replicas | CD | "Wenn ich das recht verstehe, dann entstand FREIBAND, eines der Soloprojekte des umtriebigen Frans de Waard, aus einem per Scrollrad erzeugten Geräusch, das ihn an Asmus Tietchens‘ Daseinsverfehlung (Stille Andacht, 1993) erinnerte. Der Hamburger hatte dieses Album aus den kratzenden Klängen fabriziert, die entstehen, wenn man eine Tonbandspule über den Tonkopf zieht, und die 13 Tracks allesamt ‚Freiband‘ getauft. De Waard wollte als einmaliges Projekt etwas Ähnliches probieren, woraus dann Microbes (Ritornell, 2001) entstand. Wie das bei FdW so ist, wurde daraus ein Fass ohne Boden, in das nun nach dem Gesetz der Unvermeidlichkeit auch Replicas (Monochrome Vision, mv19) eintaucht, das tatsächlich den Ausgangspunkt, nämlich Tietchens‘ Freiband-Tracks, als 13-faches ‚Re‘ remixt. Selbst das Cover ist eine Revision des Originals, jenem Haus mit Fenstern wie zwei aufgerissenene Augen und ein großes Maul. Inzwischen ist es eine Ruine mit eingeworfenen Fensterscheiben, herbstlich gesäumt von Ahorn. Wenn hier etwas einschlägig ist, dann A.C. Dantos Begriff ‚Aboutness‘ - Kunst ist immer ein Über-Etwas - , gesteigert, aber gleichzeitig auch implodiert, zu: Kunst ist Über-Kunst. But what is it all about? Schleifende, knisternde, pulsierende, blasende, kristallin funklende Geräusche, dazu - mit etwas Phantasie - aber auch paranormal, d.h. verhuscht und verzerrt ‚singende‘ oder ‚sprechende‘. Das leerstehende Haus wird da zum Geisterhaus, auch wenn de Waards nüchterne und spröde Akribie diesen hauntologischen Schluss selbst nicht nahelegt." [Bad Alchemy] "Highly conceptual project that combines features of remix, recycling and plagiarism - the re-interpretation of classic album by Asmus Tietchens “Daseinsverfehlung”. All what can be heard on this CD, as always in case of Frans de Waard framework, is made from music that already existed: every sound, word in titles and even the cover picture - all is just processing and manipulation techniques. Freiband is one of solo projects by Frans de Waard. Besides Kapotte Muziek, Frans currently also plays in Beequeen duo with Freek Kinkelaar, runs Plinkity Plonk and other small labels, writes tons of reviews for the Vital Weekly newsletter. When just get some free time, he becomes active with various side-projects like Goem (minimal techno), Quest (ambient), Shifts (post-rock), Captain Black (remixes) etc." [label notes ] "... Without getting too trippy or spacey, I would like to propose that this is the kind of music that alters your state of mind and being. Not the kind of album that you'll play in the background, 'cause it wants your full attention. It freezes your body and at same time makes you experience it from head to toe. In this way it has the same effect as most of Francisco Lopez' work has on me: it grabs you by the ears and sucks you right in." [SdT, Vital Weekly] label-website: www.monochromevision.ru | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| True Type | CD-R | "Freiband is one of the many projects by Frans de Waard, one of the Dutch masters of experimental electronic music. For True Type he has not made new music but he selected mp3 releases that needed a proper release because of quality. The 4 selected releases we find here are Reflection previously released on the now defunct mp3 label techNOH, the release Parallel for the 12K side label Term., remixes for the now defunct .Tiln/Antiopic mp3 label and EARLabs released on the now defunct mp3 label EARLabs (still working as review site) which contains remixes of the music by Jos Smolders. The music is now finally available in full quality as it was supposed to be. For the Freiband project he gets his inspiration from Asmus Tietchens making use of glitches and pops from scratched cd's and such. Because of this Frans himself would call this popmusic. True Type is a lovely collection of music which shows the diversity of the Freiband project very well. True Type is limited to 100 pieces." [label info] www.movingfurniturerecords.com | 2009 | €7.50 |
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| Stainless Steel | LP | "ini.itu is releasing a new vinyl only LP, the 8th of its catalogue, composed by Freiband • Freiband is one of the long lasting projects of Frans de Waard, who is making music since more than 25 years under many aliases and in different line-ups, the most well-known being Kapotte Muziek ( with Roel Meelkop and Peter Duimelinks ), Goem ( same team, different tools ), THU20 ( same, augmented by Jac van Bussel and Jos Smolders ), Beequeen ( w/ Freek Kinkelaar ), and more recently Wieman ( formerly known as Zèbra ) ( w/ Roel Meelkop ), Ezdanitoff ( w/ Wouter Jaspers ) and Tobacconists ( w/ Scott Foust from Idea Fire Company ). Solo he has been active under his own name, Shifts and of course Freiband. His other activities include : editor and writer for Vital Weekly, programmer at Geluidswerkplaats in Nijmegen, organizer of the residencies Brombrom and director of the labels Korm Plastics, Moll and Plinkety Plonk. • the name Freiband itself is picked from Asmus Tietchens' album Daseinsverfehlung, on which he explored sounds created by rubbing tape freely on magnetic heads. Frans de Waard transferred the concept to the digital field and now mostly uses that name for his computer-based pieces. What Freiband proposes here is 2 sides of radically reworked gamelan : • Side A seems to progress through an acid bath and take the magnifying glass to enhance the digital decays, evoking various stages of textural corrosions. Through these aggressive and irreverent treatments, the naturally metallic harmonics are by twist and turns abruptly dismantled and fractured into crunchy, dense and fuzzy fireworks. Despite the stop & go transitions this hard-edged and raw piece still holds a nice unity across the digital errs and disturbances. • on side B, through some arcane wirings, some machines end up spitting out shifting binary patterns with a somewhat alienating feeling. Proof that electronic music can be minimal and eschew the 4/4 dance floor pattern, in favour of some dry and uncompromising “Unerforschtes Gebiet” between minimal beats and Steve Reich’ early tape compositions. this LP further expands the horizon of ini.itu, successfully interrogating the link between south-east asian instruments and electronic contemporary music. Maybe something to file along Hecker, Pita, Mika Vaino, Fennesz or Alva Noto's Xerrox LPs. p.s. Frans de Waard will also simultaneously release a companion 3” on his Moll imprint, with a totally different track from the same sessions that couldn’t be included on the LP. That track is a spectral exploration of the higher frequencies, followed by a pile-up of gamelan sounds." [label info] www.iniitu.net "The LP thus both presents the quality of the gamelan style in its pure origin and 21st electronic avantgarde by one of Holland's finest sound artists. A superb ode to the importance of the gamelan music for the modern sound experimentations of the Western world." [NM/Vital Weekly] | 2011 | €12.50 |
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| FRITH, FRED | Technology of Tears | CD | "FRED FRITH erfand The Technology of Tears (ReRFRO011) 1986/87 für eine Choreographie von Rosalind Newman. Er konnte dabei auf Henry Kaisers neuem Synklavier im Maximum an Samplingtechnologie jener Zeit schwelgen. Der Duktus ist hämmernd und zuckend, das Klangbild gesättigt mit synthetisierten Gitarren- und Geigensounds. Dazu schrillt im ersten Drittel ‚Sadness, its bones bleached behind us‘ John Zorns Altosax und Tenko skandiert kläffend ihre Kampfkunstschreie. Mensch und Automat, heiß und kalt, reiben sich im ostinat hackenden Chop-chop-chop des Maschinenbeats. Die beiden folgenden Teile behalten die Motorik bei, ein tänzerisches Hmtata, aber zunehmend auch ein kniebrecherisches Zickzack, gespickt mit Tenkos Ha!s und Ho!s, mit repetitiver Gitarrenarbeit und Geigenstrichen in Frith-typischer ‚Imaginary Folk‘-Manier, d. h. eingetaucht in urbane Dynamik und auf sarkastische Weise futuristisch statt idyllisch und nostalgisch. Der Beat ist dabei so ‚imaginär‘ und dominant wie bei Skeleton Crew. Christian Marclay stiftet Phantomklänge per Turntable, die den ‚Palace of Laughter‘ mit plunderphonischem Trubel rocken. Für ‚Jigsaw‘, ebenfalls eine Tanzmusik für Newman, die mit ähnlicher rhythmischer Hartnäckigkeit motorische und dynamische Anstöße gibt, machte Frith das Meiste selbst, sogar die Schreie und skelettierten Gesänge. Vielspurig häuft er Gitarren-, Geigen-, Bass- und Drumloops und diesmal stößt Jim Staley mit der Posaune dazu. Das Ganze hat einen Schwung, der immer und immer wieder angriffslustig gegen die Fassade von Trägheit und Unlust rammt. Doch bis heute gilt: Man muss sich Sisyphos als glücklichen Menschen vorstellen." [Bad Alchemy] "With an all-star line-up that features Tenko, John Zorn and Christian Marclay (with guest Jim Staley on trombone), Technology of Tears started life in New York in 1986 as a dance commission by Rosalind Newman. Fred took this opportunity to experiment with Henry Kaiser's brand new synclavier (the absolute state-of-the-art sampling and processing technology of the time - Henry had to take out a second mortgage on his house to buy it). It was the sophisticated sampling that fascinated Fred, and the piece is characterised by technological "comparisons" between real and virtual voices which constantly merge into one another. Tenko and Zorn tear through it all with breathless intensity. Parts two and three, which follow, couldn't be more different, for them Fred adopts a completely different methodology, playing everything himself mostly on low-grade instruments, then inviting turntablist Marclay to add plundered parts. Here is a completely different approach to "sampling": exploring dense layers of quotation intercut with melodies formed using random editing processes (with subsequent transcription and re-performance). Lastly there is Jigsaw, a later work, also made for Rosalind Newman, reflecting the frustrations experienced making Technology... where, every time Fred would complete a stable version, Rosalind would ask for changes (incidentally, sending the recording way over budget). This time Fred decided to make a modular piece that could be re-assembled in any way requested - and having no pre-determined structure at all. The original composition consisted of dozens of musical cells, each recorded separately in increments of between 3 and 12 measures; all at the same tempo, and in the same key. The idea was to play the elements separately and then ask Rosalind how she would like them constructed. Ironically, the test assembly, made as demonstration of what was possible, won instant approval, and no reconstruction was ever necessary." [label notes] | 2008 | €14.00 |
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| Rocking The Boat (Volume 1 Of The Fred Records Story, 2001-2020) | 9 x CD BOX | "First of a three-box collection by one of the most innovative guitarists and composers of his generation, containing 8 ReR CDs, plus a bonus Fred title & a fat historic booklet with artwork, photographs, extensive notes and other comments by Fred, all packed into in a sturdy box -- and at a budget price. Box one contains: The legendary Guitar Solos, Gravity (with Etron Fou Leloublan and Samla Mammas Manna), Cheap at Half the Price, Killing Time (with Bill Laswell and Fred Maher), Impur (for very large ensemble), Middle of the Moment (film score), Keep the Dog (double CD feat: Rene Lussier, Bob Ostertag, Zeena Parkins, Jean Derome & Charles Hayward). Plus, bonus CD Dropera. Biographical: Recipient of Italy's Demetrio Stratos Prize for his life's work in experimental music and Professor Emeritus at the legendary epicenter of American experimental music, Mills College in Oakland, California, Fred still teaches in the improvisation master's program at the Musik Akademie in Basel & as visiting faculty in the Universidad Austral in Valdivia, Chile, where he has been collaborating on the creation of a new School of Music & Sound Art. Also featuring Lars Hollmer, Marc Hollander, Hans Bruniusson, Eino Haapala, Olivia Bruynhooghe, Chris Cutler, Tina Curran, Catherine Jauniaux, Frank Wuyts, Michel Berkmans, Etienne Conod, Denis van Hecke, Veronique Vincent, Asha Curran Frith, the 13th Street Puerto Rican Summertime Band, Fred Maher, Bill Laswell, Paul Sears, Jean Derome, Charles Hayward, Rene Lussier, Bob Ostertag, Zeena Parkins, Ferdinand Richard, Tim Hodgkinson, Fabrizio Appelius, Mikaela Dietl, Robert Lax, Sandra M'Bow, Ida man walatAkhmudan, Tshanak ag Abalbal, women from the Kel lforas tribe, Josefina Lehmann, Johann le Guillerm, Bertrand Duval, Attila Zombori, Jean-Paul Lefeuvre, Hyacinthe Reisch, Emmanuelle Jacqueline, Didier A, Nasser Sai"dani, Catherine Guinamard, Ensemble Heteroclite, David Wood, Pascal Pariaud, Sophie Dufeutrelle, Laure Michel, Catherine Leuchter et al." Neue CD-Box-Serie des weltweit bekannten und renommierten britischen Avantgarde-Gitarristen FRED FRITH. „The Fred Records Story“ erscheint mit jeweils neun CDs in den drei Teilen „Vol. 1 - Rocking The Boat“, „Vol. 2 - Crossing Border“ und „Vol. 3 - Stepping Out“ auf RECOMMENDED. Der Multiinstrumentalist FRED FRITH zählt seit fünf Dekaden zu den wichtigsten und einflussreichsten Impulsgebern der zeitgenössischen Jazz- / Rock- und Avantgarde-Szene. So startete der studierte Musiker (Cambridge) seine Karriere Ende der sechziger Jahre als Gründungsmitglied der legendären Artrock-Band HENRY COW. Nach Auflösung der Genre definierenden Band (1979) gründete er gemeinsam mit CHRIS CUTLER und DAGMAR KRAUSE die ART BEARS und rief kurze Zeit später (gemeinsam mit BILL LASWELL) die Formation MASSACRE ins Leben. Zudem veröffentlichte er zahlreiche Soloalben, arbeitete mit renommierten Kollegen unterschiedlichster musikalischer Provenienz wie BRIAN ENO, MIKE OLDFIELD, JOHN ZORN, HENRY KAISER, PHIL MINTON, THE RESIDENTS und RICHARD THOMPSON und ist darüber hinaus als Film- und Theater-Komponist („Step Across The Border“ / 1990), Produzent (DAVID MOSS, TENKO, ETRON FOU LELOUBLAN) und Hochschullehrer (Mills College Kalifornien) tätig. Die neue Box-Serie „The Fred Records Story“ fasst themenspezifisch die Karrie des Ausnahmekünstlers zusammen, wobei mit „Inimitable“ in „Vol. 3 - Stepping Out“ sogar ein bisher unveröffentlichtes Album enthalten ist. Inklusive: Guitar Solos, Gravity, Cheap at Half the Price, Killing Time, Impur, Middle of the Moment, Keep the Dog (2CD), Bonus: Dropera https://fredfrith.bandcamp.com/album/rocking-the-boat-vol-1-of-the-fred-records-story-2001-2020 | 2021 | €70.00 |
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| Crossing Borders (Volume 2 Of The Fred Records Story, 2001-2020) | 9 x CD BOX | "Second of a three-box collection by one of the most innovative guitarists and composers of his generation, containing 8 ReR CDs, a bonus Fred title and a fat historic booklet with artwork, photographs, extensive notes & other comments by Fred, all packed into in a sturdy box -- and at a budget price. Box 2 contains: Live in Japan, Speechless, Prints, Step Across the Border (film score), Impur 2 (large ensemble), Art of Memory II (with John Zorn), Skeleton Crew (double CD with Zeena Parkins and Tom Cora). Plus, bonus CD Helter Skelter (remastered). Cover photo: Heike Liss Biographical: Recipient of Italy's Demetrio Stratos Prize for his life's work in experimental music & Professor Emeritus at the legendary epicenter of American experimental music, Mills College in Oakland, California, Fred still teaches in the improvisation master's program at the Musik Akademie in Basel and as visiting faculty in the Universidad Austral in Valdivia, Chile, where he has been collaborating on the creation of a new School of Music and Sound Art. Also appearing: Guigou Chenevier, Margot Mathieu, Ferdinand Richard, Jo Thirion, Tina Curran, Roger Kent Parsons, Asha & Storm, George Cartwright, Hans Bruniusson, Mars Williams, Steve Buchanan, Bill Laswell, Fred Maher, Bernd "Uimsch' Lehmann, Dave Kerman, Mike Johnson, Sebastian Gramms, Alexandra Schulz, Sheena Dupuis, Tom Cora, Zeena Parkins, Bob Ostertag, John Zorn, Daihachi Oguchi, Jean Derome, Rene Lussier, Kevin Norton, Eino Haapala, Marc Hollander, Lars Holl mer, Tim Hodgkinson, Iva Bittov. Pavel Fajt, Eitetsu Hayashi, Haco, Rabi, Lu, Katrin, Dave Newhouse, Laurent Frick, Pascal Pariaud, Joel Jorda, Laurent Vichard, Samuel Chagnard, Stephane Lambert, Philippe Madile, Serge Sana, Claire Mollard, Stephane Grosjean, Cyril Cambon, Stephen Tissot, Guillaume Quemener, Ghilem Lacroux, Bader Gharzouli, Gilles Laval, Jean-Michel Quoisse, Denis Mariotte, Claude Monteil, Edmond Hosdikian, Fred Giuliani, Kiwi, Nadine Laporte, Richard Peter et al." https://fredfrith.bandcamp.com/album/crossing-borders-vol-2-of-the-fred-records-story-2001-2020 | 2021 | €70.00 |
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| FRÖBERG, DAN | 15 Songs (down at Jinxey's) | CD | "A lone thumb piano, a singing woman, children at play, howling and crackling electricity, chirping birds, tones from a toy organ, sounds of traffic - Dan Fröberg´s remarkable compositions are intersections of shapes, environments, times, places and wildly disparate contexts. As a listener you may recognize individual sonic fragments and create pictures and scenarios through private associations - like an inner movie running parallel to the works - but still the sound environments appear so curious and raise so many questions in our minds. What are these shapes, milieus and tales that Dan Fröberg illustrates for us, and what do they want to convey? Traveling Dan Fröberg´s soundscapes renders you the feeling of a cloud passing freely between various geographical, temporal and cultural settings and contexts. Occasionally a dream appears. A folk music ensemble commences to play nearby, some giggling children run by, an orchestra of traffic looms large, and rustling leaves fall. The cloud hovers on, through walls, mountains and a brook, suddenly appearing in another time, in another place, where other figures tell their stories. In the world of Dan Fröberg everything is inspired: people, animals, places, sound, shadows, memories. Even though the sounds appear crystal clear in their purity, they convey many remarkable stories, while simultaneously leaving the field open for the listener´s fantasy. Dan Fröberg´s compositions and sound recordings are as clean as can be. No post-production processing of the sounds has been applied. Dan Fröberg works with a kind of sound magic. Nothing is left to arbitrary randomness. Each sound is chosen with care. When Dan Fröberg composes his pieces, each small detail of the soundscape is rendered vitality and significance. The significations are gradually transformed and new tales emerge as the different sound worlds are confronted with each other. As a listener you are transferred somewhere else just as your questions have began to formulate themselves - into a new world, quite familiar, albeit with something completely new and alien totell. The properties of time and space are always shifting in these pieces where figures, occurrences and reflections approach, materialize, convey something only to drift by or dissolve - as something novel appears, something else through the journey. Dan Fröberg prefers to brand his acoustic works folk music, rather than musique concrète, field recordings, sound art or something else that would be convenient. The compositions on this CD, or the journeys, if you like, take shape through 15 songs, wherein the shapes, environments and events constitute the voices that sing and establish this folk music that sounds like nothing else, in the borderland between here and now." [Daniel Rozenhall, Executive producer, Fylkingen Records.] "Also from Stockholm and sometimes connected to Firework is Fylkingen, a place for concerts, art, work and much more. A fine place to be. Their releases are less arty and conceptual and more musical. The name Dan Fröberg rings a bell, but my memory is such a condition that I don't remember. It seems to me he works with found sound: people talking, street sounds, the luna park, birds and electrical currents. He puts these together in a great way, a dream-like state of music. Strongly reminding me of Dominique Petitgand, but less telling a tale than he did in his music. With Petitgand somebody would tell a story, sing a song and he would add found sound, whereas Fröberg places the sound in the central position and lets the listener think of a story. This is 'close your eyes and dream away' music, but not in a new age sense of the word, but cinematic: true cinema for the ears. Great one." [Fdw/Vital Weekly] | 2007 | €13.00 |
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| FUKUOKA, RINJI / MICHEL HENRITZI / LUCA MASSOLIN | Weather Report | LP | "BACKWARDS is proud to announce a mind-blowing album of cosmic improvisation by the trio of musician / producer Luca Massolin (Golden Cup, Golden Jooklo Age), French avant-garde guitarist Michel Henritzi and Rinji Fukuoka, formely member of Overhang Party and currently of Majutsu No Niwa. Recorded in November 2011, eight months after the Fukushima disaster, ‘Weather Report’ is an onirical yet political soundpiece, developed in two long movements, ‘A Chuva Obrigado’ and ‘Radioactive Arigato’. The first side is a cornucopia of ghostly shapes and haunted tones, with Massolin’s dreamy organ and heavenly electronics blessed by Fukuoka’s elegiac violin lines. The piece evolves soon into an improvised blues for flamenco-like guitar (!!!), percussions and abstract electronics, building up tension until Henritzi’s lapsteel joins with waves of ectoplasmic electricity, and finally exploding into a blast of cathartic free noise. The other side is when the piece starts vibrating, with Massolin’s electric bass pushing the whole thing into full-on shoegaze mode, Henritzi combining long, doomy drones and Fukuoka playing the most emotionally violin ragas you got to hear in an improvised studio album. There will be room for more ghosts until the end of this side, taking us to a landscape of wintry trees, empty streets, an abandoned city devoid of human presence. This is the soundtrack of an echological disaster, a picture taken right after it happened, a warn about the risks of pushing the limits of human technology against nature. Images translated into sounds by improvised free music in its purest form: evocative, political, magical. How can you not be affected? Limited edition of 260 copies of which 50 are on BLUE vinyl, and the remaining on standard black wax." [label info] www.backwards.it | 2014 | €15.00 |
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| FURUDATE, TETSUO & Z. KARKOWSKI | World as Will II | CD | "Re-Aktivierung des Labels von SCOT JENERIK aus San Francisco, der v.a. als Konzertveranstalter aktiv ist, mit dem zweiten Teil der Zusammenarbeit von Karkowski & Furudate (Teil I erschien auf Staalplaat). In Sachen apokalyptischer, orchestraler, irgendwie „neo-klassischer“ Komposition wohl mit das intensivste und extremste, was es zur Zeit gibt! " [Drone Rec 2002] “Legendary composers Zbigniew Karkowski and Tetsuo Furudate complete their second installment of World As Will. This powerful collaboration results in a furiously intense music with Wagner-esque orchestrations and instrumentation with vigorous electronic manipulations, voice and mastery. A truly epic piece of work.” [press release] "The orchestral madness it evokes makes Laibach (to compare with a group who have used loads of orchestral sounds) into childplay." -Frans de Ward, Vital Weekly, Amsterdam | 2002 | €14.00 |
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| G*PARK | Gour | LP | "New works by Swiss musique concrete composer and visual artist Marc Zeier / G*Park. Active since the early 80's Zeier was a founding member of the Schimpfluch-Gruppe. He lives and works in Zürich as a composer, installation- and video-artist and plankton fisherman. Gour presents one long composition of his highly fascinating and unique crypto electro-acoustics based solely of micro field-recordings and natural phenomena. 'Musique concrete seems eternally old-fashioned and eternally modern. Marc Zeier makes you fall in love with the form all over again'. Thanks Are Due To: The Etang of Gour and its Creatures, A Singing and Cracking Chimney, Wild Bees and Wasps from Piemonte, Limnodromus griseus, Unidentified Voices from the Gemauge House, The Uwaga Squad, The Flies (Sarcophagidae), The Crows and Pigs of Chants, The People of Tiananmen, The Frozen Lakes, The Wolves. Edition of 350 copies." [label info] www.tochnit-aleph.com "The Swiss aktionist collective Schimpfluch has been active since the mid-'80s, with its various members seeking out the transgressive, the ultra-violent, and the transcendent all at once, via a dystopian hybrid of noise, punk theatrics, and / or musique concrete. In doing so, these provocateurs follow what their Viennese progenitors had started in the '60s through performance, sculpture, and painting. It can't go unnoticed how much of the iconography that Sudden Infant of Schimpfluch incorporates from Gunter Brus, and how much the hellish comedies of Otto Muehl filter through the modern day work of Rudolf Eb.Er. G*Park (aka Marc Zeier) is the most enigmatic of all the Schimpfluch artists, with no obvious parallels to anyone before him, as he trades in the modern day techniques of musique concrete, although his work acquires a tension, a dynamism, and an existential blight that were never achieved by the likes of Xenakis, Schaefer, Ferrari, or Chion. G*Park's epic double cd Sub from two years ago still proves to be an exhausting and exhilarating document into the denatured field recordings, cryptic collage, and subcutaneous electro-acoustics from Zeier, with Gour standing a continuation of those themes. Like on Sub, Zeier states the origins of his sound material - crows, pigs, flesh flies, wasps, wolves, frozen lakes, and some less obvious sounds from the Uwaga Squad and the Etang of Gour. Zeier locates mechanized bursts against a backdrop of very distant blackened noise, with all sorts of whipcrack slashes, wooden creaks, watery plops, corvid calls, and porcine squeals constructing a strange and hostile narrative of ritualized violence against an unknown subject. The genius of G*Park lies not in the sounds themselves (even as they are immaculately presented) but in the psychological voids left where Zeier eradicated everything through deathray, sterilizing cauterization, or fastidious vacuuming. A brilliantly done record from one of the very best technicians of the cruel theater of musique concrete." [Aquarius Records] | 2015 | €18.50 |
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| GABURO, KENNETH | Lingua II: Maledetto / Antiphony VIII | CD | "The work and thought of the American composer Kenneth Gaburo (1926-1993) exhibited many striking changes during his lifetime. In fact, while the world of commercial endeavor still insists that artists develop a recognizable personal "style," Gaburo's life-work can be seen as one of continual change and exploration, rather than one of codification and promotion. Some of these changes are beautifully illustrated by the two works on this CD, Maledetto, for seven speaking voices, from 1967-68, and Antiphony VIII (Revolution), for percussionist and electronic tape, from 1982-3. Both are intricate and powerful works, both take their inspiration from "non-musical" materials, and both require virtuosity of a most uncommon order. However, beyond that, the two works could not be more different. Maledetto is a wild choral piece, a great complex cry, a work that, while reveling in a surface texture of innuendo, word play, and pseudo- and real- history, spoken/shouted/sung by 7 amazing speakers, contains within itself a deep and profound celebration of the body, the physical, the sexual. It is one of the earliest of Gaburo's works where his concern for holistic thinking and art-making comes to the fore. This sort of thinking was in the air, of course ¬ many works were written at this time that were multi-layered in their meaning and intent, but Maledetto seems unique. It's combination of profundity and what might be called adolescent sniggering, and almost every emotional state in between, seems unprecedented. The subject of the piece is the word screw, in all its connotations, from the sexual to the mechanical, from the mildly obscene to the boisterous, with diversions along the way into topics such as perfume manufacture, printing, classical design, and structural linguistics, all of which connect with the small ridged, groovy object of attention. Speaking voices also figure in Antiphony VIII, but here they are the voices of people giving their heartfelt reactions to the notion that nuclear war has made their lives expendable. This work was created at least 15 years after Maledetto, and the boisterous energy of the Sexual Revolution, one of the earliest counter-cultural movements of the mid-1960s, has given place to the grim organizational determination of the various Anti-Nuclear movements of the 1980s. Gaburo's attitude has also changed. If Maledetto is a celebration, Antiphony VIII is a wake, and a wake-up call. Not content merely to protest, or to document people's reactions, the percussion, electronics, concrete sounds, and voices in this piece each embody within them Gaburo's analysis of the most common attitudes people have to the problem of governments treating them as expendable - helplessness, indifference, anger, uncertainty, and presents them all to us as a summary, and a questioning of our own attitudes to the problem. Gaburo the deep analyst of phenomena is still here, but now his analytical mind is dissecting not just a problem, but the wide variety of people's responses to that problem ¬ both as a structural resource, and as a means perhaps of intuiting the way forward." [Warren Burt (from the liner notes)] "Gaburo (1926-1993) is one of those many pioneering US-composers like Cowell, Cage, Nancarrow, Partch, etc. But he is one of lesser known ones. With this cd Pogus makes two works by him available. The first one 'Lingua II: Maledetto' (composition for 7 Virtuoso Speakers), composed in 1967-68, was first released on CRI in 1974. The liner notes Gaburo wrote for this release are reprinted here. The recording of this composition however is another one then released by CRI, but dating from the same period. June 10th, 1973 to be exact. The track opens with high pitched non-verbal throat sounds. After a few minutes the narrator starts reading a text about the all the connotations and meanings of the word 'screw'. Then two other voices join, reciting also texts concerning this word, etc., etc. Later on to be followed by a quartet. Sometimes the voices speak simultaneously, sometimes one after another. Sometimes several voices speak the same text. At other times not. Sometimes there is a out of phase reading of the same text by several speakers. It sounds very theatrical. No wonder as Gaburo composed this work as a part of a massive 6-hour theater work Called LINGUA. In 'Maladetto' Gaburo experiments with language and meaning, trying to create a dramatic and theatrical situation. I'm not completely sure but I think this is a live recording, using no overdubs and editing. The second composition 'Antiphony VIII' is written for tape and percussion in 1982-83. The percussion is played by Steven Schick. The recording dates from 1984. Alas the voices on the tape sound very muffled, and one cannot always hear what they say. The percussion playing becomes more and more intense during the piece, becoming increasingly involved in what the voice speaks about (nuclear war). So also in this piece theatrical aspects are present. Because of this quality it may be that both works on this cd still sound very much alive." [DM /Vital Weekly] www.pogus.com | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| GASSMANN, REMI | Electronics | 10inch | 11 early electroacoustic pieces for the Studiotrautonium keyboard alongside tape manipulation to accompany the New York City Ballet production Electronics by George Balanchine Originally staged March 22, 1961, as part of a double bill choreographed by George Balanchine, the experimental New York City Ballet production Electronics included the renowned dancers Violette Verdy and Jacques d’Amboise (pictured on the front of this album) and a revolutionary score by multi-disciplined composer Remy Gassmann using a truly unique instrument. Working alongside German born keyboard composer and close acquaintance Oskar Sala (with whom he had studied in Berlin under Paul Hindemith), Gassmann was given access and assistance to the latest developments of the Trautonium, an early electronic keyboard that was first exhibited in 1930 by inventor Adolf Trautwein and three pianists (including Sala). Being one of the original exponents of the machine, Sala (with Trautwein’s blessing) took the basic model of a neon tube oscillator and wire frequency controller (which provided an untempered continuous tonal range) and spent over twenty years developing what would become the Konzerttrautonium (as used by Roichard Strauss to emulate synthetic gongs), followed by the micro- tonal Mixturtrautonium and eventually the static Studiotrautonium which formed the centrepiece of his own studio in Berlin-Charlottenburg where Electronics was composed and realised. For the 1961 ballet, dressed in metal- lic bodysuits with geometric diodic motifs, Verdy and d’Amboise (alongside a small troupe of other dancers) performed the concise eleven-part ballet to polarised but predominantly positive audiences, generating a new outlook on experimental dance and supporting the similar sensibilities of other choreog- raphers such as Alwin Nikolais, Yvonne Georgi (with Henk Badings) and Maurice Béjart (with Pierre Henry). As one of the first American performances drawing primarily on European developments, the modest critical success of the project would open new avenues for the electronic musical duo who were commissioned later in the year by Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions to provide enhanced and versatile sound effects emulating cacophonic bird sounds alongside Bernard Hermann for the 1963 blockbuster The Birds. https://finderskeepersrecords.bandcamp.com/album/electronics | 2013 | €19.50 |
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| GEINS'T NAIT & L. PETITGAND | Oublier | CD | "Geins't Naït and Laurent Petitgand's Oublier follows their 2014 Je vous dis album, which inaugurated the Mind Travels series on Ici d'Ailleurs -- a collection dedicated to ambient, industrial, and classical-influenced music. Geins't Naït and Laurent Petitgand exemplify the particular vision of the series, with a backroads music that's often unusual, always poignant, and underappreciated. Oublier is the finest illustration of that vision to date. Geins't Naït creates industrial collages in a similar vein to the early work of Einstürzende Neubauten or Throbbing Gristle, while Laurent Petitgand is best known for his many contributions to the films of Wim Wenders, including 2014's The Salt of the Earth, which won three awards at the 2014 Cannes film festival. These two seemingly disparate artists are united here by their desire to escape from all generally accepted standards of creativity. Regarding Oublier, one could pick out Laurent Petitgand's magnificent melodies or Geins't Naït's haunting, hypnotic dynamics of loops and manipulated samples, but it is ultimately up the listeners to find their own meaning and experience -- because one of Oublier's central qualities is that it situates listeners at the center of its universe so effectively and to such an extent that they actually become participants. Some will perceive a heightened melancholy, even a form of despair. Others will be seduced by the work's evident beauty and warmth. Whatever the case, its non-linearity favors total immersion and sometimes -- in the more intense moments -- totally letting go." [label info] www.icidailleurs.com | 2015 | €13.00 |
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| Like This Maybe or This | CD | Five years after the release of "Je vous dis" in 2018, Geins't Naït and L.Petitgand's second album from the "Mind Travel" and "Make Dogs Sing" collection on the German label "Offen", the duo are now writing a new chapter in their story with this fascinating poetic tale. The same mysterious and heady atmosphere which characterises the two musicians is present in this new work but clearly they have never ceased refining and polishing their sounds to give their compositions even more power and depth. Geins't Naït and L.Petitgand here offer twelve new tracks with names as enigmatic as the title "Like this maybe or This" itself and the record's whole universe. In reality, these mysterious names lead us to let ourselves be taken to the deep meaning of their creation. The subject matter is certainly difficult to grasp and invites us on an inner journey while leading us to doubt and question ourselves incessantly. There is a perfect alchemy between these two artists though this was far from self-evident as they come from two very different schools. Thierry Merigout, who is now the only representative left from the late 80's experimental project Geins't Naït in Nancy, comes from the post-industrial scene. As for Laurent Petitgand, he is a pure melodist who is best known for his work as a composer of music for films and live shows and has collaborated with Wim Wenders and Paul Auster in particular. "Like this maybe or This" is a fully accomplished symbiosis between Geinst Nait's industrial and experimental tonalities and the celestial melodies of Laurent Petitgand. "Shape of the storie" starts the album with a bewildering atmosphere which mixes a sample of a guttural voice with cavernous resonances thus prefiguring the album's general atmosphere. However, while some tracks like "HAC" fuel our existential anguish, other tracks have a poetic and melancholic tonality which touches our deepest humanity. This is the case of "Dustil" whose subtle piano notes combined with the melancholy violin show us a sublimated world. This fascinating blend of violence and gentleness makes this record an atypical work which enables listeners to lose themselves in an emotional nebula where they can perceive the turbulence and also the intensity of our inner life. https://mindtravels.bandcamp.com/album/like-this-maybe-or-this | 2021 | €10.00 |
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| GENDREAU, MICHAEL | 55 pas de la ligne au no 3 | CD | MICHAEL GENDREAU, bekannt mit seiner Arbeit als CRAWLING WITH TARTS, mit seiner ersten Solo-CD: zwei lange Stücke mechanisch brummende drone-soundscapes mit repetitiven Mustern, deren Parameter sich allmählich verändern. “ Long-time San Francisco based sound artist, internationally known from his extensive discography as Crawling With Tarts, releases his first full length solo work. 55 pas de la ligne au no 3 is a microscopic study of dense sonic landscapes buried within antiquated turntable motors and furnaces. Gendreau, an acoustician by profession, utilizes high sensitivity accelerometers to map detailed frequencies from a variety of old turntable motors and mechanics. This is a rare exhibition of the creative potential within this kind of technology. (Randy Yau's favorite album of the year... And soon to be Jim Haynes' too!) ” In its puzzling bellows, the 35-minute title track leads the listener astray as it rambles in its physics and amplified world of micro-sound. Here there are hints of data transfer and voice channeling that has at once a startling approach and tectonic finish. The repetitive churning of teeny motorized units, in their climbing, distorted frequencies will have you hanging on each transition. Some of the finer sources play with the idea of scale, while at times these palm-sized worlds grow into 300 foot tall super coasters, and in moments they are again transformed smaller than a pinhead. 23five is ready to challenge our ears with visionary work that pushes the barriers of the noise/sound envelope.” [Vital Weekly 332] label: www.23five.org | 2002 | €13.00 |
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| GENOCIDE ORGAN | Civilization | do-CD BOX | "This release was already planned in 2011 for the 20th anniversary of „Save our Slaves“. The implementation and the restoration of the original source material took a lot of time, especially the sound-files of the 1990 pre-release concert which are completed for this set for the 1st time. Genocide Organ had to dig deep into long-forgotten parts of the archive, to reconstruct as many as possible of the original photo-materials, reconstruct, extend and re-view them. The work on the new album „The Obituary of the Americas“ delayed the completion as well, but then also accelerated it, as both publications were cut across thematically. Now it is done! A further stone fits into the wall of the bands historical back catalogue. LP version: Limited numbered edition 500. The deluxe linenpaper covered Hard-Slipcase is foilblocked and debossed. The record sleeves and the additional artwork sleeves are all debossed and spot-varnished in the typical Genocide Organ artwork finish you know from : Obituary of the Americas: album. The artwork sleeve is filled up with extensive large 24p booklet, numbered certificate, inlay for the Live LP and embroidered patch. CD version: Limited first edition comes as deluxe linenpaper covered, foilblocked and debossed Hard-Slipcase, incl. Coverpak with double CD and extensive large 24p booklet. Only this first edition comes as special Hard-Slipcase Set with the additional Live CD. Musical contend on both formats: The complete material of „Save our Slaves“ originally released in 1991. „The Lever Sunlicht Shooting“, reflecting the complete performance of Genocide Organ Live 15.12.1990 in Mannheim in front of an invited audience. Compilation Tracks from: Perpetual State of Oracular Dream LP 1991 Natural Order 2LP 1997 Sound of Hate Vol.7 MC 1992 Exploration One CD 1995 Trans-Action MC 1992 + both tracks from: Klan Kountry 7″ 1998 all material from original source material re-mastered by Jerome Nougaillon and Genocide Organ. :CONTEXT: Released on Tesco Organisation in 1991, Save Our Slaves arrived as the second album for Genocide Organ, following the debut Leichenlinie released 2 years prior. Although the impact of Leichenlinie is undeniable in establishing the group within the noise industrial / power electronics scene, upon reflection Save Our Slaves is the release that cemented Genocide Organ’s cult underground status. This cult status has been generated via their musical approach, coupled with lavish handmade packaging and the presentation of strong, potentially controversial thematic material in an impartial and ambiguous manner; which incidentally some have interpreted as being ‚politically incorrect‘. Save Our Slaves stands out as the landmark release that definitively executed each hallmark element of sound, visuals and thematic content with flawless accuracy. :THEME: Conceptually, Save Our Slaves is an album renowned for its direct engagement with many taboo aspects of America’s history. Consequently, without shying away from the darkest aspects of America’s past, Save Our Slaves is concerned with: slavery, racist movements such as the Ku Klux Klan, radical right wing political advocacy group The John Birch Society, and the struggles for suppression, dominance and/or liberty on both sides of the civil rights movement. There are seemingly implied references to Dr Martin Luther King (the vinyl side dubbed Birmingham perhaps referring to Birmingham, Alabama and the 1950-60’s civil rights movement), whilst the track Violent Coordinating Committee appears to be inspired by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee – an important ‚direct action‘ organization of the 1960’s civil rights movement. Save Our Slaves also contains more direct references to other civil rights figures including James Meredith – the first African-American student admitted to the segregated University of Mississippi (a flashpoint of the civil rights movement); and Sarah Patton Boyle – Virginia’s most prominent white civil rights activists during the 1950-60s. Yet to expand the thematic content further, the album also makes reference to American Imperialism of the 1950’s to 1970’s, which included covert CIA operations in the Middle East, Africa, South America, and Indochina / South East Asia. Specifically, such operations involved the facilitation of military instigated coups and provision of financial and military support to various dictators in the ideological fight for capitalism against communism and socialism. Accordingly, within the broadly coveted discography of Genocide Organ, Save Our Slaves stands out as one of their pinnacle releases by fact of it being one the of most sought after. The album’s revered status is also demonstrative of the manner in which Genocide Organ combine music, theme and artwork to transcend the creation of albums designed merely to be ‚enjoyed‘. Save Our Slaves functions as a politically charged, controversial declaration and socio-political manifesto that analyses American society, the roots of America’s history and culture and its role in shaping the modern world. As exemplified by its sound, visuals and thematic content Save Our Slaves stands as a strong and clear testament to the initial rise and early establishment of Genocide Organ’s cult status. Richard Stevenson: editor of Spectrum Magazine (1998-2001) / current editor of noise receptor journal (print ‚zine & blog). | 2017 | €28.00 |
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| The Truth will make you free | LP | "Debossed Cover, comes with numbered insert. 20 years after „The Truth will make you free“ saw light for the 1st time, this last Brick in the wall of Genocide Organ´s back catalogue gets re-issued. First released in 1999 as vinyl only release. Here Tesco offers this album in the typical art-style that all Genocide Organ records come in. „The Truth will make you free“ is an album yet to discover featuring many dark rhythmic industrial pieces filled with the agony of a dying world. All the confessions made there were true and the presence proved them right. The Truth will be twisted and turned around as often as someone wilst it and then it becomes a lie and suddenly the lie becomes truth just to turn lie again." https://tescogermany.bandcamp.com | 2019 | €25.00 |
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| DEATH ZONES | do-LP | First Video Teaser: NoSuicideUnit Released as limited 2LP in gatefold cover with two inserts & numbered card. 2CD Version. Gatefold and Digipak shows the typical GO debossed and spotvarnished layout. Will be not available via bandcamp. ATTENTION: The vinyl version will only be produced according to the number of orders we get prior to 9.11.23. After this date it may prove difficult to obtain a copies. Somewhere out there they were controlling the streets to ensure that rules were followed. They were smuggling themselves from one continent to another, guarding borders training rebels, breaching doors, steering drones, and following the path of the War-Orchestra. The seventh year anniversary of the release of :OBITUARY OF THE AMERICAS: sees Genocide Organ returning with a release full of cynical survivalism in a world of havoc! While those celebrate the new world - we prepare ourselves for :DEATH ZONES:. What started with the :TIPPING POINT: 3MC Set in 2020 has now turned into :DEATH ZONES: Stand fast, mark your target , when it comes. No more sounds - Just moving ground! TRACKLIST: Conditioned War Sheep Appropriate Action Identity Politics NoSuicideUnit Loitering Munition When our Terror comes Pure Evil Affirmative Action Abbey Gate Virtue Signaling Migrant Soldiers Kommando Found Dead Stack the Bodies Malicous Purity FU6 - Waiting for Hell Trial by Combat Fake Emotions Small Boys Unit TESCO 160 | 2023 | €39.00 |
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| Death Zones | do-CD | Released as limited 2LP in gatefold cover with two inserts & numbered card.heavy black vinyl 2CD Version and LTD300 2MC set. Gatefold and Digipak shows the typical GO debossed and spotvarnished layout. Will be not available via bandcamp. ATTENTION: The vinyl version will only be produced according to the number of orders we get prior to 9.11.23. After this date it may prove difficult to obtain a copy. Somewhere out there they were controlling the streets to ensure that rules were followed. They were smuggling themselves from one continent to another, guarding borders training rebels, breaching doors, steering drones, and following the path of the War-Orchestra. The seventh year anniversary of the release of :OBITUARY OF THE AMERICAS: sees Genocide Organ returning with a release full of cynical survivalism in a world of havoc! While those celebrate the new world – we prepare ourselves for :DEATH ZONES:. What started with the :TIPPING POINT: 3MC Set in 2020 has now turned into :DEATH ZONES: Stand fast, mark your target , when it comes. No more sounds – Just moving ground! TRACKLIST: Conditioned War Sheep Appropriate Action Identity Politics NoSuicideUnit Loitering Munition When our Terror comes Pure Evil Affirmative Action Abbey Gate Virtue Signaling Migrant Soldiers Kommando Found Dead Stack the Bodies Malicous Purity FU6 – Waiting for Hell Trial by Combat Small Boys Unit Fake Emotions | 2023 | €20.00 |
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| GFFR | Blockchain Me Anonymous | LP | gFFr BLOCKCHAIN ME ANONYMOUS 12" LP, ltd. 200 copies + download card Blockchain Me Anonymous is a result of more Terabytes exchanged between gF’s and Fr’s machines. These machines are non-human yet they develop ambitiousness and sexuality. They are assertive. They do not argue. They do not care. From gFFr’s networked machines an AI emerged, with will and voice. You can call her Verena Becker (maybe), she has many faces (and counting) and she wants to be a pop star. Machines worship her more than Madonna. They sing her songs while performing tasks. Verena Becker likes pop music. She often hums “The Queer is Dad”, her favorite refrain, but in her own machinic way. She’s afraid that neurotypical humans could not appreciate, but she wants to be a pop star. She was convinced that her neural network could only please machines, which made her sad. She leaked into gF and Fr’s computers and she drove them to make this record because she wants to please humans. During the only interview via neural cable connection, she expressed very few concepts, translatable as follows: “F#*% ¥o# hum@n @s solos. Buy my f#*%in’ record. Sing my songs. D@nce with me. Sta¥n or Go. Lemme stoned. I love you. Be mined”. You’d better listen. gFFr is Verena Becker with Fr and gF. Facial recognition mixups and angry neighbors. AI is political. Individual biographies: gF is a XY-year-old junior programmer who enjoys hockey, watching sport and badminton. He is artificial, but can also be very random and a bit beats.He is from Italy. He has a degree in computing. Physically, gF is in pretty good shape. He is average-height with light skin, blonde hair and brown eyes.He grew up in an upper class neighborhood. gF’s best friend is a junior programmer called Laila Stanley. They are inseparable. He also hangs around with Mildred Ferguson and Finley Kemp. They enjoy attending galleries together. Fr is a @@-year-old online mental trainer who enjoys spreading fake news on Facebook, traveling in dark webs and working on cars. He is pseudo-artificial and a bit lazy, as per Lacan’s interpretation of laziness. He has a severe phobia of tables, and is obsessed with reading. After his mother died when he was young, he was raised by his father, a period in which he developed an enduring love for insects and empty spaces. Fr is slightly overweight, but exercising every day to get back in shape. His best friend is his dog named Petrus. He lives alone in the woods and communicates only through text-speech software. Verena Becker is a young female artificial intelligence, trained on Donna Haraway, Gilles Deleuze and Britney Spears. Her secret dream is to become a pop singer. Despite the rigid workouts of thousands of stories without elevators, her neural net is yet too shallow to allow her to sing any potential blockbuster. Verena is however unable to develop resentment, rather she naïvely perseverates in hope that one day her programmers will add new layers to her network. She often hangs out with Sniper, her high-frequency trading friend. gFFr self-released its first EP Play with Me on 3rd July 2020 (Bandcamp Day) and now its full-length Blockchain Me Anonymous in May 2021, on 13 / Silentes records. https://gffr.bandcamp.com/album/blockchain-me-anonymous | 2021 | €18.00 |
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| GHEYSEN, FILIP | Tabletop Guitar | CD / DVD / BOOK | "Filip Gheysen (1979) is a musician and audio artist, living and working in Ghent, Belgium, with a passion for sound and experimental music. Using only a tabletop guitar, effects and the occasional autoharp, he creates abstract droning soundscapes, stripped of all unnecessary elements, focussing solely on the timbre and tone of his instrument. It's this timbre that is vital in his musical works, in that the harmonic spectrums of the drones and the enhanced sounds he typically produces with his electric tabletop guitar are progressively shifting. Synonymous with timbre is the quasi-poetic phrase tone colour. These elements are equally visible in Gheysen's visual art, consisting mostly of abstract prints and paintings. There is obviously a play with the tones of a colour, thus an inversion of the aforementioned musical term. This pertinent in- and decrease of saturation and of temperature in the pictorial field is comparable to what is going on in his music. Moreover, these are features which are obviously emphasised in the videos the artist has been creating since 2011. They show lines dance rather timidly, make turns or float along accompanied by passing spots and travelling smears in a scenery of inks and paint. The imagery, strongly reminiscent of his prints and paintings, is enlivened by humming guitar sounds. As an inspired symbiosis between his visual art and his music, the video clips constitute a logical step in Gheysen's intriguing body of work that doesnt cease to amaze. Although appearing here for the first time under his own name, Filip Gheysen has been very active in different projects. He is the founder of Glasvocht Records and has released albums under the monikers Picturesque, Teledroom (with Portables-guitarist Wio) and is a member of the band 4 Black Boxes (with Jürgen De Blonde aka Köhn and Tom Vangheluwe). Trained as a graphic designer, he has also studied printmaking at the academy of Ghent and had several expositions. Tabletop Guitar presents both his musical and visual art and adds a third field of interest. His videoworks are the culmination of his two main outlets, giving a new dimension to his art." [label info] www.silkentofu.org | 2013 | €20.00 |
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| GIFFONI, CARLOS | Eternal Noise | CD | Vier Stücke mit hyper-minimalen Analog-Drones, zwischen rauh-knarzigen Texturen und sanften Wellen a la ELEH. "Carlos Giffoni knows no mercy. Of all the noise terrorists on the loose today, Giffoni causes the most upheaval. We know he specialises in brutal and invincible noise collages, but there is so much more to it than that. There is always a glimmer of hope that shines through the dense clouds of noise. His noise lives, broods and swings. His latest album for Bottrop-Boy is a true revelation in this respect, not just for the listener, but also for the artist himself. After all, the Venezuelan artist, who is based in New York, has conceded that this is a new style for him. With Eternal Noise Carlos Giffoni enters the holiest of holies, his noise nirvana. Even though Giffoni’s earlier works already sounded impressively organic, with Eternal Noise he is heading for new heights. His customary thick layers of noise sound more subtle than ever before. The four-part suite maintains physical impact, but all faces are turned to heaven, towards eternity. Rather than a noise exercise that sounds like a wrestling match in the dirt, this recording represents ascension towards the sun and open heavens. At times you will find yourself almost drowning in the feedback splashing against you, at other times you will find yourself breathlessly captivated by the peregrinations, whirls and swells of sinus tones. Giffoni is genuinely inspired by the avant-garde music of the 20th century and the results are miraculous. How Giffoni creates his compositions is of no importance. This is all about their effect on your mood, the spectacle of your ravished soul. You find yourself asking how it is possible that such loud and intense music can be so tranquil and meditative at the same time. Eternal Noise reconfirms Giffoni’s status as the uncrowned king of contemporary noise. Bottrop-Boy is proud to release this key work in Giffoni’s oeuvre." [label info] ".... The eternal is the easier word to parse. Giffoni here deals exclusively with shape-shifting drones, mostly around the lower partials of the overtone series. Each of the four tracks doesn’t evolve so much as amorphously change emphasis at a geologic or tectonic pace, almost a history of the Earth heard from the inside or the sound of individual molecules vibrating, a kind of nano-counterpoint. Even where there is a pulse within the drone, it serves not as a driving teleological force but rather as a mere marker of the passing time, alluding to the stasis of the most ambient of krautrock tracks. On top of that, Giffoni seems to be evoking a kind of throat singing where the vocal chords have been replaced by charged wires that crackle, buzz, and distort as they vibrate. Each overtone has its own individual color of noise, so the composite is like the gradual color shifts of oil on water or of a dissolving Gobstopper. Were those flavors of noise not so harsh around the edges, this album could almost be meditative. It is fitting that the liner notes are mostly pictures of Japanese temples, since their serenity is clearly behind almost every sound here, even the harsh ones. And when each track cuts off suddenly, it feels as if you're being unwillingly wrested back into reality." [Dan Rucchia / Dusted Mag] www.bottrop-boy.com | 2008 | €12.50 |
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| GILLIS, ANNE | * * | CD | French musician & performance artist Manon Anne Gillis came to Japan to perform in 2016 following the 2015 release of the 5-CD archive box set from Art Into Life, which was a compilation of earlier recordings. Now at last, for the first time in 27 years since 1994’s “Euragine” in CD format, her long-awaited 7th solo album is completed. As she still continues to progress and evolve musically, this work is constructed primarily around primitive hiss noise and error sounds. Here she has woven a musical tapestry that is more blurred, obscured, and noise-oriented than her earlier work. With the strong cohesiveness of her disquieting singing voice in a thunderous roar bellowing from the inner depths, the repetition of the dense glitch sounds, and the nostalgic concept of the obscure rhythm track (track 5) will remind us of her days when she went by the alias Devil’s Picnic. 2015年にArt Into Lifeより過去の音源を総括した5CDアーカイヴボックスをリリースし、翌2016年には来日公演も果たしたフランスの女性音楽家/パフォーマーManon Anne Gillis。1994年にCDフォーマットで発表した[Euragine]以来27年振りとなる、待望の7thソロアルバムが遂に完成。プリミティブなヒスノイズやエラー音を主軸とした構造は、過去のどの作品よりも不明瞭かつノイジーであり、今尚進化を続ける彼女の音楽性が様々な様相で紡ぎ出される。粘着度の強い轟音の奥底から響く不穏な歌声、高濃密なグリッチサウンドの反復、そして初期の変名Devil's Picnicを思わせるオブスキュアなリズムトラック(Track.5)では原点回帰なコンセプトも確認出来る。 Mastered by Takumi Akaishi who was Anne’s supporting act for her 2016 performance in Japan. 彼女の2016年来日公演でサポートアクトを務めた赤石拓海によるマスタリング。 https://art-into-life.bandcamp.com/album/- | 2021 | €18.50 |
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| " - " | LP | French musician & performance artist Manon Anne Gillis came to Japan to perform in 2016 following the 2015 release of the 5-CD archive box set from Art Into Life, which was a compilation of earlier recordings. Now at last, for the first time in 27 years since 1994’s “Euragine” in CD format, her long-awaited 7th solo album is completed. As she still continues to progress and evolve musically, this work is constructed primarily around primitive hiss noise and error sounds. Here she has woven a musical tapestry that is more blurred, obscured, and noise-oriented than her earlier work. With the strong cohesiveness of her disquieting singing voice in a thunderous roar bellowing from the inner depths, the repetition of the dense glitch sounds, and the nostalgic concept of the obscure rhythm track (track 5) will remind us of her days when she went by the alias Devil’s Picnic. 2015年にArt Into Lifeより過去の音源を総括した5CDアーカイヴボックスをリリースし、翌2016年には来日公演も果たしたフランスの女性音楽家/パフォーマーManon Anne Gillis。1994年にCDフォーマットで発表した[Euragine]以来27年振りとなる、待望の7thソロアルバムが遂に完成。プリミティブなヒスノイズやエラー音を主軸とした構造は、過去のどの作品よりも不明瞭かつノイジーであり、今尚進化を続ける彼女の音楽性が様々な様相で紡ぎ出される。粘着度の強い轟音の奥底から響く不穏な歌声、高濃密なグリッチサウンドの反復、そして初期の変名Devil's Picnicを思わせるオブスキュアなリズムトラック(Track.5)では原点回帰なコンセプトも確認出来る。 credits released November 5, 2021 Mastered by Takumi Akaishi who was Anne’s supporting act for her 2016 performance in Japan. 彼女の2016年来日公演でサポートアクトを務めた赤石拓海によるマスタリング。 https://art-into-life.bandcamp.com/album/- | 2021 | €30.00 |
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| GILLIS, ANNE / JAC BERROCAL / JACQUES DOYEN | Fuel 217 / Sacre | pic-7inch | Side A : Anne Gillis / Jac Berrocal - fuel 217 Collaboration between Anne Gillis (oil can de Dion-bouton) and Jac Berrocal (pocket trumpet). Side B : is a reissue of a collaboration between Jacques Doyen and Jac Berrocal on a text by Allen Ginsberg that was released on the tape compilation "Paris Tokyo" in 1983 on the Tago Mago label. "This is quite a little oddity. It is the only release (so far?) of this French label (listing the main distribution source as the address) and it is a picture disc on heavy vinyl. Both sides involve Jacuqes Berrocal, the French trumpet improviser and on one side he has a duet with Anne Gillis, of whom I had not heard in a long time. They met the lovely Parisian festival Sonic Protest and Gillis found an "oil can De Dion Bouton at a flea market" and used that in the recording. The other sees a lyric by Allen Ginsburg recited by Jacques Doyen and that song already appeared on the 1982 compilation 'Paris Tokyo' by the Tago Mago label. The whole thing is limited to 230 copies. It may seem odd to pair both songs together, but then: why not? The side with Anne Gillis is certainly a most curious affair with the crackling of can, oil or otherwise, and some far away sounds; it might be a trumpet but for all I know it might also be a voice. Surely a fine piece of musique concrete in a very naive sort of way, which is something I enjoy very much. The trumpet is easily recognized on 'Sacré', layered I should think, also not too present in the mix, unlike the voice of Doyen, reciting the French poem, and even without understanding what this is about, one feel the somewhat scared atmosphere of the piece. Do these pieces fit together? Maybe not, indeed. Does it matter? It doesn't, either. It is a most lovely 7" and that's what matters." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2018 | €17.00 |
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| GINNUNGAGAP | Return to Nothing / Nothing to Return | mLP | Teure aber sehr schön gestaltete Vinyl-Edition (nachdem die CD schon lange vergriffen ist) von diesen Aufnahmen von 2004 von STEPHEN O'MALLEYS vielleicht experimentellsten Seitenprojekt... "Stephen O’Malley (SUNN O))), KHANATE) on guitar in live- improvisation with two others (GERRIT & T.WYSKIDA) working on electronics and gong & tympani, creating a strange atmosphere between floating soundwaves, dark drones & concrete detailed microsounds. Two long tracks that got more filled & dense & beautiful over the timeperiod.... Recorded March 10th, 2004, at the Flux Factory in Queens." [Drone Records] "... Ginnungagap is a term from Norse mythology that means something like "seeming emptiness" and that's a great name for this project, which sounds like it emanates from some abyssal void or abandoned cave or something. Ambient sinister drone improv, reminding us a little bit of House of Low Culture or even Thuja, if they were more creepy and liquid-sounding. Ginnungagap is a trio consisting of Khanate / SUNNO))) dude Stephen O'Malley on guitar, Khanate's Tim Wyskida on gong and tympani, and Gerritt Wittmer (who runs the Misanthropic Agenda label, and records solo as Gerritt) on computer. Packaged in a gold-printed, flat oversized cardstock sleeve, this disc consists of two tracks: "Return To Nothing" being a live recording about a half-hour in length, followed by Gerritt's remix "Nothing To Return" for about 20 minutes more. Like so much Khanate / SUNNO))) related stuff, it's of course a limited edition release... " [Aquarius Records review] "A live recording and alternate mix of a collaboration between GERRITT (GERRITT, Misanthropic Agenda), STEPHEN O'MALLEY (KHANATE, SUNN O))), LOTUS EATERS, BURNING WITCH, THORR'S HAMMER), and TIM WYSKIDA (KHANATE, BLIND IDIOT GOD). Recorded March 10, 2004 at the Flux Factory in Queens. Limited edition of 500, pressed on color vinyl." [label info] www.misantropicagenda.com | 2009 | €23.50 |
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| GODSPEED YOU BLACK EMPOROR! [GYBE] | Lift your skinny fists like antennas to heaven | do-LP | \"Das neue, phänomenale Album der innovativen Post-Rock-Band ! Vier lange, ausufernde Stücke die nur noch manchmal entfernt an gängige „Rock“-Strukturen erinnern, vielmehr entwickeln sich zarte Anfänge aus z.B. Guitars, Streichern, Bläsern & Bass hin zu monumentalen Instrumental-Stücken; voller Harmonien und unterschwelliger Kraft, die manchmal fast explodiert.. es gibt auch atmosphärische Zwischenparts mit piano, field recordings, etc.. hier treffen sich GLENN BRANCA, RACHEL’S, und LABRADFORD. Intense !\" [Drone Records info 2000] \"...like Antennas to Heaven After two years of constant touring and near-unanimous critical acclaim, Godspeed You Black Emperor! assembled a collection of new recordings that charted the creative evolution of the band as well as its literal physical movement on the road, criss-crossing North America and Europe. Five expansive full-band compositions are framed by various field recordings, tape manipulations and ensemble pieces in a return to the narrative sonic collage techniques that marked their 1997 debut (F#A#8). Four seamless sides of vinyl unfold a world of aching sadness and beauty, with musical quotes ranging from heartland americana to mitteleuropa folkways, all distilled through the unique sonic filters of Godspeed\'s pedal-crazy orchestral rock instrumentation. Harrowing guitars, plaintive strings, pulsing basses and explosive drums combine with glockenspiels, horns and tape drones to form an overwhelming palette of sounds, always driven by fierce melodic momentum and intense emotional resonance. GYBE! continued to paint on an impossibly large canvas, with an uncanny blend of world-weariness and naive exuberance that spoke volumes about the conflicts and contradictions permeating our political and cultural life. The tension between humility and hubris conjured an epic scope and a raw hope that such sweeping gestures might survive with some semblance of substance.\" [label info] www.cstrecords.com | 2000 | €26.00 |
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| F# A# °° | CD | "Originally released on vinyl in a pressing of 500 on the Constellation label, F# A# ∞has been remixed and resequenced. Take the epic scope of Ennio Morricone, the artsy slash of 17 Pygmies, the desert tones of prime Savage Republic, bolster the mix with the rhythmic chugalug of The Ex and add the Canadian tradition of radio drama and you begin to get a hint of what this band are up to. With twin percussionists, three guitar players, violin, cello, glockenspeil and tape loops, godspeed you black emperor! can make a big rumbling sound or stretch out into delicate filigrees. The nontet has developed a reputation in their hometown for gripping multimedia shows at their recording and performance space Hotel 2 Tango. At the Lounge Ax twin film projectors emitted grainy backdrops while the band built up their cinemascope sound world. The original home recordings were made at Hotel 2 Tango and have been tweaked at Toronto's Chemical Sound studios (with the help of Daryl Smith of Slow Loris). Two new pieces,"Dead Metheny" and "Sad Mafioso," have been recorded for the compact disc." [label info] www.brainwashed.com/kranky | 1998 | €15.00 |
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| Allelujah! Don't bend! Ascend! | LP + 7inch | "We are proud to announce the first new recordings by Godspeed You! Black Emperor in a decade. Featuring two twenty-minute slabs of epic instrumental rock music and two six-and-a-half minute drones, ‘ALLELUJAH! DON’T BEND! ASCEND! provides soaring, shining proof of the band’s powerful return to form. Having emerged from hiatus at the end of 2010, GYBE picked up right where they left off, immediately re-capturing the sound and material that had fallen dormant in 2003 and driving it forward with every show of their extensive touring over the last 18 months. The new album presents the fruits of that labour: evolved and definitive versions of two huge compositions previously known to fans as “Albanian” and “Gamelan”, now properly titled as “MLADIC” and “WE DRIFT LIKE WORRIED FIRE” respectively. Accompanied by the new drones (stitched into the album sequence on CD; cut separately on their own 7″ for the LP version), GYBE have offered up a fifth album that we feel is as absolutely vital, virulent, honest and heavy as anything in their discography. We don’t have much time for mythology, but we’d be lying if we said the return of Godspeed You! Black Emperor in 2010 didn’t signify a whole lot to us as a marker from which to look back on the past decade, to reflect on what’s been gained or lost within the confines of independent music culture and what’s been gained or lost in the socio-political landscape writ large. Godspeed’s music will do that to you. It is music that bears witness to, channels and transforms this predominantly terrible, infuriating, venal and nihilistically sad story we’re all living, sharing, resisting, protesting, deconstructing and trying to change for the better. We think GYBE has once again provided a uniquely moving and compelling soundtrack for these acts of analysis, defiance and ascension. * * * Hard to believe a full decade has passed since the release of Yanqui U.X.O., the last album by GYBE. Never a band to care for conventional industry wisdom, Yanqui was released shortly before xmas 2003 with little publicity and no press availability, no marketing plans or cross-promotions or brand synergies, with back cover artwork tracing the inextricable links between major music labels and the military-industrial complex. Driven by word-of-mouth from a passionate and committed fanbase galvanized by the group's sonic vision and its dedication to unmediated, unsullied musical communication, the album found it's rightful audience. To suggest that such simple principles and goals have become harder to maintain and enact a decade later is an understatement. For all the contents and discontents – for all the "content" – of our present cultural moment, the idea of circumventing the glare of exposure, the massaging of media cycles and the calculus of identity management appears quaint, if not futile. But Godspeed is looking to try all the same. The band wants people to care about this new album, without telling people they should or talking about themselves. They want to hold on to some part of that energy that comes with the thrill of anonymous discovery and unmediated transmission, knowing full well that these days, anti-strategy risks being tagged as a strategy, non-marketing framed as its opposite, and deeply held principles they consider fundamental to health as likely to be interpreted as just another form of stealth. Truly, thanks for being open to hearing it. Release date: 15 October 2012 (Europe), 16 October 2012 (rest of world) Running time: 53:09 LP is pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl at Optimal (Germany) and comes in a tipped-on heavyweight gatefold jacket printed in full-colour process plus a spot metallic ink and spot matte varnish. LP dust sleeve is also 4-colour print. Package includes a 7 inch in printed dust sleeve (same audio appears in a different sequence on the CD) and a 12"x48" pull-out poster (printed full colour on both sides) featuring a collage of film stills specially-photographed and captured from the GYBE live 16mm projections." [label info] www.cstrecords.com "Viel ist passiert in den letzten 10 Jahren und für Mythologien bleibt weder Zeit noch Kapazität, aber eines ist doch offenbar: wir würden lügen, wenn wir nicht zugeben würden, dass die Rückkehr von GY!BE im Jahre 2010 eine Zäsur, ein Punkt der Rückschau gewesen ist. Wie kaum eine andere Band haben die Kanadier uns in den letzten Jahren begleitet, und das ohne musikalisch wirklich sichtbar zu sein. Ihre Geschichte ist eng mit dem Label Constellation verknüpft und die gesamte Attitüde, der Kontext, in dem sich Constellation und damit auch GY!BE bewegen, haben einen nicht zu unterschätzenden Einfluss auf die Independent Musikkultur weltweit ausgeübt. Und so regt dieses neue Album von GY!BE eine Rückschau an, eine Auseinandersetzung, was Independentkultur und Selbstverständnis heute noch bedeuten und wohin sich die soziokulturellen Komponenten unserer Gesellschaft entwickelt haben und noch weiter entwickeln werden. Auf diese Weise wird ,'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!" mit einer Bedeutung aufgeladen, wie sie schwerer kaum wiegen kann - und auf die weder Band noch Album direkt einen Einfluss haben - eine künstlerische Äußerung, die Bedeutung durch ihre bloße Existenz erlangt - da haben wir ihn doch, den Mythos, ohne dass wir es wollten. Und wir können es nur akzeptieren - dass dieses wunderbare Stück Musik (und das ist sie wahrlich, diese Platte - musikalisch ein Meisterwerk) schon jetzt ein Begleiter unseres Selbstverständnisses geworden ist, ein Moment des Innehaltens, des Reflektierens und damit Zeuge unserer eigenen Transformation, in der wir versuchen, das Kapitel unserer eigenen Biographie in diesem Buch aus überwiegend furchtbaren, korrupten, komplizierten und nihilistischen Geschichten neu zu schreiben und irgendwie in Hoffnung zu verwandeln. GY!BE haben es wieder einmal geschafft, einen Soundtrack für dieses Wechselspiel aus Analyse, Trotz und Befreiung zu liefern. Die Vinylversion von ,'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!" besteht aus einer LP und einer 7". Die 7" enthält zwei Drones, die auf der CD in den Album-Kontext eingebunden sind, auf Vinyl aber separat vorliegen, um eine gute Qualität der Pressung zu erreichen. Die beiden Songs ,Mladic" und ,We Drift Like Worried Fire" sind final ausformulierte Versionen der beiden von den den Konzerten der Band bereits bekannten Tracks ,Albanian" und ,Gamelan". Die beiden Tracks wurden von Howard Bilerman im legendären Hotel2Tango Studio aufgenommen, während die Drones von der Band selbst aufgenommen und gemixt wurden. Alle wurden gemastert von Harris Newman/ Greymarket. Musikalisch knüpft ,'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!" an das ziemlich exakt vor 10 Jahren im Herbst 2002 veröffentlichte, letzte Album ,Yanqui U.X.O." an und greift seine klangliche Ästhetik ebenso auf wie seinen Kontext. Die Vinylversion von ,'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!" besteht aus einer LP und einer 7". Die 7" enthält zwei Drones, die auf der CD in den Album-Kontext eingebunden sind, auf Vinyl aber separat vorliegen, um eine gute Qualität der Pressung zu erreichen. 180gLP IN TIPPED-ON GATEFOLD JACKET. INCLUDES 7" VINYL + 12"x 48" PULL-OUT POSTER!" [label info- Cargo translation] | 2012 | €25.00 |
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| Allelujah! Don't bend! Ascend! | CD | "We are proud to announce the first new recordings by Godspeed You! Black Emperor in a decade. Featuring two twenty-minute slabs of epic instrumental rock music and two six-and-a-half minute drones, ‘ALLELUJAH! DON’T BEND! ASCEND! provides soaring, shining proof of the band’s powerful return to form. Having emerged from hiatus at the end of 2010, GYBE picked up right where they left off, immediately re-capturing the sound and material that had fallen dormant in 2003 and driving it forward with every show of their extensive touring over the last 18 months. The new album presents the fruits of that labour: evolved and definitive versions of two huge compositions previously known to fans as “Albanian” and “Gamelan”, now properly titled as “MLADIC” and “WE DRIFT LIKE WORRIED FIRE” respectively. Accompanied by the new drones (stitched into the album sequence on CD; cut separately on their own 7″ for the LP version), GYBE have offered up a fifth album that we feel is as absolutely vital, virulent, honest and heavy as anything in their discography. We don’t have much time for mythology, but we’d be lying if we said the return of Godspeed You! Black Emperor in 2010 didn’t signify a whole lot to us as a marker from which to look back on the past decade, to reflect on what’s been gained or lost within the confines of independent music culture and what’s been gained or lost in the socio-political landscape writ large. Godspeed’s music will do that to you. It is music that bears witness to, channels and transforms this predominantly terrible, infuriating, venal and nihilistically sad story we’re all living, sharing, resisting, protesting, deconstructing and trying to change for the better. We think GYBE has once again provided a uniquely moving and compelling soundtrack for these acts of analysis, defiance and ascension. * * * Hard to believe a full decade has passed since the release of Yanqui U.X.O., the last album by GYBE. Never a band to care for conventional industry wisdom, Yanqui was released shortly before xmas 2003 with little publicity and no press availability, no marketing plans or cross-promotions or brand synergies, with back cover artwork tracing the inextricable links between major music labels and the military-industrial complex. Driven by word-of-mouth from a passionate and committed fanbase galvanized by the group's sonic vision and its dedication to unmediated, unsullied musical communication, the album found it's rightful audience. To suggest that such simple principles and goals have become harder to maintain and enact a decade later is an understatement. For all the contents and discontents – for all the "content" – of our present cultural moment, the idea of circumventing the glare of exposure, the massaging of media cycles and the calculus of identity management appears quaint, if not futile. But Godspeed is looking to try all the same. The band wants people to care about this new album, without telling people they should or talking about themselves. They want to hold on to some part of that energy that comes with the thrill of anonymous discovery and unmediated transmission, knowing full well that these days, anti-strategy risks being tagged as a strategy, non-marketing framed as its opposite, and deeply held principles they consider fundamental to health as likely to be interpreted as just another form of stealth. Truly, thanks for being open to hearing it. Release date: 15 October 2012 (Europe), 16 October 2012 (rest of world) Running time: 53:09 LP is pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl at Optimal (Germany) and comes in a tipped-on heavyweight gatefold jacket printed in full-colour process plus a spot metallic ink and spot matte varnish. LP dust sleeve is also 4-colour print. Package includes a 7 inch in printed dust sleeve (same audio appears in a different sequence on the CD) and a 12"x48" pull-out poster (printed full colour on both sides) featuring a collage of film stills specially-photographed and captured from the GYBE live 16mm projections." [label info] www.cstrecords.com | 2012 | €14.50 |
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| No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead | do-LP | "Die schlimmen Kriegsereignisse in Nahost bestimmten die Titelgebung des 9ten Albums des kanadischen Postrockkollektivs genauso massiv wie sie auch die Band beschäftigte, die heftig darüber diskutierte und stritt, bevor sie aufnahm. Das hatte auch Konsequenzen bei der musikalischen Entstehung der wie immer ellenlangen Songs, die teils eine ganze LP-Seite ausfüllen. Das drohende Kriegsunheil und das Aufkeimen des Bösen ist schon immer wieder spürbar, auch wenn der bekannte ästhetische Rahmen nicht anders als auf den vorhergehenden Alben klingt. Z.B. auf der dritten LP-Seite in "Devils own this town": Von dumpfen Schlägen durchbrochene mahlende Distortiongitarren und die den GYBE immer auch mit prägende Geige schwingen sich lautmalerisch auf, dann kommen fernöstliche Klänge ins Spiel, dann zerreisst eine geschrammelte Gitarre den Aufbau. In den wiederum rein instrumentalen Stücke verbinden sich Kummer, Schmerz und Angst vor der Brutalität (drohenden) Krieges. GYBE zeigen sich spielfreudig und wirken hochemotional in den epischen Stücken, die unerwartete Wendungen nehmen, sich immer wieder steigern, abfallen, sich verändern und wenig Grund für Optimismus bieten. THE PLAIN TRUTH== we drifted through it, arguing. every day a new war crime, every day a flower bloom. we sat down together and wrote it in one room, and then sat down in a different room, recording. NO TITLE= what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall? what context? what broken melody? and then a tally and a date to mark a point on the line, the negative process, the growing pile. the sun setting above beds of ash while we sat together, arguing. the old world order barely pretended to care. this new century will be crueler still. war is coming. don't give up. pick a side. hang on. love." godspeed you black emperor is/was/is = Thierry Amar – electric bass + contrebasse David Bryant – electric guitar + tape loops Aidan Girt – drums Timothy Herzog – drums + glockenspiel Efrim Manuel Menuck – electric guitar + tape loops Michael Moya – electric guitar Mauro Pezzente – electric bass Sophie Trudeau – violin Karl Lemieux + Philippe Léonard – 16mm film projections all of it recorded at thee mighty hotelatango winter of bombs 2024. engineered + mixed by Jace Lasek. mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market. front cover photo by Stacy Lee. voice on "raindrops cast in lead" = Michele Fiedler Fuentes. 2x180gLP pressed at Optimal (DE) in 350gsm gatefold jacket + 300gsm inners printed LE-UV on uncoated Alaska artboards + DL card. https://godspeedyoublackemperor.bandcamp.com/album/no-title-as-of-13-february-2024-28340-dead | 2024 | €33.50 |
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| No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead | CD | "Die schlimmen Kriegsereignisse in Nahost bestimmten die Titelgebung des 9ten Albums des kanadischen Postrockkollektivs genauso massiv wie sie auch die Band beschäftigte, die heftig darüber diskutierte und stritt, bevor sie aufnahm. Das hatte auch Konsequenzen bei der musikalischen Entstehung der wie immer ellenlangen Songs, die teils eine ganze LP-Seite ausfüllen. Das drohende Kriegsunheil und das Aufkeimen des Bösen ist schon immer wieder spürbar, auch wenn der bekannte ästhetische Rahmen nicht anders als auf den vorhergehenden Alben klingt. Z.B. auf der dritten LP-Seite in "Devils own this town": Von dumpfen Schlägen durchbrochene mahlende Distortiongitarren und die den GYBE immer auch mit prägende Geige schwingen sich lautmalerisch auf, dann kommen fernöstliche Klänge ins Spiel, dann zerreisst eine geschrammelte Gitarre den Aufbau. In den wiederum rein instrumentalen Stücke verbinden sich Kummer, Schmerz und Angst vor der Brutalität (drohenden) Krieges. GYBE zeigen sich spielfreudig und wirken hochemotional in den epischen Stücken, die unerwartete Wendungen nehmen, sich immer wieder steigern, abfallen, sich verändern und wenig Grund für Optimismus bieten. THE PLAIN TRUTH== we drifted through it, arguing. every day a new war crime, every day a flower bloom. we sat down together and wrote it in one room, and then sat down in a different room, recording. NO TITLE= what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall? what context? what broken melody? and then a tally and a date to mark a point on the line, the negative process, the growing pile. the sun setting above beds of ash while we sat together, arguing. the old world order barely pretended to care. this new century will be crueler still. war is coming. don't give up. pick a side. hang on. love." godspeed you black emperor is/was/is = Thierry Amar – electric bass + contrebasse David Bryant – electric guitar + tape loops Aidan Girt – drums Timothy Herzog – drums + glockenspiel Efrim Manuel Menuck – electric guitar + tape loops Michael Moya – electric guitar Mauro Pezzente – electric bass Sophie Trudeau – violin Karl Lemieux + Philippe Léonard – 16mm film projections all of it recorded at thee mighty hotelatango winter of bombs 2024. engineered + mixed by Jace Lasek. mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market. front cover photo by Stacy Lee. voice on "raindrops cast in lead" = Michele Fiedler Fuentes. https://godspeedyoublackemperor.bandcamp.com/album/no-title-as-of-13-february-2024-28340-dead | 2024 | €15.00 |
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| GOEBBELS, HEINER / ALFRED HARTH | Hommage / Vier Fäuste für Hanns Eisler | do-CD | "This long and extraordinarily fruitful partnership started here - continuing though the Sogennantes Linksradikales Blasorchester - where they picked up Christoph Anders with whom they went on to co-found Cassiber, with your humble reviewer. These are jazz inflected, punk inflected but mainly spirited and imaginative renderings of Eisler material, with more pieces by the duo who, between them, cover a lot of instruments and combinations of instruments and – ah youth – are never less than hurling themselves into the performances. Both LPs have been re-mastered by Bob Drake for this release." [label notes] label-website: www.rermegacorp.com | 2007 | €19.00 |
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| GOH, LEE KWANG | Good Vibrations. Solo Improvisations with Stereo DJ Mixer | CD | "Selected solo improvisations with stereo dj mixer. 'Goh Lee Kwang are one of the most prominent and well-respected experimental sound artist and improviser from Malaysia, working on wide range of contexts, from backing music for dance & theater to sound video installation. Over the last two years, he has begun frequently working on the 'Good Vibrations' recording. Original from Penang, Glk burst onto the scene in the beginning of 21st century as a electronic music maker. since then, he has gradually shifted his output into a more abstract vein, often abandoning the musical instruments entirely. glk previous recording include collaboration with Aziz, Tim Blechmann and many others, as well as numerous solo recording including Internal Pleasures, Punk guitar and Nerve Center. Based in Kuala Lumpur, who uses a range of names for performing including his real one, Goh Lee Kwang, is a immensely talented sound artist, as demonstrated by his solo work (records on PseudoArcana, Deserted Factory, and his very own Herbal), as well as his collaborations with Tim Blechmann, Olaf Hochherz, and many others (releases on Moka Bar, TiBProd, Herbal,Break the line !). Goh Lee Kwang recorded quite a bit of material for this project, six studio sessions (Stuttgart, Rotterdam, Krems, Kuala Lumpur, London, Amsterdam) plus two concerts (Paris, Stuttgart). From this materials, the artist hand pick the recording which represent the most closer to the original sound (of the mixer) without any process of filter and treatment, and the result is Good Vibrations (which is actually taken from a the Beach Boys title). The eyecathing design is the work of Herbal in house design team, created entirely from the photos of Lau Mun Leng taken in Rotterdam." [label info] www.herbalinternational.tk | 2007 | €13.00 |
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| GOOSE | Isabel | mCD-R | Klangschalen, Becken- & Glockensounds vermischen sich mit dem tiefen (genial effektierten) Rumpeln eines Hurrikans! Ein sehr kraftvolles & hypnotisches Stück, auch wenn (fast)-Stille eine grosse Rolle spielt. "Also known for his Stolen Light noise project and his annual xmas compilations on his Zaftig Research label, Goose is Brett Lunceford's alias for his drone & dark ambient sounds. this track was quite an experience/experiment for him: "i recorded part of that track while hurricane isabel was coming through pennsylvania, hence the title of the track. all we got was a lot of wind and rain and not a lot of damage, but it was nice to record. i had just bought a tibetan singing bowl and i have played drums for about 20 years now, so i love percussion sounds. i was just hoping that the people downstairs from me would not be too annoyed as i was playing the cymbals and bells! this was a bit of a departure from my typical long form drones that i generally do as Goose, but i like it a lot." so here is this hypnotic & acoustic droney track. to make it yet more hypnotic, it's been carefully mastered by our beloved italian master andrea marutti. let yourself carry along by isabel..." [label info] www.taalem.com | 2007 | €5.00 |
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| GRIM | Message | LP | Grim is the one-man project of Jun Konagaya - formed from the ashes of White Hospital, his legendary early 1980s noise duo with Tomosada Kuwahara - which, accepting a long hiatus in the middle, has bridged the worlds of industrial music, power electronics, and noise for nearly three decades. Belonging roughly to the first wave of Japanese noise, Konagaya is particularly noteworthy among his peers for casting an eye further afield, drawing influences from bands like Whitehouse and SPK, rather than members of his own scene, as well varied reference points as far afield as the traditional folk music of Tibet. That understood, nothing was likely to prepare the context of Japanese noise for what was delivered by his 1987 EP “Message”. It belongs to a body of three releases created by Grim during the 1980s, including the full length, “Folk Music”, issued by Eskimo Records in 1986, and the EP, “Amaterasu”, released by G.A. Propaganda in 1985. While its two predecessors are brilliant and more or less what you might expect from a seminal artist of Japanese noise, “Message” follows a markedly different path, delving toward the realm of pop and folk via a series of six songs that emit a stronger connection to Daniel Johnson, Syd Barrett, Sebadoh, and Tenniscoats than anything the noise scene has ever produced; it feels like walking through an ancient fairy tale forest, all hazy, magical and slightly eerie. Dreamy and meandering, drawing on '60s psychedelia, DIY aesthetics, and folky undercurrents, Grim’s “Message” is a masterstroke in underground Japanese pop, pushing radically forward, while challenging the boundaries of the scene to which the project predominately belongs. Following the album’s original release in 1987, Jun Konagaya followed different paths beyond the world of sound, before unexpectedly relaunching an incredibly prolific career, returning to more explicit territories of noise. As such, “Message” remained a coveted, rare artefact of a road less traveled and a window into the diverse talents and temperaments that rest below all of his output. One of the most distinct and unexpected artifacts of the Japanese scene during the period, rather than the full throttle fury for which it has been widely known, here we encounter the one-man project of Jun Konagaya weaving stunningly beautiful passages within the realm of pop and folk, incorporating elements of '60s psychedelia and Lo-Fi DIY, with Yukio Nagoshi, founding member of the Vasilisk unit, on guitar and percussion and A. Takahashi on vocals, with collaboration and technical support from Tomosada Kuwahara, partner and co-founder with Jun Konagaya of the legendary group White Hospital. First ever reissue of the album furthers these insights, extending the original EP with an entirely new body of noise-oriented reworks by Grim of the original six tracks, effectively doubling in length to a full-length release. https://urashima.bandcamp.com/album/message "Hätten die subkulturellen Phänomene, die irgendwann von Juristen und Journalisten als Wreckers of Civilization oder England’s Hidden Reverse bezeichnet worden sind, ein Pendant in Japan gehabt, dann wäre Jun Konagaya alias Grim wahrscheinlich das zentrale Flaggschiff dieser Bewegung gewesen, denn sein Interesse am Abseitigen hatte – in Ansätzen bereits bei seiner Band White Hospital – Züge des okkult-autistischen Dandyismus, die man häufig bei den englischen Kollegen beobachtete. Nachdem Konagaya bereits einige Erfahrungen mit lärmenden Soundcollagen gesammelt hatte, entdeckte er Mitte der 80er seine Leidenschaft für das Songformat und für eine Art folkigen Pop, der Schrägheit mit gut dosiertem Kitsch verbindet, und so erschien 1986 das heute als heimlicher Klassiker geltende Album “Folk Music” auf Grims eigenem Label Eskimo Records. Zu dessen Nachwehen gehört auch die im Jahr darauf erschienene EP “Message” (ebenfalls Eskimo), die mit einer Handvoll an Gästen eingespielt wurde und jüngst von Urashima Records neu aufgelegt wurde. Während Grims Wurzeln in der Geräuschmusik in “Folk Music” noch deutlicher zu hören waren, könnte man diese in “Message” eher subtil in einer unterschwelligen Unbehaglichkeit aufspüren, denn rein stilistisch bewegen sich die sechs Stücke fast komplett im Bereich poppig angehauchter Folk-Lullabies, in denen sanfte Gitarrenakkorde und dazu passender Gesang, bei dem nicht immer ganz klar ist, ob man gerade eine Sängerin oder einen Sänger hört, das Bild prägen. Der Opener “Heritage” startet gleich mit Picking und lieblichem Gesang, und schon in diesem Stück fällt in der gefühlvollen Mollastigkeit eine galoppierende Euphorie auf, deren verhuschte Exzentrik durch die launige Trompete gegen Ende noch einmal extra unterstrichen wird. Jedes der Stücke hat seine eigenen Marotten: Bei “Deep in Meditation” ist es das Zusammenspiel von Walzertakt und etwas, dass wie eine Melodika klingt, bei “Parable & Cole” das Paradox einer lieblich-pastoralen Monotonie als Kulisse intimer Flüsterstimmen. Bei “Mooncalf’s Walz” der leicht verzerrte Moment zu Beginn, der aber recht schnell einer noch fiepsigeren Lieblichkeit die Tür öffnet. Diese erreicht bei “Klara’s Song” den Höhepunkt an Kindlichkeit, und trotz psychedelischer Twangs schwebt über all dem eine 80er Jahre-Stimmung, die sich neben der rauen und sicher gewollt einfachen Klanggestaltung einem Esprit verdankt, den man nicht künstlich erzeugen kann. Man sollte als weitere Klammer aber auch das leicht unbehagliche Element einmal mehr betonen – eine seltsame Weltfremdheit, die sich in den allzuschönen Arrangements bei genauerem Hinhören offenbart und den Eindruck entstehen lässt, dass dieses Idyll nicht nur von Feen und Folksternchen bevölkert ist, sondern ebenso sehr von dämonischem Gesindel. Heute werden gerne renommierte Sängerinnen und Sänger aus Folk und Psychedelic der Jahre um 1970 genannt, wenn man sich auf Grims hier durchgezogenen Stil einen Reim machen will. Wer allerdings zu Konagayas eigener Generation gehört und mit undergroundigen Songs der 80er und 90er sozialisiert worden ist, hat vielleicht spezifischere Assoziationen, und die können von Strawberry Switchblade über frühe Psychic TV und die Legendary Pink Dots bis zu den ersten folkigen Versuchen von Current 93 oder Death in June reichen – ein merkwürdiges Kuriosum, bei dem ich nie ganz über den Gedanken hinweg komme, wie nah das alles an einem potentiellen Pop-Hype vorbeigeschlittert ist. Interessant und hervorhebenswert ist dabei, das Grim eine solche Musik bereits perfektionierte, als diese auch in Europa erst im Entstehen begriffen war. Der Wiederveröffentlichung, die diese Songs erneut auf Vinyl präsentiert, sind einige Remixe als Bonustracks hinzugefügt – ultranoisige Versionen, die die Spuren späterer Entwicklungen Konagayas tragen, die aber die süßlich säuselnden Stimmen immer noch geisterhaft im von Lärm erfüllten Raum schweben lassen." [U.S./ African Paper] "Returning off the back of an incredible run of deep dives into numerous historical contexts of noise, Urashima brings us the first ever vinyl reissue of Grim's legendary 1987 EP, “Message”, now expanded to a full album's length. One of the most distinct and unexpected artifacts of the Japanese scene during the period, rather than the full throttle fury for which it has been widely known, here we encounter the one-man project of Jun Konagaya weaving stunningly beautiful passages within the realm of pop and folk, incorporating elements of '60s psychedelia and Lo-Fi DIY. This highly sought-after holy grail of the 1980s underground is issued by Urashima in a limited edition of 199 copies, and won't sit around for long. Grim "Message"(LP) Since its founding during the late 2000s, the Italian imprint, Urashima, has become a definitive voice in the landscape of noise, sculpting a singular vision of one of the most vibrant and revolutionary bodies of experimental sound to have graced the globe. Already in 2022, they’ve delivered beautiful, ambitious limited edition releases like Controlled Death’s “Death Synth Box”, Merzbow’s “Collection 001-010” and “Hybrid Noisebloom”, as well as Masonna’s “Masonna Vs. Bananamara” and Hijokaidan’s “Zouroku No Kibyou”. Beginning the label’s final push toward the end of the year is the first ever vinyl reissue of Grim’s legendary, highly sought after 1987 EP, “Message”, now expanded with new material to a full LP in length. An inexplicable hybrid of folk, indie pop, electronic music, and experimentalism, there’s almost nothing like it within the territory and context of sound within in which it rests. A true holy grail of the 1980s Japanese underground, with original pressings commanding crazy money on the collector’s market, this very limited edition of 199 copies is going to be gone in a flash. Don’t sleep! Grim is the one-man project of Jun Konagaya - formed from the ashes of White Hospital, his legendary early 1980s noise duo with Tomasada Kuwahara - which, accepting a long hiatus in the middle, has bridged the worlds of industrial music, power electronics, and noise for nearly three decades. Belonging roughly to the first wave of Japanese noise, Konagaya is particularly noteworthy among his peers for casting an eye further afield, drawing influences from bands like Whitehouse and SPK, rather than members of his own scene, as well varied reference points as far afield as the traditional folk music of Tibet. That understood, nothing was likely to prepare the context of Japanese noise for what was delivered by his 1987 EP “Message”. “Message” belongs to a body of three releases created by Grim during the 1980s, including the full length, “Folk Music”, issued by Eskimo Records in 1986, and the EP, “Amaterasu”, released by G.A. Propaganda in 1985. While its two predecessors are brilliant and more or less what you might expect from a seminal artist of Japanese noise, “Message” follows a markedly different path, delving toward the realm of pop and folk via a series of six songs that emit a stronger connection to Daniel Johnson, Syd Barrett, Sebadoh, and Tenniscoats than anything the noise scene has ever produced. Dreamy and meandering, drawing on '60s psychedelia, DIY aesthetics, and folky undercurrents, Grim’s “Message” is a masterstroke in underground Japanese pop, pushing radically forward, while challenging the boundaries of the scene to which the project predominately belongs. Following the album’s original release in 1987, Jun Konagaya followed different paths beyond the world of sound, before unexpectedly relaunching an incredibly prolific career, returning to more explicit territories of noise. As such, “Message” remained a coveted, rare artefact of a road less traveled and a window into the diverse talents and temperaments that rest below all of his output. Urashima’s first ever reissue of the album furthers these insights, extending the original EP with an entirely new body of noise-oriented reworks by Grim of the original six tracks, effectively doubling in length to a full-length release. Visionary, wild, and weird, this beautifully produced LP is issued in a very limited edition of 199 copies, and is an absolute must for any fan of Grim, Japanese noise, and '80s DIY psychedelic pop." [Soundohm] | 2022 | €29.00 |
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| GRMMSK | Reality Asylum | 12inch | Another 30min of condensed DoomDub-Versions. All of the tunes have been deranged and recorded at METSÄÄN STUDIO in midst of the finnish forest in 2017. they summon urban dread and voice the desire to escape the grinding concrete molars of babylon towards an utopic ZONE that provides freedom for all. We came a long way, but are still far away. totstellen-grmmsk.bandcamp.com/album/reality-asylum | 2018 | €15.00 |
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| GUTHRIE, ANNE / RICHARD KAMERMAN | Sinter | CD | "Sinter injects vast amounts of oxygen into the room, air swirling and echoing in huge spaces, light shimmering and hazy. In metallurgical terms, sintering is the making of objects from powder and powdery, especially with a metallic connotation, isn't the worst term you could use for much of this music. Field recordings (and, per the sleeve, domestic recordings) are mixed with electronics throughout; nary a French horn in sight though I think I pick up a bit of Kamerman's small clattering devices here and there. [] An extraordinary piece capping one of the finest recordings I've heard in quite a while. Excellent work'. Brian Olewnick. ErstAEU, a new sub-label to 'document the work of young American experimental musicians working in a post-electroacoustic vein'." [label info] www.erstwhilerecords.com Dusted Reviews Artist: Anne Guthrie / Richard Kamerman Album: Sinter Label: ErstAEU Review date: May. 15, 2013 "Erstwhile Records has just rolled out a new sub-label, ErstAEU. In the tradition of AMM, the AEU is not explained. Despite the paucity of officially sanctioned information — you won’t find any explanatory text on the label’s website — there’s a definite aesthetic angle at work here. The label’s first three CDs are all the product of American-born duos, and all of the participants are in their 20s or 30s. Conventional instruments aren’t completely absent, but they often take a back seat to captured or processed sounds, as well as disorienting manipulations of time and space. One thing the albums do not share is a particular methodology. Graham Stephenson and Aaron Zarzutski’s Touching is a straight-up improv encounter; Joe Panzner and Greg Stuart’s Dystonia Duos combines played and processed sounds into hard-shelled containers of noisy electrical activity; and Anne Guthrie and Richard Kamerman’s Sinter, an assembly of “field recordings, domestic recordings, composition, improvisation, and processing,” which inhabits some zone that doesn’t really have a name yet. For clues about how to understand it, one can look to the album’s name. Sintering bonds powdered clay into a pot without melting it; even after it’s fired, the ceramic’s texture will make you think of clay. The disparate elements of “Civil Twilight: 5:23” — dancing electrical buzzes, slow-changing mechanical hums, under-the-breath counting, close-up paper shuffling, and distant outdoor sounds — likewise retain their essential individual characters even though they have been configured into a hefty yet spacious block of musique concrète. But the way the sounds hang together doesn’t tell you why they were made to sit in that configuration, or how you should respond to them. They just are what they are. So you might either be thinking about now, “I gotta hear this record,” or “Why the hell would I ever want to hear this stuff?” You know who you are, and either way I’d tell you to listen to your inner voice. Having spent a lot of time with it, I’m on both sides of the fence. On the one hand, there’s “Re(Z)=Piper, Im(Z)=Andrej,” an amalgam of cleanly recorded exchanges in Italian (I think), fuzzy room sounds that might come from a mall or train station, and mightily distorted monk chants that sound like they’re being played Alvin Lucier-style from a busted speaker into a resonant room. I’d heartily recommend it to anyone who likes their noise non-macho and genuinely unpredictable. On the other, listening to “Porcellino”’s layers of distant banging and close metallic clanking is an exhausting Cage-ian exercise in using applied attention to pry interest from boredom. The most rewarding piece is the longest, the last, and the one that feels most musical. Taking a cue once more from nomenclature, “Several Or Many Fibers” feels to me like a tapestry. I’m not sure that its journey — from footsteps and a hovering synth note through sounds of water striking different surfaces to a late burst of weather reporting — is intended to say anything at all. But the way these sounds succeed each other implies a narrative whose inscrutability makes there passage compelling." [Bill Meyer, DUSTED magazine] | 2013 | €15.00 |
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| GYDJA | Þjóðáar Fnæstu Eitri | CD | Winter-Light bids a very warm, welcome return to Gydja (Abby Helasdottir) with the follow up to her highly regarded 'Ár var alda' album. This new sonic saga continues the journey that began in 'Ar var Alda' with its depiction of cosmic creation within the vast primordial void of Ginnungagap. Now the focus turns to Élivágar, the great eleven-fold river whose venomous waters flowed into the void in that moment of cosmological nascency, and would continue to make their way through the underworld after the establishment of the universe. These eleven Þjóðáar Fnæstu Eitri ('mighty streams, spewing venom') act as markers of liminality and initiation, dividing zones of both geography and experience, and bearing names that define their transformative characteristics: Leiptr (lightning), Fimbulþul (mighty mumbler), Gjöll (resounding), Fjörm (hurrying), Sliðr (terrible), Ylgr (she-wolf), Gunnþrá (battle-trough), Svöl (cool), Við (wide), Hrið (storm) and Sylgr (swallower). As has become the trade mark of Gydja's sound, the eleven tracks that make up 'Þjóðáar Fnæstu Eitri', have been intricately layered and meticulously crafted. Employing both graceful and subtle use of sounds, the listener is drawn into the journey, traversing each rivers flowing waters. Vast drones, percussive atmospherics and soft intricate electronics, underpinned with deep bass and ancient sounds. English translation:- 1. Lightning 2. Mighty mumbler 3. Resounding 4. Hurrying 5. Terrible 6. She-Wolf 7. Battle-trough 8. Cool 9. Wide 10. Storm 11. Swallower credits released December 21, 2023 Mastered by Robin Storey Cover artwork and design by Abby Helasdottir https://winter-light.bandcamp.com/album/j-ar-fn-stu-eitri | 2023 | €14.00 |
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| HABEEB | Il cancello della morte | CD-R | Neues dark ambient noise-Projekt auf SOMNABULANT, einer der zur Zeit besten Adressen für elektronischen Abgrunds-Industrial. Meist wuchtige analoge Flächen & amorphe Soundeffekte.....dann wieder schwelend & paralisierend, monumentale Rausch- & Dröhnflächen.... lim. 200 und beim Label schon weg ! “Habeeb seems such an odd sounding name for this sinister dark ambient project from L. Kerr of Steel Hook Prostheses. This massive disc is definitely stronger and more focused than what little I've heard from the project in the past, building often lengthy tracks around smoothly flowing low-end hums and drones with subtle melodic undercurrents seeping in at times. "Creeping Death" gets a bit louder with biting high-end swells that peak out to faint distortion over rumbling bass and slightly more prominent "notes" in the middleground, whereas a few other tracks are much quieter and more subdued. "Rigor Mortis" is very delicately rhythmic with its repetitive low-end loop throbbing away, followed by "Tapping the Spine with Razorwire", which adds in very lightweight wisps of distortion against the brooding ambience of the core soundscape – certainly a bit more ominous. "Descension Into the Blackness" is a monolithic 19 minutes (nearly half of the disc's the entire running time), building up slowly with hugely resonant bass and distant percussive sounds reverberating in the background – getting slightly thicker/louder, but maintaining a very stripped down aesthetic that never sways too far from the course. Closer "Keepers of the Death Gate" is the only track I dislike, and I find it to be terribly distracting in contrast to the other tracks, opening with a sample of some sort of country-ish music with pitch-shifted speaking before giving way to a barely distorted loop with a few harsher spurts of thick distorted noise layering in to add to the industrial percussiveness. Even without the strange intro it would've been uncharacteristic of the release as a whole, but that first segment of the track really kills it for me. The CD-R comes in a slim DVD case with minimal artwork that's basically black and white and depicts some illegible text and a woodcut image of demons shoveling people into the mouth of hell. It's a simple presentation but as is usually the case with work from this label it looks quite clean and tasteful. A solid release pound for pound. I'm still a bit confused as to what that last track is all about, but the preceding 55 minutes is a consistent slab of damn promising dark ambient noise.” [Aversionline.com] | 2004 | €10.00 |
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| HALO MANASH | Se Its En | CD | "Se Its En is the first official release of Halo Manash and was originally released in an edition of 100 copies by Finnish underground record label Blue Sector in 2003. After a long period of unavailability the album is now re-released through our Stellar Mansion series. The quintessential tunes for the tracks were received from in seven specific dreams and captured on tape during the following morning under the guidance of awakened subconscious forces. The album as a whole, however, should not be considered only as a self-centered work or a mere outcome of lucid dreaming sessions of the personnel involved; Se Its En serves as a continually living and assisting metaphysical implement that guides and enlightens travel in The Great Elemental Current. The seven surrealistic tracks were composed by using manipulated bowed string instruments, percussions, analogue synthesizer, human and inhuman vocalisations & other surreal recordings. Se Its En is the key to the gate leading to Sacral Meeting with Halo Manash. The album is enclosed in a customised and silk-screen printed Stellar Mansion cardboard covers including an 8-panel black on black printed booklet and a silk-screen printed insert card. The regular edition is limited to 468 copies." [label info] www.auralhypnox.com "Finland strikes back again! New project on a new label, which brings us haunting and secretful post-industrial drone-spheres with various subliminal effects... dark and beautiful." [Drone Rec. info 2003] “ Halo Manash 'Se Its En' follows the same direction as I.corax (being a solo-project of the other member), but whereas I.corax is more like a continuous flow of sound, Halo Manash is more structured and minimal. Also the general soundscape isn't based that much on field recordings etc, but is mostly created by a guitar through a wild bunch of effect processors. There are even some kind of strange melodies that are spiced up with occasional lyrics of spoken word and simple, ritualistic percussions. There are two versions of 'Se Its En' available; a normal slimcase with pro-printed covers and an insert, and a version that comes in a cool hand-made black cloth bag (insert and covers included, naturally).” [orignal label description 2003] | 2014 | €13.00 |
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| HAMNSKIFTE | Födzlepijan | CD | "First record from a mysterious Swedish duo, whose sound is inspired by, according to the band themselves, Burzum, Earth, Skepticism, Nortt and Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg. But imagine those influences channeled into something more medieval sounding, and WAY more post rocky, a sort of droning medieval slowcore laid beneath softly buzzing metallic rumble and shimmer, and you'll get an idea of Hamnskifte's sound. This is drone and ultimately slow meditative Black Metal with hypnotic medieval folk melodies recorded with guitars, drums, bass, organ, bodhran drum, bells and some self-invented percussion instruments. Originally released to the world in the spring of 2010 by, now-defunct, American label Starlight Temple Society, as a limited edition of 125 copies." [label info] hamnskifte.blogspot.de "Fodzlepijnan first appeared on the now-defunct Starlight Temple Society label back in 2010 as a limited-edition CDR release (we still have a couple of copies of this version in stock, as a matter of fact), and it offered a beautifully eerie and ghostly collection of funereal folk-rock and desolate, doom-laden slowcore from the mysterious Swedish duo known as Hamnskifte. The band seemed to have roots in both funeral doom and black metal (indeed, the band cited the likes of Nortt, Burzum, Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg, Earth and Skepticism as direct influences on their music), but their music didn't really sound like either of those forms, and in fact only marginally sounded like a metal band at all. Instead, Hamnskifte craft this strange sound that is more "post-rock" than anything, a mysterious, low-fi sound that creeps across the album using hand-made percussive instruments, organs, bells, and bodhran drums alongside their standard rock lineup of drums, guitar and bass. That original disc really impressed me when we first picked it up, and it's haunting blackened slowcore sound filled the office here at C-Blast for weeks after we picked it up. While the original Starlight Temple CDR came in a handmade package that consisted of a screen-printed silver envelope, an eight page booklet and foldout poster and was limited to just one hundred twenty five copies, the new CD version of Fodzlepijnan that just came out on the black metal label Myrkr presents the album in a handsome new six-panel digi-sleeve that includes a printed vellum inner sleeve for the disc. At first, Fodzlepijnan opens with a brief intro of wheezing harmonium and martial snares playing a slow, haunting folky melody, the sound very neo-folkish and atmospheric, and that leads right into the first proper song, "Ther Skall Wara Gråt Och Tandagnisslan". It's here that Hamnskifte fully unfurls their sound, a combination of tranquil, almost funereal drumming that incorporates other shuffling percussive instruments into it's deliberate, processional-like tempos, moody strummed chords that seem to be emanating from sort of banjo-like stringed instrument, and swells of lush feedback and distorted guitar. The band weaves these sounds together into simple, dark melodies that sound more like something from Swans than anything vaguely black metallish. But there's also that doom-laden creepiness that lurks beneath the surface of these melancholy folk-dirges, a subdued heaviness heard in those slow-motion drums, waves of vast keyboard drift and that buzzing harmonium-like drone that makes a reappearance, and the deeper you get into this, the more that you can hear the band's admitted Skepticism influence, a vague funeral doom quality to this music that you hear more in the atmosphere and pace of the music than in any overt metallic qualities. It's all some surprisingly beautiful stuff, in fact. The following song "Wäsende" might be my favorite, another instrumental piece that resembles some particularly gloomy, darkened 70's psych-folk, with some of the prettiest acoustic guitar arrangements on the album, laid out over delicate droning organs and that slow, shuffling backbeat. Further in, the sound starts to get heavier as some muffled distorted guitars creep into "Foglarna Warda Fångna Medh Snaror", lending an undercurrent of clanging, doom-laden rumble to the song's hauntingly pretty folk melody and stretches of ghostly, cavernous drone. "Dageligh Beredelse Emoot Döden" has a more ominous feel, death-march drums and minor key jangle woven into a Goblin-esque groove, and closer "Uthi Thet Ytterste Mörckret" unfolds into a twelve minute kosmische trance of pounding tribal drums and slithering bass, moody acoustic strum draped over droning keyboards and sheets of electrical hum, the album closing within the sway of this last krautrock-tinged hypno-trance. Highly recommended." [CrucialBlast] | 2012 | €12.00 |
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| HANNO, YOSHIHIRO |
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CD | “Yoshihiro Hanno explores for years now a wide range of musics: soundtracks, contemporary music, free jazz , drum 'n' bass, fragmented electronica, hip hop... with a definite taste for fusion and destructuration in order to create a new form of avant-garde. Follow up to his precedent release 'April Remixes' feat. Oval,Christophe Charles... (SR196), here is |
2004 | €12.50 |
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| HAYNES, JIM | The Decline Effect | do-LP | "Parapsychology introduced the notion of the decline effect as a statistical phenomenon of diminishing results whilst investigating extra-sensory perception and psychokinesis. Where initial findings might substantiate proof of such abilities, further studies would almost always demonstrate the contrary. As such, this ontological disappearing act stands in allegorical parallel to the entropic art of Jim Haynes and frames his 2011 opus of the corroded drone and a compacted disintegration of sound. This San Francisco Bay Area artist has long defined his work through the pithy phrase: "I rust things." The Decline Effect continues his investigations with electroacoustic decay through four bodies of evidence left behind from ephemeral aktions, shipwrecked electronics, re-engineered field recordings, and transmissions from the ether. Haynes composes through all of these sources through a patient suturing of sympathetic elements, whether they be textural, tonal, visceral, heavenly, sodden, or monolithic. Here, embers foretelling a nuclear winter gently waft upon industrial chorales amassed from an army of fidgeting motors; the sulfur-laden hiss from volcanic vents erupts from an organic thrum into boiling crescendos of environmental noise; geiger counter palpitations stream along a leaden sea of modulated radio noise; a warm explosion of sun-bleached distortion caresses the evanescent halos from an undulating mesmerism inexplicably not sourced from a guitar and / or digital patch authored by Christian Fennesz. Haynes' broken minimalism orbits somewhere near the work Joe Colley, G*Park, Nurse With Wound, and BJ Nilsen. The 2LP of The Decline Effect is strictly limited to 350 copies, comes in a handsome gatefold sleeve, and sports the necessary download coupon. Zener cards not included." [label info] www.helenscarsdale.com "Another mysterious sonic missive from our very own resident dronologist Jim Haynes, another excursion into the sound of decay, this time in the form of four sprawling sidelong epics, each its own self contained soundworld, culled from various field recordings, vibrating strings and other sonic errata. Recorded over the last three years, these recordings require headphones to truly explore their depth, and once strapped on, it's easy to get lost in these strange lands of decay and declines. The A side was originally a commissioned soundtrack for a pair of films that screened at the Hauntology exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum in 2010, and while we've yet to see either of these films, the smoldering slow moving "Ashes" does evoke a certain ontological sonic dread, the core of the sound is of course the drone, but that drone is pulled taut, and the sound seems to fray as the track progresses, shedding sonic detritus in the form of fractured melodies, strange clicks and muted buzz. At times, this begins to sound like perhaps Haynes' most overtly musical record, but that musicality is eventually picked apart, the remaining elements litter the landscape like bits of some sonic wreckage, but then the edges are smoothed, and the stray shards are reigned in, the sound is truly beautiful, whether a deep sonorous drone, or a lush layered stretch of celestial shimmer. Named for the performance space at which the piece was debuted, "Terminal" is another sidelong soundscape, the majority of the sounds sourced from field recordings of geysers and thermal vents, the opening few minutes unfurling like a raw field recordings, playing out like some obscure scientific document, unearthed from some dusty box filed away in a warehouse, chronicling some lost expedition. The sound doesn't necessarily grow more musical, but instead, seems to blossom and display more texture, and more depth, as if more sounds were introduced and then layered or woven into one another, streaks of blurred hiss, peppered with the sound of wind on microphone or the trickle of water, the white noise of eruption balanced by the hushed murmur of calm before and after. Side three finds Haynes exploring radioactive decay, unclear what the sound sources are, we'd like to think, that it's indeed recordings of Strontium or Uranium, the radioactivity causing the tape to warp and curdle, but in fact, it sounds more like an assemblage of intercepted short wave broadcasts, and deep bellows of bowed metal, lush chordal swells washing over strange effects, muted glitches, lush tones and surprisingly dreamy overtones, bell like chimes, chittering cricket like clicks, Geiger counter like bleeps, all blurred and smeared into a gorgeous hazy of soft focus shimmer, those clicks coalescing into an almost-rhythm, while the surrounding sounds seem to lose cohesion, the edges softening, all bleeding into one another and drifting like blackened clouds of whir and thrum. And finally, the last movement in this crumbling sonic tetraptych is the wire recording sourced "Cold", in which Haynes captures the sympathetic buzz of wires and plays them like some sort of abstract harp, at least that's how we picture it, a huge stone room, with metal wires running across in wild tangles, Haynes at the center, wildly bowing and striking wires, creating this delicate crystalline symphony, another blurred buzzscape, that peppers the lush layered shimmer, with creaks and clatter, skitter and crunch, but those errant sounds are quickly subsumed by the warm whirls of hushed bleary drift and an unexpected eruption of caustic blown out noise, a psychedelic squall that acts as the record's coda, before the inevitable decline, the sound slipping into nothingness. Gorgeous stuff. LIMITED TO 350 COPIES!! Housed in a luxurious full color gatefold sleeve, and pressed on nice thick black vinyl. Includes a download coupon as well." [Aquarius Rec.] | 2011 | €23.50 |
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| HECKER, TIM | Harmony in Ultraviolet | CD | Klang, schimmernd wie helles Licht! TIM HECKER ist nun auf Kranky gelandet, was seinem recht einmaligen Drone-Sound keinen Abbruch tut, im Gegenteil, HARMONY IN VIOLET erscheint uns wie der vorläufige Höhepunkt seines Schaffens: HECKER schafft es, seine digital-sphärischen Drones fast gleichzeitig wie einen monumentalen Noise-Sturm und doch höchst emotional harmonisch & zärtlich-melancholisch erklingen zu lassen.... "Hecker geht den auf seinen letzten Alben eingeschlagenen Weg weiter, baut ihn aus, erweitert ihn. Vielleicht ist "Harmony In Ultraviolet" nicht so hart wie das letzte Album "Mirages", aber Stücke wie "Chimeras" sind nicht weniger eindrucksvoll. Sie berauschen und entziehen den Hörer der Realität. Epische, weite und hocheindrucksvolle sphärische Momente brillieren da. Sie zeigen Heckers grosses Talent für Klangforschungen im Bereich der "spektralen" Musik. Überhaupt, Tim Heckers Klangkompositionen bewegen sich wie auf einem Farbspektrum: immer wieder werden neue Facetten und Färbungen abgetastet und herauspoliert. Feinfühlig, sensibel ebenso wie kalt, dunkel und zerfahren. Doch einerseits klingen die 15 neuen Stücke auf "Harmony In Ultraviolet" so bedeutungsvoll und geladen, andererseits aber so leicht zugänglich, durchschaubar... und bedeutungslos? Wie steckt man den Rahmen ab wenn man Heckers Musik beschreiben soll? Tim Hecker bewegt sich auf einem Feld von Ambient, Drone, elektronischer Musik, Noise und einem gefühlsmässigen Metal. "Harmony In Ultraviolet" ist ein Herbstalbum und erscheint genau zur richtigen Zeit. Denn zusammengefasst klingt es einfach wie der Herbstwind in all seinen Daseinsformen." [Creative-Eclipse] "Call Canadian Tim Hecker's fourth full-length release (and first for drone-oriented American label Kranky) "ambient for bombardiers." Like onetime-tourmates Isis, Hecker's focus is on the molten core of metal—the drones, distortions, compressed crunching, and industrial noises that course underneath its notes and riffs. Not surprisingly, one of his earliest releases deconstructed and distended Van Halen's "Ain't Talking 'Bout Love" to more ambient ends. The display of WWII-era portraiture on Harmony in Ultraviolet's cover suggests a cenotaph to downed pilots (in actuality it's an anti-fascist memorial), while the overhead shot of Bologna, Italy, on the interior forebodes the imminent firebombing. Hecker's focus, though, is on the interior of that flying fortress, a blurry suite of movements rife with churns and buzzes. At these stratospheric heights, the guitar's distinct qualities are made fuzzy and uncertain via laptop and digital effects. If you melted off the pop structure from My Bloody Valentine's Loveless with some molten magma, you'd have a good idea of Hecker's sound. Flow is maintained throughout, as Tim Hecker apparently understands that ever-tricky notion of fluid dynamics. He breaks up motifs (see "Palimpsest") with churning ebbs and digressions but keeps together the pinnacle suite, "Whitecaps of White Noise." And while Hecker has always been an adept craftsman, Harmony reveals his mastery of the idiom. Washes now feel oceanic, as epic and evocative ripples take shape out of unplumbed depths of feedback and distorted peals." [Andy Beta] "....Harmony is, paradoxically, Hecker's most dramatic and most oceanic record. The former implies twists, arc, and carefully planned change intended to evoke specific effects; the latter suggests stasis, immersion, and a state of dreamy contemplation. Harmony manages to be both these things by surprising as it mesmerizes, with Hecker reigning in or tempering any jarring effects just enough to keep the self-obliterating sense of endless drone intact. One key is that the tension never really dissipates, varying only in degree and quality. The opening "Rainbow Blood" sets the scene with a screeching and trebly drone, like an orchestra tuning up in the darkened theater where Rebecca del Rio performed in Mulholland Drive, and for the next 48 minutes, Harmony keeps the pulse elevated..." [Mark Richardson / Pitchforkmedia] | 2006 | €14.50 |
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| HELM | Impasse | LP | "Impasse is a sideways journey into the archives of London-based artist Luke Younger, a.k.a. Helm. Conceived six years ago in the wake of a Birds of Delay tour, the album originally saw the light of day in an abridged version as a mini-CDR on the Low Point label in 2008. This remastered and expanded reissue has the two original tracks along with two others from the same sessions that remained unmixed until a couple of years ago. Impasse appears as somewhat of an anomaly in the Helm canon when viewed alongside recent live performances and his work for labels like Pan and Kye. Where other works explore the mystery inherent in everyday sounds and acoustic phenomena, Impasse is significantly brighter in tone. Consisting of four loop-based pieces, the record invokes the same fantastic worlds found in Terry Riley’s or Boyd Rice’s early ambient pieces. Picture a functional family vacation, an explorer at the apex of his endeavors, a 4:00 AM drinking session with new liquids discovered. Bright corners, euphoric angles and ecstatic drones come together for an emotionally charged high that reflects these unique moments in the human experience. The beauty of Helm lies in its implacable curiosity, the way his music observes the current state of being. Released in a limited edition with artwork by Graham Lambkin, Impasse is another sublime offering from one of the UK’s sharpest cats." [label info] | 2014 | €15.00 |
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| Axis | LP | "London exploratory industrialist Luke Younger characterizes the creation of his latest collection, Axis, as a liberating return to roots: “It felt like going back to the beginning, it felt freeing.” Begun before the pandemic as a soundtrack to a dance performance, the initial vision was for something “visceral, with physical movement in mind.” When the project shifted to indefinite hiatus, he reimagined the material in the context of an LP, while retaining its sense of dynamic physicality. The result is grim and gripping, seasick throbs lurching in a low-ceilinged space, strafed with fractured clanging, hissing steam, and grinding spirals of granular haze. Noise in its most elevated and compelling form, from and for the body as much as the mind. The album’s unique immediacy stems from Younger’s instinctual muse, reactivating raw methods with fresh energy. “I tuned back in to working with noise techniques again: more primitive equipment, cheap FX, contact mics, noise boxes.” Key guest contributions by Lucy Railton (cello), Mark Morgan of Sightings (guitar), Alex Tucker (vocals), and the late, legendary John Hannon (violin) further enrich the record’s bristling palette. Although half the tracks were begun pre-Covid at Hannon’s Essex studio, the rest were finished in Younger’s kitchen and living room during lockdown. The final tracks were then relayed to veteran mix specialist Randall Dunn, who further honed the material, adding a vivid spatial quality before entrusting the album to Stefan Betke (Pole) for final mastering. From the hellscape metronome of “Moskito” to the insectoid warzone pulse of “Repellent” to the seething orchestral undertow of “Axis,” this is music of ominous gravity and worlds in peril. But it’s the closing cut, “Tower,” which Younger calls “perhaps the most dramatic piece of music I’ve ever made.” A lurking, blackened descension conjured on keys, guitar, and wormhole wah, the melody simmers and swells until suddenly exploding in a chaos of distorted blast beats. From their ashes the three-note riff slowly returns, like some astral dungeon synth exorcism, rising in a searing arc towards frenzied immolation before finally fading away in white fire and afterlife whispers." "HELM has consistently been one of the most fascinating (projects) in British experimental music the past decade" - The Quietus Luke Younger, der unter dem Moniker HELM Alben veröffentlicht, die bereits Kult-Status genießen, hat beim Label DAIS angedockt. HELM hat bislang fünf Studioalben und drei EPs mit experimenteller Musik veröffentlicht, in denen er eine Beziehung zwischen akustischen, elektronischen und realen Klängen erforscht. Ab 2012 veröffentlichte er seine Alben beim renommierten PAN Label, darunter die von Kritikern und Fans gleichermaßen gefeierten Alben "Olympic Mess" und "Chemical Flowers". Der Londoner Industrial-Musiker Luke Younger aka HELM beschreibt die Kreation seiner neuesten Kollektion "Axis" als eine befreiende Rückkehr zu den Wurzeln: "It felt like going back to the beginning, it felt freeing." Das Ergebnis ist düster und fesselnd: Seekranke Klänge, die in einem niedrigen Raum taumeln, durchsetzt von gebrochenem Klirren, zischendem Dampf und mahlenden Spiralen aus körnigem Dunst. Lärm in seiner höchsten und fesselndsten Form, von und für den Körper ebenso wie für den Geist. Wichtige Gastbeiträge von Lucy Railton (Cello), Mark Morgan von Sightings (Gitarre), Alex Tucker (Gesang) und dem verstorbenen, legendären John Hannon (Violine) bereichern die schillernde Palette des Albums zusätzlich. Mix-Spezialist Randall Dunn verfeinerte das Material und fügte eine lebendige räumliche Qualität hinzu, bevor er das Album Stefan Betke (Pole) für das endgültige Mastering anvertraute. Vom höllischen Metronom von "Moskito" über den insektoiden Warzone-Puls von "Repellent" bis hin zum brodelnden orchestralen Unterton von "Axis" ist dies Musik von bedrohlicher Schwere und Welten in Gefahr. Aber es ist das abschließende Stück "Tower", das Younger als "perhaps the most dramatic piece of music I've ever made." bezeichnet. Ein lauernder, geschwärzter Abstieg, beschworen von Tasten, Saiten und Wurmloch-Wah, die Melodie brodelt und schwillt an, bis sie plötzlich in einem Chaos aus verzerrten Blastbeats explodiert. Aus ihrer Asche kehrt das dreistimmige Riff langsam zurück, wie ein astraler Kerker-Synthie-Exorzismus, der sich in einem brennenden Bogen zur rasenden Verbrennung steigert, bevor er schließlich in weißem Feuer und Jenseitsgeflüster vergeht. "Mit einem an Bauhaus’ „The Sky’s Gone Out“ erinnernden Cover erscheint nach einer Reihe von Alben mit “Axis” der neue Longplayer von Helm, dem Einmannprojekt von Luke Younger, auf Dais Records. Younger bezeichnet sich auf seiner Bandcampseite als „sound artist and experimental musician“, dabei hat er eine lange und durchaus heterogene(re) musikalische Biographie (u.a. Hardcore mit The Lowest Form). Auf „Axis“, ursprünglich vor der Pandemie konzipiert als Soundtrack für eine Tanzperformance, die dann doch nicht zustande kam, setzt Younger bewusst „primitives“ Equipment ein (“cheap FX, contact mics, noise boxes”). Hinzukommen Gastmusiker an Geige, Gitarre, Cello sowie Gesang von Alex Tucker. Mit zerhäckselten Störtönen beginnt das das Album eröffnende „Para“, bevor melodische Passagen einsetzen. Das elektronische Gebrutzel, das sich immer wieder verdichtet, gibt dem Stück eine dissonante Unruhe. „Moskito“ mit seinem kuriosen, kargen und schleppenden Rhythmus, klingt anfangs nach Minimaltechno, dann lassen sich dissonante Streicher erahnen. “Crash” dagegen ist – dem Titel zum Trotz – ruhiger, besitzt fast schon Ambientcharakter. Hier sorgen Streicherpassagen für Momente der Melancholie. Dieses Innehalten wird mit den Zahnarztbohrersounds, die “Repellent” einleiten, beendet. Dann setzen verzerrte Beats ein. “Mole” knistert, als werde eine Verpackung geöffnet. Das ist ein dunkles Stück Geräuschmusik mit Streicherpassagen, die an einen Folk Horror-Soundtrack denken lassen. Auf dem düsteren Titeltrack hört man übereinandergeschichtete schabende und nach Sirenen klingende Sounds, die in einer Kakophonie untergehen. “Tower” schließlich ist ein im Kontext des Albums fast schon orchestraler, dramatischer Track. The rest is silence." [MG / African Paper] | 2021 | €23.00 |
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| HENRIKSEN, ARVE | The Nature of Connections | LP + CD | "The Nature Of Connections" almost entirely features pieces composed by Arve’s collaborators. Recorded in the sparkling acoustic of Oslo’s legendary Rainbow Studio by Jan Erik Kongshaug, it’s an album with closer ties to Nordic folk and contemporary, minimalist chamber music than any of Arve’s previous releases. At the same time it features some of the most melodic and seductive music he has recorded. The trumpeter had planned to make an album with a string quartet for many years but never quite found the right formula. Finally, a special commissioned tour brought him together with violinists Nils Økland and Gjermund Larsen, cellist Svante Henryson and double bassist Mats Eilertsen, all of whom now appear as the central planks in "The Nature Of Connections". Another welcome guest is drummer Audun Kleive, veteran of Norwegian jazz ensembles including Oslo 13, JøKleBa!, Generator X, Terje Rypdal and Jon Balke. Seit 2001 hat er eine Reihe von exquisite Soloaufnahmen aufgenommen, die elektronische Texturen, Holzbläser, ethnische Instrumente, Percussion, Keyboards und seine traurige, sehnsuchtsvolle Stimme vereinen. Die Musik von ARVE HENRIKSEN zeigt gleichzeitig die atemberaubende Schönheit der unberührten Natur und die sich stetig verändernde kosmopolitische Umwelt des postmodernen Reisenden. ,The Nature Of Connections" ist das neueste Glied in einer sich stetig weiterentwickelnden Kette. Dies ist sein erstes akustisches Album, das sich um vier großartige Streicher rankt und mit einigen seiner wärmsten und organischsten Tracks aufwartet. Aufgenommen mit Jan Erik Kongshaug in der kristallklaren Akustik des legendären Rainbow Studios in Stockholm ist ,The Nature Of Connections" Jazz mit einer engen Verbindung zur nordischen Folklore und der zeitgenössischen minimalistischen Kammermusik. Arve Henriksen - trumpet, piccolo trumpet, piano, Nils Okland - violin, Hardanger fiddle, viola d'amore, Svante Henryson - cello, Gjermund Larsen - violin, Hardanger fiddle, Mats Eilertsen - double bass, Audun Kleive - drums" www.runegrammofon.com/artists/arve_henriksen/rcd2161-arve-henriksen-the-nature-of-connections-cd-lp/ | 2014 | €25.00 |
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| HENRY COW | Stockholm & Göteborg | CD | "The first new release for 30 years from this legendary audience-splitting British group, and the first featuring Georgina Born, the group’s bassist between 1976-78. Remixed and re-mastered from the original Swedish radio tapes. ‘Henry Cow, me favourite band in the world’ [Robert Wyatt, 1973] Henry Cow were never going to fit in. Their compositions were way too composed and their improvising was way too improvised - a tendency that only got more extreme as time went on, as these recordings from 1976 and 1977 demonstrate. Stockholm and Goteborg fills in some of the missing history between In Praise of Learning (1975) and Western Culture (1978) and offers music that has not been heard on record until now. First is Tim Hodgkinson’s late and fiendishly complicated epic composition ‘Erk Gah’ (a working title), that took many months of sweat to learn and resolutely eschews any hint of riff, solo or modular assembly. At the other extreme are the two wide-ranging improvisations built around heady extended instrumental techniques, aleatorics, quotations, more-or-less randomly inserted prepared materials and a blithe disregard for genre rules. Between, constantly shifting ground, are a straight-ahead version of Phil Ochs’ No more Songs (one of only two covers ever performed by the band), an unreleased composition by Fred Frith, and a version of the Ottawa Song: a typical live set from that period. Finally, Stockholm is a snapshot of a band of exceptional talents having fun. And it reflects what the studio albums could not – that Henry Cow’s natural habitat was the stage - and the real-time pressure of public performance - because it was there that the music could live and breathe. And evolve. Stockholm and Goteborg is the first volume of a 9 CD and one DVD set of unreleased material commemorating the band’s 40th anniversary. Georgina Born. fretless bass, cello Lindsay Cooper. bassoon, flute, recorder, sopranino sax, piano Chris Cutler. drums, electrification (13) and piano Fred Frith. guitar, xylophone, piano John Greaves bass, voice Tim Hodgkinson. organ, alto saxophone Dagmar Krause. singing. " [label info] | 2008 | €14.00 |
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| Ex Box Collected Fragments 1971-1978 | CD | "EX BOX is a free bonus CD issued to subscribers to the Henry Cow Box Redux and is NOT FOR GENERAL SALE." Limited edition of 250. However, ReR Megacorp also made this CD available for separate purchase. Copies sold to non-subscribers were not numbered. ● 1 : 1971 recorded in Cambridge ● 2 & 3 : remixes done at Cold Storage in Brixton for the first CD reissue of 'Legend' on the Minneapolis label East Side Digital in 1991. ● 4, 5, 6 & 7 : taken from a concert at the Theatre Royal, Sheffield on June 9, 1974. Rescued from an otherwise unidentified cassette. ● 8 : from the 1976 quartet tour of Scandinavia. From an otherwise unidentified cassette. ● 9 : extracted from material generated while working on side two of Unrest, and appeared as a bonus track on the ESD reissue. Recorded at The Manor, probably between the 14th and 28th February 1974. ● 10 and 11 were gleaned from one of the few surviving Orckestra recordings. Taken from an unidentified cassette. [was previously available on a bonus mini-CD given to subscribers of The Henry Cow Facsimile Box.] ● 12, 13, 14 : recorded in January 1978 at Sunrise in Switzerland. They weren't use for future Henry Cow releases, but later appeared on the ReR reissue of Western Culture as bonus tracks. [actually tracks 12 & 13 were also released as early as 1982 on Recommended Records Sampler]. ● 15, 16, 17 : recorded on 20th February, 1977 at the TeatroOlimpico in Parma. Mastered from a cassette. Assembled by Chris Cutler, then improved and mastered at Studio Midi-Pyrenees by Bob Drakein October 2019. | 2019 | €15.00 |
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| HEROIN IN TAHITI | Casilina Tapes 2010 - 2017 | LP | "Hailing from Rome, cult duo Heroin in Tahiti fuse analogue synths, garage-y guitars and skittering drum machines to gloriously lo-fi effect. This collection of previously unreleased tracks covers material recorded in their studio from a 7-year period. Their unique psychedelic vision touches on everything from beat poetry, house music and Ennio Morricone soundtracks." [Norman Records] "Heroin In Tahiti is a duo from Rome, Italy hailing from the Roma Est scene, a sort of local community based in the crumbling and deteriorated neighborhoods which were already eternalized by Pasolini and Neorealist Cinema (think of Pasolini, De Sica, Visconti, etc.) The duo plays a variety of cheap guitars, analog synths, drum machines, and pedals, achieving a dirtiness which is tragically lo-fi and out-of-time at the same time: a "Spaghetti Wasteland", as they call it. In 2012 they released on Boring Machines their debut album Death Surf, a title which spoke for the music played on the record. The label said of the album: "Think of drinking a frozen daiquiri on a solitary beach while watching a poorly tuned TV broadcasting loops of If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death (1968), while Mururoa tests are happening at the horizon." When mentioning Italian occult psychedelia, Heroin In Tahiti seems the best choice to sum up the sound and the references that stay at the core of this all-Italian scene. With albums like the mammoth double LP Sun And Violence (2015), the minimalist Canicola (2014) and the monolithic Remoria (GRA 001LP, 2017), Heroin In Tahiti became a cult band for their particular signature. Casilina Tapes 2010-2017 is the latest (and probably last) output from the cult Italian duo. It's a collection of unreleased tracks recorded in their basement studio in Rome in the last seven years while building up their thematic albums. The label listened to the single tracks at once and they found out there's a coherence between them even if they have been created in different periods. Actually, they show a coherence that only Heroin In Tahiti, with their kaleidoscopic vision of how Italy secretly sounds, can properly conjure up. Boring Machines calls it "total music". You may find elements which reminds of long lost Morriconian soundtracks for cheap westerns or giallos, library music to accompany documentaries on Superstudio radical architecture, urban tribalism, beat poetry festivals on the seashore, and house music. Recorded in Rome, 2010-2017. Artwork by Francesco de Figueiredo. Screen printed covers by Legno, Milano." [label info] | 2018 | €20.00 |
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| HERR LOUNGE CORPS + CADAVEROUS CONDITION | The Breath of a Bird | CD | "Death In June collaborator Miro Snejdr aka Herr Lounge Corps teamed up with Death Metal weirdos Cadaverous Condition to create an epic, haunting piece of dark mood music cast into rather accessible songs. A soundtrack to dreams and even more so, nightmares. The album also features a massive horror synthwave remix by GosT." [Bandcamp info] Breath Of A Bird CD music contains a single disc. Cadaverous Condition used to be an extreme metal band from Austria. Their style ranges from old school death metal to acoustic guitar songs with typical death metal growl vocals the band themselves describe as "Death Folk" In recent years, the band have concentrated on collaborations, this new one combining their sound with the piano and electronic compositions by Herr Lounge Corps. Breath Of A Bird album for sale by Herr Lounge Corps & Cadaverous Condition was released Jun 08, 2018 on the Klanggalerie label. | 2018 | €14.00 |
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| HILDEBRAND, GUSTAF | Heliopause | CD | "Finally we are graced with brand new material from Sweden's Gustaf Hildebrand, a few years after the epic Primordial Resonance album and his joint project with Amanda Votta, Lacus Somniorum. The Heliopause, the point outside our solar system where the solar wind ceases to be, transitioning into what is known as the Interstellar Medium and where our sun becomes just another pinprick of light amongst a billion others. If you were to find yourself stranded in such a place with nothing but a radio receiver, Gustaf Hildebrand imagines that this is what you would hear, low rumbling soundscapes interspersed with bursts of static, com-chatter and signal interceptions from a distant world. Vestiges of humanity bubble up from the ether, speaking encoded messages in the form of numerical combinations and long-forgotten cyphers, their true meanings lost or hidden away inside the memory banks of decommissioned satellites. This new chapter in Hildebrand’s discography reaffirm’s his position as a true visionary and unique craftsman of exploratory sonorities. Edition of 800 copies in 6 panel digipack. 9 Tracks. Running Time 52:23 | 2012 | €13.50 |
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| HIORTHOY, KIM & RUNE KRISTOFFERSEN | LET'S PUT IT TO MUSIC / 20 YEARS OF RUNE GRAMMOFON | BOOK & 7inch | Includes a 7" single with exclusive tracks from Fire! Orchestra, The Last Hurrah!! and Maja S. K. Ratkje, surely among the most exuisite in the whole catalogue. Introductions by David Fricke and Adrian Shaughnessy. It´s no secret that Rune Grammofon founder Rune Kristoffersen is a big admirer of labels like Blue Note, Impuls, ECM, 4AD and Factory, to mention some labels with strong visual identities. But we can´t recall another label that has worked with one designer exclusively for 20 years and 200 releases. The exclusivity was a premise for our collaboration with Kim Hiorthøy from the very beginning, but we certainly never had any expectations about how long we would be able to keep it going. This book is far from being a catalog lining up the releases (it´s not even "complete" or chronological in that sense), but provides an interesting insight by including sketches, rejected designs and unused idéas that never left the drawing board... until now. A Rune Grammofon record is never finished until the cover is done and a sleeve is never designed for the sole purpose of selling a product (it took 28 releases before an artist was pictured on the sleeve!), or necessarily reflect the music in any way (is that even possible?), but rather to establish a suggestive relation between the two, often based on the album title or a song title, but not in an obvious way. We have also included a number of interesting and eclectic "best of" lists from the likes of Jono El Grande, Bent Sæther, Lasse Marhaug, Mats Gustafsson, SPUNK, Rune Kristoffersen and others. The book has 224 pages, comes with a tactile Geltex hardcover and is beautifully designed by Hiorthøy. www.runegrammofon.com/artists/books/rbk2200-let-s-put-it-to-music-20-years-of-rune-grammofon-boo/ | 2018 | €46.00 |
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| HIRSUTE PURSUIT | Tighten that Muscle | CD | "Music that smells like a man! “I play Hirsute Pursuit at all of my DJ gigs” (Peter Christopherson) “Tighten That Muscle Ring” features collaborators such as Bryin Dall of Thee Majesty, Boyd Rice of NON and Sleazy of Coil / Throbbing Gristle. The music is real. The sex is real. Created by Harley Phoenix and his musical partner, Bryin Dall, this is Gay Sex Music that offers no apologies. Enticing rhythms combined with raw sex and a commanding, deep, resonate voice, Harley has transformed explicit instructions for serving his pleasure into a musical orgy that hits the gay community where it plays, the dance floor and the bedroom. Sleazy dance beats pound along at tempos that encourage carnal exploration, while sounds of ecstasy cannot be ignored. You will be thinking Cock Thoughts (a song from the first album, That Hole Belongs to Me). After starting with a MySpace page Hirsute Pursuit has become THE MOST PLAYED GAY MUSIC ON MYSPACE. Typical letters from fans tell Harley that after listening to his music, they HAD to go “get off”. While fans have been pleading for photos, Harley refuses to give in. Understanding the restraints of reality, Harley remains in the shadows, making Hirsute Pursuit the ultimate in musical fantasy. Without any publicity or releases, Hirsute Pursuit has had over 140,000 plays in less than a year! Drawing fans from all musical genres, including House, Country, Rock, Hip Hop, etc. Primarily attracting a gay audience, recent fans also include female dominatrixes, middle-class housewives and straight guys (as is evidenced in the video, Boys Keep Swinging featuring Boyd Rice and James Pope, both straight). The raw sensuality has now crossed over into the heterosexual domain. This is music you can fuck to, as well as bump and grind. Harley Phoenix is currently preparing Hirsute Pursuit’s live show experience which will include actual musicians, dancers and video to give the audience members a complete sensory explosion. Comes in a 6-panel digisleeve." [label info] www.coldspring.co.uk | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| HIS DIVINE GRACE | Le Grand Secret | CD | Auf dem Schwesterlabel von TREUE UM TREUE erscheint dieses hochmelancholische und philosophische Werk des französisches Projekts, dass uns in seiner "sad ambient" - Melodiosität an frühe REUTOFF erinnert hat... "Inspired by the works of the Traditionalists and the lives and deaths of Sekens Murdock and Leontin V. Abilgaard, Moonchild Erik’s fourth CD album “Le Grand Secret” (The Great Secret) takes the shape of a metaphysical reflection on the deceptions of human language, in which Murdock and Abilgaard saw the main cause for the world of confusion we live in. Musically more accessible than “Eurydice” or “Reverse Aleph”, this very diverse new opus is the worthy successor of “Die Schlangenkönigin”, hovering from emotional soundscapes and spacey dub rhythms into gloomy, awe-inspiring drones with even noisy elements. An initiation through pure sound." [label info] "...Tackling literary philosophical surrealism is a rather daunting task yet His Divine Grace has successfully extracted the subtle nuances of this newest muse and has distilled the rudimentary literary aesthetic into a long audio voyage filled with mystery and esoteric darkness. The album explores a wide array of carefully constructed dark ambient and experimental soundscapes as it leads the listener through imaginative and stimulating sonic worlds that shimmer like mirages. Dark ambient drones and electronic sounds are contorted into breathtaking monuments of sound that lay long shadows across barren wastelands of uninhabitable terrain. Like titans fighting battles long forgotten each track makes a definitive and powerful statement as His Divine Grace unfolds contemplative compositions that inspire and demand reflection. The CD is spilt into three definitive chapters. Chapter one titled “These – Sekens Murdock” showcases the musical tribute to Murdock and establishes the musical introduction. Track one tilted “Les chevaux de feu” begins the album with an epic dark ambient anthem that combines churning industrial strength noise with interlacing drones and thunderous industrial sounds. Elusive samples of organ and choir enhance the experience lending a humanist emotional depth to the somber apocalyptic decimation established the industrial side of the music. Track two titled “Les gardiens du grand secret” features a shift in sound as His Divine Grace sheds the tormented confines of dark ambient music and steers the listner into ethereal ambience. Using a simple collection of finely articulated electronic sounds His Divine Grace sculpts a luminous song that elevates the spirit as it transports the listner into a sonic domain of alternating tones of purity. Track four titled “Verbum, lux et vita” unfolds with an element of suspense and an unknown presence dominating the tentative atmosphere as if invisible dwellers rove beyond the perimeter of the senses. Track four titled “Le voile levé” concludes the first chapter of the CD with a lonely and lengthy composition that combines delicate sonorous tones with tamed industrial rhythms and tuba like notes that resonate from the depths. “Le voile levé” is reminiscent of the organic ambient flow once achieved by O Yuki Conjugate though slightly darker and freed from the constrains of any ethnic influence. Chapter two titled “Antithèse - Leontin Voigt Abilgaard” features five compositions themed around Abilgaard. The chapter begins with song five titled “De la nécessité de se taire.” “De la nécessité de se taire” leads the listner once again into yet another independent composition whose identity is only tenuously connected to its peers. The song begins with ominous drone music that is paired with voice samples and recorded sounds of water. As the song progresses the atmosphere darkens significantly as a threatening tone is established. Feelings of loneliness and isolation begin to creep up on the listner as His Divine Grace conjures forth an experimental ambient ballad that breathes with an uneasy rasp as it guides you through reflections of emotional carnage and fragility. Track six titled “Frayeurs initiatiques” continues the journey of isolation though the subterranean depths of the previous song seem somewhat further away. Using simple electronic tones and drones His Divine Grace subdues the listner with a hypnotic assault of suffering ambience. Track seven titled “Pourquoi... toujours pourquoi” sees light beginning to pierce the darkness as a slowly churning palate of voice samples dances with steadily growing waves of electronic sounds that drift awash in a delicate tapestry of sound. Like hope rising from the ashes of defeat the music gently stirs the listeners spirit to remember what has been lost and to react and reclaim. “L’opposition tacite” retreats once again into another suspenseful ambient narrative filled with dark ambience and ritualistic overtones that combine to offer a song filled with primal elements and an esoteric darkness that is tangible. “Le quatre-heure de crystal” ends the Abilgaard chapter of the CD on an experimental note as His Divine Grace abandons the listner to musical surrealism with a strong mind bending psychedelic tinge. Like witnessing events from the perspective of a heavily tranquilized yet conscious person the music washes across the listner like fragmented waves of conscious thought disarrayed and decaying. Synthese et Syncretisme is the third and final chapter of the Le Grand Secret CD and it features a single song titled “Le Principe immuable.” ‘Le Principe immuable” is the most contemplative of all the tracks on the album and it lasts for more than sixteen minutes allowing for total submersion in the music. The finale does not end with a bang but rather on a very gentle note as His Divine Grace coaxes an incredible amount of sentiment, reflection and emotion from some of the simplest musical elements ever applied. Oscillating notes tepidly induce a spell that closes the album with brilliance and delicacy. His Divine Grace is the type of electronic music that I covet. Grounded in industrial and ambient music His Divine Grace expertly melds his industrial musicl foundation with the openness of experimental composition. Each song is like a living entity, some transcendent and others primal and raw. Le Grand Secret sees His Divine Grace come to full fruition as he seizes upon literary figures deserving of his creativity. Le Grand Secret is an awesome display of imagination and musical surrealism and I highly recommend the album to those seeking to revel in previously undiscovered musical domains. Those who like bands like Propergol, Tordoih, Dusk Of Hope, and other promising dark filmic ambient music are encouraged to check out Le Grand Secret." [Malahki Thorn / Heathen Harvest] | 2006 | €6.00 |
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| HISS | Zahir | CD | Hiss is an improvisational quartet made up of one Englishman and three Norwegians with an instrumental line-up that is unremarkable enough, but with a sound that is fairly unique. Keyboardist/electronicist Pat Thomas is a veteran of the British free improv scene while guitarist Ivar Grydeland, bassist Tonny Kluften and percussionist Ingar Zach -- though the latter three are younger -- are mainstays of the Norwegian free jazz and improv cultures. The reasoning behind the Arabic-sounding track titles remains obscure. The music herein has some of the spikiness and general clamor associated with the post-SME scene in England, and leavened with allusions to contemporary electronica and even a tinge of rock-based fills. One might even be able to pick up the slightest influence of the very early Jan Garbarek groups: Grydeland sometimes brings to mind Terje Rypdal at his most extreme. Had the latter (a Norwegian saxophonist) stayed true to the aesthetic displayed in albums like Sart and Afric Pepperbird, it's just possible he might have been creating music like Hiss in 2002! For all their abstractions, the pieces hover in more of a free jazz vein than a non-idiomatic one. Though there are no solos per se; there is very much a sense of four individuals playing with less regard for the overall group sound than with creating a ruckus: a goal they reach often enough to make the album a fairly successful, noisy joyride. Listeners familiar with Company Weeks of the past, or the music produced along the Derek Bailey/Barry Guy/Evan Parker axis over the last several decades, may find nothing terribly groundbreaking here (though the title cut edges into intriguing territory). But overall it's a solid effort; very clearly recorded; that pays its own dividends. | 2003 | €6.00 |
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| HODGKINSON, TIM & MILO FINE | Teshuvah | CD | "TWO BLOKES FINDING SOUND IN THE MIDST OF A Sort of Macrocosm Insufferable and absurd. But, what else to expect? Because we are (imagine ourselves to be?) sentient, or rather, due to the manner in which western "civilization", an infectious disease which has managed to inculcate almost every indigenous culture on the planet, has manifested this sentience, we are an utterly disingenuous species. Our actions, in one way or another, are, for the most part (exclusively?) unintentional manifestations of what lurks beneath; unacknowledged, suppressed, repressed, willfully unknown. Our behavioral watchwords? Rationalization and justification. Why? Well, fear of course, Knowing we will cease to exist, or, perhaps more accurately, lacking the ability to fathom the eternal (or what we imagine it to be), we turn to so-called power, material wealth, fame and the like as pathetically meagre compensation. Now, there are those who would, in the current lexicon, argue that "it's all good", which is nothing but a rephrasing of essential tenets found in any number of belief systems/philosophies. And while there is no doubt that truly existing in the eternity of every moment, to treat what we generally separate into "good" or "bad"/ "positive" or "negative", as nothing but unified energy of which we are simply a part -- to, in other words, maintain a sense of calm and "being" regardless of life's circumstances -- would likely be ideal, or close to it. But, given the essence of humanity's overall conditioning and wiring, this state is, sadly, more or less impossible to attain, never mind sustain. Not to say that it isn't worth considering and attempting. But, in the meantime, let's drop the pretense; the state of the world -- inner and outer -- makes it clear that it is not all good, and to excuse our behavior is to propagate the missteps that personify humanity. Certainly A Microcosm Social gatherings are all, to one degree or another, insufferable and absurd. Fraught with rampant hidden agendas and their manifestations -- positioning (hierarchal maneuvering) and networking (careerism) -- and underscored by insecurity and thinly veiled desperation (a bit thicker for those with truly sociopathic tendencies), how could they be otherwise? And, having such a gathering in the name of "art" only compounds the unbearableness, because the meaningful realization of the creative impulse should have at least something to do with transcendence. Not "transcendence" as a marketing tool or an image mongering label, but transcendence. So, when a local academy hosted yet another insular affair -- in this case, a "festival of electronic music and arts" -- wherein the invitees ranged from graduate students to out-of-town guests (underwritten by their own academies to come and display their wares; that is to say, add yet another line to their curriculum vitaes), the resultant lack of transcendence can hardly come as a surprise. And, indeed, just on the surface, there's abundant evidence as to how brilliantly this event works at cross purposes. First, it's centered around technology, which, these days, as one knows, means lap top gimmickry (and slow downloads). Second, there's a preponderance of hackneyed and merciless expropriation of indigenous musics, a clear sign of wrong-headed political correctness. Third, as part of ever elusive "audience development", there is much pandering to rock/pop influences. Fourth, the programming style is all pastiche -- a little of this, a little of that -- catering to short attention spans. (And, do I need to mention how the curator and others high in the food chain, get to present their work in the better, more prestigious venues? I thought not.) In all, it's fascinating how an event so concerned with creativity is, for the most part, so utterly bereft of same. Tim and I first met when he came to town with Konk Pack (a trio which also includes Roger Turner and Thomas Lehn) in the fall of 2007. In addition to playing a duo set with Roger that evening, I had served as a middle man of sorts in setting up the gig, which, due to the curator dropping the ball vis a vis communications, almost didn't happen. (And, even when it did, the evening itself was filled with an assortment of additional miscues, which Tim -- the group's de facto "tour manger " -- and I handled well, and, perhaps more importantly, with good humor.) Tim and I didn't talk a lot that evening or at brunch the next day, but, as evidenced by our on-the-spot problem solving and the exchanges we did have, there was an obvious overlapping of sensibilities and interests. Evidently, Tim thought so too. I was, however, surprised and amused when Tim let me know he was returning to participate in this, as we say in the states, "dog and pony" show (i.e., an empty showcase). (That he was a member of an ensemble not playing his music -- a hired hand, so to speak -- mitigated my surprise.) In his e-mail he expressed an interest in finding some time to hang out amongst the rehearsals and performances. I countered by suggesting we get together to play. So, we elected to attempt both, but, naturally, given logistical concerns (schedules and transportation) the path to something simple was replete with small stumbling blocks. Enter filmmaker/videographer Mike Yaeger. Part of my unexpected and last minute middle man duties on Tim's previous visit was to find accommodations for Konk Pack. For several reasons, three people would have been a bit much at my place. Particularly in the light of Roger having opened his home to me for several days in 2003 while I was in England, his staying with me was a foregone conclusion. Fortunately, in an inspired moment, I remembered Mike had a long standing admiration for Tim's work. So, I contacted him about the possibility of Tim and Thomas spending the night at his house. Having met and had quite a long conversation with Tim the preceding year, Mike was delighted. This time around (late winter 2008), Tim had already alerted Mike to his return, but Mike was unaware that I had suggested our getting together to play. This prospect was especially exciting for him, because, in addition to his abiding respect for Tim's music, Mike has expressed a deep appreciation for my work as evidenced by his recurring bursts of support. (That a virodha bhakti -- devotion by defiance -- undercurrent informs our relationship is not surprising, as it is a recurring theme in my interpersonal dynamics.) He was, therefore, very keen on videotaping our session. And, because the audio on his camera is of mediocre quality, he suggested, no, almost insisted that I record it with my DAT equipment (consisting of a recorder, mixer and four microphones). I, on the other hand, just wanted to keep things simple and make some music. But, Mike, in his unbridled enthusiasm, can be extremely persuasive, and so we compromised. I'd record it, but with a basic stereo mike set-up. Looking at the festival schedule, I noted the first day I was available to hear Tim, and made tentative arrangements to meet and go out with him and Mike. But that, of course, entailed the concerted effort of entering a domain that, despite my efforts to place occurrences in a broader context, nonetheless so irritates my nerve endings. Thus, with as much of an accepting attitude as I could muster, and keeping open the option that there just might, might be something of interest to hear (which, as it turns out there was, but just barely), I entered the venue where Tim would be playing and, once inside the performing space proper, immediately detected the pervasive stench of heightened self-importance and the politics of music as, first and foremost, a career path. A sort of existential nausea washed over me. With a demeanor of subtle defiance, I found a place to sit as some vacant post-modern design-form morphed on the stage's screen. Within moments, I spotted an enthralled Mike, who, for all his perspicacious opinions concerning artistic endeavor, can, in certain circumstances, be quite a, shall we say, forgiving listener; and Viv Corringham, one of my regular collaborators, whom I mercilessly (and, if I may be so bold, justifiably) tease for regularly showing up at these sorts of affairs. (However, as she actually participated in this event the previous year, her presence was de rigueur. Moreover, given that Viv has a genuine arts degree, one readily recognizes the force of habit extending from a good indoctrination, er, education.) During breaks between pieces, and almost trembling with displeasure, I asked Mike when we could get out of there, phrasing it along the lines of, "When the fuck can we get out of here and get something to eat?". He seemed perplexed and annoyed, to the point where, a bit later, and subsequent to Tim and I having warmly reestablished contact, Mike indicated he wouldn't be able to give Tim a ride to the session on Saturday, because he didn't want to miss any of the concerts (and, additionally, would have his young daughter, Alice, in tow). With no other viable options, I said I'd fetch Tim and get him back afterwards. Slight tensions aside, the four of us decided to get together for a meal prior to to Tim's next appearance that evening. The dinner at a small Indian restaurant was lovely; the usual push-pull banter amongst new and old comrades (Viv having known Tim for quite some time). Naturally, a fair portion of the conversation centered around the event at hand. And while Mike would have loved to find an ally in Tim concerning positive aspects of the festival, Tim was having none of it, and even went so far as to regale us with some wonderful and revealing behind-the-scenes stories. As the evening went on, Mike, in particular, was concerned about getting to the next venue in time to get a seat. I was, of course, in no great hurry, never imagining, in the light of the afternoon event's modest audience, that the place would be filled to capacity. Much to my chagrin, however, that was indeed the case, perhaps in part because it was a smaller venue. (Despite his being a performer in the evening's second half, even Tim wasn't allowed entrance.) Thankfully, my companions forgave me for filibustering at the restaurant. And, as we were in good spirits, and the ushers a good audience for our persiflage, we enjoyed our time in the lobby. Expectedly, some people left during the interval, so there were more seats to be had. I stayed to hear Tim, and then beat a hasty retreat. Encounter Saturday. Mike bringing Tim after all. Cart the smaller drum kit upstairs. Set it up. Open the piano. Assemble the clarinet. Set up the recording equipment. And, naturally, wait. Chronicling via cell phone: delayed rehearsals, concerts predictably running late, the convolutions surrounding their finding a place for a quick meal before arriving, and Mike's ongoing "negotiations" with Alice. Having a sense as to when Tim had to be back "on the job", I started thinking we'd have no time to play at all. Another call, they're almost here. Arrival. Mike and Tim set up their equipment, and, given the time constraints, we eschew a sound check. Then, without a word, the music starts. Now, if I may back up a moment. Previous to his hearing me play clarinets with Roger the year before, Tim knew fuck-all about my music. And my exposure to his work was limited; the early progressive/art rock, the raucous, improvised environs of Konk Pack (which didn't involve much woodwind playing), and the frugal bursts characterizing his contributions to the festival. So my expectations (like assumptions, a tricky business) were of a spare, lyrically-tinged aesthetic, perhaps informed by some "noisy" eruptions. But, when Tim put his horn to his mouth, it was all technically sharp, inventive fire. And I was delighted, as much for the music that was there, that moment, and to come, as for the fact that my expectations had been wonderfully circumvented. Improvisation. My lifework. Acknowledgments Mike, thanks very much for all your help, and, particularly for suggesting, er, insisting that I record the session. (And, thank you to Kevin Cosgrove, whose serendipitous mentioning the word "renunciant" in a conversation just after my having essentially finished these notes, brought the track titles into focus.) -- © milo fine (july 2008) " [label info / credits] www.rossbin.com " 'Teshuvah' reflects a first meeting between of two experienced veteran improvisors: Tim Hodgkinson (Henry Cow, Konk Pack, etc.) and Milo Fine. The career of Fine goes back to 1969 when he started The Milo Fine Free Jazz Ensemble. Throughout his career he was dedicated to free improvised music. I guess both gentlemen are more or less of the same age. Also Hodgkinson has a longlasting relation with free improvisation, as it was already part of the Henry Cow. They combined rock and free improvisation. In the last few years Hodgkinson tours regularly with his trio Konk Pack (Roger Turner, Thomas Lehn). During a concert in Minnesota he met Fine and the idea for a duo-session came up. It was realized in Fine's home, on a day in march 2008. Two long extended and one short improvisation made it to the CD that has Fine playing piano, drums, b flat clarinet and voice and Hodgkinson on b flat clarinet. While listening one feels the joy they had in their fabulous interactions. Never a dull moment during these sparkling, catch-me-while-you-can improvisations" [DM / Vital Weekly] | 2009 | €12.00 |
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| HOLTERBACH, MANU | Aare am Marzilibad | mCD | Das kleine aber feine belgische Label EREWHON meldet sich mit zwei Releases zurück (die zweite VÖ ist die ERIC CORDIER CD), und einem neuen Namen für uns: MANU HOLTERBACH führt uns ins innere einer Flasche, die durch einen Fluss treibt; eine eigene Mikro-Welt von flüsterndem Rauschen, ans Glas stossenden Luftblasen & Aussengeräuschen... faszinierend ! „Für 18 Minuten teilt man die Audiosphere mit einer Forelle“ [Bad Alchemy]. “Manu Holterbach is a young French sound artist who proposes his many-faceted talents since already more than 10 years. He invents new instruments, spatialization devices and mutant loudspeakers that were showed around the world in diverse installations and performances, in solo or in collaboration with a.o. Sophie Durand, Pierre Berthet, Jean-François Laporte, David Maranha. You can listen to his beautifull "verres enharmoniques" instruments on his highly acclaimed CD recently released on cloudmirror, and to "parenthèses flottantes" a piece freely available online on Happy New Ears (look for the www.creaties link). He is actually working on a biography of the French composer Eliane Radigue. Manu also composes pieces realized with natural and industrial environmental sound recordings, like the one we proudly propose on erewhon, Aare am Marzilibad. This piece realized in 2003 is a ready-made recording of a Swiss choppy river, the Aare, done with a microphone hermetically locked into a bottle. What you can hear is the sound of thousands of pebbles that knock together in the powerful stream. It illustrates perfectly Manu's focus on microscopic events and fragility.” [label description] “Manu Holterbach, inventor of the electronic glasses (see Vital Weekly 472), works also with spatialization devices and mutant loudspeakers, but also installations and performances. For the piece presented on this miniCD, he locked a microphone hermetically in a bottle. He threw the bottle in a Swiss river, the Aare, and made this recording. If you open a bottle of some drink with bubbles, you might be fascinated at the sounds of the bubbles escaping. The first half of this piece sounds a bit similar, but if you listen carefully you can also hear voices from aside of the river. But they are far away, and as the piece progresses, they become louder. Perhaps the bottle washed ashore? It's a pretty single-minded concept that however works out very well. It's a beauty to listen to. Somewhere between highly filtered rain sounds and opening the next beer can.” [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2006 | €7.00 |
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| HOLTKAMP, KOEN | Field Rituals | CD | " 'Field Rituals' is the first solo album to come from Koen Holtkamp, an artist probably better known as one half of ambient duo Mountains. Based in Brooklyn, Koen created the album slowly and as a love letter of sorts, taking in delicate field recordings and using them like faded photos representing his distinct memories of the people and places he chanced upon. Some may have heard the incredible ‚Make Haste’ which appeared on limited edition vinyl earlier in the year, but this was only a taste of what Koen has to offer on ’Field Rituals’. Taking cues from the classic ambience of Brian Eno and fusing it with the instrumental subtlety of Sweden’s Tape, Koen has come up with an aural book on his subject matter. Each track feels entwined in the next and feels like a part of something much bigger. Sure we’ve heard field recordings, synthesizers and guitars before but rarely have these instruments been injected with such a lightness of touch and with such a delicate open ear. Each listen reveals more, like peeling back layers of onion skin – take the album’s epic centrepiece ’Sky Flowers’ for example, which blends slow-moving synthesizers with good-natured environmental recordings and shimmering strings. The result is explosive somehow, with the grandeur more usually exploited by Arvo Part being framed with a distant electronic ambience. The slow-burning pace is probably the single most important facet and reveals an artist at ease with his musical choices, something unusual in a genre brimming with young hopefuls. A good comparison might be Stars of the Lid, but Koen’s music is more organic and more humble somewhat than the ex-Texan duo. In the end we are just proud that Koen has allowed us a look into this most personal of works." [label info] "Here be the first full length album from Mountains-man Koen Holtkamp. You may recall we got in (and sold out) his contribution to the A Room Forever series of LPs commissioning artists to match a field recording on one side with a sympathetic composition on the other. Where his offering there was a dark-hued, ominous crescendo of crackled drone sourced from acoustic guitar, Field Rituals has its head in the clouds. Holtkamp begins the album with a lovely round of brightly rendered acoustic guitar finger picking with some tricked out ring modulation effects giving each of the tones a sun-flecked glow and funhouse mirror curvature. Sustained drones from loops of melodica and harmonica mutate into an ersatz harmonium with the soaring overtones and sweeping fluctuations of tonalities gently crashing into each other. The loops every once in a while coalesce into a rhythmic underbelly, but mostly they settle as a effervescent bubbling of overlapping delay patterns and softly shimmered ambience. On top of all of this, Holtkamp dapples everything with his shimmered guitar and occasional crackles of tactile objects (he mentions water, seeds, ice, and paper) as well as field recordings of giggly children romping in a playground. The effect is somewhere between the immaculate pieces from Keith Fullerton Whitman's recordings and the bright-eyed naturalist wonder of the Jewelled Antler camp. Really gorgeous stuff from the ever impressive Type label." [Aquarius Records review] www.typerecords.com | 2008 | €16.00 |
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| Make Haste / Free Birds | LP-Box | "Third volume to be released in this amazing new series. Koen Holtkamp is from Brooklyn, NY and runs the Apestaartje label and records as one half off the group Mountains. "Room Forever. Concept and art direction by Joshua Zucker. Photography by Kurt Mangum. A Room Forever is an art project realized as a curated series of limited edition 12" record LPs. Packaged in a custom-made box with high quality digital C-print covers and letterpressed inserts, each record features an original musical composition on one side and a field recording on the other. Pressed in one-time editions of 300, A Room Forever takes a unique and personal approach to the vinyl record LP. Conceived as a physical manifestation of the Roadside Picnic Radio podcast, the project draws upon the rich history and mythologies of audio recording to produce a final object of art that will resonate uniquely within each listener. More than anything, A Room Forever is inherently about the act of listening." Please note that these records are cut at the Dubplates & Mastering lab in Germany and are designed to be played at 45 r.p.m. [label info] www.aroomforever.com | 2008 | €28.00 |
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| HOTOTOGISU + BURNING STAR CORE | same | LP | "Hototogisu -- the duo of UK experimentalist Matthew Bower (Skullflower/Sunroof et al.) and New York-based-guitarist Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards/Zaimph/GHQ) -- are all about impact, about taking the physical aspect of sound and hallucinating it to the point of abstraction, so much so, that for all of the complexity of their music, it often sounds like it's standing still, simply hanging in the air and vibrating without anything approaching a 'plot' to bring it to a point. By contrast, Burning Star Core, the trio of drummer Trevor Tremaine, Robert Beatty on electronics (both of whom also play in Hair Police alongside Mike Connelly of Wolf Eyes) and C. Spencer Yeh on violin and electronics, are more overtly propulsive, usurping 'classic' rock form via electronics and drums, but still focused on momentum, on the jam as a form of structural gravity, on the unfolding of action via development over time. This all-improvised studio meeting is the perfect reconciliation of both tendencies, of Hototogisu's obsessive layering of strata after strata of violently-conceived noise and of Burning Star Core's epic, post-Kraut thunder-punk style. Bower has long been on record about his opposition to anything approaching 'dialogue' in improvised music, favoring a senses-devouring simultaneity over anything that might pass for actual exchange, so it's no surprise that there is little on this new record that sounds even close to conventionally-improvised music. Instead, it feels more focused towards the zone where energy begins to spontaneously birth form, where the monomaniacal pursuit of the nowhere zone bears fruit in the shape of a music that transcends its constituent parts while being totally based around -- and rooted in -- the individual response to the moment. BXC play it ginchy and garage-pop right from the start, simultaneously inverting and amplifying Bower and Bassett's vertical constructs with drums that sound like they might have been lifted straight from the most flower-power parts of the Silver Apples' back catalog and bass patterns that are as tactile and rock-anchored as Can's Holger Czukay. To hear Hototogisu's music given this kind of injection of dynamic energy makes them seem more obviously sourced in 'classic' rock music than you might otherwise have guessed, with a dense, implosive sound that feels like a hyper-distilled take on all of rock's most outlaw aspects, the feedback that makes you feel like you could explode in a ball of electricity, the anti-gravity effect of heavy fuzz, the seductive, alien tongues. It's certainly the most 'garage band' side that either of the groups have cut to date, albeit in the form of a Gnostic, post-acid re-think where the vibration is more important than the outer forms, where energized enthusiasm makes for a more fundamental guiding principle than verse/chorus/verse and where the only direction left is out. Which is another way of saying it feels genuinely bad-ass. In an era where even the best groups seem polite, pro, participatory, democratic, this is music that is disregarding in its overwhelming power, exhilarating in its irresponsible spontaneity. And in an underground scene where self-conscious notions of avant-garde and 'free improvisation' have long displaced any concept of an intuitive rocks-off style, well, it feels like a re-connection to the source. So file this one closer to Kill City or Sticky Fingers than Persian Surgery Dervishes or The Black Album and feel the gravity of your whole record collection shift." [David Keenan, Glasgow, November 2008] | 2008 | €15.00 |
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| HUMAN QUENA ORCHESTRA | Means without Ends | CD | Für Fans des ultra-langsamen Noise-Rocks a la SWANS, GODFLESH, etc. kommen HUMAN QUENA ORCHESTRA genau richtig! Ihr Slow-Drone-Noise aus herrlich verzerrten & scheppernden Snare-Drums, entmenschlichtem Schreigesang & dunkel Noise-Flächen klingt unfassbar abgründig & visionär, wie ein letzter Aufschrei vor dem Untergang. "Various permutations of this disc have been floating around for a while, each in various states of completeness, but every one we'd heard sounded even better than the last. But this is the one, the final, finished product. The long in the works Human Quena Orchestra, the work of Ryan Unks, formerly of techgrind combo Creation Is Crucifixion, but don't be expecting grind, or even technicality, this all the way on the other side of the spectrum. Abject, filthy, pummeling, slow motion noise drenched doom. A plodding sonic monster, guitars, not just distorted, but treated and twisted into harsh, skin scraping, caustic slabs of sinister sound, a low end so thick, it's like dunking your head in a cement mixer, insane sounding drums, each snare crack like the recording of a million breaking windows, each kick drum the sound of a slowed down car wreck. And beneath it all, thick swells of black ambience, drifting and slithering, pulsing and swelling. A lurching, stumbling blackened doom dirge behemoth. Think Swans, Godflesh, Pitchshifter, that sort of machinelike apocalyptic industrial pound, mixed with some funereal ultra doom a la Moss, Bunkur, etc., but filtered through a druggy psychedelia, with a minimal shimmery drone bent, that ends up sounding like a way more brutal, way more harsh, tripped out, psychedelic, industrial version of Jesu, that sort of blissed out sun baked vibe, but as if played by some misanthropic black metal horde, harsh blackened vocals, shrieking hysterically and growling demonically over the relentless amp melting metallic trudge. Every track is rife with layer after layer of undulating low end. Like being tossed about on a stormy sea, but instead of water, it's an endless expanse of roiling black sound waves, rumbling drones, and thick snarled streaks of throbbing bass. The magic Of Unks' Human Quena Orchestra though is that this hellish harshness is balanced with a nearly equal amount of meditative ambience, long stretches of deep shimmer, and even some of the harshest tracks are tempered by the swirling low end drift lurking beneath. So brutally gorgeous. Definitely essential listening for fans of all the above mentioned outfits, as well as Monarch, Nadja, the Angelic Process, Fear Falls Burning, Skullflower, Abruptum, Monument Of Urns, Trollmann, Khanate, The Body and all our favorite purveyors of crumbling downtuned beauty and dreamy damaged doom. Packaged in a gorgeous hand screened multiple panel fold over sleeve with super striking ADD style microscopic super detailed artwork." [Aquarius Records] label-website: www.daftalliance.com | 2007 | €13.00 |
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| The Politics of the Irredeemable | CD | Instrumental Apocalyptic Doom Ambience! Musik von erdrückender Intensität & urwüchsiger Kraft! Heftige Gitarren-Drones, wuchtige ultralangsame Pulses, Schreie, Noise... So brutal wie wunderschön. Gehört mit zum intensivsten, was es im Bereich "Industrial-Rock" der schleppend-zermahlenden Sorte zur Zeit gibt, natürlich muss man an alte SWANS denken, aktuell fällt uns sonst nur noch TRANSITIONAL, KHANATE oder BUNKUR ein. Das zweite Album! "Ein bisschen Fantasie vorausgesetzt, stelle man sich folgendes Szenario vor: NAPALM DEATH wären keine Grindcore-, sondern eine Black-Metal-Band, und als Justin Broadrick sie 1986 verließ, um dann GODFLESH zu gründen, hätte er neben Industrial, Noise und Ambient eben auch einen Teil Black Metal in sein Projekt gebracht, aber mit dem Wissen, wie sich so etwas eben 2009 anhören müsste. Ein alberner Vergleich vielleicht, aber das aus Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania stammende Duo HUMAN QUENA ORCHESTRA schafft es mit seinem zweiten Album, eine ähnlich bedrückende Atmosphäre aufzubauen, wie es einst GODFLESH konnten und das eben mit ganz ähnlichen, aber noch heftigeren Mitteln, denn auf einen nachvollziehbaren Rhythmus und eine Songstruktur muss man verzichten. Eine den Songs als Fundament dienende Geräuschkulisse, darüber Schreie, Noisefetzen und ein sich ständig wiederholendes brutales Riff, das nur alle zehn Sekunden zusammen mit einem Drumschlag auftaucht: „The Politics Of The Irredeemable" ist statisch und undynamisch, wie eine massive, undurchdringliche Wand, die so dunkel, hoch und breit ist, dass du ihre Dimensionen nicht abschätzen kannst." [André Bohnensack, OX-Fanzine] "Human Quena Orchestra first took shape as a solo project from Ryan Unks, who had previously played guitar in the final lineup of the Pittsburgh metal band Creation Is Crucifixion. After moving from CIC, Unks began to work on a new project that would incorporate elements of black metal, crushing drone music, extreme psychotropic noise and psychedelic/krautrock influences into a sound that would be much heavier any of his previous projects. The first album from Human Quena Orchestra was released in 2007 on Daft Alliance; Means Without Ends was a disturbing, introspective slab of blackened industrial doom that stood out in stark contrast from the rest of the slow n' low extreme doom scene, utilizing layers of harsh textured distortion and electronics to create a caustic form of monstrous doom that shared as much of industrial music's cold, machine-like aesthetic as it did the ultra-slow riffage of the most extreme variants of doom metal. At the same time that the bands debut was taking shape, Unks was joined by another former member of Creation Is Crucifixion, Nathan Berlinguette (who was also a member of the dark ambient project M.Kourie and the deathdrone duo 5/5/2000). With the addition of Berlinguette's skilled application of dark ambience and expansive soundscapes, Human Quena Orchestra began to move into even more textured territory which has culminated with the second HQO full-length, The Politics of the Irredeemable, a series of apocalyptic visions and epiphanies of endtime realization, prophetic screeds that look to a future rendered pustulent and war-stricken by the failed machinations of the human race, presented as six chapters that enter your consciousness through a delivery system of extreme industrial dread. The Politics of the Irredeemable is crushing and oppressive, a crawl through abstract fields of low-end sound that move from punishing blasts of ultra-heavy machine-doom and earth-shaking tectonic riffs, to thick fogs of black electronic ambience that shimmer with subsonic pulses and celestial drones, the presence of malevolent electricity crackling in the air around the lumbering, nightmarish electro-sludge monstrosity of the Human Quena Orchestra. And at the same time, there are passages of immense beauty on this album that lurk at the peripheries of HQO's malevolent crush; the track "Aspirations" for instance, where pummeling slow-motion industrial percussions grinds in an infinite loop beneath a swirling nightsky of kosmiche synthesizers and heavenly, blissed-out ambience, the drums becoming like distant mortar blasts heard over the horizon as terrified screams ring out and stars fall dead from the skies. Total deathmachine grind ambience. The CD is packaged in a heavy gatefold jacket with murky, dismal images of blasted city streets and torched monuments, with lyrics and quotations relevant to the apocalyptic themes on the album printed on the inside jacket. Comes with three 1" color buttons featuring artwork from the album." [label info] www.Crucialblast.net | 2009 | €12.00 |
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| HUNTSVILLE | For the middle class | CD | Sehr schwungvoll-polyperkussive Instrumental-Melangen dieses norwegischen Ensemble, absolut hörenswert ! "Die drei Musiker von HUNTSVILLE - Ivar Grydeland, Tonny Kluften und Ingar Zach - stammen allesamt aus Norwegen. Grydeland und Zach gründeten zusammen das Sofa Label für improvisierte Musik und tauchten schon zusammen in ebenso unzähligen wie vielfältigen Gruppen wie dem Improvisations-Ensemble NO SPAGHETTI EDITION oder gemeinsam mit dem britischen Keyboarder Pat Thomas im Quartett HISS auf. Die Tatsache, dass alle Mitglieder von HUNTSVILLE Multiinstrumentalisten sind, zeigt, dass die Band um Lichtjahre von einem konventionellen Trio mit Gitarre, Bass und Drums entfernt ist. Grydeland mischt akustische und elektrische Gitarre und am Banjo mit Fingerpickung, verschiedenen Bögen und obskuren Effektgeräten. Ebenso benutzt Kluften am Bass unterschiedliche Bögen, Stöcke und Gummibänder, während Zach dies mit den diversesten Klängen seines Drumkits untermalt. Am Ende ist es ganz unmöglich, herauszufinden, wer welches bizarre Geräusch zu Tage gefördert hat. HUNTSVILLE treiben den polyrhythmischen Zugang, wie ihn ORNETTE COLEMAN bei "Lonely Woman" kultiviert hat, auf neue Höhen. Verschiedene Tempi der Instrumente konkurrieren miteinander und kommen am Ende der Reise doch als homogenes Ganzes im Gehör des Zeugen an. // _This is the debut release for Norwegian trio Huntsville. Huntville are Ivar Grydeland, (guitars, banjo, pedal steel guitar, etc.) Tonny Kluften (double bass, etc.) and Ingar Zach (percussion, tabla machine, sarangi box, shruti box, etc.) Grydeland and Zach founded the Sofa label for improvised music in 2000 and appear together in various projects on several of the label's releases. They have worked with Kluften since 1998, as the core of improvising ensemble No Spaghetti Edition and in the quartet HISS with British keyboardist Pat Thomas. The HISS CD from 2003, Zahir, shows the group's intense application of so-called free improvisation. The Huntsville project contrasts sharply with their earlier work, and this release reveals a quite different, more groove-based approach with strong elements of composition. Zach comments, "... during the last two or three years, our interest in country music and electronic music has developed into a sound we really wanted to investigate -- also Feldman and Cage, drone music, folk music..." The group's multi-instrumentalism means that this is no conventional guitar-bass-drums trio. On acoustic and electric guitar as well as banjo, Grydeland mixes finger-picking techniques with various types of bow, as well as acoustic and electronic devices. Tonny Kluften on double-bass uses various bows, sticks and rubber bands, while Zach produces a wide range of sounds on drum kit. They make striking use of a marvelous polyrhythmic approach pioneered by Ornette Coleman on "Lonely Woman," and Zach's locomotive groove is contrasted by the free tempo of plangent, folk-like acoustic guitar, in a kind of fractured descendent of the railroad blues. Alternately, the drums set up a tight and furious high-tempo, with the other instruments either at a slower tempo, or out of tempo completely. When the group lowers the energy levels, soft arpeggios on acoustic guitar are heard against percussive objects and a lone, rather erratic bass drum -- these effects are spare, haunting and quite beautiful. For The Middle Class displays a genuinely musical use of unexpected sounds and textures, allied with echoes of traditional genres in a radical new conceptual language." [press release] "Pretty incredible long-player by the Norwegian trio of Ivar Grydeland, Tonny Kluften and Ingar Zach, who’ve long been involved with the free improvisation world already documented by Grydeland’s Sofa label on a number of releases since 2000. Here, however, they utilise all manner of instruments from guitars, double bass, banjo, tabla machine and various others originating from India to explore a more recent interest in drone, country, folk and electronic music. Opening song, ‘The Appearance of a Wise Child’, tethered to around 15 mins worth of driving, hypnotic percussion and snatching some random vocals along the way, largely sets the tone for the remainder of the release. Organic textures snake around each other, rhythms staple everything to that juncture where everything points to an apex of unadulterated ecstasy, and discernible ur-strums combine with frenetic bows and scrapes for that only too important raw effect so hard to find in this day of software-generated sterilisation. Only second track, ‘Serious Like a Pope’ loses its grip slightly as the pace is whittled back to a near Fahey-esque approach rendered better on fourth and final cut, ‘Melon’, which furnishes us with a comparatively stripped and gentle touchdown to the proceedings. Nonetheless, Huntsville sound like their experience within such realms of music is paying off. The product of people who know their game without having let their imagination or yearning to voyage to new places suffer. Fucken dandy in my book, I have to concede." [RJ, Adverse Effect] | 2006 | €10.00 |
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| HYBRYDS | Ritual Anthology | CD | Aufnahmen von 1986-1993 von der belgischen Ethno / Ritual / Industrial-Band, welche eindrucksvoll ihren mal verträumt-mysteriösen, mal magisch-beschwörenden, meist perkussiven Stil präsentiert. Über die Hälfte der Stücke ist unveröffentlicht. Ziel dieser Musik ist die Erzeugung von Trance, welche den Zugang zu im Alltag schwer zugänglichen Bewusstseinszuständen möglich macht. Kommt im edlen schwarz-gold bedruckten Papp-Ausklapp-Cover. "With this CD Aquarellist is proud to present the anthology of early ritual works of this fabulous Belgian project. This music immerses the listener into the space of RITUAL - the magical action aimed to reach the goals beyond the borders of the ordinary world. An action evoking deeper layers of consciousness, deeper memories not active in our everyday life. An action that helps to reveal our potential as powerful and miraculous creatures. Hybryds present their visions of rituals in the form of rhythmical compositions built on repetitive percussive loops crowned with layers of numerous archaic instruments, aided by vocal spells and atmospheric soundscapes with minor electronic additions. This material was recorded in 1986-1993 by Magthea & Yasnaia with the help of their friends: Ah Cama Sotz, Djen Ajakan Shean, Vidna Obmana, Clive Richards, Irae Deprofundo and Bobby Colombo. Three tracks from this CD were previously released on "The Rhythm Of The Ritual" CD (Charnel Music, 1994), one track was released as "The Ritual Should Be Kept Alive - Part 1" CD EP (3RIOART, 1991), and three other tracks are released here for the first time. CD, limited edition of 600 in digipak from a corrugated cardboard, picture it is executed by a method of silk-screen printing 1- For the Nameless one 2- El Caballo 3- Je suis la premiere 4- Call for the Touareg 5- Fallen Angels 6- The ritual should be kept alive - part 1 7- The ritual should be kept alive - part 3 Recorded between 1986 and 1993. Digital re-mastered 2009 by 3RIOART vzw from original material recorded on 4 track cassette and recordings live to DAT. Credits: Magthea, Yasnaia, Ah Cama Sotz, Djen Ajakan S, Vidna Obmana, Clive Richards, Irae Deprofundo, Bobby Colombo. Visit: http://www.hybryds.com http://users.telenet.be/3rioart/ Reviews: http://maeror3.livejournal.com/80596.html" [label info] www.aquarellist.ru | 2009 | €14.00 |
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| Mythical Music from the 21st Century | CD | "This is the second volume in the ongoing series of Hybryds reissues on Zoharum and it coincides with the 30th anniversary of artistic work of Sandy Nys and company. "Mythical Music from the 21st Century", the first full Hybryds release, collects tracks recorded between 1983 and 1986 scattered on various compilations. Yet they form the first representation of their venture into the world of sonic rituals and magic. Their perspective on sound still has not been imitated or copied and even after 30 years they still sound fresh. In the words of Sandy Nys: The first recordings were made in 1983. During the next years more recordings and musical rituals were created with different people in different places. In this first release about 20 people were involved. The recordings were a field trip, a diary of my life. The recordings became a story. The mythical story of NaHeMa. Most of the songs were sent for compilations on independent labels, yet the complete story was released in 1986 for the first time as a cassette on 3RIORECORDINGS (there was also a very limited edition in a box of 30 copies with the Dream Machine building prints.) In 1990 it was re-released by Nuit et Brouillard (France) as a cassette in a small box. In 1998 a limited picture disc in an edition of 666 copies was released by Triton (Germany). This version is shorter than the cassette one. This new CD release contains extras: the unreleased live version of "Sacred Voices," performed live on Radio Centraal and an unreleased mix of "Octahedron" by the Alpha Project. The album has been digitally remastered from the original stereo cassette master by none else but Sandy Nys, who also provided the cover based on the previous editions. This is the ritual music at its best. Now you can enjoy it in the best digital quality." [label info] www.zoharum.com | 2013 | €13.00 |
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| HYPSIPHRONE | And the Void shall pierce their Eyes | CD | "Debut album from this one man project from Greece, and a new entry into the Black Plague roster, fitting right in with label mates Sewer Goddess in its ability to create innately evil and impure sounds, integrating elements of doom metal, black metal, and dark experimentalism into the pure industrial horror that constitutes the majority of this release. The result is nothing short of absolute and abject dread; 8 tracks spanning an hour worth of material - an auditory overload that's completely immersive, and at times overwhelming, where heaving masses of percussive doom collide with shuddering machinery dirge, ghoulish and nightmarish ambience, torturous screams, and cinematic depravity, the sounds layered into a tangled and abstract tapestry of something completely epic and nearly majestic in its scale. Fans of Gnaw Their Tongues, Abruptum, and Necro Evangelicum era BDN will do well to wallow in the oozing blackness and unbridled malevolence Hypsiphrone has created. Lmtd 500 copies, in 6 panel." [label info] www.malignantrecords.com | 2011 | €12.00 |
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| I.CORAX | From gOLDem flesh to silverb ONE | CD | "After a long period of unavailability we are proud to release the third official release of I.corax ‘from gOLDem flesh to silverb ONE' through our Stellar Mansion series. The album was originally released by Blue Sector in 2003 and presents material created exclusively for a live performance, taking place at KMY's 5th year anniversary on 27th of September in Turku, Finland. The album was recorded live in studio while rehearsing for the performance, and presents a natural combination of surreal synthetic noises and drones, analogue synthesizers, hypnotically looping samples and heavily manipulated field recordings spiced up with various horns made of animal bones, bowed instruments and occasional human whispers and words. This is a monolithic, hypnotic and all-encompassing work in a field of abstract and experimental Finnish dark ambience; transformative aural alchemy that will spiral deep within. The album is enclosed inside a newly designed and silk-screen printed cardboard covers including three offset printed insert cards and a four panel booklet. Limited to 500 copies." [label info] www.auralhypnox.com "Der neue Geheimtip für Freunde ausserweltlich dunkler Musik: Dies ist extrem visionärer und tranciger dark ambient Industrial aus Finnland, vielerlei Schichten repetitiver Muster und Flächen werden aufgetürmt und zu einem umschlingenden Waberkorpus geformt... okkult und unheimlich...schon der dritte release auf BLUE SECTOR." [Drone Rec. 2004] | 2014 | €13.00 |
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| IELASI, GIUSEPPE & HOWARD STELZER | Night Life | CD | Sehr fruchtbare Zusammenarbeit in der Brombron-Serie: GIUSEPPE IELASI, Impro-Gitarrist aus Italien der auch das FRINGES Label betreibt, und der US-Amerikaner HOWARD STELZER, bekannt für seine "schwierigen" Tapemanipulationen und field recordings und ebenfalls Labelbetreiber (INTRANSITIVE RECORDS), kamen für einige Tage in Nijmegen im Extrapool-Studio zusammen.... so entstand "Night Life, wo low-fi noises der seltsamsten Art mit ruhigen Gitarren-pickings kontrastieren, oft bewegt sich die Musik im pulsierend-atmosphärischen Bereich aber mit stetiger Veränderung, cut-ups & nicht-alltägliche Konkret-sounds tauchen auf, sowie immer wieder Giuseppes ungewöhnliche Gitarrenarbeit, die sich kaum beschreiben lässt..... "I am not sure wether the title of this disc refers to the time of recording, but if so the last track's title says it all: Losing our taste for the night life. I know for a fact that a Brombron project can mess up your daily rhythm pretty bad and that ending it feels almost as good as starting it. This disc by Ielasi and Stelzer has obviously had exactly the right amount of night time anyway. I have known and admired Howard Stelzer's work as tape jockey for quite some time now (aside of his activity as boss of the wonderful Intransitive Recordings), but Giuseppe Ielasi was a new name for me. He is a contemporary guitarist, using this instrument in all possible ways, but with a strong bias towards electronic manipulations. The result of this collaboration is absolutely fascinating: on one hand there are the harsh and explosive eruptions of Stelzer's tapes and on the other hand there are the more gentle and melodic guitar manipulations of Ielasi. This combination is truly excellent and invigorating. It has certainly been a while since I heard something this refreshing and exciting. I am not sure why this is; the use of sounds, the compositions, the tension, somehow everything just fits together so well that I am lost for words really. Simply beautiful and an absolute must!!!" [MR / Vital Weekly] | 2006 | €13.00 |
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| IF, BWANA | Red One | CD | "Please note: This release is packaged in hand stenciled 11” x 17” card type stock paper, folded, inserted into re-sealable plastic sleeves. There is no jewel case, tray card etc. There is a bar code. After the last If, Bwana (Al Margolis) release on Pogus – the large-scale double cd E (and Sometimes Why), this brand new If, Bwana recording is a little more intimate. This release consists of six smaller works for one or at most two instruments – with the instruments all being multi-tracked for a denser, deeper sound. Red One features performances by stalwart experimental/avant musician/composers such as Nate Wooley, trumpet, on Toys for Al (with Al Margolis on toy trumpet); Ellen Band’s vocals on Ellen, Banned; trombonist Monique Buzzarté on Xylo 2; bassoonist Leslie Ross on It is Bassoon; Lisa B Kelley, voice and Veronika Vitazkova, flute on Lisa Verabbit; and Al Margolis, toy trumpet on Toys for Nate. To quote from Massimo Ricci’s Touching Extreme review of E (and Sometimes Why) - and an equally apt description here: “…enriching with a distinct human component – Al Margolis’ “academically improper” compositional conceptions. The ensuing music is intelligently awkward and typically difficult to categorize, barring the creation of a “Bwana” label: rich in disruptions yet engrossingly (and economically) minimalist at times, comprising twisted details that, in a general context of rationalism, increase the amount of question marks each and every time the discs are spun.” This disc adds another chapter to the thirty-year journey of If, Bwana. If, Bwana was born on New Year's Eve 1984, making music that has swung between fairly spontaneous studio constructions and more process-oriented composition. A recent review of Margolis's work says: "Let it be declared that Al Margolis/If, Bwana is some sort of evil genius working with raw materials which are never adapted to a genre or a context, because they create one in that very moment. Those sources are radically altered up to an utterly unrecognizable state, anarchic manifestations moving in compact determination." (Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes). Al Margolis has been an activist in the 1980s American cassette underground through his cassette label Sound of Pig Music; was co-founder of experimental music label Pogus Productions, which he continues to run. Active under the name If, Bwana since 1984, making music that has swung between fairly spontaneous studio constructions and more process-oriented composition." https://www.pogus.com/21068.html "And finally there is label boss Al Margolis with a new release as If, Bwana, his moniker since the mid 80s. His 'Red One' looks very much like some tape release he could have done in the 80s, with paint images sprayed on paper and a rather 80s design, but the music is all new. In each of the six pieces he works with sound material which he received from others, and all that has to do with 'air'. Nate Wooley plays trumpet, Margolis himself toy-trumpet (both in the first piece), Ellan Band uses her voice (second), Monique Buzzarte trombone (third), Leslie Ross (bassoon), Lisa B Kelley (voice) and Veronika Vitazkova on flute (fifth) and Margolis again on toy trumpet in the sixth piece. Margolis keeps his If, Bwana name for when it comes to using recordings for acoustic instruments and reworking them into lengthy pieces of drone like sound scapes. Taking the working method from Phill Niblock he cuts the sounds right before they start and right after they end, and then starts to layer them on the computer. He pitches some up, some down, and in some tracks in the musical program he cuts out parts, so have a start/stop feel, like some instruments only play part of the time, and others are in a more continuous mode. Thus clever modern classical music is made of a highly atmospheric chain. It's a technique If, Bwana has been using for years now, and he mastered it quite well. Not as controlled as Niblock himself does this, but the music is more playful - for instance in the two pieces that use voice, especially 'Lisa Verabbit' connects to the world of improvisation/free forms of classical music. It's different, playful, but perhaps not my most favorite of this disc. I'd rather settle 'Toys For Al' or 'It Is Bassoon', which it's controlled sustaining sounds and sounds dropping in and out in very gentle way. Another fine release with a nice, strange visual esthetic. Not the next new move, but a further investigation into what we already know." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2013 | €14.00 |
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| ILLUSION OF SAFETY | Surrender | CD-R | "I've been releasing things outside of the internet (no part of it), and one of them has been "Surrender", the newest outing by Illusion of Safety. Daniel Burke has made a "remix overview" of this work, and I had to let the cat out of the bag. More information can be found at the video link, including the mail box where money orders/hidden cash is to be sent. Do check it out! The video is exceptional! I've been told some of the processes in making it, and it's nothing short of deftly inspired! $7 postage paid in the US. $12 elsewhere. Available in pro cassette and pro CDR format. I haphazardly spurred Illusion of Safety back into live action in 2008 when I asked him to do a show with me at the Empty Bottle. From there, we were both asked to perform for WTII's monthly showcase at Darkroom, wherein this clown video material first surfaced, so it's a pleasure for me to release the nexus of a soundtrack to this imagery, coming full circle. "Illusion of Safety, just passing its 30th year since inception, is often regarded as the innovator of "ambient industrial". Despite having traversed nearly every arena of the experimental milieu, performed prestigious fests all over the world, and collaborated with some of widest ranging and heaviest hitting of the avante garde, core member/founder Daniel Burke has both shown a return to form and a veritable bouquet of new frontiers in his most recent outing, "Surrender". In just under 60 minutes, the listener is taken on a dizzying carousel ride where everything but the kitchen sink is employed to weave a deeply personal (abstract, wordless) narrative that comes off as minimalistic, condensed, and bombastic. But at the same time, it is a constantly shifting, complex and ornate grid iron amalgam of genuine enthusiasm and horror. Recommended if you like a complete disregard for the myopic trappings and short sighted formulae of contemporary sound art today." [label info] nopartofit.blogspot.de "Somewhere, an old T-shirt from Illusion Of Safety exists (the last we saw was affixed to Sigtryggur from Stillupsteypa some 10 years ago) with a deadpan/ironic catch-phrase "Illusion Of Safety gives you that soaring feeling" next to an image of a man tumbling headfirst out of a skyscraper window. Such a calculated juxtaposition of word and image was emblematic of the '80s art world (e.g. Barbara Kruger), often speaking to the underbelly of callousness, cruelty, violence and general amorality within consumerist society. Outside of this bold piece of iconography, Illusion Of Safety has operated within a more liminal state of mysteriousness through signifier and meaning. Even in their most placid albums of soft-focus ambience, the specter of some unknowable threat lurks in the background. More common in the Illusion Of Safety catalogue is an iron-fisted grasp of that sense of foreboding and dread through psychologically tense sound design. Over three decades in existence, this Chicago based project has been whittled down to its core member Dan Burke - with a few comrades-in-arms joining him occasionally - and is probably the longest running American industrial project, having produced a very impressive body of work. The 2014 album Surrender fits comfortably next to some of the masterpieces of the IOS back catalogue (e.g. Cancer, In Session, Historical, etc.) through the trademarked juxtaposition of noxious frequencies snaking in and out of harmonic phase patterns only to snap out of existence with a razor-cut edit into an electrical burst of tesla coil noise (for example). Disjointed rhythms, mediated collages, decontextualized field recordings, and psychoacoustic phrases map this album with incredible control and precision. Illusion Of Safety proves once again that they are one of the greats of industrial culture. Grab this album before it disappears, the pro-duplicated cd-r is limited to just 100 copies. Same for the cassette." [Aquarius Records] "Among the few artists I have been following what seems now to be a lifetime (Asmus Tietchens, Main, Organum), Illusion Of Safety is probably among them the band I saw play live most. Dan Burke, the main man, is a most loveable chap and he always surprises me with his next move. His music doesn't operate in any particular style, but overlaps various genres. Improvised, industrial, ambient, musique concrete, and even a bit of techno beat thrown in. Here's a new album that proofs it. It's called 'Surrender' (which word always reminds me of the Cheap Trick song) and on a label called No Part Of It, meaning they don't want to be part of the world of Internet. There is a website, but there catalogue is hand scribbled on a sheet of paper and the CDRs - professionally designed - can be bought with a money order. Yes! That's what I like. Swim against the tide. Music wise Illusion Of Safety does something we haven't seen him do in quite some time. The collage styled music in which lengthy chunks of sounds are suddenly cut away by voices from radio and TV, a techno beats slips into view and sounds remarkable like the early 90s works such as 'Historical', 'Inside Agitator' or 'Distraction'. Quiet at times, but also quite bombastic at other times, filmic but without too many words. And if we hear any, it's about nuclear waste leakage. In that sense this album also harks back to the post-industrial sound of yesteryear. The balance between the very quiet and the very loud, between the ambience and the beats, is maintained very well throughout this release. Daddy's all right: surrender!" [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2013 | €9.00 |
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| Pastoral | CD | Illusion Of Safety - Pastoral CD only, 200 copies, Korm Plastics While Korm Plastics publishes books these days, this is a surprise CD only release. We sent him this demo in 2011 & we all forgot about it. Pastoral is a welcome edition to the catalog showcasing a less aggressive stance from the project, a more organic subdued presentation, sounds to make a clearing, & open space. The recordings history is a bit blurred now but it is very likely tracks 1, 2, 3, & 5 are Kurt Griesch and Daniel Burke, post 1995 tour work. Track four uses an instance of Reaktor 5 VCS-3 software emulation. Illusion of Safety Since 1983, Daniel Burke and his many conspirators under the Illusion Of Safety banner have over the course of 40+ full length releases traversed most every facet of the avant sound plane, from early industrial pop deconstruction to blindingly minimal sound art to densely surreal found-sound collage, each unique approach bending and reconstituting the expectations and possibilities of each realm, creating uneasy music that is dense and dystopian and yet also beautiful. Performing over 300 live concerts throughout Europe and the states included No Fun 2008, the Wroclaw Industrial Music Festival 2009, Sonic Circuits in 2010, with Shen Wei Dance Arts in 2011 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, and at the Crisis Data Transfer Pre-Party October 2023. Outside of IOS Burke has collaborated with Jim O’Rourke, Jon Mueller, Randy Greif, Darin Gray, Z’EV, Cheer-Accident, Thomas Dimuzio, Kevin Drumm, Bill Horist, and others. https://kormdigitaal.bandcamp.com/album/pastoral "I don't think it's a surprise that here at VWHQ, there is a person that likes Dan Burke's aka Illusion of Safety's output. Earlier this year, Korm Plastics (who said they'd never release music again) broke the dry spell of releasing music by co-releasing the IoS/Z'ev collaboration on vinyl. Now they have a CD by Illusion of Safety. Combine that with a few other releases like Muziekkamer and the BOH Sampler, and those first words on the Korm website raise questions: 'Korm Plastics was a record label. These days, we publish books. About music.' Maybe Frans will explain it to me at some point. But, back to what it is all about. Illusion of Safety / Dan Burke. It's a blind spot in my collection. I've seen him perform once in Aachen, but since that was something like 25 years ago, I really can't remember the details. So, it's Dan's recent output that I started to know and respect. And with this new album, "Pastoral", the concern is only getting stronger. Though I must say, it took me several listening sessions before it struck me at the right spots. The five tracks with a total playing time of 58 minutes are hidden in serene packaging. Pictures of a morning or evening stroll in the countryside and the first sounds of "Invulnerable" are concrete staccato sounds. There was something wrong with the combination of those in my head. Still, as the track continued, field recordings started building a backing drone, and additional sounds formed the actual composition with a massive piano/guitar intermezzo, which has to be mentioned. All kinds of manipulated musical instruments create a flawless transition towards the second track entitled "Neolithic", and from here, it only gets better. Tracks 3 to 5 are droney soundscapes with a perfect balance between layers of minimal noise and drones and additional sounds projected on top of it. In total, 40 minutes of absolute poetic sounds. And there it struck me how I see Dan's music, in this release at least. Looking at the picture on the cover, you get an emotion, but zooming in on the picture, you can extrude air, sun, grass, sand, and a little forest in the back. And zooming in on the woods, you can see trees and then branches... But zooming out, you get a 'walk in nature'... But what if you zoom out from there... "Thermogenesis", "Ground", and "Compelling" all cover a particular aspect of switching perspectives like this. At least, that's what I think. Pastoral (noun): a work of literature portraying an idealized version of country life. For me, the first tracks are about escaping what's terrible, and the last three are about embracing what's good. The illusion of Safety presents in one album that you can't make just one of those choices (escape/embrace) and that the result is great if you follow your heart. (BW) | 2023 | €12.00 |
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| IMANISHI, MASAYUKI | Insects are | CD | "The recording locations of this work are Nakanoshima Park, Tenjinbashi, Sakuranomiya Park in Osaka, Japan. There are rows of cherry trees, rivers, ponds, lotus flowers on swamps, boat dock, railroads, and small forests. I visit this place often. The expression is rich depending on the season. It was a very hot summer day in August 2020. I brought in a small recording set (digital recorder, tape recorder, etc.) and worked on the go. There are so many different creatures living there. Feel the sounds of birds, insects, fish, and trees. One does not hear them all, but many small insects kind of haunted the process. (Masayuki Imanishi, 21 September 2020) LOCATIONS : Nakanoshima Park, Tenjinbashi, Sakuranomiya Park, Osaka, Japan Sound recordings made with PCM recorder, microphone, and tape recorder. Disassembled sound source reconstructed on PC. Mixed, assembled, and mastered by Masayuki Imanishi in 2020. Cover design, card & treatments by Daniel Crokaert. Based exclusively on photos by Masayuki Imanishi. https://unfathomless.bandcamp.com/album/insects-are "Insects are: a rich and lush sound drone-noise universe in the heart of Osaka Masayuki Imanishi, insects are, Belgium, Unfathomless, U69 CD (2021) Burying your head in this rich and lush 40-minute soundscape of insect activity and the background noises of other creatures and Nature generally, you’d think you’d been transported to a nature reserve or a wilderness area where access is only via a mud track or walkways made by park rangers, or even a magical world hidden behind forest trees or beneath the ground you walk upon. As it turns out, all the sounds and noises here were recorded in parks in Osaka, the centre of Japan’s second largest metropolitan area with over 19 million people, by sound artist Masayuki Imanishi using a PCM recorder, microphone and tape recorder. Two of these parks, Nakanoshima Park and Sakuranomiya Park, are close to the city centre and run along riverbanks, and the sounds of water and waterfowl have been captured as well. Perhaps the astonishing aspect of this work is that even though the parks where Imanishi made his recordings are right in the centre of Osaka, the huge majority of sounds appear natural and not man-made, though at the beginning of the work you can hear trains and typical urban traffic noises. Very little editing seems to have been done. Past its early moments, the noises of the urban environment merge completely into the sonic ambience of the park environments where the insects and other park fauna dominate. The insect noises can be very eerie and rhythmic. The sonic tapestry unwinds in such a way as to draw listeners deep into the worlds held in its threads, led by the crickets, cicadas and other chirping and humming insects. Bird noises and flutter later join the insect chorus but the two sets of animals never fight for dominance; rather their sounds complement one another and merge into a soundtrack of a universe that on the surface appears so familiar to us (urban park and forest) as to be banal yet at the same time hidden and secret when we start to investigate its depths. At some point in the recording (probably near the 30th minute), the insect drones start to resemble tiny UFOs simultaneously launching and landing in distant parts of the riverine parklands: the rich sounds that develop and appear to become ever more complex and spiralling into a point beyond infinity may well be the best part of this work. Imanishi’s artistry is most apparent in the way he has structured this work so that it draws listeners deep into the micro-universes of Osaka’s urban parklands to reveal different layers of animal and plant life, each with their separate sounds yet all joining in a harmonious chorus of noise and drone that is dynamic and ever changing. These tiny worlds have always been present in Osaka, and perhaps in other cities around the world, if we were to pause in our daily routines and open our senses to the hidden universes around us. As the title of the recording says, insects are: they have been and always will be, if we listen to them and accept and respect them for what they are." [The Sound Projector] | 2021 | €14.00 |
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| IN CAMERA | Arrival | LP | Sixth album by Christoph Heemann and Timo van Luijk. Four years after Lost in Spice comes Arrival. An altar on the surface of the water is burning with flames. Behind it you can see a half of the Earth's globe, and on it there's a bright throne. A pale, translucent ruler wearing a crown sits in the throne. The globe is surrounded by a ball of shadows on which sits a larger dark ruler on a dark throne. Behind the globe are mountain peaks, and all of it is reflected in the water. Above the mountains are clouds which merge into rivers and end in a curved horizon on which forests stand, and the sun rises between them. Above this horizon is another sky with lunar crescents and comets. Above this sky are rows of angels bent over, above which the stars shine. The sun shines in the top left corner and the crescent moon in the right. | 2024 | €23.00 |
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| INADE | The Nine Colours of the Threshold | CD | "With the all new album after 9 years, Inade return with another work that indicates a codifying of their sound world full of mysterious design, unspoken secrets and dreams of ancient origin. The immersive arrangements and haunting voices supported by crackling electronics painting a dark and earthly picture. Infinite eons have passed through the labyrinthine hierarchy of deep fusing drones, tectonic soundscapes, percussions and ritual instruments - sonically sculpturing of that which lies deeper than matter, time and space. The intriguing tone colour on 'The Nine Colours Of The Threshold‘ is generally one of heroic majesty, a kind of epic intimacy, with light and sparkling fragments. It is the narrow, hidden tracks that lead back to our lost homeland, what contains the solution to the last mysteries is not the ugly scar that life´s rasp leaves on us, but the fine, almost invisible writing that is engraved on our body." loki-found.bandcamp.com/album/the-nine-colours-of-the-threshold | 2018 | €13.00 |
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| INDO | Rupa Loka | CD | "The Rupa Loka, one of the hidden planes of existence beyond our own is the focus for this album, a serene world populated by beings more refined and evolved than ourselves. The album is a journey through this nature kingdom and incorporates soundscapes rich in flavour and diversity. The recordings were originally produced in 2009 and rediscovered and carefully reassembled and remastered in the process. The album comes in a jewelcase with a 12-page booklet depicting the realm of the Rupa Loka." [label info] http://gterma.blogspot.se "Indo‘s ‘Rupa Loka’ brings us back in 2011, actually it was recorded in 2009 so I guess this makes the record already pretty ancient in the context of our current times, when daily you are given access to countless records, either old or new. However, in your daily routine I hardly advise you to find your way to the first ever record, that the Swedish ambient label gterma has ever released. At first the record is striking you with its picturesque artwork, especially the amazing photographs in the inlay (which has actually already became signature for all gterma production). The whole art direction and the general concept of the record leaves a strong feeling for an Eastern cultural influence, but still this artistic decision is not over-imposed on the listener by any means. What we have here is one very powerful and beautiful ambient record. Rupa Loka is soaked with meditative, slow and immense drones which are additionally embraced by fragile and delicate soundscapes. However, what makes this record truly special are the field recordings. The Hungarian musician Andras Kiss, who’s actually the person behind the ambient act Indo (as this is quite an overused monicker in music of all genres) didn’t capture anything you haven’t heard. His sounds are natural, familiar, not probably but certainly surrounding all of us in our daily lives, but he incorporated them with such a skill, that would surely make you a bit envious if you’re also producing music yourself. What is more important it will surely make you consider how much life, emotion and potential there is in the sound and ambiance of our everyday surrounding, but due to our mental simplicity we’ve accepted all of this perfection and endlessness for granted. Rupa Loka is anything but a record for the simple minds, just like its Buddhist concept suggests its aim is to recreate a dimension, a form of existence inhabited by higher results of evolution. Quite a pretentious and tough aim, but so subtly approached that it leaves you smiling with satisfaction, when you realise the record really serves its purpose. This album is so alive and so organic, that at a certain point you forget that a human hand and mind initiated this impressive sound sculpture. I don’t need an artwork for this, neither track titles or a band project. I just need the CD carrying this art piece, which is interacting on way too too many levels with my personality, so by no means I can accept it as just another ambient record I got for the day. What a great start for a label! What a great artist statement!" [Angel S / Heathen Harvest] | 2011 | €13.00 |
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| INFANT CYCLE | Drop-Out Center | CD | " 'Drop-out Center' is the anniversary album of The Infant Cycle project celebrating 20 years of the personal creative journey of the Canadian musician Jim DeJong which began in November 1992 after leaving the band Mind Skelp-cher. During this time Jim has recorded and released a massive amount of material both on his own label The Ceiling and on other respectable underground labels such as EE Tapes, Drone Records, Afe Records, etc. and this is his second full-length album on CD after "The Sand Rays" (Diophantine Discs, 2009). The album includes nine abstract compositions recorded with Jim's trademark approach. Using such sound sources as shortwave radio, vinyl surface, videotape, bird cage and also more "normal" instruments (bass guitar, electric mandolin, Korg Poly-800 synthesizer) he creates slowly drifting multilayered textures with sometimes unexpected stops and narration twists. Sharp crispy foreground sound is set off by gentle background waves of resonating feedbacks forming intelligent electroacoustic glitch / drone with scratchy tangibility, meditativeness and even a sort of romanticism. This is music that evokes imagination and easily paints images in the listener's mind... 'Turn on!' " [label info] http://zhb.radionoise.ru "Jim DeJong from Canada celebrates twenty years of activities as The Infant Cycle, during which he released a whole bunch of CDRs, net releases, a bit of vinyl and one 'real' CD on Diohantine Discs (see Vital Weekly 695), and now his second on Russia's Zhelezobeton, a home which sheltered also some previous releases by DeJong. All the pieces here are from April 2011 and further explore the sound world we know from DeJong over the past years. The cover explains the nature of sound sources, which makes a great read. On one side we have 'vinyl playout groove', 'video record', bird cage and shortwave, while on the other hand we have an electric guitar, electric mandolin, bass, poly 800 but also field recordings. Plenty to choose from, and he does put his options to good use. The varied options for sound creation lead to a varied sound, but with one constant factor: atmospherics play an important role in all of these pieces. He layers a whole bunch of sounds together and then carefully mixes these. But it not necessarily leads to mere drone music. In 'Shiny Venus Part 2' for instance he loops the strumming of a bass-guitar a few times and then other sounds (mandolin, bird cage, field recordings) drop in and out of the mix. When he uses the 'playout' grooves (which are those grooves at the end of a piece of vinyl), it becomes more rhythmical obviously but spiced up with electronics and sometimes remain short, these pieces act more like interludes, except for 'Pipe', which is considerable longer. These moody tunes are indeed much more than just drone pieces. It's the sheer variation, the exploration of sounds to create these atmospheric tunes that make this perhaps the most mature record I heard from The Infant Cycle so far. Excellent stuff indeed." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2012 | €12.00 |
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| INGENTING KOLLEKTIVA | Fragments of Night | LP | "ingenting kollektiva members : diane granahan, kirston lightowler, tarrl lightowler, matthew swiezynski. edited and constructed by : diane granahan & matthew swiezynski (side a), kirston lightowler & tarrl lightowler, (side b). recorded in the drei gewsser barn, rain storm recording 25.12.2009 & drei gewsser studios 27.12.2009 & oiseaux invisibles studios, california 2011. instruments : bells, bowed tibetan prayer bowl, cello, field recordings, guitars, harmonium, loops, nightingale devise, portable 78 player (ravel's gaspard de la nuit, walter gieseking), psaltery, tenor sax, shakuhachi flute (watazumido-shuso). mastered by taylor deupree. the ingenting kollektiva is an homage to ingmar bergman and sven nykvist. fragments of night refers back 40 years to numerous recordings gathered around 25.12.2009 at drei wasser." [label info/credits] " 'ingenting' translates from swedish as 'nothing', and this american collective draw inspiration from the cinematic master of nihilism, ingmar bergman, on their beautiful debut fragments of night. the two sprawling tracks dislocate the source material of guitar, bowls, psaltery, saxophone and field recordings through an organic crosshatching of delay and loop techniques. sombre melodies and sodden textures emerge out of their droning psychedelic improvisations as a sensible take on variation and repetition, coming to a comparatively violent climax at the end of side B with an abrasive arpeggio of tremolo-clipping violin scrapes. even with this crashing conclusion, the 'nothingness' which speaks through the recordings is not an existential hammer declaring the death of god, but RATHER SUBLTE AND POIGNANT EXPOSITION ON LONELINESS." [Jim Haynes, THE WIRE] "I don't think I heard about Ingenting Kollektiva, which members include Diane Granahan, Kirston Lightowler, Tarrl Lightowler and Matthew Swiezynski. Diane and Matthew play on side A and Kirston and Tarrl on side B. "The kollektiva seeks to issue recordings that are meditations on the quality of light, sound and atmosphere created by Ingmar Bergman and Sven Nykvist". You could expect them to release DVDs which are promised for the future. Here on LP, they play a variety of instruments, like bells, bowed tibetan prayer bowl, cello, field recordings, guitars, harmonium, loops, nightingale devise, portable 78 record player, psaltery, tenor sax and shakuhachi. I am not entirely sure if I would have been able to pick out all of these instruments on the two lenghty cuts on either side of the record. What it doesn't mention is - perhaps - the amount of processing that takes place on this record. Everything seems melted and molted around some sort of treatment, acoustically (more on side b than on side a it seems) and electronically (vice versa obviously). Obviously we are dealing here with highly atmospheric music, which fits the Mirror tradition quite nice. Atmospheric music but with a sharper edge, and a great sense of experimentalism. From the description one could think this more like wishy-washy new age type of music, but the darker textures of this record work quite nice. Maybe indeed a great soundtrack to a Bergman movie, overlooking some lakes in Sweden and lots of silence among the actors. Haunting and haunted indeed. I wonder what their own films be like. Very nice." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2012 | €17.50 |
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| INNER VISION LABORATORY | Perpetua | CD | "The focal point of the album is the condition of mankind entangled in the cycle of creation, stagnation and destruction. Creation is an idealistic picture, it dwells in an idea of fiat lux et facta est lux. It is a blueprint for the musical narrative that is comprised of unrestricted admiration of life, of order that is mankind’s objective, and ultimately of conflict which is the most inherent human condition. In the war of mankind against itself the ideals permeating creation become obscure and only annihilation brings forth a new illusion – a promise of another beginning. The ubiquitous illusion is an all-encompassing device that folds these non-recordable events into a cycle. It is channeled in the unifying wave of music of Karol Skrzypiec – an artist more complete, yet still debating the finality of his form of communication. Syntactically, the latest release of INNER VISION LABORATORY is an effect of thoughtful construction. Perpetua is an unconventional harmonious image which draws also from beyond of the repertoire typically associated with the instrumentarium characteristic of its genre, the accord of the album’s narration, however, is not lost." [label info] www.zoharum.com | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| IRIKARAH | Endstation Steinbruch | CD | Well arranged "classic Industrial" dealing with 3rd Reich-topics. "Re-issue of an extremely limited cassette (20 copies!), originally published by Andreas Arndt’s own label Keine Zeit Recordings in 1996. Six tracks of dark and disturbing Power Noise / Death Ambient, not far off the style of Brighter Death Now. Limited to just 300 hand-numbered copies in an outsized foldout package. Recommended" [Cold Spring] | 2006 | €10.00 |
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| IRISARRI, RAFAEL ANTON | El Ferrocarril Desvaneciente | MC | Rafael Anton Irisarri continues his string of post-minimalist releases with his third for Umor Rex: El Ferrocarril Desvaneciente. While composed as an ode to an overnight train journey through Spain he took many years ago, the music picks up sonically where his previous album Sirimiri left off. Irisarri focuses on deploying sonic cycles throughout these four shorter pieces, basing much of this sweeping ambience around looped sounds and distant pulses. The sound is however kept in a state of forward motion and constant evolution, invoking the slowly rumbling night train that inspired it —not to mention its cargo of misfits and travelers. Irisarri’s skill, set as a manipulator of minimal sound input, is at full strength here, imbuing even shorter pieces such as “El Espectro Electromagnético,” with chasms slowly cresting drama. The phantasmagoria of “Un Saltador” was even composed as a departure for him, toying with synths and pedals in a “modular kind of way,” letting an experiment unfold with minimal interaction. Inspired by musical storytellers such as Lee Hazelwood, Lou Reed, or Leonard Cohen, his music is transforming into something closer to narrative ––“storytelling without words,” as he puts it; “lyrical without lyrics”. His music hasn’t sounded as hopeful as it does on El Ferrocarril Desvaneciente for quite some time. The outward-looking despair of 2017’s The Shameless Years and the sorrowful introversion of Sirimiri have both been usurped by dreamy anecdotage. As with Sirimiri, it’s Irisarri’s intention that the El Ferrocarril Desvaneciente’s songs play out as a one long repetition, and thus we include again a bonus track comprising the full 22-minute loop. [Preorder for September 28, 2018] www.umor-rex.org/ur114/ | 2018 | €15.00 |
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| Peripeteia | CD | Over the years, American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri has become ubiquitous within the spheres of ambient, drone and electronic music. Whether it's through Irisarri's celestial long-form albums or his lauded audio engineering credentials for countless artists and labels, Irisarri's consistent dedication to his craft never wavers from the forefront. While Irisarri's compositions typically field an array of modern ambient overtones threaded through oceanic symphonies with tape loops, bowed electric guitar and vast washes of overdriven sound, his recent debut album for Dais Records, "Peripeteia, portrays these common themes giving way to metal and classical influences that emphasizes Irisarri's melancholic tendencies. These unique overtures, coupled with his signature layering of distortion and bleached-out textures, fabricate an audible environment that would seemingly be at odds with, yet gracefully complement each other. In Irisarri's own words, "My previous works internalize any exterior forces or circumstances, while trying to make sense of the world. Peripeteia reverses that approach, focusing on the personal in order to tell a wider human story." The emotional depth found throughout Peripeteia is impeccably on display with the track, Mellified. A collaboration with Spanish composer Yamila, the choral arrangements bring to mind the sacred music of Arvo Pärt, while her voice combines the Andalusian "Cante jondo" style with medieval modes, almost drowning in layers of octave fuzz distortion and dystopian synths patterns. On Arduous Clarity, the bright arpeggiating melody that churns throughout, offers the initial glimmer of optimism in an otherwise decaying tale of personal turmoil. This encouraging glimpse is short lived however, as the song Refuge/Refuse seemingly plummets into the mourning depths of somber despair. A chorus of voices steadily crawls from its desolate terrain - a sea of broken spirits, eternally resigned to strain and bellow their final lament. Fright and Control, a piece which is equally soul churning, seems to possess a satisfying resolve, as if after years of searching, one's very salvation has been laid to rest through the acceptance of mortality and the enlightenment in death. Irisarri's complexity is utilized to a forcible success, slowly pulsing throughout the foreground of his audience, further emphasizing the impending dread of resolve." https://irisarri.bandcamp.com/album/peripeteia | 2020 | €15.00 |
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| The Shameless Years | LP | Post-minimalist American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri made his Umor Rex debut in 2017 with "The Shameless Years". Inspired by a troubled socio-political climate, buried melodies punch their way through a bleak cover of noisy drones, periodically veering into some of Irisarri’s most eerily pertinent music. One of Rafael Anton Irisarri’s most thematically and sonically cohesive records to date The Shameless Years came together in a relatively short burst of creativity starting at the end of 2016. Rediscovering some relatively older tools - namely Native Instruments’ Reaktor, Absynth, and Kontakt software - Irisarri combined them with his collection of guitars, pedals, amps, and analogue processing gear, turning his Black Knoll Studio north of NYC into a powerful writing tool. Completed quickly by Irisarri’s standards, let alone during a period of social upheaval in American society, the record faces down several key personal themes. The title, suggests Irisarri, could in fact be seen as a reflection of the era of shamelessness we’re currently living in; a time of fake news and alternative facts. Two tracks were completely remotely between Irisarri in New York and Umor Rex veteran "Siavash Amini from his home in Tehran, Iran. This music came together at the peak of all the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric happening in the USA, not to mention the banning of Iranians from entering the country, explains Irisarri. The diptych with Amini, ‘Karma Krama’ and ‘The Faithless’, seems bathed in additional waves of sorrow and dread. The wash of symphonic stormclouds of synth drones and processed notes on the latter gradually appears and disappears over the course of thirteen mournful minutes. ‘Rh Negative’ marches gigantic guitars through towering valleys of scarred ambient noise dealing with Irisarri’s own heritage, many of his ancestors having come to America to escape poverty and oppression. The refusal of modern America to extend similar sanctuary to refugees escaping turmoil weighs heavily on the composer. Elsewhere an emotional onslaught of notes buried in mounds of greyscale noise on ‘Sky Burial’ aims to deal with Irisarri’s very own mortality – something he was recently confronted with following health scares, an accident, and a near-death experience in 2016. Pushing 40 as this album was being made, the composer is constantly aware that he’s already outlived his own father, who died at the age of 32. Facing down both intolerance and the void, the epic soundscapes of The Shameless Years are a vast cry of emotion from Irisarri. The clock is ticking - gotta make the most out of it while you still can. All songs written and performed by Rafael Anton Irisarri, except #5 & #6 written and performed with Siavash Amini. Design by Daniel Castrejón, photos by Camilo Christen. Mastered by James Plotkin." | 2021 | €21.00 |
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| Peripeteia (clear) | LP | Over the years, American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri has become ubiquitous within the spheres of ambient, drone and electronic music. Whether it's through Irisarri's celestial long-form albums or his lauded audio engineering credentials for countless artists and labels, Irisarri's consistent dedication to his craft never wavers from the forefront. While Irisarri's compositions typically field an array of modern ambient overtones threaded through oceanic symphonies with tape loops, bowed electric guitar and vast washes of overdriven sound, his recent debut album for Dais Records, "Peripeteia, portrays these common themes giving way to metal and classical influences that emphasizes Irisarri's melancholic tendencies. These unique overtures, coupled with his signature layering of distortion and bleached-out textures, fabricate an audible environment that would seemingly be at odds with, yet gracefully complement each other. In Irisarri's own words, "My previous works internalize any exterior forces or circumstances, while trying to make sense of the world. Peripeteia reverses that approach, focusing on the personal in order to tell a wider human story." The emotional depth found throughout Peripeteia is impeccably on display with the track, Mellified. A collaboration with Spanish composer Yamila, the choral arrangements bring to mind the sacred music of Arvo Pärt, while her voice combines the Andalusian "Cante jondo" style with medieval modes, almost drowning in layers of octave fuzz distortion and dystopian synths patterns. On Arduous Clarity, the bright arpeggiating melody that churns throughout, offers the initial glimmer of optimism in an otherwise decaying tale of personal turmoil. This encouraging glimpse is short lived however, as the song Refuge/Refuse seemingly plummets into the mourning depths of somber despair. A chorus of voices steadily crawls from its desolate terrain - a sea of broken spirits, eternally resigned to strain and bellow their final lament. Fright and Control, a piece which is equally soul churning, seems to possess a satisfying resolve, as if after years of searching, one's very salvation has been laid to rest through the acceptance of mortality and the enlightenment in death. Irisarri's complexity is utilized to a forcible success, slowly pulsing throughout the foreground of his audience, further emphasizing the impending dread of resolve." https://irisarri.bandcamp.com/album/peripeteia | 2020 | €24.00 |
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| IRM | Indications of Nigredo | 12inch | "... IRM hat sich für Indications of Nigredo (Seger 23, 12“) mit dem Bassisten Mikael Oretoft verstärkt, der Jarls Knurschelektronik mit dunklen Twangs durchsetzt. Vor dieser sich langsam aufbauenden Wall of Sound wirken Bladhs Einwürfe seltsam dünn und wie kastriert. Der grusig harsche Noise kommt als gnadenloses Mahlwerk ins Rollen, die Stimme klingt immer gequälter und panischer. Wieder gefasst, stellt sich Bladh einem zweiten Härtetest und verliest die Versuchsanordnung. Dann überdröhnt und umflattert ihn ‚Indicator 2‘, ein Sturm aus Noise und Eis, unter dessen Pfeilhagel er sich als Hl. Sebastian windet. Beatkaskaden und zeitlupiges Bassgedröhn geben der Inszenierung einen rituellen Anstrich. Bladh schreit wie am Spieß Parolen, um anschließend seine Wunden zu lecken. Ist der wirkliche Name des jungen Mannes Narziss? Oder Marsyas?" [Bad Alchemy] "On the theme of alchemy and the topics of shame vs. bodily self infliction, IRM makes way for a new start after the inspired “Virgin Mind” double-disc set from 2005. These are new recordings with the new member Mikael Oretoft joining on bass. Two long tracks - the first being an intense up-building, deep pulsating number with both spoken and rough vocals, volcanic exaggerated bass noise and doom-laden atmosphere. The second more of an aftermath with its downspiralling, almost dreamy character of echoing tones, ripping clangs and chilling audio-schmerz. In total over 23 minutes of music in a glossy colour sleeve with gross artwork and a small insert. Edition of 500 copies." [label info] "... What fascinates with IRM's approach to power electronics is the intelligent construction of the works. Apparently it is not the question of shocking the listener with the sounds of collapsing electronics. More likely the trio invites you into dark territories of electronic sound, - territories that in the first moments seems harmless, but soon after turns out to be a true noise monster. A noise monster, where the emotional impact remains and thus makes the storm of crushing electronics even more overwhelming as they attack the listener. A true masterpiece of apocalyptic art."[NM / Vital Weekly] label website: www.segerhuva.se | 2008 | €15.00 |
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| IRM / SKIN AREA | Purple Screen // Red Eruption / Red Discharge | 10" | Harsh Noise with a sometimes jazzy (yes!) feel to it from SKIN AREA, who use also drums and bass and voice, in fact they begin with harsh noises and end up in an improvisation. Very strange and beyond good and evil. IRM create one long dark piece interesting soundwalls... new swedish noise on a new swedish label ! “ Two of Sweden's finest bands share this slab of vinyl. Skin Area delivers a 14-minute track that begs you to push the volumes louder and louder until your brain becomes one with the raging hardcore noises they produce. You'll wish there were drugs as hard and vicious as these sounds, but I'm afraid western science hasn't come that far yet... Skin Area's versatility might shock (and offend) some listeners who are unprepared to blow their minds on a regular basis. IRM makes full use of the 10" format with what could very well be their finest moment yet -- a 12 min epic that expertly combines menacing electronics and more traditional sounds (this should be among the top-five of any best-power-electronics-with-glockenspiel list ever compiled). Since none of you are regular church-goers, why not make it your Sunday ritual to blast the neighborhood with this 10"? You will be rewarded.” [label info] | 2003 | €10.00 |
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| IRR.APP. (ext.) | Kreiselwelle | CD | "Das ist nun - nach Ozeanische Gefühle und Cosmic Superimposition - der abschließende Teil von M. S. Waldrons Trilogie über den Freudo-Marxisten, Faschismusund Orgontheoretiker und Parawissenschaftler Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957). Reich war der Auffassung, dass der von ihm postulierte ‚Orgonenergie-Ozean‘ 'Lebensenergie‘ in Form von ‚Kreiselwellen‘ ausstrahlt, die sich visuell, thermisch, elektroskopisch und mit Hilfe des Geiger-Müller-Zählers nachweisen lassen. Waldron spielt entsprechend mit ‚Spiral-Klängen‘, Spiralfedern, dem Geräusch anbrandender, ‚lappender‘ Wellen, Luftwirbeln, aufziehbarem Spielzeug etc. Rasselnde, pulsierende, blubbrig unkende, wie Whirlies sirrende und automatisch klappernde Geräusche mischen sich mit elementaren zu einem unruhigen Gedröhn. Die an- und abflauenden Erregungszustände sind Teil eines Kontinuums von gut einer Dreiviertelstunde. Schritte zu Beginn und zwischendurch vage Stimmfetzen im Hintergrund deuten an, dass der Mensch in diesem Energiefluss, diesem Kontinuum von Wirbeln mitschwingt." [Bad Alchemy] " irr. app. (ext.) is the sound-engineering project of Californian M.S. Waldron, whose liminal slippages and detourned croons have been spotted recently on stage in Nurse With Wound. Yet for all of the antics that are required for the NWW spectacle, Mr. Waldron still dedicates himself in the parallel pursuits of irr. app. (ext.) with a discography that reads more like a wunderkammer of uncanny investigations into futility declared as its reverse. Kreiselwelle is the third and final installment to a body of works that irr. app. (ext.) has composed under the influence of Wilhelm Reich, the unorthodox 20th Century psychologist who proposed amongst many hypotheses, an interconnectivity between energy, organisms, and the entire cosmos. The title to this album translates as ‘spiral wave,’ a structuralist form which Reich had observed throughout nature within numerous systems, whether that be the grand arcs of galaxies down to the radial symmetries of micro-organisms. For Kreiselwelle, Mr. Waldron returns to the same collection of field recordings which began this trilogy that includes Ozeanische Gefühle and Cosmic Superimposition; however, he restricted himself to those sounds with spiralling origins: resonating springs, the sounds of the ocean cyclically churning over pebbles on the beach, the wafting of air around various objects, or simply a lamp-shade spinning in place. The resulting recording develops as an organic sublimation of one sound transforming from one state into another and then another. Motorized sounds of mechanical toys set askew settle into a tremolo phase pattern of electrical vibrations. These in turn morph into a cauldron of slow locomotive rumbling, which beget one of many glassine drones that float throughout Kreiselwelle. Many of the sounds seem to have origins in objects that are broken, obsolete, or just plain wrong; but through Waldron’s deft alchemy, these sounds are allowed to flourish in this richly dark and oddly serene amalgamation." [label info] "...[as] for the ultra-fantastic soundwork of Irr. App. (Ext.), this Californian composer has been baffling and perplexing the ears of international listeners for not a few years now, and his new Kreiselwelle, a single 45-minute work of strange process music, is a slow voyage into the unknown. Within minutes, we're taken far beyond the relatively familiar world of "dark ambient" and enter a murky field of immersive and twisted shapes, where possible danger lurks at every corner. Conceptually rooted in an interpretation of the works of Wilhelm Reich, Kreiselwelle is the third part of a trilogy and connect with the "spiral waves" of the title, derived all of its sounds from things shaped like spirals (such as metal springs, or the circular movement of the ocean). In like manner, M. S. Waldron's composition will probably suck you into a whirlpool of doubt and ambiguity." [Ed Pinsent / The Sound Projector] www.helenscarsdale.com "Kreiselwelle is the conclusion to a superb trilogy from irr. app. (ext.) who used the words, philosophies, and eccentricities of Wilhelm Reich as the springboard into a realm of post-Surrealist, post-industrialist, post-drone arena of sound design. While a prominent European psychoanalyst, whose ideas could be seen as an occasional counterpoint to those of Freud, Reich may be best known for his parascientific research into Orgone energy, which he claimed was central and unifying force of life throughout the universe. Much of this latter research has been discredited and unfortunately shed a cloud of incredulity upon his psychoanalytic work. While Reich's claims of cloud-busting and orgone therapy offer particularly strong metaphors, M.S. Waldron - the principle architect to irr. app. (ext.) - has looked more to the psychological aspects of Reich's work. Kreiselwelle translates from the German as spiral wave or gyroscopic wave, and points to the similarities which Reich had noted in the structures of microscopic organisms, turbulent wave patterns, and spiral-arm galaxies. Through this trilogy (which also includes Ozeanische Gefuhle and Cosmic Superimposition), Waldron mirrors Reich's early cosmology through a compositional fluidity that alludes to contemporary drone fascination, constructed through overlapping collages, occluded field recordings, sustained tones from atypical instruments, and crosshatched synthetic noises. All three of these albums were sourced from the same set of field recordings, but each detours into its own particular wandering. Kreiselwelle begins with a very slow hypnotic strum across a detuned guitar with liquid tactility and a warped distance buzz filling in the gaps. Grand sweeps of slashing drones that could originate from an echoing chainsaw deep in the woods forms an unlikely crescendo with sympathetic tones, only to collapse into the softened white noise of cars passing by. Soon after, a rhythmic tapping of agitated electronics forms a motorik rhythm against the tapestry of audio fluidity, with all of the electro-shock bursts of a tesla coil. This in turn morphs into a cauldron of slow locomotive rumbling, which beget one of many glassine drones that float throughout Kreiselwelle. For fans of any of work of Nurse With Wound (after all Mr. Waldron is in the NWW touring ensemble!), H.N.A.S., and the more esoteric recordings of Organum; and certainly of note for those of you taken by Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words, Xela, Svarte Greiner, Expo '70, Emeralds, or any of the darker, weirder, more fucked-up drone ensembles of recent days. Very highly recommended!" [Aquarius Rec.] | 2009 | €13.00 |
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| Ozeanische Gefühle | CD | Damn, this is SO GOOD! IRR.APP (ext.) zeigt hier, dass er nicht nur strangeste eher elektro-akustische Soundscapes zusammenschustern kann, sondern auch sehr fliessende, aber leicht “gefährliche” und surrealistische dronescapes, die pulsieren, mäandern, rotieren und einfach LEBEN. In der Tat scheint hier alles in Grenzenlosigkeit zu zerfliessen...... High TIP for Drone-Heads ! “irr. app. (ext) is the work of California-based sound artist Matt Waldron, whose collected body of work is far too important to continue to be forgotten. During the past decade, only two full albums -- Dust Pincher Appliances (2003 on Crouton) and An Uncertain Animal, Ruptured; Tissue Expanding in Conversation (1997 on Fire, Inc.) -- have seen the light of day despite the fact that perhaps a dozen albums have been completed. The public silence for irr. app. (ext) was never by Waldron's design, as numerous recording deals collapsed, one after the other. The story becomes all the more of conundrum as these misadventures of neglect and ignorance occurred despite Waldron's high-profile collaborations with Nurse With Wound and Stilluppsteypa. If a humble organization like the Helen Scarsdale Agency can have its say, then we speak to remove whatever curses that have haunted irr. app. (ext.) in the past and provide the world with the opportunity to revel in the spectacle and the beauty that is Matt Waldron's art. Had things gone differently, Ozeanische Gefühle would have been one of the lost irr. app. (ext.) recordings. That would have been a shame for Ozeanische Gefühle stands as an impeccable composition of post-surrealist dronescaping rivaling such masterpieces as The Hafler Trio's Kill The King, Jonathan Coleclough & Andrew Chalk's Sumac, and Nurse With Wound's Soliloquy For Lilith. The title has origins with Freud and earlier thinkers; yet Waldron came across Ozeanische Gefühle (which translates from the German as "oceanic feelings") in his studies of Wilhelm Reich who referenced the term to describe the natural state of every healthy organism as connected to and engaged with the world around it, with its energies flowing from the center outwards. For Waldron, Reich's ideas became the starting point for a metonymic exercise seeking to discover that which is near a signifier and spiral beyond each successive discovery along a complicated aesthetic thread by way of intuition and accident. The album tumbles through a series of sympathetic dronings, field recordings, and performative gestures, continuously traversing the emotional polarities of psychological tension and externalized jouissance. The album begins with a heavily processed flutter of sustained woodwinds accompanied by thunderous rumbles in the distance before dispersing amidst Bernhard Hermann-esque slashings of discordant strings. Later on, the grotesque pathos of a Wurlitzer organ dissolves into a blackened emptiness that envelopes the complex resonant frequencies from Waldron's slow, deliberate performance upon bowls and bells. Despite the incredible depth of his source materials, Waldron displays an uncanny intellect that reflects all of his wandering passages through the lens of a melancholic ambience. Simply put, Ozeanische Gefühle is a wonder to behold.”[ Helen Scarsdale, June 2004] www.helenscarsdale.com "If anyone has the ability to carry the post-Surrealist torch of Nurse With Wound, it would have to be Matt Waldron through his irr. app. (ext.) project. Like Nurse With Wound's eccentric genius Stapleton, Waldron would never qualify himself as a Surrealist, but it's a good jumping off point to describe their respective works. With Ozeanische Gefuhle, Waldron establishes irr. app. (ext.) establishes himself as one of the most gifted sound-sculptors whose work have passed through the doors of Aquarius. If you've ever picked up any drone / minimalist / ambient records or even just anything that Andee has poetically described as 'completely fucked', then you owe it yourself to pick up Ozeanische Gefuhle. This review could ramble on and on, but let's cut to the chase and state the obvious, this album is brilliant. Strangely enough, Ozeanische Gefuhle -- as great as it is -- almost disappeared into the ether, as it was slated for release a few years back on another label who just sat on it for years, much to the chagrin of Mr. Waldron. Fortunately, the good people at the Helen Scarsdale Agency rectified the situation and made sure this album got its due recognition. The title itself is an allusion to Wilhelm Reich, who used the term to describe the natural state of every healthy organism as connected to and engaged with the world around it. Such ideas in lesser hands would result in limp idylltronica with New Age sentimentality; but this is not the case for irr. app. (ext.), who solidly grounds this record upon a fundamental drone, which slinks its way through numerous field recordings and performative gestures. Waldron's masterpiece emerges as a tidal current of electronic sound, rumbling through blackened spaces and soaring with divine expressivity. As good if not better than anything by Nurse With Wound, Organum, :zoviet france:, Phill Niblock, and the Hafler Trio. Yeah, it's that good!" [Aquarius Rec.] | 2004 | €14.00 |
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| ISABELLA, JASPER & SIMON FISHER TURNER | Savage Songs of Brutality and Food | CD | "This is the blurb. I think it’s a press release, too, about this album I’ve made with my kids’ voices and sounds and these home recordings we’ve made over the last 13 years. They’re now 15 and 17 and who knows what they think. I know they’re not too interested in it this now, but they’ve seen the artwork and pictures and obviously they know the tracks, but I don’t think they actually realise this is coming out and that strangers can buy the LP in a Record Shop or online with actual money. For years as the two of them were growing up I was always photographing and recording their lives. Over 68,000 pictures on my desktop, and hours of recordings. This is commonplace now, but when I was growing up maybe the Brownie would come out on the beach on Whitsand Bay, or if we went on holiday, a picture of a mountain or something interesting like, a pizza. Mum had a reel-to-reel she never used, and I had a radio. Dad was underwater. Why go on holiday when you live in Cornwall. Dad was a submariner based in Plymouth and my mum was a mum and a Rally driver. Three boys to look after. Chaos and serious hard work. Now both my parents are dead, I’ve photos from mum’s albums, but oddly enough Dad never took photos at all, and distrusted them I think. So to this album. It’s the first thirteen years or so of our children’s lives made into cute and cruel songs of experimentation and, yes, chaos again. So, from the first heartbeat (not included here) to just under two years ago, I randomly and sometimes secretly recorded them singing or talking, often encouraged of course by me. That’s what parents do. I recorded for 13 years. It’s rather wonderful to have sound documents as opposed to pictures. Luckily I have both and I’m still rediscovering forgotten sounds even now. This is a music/sound diary (perhaps) of the frankly mad, cute, annoying, moving, innocent, loud, loving, embarrassing, noises of their lives up to now, as recorded and messed up by me, as in messed-up-and-I-don’t-care, but do I care. I try to edit with clarity where needed, but otherwise the vocals and ideas are pretty raw and unaltered for the sweeter market of pop. This is just STUFF. Wild and Alive. Rebels without a pause. I was a dad with slithers time on my hands and a Mac I could barely understand. I made tracks/songs, whatever you want to call them between cooking, cleaning, bathing, shopping, driving, and sleeping ad infinitum. It’s the three of us mainly, with The Elysian Quartet thrown together for The Mighty Dinosaur song, but I’m the leader, the captain of the ship. You always need a Captain and they were my sonic crewmates, even though they were often press-ganged into service reluctantly. . There will be no Volume Two. They’ve eventually got really fed up with me doing this, and I can’t blame them one bit, but when faced with all these bits of songs or, fragments of stuff, what do you do? Throw them in the bin, give them to them on their wedding day and really make them cringe? No. The best thing to do is to compile them like a mix tape and keep your fingers crossed that someday, someone might be interested in releasing a compilation of this madness. Charles Powne from Soleilmoon Recordings came to the rescue, in that he mentioned somehow whether I’d heard of an LP of children’s songs. I hadn’t in fact, but I told him about these recordings I’d been making over the years. Isabella and Jasper I think are now probably incredibly pissed off with me, but you know, that’s tough. Full stop. Now at 17 and 15 their childhoods are over. The illusions shattered. There is no pretence. They can watch the news, Snapchat at speed, and lurk on the net who knows where. Innocence has gone, battered out of them by schools and the more serious and dull adults that surround them. They were the funniest and most amusing two smaller people imaginable, but now, they’re Teenagers…….Aaahhhhh. They’ve opinions, they’re brighter than me, better looking, funnier, nicer clothes, better humour and taste, and they’ve more friends than me too. The job is done. I’m sadly responsible for the musical settings they happen to find themselves in, although, quite often all the music or at least some of it is made up from their noises too. We like a noise here and there and we love to dance on a Friday night. One of the beauties of this sort of music is that there are no rules. We could all do with this sort of freedom, in not just music, but film, cooking, and storytelling. A child’s imagination is the finest open canvas ever. No rules rule. Oh God, I sound like a dotting dull dad. C’est la vie. Stay well and keep calm and risk everything with passion and love." -- SIMON FISHER TURNER LONDON, 25 JUNE, 2020 https://isabellajasperandsimonfisherturner.bandcamp.com | 2020 | €14.00 |
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| ISHIGAMI, KAZUYA | Canceller X | CD | Ishigami's latest work, pursuing original electronic music in the context of ambient noise / dark ambient. Although it is from academism, the activity on the album that constantly renews and destroys its own frame is not due to the destruction, but born out of the attitude to keep seeking for their own music. In the meantime, even though Ishigami's music is generally called experimental electronic acoustics, its tone is more bohemian and overflowing. Presented in a foldout sleeve with plain card inner. neus318.net/kazuya/canceller-x-kyou001/ https://soundcloud.com/kyou-records/tr1-playback-of-anxiety-kazuyaishigami "I discovered the Japanese ‘sound maker’ Kazuya Ishigami by his “Cleaner 583”-album. This artist already released considerable number of productions on his own label Neus-318 while he now started a new record company called Kyou Records. “Canceller X” is the first release on this brand-new company and also the first one in the “Neo Electroacoustic Ambient Series”. Content: The sound universe created for “Canceller X” is carried by ambient-like soundscapes mixed with an impressive sonic canvas of noises, manipulations and field recordings. The tracks progressively evolve, sometimes featuring unexpected melodic elements and mainly supported by mysterious atmospheres. + + + : Kazuya Ishigami remains first of all a sound designer, sound performer and sound engineer in electro-acoustic music. That’s precisely the concept of this series and the kind of sound you rapidly will recognize in his work. But there is where most of sound experimentalists lose themselves in a vacuum of improvisation and abstract music, “Canceller X” reveals a work with great sound atmospheres. That’s what makes the work dark-ambient like and even somewhat visual. There’s a kind of hidden danger emerging from the tracks and I like this mysterious atmosphere. – – – : The sound formula is somewhat repetitive and a little less predictable after a while. But it first of all is the kind of music you need to discover in the right circumstances. Conclusion: “Canceller X” is a pretty fascinating and atypical opus with a particular focus on sound creation. This is an interesting sonic experiment." [Side-Line] | 2017 | €13.00 |
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| ISOLRUBIN BK (AKA LUSTMORD) | Crash Injury Trauma | CD | "Investigation of an automobile death is frequently inadequately conducted by medical investigators, partly because important questions are not anticipated at the time of the investigation. There are many facets of the investigation and each one has far-reaching consequences. The importance of proper handling of an automobile fatality cannot be over stressed. The following components of investigation procedures should not be neglected: [1] Scene investigation with photographs. [2] Complete autopsy with recording of injuries by description, drawings and photographs. [3] Evidence collection - clothing, glass traces, oil, paint, rust, and blood spots. [4] Follow-up studies - blood typing, analysis for carbon monoxide (if fire), alcohol (always), amphetamines (especially in truck drivers), and other drugs (if indicated). “Crash Injury Trauma” is a shocking and disturbing album, unflinching and relentless in its fascination with violent car accidents. Tires skid and horns blare, followed by the sickening sounds of crashing metal and shattering glass, screams, sirens and heart-pounding bass. It’s a cruel, sadistic and horrifying tour de force in the ambient and power electronics genre. B. Lustmord released “Crash Injury Trauma” in 1993, as a side project, under the pseudonym Isolrubin BK. Following “Heresy” and “The Monstrous Soul”, and preceding “The Place Where The Black Stars Hang”, the album was recorded during what is now considered a pivotal period in the British artist’s career. Out of print for nearly a decade, this new 2009 edition has been remastered from the ground up, and is presented in completely redesigned packaging. B. Lustmord has been actively pushing the boundaries of sound for nearly 30 years and has a remarkably broad and diverse list of credits, including an extensive discography of his own highly regarded recordings, including fifteen Lustmord releases. He has collaborated with a wide variety musicians, ranging from Industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle and SPK to alt rock mainstays Tool and Melvins. He has also worked on television shows, commercials and games, including Unreal Tournament III and Assassin's Creed, as well as on more than forty motion pictures, including The Crow, The Craft, Pitch Black and Underworld. Based in Los Angeles, he is currently he is working on new Lustmord material as well as Puscifer, an ongoing project with Maynard James Keenan of Tool and A Perfect Circle." [label info] www.soleilmoon.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWYuTULNZAE | 2009 | €15.00 |
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| JACASZEK | Kwiaty | LP | "It all started with a book, as these things often do: an English anthology of metaphysical poetry from the 17th century, to be exact. Which may not sound like the sexiest option on the shelves, but hear us out. The gentleman plowing through those weathered pages happened to be Michał Jacaszek, the Polish composer who's spun dramatic shades of darkness and light into gold for more than a decade now. An absolute master of melancholy, from the trickle-down electronics of Treny to the vapor-trailed verses of its looming spiritual cousin KWIATY. "The poems were simple, pure and beautiful," Jacaszek says of the book's poignant Robert Herrick passages. "They spoke about death, pain, longing and loneliness, but somehow these pieces were bringing hope, solace, and peace." They also sounded a hell of a lot like songs when read out loud. Structurally at least. Herrick's rhyme schemes and rhythms still needed the right musical accompaniment, and Jacaszek had just the ticket: a backlog of previously unreleased recordings—warm-blooded samples, lonesome synth lines, pared-down guitar parts—begging for proper arrangements and dynamic mixdowns. Not to mention the most vocal-driven material Jacaszek's ever written, melding his stormy melodies with a breakout performance by Hania Malarowska and the robust supporting roles of Joasia Sobowiec-Jamioł and Natalia Grzebała. "I tend to always create organic, acoustic sounds, even though I work within a digital environment," explains Jacaszek. "Because KWIATY is actually a vocal album, the electronic sounds in the background seemed to be a perfect opposition. It's all unintentional, really; this is just my music language and I can't run away from it." jacaszek.bandcamp.com/album/kwiaty "I first discovered the wonderful and adventurous music of Jacaszek in a record store. 'Glimmer' and 'Catalogue des Arbres (feat. Kwartludium)' have been regularly played albums for years in this household. So when this new album was announced, I was immediately interested. However, like often happens with artists this talented and versatile, starting to write this review was a difficult task. So let's just begin by writing that this is an breathtaking piece of work. For those not familiar with Michał Jacaszek: he is a Polish composer who combines electronically prepared sounds with acoustic instruments. Over the years, he composed soundtracks and theatre music, plus a number of albums. His work blend classical music with experimental electronics and jazz. He knows little to no musical borders and continuously drags in seemingly strange influences. 'Kwiaty' means flowers and in a way that is exactly what you get on this album; blooming pieces of music that look and feel familiar yet mysterious. The album was inspired by Michał Jacaszek’s discovery of an English anthology of metaphysical poetry from the 17th century by Robert Herrick, which to him — somehow-- sounded songlike when read out-loud. The album contains guest appearances by Hania Malarowska (Hanimal), Joasia Sobowiec-Jamioł and Natalia Grzebała. The songs on this album are strange pop-ballads or jazz inspired classical pieces or electronically rearranged folk songs, regarding on how you feel about them. I hear influences from all these genres, including trip hop, dark jazz and the soundtracks to Tim Burton's movies or even Twin Peaks. There is a gloomy atmosphere, a mysterious feel but also musical ingenuity and beautiful vocals. In short, this is Jacaszek at his very best. Once again I refuse to pick a favorite track. I'm not even going to mention separate songs. I'm just going to recommend buying the album. Take the weekend off and enjoy 'Kwiaty' non-stop. Allow Jacaszek to guide you on an introvert but epic journey, one you will not regret. It will definitely be worth the effort. If you are into anything between Dead Can Dance, Bersarin Quartet and The Nightmare Before Christmas, you will easily get addicted to this thing..." [Merchants of Air] | 2017 | €20.00 |
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| Music for Film | LP | "Since his earliest projects nearly two decades ago, Polish composer Michal Jacaszek has kept some proximity to film music. Initially, his output simply felt cinematic by nature; densely detailed electroacoustic textures on releases like Lo-Fi Stories (2004), Treny (2008) and Glimmer (2011) evoked dimly-lit worlds within themselves, vignettes of the imagination. Over time his interest in sound design and collaboration would manifest actual film projects and commissions, some of which have earned him awards. Jacaszek's practice - an amalgamation of ambient, classical, and musique concrete - deploys field recordings, acoustic samples, poetry, and baroque instrumentation to paint pictures, oftentimes melancholic, nostalgic, tragic. His 2020 album, Music For Film, marks the naturally-occurring intersection of his identities as a solo artist and a film score artist. The collection is now sequenced and released as a single autonomic movement. "I didn't write to particular scenes," says Jacaszek, recalling the process of envisioning music for Rainer Sarnet's 2017 black-and-white fantasy drama November. "He asked me to create a bunch of pieces for a dark fairytale-like movie about love in old Estonian pagan times - full of dark magic, strange beliefs, poverty, grit, and natural beauty." That versatile purpose from the onset affords the material particular pliability in the album format; the pieces work on their own. Two tracks originated from the 2019 documentary He Dreams of Giants; another was first used in 2008 project Golgota wroc?awska. Context removed, they fuse seamlessly; ten years time between some recordings, erased. A visceral dynamism emerges here with a relatively restricted palette of sounds. Music moves in measured steps, inconspicuous yet holding attention. Opener "The Zone" is curious and brittle, crawling on keys and a foundational bass thump as strings seep beneath in a raspy hush. Centerpiece "Dance" folds into an ominous and molasses-slow trot through minor chords, spacious percussion, and static, all under the spell of a mournful violin lead. Windswept vocals haunt "Liina" from a distance, while they sink deeply into orchestral closer "November Late." Jacaszek's work is that of an auteur; he has signatures that he uses faithfully and with much aplomb. Listeners can expect subtle gesture and baroque grandeur on Music For Films: soaring melodies cloaked in reverberation, delicate piano ruminations, and textural craftwork capable of creating and disrupting motifs, smothering and enchanting minds." | 2020 | €20.50 |
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| Gardenia | LP | "Gardenia is an existing land located at the Limpopo province of South Africa, right at the border with Botswana. The place's real name is Mmabolela and it's a private nature reserve covering 6500ha of subtropical savanna and part of Limpopo River. In November 2019, I had a chance to visit the location and participate in an annual residency for composers and sound artists called 'Sonic Mmabolela', initiated and curated by Francisco López. We lived in an isolated property in the middle of savanna having a unique opportunity to exist in undisturbed touch with the African wilderness. All the natural sounds later used to create Gardenia were captured there -- during longtime recording sessions over the virgin interior of Mmabolela Reserve. The album's field recording content was selected from several hours of birdsong, calls of frogs, insect noises, sounds of trees, bushes, grass as well as non-living natural elements like stones or shells. These field recordings were later digitally processed and used as part of nine musical arrangements. However, the recording sources and the location of Gardenia is defined, it was not my intention to document a South African natural soundscape nor create any other kind of strict concept album. All I do in my work is an affirmation of beauty hidden in various aspects of the Creation." --Michał Jacaszek Recorded, composed, and produced by Michał Jacaszek. Photography + design: Jon Wozencroft. DVD case; includes download. https://jacaszekreleases.bandcamp.com/album/gardenia | 2020 | €25.50 |
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| JACKMAN, DAVID (=ORGANUM) | Schining | do-CD | "The next in Die Stadt's Jackman/Organum series, continuing his persuit of the monolithic shifting structure. Beginning with similar sounds to "Flames Of Fire" - a metallic buzz and deep, resonating tone - Jackman shifts the pitch more with sharper buzzing and a greater use of gongs and bells. A shimmering mix, with the first half much heavier. On the second CD he opens the sound up more, with the dynamics giving an almost buoyant quality to the music. Leading off with the crashing gong, it's soon stripped back allowing a sustained, wavering tone to be in the forefront. The sound resembles what could be an organ but held for infinity. Just as it becomes mesmerising and hypnotic though, Jackman throws in the bells, with variations coming in rapid succession versus the otherwise slow and steady feel. Ltd x 500 copies in a digisleeve with excellent artwork by Jonathan Coleclough." "Music and musical releases can be controversial for many reasons. Lyrical content, shocking covers, too loud, too quiet: David Jackman’s music is controversial for none of these reasons. His music isn’t noisy or silent, with no lyrical content or a shocking cover. I am not on any discussion group online and never was, but I can imagine a discussion with the topic: “Is David Jackman doing the same thing over and over again?”. I don’t know the answer, but I can guess. We can say the last few releases (and I am discounting his Organum Electronics releases; they are in a different league) contain the same musical elements. I copy from my last review, “A drone, Shruti-like, some low gong sound, the occasional bang on the piano, a church bell and some crows flying overhead”. The crows may have flown away, but the other elements are there. I also wrote, “The drone is continuous here; the others appear irregularly. The whole work is slow and majestic. The music has a funeral aspect, like a black-and-white picture from an Edgar Allen Poe story. It is very similar to much of his recent work, and it is hard to figure out the difference(s). All of this fits my pop-art theory. I love this mystique and playing around with similar ideas and notions. I am sure this mystery will never be unravelled” On ‘Shining’ (is that a word? Google pushes forward ‘The Shining’), we have two of these works, and they are different, more than just the numbers 1 and 2 on the discs. On the second disc, the intervals appear quicker, and the disc is a few seconds shorter. Both pieces feel like a requiem mass in a church, complete with those church bells. And why is this one credited to David Philip Jackman? More mystery or willful obscure?" [Vital Weekly] | 2024 | €18.00 |
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| JARL | Amygdala Colours - Hemisphere Rotation | CD | "Jarl has a long discography behind him with more than 15 releases since his solo project started in the early years of the millenia. Describing his music as unbalanced, turbulent, withdrawn electronics that focus on isolation he's made an impact on the electronic scene defining an own explicit sound. "Amygdala Colours - Hemisphere Rotation" is the second album on Reverse Alignment and follows the critically acclaimed "Case 1959 - Dyatlov". But where previous album explored the external mysteries of Dyatlov 1959 Jarl take us unto an internal trip through the structures and events of the cognitive mind with a main focus on the Amygdala, where the processing of memory, decision-making, and emotional reactions occur. This album is built with layers of sound which slowely gets audible and disappears psychedelically. A variation of electronic and acoustic treatments has been used and the whole album is a mastodon track passing 50 minutes. As usual, the listener gets a mixture of drone, ambient and industrial that are molded perfectly into "that" typical Jarl-ish sound that sure wont dissapoint. Accompanied with the musical expression comes astonishing work from Karolina Urbaniak who designed the cover. It is as if you could touch the music." [label info] reversealignment.bandcamp.com | 2016 | €13.00 |
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| Negative Rotation / Intensive Fracture | do-CD | "After the critically acclaimed (and almost sold-out) collaborative album with Evenomist, Jarl returns to Zoharum fold with the next release. It is the first in the series of albums collecting rare works of Erik Jarl known for his involvement with IRM and Skin Area apart from his solo work. His own compositions are an exquisite mix of static ambient with strong influence of drone, noise or post-industrial electronica in general. This double CD is a reissue of two cassettes originally released by Abisko. They were recorded on a Fostex 8-track recorder. Both tapes sound very different. ”Negative Rotation” is cold and monotonous, but with some changes in sounds that repeats themselves, while ”Intensive Fracture” is improvised psychedelic floating noise. Both recordings were done with analogue synthesizers and analogue effects. This double CD also contains five bonus tracks from different compilations. The CD are housed in an ecopak sleeve and is strictly limited to 250 copies. The cover picture and design was made by Karolina Urbaniak (responsible for the lastest covers Jarl, IRM and Skin Area albums and widely known for here photographic work.) The album was remastered by Łukasz Miernik. The whole production process was overseen by Michał Porwet." | 2017 | €15.00 |
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| Spectrum Confusion | CD | Spectrum Confusion is Jarl’s fifth album on Reverse Alignment, following on from 2019’s massive triple CD release Symptoms Variation/ Sensory Deprivation. And once again Karolina Urbaniak has masterfully created the cover artwork, as she’s done for the four earlier Jarl releases, also released by RA. Spectrum Confusion consists of three long-form pieces showcasing his trademark psychedelic, hypnotic approach, but this time the presence of bubbling and pulsating sounds makes the music sound closer to the electronic experiments of Northern European avant-garde composers in conjunction with more melodic passages harmonically coexisting alongside the abstract elements. Jarl’s music has entered its more mature stage here, and Spectrum Confusion consolidates his reputation as one of the most interesting and original European electronic music composers. Swedish musician Erik Jarl has been active since the Fall of 1999, principally as Jarl. He was also a member of post-industrial act IRM, of which Erik was one of the founding members. Jarl’s music has been released on several labels through the years, and he has collaborated with acts like Anemone Tube, Envenomist, and Skin Area. Erik Jarl composes his music through a total analogue approach with the use of synthesisers, analogue sequencers, waveform generators, and oscillators, as well as several echo/reverb and delay units. https://reversealignment.bandcamp.com/album/spectrum-confusion "More and more, the territory for Vital Weekly is that of modern classical music, improvised music and such; the last resort of physical releases, perhaps? I am glad that there is also music from Erik Jarl dropping on my doorstep now and then. Just for the sake of hearing something else, also because I have been quite a fan of his music over the years. After all these years of reviewing his music, I still have not a clear picture of what Jarl does. Maybe I believed he was a man of computer technology for a while, but I think that the modular synthesiser is his instrument of choice in recent times. When I was playing this CD, I used some more volume to drown out the clarinet rehearsals taking place upstairs, and it occurs to me that there is a slightly more cosmic streak to his music this time around. I doubt the volume is a contributing factor to that thought. I had this realisation, and I thought there was a straight line from Conrad Schnitzler's 'non-keyboard electronics' to the world of industrial music. Jarl's sonic paintings are dark and bleak; they are slow and minimal. Yet, it is also music of hope and light. This music is not the dystopian cosmic journey of a spaceship returning to the destroyed earth, but rather, well, such as I hear this, a celebratory trip back home. The spacecraft is in slow motion returning from whatever it was doing in space anyway. The additional reverb sets some of the moods here. It bursts and bubbles along the edges of the massive drones. Maybe because Jarl adds a melodic touch to his electronics, it made me think of that. I took a peek at Vangelis' recent tribute to Juno (the Jupiter moon, not the synthesiser), hailed in the daily, but I feel NASA missed out on Jarl's music for this occasion. His soundtrack would fit Juno much better than Vangelis' orchestral brushes. Alright, next time, Nasa, go to Sweden and talk to Jarl!" [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2021 | €13.00 |
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| JAZZFINGER | Mole & the Morning Dew | LP | "Their second release for Spirit of Orr, and their first purple vinyl release, Jazzfinger use this opportunity to disseminate two sides of ‘heavily indebted to visuals’ drone sound. The grainy delicacy of “Beneath Our Fathers Field” opens proceedings, the accompaniment to a silent piece of Egyptian rooted mystery-movie – the unreleased harmonium start-up of Balance/Christopherson’s dawn sessions. The three pieces on the record’s first side feel more connected to each other than almost everything else I’ve heard by this crew, its also their most aurally poetic. Jazzfinger manage to convince me I’m being haunted by humans with “The Swimming Heal”, swirls of birds flocking and diving over some Gretna-like landscape through the feedback. The two flipside pieces are built on repeated acoustic guitar parts, cliff-hanger menace in the Dictaphone gruffness and the fear generated in repetition. Picture an acoustic Jandek lost in sea fret, encircled by a host of cymbal bowers. Jazzfinger records do more than anything else I’m aware of to make yer eyes obsolete. 10/10" [Scott McKeating / Foxy Digitalis] "It is with deep honor and wonder that we announce the release of this magical splaying of deep sound by Newcastle's mighty Jazzfinger. Truly Mr Jones and his crew are the bringers, the full cup, part of the good that balances our lives against dark evils. Without hesitation, the people who hold the world together. Feel their power, and be comforted. Limited to 600, purple vinyl." [label info] www.spiritoforr.com | 2009 | €15.50 |
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| JENSEN, CLARICE | For this from that will be filled (silver) | LP | Originally released in 2018, »For this from that will be filled« is the debut album by Clarice Jensen, artistic director of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME). The album explores the variable differences between acoustic and electronic sound as well as depiction of the simulated and the unconscious. It was originally conceived as a collaboration between Jensen and the artist Jonathan Turner as an audio-visual work, but is here presented in it´s pure audible form. Building on a long and romantic tradition of solo cello repertoire, Jensen expands and confuses the familiar sound of the cello through the use of effects pedals, multi-tracking, and tape loops recorded at variable speeds, presented in works she has written for herself as well as a piece she conceived together with Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson. Also featured is Michael Harrison’s Cello Constellations for multi-tracked cello and sine tones, written for Jensen, which meditates on long, sustaining tones. With »For this from that will be filled«, Jensen has made an incredibly strong first album that feels like a surreal and futuristic journey through an alternate timeline. claricejensen.bandcamp.com/album/for-this-from-that-will-be-filled | 2022 | €23.50 |
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| Esthesis | LP | Cellist/composer Clarice Jensen returns on 130701 with her third album, ‘Esthesis’, a deep and gorgeous new work conceptually structured around the emotional and harmonic spectrum and the phenomenon of chromesthesia – a condition whereby sound involuntarily evokes an experience of color, shape and movement. Following up her critically-acclaimed 2020 LP ‘The experience of repetition as death’ (a record almost presciently timed to arrive as Covid first hit), 'Esthesis’ sees Jensen expanding her oeuvre, introducing a wider instrumental range, and reflecting on the effects of isolation. Recorded by Jensen in upstate NY and expertly mixed by Francesco Donadello, the record was mastered by Matthew Agoglia and is released on October 21st, ahead of a UK/EU tour supporting 130701 alumni Dustin O’Halloran. From its opening piano notes, 'Esthesis’ gently upends expectations built up over previous albums. Shifting and extending Jensen’s sound in line with the adventurousness of the ‘Drone Studies’ and ‘Platonic Solids’ EPs, the album is less reliant on her trademark razor-sharp, processed cello drone. Performed heavily on synth, as well as her more usual cello and electronics, it also features the piano playing of Timo Andres (tracks 1, 4 and 5) and the voices of Laura Lutzke, Francesca Federico and Emma Broughton (on tracks 3 and 6). Whilst the drone is never far away, there’s a sense of more light and space across the album. 'Esthesis’ was originally conceived in pre-pandemic times as a concert experience, structured to comprise a series of long drones, each centred on a single key/pitch and cycling sequentially through the circle of fifths from C to F. These drones would be punctuated by shorter “songs”, each depicting one of the seven principle emotions defined in the Chinese Book of Rites. As an audio-visual experience, Jensen imagined the audience being bathed in coloured lights that corresponded to each drone, with those colours combined or oscillating during the songs in an effort to mimic or induce chromesthesia: a (gentle, not jarring) trip through the complete spectrum of colour, (Western) pitch and emotion. With the pandemic dashing these plans and ushering in a period where it was even difficult to imagine live performance anymore, Jensen instead set out to realise the concept as an album palpably created in enforced solitude and isolation. “I expanded my usual palette of layered and treated cellos without the effect of a more grandiose or large-scale feeling of timbre; I wished to employ additional media in an effort to further portray the idea of isolation and containment.” Foregoing the longer drone structures she’d planned in favour of a more succinct whole, each track on ‘Esthesis’ evokes a different principal emotion using seemingly one-dimensional titles, with Jensen’s intention being to juxtapose the depths of these emotions with the reality-overlay of solitude. “It also calls to question how sensation can be rudimentary. Imposed isolation and the fear of viral exposure led many to seek sensation by streaming television, circulating memes, and sharing delayed laughs with loved ones across computer screens – all of this done alone and somewhat removed through various media, and set against a backdrop of very real fear.” While the \"removed\" nature of each track/emotion remains deliberate, so also exists the very realness of the emotion itself. “\'Joy\' evokes vernal lightness and promise, and came to me as I was falling asleep and realised I was still smiling thinking about someone I love. \'Sadness\' is a setting of Purcell\'s \'Dido\'s Lament’. \'Liking\' begins with tentative hope and then blossoms, using an additive compositional process, whereas \'Disliking\' is subtractive. ‘Anger\' uses text taken from Simone de Beauvoir\'s letters to Nelson Algren (the entirety is pasted below). \'Fear\' attempts to simply portray breathing and absence. The organs used on \'Love\' suggest hallowed spaces, employing only a short progression that always returns to the same but becomes layered, out-of-sync and lost, but simplest at its end.” Thursday, 3 Juillet 1947 “I led a very quiet life since my last letter: no cave, no party, no wit. There was a wonderful storm in the country, it was really beautiful. The whole day had been so hot, you really wanted to die, love or work or happiness did not mean anything more. And then came a huge black smoke in the sky, and strange phantasms went by in the dim light, and soon you could not see the sky nor the landscape any more, just a cherry tree beaten by the wind while the rain fell crazily, and thunder shaked the sky. Many trees were broken, flowers killed, the landscape was a battle field… Afterwards, everything was strangely peaceful. Friends came and we had a dinner and long evening: the woman who has swallowed a pin, her husband, the old lady I like so much, and Sartre. But I was not very quiet myself; the storm had gone on my nerves, and I drank much, and, dearest, when I drink much I am no longer sensible at all; when the other friends left I became a storm myself, and poor Sartre was very bored with me who spoke about life and death and everything in a rather mad way. When I am drunk everything seems very tragic and pathetic and terrifying to me – so dreadfully important, and yet without importance since death is at the end; I should knock my head against the walls. I did not knock my head but I spoke and raved late in the night on the peaceful little country roads, and I decided not to drink any more for some time. You see, it has never been very easy for me to live, though I am always very happy – maybe because I want so much to be happy. I like so much to live and I hate the idea of dying one day. And then I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life, I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, and to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish…You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger…” [Simone de Beauvoir, Letters to Nelson Algren] Across the album’s seven pieces, Jensen shows great restraint and an incredible compositional talent in spinning a series of beautiful, complex interweavings of texture, tone, rhythm and melody. There is a serious depth in her sensibility, that rewards repeated listening. https://claricejensen.bandcamp.com/album/esthesis | 2022 | €32.50 |
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| JERMAN / BARNES | Versatile Ambience | LP | Without referencing typical genre or style, the collaboration of sound artists Tim Barnes and Jeph Jerman moves a step forward with this 45 RPM LP release of texture and atmosphere, with assistance from Ken Vandermark, Jacob Duncan, Aaron Michael Bulter, Sara Saltau & Bret Berry. "The fact that two words sit next to each other does not automatically mean that they are related. The ambience given off by this LP full of coarse textures and lancing sounds isn't exactly versatile; it'd be easier to devise a list of places where it can't be played and people you know who would not sit still for it than to string together the places where its ambience would be appropriate. And just because two men with documented histories of hitting things get together and make records doesn't mean they'll turn in an album of percussion music. In fact, Tim Barnes and Jeph Jerman only occasionally resort to directly striking anything on Versatile Ambience; they're too busy engaging in all manner of other interventions that confound perception and makes you think hard about just what constitutes music. If you consult Barnes' and Jerman's discography, you can find CDRs a decade old to which the Discogs website has assigned the designation free improvisation. Whatever you call the music on Versatile Ambience, you can't call it that. It is carefully constructed from collected outdoors sounds, wind and stringed instruments played by musicians such as Ken Vandermark and electronics of uncertain provenance; there's definitely a shortwave radio in the mix, but beyond that, take a guess. It's probably more relevant to note that it's not immediately clear if the twittering high frequencies that lift away from a distant jet's quiet roar are played electronics or a field recording of bugs. Jerman has gone on record saying that he is not concerned with representing anything, he just uses sounds he likes to hear. Still, in a time when human activity is submerging islands and killing off species at a record rate, it's hard not to assign significance to music that challenges the listener to figure out where nature ends and man begins. No discussion of this album would be complete without acknowledging its particular physical qualities. The sleeve is hefty and substantial. The vinyl is heavy and spins at 45 RPM; Rashad Becker's mastering conveys the high frequencies with amazing clarity and the rougher textures with such tactility that you'll swear you can feel the sounds coming through your fingertips." [Bill Meyer, Dusted Magazine] | 2016 | €26.00 |
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| JESU | Why are we not perfect? | maxi-CD | "... Why Are We Not Perfect completes Broadrick’s transformation from atmosphere-obsessed drone metallurgist to neo-shoegaze aesthete. There’s heaviness of a very different sort oozing from the two-chord vamp “Farewell” -- it’s the kind of heaviness that derives from depth of production and emotional resonance, rather than piles of distorted guitar. You could easily fall into the cracks between those Björk-like fuzz bass hits on the title track. Its final lyric (“Why are we not perfect/ When we can’t live forever?”) is just one of the many simple profundities you’ll find buried deep within if you do... ] [Prefix mag] "5 track EP (2 songs of which originally appeared on the vinyl only split 12" with Eluvium). JUSTIN BROADRICK has set aside the heavy foundation of pounding guitars prevalent in past recordings & brought to the fore elements of texture & melody that previously hovered at the periphery of his monolithic compositions. While this may prove frustrating to metal idealists, those with a greater sense of adventure will find the results both illuminating & heart rending." [label info] "Not a brand new Jesu record, instead, this ep collects the three tracks from Jesu's split lp with Eluvium from last year, and adds two alternate versions to flesh it out a bit. Folks who missed out on that now out of print 12", or those amongst you who remain turntableless, will for sure want to pick this up, and Jesu fanatics, might just find this worth it for the two extra alternate takes. First the songs proper: Three new songs from Jesu, and as if we didn't already see Broadrick and Co. heading in this direction, they've almost entirely jettisoned the heaviness, in favor of a blissy new wave-y drift. Really! No massive sludge, no blissed out crunch, in fact, most of this sounds like Jesu doing the soundtrack to a John Hughes movie, all drift and croon and no crunch and pummel, but it's really nice, and pretty, and still suitably Jesu-like. Imagine Simple Minds or the Cure but raised on Slowdive and Chapterhouse and Swervedriver and My Bloody Valentine, doing the theme song for Sixteen Candles 2008 (which if our calculations are correct would be more like Forty Candles). The first song would be a massive hit, sort of melancholy and romantic, dark and dreamy, but still sort of catchy and hopeful, like sunbeams barely making it through grey storm clouds. The final track sounds like it could be from that last scene in Sixteen Candles 2008, the one where the boy and the girl finally make it to the dance after all of the crazy mishaps and misunderstandings and are finally sharing that slow dance... lugubrious and fuzzy, and soft focus and so great actually. It's weird, and a bit unexpected, but as much as we love the glacial crush of past Jesu discs, this new-wave-y drift really suits them, which is a good thing, since they seem to be heading even more and more in that direction with each new release. The two extra tracks are definitely not -drastically- different, but different enough certainly to make them worth having. "Farewell" gets even more washed out, the whole thing muted and over saturated, the chugging guitars, disembodied and more textural than heavy, the whole song suffused with chiming harmonics and sun dappled soaring bittersweet melodies. "Why Are We Not Perfect", the above mentioned Sixteen Candles 2008 closer, hews closely to the original, the change more in timbre and texture than anything, the vocals still weary and woozy, the beat a loping skittery shuffle, surrounded by shimmering clouds of effervescent streaks of warm buzz, swirls of backwards melody, all whirling softly and dreamily. Beautifully packaged in a super thick oversized Japanese style mini lp cd jacket, with a thick printed inner sleeve." [Aquarius Records] www.hydrahead.com | 2008 | €11.00 |
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| JOBIN, FRANCE | Death Is Perfection, Everything Else Is Relative | LP | "The last two years have seen me maintaining an association with an unusual bedfellow, death. The loss of Mika Vainio, as well as three members of my own family, has had a profound effect on me and spurred a lengthy reflection on life, death, and everything in between. Parallelly, while studying the philosophy of science, I came across shadow photons: “Tangible photons are the ones we can see or detect with instruments whereas shadow photons are intangible (invisible) detectable only indirectly through the interference effects on the tangible photons. There is no intrinsic difference between tangible and shadow photons: each photon is tangible in one universe and intangible in all the other parallel universes. They travel at the speed of light, bounce off mirrors, are refracted by lenses, and are stopped by opaque barriers or filters of the wrong colour. Yet, they do not trigger even the most sensitive detectors. The only thing in the universe that a shadow photon can be observed to affect is the tangible photon that it accompanies. This is the phenomenon of interference. Shadow photons would go entirely unnoticed, were it not for this phenomenon and the strange pattern of shadows by which we observe it. Thus the existence of a seething, prodigiously complicated hidden world of shadow photons has been inferred.”* I have drawn a parallel between shadow photons and death. The interference phenomena, parallel universes, and how shadow photons affect tangible photons they accompany, offer, in my opinion, similarities, an unknown universe which is death and how we, remaining tangible human beings, are affected. This quest has led me to be more willing to accept chaos in my life and to conclude that Death is perfection, everything else is relative. *The fabric of reality, David Deutsch, Penguin Press 1997. All sounds recorded at various locations in Europe, South America and at EMS, Stockholm using the Buchla 200 modular synthesizer. soar, all sounds recorded with Klara Lewis in Montreal 2018 https://francejobin.bandcamp.com/album/death-is-perfection-everything-else-is-relative #################################### "Subsequent to a series of personal losses, France Jobin – Montreal’s minimalist composer of deserved renown – was forced to come to terms with something that haunts the existence of countless beings. As pathetic as this usually appears (courtesy of the average human’s shallowness), she attempted a rational collocation of chaos in her life, at the same time recognizing death as the ultimate symbol of a not better specified “perfection”. The introductory notes quote an excerpt from David Deutsch’s book The Fabric Of Reality, grounded on the theory of phantom photons. Now, when it comes to photons this writer’s cynical experience translates as follows: interesting stuff on paper, yet inevitably destined to become, in most cases, food for pseudo-intellectual exhibition of the self (though I’m convinced that Jobin doesn’t belong to that category). After all, everyone is entitled to clutching at the straws of unearthly conjectures to put a measure of order in their own mind. Particularly when the grim reaper comes around waving us hello under various guises, which – in this day and age – happens quite frequently, including the cerebral demise of selected wannabe “authorities” dabbling in issues beyond their reach. Fortunately, besides any cognitive necessity Jobin is an expert sound assembler. The music she created for this album derives entirely from a Buchla 200 analog synthesizer, except for a shorter and less assuaging track – “Soar” – made with Klara Lewis and exclusively available in the digital version. The longer pieces “Inertia” and “P”, however, represent everything that needs to be (un)told. There’s an answer to every question, there’s calmness behind any anxious doubt if only one delves in the right combination of frequencies. Jobin concocted textural trails that stay with the listener unobtrusively, typically projecting one or two suspended chords. The result amalgamates perfectly with our environment when played at moderate volume. Still, the apparent stasis is perturbed by the very pulsation that it contains. We detect imperceptible subsurface discolorations, brief dissipations of energy across the harmonic flawlessness, a few dynamic weaknesses and slight distortions in an otherwise rather narcotic flux. It’s sorrow-inducing, brain-quietening, and profoundly individual." [Touching Extremes] | 2020 | €19.50 |
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| JOBIN, FRANCE & FABIO PERLETTA | Mirror Neurons | CD | "Mirror neurons represent a distinctive class of cells that fire both when an animal executes an action and when it observes another individual performing the same action. Discovered by Italian neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti and his team at the University of Parma while doing a research on the neural representation of motor movements in monkeys, the precise function and influence of these neurons has become one of the most important topic in neuroscience. They have been linked to many behaviours and abilities, from empathy to learning by imitation and language acquisition, as well as implicated in conditions such as autism and other brain disorders. These findings suggest that the mirror neuron system plays a key role in our ability to experience empathy. Initiated by sound artists France Jobin and Fabio Perletta, Mirror Neurons is a media-project investigating the notion of empathy and physical distance. The entire album is the result of extended sound files exchange between Montréal (Canada) and Roseto degli Abruzzi (Italy). Each of the pieces is based on rough sounds and their consequent re-working, listening and reaction, processing and imitation. The ongoing process helped the artists to draw inspiration in terms of stimuli for the act of composing itself in two very distant cities, different climate, time zones and languages. Like much of Jobin and Perletta’s recent works, Mirror Neurons explores the artists’ interest in intersection between science and art, as well as the infinitely small and invisible. In order to further develop the concept of distance/connectivity, visual artists XX+XY from Rome have been involved in the process. They created a multi-dimensional, generative and ever-changing sound visualization through the use of quiet textures and subtle movements emphasizing the slowed sense of time of the work itself. Thought to be performed live in a big space, the video aims to create an immersive environment and a unique occasion to reflect about the behaviour of our emotions and the importance of human interaction." [label info] www.dragonseyerecordings.com | 2015 | €13.00 |
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| JOHANNSSON, JOHANN | IBM 1401, a User's Manual | CD | Nach den schönen TOUCH-CDs ein weiteres stark Filmsoundtrack-artiges Album des Isländers, dass uns stark an die emotionale Musik von ARVO PÄRT erinnert... sein Debut für 4AD !! "Johann Johannsson ist Isländer und lebt in Reykjavik. Er ist Musiker (sowohl Solo als auch als Mitglied des Apparat Organ Quartets), Komponist, Produzent und Labelgründer (Kitchen Motor). Johannssons Name ist auch immer wieder in den Credits der Produktionen renommierter Künstler zu finden. So produzierte und schrieb er mit Marc Almond an dessen Stranger Things' Album, arbeitete mit Barry Adamson, Pan Sonic, dem Hafler Trio oder Jaki Liebezeit zusammen. Als Komponist verzaubert er seine Zuhörer meist mit seiner stattlichen und eindringlich-melodischen Musik. Sein neues Werk ist bis dato seine am anspruchsvollsten instrumentierte und attraktivste Komposition. Die Idee zum Album basiert auf der Arbeit von Johanns Vater. Dieser war im Jahr 1964 als leitender Techniker bei einem der ersten Großrechnerprojekte Islands beschäftigt und es gelang ihm, den Rechner IBM 1401 mit einer Melodie zu programmieren und diese aufzunehmen. Diese Tonbänder, die Johann auf dem Dachboden seines Vaters fand, bilden das Herzstück des Albums. Für die Aufnahmen schrieb Johannson seine Komposition für ein Streicher-Sextett um und komponierte einen neuen finalen Satz." [Indigo] "So here it is, Jóhann Jóhannsson’s eagerly awaited debut album for the 4AD label, and we’re very happy indeed to say that it’s the finest record he’s put his name to yet. I suppose the move from Touch worried some fans at first, but on hearing ‘IBM 1401…’ in it’s entirety it makes perfect sense as part of the 4AD catalogue. Jóhannsson found inspiration for the record after discovering his father’s IBM1401, a cumbersome 1960s computer system for which his father was a technician. Apparently these machines used to cost $2500 per day to lease and probably did a lot less than you’d think given the price, but Jóhannsson saw something intriguing to sample and in the same way that he utilised morse code receivers and ham radios on his Kitchen Motors disc, he uses IBM1401 training tapes as the thematic link on these tracks. An English voice can be heard describing the computer parts and how they work and how to engineer repairs on the machine and it’s peripherals, of course this is something that can ruin an otherwise good piece of music, but Jóhannsson in his restraint has managed to use the samples so cleverly that they actually become part of the music itself. The assertive voice becomes a symbol of nostalgia and that dusty sentiment, a picture of technology passed, or an electronic postcard from 1960, and never becomes there merely for the sake of it. Coupled with the simply stunning string arrangements they add a strange ethereal narrative, and while not telling a story as such, they bring vivid pictures to mind with great ease. Jóhannsson’s skill in merging sounds doesn’t end here either, as we heard on the stunning ‘Englabörn’ he can subtly blend his electronic production methods with the orchestral arrangements without it ever falling out of place. Synthesized chimes trip and fall in-between the orchestral swells and radiophonic bleeps to create soundscapes so breathtaking they can leave you totally lost for words. It would be almost offensive however to merely label ‘IBM 1401, A User’s Manual’ as cinematic, rather Jóhannsson has pushed the bar higher and taken the infant post-classical genre to the next logical place, creating an album which doesn’t just suggest visuals, rather with it’s oblique use of sampled voices and atmospheric sounds the visuals are there all the time and are simply left for us to interpret. A challenging, engaging and utterly breathtaking experience, Jóhann Jóhannsson has proved he is out there on his own. Essential purchase." [Boomkat] | 2006 | €14.00 |
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| JONES, A.F. | For Eschrichtiidae | mCD-R | This piece is the first in a series called omniana, and is presented on behalf of two gray whales that frequent the Puget Sound and the Straits of Juan de Fuca. These whales are known by us as Patch (#49), and Little Patch (#53). The piece is both a noise recording and an ambient one: a somewhat musical work that is actually a raw underwater recording of a Washington State ferry approaching and docking in Port Townsend, WA on April 29, 2019. The sounds were captured using hydrophones and condensers simultaneously in open air. Undersea noise pollution is a problem, and a growing one, and there is little policy in the U.S. to address it. Even vessels operated by environmentally conscious organizations like the Washington State Ferries have significant issues to overcome if we are to expect healthier ecosystems. In Washington, Eschrichtiidae are at superior trophic levels in the local waters, and provide a delicate balance to the ecosystem. The winter feeding routines of Eschrichtiidae are essential for food and lipid stores that allow for their demanding migrations to tropical latitudes for breeding. We must expect better, routine maintenance of propulsion trains and propellers from vessels. The intense noise that can be heard here is estimated to be 70-80 dB above what should be considered to be normal. In addition to causing stress to whales, such noise disorients gray and killer whales, fully disrupts their unique communications, and throws into disorder the availability and behaviors of prey species. Listen, enjoy, and advocate for robust undersea noise pollution policy. The sounds and the context: - This ferry is making a slow approach to the Port Townsend dock at the end of its transit from Coupeville, WA. - The loud metallic noises are the sounds its poorly maintained propulsion system and propeller - The propeller stops as the ferry slows its speed - The propeller is used again for navigation - The propeller stops and the ferry slowly shifts to its water jets and thrusters for positioning as it approaches the dock - The ambient sounds are the final process of positioning and docking - The lapping water is the waves from the wake of the ferry during its earlier approach, finally reaching the floating dock I am standing on - the bass sounds heard throughout the recording are the floating dock from which the piece was recorded, bumping into a pylon from shifting waves and currents Alan Jones March 2019 https://taalem.bandcamp.com/album/for-eschrichtiidae-omniana-alm-128 | 2019 | €5.00 |
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| JUILLARD, PIERRE | Haga | mCD-R | pierre juillard is a french naturalist exploring different sound territories, with different collaborators, from field recordings, sound poetry to free improvisation. his solo output is mainly focused on field recordings. "haga" is a fascinating mix of sounds recorded near cherbourg, france. "the name 'haga' comes from norse, an ancient scandinavian language, and would mean 'closed place'. this piece is a collage of recordings made in cap de la hague near cherbourg in august 2019. i tried to capture the diversity of the sound spaces in this small part of the french coastline, a concentrate of biodiversity: cliffs, rocky foreshores, immense sand or pebble beaches, monumental dunes, salt meadows… the history of the sites was also a common theme, from the fortifications of vauban to fossil bunkers, from semaphores watching the coastline to small craft harbours dear to jacques prévert. the beauty of this wild spaces, known as "the little ireland", hides another side: it’s one of the most endangered site on the planet, where massive amounts of nuclear waste are recycled…" (pierre juillard) recorded at saint-vaast-la-hougue, tatihou, urville-nacqueville, baie de quervière, pointe de jardeheu, cap de la hague, goury, baie d'ecalgrain, vauville, dunes de biville, diélette composed and mixed in october-november 2019 https://taalem.bandcamp.com/album/haga-alm-138 "It has been a long time since I last reviewed music by Pierre Julliard; Vital Weekly 863, a collaborative work with Frederique Bruyas; before that, a 3"CDR on the Kaon label, Vital Weekly 811). Taalem calls him a "French naturalist exploring different sound territories, with different collaborators, from field recordings, sound poetry to free improvisation. His solo output is mainly focused on field recordings". The recordings for 'Haga' were made near Cherbourg, France. This is a harbour town with a long history, and Julliard found sounds near the sea, with sea waves, bird sounds, the beach, but also, so it seems near the fortress. Pointing his microphones in various corners of buildings, the resonances of the natural world come to us in a slightly different way. I would think that Juillard restricts his music to natural recordings and not to processing his sounds in any way. Various events flow right into each other or are mixed, so a vivid picture of the place arises. A fine work of pure field recordings." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2021 | €5.00 |
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| JULIUS, ROLF | Music for the Ears | CD | "For a long time I've been thinking about how to create spaces into which one can retreat, where one can find quiet, where one can see, hear, where one is able to concentrate, where one is isolated from the world around but still is able to participate in itby means of art or Music or both' Rolf Julius, 1987. 'Futurism and Dadaism both made use of the synthesis of audio and visual arts to create a singular experience greater than the sum of its parts. This idea was further advanced by the Fluxus and Minimalism movements. Born in 1939 in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, Rolf Julius was profoundly influenced and inspired by these movements while he studied art in Bremen and Berlin. YEars later, after immersing himself in Musical works by artists like Morton Feldman, John Cage, and La Monte Young, Julius began to shift his focus from visual art to the synthesis of sound and visual art and nature, exploring the relationships between sounds and objects and environments. Julius soon discovered how sounds can influence vision, creating simple tones to be presented in conjunction with his early photographic work. Such experiments culminated in the creation of his pioneering work 'Dike Line' (1979), which combined visual images with texture-inducing tones. This piece was presented at the ground breaking exhibition 'Fur Augen Und Ohren' in 1980. Mythical in scope, this was the first major European exhibition attempted to map international research by artists exploring relations between sound and visual art, bringing together work by John Cage, Luigi Russolo, Nam June Paik, Joe Jones, Bill Fontana, Milan Knizak, Harry Bertoia, David Tudor and Rolf Julius. Over the next 30 yEars Julius went on to create some of the most meaningful and moving works in the grey area between Music and art, between sound and silence. Alongside Takehisa Kosugi, Terry Fox, and Akio Suzuki, he has emerged as one of the most important and influential sound artists of our time. Since the early 1980's Julius has referred to his compositions as Small Music, receiving international acclaim from those in the fields of contemporary art and Music for calling the origins of sound and vision into question. Small Music not only describes Julius' approach to composition (soft and compelling sounds from simple instruments and nature), but also a way in which to view his works and ultimately the world. Art historian Bernd Schulz once wrote 'if one recalls John Cage's central theme of 'silence' then Rolf Julius is the contemporary artist who approaches him most closely'. Julius' Small Music has the distinct ability to heighten our perception such that 'silence' becomes a positive quality of a place and a situation, and not just an absence of sound. Whether using photographs, ink drawings, audio compositions, or subtle and sometimes almost hidden outdoor installations, Rolf Julius' works serve as catalyst, increasing our awareness of the great beauty of the world that surrounds us. Western Vinyl is proud to release 'Music for the Ears' the first in a series of Small Music releases by Rolf Julius. With a goal of creating solitary sound environments, the Small Music series will culminate into a boxed edition of seminal works by this master sound artist. 'Music for the Ears' is comprised of two long tracks of gently weaving tones exploring the possibilities of spatial experience. The cover image depicts Julius' sound installation in a bamboo forest in Kyoto, Japan where his Music is placed high in the air, by speakers hanging freely from the branches of the trees. As the Music suspends itself in the air, the tones sway in the wind floating ever so gently, caressing the Ears, the trees, the light, and clouds." [label info] www.westernvinyl.com "Now here's someone who is perhaps world famous in the world of sound art, yet hardly ever appears in Vital Weekly. Its, among other reasons, because he didn't release that music, but also because his music is usually heard in museums and galleries and not always on record. But the good news is that Western Vinyl will re-release eight of his old works, starting with 'Music For The Ears', which comes with the subtitle 'small music no. 1' and small music it is. 'Song From The Past', the first of the two pieces on this album sounds like one long tape loop of bamboo flute being played. Every now and then it stops and then it starts again. Music that is very undemanding - an environmental piece to fill your ambience. Or perhaps music to meditate by - if only I ever did that. The second piece 'Music On Two High Poles' is different. It might be played on a small, children's organ or a harmonium, cut into two loops of a varying length. Its a bit louder, or perhaps it just appears so: I turned up the volume quite a bit for the first piece, so this one comes in louder. I think both pieces are designed to do the same thing: create a sonic environment. What I especially liked about it, and that's something you can only hear when the volume is quite a bit, is all the extra sounds that come along: the static hiss from the used analogue tapes that creates a nice additional sonic layer to the music. And which doesn't seem to make the music static but very much alive and vibrant. Excellent music. This is the earliest Rolf Julius recording, from 1979 and the start of a great career. Can't wait for the other seven releases." [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2010 | €14.00 |
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| K11 [= PIETRO RIPARBELLI ] | K | MC | "The shortest release is by K11, and also one of the few whose title reflects the bandname. This is perhaps the most obscure release of these three. Rumbling deep end sounds with some mild distortion and far away we hear some sounds in the background. That could be sounds picked up in a large room with lots of natural reverb, say a church so. The humming sound returns on the second side of this tape, but now also pushed towards the back and again with sounds picked up, seemingly, at random. Streetsounds, radio interference and such like. Things build up over the course of the tape to a mighty crescendo of colliding field recordings. I preferred the b-side over the a-side, simply for its more austere, creepy character." [FdW/Vital Weekly] www.silentes.it/tapestry | 2011 | €7.50 |
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| KA-SPEL, EDWARD (LEGENDARY PINK DOTS) | Lyvv, China Doll | CD | "Edward Ka-spel, singer and frontman of The Legendary Pink Dots, may not need any more introduction. Ever since the early 80s' the Pink Dots are an unqiue group, that blend together modern electronic music with psychedelic music from the 70's, with as a landmark of its own, the apocalytpic lyrics and voice of Edward Ka-spel. As a solo artist his music is not so complex and varied regarding instrumentation, but they create a more private and intimate atmosphere. "Lyvv Chian Doll" was original released as a casette by Ka-spel on his own Mirrordot cassette label. Originally this cassette was intended as a simple live document, but during its compilation that intention became obscured. Ultimately only half of the material was live, and it featured much previously unheard work. For the CD version, only "The Horn Section" is live, while a number of sketches and small pieces have been inserted, recordings that cover the period 1982-1992, so do be patient with the occasional dubious sound quality. CD is packed in standard jewel box with transparant tray." [label info] www.staalplaat.com | 1993 | €14.50 |
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| Caste O' Graye Skreeens | CD | "When all's been said & all's been seen, face it, we are just machines". Last copies of this album on the now defunct World Serpent label. Consists more or less of the fabulous one-tracker "OUR CAPTAIN'S EYES" (53+ min.), a very subtle & dense track with various parts, partly pulsating or with little beats, partly free floating atmospheric & experimental, and also the typical KA-SPEL melodies & vocals appear.... this is like having 20 different tracks in one long surrealistic & weird journey... | 2001 | €13.00 |
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| KAHN, JASON | Miramar | CD | Vier super-minimale und recht “trockene” drones dieses inzwischen in der Schweiz ansässigen Klangkünstlers, der wie z.B. ALVIN LUCIER den Raum als Instrument benutzt... “ 'miramar' features new pieces recorded live in studio using analogue synthesizer, floor tom and small cymbals. Recorded with eight different room microphones, the room being extremely large, with 20-meter high ceilings. Each room microphone picked up a different frequency range, depending on its placement and how the room's resonant frequency mixed with what I was playing. In addition to analogue synthesizer and percussion, the room itself was thus the third «instrument» Jason Kahn used on this recording. Jason Kahn was born in New York, grew up in Los Angeles, moved to Berlin in 1990. He now lives in Zürich. His audio work is a mix of electronic and acoustic sound sources, produced with minimal percussion, laptop or analogue synthesizer. In recent years he has also created several sound installations. He started the cd label «cut» in 1998” [label description] | 2004 | €14.00 |
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| KAMMERFLIMMER KOLLEKTIEF / STRINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS | split | 10inch | "Für den Auftakt der halluzinatorischen Wahrnehmungen gewidmeten Parakusis-Reihe des mit Bill Laswell gestarteten Karlsruher Labels, variieren Thomas Weber, Heike Aumüller & Johannes Frisch zwei Tracks ihres Staubgold-Releases Jinx, bei denen der Musik Flügel wachsen, die einen in eine Art ‚out of body experience‘ davon tragen können. ‚Jnx (Excursion)‘ klopft, rasselt und dröhnt und Aumüller kaut mit zittrigem Gesang die Luft weich, damit das Karlsruher Schamanen-Kollektief an der Weltachse entlang in die Anderwelt gelangt. ‚Both Eyes Tight Shut‘ (Instrumentalversion) bringt Strings -Frischs Kontrabass arco, Heike Wendelins Viola und Martin Siewerts Lapsteel - so in Schwingung, dass die Phantasie auf sanften Langwellen den Orbit verlässt und durch Outer Space driftet, nirvanasüchtig wie der finale Surfer in Dark Star. Zwei astrale Trips in der Tradition krautiger Space-Psychedelik. Hinter fest geschlossenen Augen öffnet sich die Tür des Cactus Tree Motels auf den Mäanderweg in Sound, der in Altered States lockt. Stringtheoretisch versiert zeigt sich auch das von BiP_HOp-Macher Philippe Petit versammelte 11-köpfige Ensemble STRINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. Saiteninstrumente haben die absolute Mehrheit gegenüber der Fraktion aus Trompete, Saxophon, Vibraphon, Sampler und Petits Laptop. Nach einer ersten Duftmarke auf der BiP_HOp-Compilation Generation v.8 wird man hier entführt in den ‚Forest of Spades‘ mit seinem von Streichern und Vibraphon gestreuten Nadelteppich, von Perceval Bellones süßem Saxophon in ein ‚Fantastique Alaska‘ und von Andy Diagrams Trompete auf Bergkämme, auf denen sich nicht nur die Wasser scheiden. Diese Fourth World hat ihren Magnetpol im Osten. Die Musik verflüssigt das Bewusstsein so, dass es dem Sehnsuchtshorizont stetig zuströmt. Wenn nicht auch die Anderwelt ein Kugel wäre." [Bad Alchemy] "Kammerflimmer Kollektief/Strings Of Consciousness Split 10". Exclusive tracks on a strictly limited aficionados edition of 500. Both bands recently released a full-length album. Gatefold sleeve, elaborate artwork." [label info] www.karlrecords.net | 2007 | €12.00 |
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| KARINI / PALADINO / SIMON FISHER TURNER | Ghosts of Industrial Sunday | CD + DVD | "Here comes a new welcome entry in the ‘private sounds’ series of the now growing 13 catalogue. "Ghosts of Industrial Sunday" is a short film by Maria Assunta Karini and Francesco Paolo Paladino, whose music were composed by Simon Fisher Turner. This release consists of a video DVD, which contains the film, and a audio CD that features the original soundtrack and other compositions inspired by this project that Turner created on purpose; they are accompanied by an oversize 20 pages booklet that offers some images taken from the film and delves more into the concept behind it. As a film, “Ghosts of Industrial Sunday” portrays those places attended by human beings in order to carry out their profession, while they are empty, for a limited period of time, during a break, on a Saturday or Sunday. These are places where the human presence, fatigue, pain, hope are palpable presences, where silence seizes the humble labor objects almost by magic and where things talk and expose without having to necessarily utter any words. The path chosen by the directors relates to a sort of secular “via crucis”, it is an objective progress through the human work’s granted moment of interruption in order to analyze it, to describe it and to underscore its dramatic sense, through the exclusive aid of inanimate objects. The music created by Turner as a soundtrack to the film expresses a delicate tranquillity through notes of piano which are just mottled by the electronic elements in the background, while an unspoken sense of drama hovers in the air and the circular motion of the composition gradually absorbs the listener. Among the remaining tracks, is worth mentioning the evocative and intense soliloquy of "Piano For Double Lesson" and the hanging drones of the first part of "Some Lost Music". Maria Assunta Karini, sculptor, photographer, writer and director, has shown her works in several major Museums, in Korea, Brazil and the United States. She has produced several short and medium length films, that have participated in the Cannes Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, MACBA Museum of Contemporary art Barcelona, MADC Costa Rica, and has been awarded numerous prizes at art and cinema festivals. Francesco Paolo Paladino, script writer, musician and director, has received an award by F.E.D:I:C: at the 66th Festival of Venice. He has participated more than once in the Cannes Film Festival (Short Corner) and he has won the Houston’s World Film Festival and the New York Independent Film Festival. Simon Fisher Turner has composed music for Derek Jerman, David Lynch, Mike Hodges, Michael Almareyda and several others authors. His recent soundtrack for “The Epic of Everest”, a film made in 1924, was nominated “Soundtrack of the Year” for 2013 by Mojo magazine. His CDs have been published all over the world." [label info] http://13.silentes.it www.silentes.net | 2014 | €15.00 |
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| KARL BÖSMANN | Euphoria Mitte | CD | "With the whole bunch of very limited edition releases on such labels as Tosom, Domestic Violence Recordings, Verato Project and the luxurious LP made by Youdonthavetocallitmusic, the name of German musician Karl Bösmann is emerging since 2003. This is his second real CD after Unton (2005, Badbeatz Records) and includes several new compositions, showing the maturity and intensity of his prolific talent. Karl Bösmann irritates. His name alone, which reminds of Kafka's wayfarer to America, Karl Roßmann, is ambiguous. A mixture of sinister and typical german, where you can think of one of Alexander Kluge's Lebenslufe, which show in protocolar dryness the deceitfulness of fate. In fact did his debut Das Kind in der Küche (2004) exactly met this impression. The soundscapes between programmed music and abstraction - in more prosaic words, Bösmann constructs, in the good old tradition of electroacoustic music, with instruments played by himself, and completely without the fashionable chic of a laptop: minimal repetitive passages, especially drones that vibrate in themselves, that flash, shimmer and take a character and 3D-quality of its own. Phill Niblock and Ligeti could come to the back of your mind, a resonance that is an honour to both sides. Other musical influences ranges from AMM and Aube through Nurse With Wound and Organum to Ghédalia Tazartès and Xenakis and so sets his ambitions way over eye-level." [label info] www.monochromevision.ru "Karl Bosmann is a German post-industrial / electro-acoustic tactician who seems to from the Conrad Schnitzler mold of continuous experimentation with his equipment in pushing it to expressive means, no matter how atemporal or atonal the resulting sounds might be. Our previous experience with Bosmann had been through monolith drone- fields that swelled from electronics and possibly cymbals into discordant dissonant crescendos somewhere between SUNNO))) and Sunroof! Here, Bosmann showcases a wide array of electronic circuity, whose home-built, tone-bent aesthetics take after the sound poems of early electronic music coupled with the nondestructive strategies from the likes of Nautical Almanac. His electronic insectoid blips, click, and blorps percolate through live-wire electrical fields and the humming cycles akin to fluorescent bulbs. Many of these tracks begin rather charmingly similar to something by Dan Deacon or Black Dice, but Bosmann twists the demeanor of his electronics through anxiety- riddled tones that glow as if a background radiation, with all of the clicks then standing in for Geiger counter pulses to allude to the neutrino bath that he's unleashed through his electronics. The pierced feedback mantra "Around The Sun" is a great recapitulation of what Arcane Device and Nurse With Wound have done with similar material. Dotted through the experiments, Bosmann interjects collages of industrial-space field recordings coupled with overlapping male / female spoken word bits, whose content and context are smeared to the point of abstraction following the Hafler Trio's many demonstrations of information overload." [Aquarius Rec.] | 2010 | €12.50 |
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| KASSEL JAEGER | Fernweh | LP | Black Truffle is pleased to announce a new edition of Kassel Jaeger’s Fernweh, returning François J. Bonnet’s electroacoustic project to the label five years after the acclaimed Meith (BT069). Originally released on Giuseppe Ielasi and Jennifer Veillerobe’s impeccably curated Senufo Editions in 2012, Fernweh stands near the beginning of the gradual expansion of Bonnet’s approach after the austere acoustic textures of Aerae and Algae (both released on Senufo), leading to the lush, layered environments of recent solo works on Shelter Press and the epic electronic expeditions undertaken in duo projects with Stephen O’Malley and Jim O’Rourke. A major work in the Kassel Jaeger oeuvre, stretching over two LP sides, Fernweh draws together synthesized and musique concrète materials into a drifting assemblage. Its title’s meaning is close to the concept of ‘Wanderlust’, fitting for this music that moves freely and unexpectedly between what Bonnet calls ‘climates’. Beginning with fizzing electronics whose rhythm of gradual approach suggests breaking waves, the clinical atmosphere is soon haunted by intangible traces of lived reality. Textures call up wind, water, insects, the crunch of feet on sand or the clinking of glasses, yet they can never be identified with any certainty. At times these concrete elements possess a vivid ‘closeness’; at others, the sounds shade into a formless distance. Though the listener forms no clear picture from the concrete sounds, these elements aerate the music, lending it their space. Drawing from the rigorous formal language and conceptual apparatus of the French musique concrète tradition—with which Bonnet, as director of the GRM and researcher into its deepest archival recesses, is intimately familiar—the music of Kassel Jaeger is equally informed by how underground experimental music has rethought electroacoustic techniques, with Fernweh at times calling up the grit and grime of para-industrial eccentrics like Maurizio Bianchi or the Toniutti brothers, and at other moments suggesting the slow-moving grandeur of early Olivia Block. Subtle features of dynamics and rhythm act as connective tissue between the numerous ‘scenes’, with wave-like envelopes, rapid pulsations, and short, tape-loop patterns all recurring throughout the piece, shared ambiguously between electronic and concrete sounds. Amid these shifting, often inharmonic textures, the electronic elements sometimes cohere into melodic shapes and chordal patterns, cutting through the fog in distorted arcs or underpinning the layered surface with slow-moving harmonies. Like his friend and collaborator Jim O’Rourke, Bonnet displays a radical openness at odds with academic tradition, allowing unabashed emotion to coexist with rigorous experimentation. As Fernweh dies away with mysterious shudders, listeners are left at once moved and unsure of exactly what they just heard. https://kasseljaeger.bandcamp.com/album/fernweh-2 | 2025 | €28.00 |
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| KATCHMARE | Frieda Harris | CD-R | "An algid five tracks Occult homage to Lady Frieda Harris (mostly known as the artist behind Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot deck) is the case with this new creation by Nick Hoffman aka Katchmare. "Frieda Harris" Represents both progression and realization Hoffman explored on previous Katchmare albums that he recorded during winter time, as it substantiates in the 25 minutes album opener "Winterreise"- A gesture to the renowned Schubert winter piece in the shape of saturnine and freezing drones that shifts to "Unseen Chariot", a picturesque track that offers noise washes alongside silent intervals and sensory drones gliding in idiosyncratic space heaven. "Wind Canticle" comes next as a methodical winter hymn with bitter ceremonial qualities, whilst "Shifting Snow" is a short and intimidating segment before "Ulrikke" rigorously end this album with an evident observation: Destruction implies creation. Death implies life. Winter is Death." [label info] www.hcbrecords.com | 2011 | €9.00 |
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| KDONOVAN | Air Vent | mCD-R | “air vent is a project that takes natural sounds out of their specific location, the sounds of peoples personal spaces [via mobile telephone] & places them live via radio senders or the internet into new contexts, into diverse locations, into both similar & contrasting environments. the work stems from ideas based on the relationship between sound & the sound source; natural rhythms & patterns in everyday sound [background noise, dialogue, etc]; the fine line, & often friction between natural & synthetic sound in connection to space; audio & visual perception. air vent was first realized with juni radio [www.juniradio.net ] at bootlab in berlin. phone calls were made hourly [almost like an alternative news] from berlin to various places throughout the world. participants were invited to 'air their space' for 5 minutes, free to make sound or use the telephone to record sound, in whatever way they wished. the project was further progressed during a residency with ‘the fear’ at hull time based arts [www.timebase.org ], from which these recordings were taken. visually, the performance made reference to a typical dj setup, using two telephones instead of turntables. calls were made to mobile phones around the world, recipients were asked to answer their telephone & simply to leave it to record the natural background noise of their immediate environment, to convey their specific time/space/situation through sound. these calls were broadcast at the htba a:nx performance space & sent live via the internet to other environments.” [label info] mCD-R in special cardboard-box | 2005 | €9.00 |
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| KE/HIL | Syndrome / Antidrome | LP | "LP comes in 2 different covers – the SYNDROME-Cover and the ANTIDROME-Cover, both versions are lim.num. 250 cop. plus download code. All indicators point in one direction. Starting at „Hellstation“ towards „Zone 0“, passing buildings whose true purpose is less based on functionality than on degeneration. To degenerate the population, painting them pictures of would could but never will be. Concrete ravines, which are not made to live in, much more to delineate. The cries of the „Prekariat“ drowned with the play and song of the theatres. A city as you find it everywhere, marked by the pleasures of the people, covered by wishful thinking, yet full of Babylonian arrogance. From here to there, from the „Flesh Supply Center“ to the forensic psychiatry. And here and there a man rises up and connects with his kind. A Forensic Resistance. Follow „Ke / Hil“ on their way through ruins that no one sees – hear screams no one hears – exist! , so no one else does. „Syndromes / Antidromes“ rattles at the societies „Comfort-zone“ – Is this really Ke/Hil ? play it loud to hear the extreme cold!" | 2017 | €19.00 |
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| KESZLER, ELI | Stadium | do-LP | NewYork-based artist Eli Keszler is at the apex of his career. This year alone he’s had a three-month-long solo exhibition (“Blue Skies” at Fuse Arts, Bradford, UK), performed internationally in a duo with Laurel Halo, collaborated with noted Hungarian author La´szlo´ Krasznahorkai, taught experimental composition and performance at Camp in the Pyrenees mountains, composed music for Turner Prize– winning visual artist Laure Prouvost, and most recently embarked on a world tour with Oneohtrix Point Never. “Stadium” is his new album for Shelter Press. As his ninth solo record,“Stadium” reflects his move from South Brooklyn to Manhattan, where he produced the album. The constant blurry motion and ever-changing landscapes of the fast-paced island helped him modify and shape his sound into a new kind of film noir. “After we moved into our East Village apartment,” Keszler explains, “we found a guitar pick on the floor that read ‘Stadium’. We looked at each other at the same time and had the same thought. It could have gone any number of ways.” Indeed, there is a startling amount of expression at play on each track, where intersections of melody, restraint and rhythm are used to challenge the idea of memory, impression and space. Keszler is often mistaken for an electronic musician, but in fact his sounds are raw and natural, produced by hand live in-situ. His performance with the drumset and acoustic percussion are central to his work. He produces almost impossible textures through self-realized methodologies: cascading melodies, a shadow of voices, and a unique pointillistic materiality. Although playing with the intensity of digitally-created music, his communications are done live with no processing. These haptics are what give “Stadium” its depth and its warmth. In a recent interview for Dazed, collaborator Oneohtrix Point Never comments, “I’ve always described his playing as bacterial. He’s able to parallax into very small, very acute, very specific relationships between percussive textures. It’s beyond just being a drummer — he’s a world-building percussionist.” In “Stadium,” Keszler uses lived experience to realize the most wide-ranging sound he’s created to date. “Stadium” draws out textures from overlapping geographies (from Shinjuku arcades to city streets and Brutalist architecture) and transforms these travelogue field recordings into starting points for composition. He then builds on these environments to create subliminal spaces for his percussion, keyboards and acoustic instruments. His “world-building” techniques are pushed to new levels with mesmerizing string and brass arrangements. Throughout the album, Keszler’s writing, keyboard playing and scoring operate like a sonic channel that transports the listener into a quaking web. Perhaps this is the “stadium” referred to in the title: a larger network of sound and bodies moving continually, oscillating and turning in on itself. Keszler has explored these ideas before both in his visual work and sound installations - especially notable on projects such as his massive Manhattan Bridge installation ‘Archway’ or his Boston City Hall work 'Northern Stair Projection'. “Stadium” takes these long-running ideas to new depths. “My installations work with massive city spaces for a complex of individuals,” Keszler states. “The recordings on Stadium are inverted. They are landscapes scaled for the singular. Like a mass collecting in one arena, this music compresses city spaces, genre and instrumentalism into an amorphous form. On the record, there are ruptures of information and happenstance. Like a game, it could go any number of ways.” | 2018 | €26.50 |
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| KG AUGENSTERN | Circles and Cycles | BOOK + CD | Kg Augenstern (Christiane Prehn and Wolfgang Meyer) have been exploring the world for many years with their “Tentacles,” extendable fiberglass canes that allow them to touch and extract the sounds of the places they are travelling through. These tentacles have become a kind of prostheses to generate subtle experiences that require attentive listening. The various aspects of the project are constantly transformed and presented as audiokinetic installations, live-streams, radio broadcasts or sound installations in contemporary art spaces. In autumn 2019, the artists explored places in Sicily that have been abandoned within the last few decades. With their tentacles, they scratched circles on the surface of these contemporary ruins to reveal the specific sounds of the various surfaces and their surroundings. A camera installed in the center of the circles recorded the images. The research was accompanied by experiments with raw sheep’s wool and clay as materials corresponding to the ephemeral appearance and transitory atmosphere of the places. The outcome of the research was presented as an exhibition in an old prayer hall in Palermo. The CD invites listeners to explore 10 abandoned places, including the location of the final exhibition. 11 Tracks (37′44″) Book & CD (500 copies) KG Augenstern’s “tentacle” performs surgeries on abandoned places. The duo from Berlin seeks out locations that lie between the states of life and death, populated and depopulated, places constantly changing, and thus in an enduring state of malleable equilibrium. They are the apocalyptic souvenirs of humans’ attempts to form landscapes. That which exists tends towards new shapes, which slowly bury mankind’s contingencies and intentions. The forgotten place and its surfaces are scratched in circles. The media to be studied are the subtle sounds caused by the scratching. At times the tentacle glides lightly along the surface, barely touching; on another pass it might bite in, leaving a mark. It stretches itself out, or blends with the material beneath it, all the while releasing its tensions in the form of deep, diffused sound vibrations. Or it springs in powerful leaps across the ground beneath it. An intense sound is called forth, rhythmic and repetitive, embedded in the temporal cycles of the described circles. Time is rendered instable, volatile, surreal, and reveals its magic. The process is repeated in the same or another location. The combinations of time and material transform themselves into a cyclical continuum. KG Augenstern creates an additional cycle out of sheep’s wool, clay, and fire. From materials found in the ruins, burned objects are created which are fragile and subordinate to their own disintegration. The observer slips outside the field of consciousness, and attention is directed towards the revelation of baselessness, not from within the realm of understanding, but in the form of realization in a material sense. Life is transformed into a question, and this uncertainty reveals the instability of existence. Ennio Pellicanò Curator Step by step, staying in this lonely place by the sea, with that empty beach, working in all these ruins without ever seeing any living person, only birds– mostly pigeons–, insects, and lizards, a kind of hypnotic, apocalyptic dimension develops. In almost every place there is an abandoned camp somebody homeless used to use a long time ago for a temporary shelter, with worn out clothes and an old mattress. Shy dogs: one, a German shepherd with two puppies vacillates between being curious and afraid, same as me. Circle by circle, rubbish, wet walls, cracked ceilings, holes to take care of and another uncertain stairway. Contemporary archeology in contemporary ruins. Disgust, fear, tension, expectations. Layers of birdshit on children‘s toys, suddenly left behind, hard material under soft organic patina…. a baby carriage, furniture, pictures on the walls and beds still made …what will wait in the next room, the next building, the next structure? SCRATCHING A LIDO Lido Las Vegas was built in the ’60s and was closed by the authorities in 2017. Before its closure, it had been run illicitly within a nature reserve, and without any authorization, state concession, or certificate of use. It is a wooden structure with small rooms for summer guests, a restaurant and a playground for children. A solid, newer but also abandoned structure with more rooms was built just beside. The scratching circles were recorded on the terraces, between the rooms and next to the playground. The surface is tiles, sand, rubbish, wood and stones. Everything is sandy. The waves of the sea can be heard in the background. SCRATCHING A MOUNTAIN VILLAGE Cunziria is a village the dates of whose founding as an urban nucleus are unknown, but it is known that in the 1920s a slow decline began, until the 1960s, when the artisan practice of tanning stopped. Some houses have been restored but left behind unfinished and are now used as stables. In one house we found raw sheep’s wool covering the ground. At a nearby sheep farm, the farmer offered us plenty of raw wool for free. The scratched circles are partly inside and partly outside of the houses. Sometimes it was hard to move the tentacle through the plants covering the buildings. One of the circles is performed inside of a cellar, with basins formerly used for tanning. The surface varies from dense, thorny bush, stones, mud and clay to tiled floor in the restored rooms. In the background it is possible to hear sheep and sheep bells, birds, and from time to time a car on the close-by small road. SCRATCHING A COMMERCIAL AREA Beside Route S115 south of Catania is an abandoned commercial area with five big buildings. They were built in the 1990s, and given up after a short period of usage. The reason was that the new Catania-Syracusa highway was built only a short distance away, and the formerly busy road along the coast was almost forgotten. Patinaed signs on the wall still show that there once was a supermarket, a car-dealership, a furnisher….. Now a semi-organic layer covers the almost-new concrete floors, and birds fly about the huge halls, while wild plants crack the surfaces. SCRATCHING A CASTLE Castello del Duca di Misterbianco is an old castle-like villa, built in 1930, not far from a river and the beach. It has many rooms, and horse stables. It was abandoned in the Second World War after it was heavily bombed and partly destroyed by english soldiers, attacking the Germans who had occupied the castle. It is covered with plants. The surface is rocky. Two of the scratched circles were done on two different flat roofs on a windy day, the other ones inside of the structure, where it was even difficult to move the tentacle because of all the stone shards and plants scattered around. SCRATCHING A FURNITURE STORE Sicilmobile is a big furniture store built in the late ’70s in Brutalist concrete style. It was abandoned around the year 2000 for economic reasons. The building with its two levels is amazing and spacious. A restaurant was connected to the commercial area. The area has been used by skateboarders for some time. The surface is tiles, concrete, small stones and pieces of glass. In the main halls, broken bricks, fallen from the ceiling, cover the floor. One of the scratched circles was done outside of the building and the rest in different parts inside. There are two roads with a constant flow of traffic close to the building. The airport is also close. SCRATCHING A BRICK FACTORY Noted art critic Vittorio Sgarbi described Fornace Penna as “a secular basilica by the sea.” Indeed, this abandoned industrial structure echoes some of the crumbling medieval cathedrals scattered around Europe. Built entirely from solid stones in the early 1900s, Fornace Penna specialized in manufacturing bricks sold them across the Mediterranean region. However, business lasted only a little over ten years. On the night of January 24th, 1924, arson turned the factory into the fascinating and deserted stone skeleton we see today. The wind blows through the arcs of the ruins, which are heavily covered with all kinds of plants. There is an almost round, accessible vaulted kiln under the center of the building. With so many plants and rocks all over the place, it was difficult to find any locations for the scratchings. The waves of the sea can be heard in the background. At one place, a lizard tried to attack the tentacle during scratching. SCRATCHING A PAPER MILL S.p.a Cartiere Larena is a paper mill that was closed more than 30 years ago. It appears that the first paper made in Europe was produced in Sicily toward the end of the tenth century, and there are still several specialized paper producers, but this mill didn‘t survive the economical crisis of the ’80s. It is a beautiful building, still containing two big huge stone bowls, with motor-driven millstones inside. The surface is variable, from stone to clay and gravel. A road is close to the building and in the background a football match can be heard. SCRATCHING A BORGO Borgo Rizzo is one of the borgos in Sicily that were built between 1939 and 1940 under the then fascist government, with the goal of transforming agricultiral production systems and colonizing fertile, unused areas by attracting farmers to new villages that provided all main services, such as schools, churches, post offices, etc. Some of the houses have been partially renovated with EU funding, but remain unfinished and unused, tending to turn into the new generation of ruins. The area is very quiet with only very few cars driving on the nearby road. A wild dog with two puppies lives on the terrace of one of the houses. All in all it has the atmosphere of a ghost town. SCRATCHING A FORWARDING COMPANY Transporti Avimec was a big Catanian freight-forwarding company which was seized and closed in 1989 on suspicion of having been owned by the mafia and used for illegal transactions. Several attempts by mafia members to buy the company back were not successful. It was possible to enter the closed property by a hole in the wall. In the private house on the property, everything seemed to have been left behind from one minute to the next. Children’s toys, furniture and beds appear recently abandoned. The halls and the courtyard are empty. The area’s surface is partly covered with rubbish or birds‘ faeces. In the distance, traffic and the neighbours‘ trucks can be heard. SCRATCHING A CHAPEL The final exhibition was presented as a site-specific audiovisual installation at the former Oratory of Santa Maria del Sabato in one of the oldest parts of Palermo. The chapel is in a state of abandonment, waiting to converted into a synagogue. In the past it was a mosque, then a synagogue, and an oratory. The first scratch was taken in the empty hall, with just one tentacle scratching a circle. The second one is, as it was during the installation, recorded at the center of the middle circle of three motor-driven circle-scratching tentacles, with raw sheep’s wool covering parts of the floor, being moved from time to time by the tentacles. The third recording is the sound of the three tentacle circles, recorded from beside them. https://www.gruenrekorder.de/?page_id=18680 | 2020 | €18.00 |
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| KIRCHENKAMPF | Sidereal Lament | MC | epic and cosmic experimental ambient music from this long-running American artist www.diophantine.net | 2014 | €8.00 |
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| KISS THE ANUS OF A BLACK CAT | Weltuntergangsstimmung | CD | "On their fifth album Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat have transformed from a drone-folk outfit into a kind of new wave ensemble. Nevertheless, their hypnotising and apocalypic qualities have remained. Frontman Stef Heeren recorded the songs for 'Weltuntergangsstimmung' with an old drum machine, analogue synthesizers and guitar. None other than the highly regarded An Pierlé adds wonderful backing vocals on a few songs." [label info] www.zealrecords.com | 2012 | €12.00 |
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| KLEISTWAHR | Winter / Music for Zeitgeist Fighters | do-CD | https://garymundykleistwahr.bandcamp.com/album/winter-music-for-zeitgeist-fighters-2 This is the first CD release of the Kleistwahr albums Winter and Music for Zeitgeist Fighters. The albums previously appeared on vinyl. Winter was originally released on cassette in 2019 as part of the On Corrosion box set compilation released by the Helen Scarsdale Agency. The same label reissued it on vinyl in 2021. Music for Zeitgeist Fighters was released on the Nashazphone label on vinyl in 2017. This 2CD set is released by Fourth Dimension Records. With the end of Vital Weekly rapidly approaching, is there something lost? As in, for me? Something I will regret? Absolutely. For one, it is no longer receiving music from musicians whose work I have enjoyed for a long time, and you know where this is going: Gary Mundy's Kleistwahr is such a project. I am a fan, but not one to rush out and buy every record. Luckily, there's Fourth Dimension Records to reissue the limited vinyl onto a format I prefer: the CD. This double CD contains the LP 'Winter', first released by the Helen Scarsdale Agency in 2021 (an edition of 300 copies), and the 'Music For Zeitgeist Fighters' on Nashazphone in 2017, also in an edition of 300 copies. I missed out on both of them, but, as said, always welcome on a CD, especially with five bonus pieces. Following Kleistwahr's output in recent years, which has been substantial since the restart in 2009, a discernible 'signature sound' can be noted. A few words always spring to mind, and noise is an obvious one, but not noise for the sake of noise. Through the use of reverb, spread across all of Mundy's instruments (guitars, vocals, synths), the sound is dark and ominous, even orchestral. Mundy likes his music to be massive, even in its more vulnerable moments. These arrive using soaring, mournful organ tones, another trademark of the Kleistwahr sound. A tremendous howl of dystopian proportions. A word that fits Kleistwahr's music is psychedelic; not rainbow-coloured, hippy-dippy stuff, but various shades of black and grey, and with the epic length of the pieces, usually between 10 and 20 minutes, there's time for the music to develop and for the listener to be on a spacious drift, into the vast unknown realm of a black hole. While these records are from some years apart, it's interesting to note the differences and similarities, with 'Winter' seemingly having a slightly broader instrumental palette. Still, it's music by the same musician, and the quality of it all is excellent. The bonus tracks on both discs are earlier/alternative versions of the official pieces, and mark some interesting variations. Especially 'Music For Fucked Films' is quite a different thing altogether, but all five offer something different from the main work, and not just for completists. | 2025 | €16.00 |
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| KLINE, PHIL | Around the World in a Daze | 2 x DVD-A | Ausschweifender & hochgelobter neuer Release von PHIL KLINE, den wir bisher nur von der sehr schönen "Glow in the Dark" CD kannten (1998). Dabei ist er in den Staaten sehr bekannt, hat in frühen 80ern eine Band mit JIM JARMUSCH gehabt, war Bestandteil des GLENN BRANCA.Orchesters, und hat als Klangkünstler in diversen Galerien Klang-Installationen "ausgestellt"... AROUND THE WORLD IN A DAZE wurde speziell für "surround sound" aufgenommen und zeigt auf 10 Stücken eine grosse Variabilität, verbindet Komponiertes mit "gefundenen" Quellen, meist geht es um minimale konzeptuelle Arrangements basierend auf vokalem, elektronischem und kammermusikalischem Material; von harmonischen, fast kitschigen Melodien bis hin zu übereinandergeschichten Tape-Flächen und obskuren Field Recordings, z.B. eine Aufnahme aus Afrika von Tausenden Graupapageien die mit seinem dronigen "tape choir" verbunden werden, und ein echtes "Madrigal" gibt es auch zu hören. Auf der zweiten DVD ist dann Film-Material: MEDITATION (8+ min), ein Film / Musik-Clip mit PHIL KLINE, ein 35minütiges Interview mit ihm und einige Fotos. Kommt in einer übergrossen Doppel-DVD Hülle, mit ausführlichem Booklet. "Leading new-music composer Phil Kline debuts a major work on this new surround sound DVD. Heard here for the first time, this 65-minute studio composition was commissioned by Starkland to premiere on this high-resolution surround-sound DVD. Daze is Kline's longest work and biggest commission to date. Daze is also likely the largest work so far commissioned for a high-resolution surround-sound recording. Performers include the uber-cool Ethel string quartet and violin virtuoso Todd Reynolds. Surround-sound tracks place listeners inside wondrous boombox choirs, an ethereal Ethel string quartet, a weird madrigal, hyper-dense bells (hundreds of thousands at one point), richly mournful multi-tracked vocals, soaring violinistics, and an immersive environment of 15,000 African gray parrots. The release also offers a second Extras DVD with a composer-produced music video and a 30-minute interview with Kline and John Schaefer. The custom 5"x10" digipak includes a 24-page booklet. The two DVDs contain a total content of 110 minutes. This release follows Starkland's groundbreaking surround-sound Immersion DVD, now recognized as the first commissioned high-resolution surround-sound recording. Immersion won praise from Sound & Vision, Stereophile, Billboard, etc. and was the #1 best-selling DVD-Audio at Amazon for nearly a year. The main disc offers Daze in several formats for various home playback setups: the standard Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, DTS 5.1, and high-resolution audiophile DVD-Audio, as well as a stereo version. Playback of the Daze music is accompanied by over 80 images shot by Kline." [label description] www.starkland.com "..From the title you may deduce that space is a keyword in this production. Recordings for this project were done all over the world. But besides Kline is very interested in the spacial aspects of music and sound. He played with these aspects by using whole sets of boomboxes for the recording of most tracks. Besides this main interest, other musical items led him by constructing ten very different works. The lengthiest piece 'Pennies from Heaven' is the one I liked most. Because of the sound and because of the structure of the piece. The same descending scale is repeated and repeated again, transposed and multiplied, etc. The constant downward movement is very imaginative and brings about a meditative state. Also the opening piece 'The Housatonic at Henry Street' fascinates because of its multilayered and detailed soundspectrum. Other pieces use the human voice as the most important material, like 'The Wailing Wall' resurrected by the voice of Kline himself. Two other pieces have the violin in the center: 'Svarga yatra' and 'Grand Etude for the Elevation'. The beautiful concluding piece is built from field recordings done in Central Africa. Tracks differ also because for the different structuring principles that are used. But as said the pieces impress above all because of their soundqualities and spatial characteristics. Each piece is accompanied by its own series of photos. Nice photos often. From urban environments, to nature, etc, etc. But I didn't need them for enjoying the music, nor the other way around. And I couldn't bridge them in my imagination. While listening I felt a bit 'imprisoned' by looking at the same time at the pictures. Well, this also a spatial effect I guess. The second dvd has an extensive interview with Kline commenting on each piece. This gives a good insight in what Kline had in mind. Congratulations for Starkland for releasing this extraordinary and well-documented release." [DM, Vital Weekly] | 2009 | €16.50 |
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| KODJABASHIA, NIKOLA | Explosion of a Memory | CD | "Performed by the Macedonian Symphony Orchestra with Balkan electro legend Kiril Dzajkovski, Chris Cutler (percussion), Nikola Kodjbashia (prepared piano), Patric Driver and Valere Novarina (readers). Text fragments are by Heiner Muller and Valere Novarina. A four-dimensional explosion in which stretches of Baroque, folk themes and Byzantine liturgy exist contemporaneously with modern and post-modern materials - much as strata emerge where tectonic plates fold one time over another – settling eventually into long, beautiful, tonal stretches, lighter than air, that drift and attenuate to reveal, dreamily, the old simplicities. Immersive, timeless and unmistakably new, this music respects but definitively breaks with existing schools to explore instead its own geographically unique influences and contradictions. ‘Explosion of a Memory’ is a homage to my literary heroes: James Joyce, Heiner Muller, Valere Novarina, William Gibson, Euripides and Colin Teevan; it’s also a deeply personal epic about the complex relationship between childhood myths, history and perpetual homecoming’. NK NIKOLA KODJABASHIA is one of the Balkan’s most respected and award winning composers. Born into a musical family in Skopje in 1970, he pursued his compositional studies with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Anatol Vieru, György Kurtág, and Rolf Gehlhaar. In the UK, he has scored and conducted music for numerous plays, including Sir Peter Hall’s Bacchae at the National Theatre, Walter Meieryohann’s Internationally acclaimed Kafka’s Monkey at London’s Young Vic, Wedding Day of the Cromagnons for the Soho Theatre, Helter Skelter/Land of the Dead and Monsier Ibrahim and the flowers of the Qu’ran for the Bush Theatre, and Jonathan Kent’s award winning Hecuba at the Donmar warehouse, Covent Garden. He is responsible for the music and sound-design for various BBC TV documentaries and his film compositions include Damianovski’s Dance with Me and Green Pages (Chicago Film Festival Award, UK première at Glastonbury Film stage, 2007). His earlier ReR release, ‘Reveries of the Solitary Walker’ was hailed by John Walters in The Guardian as “…probably the best record of the year”." [full label press release] www.rermegacorp.com | 2010 | €13.00 |
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| KOMMISSAR HJULER / MAMA BÄR / NINNI MORGIA / SILVIA KASTEL | Live in Edinburgh | LP | "In April 2011 the two couples formed by Kommissar Hjuler & Mama Baer and Ninni Morgia & Silvia Kastel ventured for a tour in the UK; it was the first time they played together but their shared common visions, attitude and general craziness actually gave life to an inspired team. Every show was different; in Edinburgh, they decided to perform a piece originally written by Ninni Morgia & Silvia Kastel, "Jericho", that Papa Baer liked. So before the show, the group pre-recorded a tape in a big theater-like room inside the venue, with a spoken version of the lyrics. On stage, Mama Baer projected a video made by her, depicting the four of them standing against a wall; the music starts off with Kommissar manipulating the tape, then the actual "Jericho" lyrics are sung by Mama Baer and Silvia Kastel while Ninni Morgia's bends, buffs and brushes his guitar and Kastel's synthesizer starts growling out of the monster's belly. Tension, discomfort, love, pain, theatre? music? art? Four people, each of them immolates themselves for the cause. This release is available in two editions (Art Edition & Standard Edition). DON'T MISS IT!!!" [label info] www.ricercasonora.com | 2012 | €15.00 |
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| KOUTSOMIHALIS, MARINOS | Soundwalk at Vistonida Lake | CD-R | "Field recordings, both open air and underwater from the mythical Vistonida Lagoon, Thrace, Hellas. Sounds from birds, water, shells etc. Limited to 50 handnumbered copies. Comes in a handmade cloth bag decorated with wood, seashells and dried flowers, all collected from Vistonida Lagoon. Contains 2 inserts with informations, credits, pictures, copy number, chrysallida stamp etc." | 2013 | €10.00 |
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| KOUW, MATTHIJS & GAGI PETROVIC | Recalcitrance | do-CD | After their track on the Moving Music compilation, 'Recalcitrance' is the second collaboration and first full-length release by Matthijs Kouw & Gagi Petrovic. This album will be released as Double CD and digital on April 16th, 2021. "Philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers has studied the operations of states and their mobilization of technical practices to serve a presupposed general interest, which involves the production of rules and norms. Such rules and norms are blind to forms of knowledge that are denigrated as ‘local’ and ‘traditional’, and feature the correlative elimination of what does not conform and cannot be standardized – in other words, what is recalcitrant to objective evaluation. Anything that resists subsumption to technical rationality is seen as a threat to public order (Isabelle Stengers, In Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism, pp.73-4). The eight tracks on ‘Recalcitrance’ examine abstract topics that range from metaphysical speculation and psychological investigation to reflections on the process of creation itself. Taking a shared set of source sounds as their starting point, Matthijs Kouw and Gagi Petrovic invite listeners to trace the common sources of their pieces and to become recalcitrant themselves by experiencing the compositions in ways that defy what Stengers describes as technical rationality. Recalcitrant subjects ask new questions, thereby allowing the currently dominant reductionist mindset obsessed with productivity to be unsettled by space for reflection and quiet contemplation. The album comes in beautiful artwork by Zeno van den Broek and Rutger Zuydervelt and is mastered by Jos Smolders. https://gagi-petrovic.bandcamp.com/album/recalcitrance?label=13328016&tab=music | 2021 | €15.50 |
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| KRAKEN | Untitled | CD | "kraken is back and pulls us down into the abyss - a dark, cold and desolate place that is filled with the droning of oscillators. authentic field recordings mingle with evolving rhythms, and the underlying tension created by the poignant confessions of human beings adds to the unique flavor of kraken: equally fascinating, enchanting and disturbing, the sounds cut right through our souls. for fifty minutes, kraken keeps us in its tight grip and we all cannot resist but realize our own fugacity. fifteen years past the first kraken release, its epitaph is more actual than ever before: when gazing into the abyss for too long, one tardy realizes that he is part of it. from within the vast depths, raubbau brings to you the latest album, unnamed." [label info] www.raubbau.org "Lange Jahre haben wir die beiden Belgier auf NONPOP begleitet. Insbesondere ab Mitte der so genannten Nullerjahre waren JORIS VERMOST und RICARDO GOMEZ Y DE BUCK sehr aktiv, brachten regelmäßig ihre klaustrophobischen Tiefsee-Soundtracks zwischen Dark Ambient, Noise und Collage unter die Leute. (Ein Interview zur Arbeit von KRAKEN findet Ihr hier.) Mit "Strop" auf RAUBBAU (Besprechung) schien sich dann zu bewahrheiten, was KRAKEN aus Spaß bis dahin zu jedem Album sagten: Es sei ihr finales. Vier Jahre Funkstille ohne jedwede Ankündigung neuer Aktivitäten. Umso erfreuter war ich über die Nachricht von RAUBBAU, dass nun tatsächlich ein weiteres Album erscheint, passend zur Zurückhaltung einfach ohne Titel – "Untitled". "A dark, cold and desolate place" verspricht das Label, "equally fascinating, enchanting and disturbing" – diese Beschreibung deckt sich mit meiner bisherigen Wahrnehmung von KRAKEN. Und auch die gleichzeitig ästhetischen, aber sehr trostlosen Alltagsfotos, mit denen das Duo seit jeher seine Alben schmückt, deuten auf Kontinuität hin. Tatsächlich hat auch das aktuelle Werk eine hohe Wiedererkennbarkeit und liefert mit dem ersten Track einen der besten der Bandgeschichte. "Untitled 1" beginnt überraschend mit einem deutschen Text: Eine furchtsame und angewiderte, rezitierende Frauenstimme (mit Akzent) berichtet von einem "schwarzen Loch, das alles verschlingt". Sie flüstert von Verfall, Drogen, Tot und Unrat – also vom ganz normalen Leben. Harsche, knirschende, aber nicht unschöne Sounds fügen sich darunter zu einem Ambientteppich, der wiederum abrupt von Billigbeats, von Surren und Knattern unterbrochen wird. Es folgt eine melodiösere Strecke mit Gitarrentönen, die weiterhin den Gegensatz des gesamten Albums aufrecht hält: schön vs. hässlich, Freundlichkeit vs. Verderben. Das Flüstern und allerlei mystische Geräusche spielen eine Rolle, manchmal erinnert das Stück gar an geknurrten Urfolk, um am Ende wieder von flächiger Trostlosigkeit eingeholt zu werden. "Untitled 2" wirkt als Collage aus diversen, organischen Sounds. Zwischen Field Redordings und Vocals schiebt sich ein Drone und bringt einige rituell anmutende Komponenten wie Stammesgeheul oder Kampfesrufe mit. "Untitled 3" besteht im Wesentlichen aus dem rhythmischen Peitschen von Frequenzen, ebenfalls mit entfernt unterlegten, menschlichen Geräuschen. Hypnotischer Dauerbeschuss wie intensives Hubschrauberdröhnen. In "Untitled 4" spielt erneut eine Frauenstimme – spanisch? – die tragende Rolle, spricht verzweifelt zu höhligen Sounds. Das Stück geht dann über in ambienthafte Drones und verströmt die das Album durchziehende, unheimliche Atmosphäre. "Untitled 5" schließt sich nahtlos an, als düstere Soundhöhle mit weiteren Vocals, hier kommt sehr deutlich das typische KRAKEN-Flair zum Tragen, der Bezug zur See mit Geräuschen wie knarzenden Schiffsbalken. "Untitled 6" schließlich ist überwiegend ein noisiges, ansteigendes Kreischen, das Abheben eines Düsenjets oder platzende Lungen bei Sauerstoffmangel im Wasser. Am Ende läuten die Totenglocken, mit denen die rund 55 Minuten auch begonnen haben. Belgien steht ja bei der Fußball-WM hoch im Kurs. Musikalisch fällt mir in der Regel wenig zu diesem Land ein. KRAKEN allerdings sind ein Aushängeschild, und ich bin froh, dass sie sich wieder zeigen. Diese Mischung aus Trostlosigkeit und Eleganz, die Reduzierung auf menschliche Ängste und Triebe in Kombination mit der sich manchmal einschleichenden Unterwassersymbolik – das ist einmalig. 'Human Dark Ambient', vor allem im ersten Stück auf ganz hohem Niveau." [Michael We. / NON-POP] | 2014 | €6.00 |
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| KRAUSBAUER, JOHN & R KEENAN LAWLER | Spectre of Radiants | CD | R Keenan Lawler & John Krausbauer's “Spectre of radiants” is a droning, everlasting buzz of strings, gently undulating and intersecting. Unconventionally played, as usual, the resonator guitars and the banjos, builds the perfect stream of sound to accompany your longest days. Fitting in the ultraminimalist/drone panorama, this acoustic gem follow the lineage draw by authours like Phill Niblock, Tony Conrad or Elaine Radigue, mixing and confonting it with the direct attitude toward sound of people like Jim O'Rourke to finally build another chapter in the investigation on acoustic and physics that underline the very musical spirit of the authors. R Keenan Lawler is a Louisville, Kentucky based multi-instrumentalist, improviser, composer, and sound artist. Influenced and obsessed by post-punk, jazz, free improvisation, ancient and modern classical music, blues, nature, non-western music and a philosophy of "transcendence through sound." He is best known for developing a highly focused idiosyncratic language on the metal-bodied resonator guitar, extending its timbral and harmonic range far outside the usual role in bluegrass and blues. Lawler has performed solo in the US and Europe, and has worked with a wide range of diverse artists including Matmos, Pelt, Rhys Chatham, My Morning Jacket, John Butcher, Susan Alcorn, Tatsuya Nakatani , Helena Espvall, Lukas Ligeti, Ignaz Schick, Phillip Samartzis, Jack Wright, Tim Barnes and John Krausbauer. His sound art has been presented in Moma/PS1, Brooklyn, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, and in collaboration with artists Thaniel Ion Lee, Sandra Gibson, Valerie Sutherland Fuchs, and Russell Hulsey. He has shared stages with artists as diverse as John Fahey, Widespread Panic, Sudden Infant, Jim Carroll, and Vieux Farka Toure. He is presently performing solo, with various collaborators, and as a member of music collectives WET, Limited Hangout and Seismic Corruption Band. John Krausbauer is a composer/multi-instrumentalist/improviser based in Oakland, CA and co-founder of the Los Angeles publishing label, Besom Presse. A long time purveyor of the ur-drone and trance-psychedelia, his work involves audio transmissions for TOTAL/immersive sensory experience. Transcendence through repetition, duration, alternate tunings, maximum volumes, and stroboscopic lighting. He's performed and presented his music across N America, Europe, and Japan in a multitude of settings - from basements, sidewalks, and rock clubs to colleges, churches, and art museums. Over 20 recordings of his have been released on independent labels in the US, Europe, and Japan. His group and solo music can be found on Important, Beta-Lactam Ring, ANTS, Fabrica, Debacle, Autumn, Thin Wrist (upcoming), and a number of other international labels. His current music projects include the Ecstatic Music Band (a 10+ member-collective of strings players); solo music forvoice, violin, and synth; his collaboration with partner, Kaori Suzuki, with bells, voices, strings, tape; the Minimalist psych-punk group Night Collectors; his systems-based phase compositions; and ongoing duo collaborations with Kentuckian steel bodied resonator guitar player R. Keenan Lawler, NYC bagpipe player David Watson, and Tokyo based guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama. R Keenan Lawler: National Steel resonator guitars John Krausbauer: banjos https://ants4.bandcamp.com/album/spectre-of-radiants | 2020 | €13.00 |
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| KREJCI, DAVID | The Cleophone | CD | DAVID KREJCI ist ein US-amerikanischer Sound-Artist, der ein "Drone-Instrument" namens "The Cleophone" gebaut hat. Es besteht aus 12 Piano-Saiten die über einen Holzkorpus gespannt werden, wobei jede Saiten mit eigenem Pickup reguliert werden kann. Das Cleophone lässt sich mit verschiedenen Utensilien bespielen, es können auch rhythmische Muster entstehen. Hier verewigt wurde eine 33minütige ,virtuos-improvisatorische Session ohne spätere overdubs oder Effekte ; der Klang ist dronig und dynamisch, reich an Obertönen & Vibrato, leicht verzerrt & stereo-phasig aufgeteilt. For Drone / Minimal-Fans! "Dave Krejci's earliest memory of music is that of trailing his mother while she vacuumed. Krejci would hum along with the vacuum's drone sliding in and out of pitch to create vibrations in his chest. This attraction to the visceral and hypnotic characteristics of sound has fed Krejci's fire for more than 25 years. His adulthood obsession with organs, Leslies, the Cleophone and pianos is nothing more than an adult extension of his vacuum-chasing days. Krejci grew out of Austin, Minnesota, a small hog-slaughtering town curiously full of musicians. "Classically trained" on the piano, Krejci spent the majority of his musical time writing his own compositions and playing piano in bands. In 1987, Krejci escaped the miserable town and fled to Minneapolis to attend the University of Minnesota. In the late 1980s and early 90s, Krejci played Hammond organ for TwinTone/Prospective recording artist GREEN MACHINE, a psychedelic trio that produced several full-length CDs and 45RPMs. In the Spring of 2005, built the CLEOPHONE, an electronic stringed instrument built out of heavy piano strings, Rhodes electromagnetic pick-ups and a microphonic copper stand. The instrument is played through two Leslie Speakers and manipulated with piano hammers, bows, sticks, bones, brushes and ball-bearings." [label description] | 2006 | €12.00 |
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| KRENG | The Summoner | LP | LP : Laser-Cut Outer Sleeve in Fulltone Bronze & Black, incl. full Color Insert "The Summoner comes 4 years since the last Kreng album Grimoire and 3 years since the massive retrospective box set Works for Abattoir Férme 2007-2011. A lot has happened in between, and this new recording can be seen as quite the departure from the aformentioned. His most personal album to date, The Summoner is based around the 5 stages of mourning and is made after a year of losing several close friends. Hard enough material to work on, he decided to add a 6th stage, entitled The Summoning to be able to arrive at the finalé, Acceptance. Conjuring up the spirit of György Ligeti, the first half of the album is made entirely of 12 string players being directed to play around, make noisey clusters and crescendoes, moving you between Denial, Anger, Bargaining and Depression. In fact, The Summoner is the first Kreng album NOT made by hordes of samples. Music to really dig deep in to. Following into the second part of the album, twists and turns are taken and it's hard to know where exactly you are. The Summoning's haunting organs and smoke-filled chambers lead you in to an earth- shaking wall of guitars, drums and bass courtesy of Belgian doom band Amenra. Leaving you in a state of shock, the album closes in an incredibly heartfelt and quiet way with the fittingly named Acceptance." [label info] www.miasmah.com "The first release from Kreng since 2011, but well worth the wait. While the sound sources on The Summoner are quite the departure from his 2011 release Grimoire, the dark and disorienting atmosphere is still here. Here Caudron conducts a dozen string players, creating a twisted and droney orchestral mass that explodes and dies without warning, bringing to mind the terrifying works of Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. The song titles here, too, tell Caudron's story as the five stages of grief, going from "Denial" to "Acceptance". The first four tracks are dark, twisted, orchestral soundscapes, dynamic and haunted that slowly goad you into Caudron's warped world. The climax of the album is without doubt the titular track, sandwiched between "Depression" and the somber "Acceptance". The 15-minute long track features Belgian doom band Amenra (whose album Mass V we reviewed back in 2013) providing the slow, crushing trudge (with maybe the slightest, SLIGHTEST hint of uplifting melody) to bring the whole piece to a bombastic, epic zenith. Very few out there can capture the range of emotion and atmosphere that Kreng can - terrifying, cathartic, bleak, and maybe just a little bit uplifting. For fans of Gnaw Their Tongues, The Caretaker, and anything on the Miasmah label." [Aquarius Records] "Es sind schon viele Alben aus Trauer entstanden, und viele handeln von der Trauer um eine geliebte Person. Alben, die das Trauern als solches zum Thema haben, sind seltener. Das könnte damit zu tun haben, dass die Frage nach den Mechanismen des Trauerns sehr theoretisch anmutet, aber sie ist auch komplizierter als man vielleicht denkt, denn eine Trauer, die sich weder in die Verdrängung noch in Selbstmitleid flüchtet, erfordert Leidensfähigkeit und ist keineswegs eine passive Angelegenheit. Für den Belgier Pepijn Caudron ist das Thema auch keine theoretische Sache, denn der Grund für seine Beschäftigung mit dem Wesen der Trauer ist ein sehr persönlicher und rührt aus dem Verlust einiger ihm nahestehender Personen. Irgendwo stieß der Musiker auf die psychologische Beobachtung, dass Trauer häufig in mehreren, sich teilweise widersprechenden Phasen bewältigt wird. Zunächst schreckt der Trauernde davor zurück, den Verlust und den damit verbundenen Schmerz anzuerkennen und klammert sich mit unterschwelliger Verzweiflung an die Zeit vor dem Verlust. Da eine solche Verleugnung nur auf Zeit funktioniert, stellt sich bald so etwas wie Wut ein, Wut auf den Verlust als solchen, vielleicht auch auf die betrauerte Person, aber auch auf sich selbst und die eigene Unfähigkeit zu verleugnen und zu verdrängen. Mit der Phase des inneren Abwägens setzt der erste Schritt in Richtung Akzeptanz ein, dem allerdings meist eine Phase der Depression vorausgeht: Erst wenn diese durchlebt ist, kann der Trauernde den Schicksalsschlag akzeptieren. Caudron erkannte in dieser Beschreibung so viel von seinen eigenen Erfahrungen wieder, dass er den Drang verspürte, seinen eigenen Weg durch die Trauer in einem Album durchzuarbeiten. „The Summoner“, das auf diesen Erfahrungen und Überlegungen beruht und doch noch einen Schritt weitergeht, stellt in der Diskografie des Musikers schon deshalb eine besondere Wegmarke dar, weil hier erstmals mit Studiomusikern statt ausschließlich mit Samples gearbeitet wird. Die minutenlange Stille, mit der „Denial“ beginnt, könnte glatt für all das stehen, das der Trauernde, beide Hände auf die Ohren gedrückt, nicht wahrhaben will. Doch es ist eine trügerische Stille, in der sich klammheimlich eine unerbittliche Realität zusammenbraut, die durch ihr schwelend kreisendes Dröhnen, durch seltsame Stimmen und entferntes Gerumpel so bedrohlich wie ein düsteres Wahngebilde anmutet. Caudrons Erfahrung bei der Arbeit fürs Theater kommt ihm schon hier zugute, denn die leicht überhörbaren Details schwirren derart gekonnt im Raum herum, dass man auch als Hörer dieser Wirklichkeit kaum entweichen kann. Die darauf folgende „dialektische“ Folge von wenig Licht und viel Schatten weiß ebenfalls davon zu kosten – das trockenere, direktere „Anger“ mit seinen lauten und eruptiven Streicherkaskaden, das mit viel orchestralem Geklapper vor sich hinsuchende „Bargaining“, das weitaus eindeutiger dahingleitende „Depression“ und zuletzt die genügsame Ruhe des schlichten Pianos in „Acceptance“. Mit „The Summoning“ geht Caudron über das Theoriekonzeot hinaus und markiert den Punkt, an dem der schwärzeste in den lichtesten Abschnitt übergeht. Wie um zu zeigen, dass an der Stelle etwas neues geboren wird, scheint er hier noch einmal das ganze Album zu bündeln und über sich selbst hinauszuführen, und es ist nicht unpassend, dass er dies nicht im Alleingang vollzieht, sondern seine Landsleute von Amenra mitmischen lässt. Das schleppende Schlagwerk, die kraftvollen, kernigen Gitarrenwände und das heißere Gröhlen der bekannten Doommetaller, die im Normalfall als niederdrückend empfunden werden, wirken hier fast so erhebend wie eine Levitation." [Uwe Schneider / African Paper] africanpaper.com/2015/05/09/kreng-the-summoner/ | 2015 | €17.00 |
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Selfed
(SOLD OUT) |
do-10inch | "Starting with soundtracks for the Belgian theatre-company 'Abbatoir Fermé' in 2007, PEPIJN CAUDRON aka KRENG has since then created an impressive catalogue of work, submerging deeply into a cinematic musical world, often built on 'classic' instrumental sounds, expressing a fascination for "the secrets of our culture, the roots of our collective fears and the hidden wounds, phantasies and rituals of our time" (as 'Abbatoir Fermé' denotes their own programmation). KRENGs compositions share a rare intensity and originality, immersing the listener into gloomy and surealistic atmospheres. SELFED is a work for a dance choreography by KEVIN TRAPPENIERS, a piece for a single dancer that relates to the phenomenon of 'Self-Pollination' in Biology. SELFED is seen as a metaphor to overcome mental and physical barriers of the self and society, by "investigating the notion of the energy of self and self-sacrifice". The three pieces suck you in with their spiraling sounds from the very first minute, ending in an early claustrophobic climax, from which structure and beauty is regained ... An interplay of circling dynamics. This 2 x10" vinyl (45 rpm) comes in a full colour double-gatefold cover, each record pressed in a different colour (blue-black / red-black), the fourth side contains an etching of all credit information. First ed. of 498 copies. Artwork design by TILMANN BENNINGHAUS. Mastering: PETER ANDERSSON." [press release] Words by the director about the concept of SELFED: "In botany, selfing causes an animal or plant to breed with or fertilise one of the same hybrid origin or strain, thus causing the organism to self-pollinate or self-fertilise. The cover pictures refer to ultrasonic pictures of a self-replicating cyberpunk/biopunk unborn being in its early stage, to repetitive oscillator sounds and cyclic lifeforms. In SELFED, the performance, as well as the score and the sound design, explore methods to adapt the body to mental and physical barriers and how to overcome those obstacles or gain control over them. The dance performance incorporates both the philosophy and techniques of Parkour within contemporary dance. We investigate the notion of the energy of self and self-sacrifice. The self meant as an aid and a tool for introspection and reflexion, for demolition and construct of the borders of the self - of the body and the mind. Accordingly, the performance and music reflects on the positioning of mankind towards individual and social power structures." [KEVIN TRAPPENIERS] (In 2014, Kevin Trappeniers was artist in residence TAKT Dommelhof (BE) to create the dance performance SELFED, that premiered at Plesni Teater Ljubljana (Slovenia). After this choreographic debut, which consisted of an outside and an inside part made for the specific locations in Slovenia, Trappeniers reworked the inside part to physical theatre.) credits: selfed concept, direction, choreography, scenography: Kevin Trappeniers dance & performance: Dagmar Dachauer music & sound design: Kreng light design: Laurence Halloy, Kevin Trappeniers in collaboration with: Luka Avguštin, Enej Progar, Jan Ulčar, Sebastjan Zupanc (SloMotion, Slovenian Parkour Family) dramaturgy & mentorship: Andreja Kopač coaching & distribution advice: Vincent Company producer: Živa Brecelj production: Plesni Teater Ljubljana (SI) - Choreographic Debut PTL 2014 co-production: TAKT Dommelhof (Neerpelt, BE) in collaboration with: Muzej in Galerije Mesta Ljubljane (MGML) artwork & photography: Kevin Trappeniers thanks to: Vincent Van den Bossche, Blaze Urban Academy (BE), Šolski Center Ljubljana (SI) "Substantia Innominata est la 10ème Série de vinyles de Drone Records et a pour but de présenter des travaux inspirés par l’inconnu, autour de nous ou parmi nous. Commençant avec les bandes sons pour la compagnie de théâtre belge \ Abattoir Fermé\ en 2007, Pepijn Caudron alias Kreng a depuis créé un impressionnant catalogue, plongeant profondément dans monde musical cinématique, souvent construit à partir de sons instrumentaux « classiques », exprimant une fascination pour \ les secrets de notre culture, les racines de nos peurs collectives et les blessures cachées, phantasmes et rituels de notre temps\ (comme \ Abattoir Fermé\ désigne leur propre programmation). Les compositions de Kreng partagent une rare intensité et originalité, immergeant l’auditeur dans des atmosphères sombres et surréalistes. Des bruits de bateaux sous marins suggèrent en effet l’immersion inquiétante raclant, puis un saxo sirène orientale, et ça se calme en hélico dans un essai d’envol des flots, des résonances lointaines et un sonar ou celui d’un dauphin ou baleine construisent cet univers sonore immersif, un peu comme si on était pris dans un U-Boot. Selfed est un travail pour une chorégraphie de danse de Kevin Trappeniers, une pièce pour danseur seul relatant le phénomène de \ Pollinisation Atomatique\ en Biologie. Selfed est à voir comme une métaphore les barrières physiques et mentales de soi et de la société, en \ investissant la notion d’énergie propre et de sacrifice de soi\ . Les trois pièces vous sucent par leurs sons en spirale dès la première minute, se terminant dans un climat de début de claustrophobie, dans lequel beauté et structure sont retrouvés.... Une réciprocité de dynamiques circulaires. On y entend des voix, puis des rythmes secs et rapides de peaux élastiques mixés avec des voix pour montrer cette Auto Pollinisation de musiques concrètes et électroniques par les voix. Comme dans la « Pollinisation Automatique », les éléments humains et industriels se mêlent et se confondent. Ce vinyle 2 x10\ (45 rpm) est livré dans une pochette double-gatefold, chaque disque est pressé dans une couleur différente (bleur-noire / rouge-noire), le quatre titres contient une gravure première édition pressée 498 copies par Tilmann Benninghaus. Mastering - Peter Andersson. Sortie - Avril 2016" [translation by Flow / Le Bokal] | 2016 | €25.00 | ||
| Cooties | LP | "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by KRENG. Death Waltz Recording Company is delighted to take you back to the schoolyard for a dose of fun with Kreng's score to COOTIES. A group of elementary teachers – including Elijah Wood, Alison Pill, and Rainn Wilson – up against an army of feral kids infected with a mystery virus, bringing new meaning to the term “playground violence." Produced by Wood's company Spectrevision, COOTIES is already shaping up to be a modern cult classic, not least through its infectious music. Composed by the avant-garde project Kreng (aka Belgian musician Pepjin Caudron) the score for COOTIES reflects a number of influences, from Bernard Herrmann's work for strings to spaghetti westerns through a trip hop filter set to “extreme foreboding”. Kreng's approach will surprise and intrigue, compared to many scores of its ilk. While it's synth-heavy, there are key roles for haunting vocal effects and violins, mixing both aesthetically beautiful and madcap cues to create waves of emotionally and viscerally powerful tunes. COOTIES stands proud alongside – and in some cases above - the crop of contemporary horror scores. Relax, put the needle on the wax, and let this record infect your ears. You'll be voracious for more." mondotees.com/collections/deathwaltz/products/cooties-ost "Oh man, we wanted to see this movie from the second we first heard about it. Kids in a primary school get a wicked case of the 'cooties', which transforms them into zombie like wee beasties, and it's up to the teachers to survive, and if need be (which need very likely does be!) dispatch of the hungry, demonic hordes roaming the playground. The trailer looks ridiculous and over the top (we haven't actually seen it yet), and very much like a grade school version of another awesome horror-school classic, The Faculty. Beyond that just being such an amazing concept for a movie, there's the added bonus of the incredible score by weirdo soundsculptor / dronelord / avant grade composer (and huge aQ fave) Kreng, aka Pepijn Caudron. Longtime readers of the aQ list are also likely fans of the Miasmah label, which Kreng generally calls home. His releases on Miasmah are moody and murky and minimal, twisted and shadowy, waste and faded and gorgeously mysterious. And while all that sounds like the perfect ingredients for a seriously sinister horror score, since this is not your typical horror movie, Caudron gets to explore WAY out of his usual sonic comfort zone, whether it's long sprawls of DJ Shadow like beat driven grooviness (in one instance, the haunting main theme is played by what sounds like a sitar!), or swirly, symphonic exotica, or hushed, somber shimmer, it's all woven together into a proper album, that is a pretty fantastic listen, even sans the film. The DJ Shadow comparison is actually pretty apt as beats and breaks surface throughout, but it's in the execution that things get and stay weird, in fact one of the best musical moments is when a loping beat limps along beneath a cacophony of detuned brass. But it is a horror soundtrack, so Carpenterisms abound (reworked in Kreng's inimitable style), there are plenty of tense, driving synth jams, barely there haunted house ambience, darkly delicate pianoscapes, strangely dubby drifts, some deliriously atonal 20th century sounding cacophony and bursts of what sounds like some rad eighties VHS soundtrack, all dayglo distorted, blaring and bombastic. While not nearly as dark as some of the Miasmah releases, there's an ominous underpinning to the proceedings, even at it's most playful and melodic, it's fun and freaky, and like the best soundtracks, not only is a great listen, but has us wanting to see the movie even more than we already did!" [Aquarius Records] | 2015 | €29.50 |
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| Lowlife | LP | Nach "Camino" veröffentlicht Kreng seinen nächsten Soundtrack auf dem britischen Label Invada. Kreng ist das Projekt des Belgiers Pepijn Caudron. Dieser erstellt Soundtracks mit der Hilfe moderner Sampling- Technologie. Seine Scores bestehen zumeist aus düstern Klanglandschaften, die an die Werke von Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, Cliff Martinez („Drive“) und Mogwai erinnern. „Lowlife“ ist das Spielfilm-Debüt des Regisseurs Ryan Prows, der die Handlung in der Subkultur Los Angeles ansiedelt. Sein Thriller bringt schräge Charaktere, absurden Humor sowie harte Action zusammen und ist zugleich ein kritischer Kommentar zu dem modernen Amerika. Lowlife is the berserk, blood-spattered, and wickedly entertaining feature debut from Ryan Prows. Set amidst the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles, Lowlife zigzags back and forth in time as it charts how fate—and a ruthless crime boss—connects three down-and-out reprobates mixed up in an organ harvesting scheme that goes from bad to worse to off-the-rails insane. The score is pressed on purple coloured vinyl and housed in a deluxe sleeve with digital download card included. Kreng is known for his previous score to CAMINO (also released on Invada Records), and for his score to Cooties, released on Deathwaltz Media Group/Milan Records. As well as this, Kreng is also known for his critically acclaimed L’Autopsie Phénoménale de Dieu (2009), Grimoire (2011), and the lavishly designed retrospective compilation box Works For Abattoir Fermé 2007-2011 (2012). www.invada.co.uk/products/kreng-lowlife-original-motion-picture-soundtrack | 2018 | €26.00 |
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| KRISHNA | Ascend to Nothing | CD | Silken Tofu has always had a firm belief in eclecticism, crossing borders and finding new paths, and this new release is the perfect example of that stubborn attitude. KRISHNA is the ongoing collaboration between experimental techno producer Drvg Cvltvre and free jazz/metal outfit Dead Neanderthals. An invitation by the Dutch Valkhof Festival for a residency at Nijmegen’s Extrapool art space in July 2015 led to their debut album ‘Ascend To Nothing’. The result is a monolithic techno improv stomp that will both pummel and hypnotize you. Clocking in at just under 36 minutes, ‘Ascend to Nothing’ is a relentless attack on the senses, a mind-expanding trip through sound and rhythm. Dutch sax & drum duo Dead Neanderthals are known for their New Wave Of Dutch Heavy Jazz: an outrageous combination of jazz and metal, interlaced with noise, drone and minimal music. FUCK conventions and FUCK expectations. Vincent Koreman a.k.a. Drvg Cvltvre has been working on his ‘doomed out psychic house’ for years now. His rich background in the DIY scene of punk, metal and experimental music shines through as he is influenced by Suicide, Sun Ra and Terrence Dixon. So, when two acts with such an outspoken disregard for rules and borders join forces you know the result will be intense and not for the faint-hearted. ‘Ascend to Nothing’ picks you up and throws you into the vortex of the ever-growing cosmos. Let’s get lost in the void forever. CD digipack, limited to 500 copies www.silkentofu.org | 2016 | €12.50 |
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| KRYNGE | Singe Binge | CD-R | "KRYNGE, the multi-collaborative international supergroup, was the brainchild of Zan Hoffman in 1987-88 and features recordings of his home taping friends reimagined. Acknowledging the debt the contemporary experimental music scene owes to the pioneering work of the tape-trading and mail art scenes, Attenuation Circuit celebrates the 25th anniversary of Krynge by re-releasing the original cassettes on CD in bi-monthly instalments. The Krynge series comes in a dedicated new design while also containing reproductions of the original cassette cover art. Singe Binge is broken up into a few pieces alternating multiple voices (John Hudak [New Jersey], his girlfriend, Minóy [California], his mother, her friend and more). The other parts of the tape are RoLMo [Tennessee], loops and guitars and mush. Being the first tape in the series this is the kindest KRYNGE release, but it still is a hilarious example of the pleasures that can be found in the type of music/found footage collage perhaps most commonly associated with Negativland’s early work. Blending reverberating guitar sounds with wonderfully vintage 80s-style drum machine beats, TV sounds, over-the-top vocal renditions and the rest of the family talking, this recording is not only “home-taped” in the sense that it was not produced in a studio, but also in the sense that it paints a tongue-in-cheek, somewhat surreal picture of the way suburban boredom can provoke creative research." [label info] www.wix.com/attenuationcircuit/attenuation-circuit | 2012 | €8.00 |
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| KSHATRIY | Slepok Soznaniya | CD | "The project Kshatriy appeared on the Russian post-industrial scene in 2004 and up to present has participated in several compilations, as well as released some solo and collaboration recordings on limited edition CDRs. Muzyka Voln presents the project’s first "professional" compact disk with the album "Slepok Sonzaniya" (meaning "a mould of consciousness" in Russian). This work is based on the concept of consciousness of a warrior, a galactic warrior of light, bringing to world pure knowledge, infinite silence, perfect balance, a moment of power and might, a flight of freedom, love, serenity, joy, light, unified time, eternal life, simplicity and bliss. The music of the project can be described as fractal dark drone ambient with lots of patterns, woven from various sonic fibres: synthesized drones, processed field recordings, acoustic echoes and rhythmic loops. Calm and profound, filled with resilience and hidden power, like an endless ocean of tranquility, energy and beauty." [label info] http://zhb.radionoise.ru/ "Kshatriy is the project by musician from Vsevolozhsk not far from St. Petersburg. Earlier his records were released on CDr, and album Slepok Soznaniya became the first work released on CD, before it I didn't know anything about this creative unit. With his music Kshatriy creates space dark and dull as well as beautiful and interesting. In anxiously boiling sound lava there merge deep electronic drone, processed field records and also unobtrusive hissing, crack and other noise effects. Musician himself writes that his creativity "is based on the conception of warrior consciousness... galaxy warrior of light, bringing to the world clear consciousness, unlimited silence, absolute balance, a moment of force and power, a flight of freedom, love, serenity, gladness, light, common time, eternal life, simplicity and bliss...". These words sound as nothing else but an unequivocal hint at trips "inside yourself" and the state of trans provoked by music. And it is so. Slepok Soznaniya is a huge mental reactor with boiling up fragments of dark recollections, fused and crumpled into one heavy lump which dissolved all around in impenetrable swamp of its body. Rusty, smelling with dust and dampness postindustrial spirit spreads together with these sounds to colossal spaces around. Huge volume of theses spaces is one of the main special features of this music ruining all barriers inside the dark universe, and Slepok Soznaniya became a ticket to it. You peer into the darkness and don't see any limits, as if you have fallen under ground and found an alternative cosmos there. Beautiful, charming and sometimes even epic sound design making you hold your breath in long intriguing moments and make your heart beat quickly with resounding rumble and voluminous, heavy drone. It's worth to be heard." [Pi Micron, The Sound Proector] http://www.soundproector.com/?cat=reviews&id=259 "Heaving, psychonaut droning from this Russian project, Kshatriy. The name of Sergey Uak-Kib's project is actually Sanskrit, as a now deracinated caste of warriors from ancient India. Uak-Kib posits something of a balance between the spiritual and the physical in the beliefs for this class of enlightened fighters. The holistic fortitude found in that statement seems to be furthered in the glowingly psychedelic artwork that has graced some of Kshatriy's other recordings. So much for first impressions, as this is fucking bleak. Anenzephalia bleak. Thomas Koner bleak. Lustmord bleak. Thrumming drones of Vulcan intensity and Promethean scale gird the entire album of Slepok Soznaniya. The thunderous cracks that introduce "Lights" are cataclysmic in nature, tumbling from deep space and smashing into the Siberian forest, unleashing shockwaves across the curved surface of Russian's landmass and creating elegantly harmonic ripples across the swampy taiga. Iron wheels grind on long-train tracks which lead to destinations unknown on the "Hymn To Kali," which is more of a dirge than a hymn through the slow, militant pound and evolving reverberant chord shifts for an ashen, musical negativity. The almost self-evidently named "Space Travel" surfs the solar winds with echoes of distant pulsars and glowing nebula clouds flickering through the endless expanses of nothingness. We were awestruck by the work that Kshatriy produced for the 2014 Drone-Mind / Mind-Drone III compilation; and so we're delving into his catalogue. Slepok Soznaniya was originally released in 2009 on the bracingly good Russian imprint Muzyka Voln. Not all that much in the way of distribution west of the former Iron Curtain; so this one makes for a new favorite in the radiant black dronemusik camp." [Aquarius Records] | 2009 | €13.00 |
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| KTL [STEPHEN O'MALLEY & PETER REHBERG] | VII | LP | "A new timley studio album from the duo of Peter Rehberg and Stephen O’Malley. Recorded and mixed during an unexpected extended stay in Berlin when the borders of the world suddenly closed. The claustrophobic urgency of this scenario is seared into the colossal vibrations set into this vinyl release. Unlike many of their releases this is a studio record made unto itself as opposed to the many soundtracks they have made for theatre works and the like. It also stands as one of their most fully realised releases to date. Proceedings are launched with The Director. Sitting somewhere between contemporary classical and doom this is a sliding and menacing mass of sound, more Masque of the Red Death than The Decameron. Silver lining is an alarming swooping buzzing track, looming and lowering only to rise and descend again. A delicate play with the Shepard-Risset glissando manifesting a delirious swarm of sound. Lee’s garlic orbits into a short fragmented zone with bursts of harsh feedback and crashing fx, all manner of audio enters and is discarded with an underlying sense of despair and frustration. Proceedings continue on Side B with Tea With Kali where a calmer plateau is embedded with oscillating guitar and fluttering electronics. Beating sine waves envelop the listener in a meditative thought piece of sound. Frostless concludes this epic dispatch as a subtle and gentle foray into twitching electronics as a light buzzsaw drone swirls as around your mind. The interplay of sources (guitar, electronic equipment (hardware, software, speakers) is so entwined it’s often difficult to discern who is doing what amongst the broad sound field. KTL VII is instrumental music as visual narrative resulting in an exquisitely crafted release full of sophisticated and sublime illusory effects." | 2020 | €20.00 |
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| KUBISCH, CHRISTINA | La Ville Magnetique / The Magnetic City | CD | "24 Electromagnetic Walks in Poitiers. Produced at Studio Hoppegarten and Electronic Music Studio of the Technical University Berlin, October-November 2008. Liner notes and other info in French and English. The recordings of the 24 Electromagnetic Walks in Poitiers were made on August 14, 18 and 19 2008, using only Christina Kubisch's electromagnetic induction headphones and a portable recorder. The sounds have not been electronically modified. The only intervention was the use of a frequency filter. From the linernotes: Today there is a lot of interest in the musical world in 'mapping', the art of tracing the world we live in by means of maps which differ from those made for trade, commerce and business. The maps of the 24 Electromagnetic walks are visual and musical ones. 24 volunteers explored the hidden electromagnetic fields of Poitiers wearing a special headphone created by the artist. This wireless 'tool' captures and amplifies the magnetic fields above and underground the city. The visitors were free to choose their own, personal paths (itineraries) and were asked to draw them upon a map of the inner city. The length of the recordings vary between 6 and 79 minutes. Every recording is a kind of 'mirror' of the character and personality of the walker. Some people walked straight and without stopping through the streets, others often stopped and played around by moving their head (or body) when entering an interesting field, some followed the 'historical paths', others used the personal itineraries of their daily life, some just went by chance and took the exploration as a kind of acoustic adventure. The collection of 24 sound channels in Poiters is a collection of electromagnetic field recordings- an electromagnetic portrait of the city. Often what you can see normally and what you hear electromagnetically, is quite different: quiet streets burst out with strong electrical hums, the lively market place is quiet instead, the train station is a dense net of regular beats and clicks, the parking Carnot is the place where antennas fill the air with internet signals, the ATM machines of the banks hum musical chords and the security gates in the shopping streets surprise by their volume and intensity of continuous signals. The juxtaposition of the 24 itineraries was the starting point for he composition. Several times the visitors were at the same time at the same place, but exploring the sounds in different ways. The piece is a mix of all the recordings, sometimes letting them together in big clusters, sometimes following an individual walker along his way. The beginning and the end of the recordings was the tourist information center of Poitiers. The voices and the music which can be heard were recorded not with a microphone but as well through electromagnetic induction: a cable loop inside the office makes the sound audible as well outside the building. It's here, where the information of the historical city meets with the contemporary hidden electromagnetic world of Poitiers. The participants to the recorded walks: Jean-Pierre Courjaud, Quentin Debenest, Jean Hiernard, Daniel Clauzier, Emmanuelle Baud, Claude Thibault, Marion Berthier, Marie Fournier, Jean-Pierre Potier, Benoist Baillergeau, Jean-Luc Terradillos, Dominique Truco, Patrick Treguer, Jean-Christophe Desnoux, Dominique Pichon, Thomas Sillard, Marion Valière Loudiyi, Mélanie Ribot, Nicolas Bernard, Aurélien large, Marine Antony, Lilian Gerling, Anne Gérard, Christina Kubisch. Credits: Artwork By [Cover Design] - Christina Kubisch. Artwork By [Graphics] - Frederic Briand. Engineer, Mastered By - Eckehard Güther. Liner Notes - Christina Kubisch. Mixed By - Christina Kubisch. Photography - Christina Kubisch , Daniel Proux , Dominique Truco , Marion Valière-Loudiyi. Technician [Recording Assistance] - Marine Antony.' [full label info / liner notes] | 2009 | €15.00 |
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| Magnetic Flights | CD | "Two brand new pieces from one of the most exciting, active & relevant members of the first generation sound artists. Magnetic Flights is a perfect follow up to Five Electrical Walks (IMPREC167) and it is being released at the same time as a collection of two of Kubisch's unreleased archival pieces, also on Important. Magnetic Flights is entirely made of electromagnetic field recordings of international airports and inside airplanes. The recordings of this piece were made by Christina Kubisch on her travels in 2007 from and to the airports of Bukarest, Manchester, Chicago, Seoul, Munich, Amsterdam, Zurich, Frankfort, Paris, Lisbon, Berlin, Pisa, Milan and London. The sounds were not altered electronically nor changed in any other way. The only tool ,which was used for a part of it, was a filtering program (DINR) All recordings were made with the help of special sensitive wireless headphones, by which the aboveground and underground electromagnetic fields are detected, amplified and made audible. The headphones are custom made and have been develeoped by myself and constructed by the engineer Manfred Fox, Berlin. The sounds are much more musical than one could expect. There are complex layers of high and low frequencies, loops of rhythmic sequences, groups of tiny signals, long drones and many things which change constantly and are hard to describe. Magnetic Flights consists of three parts with a short special sound at the beginning and another one at the end. The piece starts with an electromagnetic sound recorded just before departure and continues with the material of flight radiations recorded inside different airplanes. These electromagnetic fields slightly change pitch during departure and arrival, but remain quite constant during the flight itself. The relatively high and compact sounds gradually build up a dense layer of vibrations with continuous minimal variations. In the second part some of the previous flight radiations gradually become filtered. The single signals mingle into a mix of small, short, nervous and very rhythmic signals. Their origin might be radio waves, communication signals with the tower , internet and atmospheric disturbances., but this is only a guess. The third part, the situation of arrival or transition, is a mix of typical electromagnetic sounds in the waiting areas of airports such as the deep vibrations of the screens of monitors which slowly fade in and out. The piece ends with the electrical flickering of an electromagnetic field of unknown origin. Christina Kubisch belongs to the first generation of sound artists. Trained as a composer, she studied painting, music (flute and composition) and electronics in Hamburg, Graz, Zürich and Milano, where she graduated. Her work can be described as the “synthesis of arts” - the discovery of acoustic space and the dimension of time in the visual arts on the one hand, and a redefinition of relationships between material and form on the other. Kubisch is best known for artistically and innovatively using techniques such as magnetic induction and ultraviolet light to create and realise her work.Since the 1970’s Kubisch has been experimenting with electromagnetic induction and was one of the first to use this method for creating sound installations. Some of her most well know works include the Electrical Walks series, where audience wear magnetic headphones, specially designed by Kubisch, with built-in coils that respond to electrical fields in the environment. Tapping into the electrical fields that result from light systems, anti-theft security devices, surveillance cameras, cell phones, computers, antennae, automated teller machines and other electric devices, she uses these visible sources to create unique and new sensory environmental experiences. In the mid-1980s, Kubisch began to incorporate light as a compositional tool in many works, for example in the installation Skylines at the documenta 8, Kassel; the underground installation Klang Fluß Licht Quelle on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin and more recently Licht Himmel a permanent light sound installation at Gasometer Oberhausen, Germany. Since 2003 Kubisch has begun to work again as a performer and collaborates with various musicians and dancers, one of whom is Lotta Melin, with whom she will be co-facilitating the Lisbon workshop. An internationally recognised artist, Kubisch has shown work at major international exhibitions and festivals (Venice Benniale, documenta 8, Kassel, Ars Electronica, Linz, Sydney Benniale, Sonar, Barcelona and Sonic Boom, London) performing around the world she has received numerous grants and awards and her music has been realised on various labels such as Cramps Records and Edition RZ. Kubisch has been visiting professor in Maastricht, Paris and Berlin and since 1994, is currently the professor for sound art at the Academy of Fine Arts, Saarbrücken, Germany." [label info] | 2011 | €15.00 |
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| KUBISCH, CHRISTINA & ANNEA LOCKWOOD | The Secret Life of the Inaudible | do-CD | About our collaboration. Annea and I first met in New York in 1975. I was writing an article about the experimental music scene in New York for an Italian magazine. We soon found out that we had a lot of common interests and ideas. In 1979 she came to Italy and together we performed her piece „World Rhythms“ at a festival in Como. I was deeply impressed by how Annea combined technical skills with intuitive performance. Sound for her always has been more than just material to bring into a compositional form. It was more than raw material, it had a complex structure of its own and was transporting energy. Annea translated and communicated this energy to the listener and she does this with unusual intensity until today. Over the years we followed each other’s works but unfortunately did not meet as often as we would have liked. During her stay in Berlin earlier this year we had another chance to discuss our works, materials, researches, concepts, doubts and future projects. The idea of a collaboration was a natural consequence of this exchange. We both investigate soundworlds which normally are not audible. Annea questions how the forces of nature influence us, I question how manmade electromagnetic fields have an impact on our lives. And we both love field recording, especially exploring underwater sounds with hydrophones. We decided to exchange sound materials and left it open to the other what to choose and how to mix it into a new composition. The two new pieces which were created by this exchange are different but at the same time seem to belong together somehow. Annea sent me extracts from recordings of VLF chorus waves, solar oscillations, earthquakes, gas vents etc. while I transmitted to her a collection of recordings of electromagnetic waves which I had made audible and recorded with special custom designed induction headphones. Annea’s sound material was coming from sonic ultra and infra ranges and was speeded up or shifted down in order to become audible, my recordings are analog and were made directly on site in different cities. The sounds we use are all strange and powerful and they go together as if they were especially made for this collaboration. Until now what kind of influence the sources of these normally hidden waves have on us is not much explored. It is up to the listener to find out more about it. Thanks to Gruenrekorder who supported our project from the beginning. — Christina Kubisch, November 2017 CD 1 – Annea Lockwood WILD ENERGY | 2016 (with Bob Bielecki) Wild Energy gives access to the inaudible, vibrations in the ultra sound and infra sound ranges emanating from sources which affect us fundamentally, but which are beyond our normal audio perception, many of which are creating our planet’s environment: the sun, the troposphere and ionosphere, the earth’s crust and core, the oxygen-generating trees – everything deeply integrated, forming an inaudible web in which we move, through which we live and on which we depend. It is our sense that through these sounds one can feel the energies generated, not as concepts but as energy-fields moving through one’s body. Here they have been shifted up (infrasound) or down (ultrasound) to bring them into the human audio range. Wild Energy begins with solar oscillations (acoustical pressure waves) recorded by the SOHO spacecraft – 40 days of solar oscillations sped up 42,000 times, and ends with ultrasound recorded from the interior of a Scots pine tree. Recordings made available to Annea Lockwood by scientists at the universities of Hawaii, Stanford, Iowa, Columbia (USA) and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research. Sound sources: The sun, acoustical pressure waves – recording courtesy of Alexander Kosovichev, Solar Oscillations Investigation team, Stanford University Gas vents and tremors, Mt Kilauea – recordings courtesy of Milton Garces, the Infrasound Laboratory, University of Hawaii VLF Chorus waves and Whistlers; Auroral Kilometric Radiation radio waves –recordings courtesy of Craig Kletzing, Radio and Plasma Wave Group, University of Iowa Sei whale – recording courtesy of Arthur Newhall, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Earthquakes – recordings courtesy of the U.S.G.S; Ben Holtzman, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University and Jason Moran Trees, cavitation events and ultrasound emissions – recordings courtesy of Melvin Tyree; Roman Zweifel , Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL and Marcus Maeder, Zurich University of the Arts, Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology Hydrothermal vents – recording courtesy of Timothy Crone, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University Bats: pipistrelle, California myotis, silver-haired bats, Shockwave-Sound.com; big brown bat and Grote’s tiger moth recording courtesy of Aaron Corcoran, Wake Forest University CD 1 – Annea Lockwood STREAMING, SWIRLING, CONVERGING | 2017 Composing with combined sound files and sources, six from each of us, has been a unique experience for me, and a deep pleasure. I have long found Christina’s explorations of the electromagnetic fields within which we live now revelatory and essential – beautiful in their sonic detail and powerful in their effects on my body. And there is satisfying sense of complementarity here: Human-created sounds from Christina’s electromagnetic world, a world which she has been hugely instrumental in revealing to us, and non-human sounds and vibrations from the geophysical, atmospheric and mammalian spheres which are my sources. Her sounds were a delight to work with, often with a clear pitch element and, while fluctuating in their details and flow, essentially stable. This contrasts well with the event-driven, more turbulent rhythms and noise content of my materials. It was fascinating to play with these differences and discover how easily our sounds blend as if drawn together magnetically into layered textures. I am most grateful to Christina for suggesting this collaboration. Sound sources: Annea Lockwood: Tremors and a bench collapse on Mt Kilauea, Hawaii, VLF whistlers, earthquakes in Sumatra and Honshu, Japan, ultrasonic sounds from a Scots pine tree, the Mid-Ocean Ridge Black Smoker hydrothermal vent, solar oscillations. Christina Kubisch: electromagnetic waves recorded in a subway station, a server room, an underground tunnel, a power station, shopping centers and in the countryside during a thunderstorm after electricity had broken down. CD 2 – Christina Kubisch NINE MAGNETIC PLACES | 2017 Nine magnetic places is a journey without knowing where to go, what to find, how long to stay or what will come next. It is a discovery of a hidden world, a dreamlike trip by which the traveller encounters unexpected juxtapositions and sequences of electromagnetic waves. The piece was inspired by the first book using the technique of automatic writing, „Les champs magnétiques“ by André Breton and Philippe Soupault, published in Paris (1920). The electromagnetic recordings were made in or traveling to: Las Vegas, Gdansk, Ystad, Kosice, Montreal, Bordeaux, Manchester, Dortmund, San Francisco, Paris, Ekaterinburg, Lagos, Venice, Bratislava, Bangkok and other places. CD 2 – Christina Kubisch BELOW BEHIND ABOVE | 2017 When I was about to finish this piece two powerful storms, called Xavier and Herwart, swept through northern Germany and Central Europe following each other within three weeks. The storms produced hurricane winds and left a path of destruction knocking down trees, power lines and buildings and caused widespread travel chaos. I was working in my studio during both storms, looking at the shaking trees in front of my house while I was listening to sounds from vulcanos, solar oscillations, earthquakes and the intense vibrations of electromagnetic fields. The experience of the two storms had a strong impact on my work. The piece became a kind of encounter of different energies and vibrations which meet in unforeseen ways. Sound sources: Annea Lockwood: Volcanic gas vents, VLF chorus waves and whistlers, earthquakes, solar oscillations and ultrasonic tree sounds. Christina Kubisch: electromagnetic recordings from light systems, seismic research centers,transmitter systems and others. Hydrophone recordings from the river Rhein. www.gruenrekorder.de "A cause of extreme disgruntlement for this writer is the passive awareness that the bulk of a lifetime was splurged on issues and people not belonging to a sphere of intuitions and considerations even marginally correlatable with his own. If one inaugurates the process of growth by being predominantly attracted by non-vocal emissions, it is foreseeable that – quite soon – attention will not be given anymore to individuals imparting sagacity via mere words, typically instilling some kind of dismay in the potential victim. In that sense, imagine the (adult) quotidian disheartenment for not having a chance to remain within essential acoustic domains when the calls comes; silence is mandatory to do that, and silence is by now a rare commodity. Finally, try to explain all of the above to someone blathering non-stop because convinced – possibly via previous trauma – or out-and-out pretending of living outside his/her body, then get back to me for a good laugh together. But we do get privileged whenever communicating – remotely but, by the grace of heavens, through sounds – with truly developed beings such as Christina Kubisch and Annea Lockwood, themselves linked by a long-time friendship and artistic consanguinity that never had resulted in a tangible collaboration. Until today. Narrating yet again what these women have been doing throughout their histories of sonic researchers would be pathetic (but if you still think there is a need to, a peep to the presentation notes of this release will help explicating the kernel of the matter). This double CD encloses four handsome compositions derived from the manipulation of swapped materials; the common denominator is the attempt of turning invisible energies and inaudible frequencies into physically perceivable substances destined to increase one’s congenital acumen. Kubisch and Lockwood operate at levels of intuitive interiority unconceivable by the average gatherer of location recordings and electronics. We can literally “feel inside” the gradual effect of sources reconfigured in various types of aural concretization. They emerge as penetrating hums of radiophonic descent, or may resemble marine currents inhabited by a somewhat alien fauna attempting new forms of signal transmission. The ordinary becomes unconventional; the voice of nature and its private tumults get disfigured by deforming lenses that, rather amazingly, emphasize the gravity of each single event. That these pieces ultimately can stand proudly amidst the finest electroacoustic musics of the last few decades is obviously a plus. However, what really counts is the implicit message: communication does happen at every stage of physical existence, including the supposedly inanimate. In times when most humans are bamboozled by things that do not exist particularized by brains that do not work, what we have to do is raising the aerials way up. Consequences – if there is sufficient emotional fuel in your personal tank – will inevitably materialize." [Touching Extremes] | 2018 | €16.00 |
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| KUBISCH, CHRISTINA & ECKEHARD GÜTHER | Unter Grund | CD | The Ruhr Area lives from and with water. It needs drinking water, water for industrial facilities and water for transportation. Water veins pulse invisibly with groundwater, connecting rivers through subsurface tunnels that also force their way into disused mines. This mine water has to be drained continuously or pumped out from underground (one speaks of unending tasks) to prevent the collapse of old shafts, subsidence damage, and the contamination of drinking water. Without constant pumping of the groundwater the Ruhr Area would transform into a vast marshy landscape. Fabian Lasarzik "The discomfort from the underground Christina Kubisch’s site-specific sound installations are based on retrieving parallel worlds. She often responds to structures and atmospheres of places and their unheralded vibrancy which she turns into concrete perception and imagination by the recipient. For the 26-channel installation “under ground” carried out on Zeche Zollverein Christina Kubisch examined above ground and subterranean streams which are little noticed, but play a decisive role: water which has to be developed from abandoned and not backfilled shafts and mounted into a complex canal and river system. It is about the control and domination of mine water, which is nothing but ascending groundwater intruding former coal bearing seems and seeping away in deepness. It has to be pumped and conveyed permanently. Without this elaborate dewatering the tunnel system would be flooded which would set the surface in motion. By now the region in the Ruhr area sagged more than 20 meters within the last 150 years. Also the water would mix with our normal groundwater and soil it chemically. It would ascend and transform the Ruhr area into a swampy seascape with contaminated water. On Zollverein there are already six centrifugal pumps in 1000 meters depth, two of them working constantly. About 8 millions cubic meters of water are developed in average per year. Talking about perpetual burdens and costs means those strenuous efforts. Those tremendous consequences and measures correspond to the enormous and massive historical interventions caused by coal mining that are widely unknown to the public. The artistic field studies by Christina Kubisch pick out this parallel world as central theme. With high sensitivity in her tonal production she feeds the dark dimension of our imagination, which associates the invisible “under the ground” with the uncanny, the uncontrollable primordial. The subject deals with the conscious and the unconscious in a metaphorical way: the lucent, literally bright surface reality in opposite to the dark, uncanny and hidden reality underground. Christina Kubisch mediates those aspects within a spatial composition by using above and underground recordings. What we hear is reality, which can be sensually experienced within a composition subtly connecting documentary material with our imagination. If we engage in the imagination stimulated by this work, we feel the monstrous things which happened underneath our feet, humans competing with the bowels of earth and the forces of nature. “Under ground” — and we are talking about approximately 1.400 meters depth — associates the unconscious, the archaic, the long forgotten. Eventually we are standing on what deposited during millions of years and we only know little about, except it is tremendous and began before the emergence of mankind. Our primal fear at this point is those primary things (basically nature itself) could turn against us and take revenge. Christina Kubisch’s work plays with those associations without pathos. When the bassy vast main water pumps raise their sound it seems we hear a giant organism underneath us breathing in and out. The sounds indicate magnitude, significance and menace. We become aware of something we normally do not notice. After all Kubisch uses military equipment like special hydrophones to make this parallel worlds tangible, and she probably does it with a certain subversive delight. It is not only about picturesque sounds and enthralling noises, but also about alternative ways of perceiving and accessing correlations. This is her deep conceptual approach. Kubisch’s work is about autonomously provided ways of experience and unofficial versions of reality. Therein lies also an ironic jab at our faith in technical progress, which on the one hand opens up the world to us, but with its focus on certain lines of development strikes us with blindness at the same time." www.gruenrekorder.de | 2016 | €13.00 |
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| KUHZUNFT / ACHIM ZEPEZAUER | Slotmachine | 10inch | The „Kuhzunft-slotmachine“ is a website-project, based on a picture of a crayon-painted slot machine. Clicking the start button activates the machine to randomly combine pre-produced recordings (of 45 seconds length) within three slots. Instead of typical fruits in the display, you would see photos attached to the specific sounds by the artists responsible for the content. Even the names of the „songs“ are put together by the single names each artist had chosen for their recordings. The vinyl release on Gruenrekorder documents the project with a selection from 13 artists and 158 recordings, that offered a possibility of 3.944.312 tracks. The online-slotmachine has the ability to continuously grow and contains at the date of the vinyl release (February 1st, 2019) four more artists and a total of 225 recordings, providing some 11.390.625 possible titles. Visit slotmachine.kuhzunft.com to discover the project yourself. You can either simply press START and get surprised or deactivate AUTO PLAY to make a selection. The vinyl features: Jaap Blonk (NL) – Voice John Chantler (AU) – Modular Synth Serge Corteyn (DE) – Guitar Rhodri Davies (GB) – Harp Gailė Griciūtė (LT) – Prepared Piano Richard Lerman (US) – Piezzo, Hydrophone Seán Mac Erlaine (IE) – Woodwinds Jérôme Noetinger (FR) – Tape Machine Pablo Paredes (CL) – Keyboards Michael Vatcher (US) – Drums Simon Whetham (GB) – Field Recordings Marta Zapparoli (IT) – Radio Waves Achim Zepezauer (DE) – Drumcomputer, Electronics, Acoustics The online slotmachine also features: Émilie Girard-Charest (CN) – Cello Florian Hartlieb (DE) – Computer Bart Maris (BE) – Trumpet Carolin Pook (DE/US) – Violin Achim Zepezauer (DE) – Words Pablo Paredes (CL) – Mastering Guida Ribeiro (PT) – Website Developing | 2019 | €10.00 |
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| LA CASA, ERIC | Zone Sensible 2 / Dundee 2 | CD | Wer jemals selbst versucht hat, brauchbare 'field recordings' zu hervorzubringen, dürfte wissen wie schwer es ist, Störgeräusche auszuschalten, die gewünschte Klangquelle laut genug hörbar zu machen und überhaupt den "richtigen Moment" zu treffen... denn der Zufall spielt hierbei eine gewichtige Rolle, die Unkontrollierbarkeit der Klänge macht demütig... Einer der absoluten Meister des Fieldrecording und deren Verarbeitung ist ERIC LA CASA, von dem hier 2 Stücke präsentiert werden, die sowohl gekonnteste Feldaufnahmen zeigen als auch die brilliante Transformation in eine Art naturale musique concrete: ZONE SENSIBLE 2 benutzt Aufnahmen von Bienen, deren summender Chor oft gewaltig anschwellt und sich mit sirrenden, elektronisch wirkenden mechano-Drones vermischt, ein Stück voller Dynamik und Brüchen, welches am Ende wie ein einziger atmender Klangorganismus wirkt, epische 26:30 min lang. Auf DUNDEE 2 dagegen entwirft er aus 30 verschiedenen Orts-Aufnahmen eine Art unterbewussten Klangspiegel der schottischen Stadt Dundee, wobei v.a. die stets vorhandenen, aber kaum jemals bewusst wahrgenommenen Sounds von Maschinen (Ventilatoren, Aufzüge, Sirenen, Kühlschränke) eine grosse Rolle spielen.. das soghafte Rauschen einer Stadt verläuft hier in langen auf- und abschwellenden Bahnen. Fazit: Zwei geniale Kompositionen für das Kino im Kopf ! "For the best part of a decade, Éric La Casa's attention to sonic phenomena has resulted in some of the finest contemporary Musique Concréte to come out of France. A listener of the highest order, La Casa's methodology for sound recording allows for a versatile examination of both urban and natural environments and it is these interests which are captured on this new edition for Room40. With an ability to find unique perspectives on his sound subjects La Casa's site specific works 'Zone Sensible' and 'Dundee' seek to draw a detailed focus and expose unfamiliar, incidental and previously unheard sound worlds. Zone Sensible, exclusively composed from recordings of bees in the Olivier Darné's hives, located in the Saint Denis suburb of Paris, reveals a chaotic, frenetic microcosm that speaks to the density of the real, whilst hinting at our ears to experience a dance of oscillations - wings beating with boundless energy. As a contrast to this microcosm, Dundee, composed with recordings of Dundee city (during a 10 days residency at DCA museum), sees La Casa turn his microphones outward. Rendering a captivating sound map of sorts, Dundee' was developed in collaboration with USA Film experimentalist Ken Jacobs' 'nervous magic lantern', on a 6 channels device. From these recordings La Casa composed variations and movements in interaction with Ken Jacobs' processing - a contemplation from the real to abstracted life." [label info] www.room40.org "Two new works by Eric LaCasa, the active composer of musique concrete. By now he has a long list of releases under his belt, and on this CD he presents two new works. 'Dundee 2' is in three parts, while 'Zone Sensible 2' is one work. That one was commissioned by Les Instants Chavires (France) for a festival and uses solely the sounds of bees, recorded in a beehive. It starts out with the sound of bees, but soon starts to move about in some electronic after life. Or so it seems. Until now I always thought, but perhaps wrongly, that LaCasa only works with pure sound, always recorded in the fields (agricultural and urban), and never used that much sound processing, but perhaps I was wrong. Here its a much more electronic work that depicts the chaos of the beehive very well. Buzzing with life, sounds crawl about and its hard to figure out what is going on - except of course if you are a bee yourself. A work full of life. 'Dundee' was commissioned by Arika for 'Kill Your Timid Notion in 2007 and uses sounds of that Scottish city, which was played back on a six channel system, devised along with Ken Jacobs, an American film maker. Here we have the 'empty' spaces that resonates, sometimes interrupted by voices ('what are you doing in the parking, recording spaces'?, or station announcements) or by events we can longer trace back to its origin. Here it seems to me LaCasa uses no electronic processing, but the pure sound phenomena as captured on tape. A powerful work, even if you don't know the city of Dundee (at least I don't). What sets LaCasa aside from his colleagues in the same field, is that he composes with the material, rather than presenting them (for instance works like this on the German Gruenrekorder label), and that makes them all the more engaging to hear. I am not sure why 'Dundee 2' has been cut into three separate pieces, but like 'Zone Sensible 2', these are excellent pieces. LaCasa is one of the true masters of working with field recordings." [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2010 | €13.00 |
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| LA CASA, ERIC & CEDRIC PEYRONNET | La Creuse | CD | LA CREUSE ist eine höchst gelungene Field Recording-Reise mit hohem Abstraktionsfaktor. Die Psychogeographie des französischen Departments LA CREUSE soll dadurch (sub)sonisch "verkörpert" und sinnlich erfahrbar werden, das Material wurde mit einem speziellen Remix- / Bearbeitungskonzept für jedes Stück konzeptualisiert. "Intelligente" Geräuschmusik aus einmaligen Klängen der Umgebung & Natur, fantastisch arrangiert ! "Our project is defined by its aim: to represent in sonic terms, and in duo, a particular environment – a triangular area in the north of the Creuse département in central France. In the first place, based on cartographic representations, we set about breaking down the chosen territory, an area between the Petite Creuse and Grande Creuse rivers, into specific sites. Secondly, we placed the map ‘under surveillance’, as it were, conducting sonic surveys in the selected sites. These surveys led us to a geophonic approach, each based on a development of specific auscultatory techniques, in which the wealth of sounds collected nourished our research into (sonic) territoriality. The aim of the project was not to replace image with sound but to give that which surrounds us a (sonic) body; to give landscape a sonic corporeality. It might be that, being unrelated to notions of admiration that go hand in hand with seeing, a sonic evaluation can go some way towards confounding our a priori notions of landscape. Thirdly, the resulting data gave rise to an ensemble of exchanges/interactions, enabling formal variations. For one of these formalisations, musical composition, we chose the following protocol: each site was given a musical interpretation by a composer, his work being based on the site’s specific sound-bank. The composer then sent his piece to a second who, with recourse to his own bank of sounds, responded to the first interpretation. The second composer redefined the composition, adding his own sounds also. The final interpretation, therefore, is based as much on the layered listenings and recordings formed at the site itself as the musical conceptions of each individual." [label notes] "As far as I remember I've never been to the area where Cedric Peyronnet (also better known as Toy Bizarre) and Eric La Casa recorded their work, the Creuse department in central France - maybe I saw it today when watching the Tour de France. However there is a booklet with this CD with pictures of the area, and in each picture there is a pair of microphones to be spotted. This is as close as you can make field recordings visual I guess. A pity that the booklet, a diary it seems, is all in French, with some general English translation on the cover. The area was divided into several specific sites which were recorded by one, and then sent to the other to work on it, to interpret the place. And vice versa of course. Each piece is started by one, finished by the other. Its not easy to hear who did what, but I think that the pieces finished by Peyronnet have a minimal subtle electronic manipulations, and that La Casa's pieces are entirely made with field recordings. I might be wrong however and no electronic processing took place. We hear rain, wind, footsteps and sounds from water, objects and other sonic events which are hard to be placed somewhere in terms of what one could recognize. Even when this is divided into nine pieces, it's best enjoyed as a complete picture: listen from start until the end, sit back and transport yourself through time and space - time is the length of the CD and the place is La Creuse. This rural and forest area is pictured quite well before your very eyes. A very refined work." [FdW / Vital Weekly ] www.herbalinternational.tk | 2008 | €13.50 |
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| LA COMUNIDAD | Bastion 23 | CD | "second release of LC / german power electronics meets ambient noise parts in a mixture of noise / strength by political provokation" [label info] "Control, Slogun, Sickness, MZ412 they all have something in common with La Comunidad . the pure fucking brutality and angry that these units can project. There is nothing happy or hopeful about this release. This German force are not a happy lot. This is about the disgust of ones world and surrounding and how a single source submits it to anyone that will listen. Not all of La Comunidad is full on noise sometimes there is a very suffocating Death Ambient assault going on here. You need to listen to the speeches and spoken word movements as much as the backdrop of the music to get the full picture. La Comunidad likes the thought of War, Pain and Dispair. That much is very simple. Its not this vision alone that makes La Comunidad any more interesting then the bands listed above. What makes them a bit more out there is the distance and isolationist feel you get when listening to this. La Comunidad aren't to make this recording for your. Your here so someone can hear the deconstruction of a human soul on the bring of either greatness or insanity. Your never really sure and I hope to never find out. Just let the extremity of it all take you and change for ever. L White has presented La Comunidad in a wonderful A5 full color 4 panel card package. The only thing is limiting it to 300 copies after all this hard work. L white is the Harsh Industrial/ Noise/ Power Electronic fans best friend as they give an outlet to very amazing projects such as there were others would never even look at them. Thank you for this L White and keep up the pain inducing release as I know I will keep on listening." [Clint Listing] label-website: www.l.white-records.de | 2007 | €13.00 |
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| LA MORTE YOUNG / DRONE ELECTRIC LUST (DEL) | split | LP | "A split with La Morte Young and Drone Electric Lust. File under psychedelic rock, experimental, drone. La Morte Young is the meeting of Talweg (Eric Lombaert, drums + Joelle Vinciarelli, voice) + Nappe (Christian Malfray, electronics + Pierre Faure, electric guitar and tape delay) + Sun Stabbed (the same Pierre Faure + Thierry Monnier, electric guitar and tapes). Recorded live at 102, Grenoble, in May 2014 by Pali Meursault. Drone Electric Lust is Kjell Runar Jenssen, drums, electronics + Lasse Marhaug, electronics + Per Gisle GalŒen and Fredrik Ness Sevendal, guitars. A coproduction between Doubtful Sounds, Apartment Records, Dysmusie, Pica Disk, Killer and Up Against the Wall, Motherfuckers!" [label info] doubtfulsounds.info | 2015 | €16.00 |
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| LAABAN, ILMAR | Ankarkättingens slut är sängens början | CD | Obscure Swedish sound-poetry with some very old recordings, from one of the lesser known artists in this field where meaning of words meets with the noise of words... Comes with nice gold-embossed small book with texts, pictures and graphics, all in Swedish ! “Ilmar Laaban´s poetry, practically a class in itself in Sweden, traverses linguistic borderlands where words can get split and torn apart, reduced to something beyond words, perhaps more universal than words, but where the various components can just as often be reassembled in new words. The cycle of destruction and construc- tion always fascinated Laaban the word-wright and word-kneader, going through it over and over again to find the cracks and clefts from which an unexpected spring might well forth.” Like Tristan Tzara he holds to the maxim "thought is born in the mouth. Laaban´s poetry, which gives sound and form to the subconscious, is a poetry of utterance, and therefore speaks for itself. But the appended compilation of statements on the subject, from the writer himself, nevertheless offer a rewarding insight into his poetic method and reveal much about the associative pathways down which his imagination has wandered. This CD begins with two examples of Labaan´s surrealist recitation from the 40´s and 50´s, followed by some of his polyphonic text-sound poetry (which he started in 1967), and finally some sound poems from the 90´s. Ilmar Laaban was born in Tallinn, Estonia in 1921. He studied Romanic languages at the university of Tartu and musical composition at the Tallinn conservatory. To avoid being drafted into Hitler´s army he fled to Sweden in 1943. He had already been writing surrealist poetry in Estonia, and continued in the same vein in Sweden, supporting himself as a freelance culture and art reviewer. His grasp and overview of the international art arena gave him an important role as a guide and source of inspiration for many artists who came in contact with him, not the least those in the circle around Fylkingen.” [label info] www.fylkingen.se | 1998 | €12.50 |
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| LABFIELD | Fishforms | CD | Ein neuer Name für die Impro-Drone-Szene, dieses skandinavische Duo, die mit indischen "Sruti" und "Saranghi"-Boxen wunderbar füllige Drones erzeugen (klingt nach Harmonium oder endlosen Sitar-Loops), die sich in endlosen Wellen und Obertönen fortbewegen, dabei aber sehr nah und konkret erscheinen. Subtile Bass-Dumm Percussion wird eingesetzt, (was meist auch einen low-freq Drone ergibt, der aber unruhiger schwingt ) und in Stück 2 ist eine Folk-artige Akustikgitarre zu hören, ... sehr schönes Debut (von zwei etablierten Leuten aus der Impro-/Jazz Szene)! " 'Phanta Rhei’ - everything flows. Whatever else might happen, life hurtles on and everything follows its natural course. Music is also subject to these ineluctable laws. While often breaking the mould, when everything is in its right place, the music follows its own course. As it does in the little experimental cabins of Laboratory Field, or LabField for short. This Scandinavian monster collective consisting of David Stackenäs (guitars, electronics) and Ingar Zach (percussion) knows exactly how to manipulate sound. At the same time, Ingar Zach is also creating a big stir with three-piece kindred spirits Huntsville. Not fussed about getting their hands dirty, Stackenäs and Zach dig for sounds of gold with successful results. Sound waves emanate from their instruments slowly. This unstoppable flood of sound is not distinguished by brute force but rather by its boundless subtlety and inventiveness. The listener will completely find themselves submerged by an overwhelming stream. Bottrop-Boy is proud to release LabField’s first sound experiments onto the world. Swedish guitarist Stackenäs and Norwegian percussionist Zach are known names in the European improvisation scene. They previously worked together in three-piece TRI DIM, together with saxophonist Håkon Kornstad. Two years later, Stackenäs and Zach decided to work as a duo, deciding on a radically different course. Improvisation, sound art, minimal music and drones are fused to form a completely unique style of performing. Zach plays, among other instruments, the unique electronic sruti and saranghi boxes. This is music that evolves quietly and often refers to the dronescapes of free improv pioneers such as AMM. The sounds which Stackenäs manages to conjure up from his guitars are unprecedented: softly humming, viciously rattling and intensely meditative. Zach answers these sounds with the hypnotic pulse of his bass drum and electronic sruti box. This is improvisational music replete with sounds branching in unpredictable directions and slowly smouldering drones. An aural rite of passage fit for these modern times." [label info] "....The 24 minute opener “Gin” is built around the sustained presence of Zachs sruti and saranghi boxes – electronic facsimiles of Indian harmonium and fiddle, respectively. With these blissed out vibrations, augmented by bells and the sparse isolated booms of a bass drum, it has the feel of a slowly unfolding devotional ritual, but it’s saved from descending into ersatz spiritual tourism by Stäckenas’s jarring embellishments. Even without seeing him at work, it’s probably safe to assume Stäckenas is operating out of the Keith Rowe school of unconventionally manipulated tabletop electric guitar, producing grating textures resembling the hum and drill of an overworked air conditioning unit or the piercing whine of a wineglass rim. For “Rin”, he switches to acoustic, with simple strumming phasing in and out of sync in left and right channels and a three note melody picked out on slide guitar – creating a satisfying mash of Country, raga and contemporary music that recalls Zach’s other trio, Huntsville. But, with the throbbing, sruti-drenched “Showa”, the album returns to its core mission to explore the bottomless reaches of drone, discovering dark, euphoric realms along the way." [Daniel Spicer / THE WIRE] "... On the risk of being accused (again) that I heard this only once, I must say that the work he produced as LabField with Stackenäs is great. Absolutely great. Zach plays bass drum, percussion, electronic scruti-box and electronic saranghi-box and Stackenäs plays acoustic guitars, resonator guitar, preparations and low budget electronics. With a background in improvisation you would expect careful, quiet, intimate playing - and in a way they do that. But it's not tender, soft or hardly outspoken. I suggest putting the volume up and get immersed by their wall of machine sounds. They play their instruments using all sorts of motors, fans or other mechanized instruments to create a natural resonating yet acoustic sound. Especially in 'Gin', the opening track which spans two-third of the entire CD this works wonderfully well. Dense to bone (mm, that's no expression)... dense like clouds, like being in a factory and one hears all the machines humming at once. Not deafening loud, but well constructed, balanced, varied, not from one point of the factory, but one has the feeling of walking about, hearing new aspects of the machines or new combination of the machines. By contrast 'Gin', the shortest piece, is a like bridge between that and 'Showa', soft tinkling guitars and percussive sounds, until things start to heat up again for the final piece. Hardly improvised sounding at all, this is sophisticated drone music of an outstanding order." [FdW / Vital Weekly] www.bottrop-boy.com | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| LABRADFORD | Prazision | do-LP | "The debut album from Labradford, as well as the premier kranky release, was originally issued in October 1993 to a surprising amount of acclaim as well as a fair bit of confusion. What was one to make of these beatless atmospheres cum pop songs that had very little to do with contemporary "indie-rock"? The album was typically lumped into such newly minted sub-genres such as "lo-fi" and "post-rock" even though there was no connection to any such imagined scenes. Lo-fi? You can hear Mark Nelson breathe between vocal lines for chrissake. Must be the lack of cymbals and hi-hat that accounts for that fallacy. Post-rock? Does this catch-all phrase for disparate musical groups and sounds even imply anything concrete or encompassing? Alas, just another label that quickly became meaningless. What is clearly evident upon listening to the album anew is that this is not a dated or stale work by any means. It could just as well have been recorded in 2003, or 1983 for that matter, as in 1993. It does not contain any of the markers so typical of pop music that would place it in any time frame, no production touches or instrumental sounds that would identify it as being the product of a specific period. At the very least, Labradford created a timeless work, one that still challenges the listener today. More to the point, they created a masterwork." [label info] www.kranky.net | 2013 | €22.50 |
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| LAINHART, RICHARD | White Night | CD | minimal ambience recorded 1974 ! Edition of 500 Ein wunderschön schimmernder, fast 30minütiger Drone von 1974 offenbart sich auf WHITE NIGHT, der aus vier sich umtänzelnden, schwingenden Tönen besteht. Obwohl hierzu Sinus-Töne auf einem MOOG-Synthesizer kreiert wurden, ergeben sich Obertöne und eine "wavende" Räumlichkeit, die das ganze eher nach Gitarrendrones klingen lassen, wie ihn heutzutage STARS OF THE LID oder ULTRASOUND machen... Erschienen auf dem Label von TOBIAS FISCHER (FEU FOLLET) und MIRKO UHLIG (ex AALFANG MIT PFERDEKOPF). "Back in 1974, one year before Brian Eno’s first landmark in Ambient-music, some young musician from New York wrote down a fragment of beauty’s hidden story with the minimal vocabulary of sine waves on the young black skin of a Moog synthesizer. The first release on CD features Richard Lainhart’s masterpiece in its original 29-minutes-version. There’s no single second to add, after this time everything is told though nothing has been said. Richard Lainhart about the work’s origin: "White Night" was composed and recorded in the late fall of 1974 at the State University of New York at Albany in the Coordinated Electronic Music Studio (CEMS). CEMS was created by my composition teacher Joel Chadabe with design and custom fabrication by Robert Moog and was, at the time, the largest integrated Moog modular synthesizer studio in the world. The piece consists of a dense, continuous four-note chord, each note in the chord recorded in a separate pass to one track on a Scully 4-track studio recorder. Each track consists of a single sine wave oscillator which is frequency modulated by a group of eight additional sine wave oscillators. Those oscillators are all tuned to different tones, each harmonically related to the fundamental chord tone. The amplitude of each harmonic oscillator is continuously varied under the control of an individual sequencer, and each sequencer is free-running - that is, the sequencers are not synchronized to each other, but rather running in their own independent timebases.The result is a continuously-changing complex harmonic waveform which modulates the frequency of the chord tone oscillator, generating a continuously-changing complex timbre based on the fundamental pitch of the note. The center tone of "White Night" is 212 Hz, slightly higher than the G below Middle C. The other notes create a chord consisting of a perfect fifth below the center tone, a major seventh just below the center tone, and a major second above the center tone. "White Night" was composed without reference to the standard A-440 tuning system, as we had no such pitch reference in the studio; I just picked a center tone that felt right, and went from there. As such, "White Night" lives in its own pitch world. The title "White Night" came about so: it was late December in upstate New York when I was finishing the piece, and a blizzard passed through town the night of the final mix. As I sat in the glow of the sequencers and tape decks in the University studio listening to the final version, I looked out the window and saw a security light on a building opposite the studio illuminating the blowing snow as it drifted off the roof. All I could see was the snow swirling in the light against the blackness; a moving painting continually drawn, erased, and redrawn, always changing, but always the same. It may sound bleak, but it wasn't - it was beautiful. It seemed to me that the image of the dancing whiteness perfectly matched the sound of the piece, and so I called it "White Night" to commemorate that evening of wind and snow." [label info] www.exovo.org | 2007 | €12.00 |
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| LALI PUNA | Our Inventions | CD | "2004 erschien ihr letztes Album "Faking The Books", dennoch ist Lali Punas Einfluss auf die elektronische Popszene immer noch spürbar. Gemeinsam mit The Notwist zeichnet die Band um Valerie Trebeljahr für moderne, experimentell angehauchte Popmusik verantwortlich. Mit "Our Inventions" rücken sie die Grenzen des Genres wieder mal ein Stück weiter. Der Song "Rest Your Head" schlägt eine souveräne Brücke zur vergangenen Bandhistorie. Hier pulsieren die Keyboards in warmen Wellen und begleiten Trebeljahrs Flüstern mit einlullenden Melodien - bis einen der Drumcomputer aus versponnenen Tagträumen reißt. Während das Vorgängeralbum förmlich auf die Bühne strebte, zeugt "Our Inventions" von intensiver, fast schon introvertierter Studioarbeit. Gleichzeitig unterstreichen Songs wie "Remember" und "Everything Is Always", was Lali Puna so besonders macht: überschwängliche Mitsingharmonien mit Feinschliff, die ihre Seele nicht hinter der Technik verstecken. Das Album schließt mit "Out There", Lali Punas Kollaboration mit Yukihiro Takahashi (Yellow Magic Orchestra). // More than half a decade has elapsed since the release of Faking The Books, Lali Puna's third (and hitherto most recent) long-player, but the band's impact on the climate of electronic rock music remains palpable. Along with sister-group The Notwist, this Weilheim quartet have helped map out the musical landscape for modern, experimentally minded pop music, and Our Inventions finds Lali Puna continuing to push the frontiers of their medium. 'Rest Your Head' serves as a perfectly poised re-introduction to the band and all they've become. Initiated by waves of glassy pulsations and warm, swelling synths, the song has the feel of a reverse-lullaby - gently winding its way through reposeful melodies, guided by the welcoming whisper of Trebeljahr's vocal until the final third kicks in with drum machine hits, and you're wide awake. While Faking The Books, with its vibrant riffs and extrovert tendencies, had the sound of a record begging to be played live, Our Inventions exhibits the hallmarks of an album spun from intensive studio-bound introspection. Two of the most explosive and ebullient songs here - 'Remember' and 'Everything Is Always' - confirm so much of what's special about Lali Puna: all the elements are at once precision engineered and delivered with absolute heartfelt conviction; perhaps never before have such jubilant pop hooks been so meticulously and fastidiously crafted, yet you can always hear the soul behind these machines. This is an album that's made for and about the modern world, concerning itself with the driving forces of progress and technological obsession. Trebeljahr's lyrics are suggestive of alienation and disenfranchisement from nature during the irony-laced title-track: "The birds in the trees/Singing our mobile melodies/What a sweet, sweet world", later stipulating that 'progress' never really gets us anywhere on 'Everything Is Always' ("Nothing new/These days"), while hinting at the ultimate bankruptcy of the all-devouring consumer age during 'Safe Tomorrow': "Never going anywhere/Don't stop by and get to know/Stuff your memory with facts/Save Save Save". The final song on the tracklist is 'Out There', a collaboration with the Yellow Magic Orchestra's Yukihiro Takahashi. The version appearing here is an alternate rendering of the track that appeared on Takahashi's Page By Page album in 2009. Here Trebeljahr addresses the global financial collapse ("Their kingdom's past, their kingdom's gone/Just ruins and plain desert/It's all burnt down, we're left alone"), and sure enough, Our Inventions is a body of work that keenly engages with the concerns of its time, one that confronts the excesses and ever-accelerating pace of modernity. The sublime, virtuoso electronic arrangements of Our Inventions directly lock onto the record's recurrent key themes, depicting a world inundated with technology and consumed by a fixation on progress - simultaneously passing commentary on this state of affairs and overcoming it. When Trebeljahr intones "Things move on/I'm gonna work fast because tomorrow comes quick" it sounds like it's being sung from the perspective of someone who's already there." [label info] www.morrmusic.com | 2010 | €16.00 |
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| Our Inventions | LP | "2004 erschien ihr letztes Album "Faking The Books", dennoch ist Lali Punas Einfluss auf die elektronische Popszene immer noch spürbar. Gemeinsam mit The Notwist zeichnet die Band um Valerie Trebeljahr für moderne, experimentell angehauchte Popmusik verantwortlich. Mit "Our Inventions" rücken sie die Grenzen des Genres wieder mal ein Stück weiter. Der Song "Rest Your Head" schlägt eine souveräne Brücke zur vergangenen Bandhistorie. Hier pulsieren die Keyboards in warmen Wellen und begleiten Trebeljahrs Flüstern mit einlullenden Melodien - bis einen der Drumcomputer aus versponnenen Tagträumen reißt. Während das Vorgängeralbum förmlich auf die Bühne strebte, zeugt "Our Inventions" von intensiver, fast schon introvertierter Studioarbeit. Gleichzeitig unterstreichen Songs wie "Remember" und "Everything Is Always", was Lali Puna so besonders macht: überschwängliche Mitsingharmonien mit Feinschliff, die ihre Seele nicht hinter der Technik verstecken. Das Album schließt mit "Out There", Lali Punas Kollaboration mit Yukihiro Takahashi (Yellow Magic Orchestra). // More than half a decade has elapsed since the release of Faking The Books, Lali Puna's third (and hitherto most recent) long-player, but the band's impact on the climate of electronic rock music remains palpable. Along with sister-group The Notwist, this Weilheim quartet have helped map out the musical landscape for modern, experimentally minded pop music, and Our Inventions finds Lali Puna continuing to push the frontiers of their medium. 'Rest Your Head' serves as a perfectly poised re-introduction to the band and all they've become. Initiated by waves of glassy pulsations and warm, swelling synths, the song has the feel of a reverse-lullaby - gently winding its way through reposeful melodies, guided by the welcoming whisper of Trebeljahr's vocal until the final third kicks in with drum machine hits, and you're wide awake. While Faking The Books, with its vibrant riffs and extrovert tendencies, had the sound of a record begging to be played live, Our Inventions exhibits the hallmarks of an album spun from intensive studio-bound introspection. Two of the most explosive and ebullient songs here - 'Remember' and 'Everything Is Always' - confirm so much of what's special about Lali Puna: all the elements are at once precision engineered and delivered with absolute heartfelt conviction; perhaps never before have such jubilant pop hooks been so meticulously and fastidiously crafted, yet you can always hear the soul behind these machines. This is an album that's made for and about the modern world, concerning itself with the driving forces of progress and technological obsession. Trebeljahr's lyrics are suggestive of alienation and disenfranchisement from nature during the irony-laced title-track: "The birds in the trees/Singing our mobile melodies/What a sweet, sweet world", later stipulating that 'progress' never really gets us anywhere on 'Everything Is Always' ("Nothing new/These days"), while hinting at the ultimate bankruptcy of the all-devouring consumer age during 'Safe Tomorrow': "Never going anywhere/Don't stop by and get to know/Stuff your memory with facts/Save Save Save". The final song on the tracklist is 'Out There', a collaboration with the Yellow Magic Orchestra's Yukihiro Takahashi. The version appearing here is an alternate rendering of the track that appeared on Takahashi's Page By Page album in 2009. Here Trebeljahr addresses the global financial collapse ("Their kingdom's past, their kingdom's gone/Just ruins and plain desert/It's all burnt down, we're left alone"), and sure enough, Our Inventions is a body of work that keenly engages with the concerns of its time, one that confronts the excesses and ever-accelerating pace of modernity. The sublime, virtuoso electronic arrangements of Our Inventions directly lock onto the record's recurrent key themes, depicting a world inundated with technology and consumed by a fixation on progress - simultaneously passing commentary on this state of affairs and overcoming it. When Trebeljahr intones "Things move on/I'm gonna work fast because tomorrow comes quick" it sounds like it's being sung from the perspective of someone who's already there." [label info] www.morrmusic.com | 2010 | €16.00 |
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| LAMI, GIOVANNI / HANNIBAL CHEW II / BARDO TODOL | Stories del Tiburon Lloron del Amazonas Cassette | 3 x MC set | Three-part journey into an imaginary Amazon from three artists working on the fringes of Field recordings. Stories del Tiburón Llorón del Amazonas picks up where the previous, Stories of the Indian Dotted Whale trilogy left off. This time, the same three artists, Giovanni Lami, Hannibal Chew II aka Gonçalo F Cardoso and Bardo Todol aka Pablo Picco return to riff on an imaginary crying shark, known to swim in the amazon river. The sad and melancholic shark has never been seen but its weep and sob can be heard all over the region. Here are three works of sympathetic howls for a lonely and misunderstood creature. First part from Giovanni Lami is made of ghost recordings made during 2020 in Iquitos, Perú, in the amazon forest during the film shoot of Tras el Barco de Fitzcarraldo. Second part from Hannibal Chew II is a collection of re-assembled recordings and jams gathered from a trip through the Amazon in late 2017 to early 2018. Later assembled during various improvised recording sessions during the long hot summer of 2023 in Tenerife, Canary Islands. The third and final part comes from Bardo Todol and features abrasive tape and digital field recordings manipulation made by Picco in Iquitos in 2020 during the shooting of Tras el barco de Fitzcaraldo. All three feature sounds of: people talking, static radios, Saturday night churches, river people, shawi people, dolphin people, shark people, market people, vibrating insects, zombie insects, giant insects, giant motors and of course various weeps of a crying shark. SUC58 = Red cassette shell SUC57 = Yellow cassette shell SUC56 = Pink cassette shell First part from Giovanni Lami is made of ghost recordings made during 2020 in Iquitos, Perú, in the amazon forest during the film shoot of “Tras el Barco de Fitzcarraldo”. Second part from Hannibal Chew II is a collection of re-assembled recordings and jams gathered from a trip through the Amazon in late 2017 to early 2018. Later assembled during various improvised recording sessions during the long hot summer of 2023 in Tenerife, Canary Islands. The third and final part comes from Bardo Todol and features abrasive tape and digital field recordings manipulation made by Picco in Iquitos in 2020 during the shooting of “Tras el barco de Fitzcaraldo”. | 2024 | €25.00 |
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| LAND:FIRE | Shortwave Transmission | CD | "Ist es wirklich schon fünf Jahre her seit das letzte Land:Fire-Album "Physical : Mental : Psychological" erschien? Ja, das Herbst9-Nebenprojekt von Henry Emich und Frank Merten hat tatsächlich so lang mit neuem Material auf sich warten lassen. Und trotz der grossen Zeitspanne ist das Thema des Albums ähnlich gewählt, geht es wieder um die Auswirkungen radioaktiver Techbologien. "Physical : Mental : Psychological" beschäftigte sich mit den Auswirkungen von 'Trinity', der ersten Atombombe 1945. Land:Fires neues Album "Shortwave Transmission" steckt den Rahmen etwas anders ab und beschäftigt sich mit dem Einsatz radioaktiver Substanzen in der modernen Kriegsführung, vor allem während der Kriege im Nahen Osten gegen Ende des letzten Jahrhunderts und den daraus resultierenden Folgen. Das Duo zeichnet ein apokalyptisches Bild der Welt, das wir uns so kaum vorstellen können, waren diese Kriege doch zu weit weg oder sind schon zu lang her. Da erscheint es fast beschämend, wenn einem die Musik aus "Shortwave Transmission" gefällt. Dieses mit Sprachfetzen aus alten Aufnahmen angefüllte Inferno klingt wie der düstere Nachhall einer Menschheit, die sich selbst vernichtet hat und deren auditives Vermächtnis alles ist, was übrig geblieben ist und nun in Radiowellen transformiert durch den Äther schwebt. Eine verlorene, einsame Melodie hallt knarzend vor sich hin. Bedrohliches Donnern macht Angst, genauso wie starkes, pulsierendes Rauschen. Blubberndes und kratzendes Grollen, von hellen, metallenen Tönen begleitet und mit unkenntlich verzerrten Sprachsamples führt zu einem abrupten Ende. Land:Fires Musik hat aber auch unweigerlich schöne Momente. Trostlosigkeit und Zerstörung sind nicht allumfassend. Der Schrei eines Raubvogels zum Beispiel oder die melancholische aber spärliche Melodie in "Most People Were Silent". Dieses Album ist eine Warnung, eine Aufforderung aufzuhören, bevor uns die Radioaktivität verschlingt. "Shortwave Transmission" ist kein Soundtrack für den Weltuntergang, sondern schon eher ein Nachruf." [Medienkonverter] "Coming back with an all new album after more than 5 years the Alter Ego of HERBST9 delivers another outstanding soundtrack about radiological warfare and it´s debris during the last century. SWT is like a massive energy spike with a surrounding maelstrom of machine noises, rhythms, interferrences and electromagnetic waves. The complex arrangement of technical sounds creates a deadly atmosphere of fallout and devastated landscapes with an apocalyptic aura reflected by dissonant harmonies and deep shimmering ambient scapes. Presented in a 6 panel digipack. Mastered by Andreas Wahnmann." [label info] www.loki-found.de "With a title like 'Short Wave Transmissions', you could perhaps easily think that the album of Land:Fire is along that of S.E.T.I. That is only partly true. There is indeed a lot of talking on this record, snippets from the radio, but the music is somewhat different. Land:Fire is an alter-ego of Herbst9, and it has been five years since he last released a record. This is all about radiological warfare, nuclear fall out and other somewhat unpleasant things in life. Here too we have some analogue synthesizers, computerized effects but also rhythm machines, which create a cold clinical and mechanical sound. That may seem like something negative, but its not. The music is very dynamic, moving back and forth between blocks of synthesized sound and soft spoken ambient textures, all spiced up with radio talk. Its not easy to say wether the music really reflects the radiological/nuclear holocaust theme (would you be aware if it wasn't told?), but there is certainly a spooky atmosphere surrounding this record. Excellent soundtrack to an imaginary film about these kind of subjects." [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2009 | €13.00 |
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| LARKIAN & YELLOW6 | Offtempo | CD | "Neither Larkian or Yellow6 are easily categorised, but both differ from each other. The mixing of the two styles creates something all its own whilst retaining the individual. By using an impressive range of effects and ways to play guitar ‘Offtempo’ offers various sound textures and landscapes, from shoegaze inspired reverb to atmospheric ambiences or epic post-rock melodies. At times, it is hard to say who played what, which is a good thing, showing it is not just a superposition of two different styles. The music tends towards the melancholy but maintains an air of optimism." [label info] www.bassesfrequences.org | 2011 | €10.00 |
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| LARSEN & Z'EV | In V.Tro | CD | "The album combines both the live recording of the first ever Larsen & Z'ev In V.Tro live performances with extreme aural-mixes by Z'ev of Larsen's In V.Tro studio sessions. Larsen and Z''ev In V.tro is a soundtrack for micro-cinematic images that document the studies on cells of the Istituto di Anatomia Umana Normale (Basic Human Anatomy Institute), between 1935 and1985. Visuals are from a studio by professors Dario Cantino and Antonio Barasa, teachers of these Scientific Institutes. By browsing great quantities of original footage on films kept in the local University with a scientific and reasoned view, Cantino and Barasa wanted to go back over the stages of history and techniques of in vitro cultures and their documented shootings, to pay tribute to the Maestro of anatomical discipline, professor Giuseppe Levi. Not only professor Levi had the intuition of the great potential of the in vitro studies of cells, using the technique developed by american zoologist Ross G. Harrison, he also enforced his studies on cells with cinema techniques, using single frames taken by optical microscope edited and sped up, obtaining a cinematic footage. These exceptionals scientific documents still represent today a useful tool for studies and researches in a lot of medical branches like Cellular Biology, Histology and Microscopic Anatomy. Larsen and Z'ev were waiting for the right concept to work together on combining Larsen's soundscaping to Z'ev's esoteric approach to rhythm and percussions and the chance of having access to these rare footages gave them the perfect context to apply their naturally cinematic and cellural music to, reproducing this way lab sperimentation and biological procedures to create life outside a living organism with the use of introspective and minimal, but richly arranged, semi improvised sounds and textures." [label info] www.importantrecords.com | 2011 | €14.00 |
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| LAST DOMINION LOST | Abomination of Desolation | CD | "Desolation: total, utter, without remit. Departure, loss, absence, yawning valleys of noise. The overture moans from the terminal ward. The humiliation of the cadaver, the scouring of abandoned houses and rubbish heaps, a planet blasted by the fruits of hubris. The last sigh of bathos: "It is finished“. Such is the subject matter and sentiment of this follow-up to the much acclaimed albums “Snowdrops From A Curate's Garden“ and „Towers of Silence“ which put Last Dominion Lost firmly on the throne of post-industrial music. “Abomination of Desolation” is consistent with their development into a dark and profound direction, and yet saturated with the noise and feedback that taps deep into the genre’s conscience: Metallic percussion and the screams of terror, ritual chants and anxious atmospheres, all used and abused in order to create the most accurate soundtrack of desolation. By the fans, “Abomination of Desolation” will be met with mixed feelings – as recordings began with John Murphy in 2015 and through his untimely death that year had to be finished without him, the acknowledged grandsigneur of post-industrial music. The album’s theme and musical approach were originally intended by John for a KRANK release: An electronic album, reflecting on John’s experiences when he was first hospitalized, comatose, and hooked to a breathing machine which was constantly creating bizarre sounds. The result stands as a brief and concise display of the group’s ability to create an unmistakable old school sound with contemporary production value. The album runs for ten tracks clocking in less than 40 minutes total and features new member Till Brüggemann (Gerechtigkeits Liga), as well as guests Nikolas Schreck, Lori Goldston and John Murphy’s beloved wife Annie Stubbs among others. With a firm electronic/analogue backbone, a delicate contrast of percussions of various origins and uncanny vocals, this is a truly dark affair, and while towards the end of the journey some more aggravating feedback loops crawl in, it never gets upfront aggressive. With the crisp mastering job of Hunter Barr it is safe to say that “Abomination of Desolation” will not lag behind its predecessors at all, but forge their deserved status as genre icons." https://epicureanescapism.bandcamp.com/album/abomination-of-desolation "Nachdem der Name Last Dominion Lost ursprünglich rückwirkend für Aufnahmen verwendet wurde, die John Murphy, Jon Evans und Dominic Guerin Anfang der 90er gemacht hatten, wurde in den letzten Jahren aus Last Dominion Lost eine aus Murphy, Evans sowie Julian Percy bestehende und in Berlin ansässige Band, die eine durchaus an den Ursprüngen des Industrials orientierte Geräuschmusik spielte, aber dem 21. Jahrhundert klanglich angemessen agierte. Über „Tower Of Silence“, das eigentliche Debüt, hieß es dann auch auf diesen Seiten, „dass Last Dominion Lost einen transparenten Klang schätzen, keinen Soundbrei, der vielleicht kurzfristig dem Hörer die Ohren zum Klingen bringt, dessen Effektivität sich aber schnell abnutzt.“ und man kann diese Einschätzung auch bzgl. des Nachfolgers – zwischendurch erschien das 2011 aufgenommene Livealbum „Snowdrops From A Curate’s Garden“ – „Abomination of Desolation“ äußern, denn wenn eine Reihe von Vertretern atonaler Geräuschmusik auf maximale Verzerrung und Statik setzen (am offensichtlichsten bei dem selbst so betitelten Wall Noise), beschreiten Last Dominion Lost einen anderen Weg, bei der statt Statik Dynamik oder besser gesagt: Unruhe herrscht – und das ist bei diesem „uneasy listening“ durchaus als Kompliment zu verstehen. Mit einem dem Buch Daniel entliehenen Titel, der auch schon Morbid Angel und Clark Ashton Smith inspirierte, macht die Band deutlich, in welche Richtung das Album geht. Von Labelseite heißt es auch: „Desolation: total, utter, without remit. Departure, loss, absence, yawning valleys of noise. The overture moans from the terminal ward. The humiliation of the cadaver, the scouring of abandoned houses and rubbish heaps, a planet blasted by the fruits of hubris. The last sigh of bathos: “It is finished“.” Diese Sätze scheinen nur auf den ersten Blick hyperbolisch, denn natürlich kann bzw. muss man das Album auch vor dem Hintergrund von John Murphys Tod lesen. Murphy hatte Konzept und musikalische Ausrichtung ursprünglich für sein Projekt Krank angedacht, um seine Krankenhauserfahrungen zu verarbeiten. Beendet wurden diese Aufnahmen von Percy, Evans sowie Till Brüggemann von Gerechtigkeits Liga, der seit einiger Zeit festes Mitglied von Last Dominion Lost ist. Letztlich ist das dystopische Musik, bei auf der der Stimme wenn nicht unbedingt eine zentrale, dann doch nicht zu unterschätzende Rolle zukommt: So etwa die Schreie, die auf „Overture To Desolation“ zu hören sind, während es scheppert und Glas zu zerbrechen scheint. Man hört aggressiv-derangierte Vocals auf „Dimunitive Cruciform“, irrsinnig dämonisches Stimmengewirr auf „Irrumatio Del Mortis“ oder aber im Hintergrund schreiende Personen auf „Bludger’s Kill“. „Devil’s Path, ein fast schon leicht atonales, analoges Ambientstück , wird von Flüstern durchzogen, „Beyond The Valley Of The Flies“ knüpft daran musikalisch an. Auf dem von ritueller Perkussion durchzogenen „Blueprint for Urban Warfare“ erklingen schmerzverzerrte Vocals, die eine psychische wie physische Auflösung zu illustrieren scheinen. Lediglich “Cursed Earth” erinnert vom Gesang an Power Electronics. Das ist vielleicht im positivsten Wortsinn pathologische Musik. In Anlehnung an Throbbing Gristle könnte man auch von einer “Journey through a diseased body” sprechen. Die Landschaften, die hier vor dem Auge des Hörenden entstehen, sind wahrlich (ver)wüst(et). In Klarkash-Tons Prosagedicht “The Abomination of Desolation” heißt es:„Of this horror, many tales are told, and nearly all of the tales are different. Some say that the thing has neither visible form nor audible voice“, Last Dominion Lost haben dem Grauen eine mehr als adäquate Stimme gegeben." [MG/African Paper] | 2017 | €12.00 |
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| Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden | CD | “Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden” is a 2011 live recording of industrial veterans Last Dominion Lost with all exclusive, unreleased tracks. Active since 1992, Last Dominion Lost feature Jon Evans, John Murphy (Shining Vril, Krank, Ex-SPK/Whitehouse/Current 93) and Julian Percy. Through their pedigree, Last Dominion Lost are considered to justifiably carry the legacy of the legend that is SPK - and that’s also by their sound, as they stand for an undiluted brand of industrial music, combining shuddering analogue sounds, clanging metal rhythms and feedback with ritual percussion & chants. On “Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden” the main focus lies on the hypnotic, ritual and mental aspects of music, with an omnipresent metallic percussive backbone. It comes as no surprise to find the group reveling in dark subject matter like psychopathology, debasement and religious deviation, to which they manage to deliver an authentic soundtrack. The LP is congruously accompanied by authentic photographs of the infamous Victorian era Lunatic Asylums in Kew and Beechworth, Australia. Last Dominion Lost take an ethically moved stance, commemorating the fact that from its beginnings as a penal colony, the majority of the early white Australians were drawn from the classes of the poor, dispossessed and desperate, long known as factors that encourage depression, alcoholism and psychological ill-being. The process of transportation was attended by squalor, disease and rape. These damaged individuals were then thrust into a harsh and alien environment, housed in circumstances worse than a modern refugee camp, and expected to build their own prisons – circumstances that effectively made mental illness was one of the colony's very first imports. From there the dismal history of mental hospitals took its course, evolving from incarceration over therapeutic occupation to, ultimately, medication. It is the practice of oppressing those who cannot “conform” to the norms imposed by the system, the root cause of the underlying aggression with which the Australian general public treated each other, and still continue to do. This live album has been recorded at Kalyug Festival, Berlin in 2011 and is perfectly mastered by James Plotkin, providing the album a sharp, forceful & modern sound. Thus “Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden” can be considered the missing link between the grainy, demo-type 1990s recordings that became “The Tyranny of Distance” (Tesco, 2004) and the enthusiastically received “Towers Of Silence” album (The Epicurean / silken tofu, 2014), which displayed a very contemporary, indicatory approach at that classic industrial sound. Beautifully duplex black/gold printed cover, 300g natural paper, postcard, 140g black vynil, black disco bag in transparent high quality sleeve with flap, includes download code. Limited edition of 253 copies, hand numbered. First 50 copies come with small postcard. The Epicurean . cure.8 Format: 12" LP & file download Release date CD: 23. October 2017 Release date LP: 21. October 2015 Artwork, typography and design: The Epicurean Playtime: 37:42 min | 2017 | €13.00 |
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| LASWELL, BILL & PETE NAMLOOK | Outland | 6 x CD BOX | The 'Outland' album series was a collaborative endeavour by the visionary US bassist-producer Bill Laswell and the late German musician Peter Namlook that pushed the boundaries of dark ambient and electronic music. Spanning five albums released over a thirteen year period from 1994, this new boxset serves as a testament to the creative synergy between the two masterminds. At the time the duo joined forces, the New York-based Laswell was already a famous producer with a massive client list that included cutting-edge rock, pop, funk, jazz and electronic artists, but he had also founded the Axiom label in 1989 and been responsible for groundbreaking work in genres that included ambient, dub and world music. Namlook was recognised as a pioneering figure in the ambient techno scene, having founded the label FAX +49-69/450464 in his native Frankfurt in 1992. 'Outland' became a fusion of their individual musical sensibilities that resulted in a unique set of releases. At the heart of the series is an exploration of sound as a vehicle for emotion and contemplation, with Laswell's signature basslines and experimental soundscapes interweaving seamlessly with Namlook's ethereal textures and intricate sonic layering. Each album is characterised by a sense of expansiveness, taking listeners on a voyage through rarely charted sonic dimensions. All have the ability to evoke a wide range of emotions and have their own distinctive sonic palette, ranging from ambient tranquility to cosmic intensity. 'Outland' has endured as an influential touchstone, its impact felt not only in its captivating soundscapes but also in its invitation to engage in deep introspection and cosmic contemplation. With each album, the duo beckoned listeners to transcend the mundane and embark on a sonic voyage into the extraordinary, where sound becomes a conduit for spiritual and artistic expression. The lavish matte-finish boxset opens to the 5 "Outland" albums in separate matte sleeves, with all-new designs, and all audio completely remastered. This box also contains a new addition to the OUTLAND series - an album of dense, bass space drone by Bill Laswell, entitled "Blackland". The boxset also contains an exclusive card with an essay about the project written by BIll Laswell, July 2023. ........................................ Their collaboration actually began after Namlook discovered that several samples from early Fax releases had been utilised for Laswell's own projects, prompting an initial forthright exchange that quickly turned into a deep mutual admiration. "We started to send music back and forth, Frankfurt to Brooklyn and back again," explains Laswell. "There were so many recordings and different collaborations that several of them turned into a series. In addition to 'Outland', there was 'Psychonavigation', 'The Dark Side Of The Moog' and more." For 'Outland', he recalls that "I had done an Asian tour with my friend Akira Sakata where I managed to record a lot of traditional music in Mongolia, which is heavy drone singing and the ultimate ambient. When I was in Europe, I brought these recordings to Pete and we worked on them in Frankfurt. That was the start of 'Outland', which then continued for another four releases." He also reveals that Namlook told him about the very start of his career. "He was playing guitar and working in a bank. Every day, on his way home with his guitar, he would pass a river and stop and play with the river flowing. I think that's where his ambient obsession began. I recorded a piece with Bernie Worrell entitled 'By A River (for Peter)', which is the first track of the box set compilation 'Die Welt ist Klang: A Tribute to Pete Namlook', which was released in 2013, a year after his death." CD1: Produced by Peter Kuhlmann. Written by Bill Laswell and Pete Namlook. Mongolian voices and instruments by Nicky Skopelitis & Oz Fritz. CD2: Produced by Peter Kuhlmann. Written by Bill Laswell and Pete Namlook. Ethnic sounds recorded in West Africa by Oz Fritz. Recorded at Klanglabor, Frankfurt. CD3: Produced by Peter Kuhlmann. Written by Bill Laswell and Pete Namlook. Recorded at Klanglabor, Frankfurt & Traben-Trarbach. CD4: Produced by Peter Kuhlmann. Written by Bill Laswell and Pete Namlook. Recorded at Klanglabor, Frankfurt & Traben-Trarbach. CD5: Produced by Peter Kuhlmann. Written by Bill Laswell and Pete Namlook. Recorded at Orange Music, West Orange,NJ, and Klanglabor Hödeshof. CD6: Bill Laswell: Bass, effects. Engineering: James Dellatacoma. Recorded at Orange Music, West Orange,NJ (Bassmatter, BMI). https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/outland "Quite a catch and a very pleasantly surprising one. I would not have imagined that Cold Spring Records, known for all their darkness, would dip into ambient electronic pioneer Pete Namlook's (1960-2012) work, particularly his piece with Bill Laswell. The latter is a bass player and producer with a massive body of work, mainly outside Vital Weekly (Herbie Hancock's 'Rockit' is a VW HQ favourite, sometimes), both on bass and production duties. Pete Namlook played electronic ambient music, usually without too many rhythms, but he wasn't too shy to put a full set on. Namlook's catalogue is massive, as at one point, he released a CD every month on his FAX +49-69/450464 label. He had a line of collaborators with whom he worked a lot (Klaus Schulze, Tetsu Inoue, and Richie Hawtin, for instance). With Bill Laswell he recorded five parts of 'Outland', which are now re-issued with a bonus disc of a new work, 'Blackland', by Laswell. There was more work by the two, 'Psychonavigation', which also spanned various CDs (and maybe something to come in the future?), which is one I really enjoyed. I could call myself a Namlook fan, yet I also know I heard maybe 50% of his work. Back in the day, I couldn't afford to buy everything I wanted, and Namlook's output was, as said, massive. From the original 'Outland' albums, I only heard two. It is interesting to play these six works as they provide an excellent picture of the diversity of ambient house music, at least in the approach of Namlook and Laswell. There isn't one kind of ambient house. The word 'house', as in 'house music', is a loose term anyway in this respect, indicating dance music. Ambient House never relies too much on strict dance beats but uses more complex rhythms, such as on 'Outland Two - African Virus', which is more exotic, wilder and sometimes indeed more African. 'Outland Three' (no subtitle) has rhythms that are a bit more straightforward and minimal, but it's not something for the dance floor. On 'Outland Four', the beats are more dub-like in some of the pieces (as with all of these pieces, it moves through various ideas and textures per album), another interest of many ambient house musicians. On the other side of the musical spectrum, we find music devoid of rhythm, spacious synthesizers, minimalist drones, and perhaps something ambient in the truest sense. As with many Namlook releases, there is a certain directness about the music, indicating that the music is one long session, a live-in-studio approach, with mixing and editing afterwards. There is not much extra information in this release explaining methods. The whole live-in-studio approach might be something that is only in my mind. Each album is a trip, and so is the whole five-plus hours of this. I played this for the first time in one row on a lazy Sunday, sipping tea after a long night. Ambient music is the preferred waking-up music for me. Maybe with the idea that my living room is a sort of chill-out place today, as some of this music is clearly the intended soundtrack for such a place." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2023 | €47.50 |
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| LAU, PAK YAN | Bakunawa | LP | More hands. More possibilities. More ethereal drones. More poly shifting rhythms. More fun. That was the starting point and the idea of ‘Bakunawa’: the album Pak Yan Lau recorded with her freshly started ensemble, consisting of the marvellous musicians Vera Cavallin, Giovanni Di Domenico, João Lobo and Mathieu Calleja. On ‘Bakunawa’ Pak Yan and her ensemble are delving and digging deep into the sound spectrum of detuned toy piano’s, second hand gong rods, prepared harp, metal tubes and ring modulators. Instruments were searched, collected and bought worldwide: on Japanese street markets, in second hand stores in Brussels, from dedicated American Ebay-sellers and the cellar of the Musica centre in Neerpelt. The result is a record split up in two compositions of 20 minutes: on Part I the Bakunawa ensemble let the overtones of the gong rods, prepared harp and metal tubes slowly resonate into a deep listening ambient state of mind. Rich harmonic textures of rather unconventional instruments shaping an immersive piece of spellbinding sonic details. On Part II the quintet craft their own ritual ceremony music with distorted toy piano’s and hypnotic percussion. Echoing the frequencies of a gamelan orchestra. Rhythms shifting in haunted patterns recalling the Philippine mythology where the moon swallowing sea dragon Bakunawa was scared away by drumming loudly on pots and pans. Pak Yan Lau: composition, gong rods, toy piano, metal tubes, ring modulators Vera Cavallin: gong rods, prepared harp Giovanni Di Domenico: gong rods, toy piano João Lobo: gong rods, toy piano, tom Mathieu Calleja: gong rods, toy piano, bass drum, metal tubes Recorded at STUK in Leuven and Kunstencentrum nona in Mechelen in 2020 Recorded and mixed by Christophe Albertijn Mastered by Gert Van Hoof & Jimmy Van Rietvelde at Cochlea Mastering Cut by Dubplates & Mastering Berlin Cover pictures by Juhyun Choi Pictures insert by Laurent Orseau Layout design by Jef Cuypers Executive production by Philippe Cortens https://cortizona.bandcamp.com/album/bakunawa | 2021 | €23.00 |
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| LEGENDARY PINK DOTS (LPD) | Chemical Playschool 15 | CD | "The Legendary Pink Dots are back with there highly anticipated new album. Chemical Playschool is a concept in which more then ever an indulgence in extended ballads and psychedelic improvisations allows Edward Ka-Spel’s voice to engage us with his unique brand of storytelling, and the use of synthesizers brings to mind vintage space rock adapted for the modern age. The album opens with the beautifully epic “Immaculate Conception” where Ka-Spel transports us into a world of stars and planets surrounded by voices and distant echos. In “The Opium Den Parts 1-3″ we find a melancholy piece with classic LPD folk essence, arriving then at the ritual tribal ballad “Ranting and Raving”. Chemical Playschool is able to surpass all of our expectations for a band always able to surprise as they lead us through their peculiar dream world. A truly inspired release representing one of the most beautiful concepts created by this eclectic and mythic band." [label info] www.rustblade.com "a new voyage into the Chemical Playschool after over 10 years of being locked outside the laboratory. Songs, labyrinths, and colours so vivid you'll never wash them out of your mind." [Edward Ka-Spel] "Over the years in their thirty plus career, there have always been 'Chemical Playschool' releases by The Legendary Pink Dots. These are works which are a bit different than their more regular, song based studio work, but not as experimental as some of the releases that they put out themselves. In songs on any of these 'Chemical Playschool' releases, there is always a fair amount of experimentation, while Edward Ka-spel's voice is never really far away. Take the opening piece, 'Immaculate Conception', which starts out with a two note synth and Edward's voice, but then after a while starts drifting into a cosmic synth work with floating and drifting melodies, and Ka-spel's voice backwards - a feature from the old days rarely seen on the more current releases. It's here where the Dots are at their best - in my humble opinion. Not drifting in a more krauty version or too spacious with experimental ideas, but an excellent balance between both ends. Rhythm machines seem not really apparent on this new CD and it all dwells heavily on the use of keyboards, electronics and maybe even field recordings, radio sounds and such like. Even Erik Drost's guitar seems to have a more remote place in the total picture, with a prominent tinkle on the strings in 'The Opium Den Parts 1-3', but otherwise more filling out spacious playing with sustaining tones. 'Chemical Playschool 15' is another fine trip - pun intended - and certainly a road these should take more often." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2012 | €14.00 |
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| Pages of Aquarius | CD | "The Legendary Pink Dots is an Anglo-Dutch experimental rock band formed in London in 1980. Although far outside the mainstream, LPD have released more than 40 albums, have a devoted worldwide following, and tour frequently. Distinctive vocals and lyrical imagery blended with hypnotic guitar and synth washes and spellbinding bass pulses to create an enthralling, captivating release." [label info] "The problem with the Age of Aquarius is that nobody seems to know when it's due, or indeed whether or not it's already begun. According to the song 'Aquarius' from hippy musical Hair, the dawning will come when "The moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars." Unfortunately, as astrologer Neil Spencer has noted, the moon enters the seventh house daily, while Jupiter and Mars are aligned several times a year. Other astrologers have argued for Aquarian start dates ranging from 1447 right up until 3597. In the popular imagination, however, the Age of Aquarius will always be associated with the “love generation” counter-culture of the 1960s, and represents the utopian new age that their flower power shenanigans were supposed to usher in. In other words, it should be here by now, and it manifestly isn't. As Legendary Pink Dots' mainstay Edward Ka-Spel notes, if this is Aquarius page one then love, peace and good hair are hardly qualities in the ascendant. "It wasn't supposed to be like this," he writes. "Are we in for another 2,160 years of this?" Ultimately though, Ka-Spel's conclusions are optimistic. What we're actually living through are the death throes of the Pisces Age, he argues; it's brutal and painful, but it won't last. The way to get through is by letting go, on both a personal and societal level, and in order to do this we need to look unflinchingly at where we are now, what is holding us back and what will help us move forward. So the album's opening track, 'Mirror, Mirror' tackles introspection, narcissism and self-loathing alongside the hard but necessary task of looking closely at your own self and putting the work in to improve. Stinging synthesiser blasts reflect this flinching process over driving electronic percussion, before a melancholy mellotron passage suggests a degree of sorrowful self-acceptance has been found. On 'The Greatest Story Ever Told,' a swarm of buzzing clockwork wasps soundtrack rising existential dread before the song shifts into a litany of reasons not to worship God, or indeed watch his movies on TV, all set to a queasy rendition of 'All Things Bright and Beautiful.' The Age of Pisces is often identified as the Christian era, and early Christians identified themselves using two fishes as a symbol; among other qualities, Aquarius is associated with the decline of religion and the rise of technology. "We worship technology," Ka-Spel whispers ambivalently at the close. How the glorious analogue squelching of 'D-Train' fits into the concept I'm not sure, but 'Credibility' and 'Trending' take a look at the world around us, the former cursing "Damn your eyes, austerity" over lullaby-like piano, while the latter looks at the mysterious force of the zeitgeist as represented by popular topics on social media. Watching "the great sea ripple," Ka-Spel wonders who or what is driving the trends, directing our thoughts and attention as one linked collective organism. The album concludes with two multi-part epics. The near-eighteen minute 'Don't Go There- Page Aquarian- Jacob's Ladder' begins in haunting yet propulsive style, discussing surveillance culture and "cameras everywhere" before shifting onto memory as a form of observation, returning to the theme of looking unsparingly at your own past actions and how they've led you to where you are now. A collage of found sound leads into a passage of spare percussion over which Ka-Spel considers the stars and the notion of destiny, before the final section finds tentative piano chords reverberating over the sound of a gathering storm. Here considerations of mortality and the afterlife are resolved into the need to make peace and find some kind of acceptance. For CD listeners, that's where the album ends, but it would be a shame to miss out on the sixteen-and-a-half minute 'The Weight of Water Parts 1-4,' which is only available on digital and double vinyl editions. A dry, steady pulse beat supports slabs of musique concrete and some non-judgemental meditations on self-destructive behaviour, before a frantic flurry of low piano notes in a repeating, claustrophobic loop successfully simulates a panic attack. This then shifts into an oceanic evocation of waking at 3am with the realisation that your life has been wasted in deceit and acquisitiveness, before the instrumental final section captures a zen-like sensation of beatific release, with acoustic and electronic textures beautifully balanced against each other. Aquarius of course is the water bearer, and 'The Weight of Water' effectively sums up the pain and difficulty of this period of transition. There's no need though to take the astrological metaphors literally; this album can be enjoyed purely as an unsettling and moving 83 minutes of music, and for those who do listen closely to the words, Ka-Spel's dry sense of humour undercuts any tendency towards new age pretentiousness. Their long history could make some wrongly see the Legendary Pink Dots as unapproachable or worse, irrelevant. But Pages of Aquarius is an album that stands on its own merits. Even if you've never bought a Pink Dots record before, this is a progressive, provocative and ultimately positive statement about the world we're all living in today." [The Quietus] | 2016 | €15.00 |
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| LEGENDARY PINK DOTS & KETVECTOR | The Shock Exchange | LP | "The Shock Exchange presents an encounter between two of the most interesting and unique projects of the current neo-psychedelic and electronic music panorama. The Legendary Pink Dots need no introduction, and on Side A they once again solidify their status as musical pioneers with all new songs and swirling psychedelic arrangements led by the charismatic voice of Edward Ka-spel. Side B is dedicated to the progressive and psychedelic electronic project kETvECTOR, born from the mind of Justin Bennett (Skinny Puppy / Bahntier) together with Stefano Rossello (Bahntier), showcasing many facets of the project; from electronic free jazz to ambient experimental and esoteric avant-garde. The album also features paintings by Franke Nardiello (aka Groovie Mann) of My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult. A transparent vinyl release exclusively for record store day 2015, not to be missed!" [label info] www.rustblade.it "When the first Compact Disc was released more than 30 years ago not many people were expecting that the LP would still be around in 2015. And even more, that it would make a come-back in the digital age. The LP today is not a mass product as it was back then, but more of a luxury product. Real music lovers want to experience music. Not just listen to it, but use all 5 senses. The tangibility, the artwork, the smell of it, it is all part of the experience. The Italian Rustblade record label is specialized in limited releases like picture discs and special packed albums. The Shock Exchange is a transparent vinyl split LP limited to 299 copies. The beautiful cover paintings were made by Franke Nardiello (a.k.a. Groovie Mann) of My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult. But most important is of course the music. The A side contains 3 tracks by The Legendary Pink Dots. The English/Dutch band celebrates its 35th anniversary this year. They are not the only band to last that long, and there are bands that are even older. But from their very first cassette release in 1980 there hasn't been a year where they did not release anything. In several years even more releases, and adding to that also solo releases and side projects such as The Tear Garden and Mimir. Also to this day they are still playing live regularly. The current lineup of the band consists of founder members Edward Ka-Spel (vocals, keyboards) and Phil Knight (a.k.a The Silverman, keyboards & electronics) as well as Erik Drost (guitars, bass) and sound engineer and wizard Raymond Steeg. The last two years the band was in a very productive phase with lots of releases, including a few releases on Rustblade: Chemical Playschool Volume 15 (2013, CD box set), The Curse Of Marie Antoinette (2013, picture disc) and 10 To The Power Of 9 (2014, 2 LP / CD). During their 35 years of existence the band's sound changed, but there are a few elements that have been there from the beginning. First there is the typical sound of Edward's voice. Second his lyrics: strange little stories with (black) humor, inventive word playing, bizarre twists and a very English reserve. Never judging but always observing. Third is a sense of melancholy, a longing for the unreachable. Fourth is a psychedelic element. Fifth is the creative use of synthesizers and samples: they use their gear to create unique sounds. Sometimes alienating, sometimes very powerful. The first track is very much in line with their previous releases, a more electronic driven song. The other two tracks are more minimalistic and melancholic. kETvECTOR is the name of the collaboration between Justin Bennett (Skinny Puppy, Bahntier) and Stefano Rossello (Bahntier). This collaboration is meant to explore new frontiers. The first two tracks are based on an electronic rhythm. The third track has human played rhythm guitar and bass guitar, and the fourth track has no rhythm, it is more ambient. All tracks are instrumental. They are like musical sketches: with abstract lines and shadows, but not fully colored. It reminds me of Tuxedomoon, probably because of the wind instruments that were used as well as the Peter Principle like bass guitar in the third track. The kETvECTOR side sounds like the soundtrack to a movie. In particular some kind of road movie, travelling on long straight roads through wide open spaces to strange places. The kind of road movie without a happy end. Where the main character never finds what he is looking for in the end, because it is the search itself that keeps him going. As a whole The Shock Exchange is not an easy album, and it takes an open mind and several listens before it reveals itself. But with every time you play it, you discover something new. In the end “difficult” albums are also the most pleasing ones. [Erik Gibbels (edited by Astrid de Ronde)/ BACKGROUND MAG] | 2015 | €23.00 |
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| LEJEUNE, JACQUES | Early Works 1969-1970 | LP | "This LP of early compositions by Jacques Lejeune features three seminal works: D'une Multitude En Fête and Petite Suite, originally released on the Perspective Musicales series in 1970, and a previously unpublished composition, Géodes, from the same period. These three pieces (not included in the recent Parages and other electroacoustic works 3CD set) are some of Lejeune's earliest music for tape and may be considered a "prequel" to his later, more thematic works. Still, his concise musical narrative is ever-present in these first recordings. The sidelong D'une Multitude En Fête (1969) refers to multitude, number, celebration and any crowd situation as a form of ceremony — all evoking a circular gaze, as topics of the different aural events and their anecdotal development emerge, leading to the dream, as a story we tell to ourselves. Géodes (1970) features percussion improvisations by Lauréat Dionne with Jacques' tapework inflecting prisms deep into its thundering, rhythmic core. This concert version appears on vinyl for the first time. Concluding the album is Petite Suite (1970), with each section referencing a traditional musical form using both anecdotal as well as instrumental flourishes. The original drum and guitar elements performed here by Michel Foudrinoy and Jean-Pierre Vassout. These pieces have been compared to Pierre Henry's bold rock themes in Messe Pour Le Temps Present and also recall the peculiar atmospheres of some of the great, early Nurse With Wound records that would follow. In contrast, Lejeune's early approach was heavily steeped in sonic narratives, combining unusual and ambiguous events to create a sound world uniquely his own. Early Works 1969-1970 explores the first precision splices by one of the true visionaries in musique concrète." [label info] www.robotrecords.com | 2015 | €26.50 |
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| LES FRAGMENTS DE LA NUIT | Musique du Crepuscule | CD | Dramatic & expressive neoclassic / chamber music from this quintett using mainly strings, lots of minimal & repetitive string-structures are build, all instrumental. Their music has been compared with ARVÖ PÄRT, STEVE REICH, PHILIPP GLASS and GODSPEED YOU BLACK EMPOROR, but we also think of WIM MERTENS and RACHELS. "Musique du Crépuscule" is a vision of night wrapped in mystery: a night haunted by spectral chants, under the spell of epic, poignant strings and sustained by hypnotic piano pulsations. Its nocturnal universe oozes with hybrid ink, enveloping hidden emotions tainted with melancholy and voluptuousness. A neo-classical or post-nocturnal piece, "Musique du Crépuscule" has many different faces. It alternates between violin riffs, dark cello projections and the complaints of a lone piano, highlighted by enigmatic echoing voices. The moonlight slowly reveals a name in the ethereal infinity: Les Fragments de la Nuit." [label info] "Michel Villar (piano) and Ombeline Chardes (violin) both hailing from France are the talented musicians who set up this project. They’ve been joined by a few more musicians and guest vocalists. While releasing their debut-cd on Equilibrium Music they have already been involved in various soundtrack compositions for independent cinema, animations and documentaries. The soundtrack-influence is easily recognizable while the piano and violin parts also bring us to make a link with neo classical music. Les Fragments De La Nuit sounds like a journey through darkness and the name of the project perfectly fits to this goal. Most of the songs remain instrumental version filled with low piano keys and sad feelings emerging from this melancholia. Mysterious chants emerge to the surface on one of the pieces, but the music remains like encaged in an atmosphere of endless darkness or should I say an endless night. The different fragments of this night have been expressed with a gift for melancholia coming from musicians with talent!" [Side-Line] | 2008 | €12.00 |
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| Demain, C'etait Hier | CD | "Lush nocturnal neo-classical pieces forming an epic soundtrack that runs from quiet, melancholy-driven moments to stirring, violent passages and eerie moods. A unique universe, where compositions that evoke Arvö Part, Philip Glass or Godspeed You! Black Emperor seem haunted by the disturbing evil ghosts of Magma now and again." [label info] www.equilibriummusic.com | 2010 | €15.00 |
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| LEVANDER, ERIK | Jökel | CD | Swedish musician Erik Levander gained attention as part of the new wave of young DIY laptop experimentalists arising in the early 2000's. His somewhat eclectic early output has since developed into a unique and vibrant blend of digital, analog and acoustic sounds weaved into epic and powerful atmospherics. Levander has performed his work extensively, including shows at Roskilde Festival, Norberg Festival, Nordic Music Days and Forma Nova Festival. With the release of ‘Jökel´, Levander’s seventh full length album, he continues to break new ground, presenting a conceptual album that may be his most minimalistic, lingering and evocative release to date. As a result of ignorance, negligence, and a lack of immediate responsible profound political action, there are indications that planet Earth is irreversibly about to leave the relative climate stability we have enjoyed during the Holocene for roughly the last 10,000 years. Some of the most apparent signs of ongoing climate change are found in the continuous reports of sea ice, inland ice, shelf ice and glaciers shrinking at an alarming rate. This album is a homage to the still living glaciers. The album title 'Jökel' means 'Glacier' in Swedish, with roots in the Icelandic word 'Jökull'. The compositions are in particular inspired by Levander’s 2009 visit to the glacier Mýrdalsjökull in Iceland, a glacier famous for covering the active volcano Katla. With imaginary field recordings, barren but vigorous soundscapes, Levander invites the listener to experience this desolate glacier 'in sensu'. Perhaps this awareness, and by appreciating the beauty and importance of these natural wonders, we can somehow in the extension help the survival of the glaciers, and contribute to recover the environmental balance of this planet. https://glacialmovements.bandcamp.com/album/j-kel | 2021 | €15.00 |
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| LEWIS, KLARA & SIMON FISHER TURNER | Care | LP | Editions Mego is proud to present the first outing from the legendary English musician, songwriter, composer and producer Simon Fisher Turner alongside the highly acclaimed emerging Swedish sound artist Klara Lewis. Care is a unique outing rife with delicious dichotomy. The opening track positions the aggressive directly against more fragile moments. On the subsequent track medieval melodies sprout from a dense rhythmic hiss. Witness a Middle Eastern song appearing amongst a haunted rattling reverb in the epic ‘Tank’ whilst a beautiful force of hope can be found within the sound world of the the closing track ‘Mend’. The wide scope of references and constant pull of forces make this debut offering a timeless patchwork of sonic spaces. Care is an album which sways in such a salubrious manner one can’t help but delight in its unique form of location/disorientation. https://editionsmego.bandcamp.com/album/care | 2018 | €18.00 |
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| LICHT-UNG |
Kristall
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7 | LICHT-UNG ist ein Label, Lyrik- und Soundprojekt für experimentelle Kunst aus Leverkusen mit etwas exzentrischem Anspruch. Auf 'Kristall' findet sich eine spannungsgeladene A-Seite basierend auf Feedback-Sounds, sowie ein wirklich kristallklarer microsound-drone auf der Rückseite. "LICHT-UNG (German for "glade") is the name of a label, art- (publishing lyrics, pictures, etc.) and sound project from the western part of Gemany with a very peculiar and rather dadaistic approach. The two pieces on "kristall" seem to be based mainly on feedback- and metal or glass sounds that are carefully put together for a queer-sounding trip. Side A ("Listen to the music playing in your head") consists of humming, growling drones, low siren-like sounds and high-frequency feedbacks, powerful and absorbing and very abstract, while never turning into sheer noise. Side B (with the odd title "Heute war ich bei den weißen Elefantens") delivers a crystal-clear noise chant and metallic overtones processed with obscure effects. File under: high-tension & crystal Drones BLUE VINYL WITH BLACK STRIAE. COVERS WITH SILKSCREEN-PRINTED TEXT & VISUAL, SILVER-PRINTED BLACK INLAY" [press release] "Ein beigelegter Pin, eine liebevoll bedruckte Rückseite und ein gespraytes Cover schaffen auf Anhieb Sympathie, die Musik nicht weniger. Licht-ung ist Fakt- und infobezogen recht schweigsam, zwar sehr betriebsam und eher in der unorthodox-verzettelten Ecke der experimentellen Musik tätig, hier allerdings geradezu lieblich und freigeistig, wofür die Namen der beiden Stücke geradezu bürgen. »Listen To The Music Playing In Your Head« ist analoge Feedbackverdrahtung a la David Lee Myers mit ordentlich Rauschen drauf, ein wenig Mikroakribie im Stile von V/VM und last but not least so differenziert fern, dass man meint, einem zeitlich langgezogenen Bremsvorgang der Untergrundbahn in Hamburg zu lauschen. Charmant und reicht allemal für einen kurzen Sprung ins Unterbewusstsein, hingegen die B-Seite trägt dem Namen des Releases eher Rechnung: »Heute War Ich Bei Den Weißen Elefanten« ist ein in der Tat kristallklarer elektroakustischer Drone auf der Grundlage eines transponierten Glockenspiels. Die Tonspur ist dabei genauso aberwitzig halluzinogen wie der Titel des Stückes, aber augenzwinkernd hintergründig. Es schlingert und scheppert auf den Frequenzen und letztlich fällt doch alles in die große Stille. Eines der etwas obskureren Werke auf Drone Records, aber sehr fein aufbereitet und mysteriös wie der Musiker dahinter." [Thorsten Soltau / AEMAG] | 2007 | €7.00 |
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| Gieb Fahrt! | mCD-R | 3" CDR, 1 TRACK, 1 VIDEOFILE, 12 MINUTES. LIMITED AND NUMBERED EDITION OF 150 COPIES. MINI DVD BOX WITH 2 INLAYS. licht-ung, a art (lyrics, pictures, etc.) and sound project from Germany. The name stands always for his very own art. Strange, peculiar, dadaistic. licht-ung have several releases on his own label, some are splits with artists like Government Alpha, Stilluppsteypa, Aube. There is also a 7" on Drone Records, that shows the lower side. This TOSOM release contains a 12 minute piece, in the best japanese Noise tradition. Very harsh, very intensive, very loud. The second track is a short video file for your PC. lichtlaterne. wenn der regen nebens cafe faellt. und jemand spaziert. einen brief schreibt, und geburtstag hat. endlich, finalmente, sind wir drin. wir koennen tanzen, klettern, sehen den fluß. seine schiffe. auch fuer sie scheint eine ampel. die post spart hilfe die ganze nacht lang auf. waere sie nicht gewesen, haette viel dort bleiben muessen, denn wir koennen nicht alles behalten. wir konnten nie alles loslassen. nur alles haben wir verloren. die maserung bleibt wie eine spur in der tuer. in einem anderen land. Du lebst." [label info] "... So Johannes is to contemporary noise what Da Vinci was to the renaissance? The 3inch has a strange short video of 6 seconds and a 12 or so minute harsh noise work which mixes harsh rumble with high pitched feedback. The noise piece is competent to the point of a total refinement of what harsh noise should be, and that's praise not criticism, it winds and weaves through a sonic landscape at times quixotically so much so that the piece IMO could have been longer - but it pays to leave your audience wanting more - which I do (though not sprouts!)." [Jliat / Vital Weekly] label: www.tosom.de | 2007 | €7.50 |
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| LILES, ANDREW | Somnambulance to Dream General | CD | Bevor Mr. LILES v.a. durch die Beteiligung an NURSE WITH WOUND einem grösseren Hörerkreis bekannt wurde, werkelte er jahrelang recht versteckt an seiner bizarr-surrealistischen Soundwelt herum, hier bestehend aus Synth-Drones & sperrigen Elektronoises, Pianosequenzen, Sprachmaterial, traditionelles englischsprachiges Gesangsmaterial (wie Kinderlieder und Abzählreime, die ein nostalgisches Flair verbreiten), melanchronische Instrumentalquellen, wirre found sounds und Versatzstücke aus Jazz, etc. etc. SOMNAMBULANCE ist eine Neubearbeitung einer CDR-Compilation mit frühem Material - gleich 21 Stücke fanden den Weg auf dieses äusserst kurzweilige Album, schwankend zwischen Düsternis und anregender Exzentrizität. Als Einstieg in LILES recht einzigartige, verschrobene Klangwelt wohl ideal !! "Somnambulance" is a reworking of an album of odd and obscure tracks that was released in a microscopic edition on CD-R before. For this CD, Mr. Liles has provided his funniest and possibly most controversial artwork as of yet. You get an hour of music of many different styles: Andrew Liles' trademark of eerie and spooky sounds is there; also electronics and a whole range of instruments are placed in between sketches and longer tracks. And if all this weren't enough, you get three bonus tracks that didn't appear on the CDR at all. After a long line of collaborations, finally a new album by Current 93 and Nurse With Wound man Liles himself!" [label info] www.klanggalerie.com | 2008 | €14.00 |
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| LILES, ANDREW & DANIEL MENCHE | The Progeny of Flies. Tres Muscae Consummunt Cadaver Equi Aeque Cito Ac Leo | CD | Untertitel: "TRES MUSCAE CONSUMMUNT CADAVER EQUI AEQUE CITO AC LEO" - "Die Nachkommen dreier Fliegen können ein totes Pferd schneller konsumieren als ein Löwe". Was das Label hier aufgeregt und ziemlich passend "brutal kosmisch" tituliert, entpuppt sich als eine dicke Drone-Suppe mit (wahrscheinlich) LILESschen Synth- und Piano-Sprengseln, man kann sich kaum auf diese nebligen Sounds konzentrieren, immer wieder wird das Bewusstsein eingelullt und quasi ausgeschaltet... vier lange Stücke. Minimal, dronig, und wie immer bei LILES mit einem dunklen surrealistischen Flair... "Ed. of 500 copies in a book bound CD case.. Kold Krush Groove, y’all. Literally! Individually Liles and Menche have torn the experimental world many new ones, but as a unit they achieve a critical mass so monumental that they deserve their own Hollywood-style canoodling name. That name: Linch-Me-Eels. The graceful ferocity that oozes out within the first few seconds is such that…well, let’s just say that if you called friends and told them you were on the moon, they would believe you. A vicious, celestial-cathedral rumble gapes its maw and spews forth into a sluggish river of electro-magma, reshaping landscapes once carved out by Cremaster Cycles and the gravitational forces of the planet Solaris. While Menche’s test-tones defying low-end slowly compresses the woofers into diamond earrings, an emerging theme for tack piano cautiously stabs at the din. And just before cowboy-robot-gone-mad Yul Brynner shows up to kill all humans, the piano slinks away to make room for the buzzing progeny of the flies, whose crescendo of wing-beats quietly, subtly rises and rises the swarm to Jupiter and beyond the infinite. After multiple listens a Xen(akis)–like state is realized and there should be a giant Star Fly-Child in your living room. Brutally cosmic!!!" [label info] "I have been a fan of the works of Mr. Liles and Mr. Menche for a while now, so this CD of their first ever collaboration is most welcome. And it looks great; packed in a hard carton slightly oversized CD sleeve with typical Liles-artwork. The 65+ minutes that form The progeny Of Flies are divided into 4 parts. Opener Eggs (signifying the first stage of the fly life cycle) features the now typical Liles-sounds augmented by Menche's higher and harsher frequencies. In one word beautiful. The second track 1st To 3rd Instar features low frequency pulses before subtle piano chords (and reverbed pedals) set in. Again full marks to Liles and Menche. "Pupar" (the third track) starts off with a horse's neigh. After that surprising intro we're in a world filled with bass tones with plucked strings and percussive elements. Closing track Metamorphoses (to end the fly theme) features a low, almost prehistoric growl and Menche's more noisy elements which builds up to a climax. The track ends with piano and the buzzing sound of a fly. This CD, subtitled "tres muscae conummunt cadaver equi aeque cito ac leo", which loosely and very cryptically translates into "three muscular complete corpses indeed quick justice and lion" is a gorgeous piece of work; beautiful, restrained and highly recommended!" [FK / Vital Weekly] www.blrrecords.com | 2008 | €14.00 |
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| LIVE SKULL | EP | CD | "24-page booklet with rare and unseen pics and extensive liner notes by band members Tom Paine & MarK C. Formed in 1982 by guitarists Mark C and Tom Paine with Marnie Greenholz on bass and James Lo on drums, Live Skull is considered by many aficionados to be the quintessential New York noise band. Together with Sonic Youth and Swans, Live Skull defined the term "noise rock" in the 1980s, spearheading the post-No Wave underground music scene in NYC with a series of legendary live performances and eight groundbreaking records released over the course of that decade. Often brutal and yet strangely seductive, each of these classic records creates hooks out of the most unlikely, seemingly disruptive elements, subverting traditional rock forms in previously unheard ways that became an undeniable (albeit often unacknowledged) influence on many of their contemporaries. Live Skull broke up in 1989, just within sight of that magical moment when the sort of music they pioneered began to finally break through, but the band's recorded output reminds us that Live Skull got there first. This is the record that started it all, Live Skull's first EP. A gloriously sprawling collection of deep, dark grooves and insidiously entwined guitars, the Village Voice rightly described the EP as "classic post-punk" and “the best introduction to New York’s guitar explorers.” The East Village Eye proclaimed it “one of the best sounding records to come out of any New York band past or present.” The New York Times put the EP on their short list of the best five records of 1984, declaring, “A few contemporary bands are making music as a deliberate antidote to the burbling synthesizers, polite crooning and polished gloss of today’s well-fed pop mainstream. New York’s Live Skull, Sonic Youth and Swans…are making the sort of music rock’s early opponents must have feared most, the music of their nightmares.” Out of print for far too many years, this 30th anniversary reissue of Live Skull's first EP is now available on limited edition vinyl and (for the first time ever) on CD, complete with a lavish booklet including extensive liner notes by founding members Tom Paine and Mark C, and eight extremely rare bonus tracks. This is the first release in desire’s Live Skull Project, an ambitious, eight-title series of reissues of the entire Live Skull catalogue, personally overseen by Mark C and Tom Paine." | 2013 | €13.00 |
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| LLYN Y CWN | Megaliths in Dub | CD | When I first saw the press release for Megaliths In Dub I struggled to imagine what ‘dark ambient’ artist Llyn Y Cwn could do to improve on something I thought was pretty perfect. As soon as I started listening a dub version made perfect sense. When I reviewed Megaliths I said ‘It’s hard to rush through, or cherry pick, from this album without breaking the spell it casts as a whole. If you have the time to listen in full then you will find yourself drawn in and becoming aligned with Llyn Y Cwn’s sensitivity for the places he has visited.’ And, ‘an audio experience that shapes, enhances and transforms mood and perception…and every bit as breath-taking as the landscapes that inspired them.’ This re-working feels like the industrial revolution has come to visit the ancient landscapes of the original album. The bucolic peace and solemnity of solid megalithic structures is now broken into its element parts with stone molecules and earth vibrated by subterranean sound systems and heavy machinery rumbling overhead. This is beauty and the beast with the original as Dr. Jekyll being synthetically reconstituted into a snarling Hyde. But while this metamorphosis maybe a brutal reimagining the juddering subbass and the phased grit of modern technology brings a harsh but glorious magnificence. There are times when the granular storm threatens to engulf us as on the tracks ‘Meini Hirion Shifted’ and ‘Machrie Resonance’ but then there is also the soft ground of ‘Dark Grove’ with its subtle woop-woop noise that drifts over the track’s pulsating heartbeat and ‘Ifan’s Portal’ which combines the warmth of a clearing in the forest with the subtle ticking of a metronome. You can imagine ancient travellers arriving at the megalithic stones to take ayahuasca and trip out as the solid earth rotates, the stars dance and the rocks vibrate like ancient granite tuning forks. Megaliths in Dub is the sound they might have heard in their heads and Llyn Y Cwn is a man with a cosmic recorder who can summon the spirits and interpret them electronically. I didn’t think Megaliths could be improved but this monolithic, tectonic dub is a wonderful conundrum: perfection made more perfect. https://joyzine.org/2025/10/13/album-review-llyn-y-cwn-megaliths-in-dub/ | 2025 | €15.00 |
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| LOPEZ, FRANCISCO | Untitled # 295 | LP | "Francisco López is not only famous for his profilic sound creations, but also for different aspects of sound manipulations. Since his very beginnings, he explores different fields of sound - and almost entire his work belongs to serie 'untitled'. untitled#295 is a piece created specially for two sides of vinyl and specially for GODrec. Besides Lopez's famous moving soundscapes, it's the pulse what makes this work driving. And not only typical pulse - a regular one with irregular accents. Slowly developing it takes insensibly into void and darkness. Extremely tempting work for claustrophobic experiences." [label info] www.godrec.com | 2014 | €20.00 |
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| Untitled # 300 | LP | "Pressing of 300 copies on crystal-clear 200-gram virgin vinyl packaged in a custom letterpress jacket printed, die-cut, and hand-assembled at Studio On Fire in Minneapolis, with particular care taken to retain the fine detail of the cover's microscopic type. Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of the sound art and experimental music scene. For more than 30 years he has developed an astonishing sonic universe, absolutely personal and iconoclastic, based on a profound listening of the world. Destroying boundaries between industrial sounds and wilderness sound environments, shifting with passion from the limits of perception to the most dreadful abyss of sonic power, proposing a blind, profound and transcendental listening, freed from the imperatives of knowledge and open to sensory and spiritual expansion' --Pedro Higueras, Sonom Studios. 'Untitled#300 is an LP based on multi-track field recordings I did in 2011 of a large colony of seagulls in a group of small islands right in front of the Moroccan-Algerian border, together with hydrophone and contact mic recordings of sea creatures underwater from the same location (side A and B of the LP, respectively). Being interested in going beyond a traditional 'soundscape' perspective, I've played freely with mixing and editing, in an unorthodox way, different multi-channel recordings I did. Side A ('abovewater') is the large seagull colony. In side B ('underwater') what you hear is predominantly millions of very small shrimp-like crustaceans, dolphin sonar (the beating pattern of the first section), and occasional fish (the 'frog-like' calls) --Francisco López. Original environmental sound matter recorded in the Chafarinas Islands off the coast of Morocco, summer 2011. Edited, mixed, and mastered at mobile messor, The Hague, the Netherlands, summer 2012. Field work carried out with the collaboration and support of the SIGEIN-Chafarinas research group (Integral Ecological Management System of the Chafarinas Islands), directed by Francisco J. Acosta (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) and coordinated by Javier Zapata (Spanish National Park Service)." [label info] www.taigarecords.com | 2015 | €26.00 |
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| LOPEZ, FRANCISCO & XABIER ERKIZIA | Elektra Bidasoa | CD | "A collaborative project between two seasoned sound artists dedicated to a profound listening of sonic phenomena. Created with original recordings from power plants along the Bidasoa river in the Basque Country, Erkizia and Lopez have built vivid straighforward and transformed sound environments from a myriad hums, rattles, crackles, and drones from the wide variety of machinery and industrial electrical facilities inside the power plants. A macro and microscopic journey into a detailed and crisp virtual sound world from the generation of electricity." [label info] http://fernsrecordings.free.fr | 2011 | €13.00 |
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| LOUP UBERTO | Racconto Artigiano | LP | https://ubero.bandcamp.com/album/racconto-artigiano Music of indecisive ways, silent writing, white pictures, noise and songs. Loup Uberto founds the Bégayer trio with Alexis Vinéïs and Lucas Ravinale, explores the traditional melodies of northern Italy, records intriguing sound documents - Cuban "raw" music, Eastern European travel diaries, Kurdish songs from Syria -, initiates gestures for French “chanson” with Le Saule record label, questions the gaze and its fiction, the rough edges of language, documents exile and wandering through sound testimonies, writings and photographs. Racconto artigiano, the artisanal tale, is inspired by Walter Benjamin's Experience and Poverty, where the author comments on the drying up of popular fables; it is the compendium of numerous attempts on various materials: mobile phones, percussion, short-circuited radio transistors, computer limiters, clarinet, medieval and popular songs from northern Italy, sound collages. Recorded in the reformed church of Mens-en-Trièves, a village at the foot of the Obiou mountain range and digging towards the eastern slope of the Vercors, this album is the outcome of some three or four years of research, the account of a series of experiments, thus itself a sort of document, a repertoire of sketches delivered as they are, completely raw and made disturbing by their dryness, just as the folk tale - which refrains from speaking - is a view offered on the horizon of silence. ########## Co-production three:four records, label Le Saule Conçu entre La Fonderie (Le Mans), Le Ciel et le 102 Rue d’Alembert (Grenoble) Enregistré au temple réformé de Mens (38), au lieu-dit Montvallon (plateau du Trièves), et au Ciel (Grenoble) entre le 13 mai et le 20 octobre 2019 Abrégé d’un ensemble de tentatives, Sur matériaux divers : Téléphones mobiles, percussions, transistors radios court-circuités, limiteurs informatiques, clarinette, chants médiévaux et populaires d’Italie du nord. A1, B1 : Canti a vatoccu, formes anciennes de chant agricole Ombrien, dégradation d'un bourdon numérique A2, B2 : Feedbacks pour deux téléphones mobiles A3, B3 : Tamburello, téléphones mobiles, effets de proximité A4, B4 : Feedbacks pour transistors radios et limiteurs informatiques A5, B5 : Il pecoraro, conte médiéval des bergers toscans, dégradation d'un bourdon numérique, clarinette et chant A6, B6 : Diffusion/Réception FM, transistors radios Sur A6, B6 : - Jean Follain, fragments de "Territoires", lecture par Lise Lecocq - Témoignage de Serge Targa, Susville, plateau matheysin - "Amore mio non piangere", chant populaire des Mondine de la vallée de Po : Serge Targa - Bernard Noël, fragments de "La Chute des Temps", lecture par Loup Uberto - J.S. Bach, Toccata en Mi mineur BWV 914 par Lucas Ravinale - Improvisations au piano par Jean-Philippe Curtelin A1, B1 : Enregistrés au Ciel les 19 et 20 octobre 2019 A5, B5 : Enregistrés au lieu-dit Montvallon les 9,10 et 11 juin 2019 A2 -> B5 : Enregistrés au temple réformé de Mens-en-Trièves, les 13 et 14 mai 2019 Mastering : Ernest Bergez -- la fable illisible est lacunaire et silencieuse, elle adopte la même pauvreté que le conte ancien, elle use du même pouvoir d’image, de l’abondant répertoire de visions qu’offre une figure déshabillée. On parle ici du conte dépouillé, artisan, fidèle à la crudité du réel, que l’on trouve dans les chants populaires et médiévaux préalablement à son absorption par la littérature. Quand la morale du conte littéraire n’est qu’un processus d’engraissement du conte par le discours, le conte populaire est au contraire une vue offerte sur l’horizon du mutisme. Deux sphères vivantes ont produit leurs clans de conteurs ; dans l’espace archaïque du chant coexistent et s’inter-contaminent le paysan (conte sédentaire, conte territorial) et le marin (conte errant, conte étranger). Une troisième figure, l’artisan, fusionne ces deux récits dans l’université du conte. Dans ce conte sans morale, la forme simple du discours ne vise pas à convaincre, ne connait aucune cible, c’est une narration sèche, un objet sans destination que chaque auditeur traduira à son aise. La forme sèche, ramassée et chaste du conte recommande l’histoire à la mémoire. Le conte est muet, en s’abstenant de dire, il tient en haleine par l’outillage des silences et des vides. loupuberto.com Live : youtu.be/yB9cdzfZnAk -- Merci à toute l’équipe de La Fonderie/Théâtre du Radeau, à François Tanguy, à la communauté de l’église réformée de Mens, aux frères et sœurs du label Le Saule, à David Nicolay et à toute l’équipe de Plege, à la famille Quenehen, à Radio Dragon, à Archipel Urbain, à Lise Lecocq, Lucas Ravinale, Alexis Vinéïs, Jean-Philippe Curtelin, Fanny George, Serge et Nanou Targa, Lewis et Clovïc, Thierry Monnier, et Diego Uberto. | 2020 | €20.00 |
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| LOVESLIESCRUSHING | Girl.Echo.Suns.Veils | CD | "space/ambient/drone from a veteran progenitor. scott cortez’s guitar is processed nearly to the point of unrecognizability, leaving behind veils and walls of shimmery droning bliss. glossolalic female voice glides spectral and luminescent through the walls of sound; sheets of noise; glossy, ethereal. lovesliescrushing makes noise sound beautiful. leave all the accidents: find beauty in grit, in dust, in noise. in the mess. formed in 1991, lovesliescrushing took the my bloody valentine / cocteau twin template and added a new twist: turning the formula inside out by using the detritus, the residue from other songs, the scraps of a song, a single note, a single chord here, a melody there or a dense wall of guitar. take the parts most bands consider throwaway accidents, filler, those little parts between songs on loveless and work them to reveal their realization as a full-blown song. ‘the formula’ is simple, almost childlike. remove the drums, the bass, use no synths or keyboards, remove all of the typical rock/pop shoegaze trappings, use what is left and record on a 4 track porta-studio. simple. that they were able to weave this all together, despite removing everything, would have made most bands run in terror. yet in that manner, lovesliescrushing found its sound. GIRL ECHO SUNS VEILS gathers music from the vast backlog of the lovesliescrushing library. some of it has appeared before, some of it is unreleased. all of this material was reworked and perfected by cortez until he decided it was ready for release. the music is almost two decades old, but sounds like it was recorded yesterday by one of a handful of newgaze, ambient bands (fennes, belong) that have become stylish recently. llc sounds completely contemporary, and yet llc was doing it back in the early 90s, without studios, without laptops! perhaps that is the most shocking aspect to their music. it is a testament to the work of lovesliescrushing, an obscure band that could and did. lovesliescrushing can sound like a jet engine tuned to an am radio station tuned to an orchestra tuning up or a gigantic blurry drone cloud. GIRL ECHO SUNS VEILS is a comprehensive look at an invisible band’s influence on the space/ambient/drone scene." [label info] www.projekt.com | 2010 | €14.50 |
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| LUASA RAELON | Consumed within the years of lead | CD | Atmosphärischer Post-Industrial aus der wachsenden US-Industrial / Dark Ambient-Szene, fünf abwechslungsreiche, dunkel-noisige Stücke, to discover! "brooding, dark industrial material with insane structure and sense of space. inspires a sense of unease and dread, total midnight music." [label info] "Consumed Within The Years Of Lead" marks the first widely available proper CD from this active and always improving project. If you haven't checked them out yet you can't blame it on hard to find releases anymore. "Years of Lead" a nearly eleven minute epic opens the disc, combining low drone melody, with looping hi tones and stutters and then tying them all together through the use subtle drifts and restrained distortion swells. It's an ambient piece that at the same time swipes at you with the sharp hi end. The piece ends on a more percussive rhythmic note as it fades away. "Forging New Alloys" uses a similar tool kit, low drones, rhythmic loops, some sharp high end, but it is a more active and alive kind of track. The movement is faster and the sounds denser while still being rooted on the ambient foundation. "The Eye Of Silence" is another lengthy piece using a foundation of distortion that almost splashes like waves at the shore in the opening moments and then returns somewhat toward the end. This gives way to electronic pulses, deep tonal swells and reverberating metallic clashes. The piece maintains a lot of negative space and uses the silences and air well. "Harvest Time" has a slow throb to it in the opening that fades away to a delicate melody and scraping metallic sounds with an genuinely unsettling presence. When this ceases, we again have multiple swells of differing texture and a nice use of silence and space, before the sound of slithering knives briefly returns. It gives everything a nice distinction. The disc closes with the track "Binary Solutions". Drawn out melody, and some really unique textures I'm not sure I can even qualify, open the track. A strange squirming, peeling quality that takes on rhythmic characteristics at times. There is an odd tension to the track, almost a paranoid quality really. "Consumed Within The Years of Lead" is an impressive release, with a unique quality to it that you don't often here in Dark Ambient type releases. In fact it's difficult to classify it so simply because of the variety of textures used but the overall feel is largely ambient and the tone becomes increasingly unnerving as the record plays out. Excellent.“ [Worm Gear] | 2004 | €8.00 |
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| LUCIER, ALVIN | Almost New York | do-CD | "CD 1 - Twonings: Charles Curtis, cello; Joseph Kubera, piano; Almost New York: Robert Dick, flutes; Broken Line: Robert Dick, flute; Danny Tunick, vibraphone; Joseph Kubera, piano CD 2 - Coda Variations: Robin Hayward, tuba Pogus is extremely delighted to release this 2 CD set of recordings of works by Alvin Lucier. He is one of the key experimental artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, and is one of my favorite composers. A unique and individual artist: No one sounds quite like Alvin Lucier. Lucier writes about the genesis of the works on this release: "Since the early 1980's I have made a series of works for conventional musical instruments. Before that time I had been mainly occupied with the exploration of such phenomena as echoloca-tion, brain waves, room acoustics and the visual representation of sound. Often these works required special equipment-hand held pulse wave oscillators (Vespers), differential amplifiers (Music for Solo Performer), horseshoe magnets (Music on a Long Thin Wire). Then players began asking me for pieces. Now I needed to find a way of achieving the same poetry with acoustic instruments as I did with electronic means. "One of the things I discovered was that players could create rhythmic patterns by closely tuning with electronically generated pure waves or with each other, producing audible beats. Often, to get continuous motion, I have one or more voices sweep up or down at various speeds against fixed sustained pitches. As a wave approaches a sustained pitch the audible beating slows down to zero when it reaches unison, then speeds up again as the wave leaves the pitch. Almost New York employs slow sweep pure wave oscillators, Broken Line, flute glissandi. In Twonings two different tuning systems collide and in Coda Variations slight variations in pitch are heard chronologically." Recorded by Charles Curtis, Joseph Kubera, Robert Dick, Danny Tunick, and Robin Hayward - some of the leading new music performers of our era, these works are essential additions to the Alvin Lucier oeuvre, as well as satisfying anyone interested in great experimental music." [label info] www.pogus.com "Usually press texts say lots of things which is just the sort of thing record label use to exaggerate to drum up interest for their artist. But when Pogus writes about Alvin Lucier 'an unique and individual artist: no one sounds quite like Alvin Lucier', I can only agree. I sang praise for the work of Lucier before. His ongoing investigation into sound phenomena, with or without the use of instruments has been going on for more than forty years now, and brought him the status of a well-known composer. And when you are well-known, people will ask you for pieces, for them to perform. On 'Almost New York' we find four of those pieces, three on disc one and one on disc two. We have hear instruments we came across before in Lucier's work, such as piano, cello and flute. In 'Twonings' for cello (performed by Charles Curtis, who himself performed more work by Lucier, and released a 2CD by Antiopic - see Vital Weekly 498) and piano, we don't have any sweeping oscillations to be followed, but two closely tuned instruments, but with enough variation in pitches to clearly distinguish differences. In the title piece we have one player and five flutes, who follows two pure wave oscillators and moves between playing five flutes, not simultaneously of course. 'Broken Line' is, then again, more alike the first piece, but then staged for three instruments, flute, vibraphone and piano. The most radical work here is the piece 'Coda Variations', which takes up the entire second disc. Robin Hayward performs it on tuba. Based on eight notes from a Feldman piece, Lucier subjected them to seven sets of permutations of sixty-three notes each. No sine waves to play along, just the sound of single notes played at one time each, for almost fifty minutes. An intriguing work. Of these four pieces, there is only one which we could label as 'traditional Lucier' work, but the three others display probably just as well what Lucier, less the pure waves and all four are simply four more great pieces. Indeed: no one sounds quite like Alvin Lucier." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2011 | €18.50 |
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| Still and Moving Lines | CD | "Pogus is absolutely delighted to offer this new release featuring Australian new music ensemble Decibel performing four works by Alvin Lucier, three of which are previously unrecorded. Ever Present (2002), the only work offered here that has been recorded before is for flute, saxophone, and piano with slow sweep pure wave oscillator and is considered by many to be Lucier’s most musical work. Carbon Copies (1989) is for saxophone, piano, flute and playback; the work investigates musicians imitating their environments. Hands (1994) is for organ with four players. The performers use their hands to subtly alter the harmonics produced from the pipes of an organ. Shelter (1967) is for vibration pickups, amplification system and enclosed space and finds Lucier offering the sounds of outside a performance space. All these works as always are amazing examples of Alvin Lucier’s fertile mind and exploring, experimental sensibility. One of the true originals. Alvin Lucier was born in 1931 in Nashua, New Hampshire. He was educated in Nashua public and parochial schools, the Portsmouth Abbey School, Yale, and Brandeis and spent two years in Rome on a Fulbright Scholarship. Lucier has pioneered in many areas of music composition and performance, including the notation of performers' physical gestures, the use of brain waves in live performance, the generation of visual imagery by sound in vibrating media, and the evocation of room acoustics for musical purposes. His recent works include a series of sound installations and works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra in which, by means of close tunings with pure tones, sound waves are caused to spin through space. Decibel are world leaders in the integration of acoustic instruments and electronics, pioneering electronic score formats, including the Decibel Scoreplayer App, incorporating mobile score formats and networked coordination performance environments. The ensemble has collaborated with composers such as Werner Dafeldecker, Agostino Di Scipio, Alvin Curran, David Toop, Marina Rosenfeld, Lionel Marchetti, Andreas Weixler and Johannes S. Sistermanns and worked with iconic Australian composers Jon Rose, Alan Lamb, Ross Bolleter, Warren Burt, Eric Griswold and Anthony Pateras. Decibel have contributed the Australian premieres of works by Fausto Romitelli, Tristan Murail, Alvin Lucier, Peter Ablinger, Mauricio Kagel and have toured monograph concerts dedicated to Alvin Lucier and John Cage." [label info] www.pogus.com | 2014 | €13.00 |
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| So You... (Hermes, Orpheus, Eurydice) | CD | “So You … (Hermes, Orpheus, Eurydice) is a major new work by legendary experimental composer Alvin Lucier. It is an hour long epic that tracks the familiar Orpheus myth from a less familiar perspective: that of Eurydice as imagined by poet H.D.; a Eurydice who rails at Orpheus for his hubris in attempting to rescue her. Two key, and formerly distinct, aspects of Lucier’s practice come together in this piece: the exploration of interference patterns in closely tuned intervals, and the exploration of resonant chambers. From speakers mounted inside amphorae a constantly turning braid of beating sine waves trace the descent into the depths of hell, and then the doomed attempt to climb back into life. Singer Jessika Kenney and long-time Lucier collaborators Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis embody the three title characters in deeply focused performances that assert themselves against the process of the sweep, or become enfolded in it. The electronics were mixed in real time by programmer and equipment designer Tom Erbe. This record has all of the mind-bending acoustic effects you’d expect from a Lucier piece, but also features a strong sense of narrative drama and flashes of raw emotion that are unexpected and deeply affecting.” | 2018 | €14.50 |
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| LUNAR ABYSS DEUS ORGANUM |
Atanimonni Aitnatsbus
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10inch | "Behind LUNAR ABYSS DEUS ORGANUM (= also known as LUNAR ABYSS QUARTET or just LUNAR ABYSS) we find Russian artist EVGENY [Biosonar] SAVENKO from the vivid St. Petersburg experimental & post-industrial scene. Since more than a decade he's producing a unique style of music combining elements of droning ambient industrial, traditional folklore and electronic, tribal/trancy psychedelism, adding pure sound-experiments often based on field recordings. A strong DIY-attitude (self-released albums usually have handmade covers with ornamental drawings & paintings) is connected with a shamanistic and pan-religious philosophy. Meditation, Trance, the wish to explore the own unconscious areas by ecstatic experiences and a deep connection with nature are his main characteristics. The two pieces "Atanimonni" and "Aitnatsbus" were especially recorded for our 10"-series and give a wonderful example of the typical L.A.D.O.-style: two long tracks (total 23+ min.) of stunning multi-layered compositions, using lots of detail-sounds from domestic and wild animals, mountain winds and brooks, forest shelters and a destroyed missile garrison, soviet analog synths, north saami female voices / singings, subtle (neo) classic harmonies, bells & gongs... hyper-dense & fluid at the same time! Both tracks end up in endless grooves (water & fire) to symbolize the connection to timeless energies. Lim. 500 with artwork by ARTYOM OSTAPCHUK (KRYPTOGEN RUNDFUNK / ZHELEZOBETON label), comes on sky-blue, crystal & white mixed vinyl. "Recordings of field recordind sounds were made in the summer of 2009 in the Carpathian mountains and the land of lakes in Karelia, during a miraculous journey, full of joyful inspiration. Party of analog synthesizers recorded by sound-poet Lesnaya Pogan during a cold winter 2010 in Moscow." [Evgeny Savenko] [label info] www.substantia-innominata.de "lunar abyss deus organum hat mit „brusnika“ auf der dr-77 in der früheren 7“ serie von drone-records einen der teile herausgebracht, der mir von allen 100 beiträgen der serie am besten gefällt. nun ist das projekt mit „atanimonni / aitnatsbus“ als sub-16 auch auf der substantia innominata 10“ serie vertreten. lunar abyss deus organum ist dabei alles andere als ein projekt, das auf lang durchlaufende schichtungen, melodiebögen oder ähnliches setzt oder im gegenzug (bearbeitete) fieldrecordings oder konkretere musikschnipsel in den eindeutigen vordergrund der arbeit stellt. im ersten eindruck sind viele der arbeiten von lunar abyss deus organum vielmehr eine zunächst undurchschaubare collage aus all diesen elementen; eine collage, die aber nie übervoll erscheint, der es sogar gelingt, trotz manchmal fast wie brüche wirkender betonungen nie die stimmung und atmosphäre zu gefährden und so drones aufzubauen, die durch fast überraschende wendungen immer wieder neue bilder aufbauen können. auch „atanimonni“ folgt dieser tradition und wiegt die hörer dabei über sehr lange zeit in der trügerischen sicherheit, der schaukelnde, wellenartige bassdrone mit dem das stück auch beginnt, könnte, wenn schon nicht ewig, dann aber zumindest für die dauer der seite begleiter bleiben. und natürlich, gerade, wenn man vergessen hat, dass es jemals anders sein könnte, wachsen dessen rauere begleiter über sich selbst und den bassdrone hinaus, bauen eine geräuschhafte kakophonie auf, brechen wie urplötzlich ab und münden in einem nur ganz leise hörbaren, durch die rille auf analoge art geloopten wassersample. zumindest hier dann also das erhören derer, die sich eine derartige musik mit noch viel längeren laufzeiten wünschen... „aitnatsbus“ geht, in gewissen sinne, einen umgekehrten weg: die geräuschhaften komponenten stehen hier zu beginn fast ganz frei (wenn auch nicht so laut wie kurz vor ende von „atanimonni“) und fangen sich erst allmählich über zunächst bassigen dann knurrenden drones und fast unhörbar schleicht sich eine weibliche stimme hinein, die, auf ähnlich verführerischer art wie schon auf der „brusnika“ 7“, einen schnipsel aus einer dieser typischen melancholischen osteuropäischen volksmusikmelodien immer und immer wieder wiederholt. perfekter dynamischer aufbau und eigentlich unmöglich erscheinender kontrast zwischen den wälzenden drones mit ihren geräuschhüllen und der sehnsuchtsvollen stimme. eigentlich. und am ende verweht nur noch der gesang und was bleibt ist das (wiederum analog geloopte) feuer..." [Hellmut Neidhardt / N] | 2012 | €12.00 |
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| LUSTMORD | [O T H E R] | CD | Das zehnte Studioalbum »Other« der Elektronik-/Industrial-Musikpioniere Lustmord wurde 2008 veröffentlicht und ist bis heute das einzige Lustmord-Album mit Gitarren, gespielt von Adam Jones (Tool), King Buzzo (The Melvins) und Aaron Turner (Isis). Das Album erschien ursprünglich auf dem unabhängigen Plattenlabel Hydra Head Records, das von Isis-Frontmann Aaron Turner gegründet wurde und früher Bands wie Converge, Pelican, Jesu, Sun O))) oder Boris beherbergte. Wie ein Journalist es damals formulierte, ist »Other« ein "düsteres Beispiel für einen vollendeten Künstler, der genau innerhalb der Parameter arbeitet, die er sich im Laufe der Jahre selbst gesetzt hat." Dieses Album zeigt Lustmord von seiner charakteristischsten Seite, und das eisige, unheilvolle Gitarrenspiel von Jones, Turner und Ozborne fügt sich perfekt in die tiefen Klanglandschaften ein, die diese beängstigende und doch inspirierende Reise ausmachen. Tatsächlich sind die Songs so kraftvoll, dass es Williams dazu bewegte, zwei Ambient-Remix-Versionen und eine Dub-Remix-EP zu erstellen, die die Klänge dieses Albums so weit wie möglich erforschen. Im Jahr 2022 arbeitet Lustmord für The Others (Lustmord Deconstructed) mit Künstlern wie Godflesh, Mono und Zola Jesus, um nur einige zu nennen, an Neuinterpretationen der »Other«-Songs zusammen, die ebenfalls jetzt erhältlich sind. Reissued in all its incarnations plus re-interpreted: Electronic/Industrial music pioneer LUSTMORDs tenth studio album [ O T H E R ], originally released in 2008 and to date the only LUSTMORD album with guitars on it, performed by Adam Jones (TOOL), King Buzzo (THE MELVINS) and Aaron Turner (ISIS). [ O T H E R ] originally came out on independent record label Hydra Head Records, founded by ISIS frontman Aaron Turner and former home of bands such as CONVERGE, PELICAN, JESU, SUN O))) or BORIS. As one journalist put it at the time, [ O T H E R ] is a "grim example of a consummate artist who is working frmly within the parameters that he has laid out for himself over the years." This album shows Lustmord at his most characteristic, and the icy, ominous guitar playing of Jones, Turner and Ozborne resonates perfectly within the deep soundscapes that make up this frightening yet inspiring journey. As a matter of fact, the material on [ O T H E R ] is so powerful that it moved Williams to create two ambient remix versions of it, and one dub remix EP exploring the sounds of this record to the greatest extend of his ability. In 2022, and also available now, LUSTMORD further collaborates with artist such as GODFLESH, MONO and ZOLA JESUS, to name but a few, for THE OTHERS (LUSTMORD DECONSTRUCTED) on re-interpretations on [ O T H E R ] tracks. LUSTMORD is the artistic moniker of Brian Williams. Born in North Wales, he started his musical career in 1980 and soon became a pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. He was a former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, and went on to work with THROBBING GRISTLE members Chris & Cosey as well as appearing on early albums by CURRENT 93, NURSE WITH WOUND and others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader's First Reformed. Additionally he created several video game soundtracks, television scores and solo albums, as well as collaborating with artists as varied as THE MELVINS, CLOCK DVA, JARBOE, John Balance of COIL, Paul Haslinger (TANGERINE DREAM), PUSCIFER, Wes Borland and more, including Grammy Award-winners TOOL on their much acclaimed effort Fear Inoculum. To this day, Lustmord is actively recording and releasing music, his latest release being the collaborative album Alter with Karin Park of A°RABROT, and he is considered to be the founding father of the dark ambient music genre. [press release] | 2022 | €16.00 |
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| [Beyond] | CD | Reissued! Electronic music pioneer LUSTMORD released an album titled [OTHER] in 2008, to date the only LUSTMORD album with guitars on it, performed by Adam Jones (TOOL), King Buzzo (MELVINS) and Aaron Turner (ISIS). The albums The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond, both released in 2009, are extensions of the ideas explored in [OTHER] and are taken from the same recording sessions, but with the guitars removed and the essence of [OTHER] distilled and reduced.[OTHER] was a journey with friends, while The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond take the concept and listener further, deeper, in-between and beyond. While is some ways [OTHER] is as close to a "rock" album as Lustmord will ever make, The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond are pure Lustmord, a sound that many others imitate but can never equal. LUSTMORD is the artistic moniker of Brian Williams. Born in North Wales, he started his musical career in 1980 and soon became a pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. He was a former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, and went on to work with THROBBING GRISTLE members Chris & Cosey as well as appearing on early albums by CURRENT 93, NURSE WITH WOUND and others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader's First Reformed. Additionally he created several video game soundtracks, television scores and solo albums, as well as collaborating with artists as varied as THE MELVINS, CLOCK DVA, JARBOE, John Balance of COIL, Paul Haslinger (TANGERINE DREAM), PUSCIFER, Wes Borland and more, including Grammy Award-winners TOOL on their much acclaimed effort Fear Inoculum. To this day, Lustmord is actively recording and releasing music, his latest release being the collaborative album Alter with Karin Park of A°RABROT, and he is considered to be the founding father of the dark ambient music genre. https://lustmord.bandcamp.com/album/beyond | 2022 | €15.00 |
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| Beyond | do-LP | Reissued! Electronic music pioneer LUSTMORD released an album titled [OTHER] in 2008, to date the only LUSTMORD album with guitars on it, performed by Adam Jones (TOOL), King Buzzo (MELVINS) and Aaron Turner (ISIS). The albums The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond, both released in 2009, are extensions of the ideas explored in [OTHER] and are taken from the same recording sessions, but with the guitars removed and the essence of [OTHER] distilled and reduced.[OTHER] was a journey with friends, while The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond take the concept and listener further, deeper, in-between and beyond. While is some ways [OTHER] is as close to a "rock" album as Lustmord will ever make, The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond are pure Lustmord, a sound that many others imitate but can never equal. LUSTMORD is the artistic moniker of Brian Williams. Born in North Wales, he started his musical career in 1980 and soon became a pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. He was a former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, and went on to work with THROBBING GRISTLE members Chris & Cosey as well as appearing on early albums by CURRENT 93, NURSE WITH WOUND and others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader's First Reformed. Additionally he created several video game soundtracks, television scores and solo albums, as well as collaborating with artists as varied as THE MELVINS, CLOCK DVA, JARBOE, John Balance of COIL, Paul Haslinger (TANGERINE DREAM), PUSCIFER, Wes Borland and more, including Grammy Award-winners TOOL on their much acclaimed effort Fear Inoculum. To this day, Lustmord is actively recording and releasing music, his latest release being the collaborative album Alter with Karin Park of A°RABROT, and he is considered to be the founding father of the dark ambient music genre. https://lustmord.bandcamp.com/album/beyond | 2022 | €32.00 |
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| [O T H E R] | do-LP | Reissued in all its incarnations plus re-interpreted: Electronic/Industrial music pioneer LUSTMORDs tenth studio album [ O T H E R ], originally released in 2008 and to date the only LUSTMORD album with guitars on it, performed by Adam Jones (TOOL), King Buzzo (THE MELVINS) and Aaron Turner (ISIS). [ O T H E R ] originally came out on independent record label Hydra Head Records, founded by ISIS frontman Aaron Turner and former home of bands such as CONVERGE, PELICAN, JESU, SUN O))) or BORIS. As one journalist put it at the time, [ O T H E R ] is a "grim example of a consummate artist who is working frmly within the parameters that he has laid out for himself over the years." This album shows Lustmord at his most characteristic, and the icy, ominous guitar playing of Jones, Turner and Ozborne resonates perfectly within the deep soundscapes that make up this frightening yet inspiring journey. As a matter of fact, the material on [ O T H E R ] is so powerful that it moved Williams to create two ambient remix versions of it, and one dub remix EP exploring the sounds of this record to the greatest extend of his ability. In 2022, and also available now, LUSTMORD further collaborates with artist such as GODFLESH, MONO and ZOLA JESUS, to name but a few, for THE OTHERS (LUSTMORD DECONSTRUCTED) on re-interpretations on [ O T H E R ] tracks. LUSTMORD is the artistic moniker of Brian Williams. Born in North Wales, he started his musical career in 1980 and soon became a pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. He was a former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, and went on to work with THROBBING GRISTLE members Chris & Cosey as well as appearing on early albums by CURRENT 93, NURSE WITH WOUND and others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader's First Reformed. Additionally he created several video game soundtracks, television scores and solo albums, as well as collaborating with artists as varied as THE MELVINS, CLOCK DVA, JARBOE, John Balance of COIL, Paul Haslinger (TANGERINE DREAM), PUSCIFER, Wes Borland and more, including Grammy Award-winners TOOL on their much acclaimed effort Fear Inoculum. To this day, Lustmord is actively recording and releasing music, his latest release being the collaborative album Alter with Karin Park of A°RABROT, and he is considered to be the founding father of the dark ambient music genre. https://lustmord.bandcamp.com/album/o-t-h-e-r | 2022 | €32.00 |
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| [Dark Places of the Earth] | CD | Reissued! Electronic music pioneer LUSTMORD released an album titled [OTHER] in 2008, to date the only LUSTMORD album with guitars on it, performed by Adam Jones (TOOL), King Buzzo (MELVINS) and Aaron Turner (ISIS). The albums The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond, both released in 2009, areextensions of the ideas explored in [OTHER] and are taken from the same recording sessions, but with the guitars removed and the essence of [OTHER] distilled and reduced.[OTHER] was a journey with friends, whileThe Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond take the concept and listener further, deeper, in-between and beyond. While is some ways [OTHER] is as close to a "rock" album as Lustmord will ever make, The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond are pure Lustmord, a sound that many others imitate but can never equal. LUSTMORD is the artistic moniker of Brian Williams. Born in North Wales, he started his musical career in 1980 and soon became a pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. He was a former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, and went on to work with THROBBING GRISTLE members Chris & Cosey as well as appearing on early albums by CURRENT 93, NURSE WITH WOUND and others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader's First Reformed. Additionally he created several video game soundtracks, television scores and solo albums, as well as collaborating with artists as varied as THE MELVINS, CLOCK DVA, JARBOE, John Balance of COIL, Paul Haslinger (TANGERINE DREAM), PUSCIFER, Wes Borland and more, including Grammy Award-winners TOOL on their much acclaimed effort Fear Inoculum. To this day, Lustmord is actively recording and releasing music, his latest release being the collaborative album Alter with Karin Park of A°RABROT, and he is considered to be the founding father of the dark ambient music genre. https://lustmord.bandcamp.com/album/the-dark-places-of-the-earth | 2022 | €15.00 |
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| LUSTMORD & KARIN PARK | Alter (lim. col. vinyl) | do-LP | Limited coloured LPs housed in gatefold w/ special canvas cardboard stock and silver hot foil! Nordic pop diva KARIN PARK of ÂRABROT adds her ethereal, mournful voice and keys to the primordial sound of legendary electronic pioneer LUSTMORD for this sublime and poignant collaboration. ALTER is a ritual of our times. On the pair's frst collaborative work, the nine tracks that make up ALTER are every bit as heart-wrenching as they are terrifying, mining new sonic territory, it is a fascinating study of light and shade that delves deep into vast uncharted darkness. Their ability to create atmosphere on the album opener "Hiraeth" is second to none, perfectly assembling a harrowing backdrop for Park's lilting sound of longing. From there, Park's vocals add all of the emotional depth and power found in names like Kate Bush, Maynard J Keenan and Elizabeth Frasier, perfectly playing against Lustmord's waves of dark drama and creating a wholly unique record that recalls Dead Can Dance, Massive Attack and Portishead at their greatest. Considering Park's credentials, it might be surprising that a collaboration with Lustmord would ft so seamlessly. Utilizing a sound comprised of elements of industrial, synth pop and more, the celebrated Swedish solo artist and member of Norwegian rock band Ârabrot utilizes experimentation in her work, blazing trails and bringing to mind the work of her peers The Knife, Scott Walker, Robyn, Depeche Mode and Burial with her darkly-rich compositions. Multiple winner of Norway's Spellemann award, Park co-wrote the Norwegian entry for the 2013 Eurovision, fnishing fourth overall. But it is the sensibility of the sacred music of her youth that Park adds to ALTER, contributing a powerful vocal that guides the listener through the cavernous, mystical depth of their collaborative work. "Lustmord is the Gustave Doré of music", Karin Park ofers pensively. "Painting magical pictures with a sound that is so vast, it gives space for your own imagination." Brian Williams grew up in North Wales, beginning his musical career as Lustmord in 1980 and becoming a pivotal fgure and pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. A former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, Williams went on to work with Throbbing Gristle members Chris & Cosey and appeared on early albums by Current 93 and Nurse With Wound amongst others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader's First Reformed, as well as on several video game, television scores and solo albums. Williams has also contributed to and collaborated with artists as varied as the Melvins, Clock DVA, Jarboe, John Balance of Coil, Clock DVA, Paul Haslinger (Tangerine Dream), Wes Borland (Limp Bizkit), Puscifer and more, including Grammy Award-winners Tool from their much acclaimed eforts 10,000 Days and Fear Inoculum. TRACKLISTING: 01. HIRAETH 02. THE VOID BETWEEN 03. PERIHELION 04. TWIN FLAMES 05. ENTWINED 06. KINDRED 07. SONG OF SOL 08. SELE | 2021 | €35.00 |
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| Alter | CD | Nordic pop diva KARIN PARK of ÅRABROT adds her ethereal, mournful voice and keys to the primordial sound of legendary electronic pioneer LUSTMORD for this sublime and poignant collaboration. ALTER is a ritual of our times. On the pair’s frst collaborative work, the nine tracks that make up ALTER are every bit as heart-wrenching as they are terrifying, mining new sonic territory, it is a fascinating study of light and shade that delves deep into vast uncharted darkness. Their ability to create atmosphere on the album opener “Hiraeth” is second to none, perfectly assembling a harrowing backdrop for Park’s lilting sound of longing. From there, Park’s vocals add all of the emotional depth and power found in names like Kate Bush, Maynard J Keenan and Elizabeth Frasier, perfectly playing against Lustmord’s waves of dark drama and creating a wholly unique record that recalls Dead Can Dance, Massive Attack and Portishead at their greatest. Considering Park’s credentials, it might be surprising that a collaboration with Lustmord would ft so seamlessly. Utilizing a sound comprised of elements of industrial, synth pop and more, the celebrated Swedish solo artist and member of Norwegian rock band Årabrot utilizes experimentation in her work, blazing trails and bringing to mind the work of her peers The Knife, Scott Walker, Robyn, Depeche Mode and Burial with her darkly-rich compositions. Multiple winner of Norway’s Spellemann award, Park co-wrote the Norwegian entry for the 2013 Eurovision, fnishing fourth overall. But it is the sensibility of the sacred music of her youth that Park adds to ALTER, contributing a powerful vocal that guides the listener through the cavernous, mystical depth of their collaborative work. ”Lustmord is the Gustave Doré of music“, Karin Park ofers pensively. “Painting magical pictures with a sound that is so vast, it gives space for your own imagination.” Brian Williams grew up in North Wales, beginning his musical career as Lustmord in 1980 and becoming a pivotal fgure and pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. A former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, Williams went on to work with Throbbing Gristle members Chris & Cosey and appeared on early albums by Current 93 and Nurse With Wound amongst others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, as well as on several video game, television scores and solo albums. Williams has also contributed to and collaborated with artists as varied as the Melvins, Clock DVA, Jarboe, John Balance of Coil, Clock DVA, Paul Haslinger (Tangerine Dream), Wes Borland (Limp Bizkit), Puscifer and more, including Grammy Award-winners Tool from their much acclaimed eforts 10,000 Days and Fear Inoculum. | 2021 | €14.00 |
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| Alter (black vinyl) | do-LP | Limited coloured LPs housed in gatefold w/ special canvas cardboard stock and silver hot foil! Nordic pop diva KARIN PARK of ÂRABROT adds her ethereal, mournful voice and keys to the primordial sound of legendary electronic pioneer LUSTMORD for this sublime and poignant collaboration. ALTER is a ritual of our times. On the pair's frst collaborative work, the nine tracks that make up ALTER are every bit as heart-wrenching as they are terrifying, mining new sonic territory, it is a fascinating study of light and shade that delves deep into vast uncharted darkness. Their ability to create atmosphere on the album opener "Hiraeth" is second to none, perfectly assembling a harrowing backdrop for Park's lilting sound of longing. From there, Park's vocals add all of the emotional depth and power found in names like Kate Bush, Maynard J Keenan and Elizabeth Frasier, perfectly playing against Lustmord's waves of dark drama and creating a wholly unique record that recalls Dead Can Dance, Massive Attack and Portishead at their greatest. Considering Park's credentials, it might be surprising that a collaboration with Lustmord would ft so seamlessly. Utilizing a sound comprised of elements of industrial, synth pop and more, the celebrated Swedish solo artist and member of Norwegian rock band Ârabrot utilizes experimentation in her work, blazing trails and bringing to mind the work of her peers The Knife, Scott Walker, Robyn, Depeche Mode and Burial with her darkly-rich compositions. Multiple winner of Norway's Spellemann award, Park co-wrote the Norwegian entry for the 2013 Eurovision, fnishing fourth overall. But it is the sensibility of the sacred music of her youth that Park adds to ALTER, contributing a powerful vocal that guides the listener through the cavernous, mystical depth of their collaborative work. "Lustmord is the Gustave Doré of music", Karin Park ofers pensively. "Painting magical pictures with a sound that is so vast, it gives space for your own imagination." Brian Williams grew up in North Wales, beginning his musical career as Lustmord in 1980 and becoming a pivotal fgure and pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. A former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, Williams went on to work with Throbbing Gristle members Chris & Cosey and appeared on early albums by Current 93 and Nurse With Wound amongst others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader's First Reformed, as well as on several video game, television scores and solo albums. Williams has also contributed to and collaborated with artists as varied as the Melvins, Clock DVA, Jarboe, John Balance of Coil, Clock DVA, Paul Haslinger (Tangerine Dream), Wes Borland (Limp Bizkit), Puscifer and more, including Grammy Award-winners Tool from their much acclaimed eforts 10,000 Days and Fear Inoculum. TRACKLISTING: 01. HIRAETH 02. THE VOID BETWEEN 03. PERIHELION 04. TWIN FLAMES 05. ENTWINED 06. KINDRED 07. SONG OF SOL 08. SELE | 2021 | €28.00 |
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| LUSTMORD & NICOLAS HORVATH | The Fall | do-LP | "The Fall is a deconstruction of November by Dennis Johnson. Written for solo piano in 1959, November is the first example of minimalist music composition and was the inspiration for La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano (1964). The 66 minute piece is a collaboration between legendary artist Lustmord and renowned classical pianist Nicolas Horvath, in which they reduces Johnson's original November to its core element and place it in a landscape of complimentary sound. The Fall echo's November but with further resonance. Recorded in May-June 2019 in Los Angeles, and Misy-sur-Yonne, France. Lustmord Active since 1980, born of the original 'industrial' scene of the period. With its own distinctive approach, blurring the line between music and sound design Lustmord's work has featured in 45 motion pictures including The Crow and Underworld and also in video games, television and commercials. Recently Lustmord scored the music for Paul Schrader's movie First Reformed. While Lustmord is often credited for creating the 'dark ambient' genre there is much more nuance to its work than what that label implies. The music is not dark, but is a light that shines into and upon the darkness. Notable collaborations amongst many include Tool, Melvins, Jarboe, John Balance of Coil, Clock DVA, Chris & Cosey, Paul Haslinger, Karin Park and Robert Rich. Nicolas Horvath An unusual artist with an unconventional résumé, pianist and electroacoustic composer Nicolas Horvath is known for his boundariesless musical explorations. Horvath is both an enthusiastic promoter of contemporary music - he has commissioned numerous works (including no fewer than 120 as part of his Homages to Philip Glass project in 2014) and collaborated with leading contemporary composers from around the world, including Alvin Lucier, Mamoru Fujieda, Jaan Rääts, Alvin Curran and Valentyn Silvestrov - and a rediscoverer of forgotten or neglected composers such as Moondog, Nobuo Uematsu, Germaine Tailleferre, François-Adrien Boieldieu, Hélène de Montgeroult, Jean Catoire, Karl August Hermann." | 2020 | €22.50 |
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| LUTNAHIMAT | Kleine Mietzekatze | mCD | Interesting Newcomer on one of the most advanced British label at the moment, comes again in closed moisture-bag design. [Drone Rec info 2007] “It is all based on a strange, involving cycle of repetitive low frequencies spiced with scraps of slowed down taped voices (luckily, just a little, as this is one of the things that I like less in experimental music at any level) and something like a pitch-transposed looped feedback. A humming deep pulse in the background completes this nerve-rubbing experience, once again showing Entr’acte’s will of dealing with many different fields of contemporary electronica. To be put in ‘repeat’ mode, ad libitum.” [Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes] www.entracte.co.uk | 2006 | €7.00 |
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| M.B. (MAURIZIO BIANCHI) | Mectpyo - Blut | do-LP | "2LP in gatefold sleeve. Edition of 300 copies. At the beginning of the metabolic year 1980, after Maurizio Bianchi finished the embryonal experience as Sacher-Pelz, he decided to undertake the concrete-synchronized course as M.B., a long-lived acronym that will accompany him along his next way of neuro-synthetic experimenter. His first ever release was the private cassette-tape entitled 'Metcpyo-Blut'. An hematopoietic experiment decomposed during the months of March and beginning of April 1980 at Mectpyo Studio. Proposed here in its original layout, this 2LP set holds intact, at a distance of almost three decades, the epicentre of M.B. sonorous universe, projected towards an euphonic cacophony. 'Mectpyo-Blut' consists of two tragic sections imbued with synthetic chloroform: the 1st, 'Maidanek Bakterium-Musique Belzec', exhales an icy atmosphere conveying a sense of mystery and annihilation. The 2nd, 'Mutant Brain-Mord Banhof' assembled the most disparate electro-hypnotic levitation's into a vertical rationality, bold, morbid and haunting. Psychic-cerebral works, they seem to spring from a neuro-atomic continent, with unreal outlines, where its influence artificially expands the ankylotic tissues by environmental arthrosis. Edition limited to 300 copies in full colour gatefold sleeve, reproducing various graphic materials from the original cassette edition. Attention: this is the real thing, top powerful and modern in its integral length (and not a meaningless edited excerpt as other unexperienced labels in demand would have cheaply proposed you!)." [label info] | 2010 | €32.50 |
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| M.B. / FRAG | Psychation | CD | An overwhelming collaboration between the legendary Maurizio Bianchi and FRAG recorded in early 2020. 4ib Records. MB & FRAG - Psychation ( 4IB Records ) "Any work of architecture that does not express serenity is a mistake." LUIS BARRAGAN What is serenity? To some; serenity is a tranquil, sequestered, fulfilled state of existence. A wilful pause of the modern consumer existence that pollutes and perverts our lives. A cessation of the demands modernity forces so brutally upon our febrile short lives. To others serenity exists within scripture, tomes and ritualistic expressions of the divine. The devout seek a glimpse of this divinity, through the serenity they seek whilst shackled to the cold clay of this mortal coil. Stephen Burroughs is FRAG and FRAG is a project that has found serenity in the brutalist architecture of the Midlands of Britain. In seeking to express in sound; the collapse of the industrial heartlands of the United Kingdom he has created through his FRAG project; a collection of audio sculptures that evoke the concrete isolation of his claustrophobic environment. FRAG is the soundtrack to a mankind that is alienated completely from the natural order of life. His compositions are not warm but cold, angular and granular. Huge slabs of desolate anguish that despite their sterile inhumanity pulse and seethe with submerged longing. The sound of FRAG is that of a lone human hand extending skywards from a collapsed building. That hand pointing accusingly, cursing the heavens for that fate that has befallen it. Beneath that dead mortar is humanity slowly expiring under the cold dead weight. It is entirely logical that FRAG and Maurizio Bianchi would collaborate together. In his early Archeo years Mr Bianchi explored the themes of isolated consciousness in the industrialised environment. The stark truth of the industrial age was explored by MB as he sought his own solace to the decaying soulless hell that surrounded him. Alienated by the inhumanity of his existence he sought to hold a mirror up to the crushing weight that sought to crush any and all resistance to its dehumanizing nature. Whilst MB sought to escape this brutalism of the soul by seeking an eremite like existence within the works of faith, FRAG became the lone wolf operative working behind enemy lines to fight a rearguard war of attrition against this inhuman leviathan. Both MB & FRAG have and are fighting the same war, against the same foe , using the same weaponry; the medium of sound. Psychation despite containing three lengthy tracks really needs to be listened to as a whole. Despite the tracks being individual entities with quite different atmosphere they are best appreciated as a thematic progression across the entire album. These tracks are constantly evolving and mutating pieces of angular geometry. A cascade of electronic shapes that fluctuate and shift in a metamorphosis of Musique Concrete tonal expressionism. At times the unrelenting nature of the album is just about to break your endurance before a snatch of melodic ambience breaks through the tumult and disarray. Where Psychation differs from most 'noise' based albums is that it retains its granite density without descending into chaotic nonsensicality. Despite the at times abrasive incisive attack of sound it retains a sense of weight. Almost as if the sound is being layered as one would layer asphalt, layer after layer added and poured. Over and over again in ceaseless repetition. The sound of humanity as it is drowned beneath the post human neo liberal order. Psychation is the sound of humanity as it thrashes and drowns beneath the technologic order that it has birthed into being. Psychation is a warning to us all. A warning of the world we will inherit if we forgo our humanity and spirituality. If we throw all caution to the wind and embrace the technologic future. Psychation is a window into that world. The post serenity, post human world of concrete, zero & ones and mindless consumerism. MB & FRAG are pointing at the inevitable conclusion of our existence if we as humans choose to venture any further. [Kristian Carter] M.B. - PSYCHELECTRONICS, SEGREGATED NOISES, NUCLEAR PICTURES. FRAG - PSYCHELECTRONIC SURGERISM. ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY - KRISTIAN R. CARTER. https://tunnelsofh.bandcamp.com/album/psychation | 2020 | €13.00 |
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| M.B.(MAURIZIO BIANCHI) / LAND USE | Psychoneurose | CD | Collaboration der wiedererstarkten Industrial-Legende mit LAND USE, einem neuen Projekt aus NL.... zu hören gibt es hier rauhe, ratternde Klang-Emanationen, die sich in immer neuen Verformungen in den Äther wälzen.... Licht-verschluckend und zähflüssig wie schwarzer Teer....unser definitiver Favorit unter den neuen MB-Veröffentlichungen der letzten Zeit ! “Italian Avant-Noise legend M.B. and Land Use collaborate on dramatic, subterranean wall-of-noise constructions and swirling textural storms, dense and complex arrangements, shifting and shimmering tones barely under control, streaming toward some distant and indefineable precipice. Not noisy, but way too tense and corrosive to be called ambient. These vibrant monoliths of sound shift the listeners pysche into a restless sort of zen, a blissful chaos - truly mind and mood-altering. Bianchi released early records on Whitehouse's Come Org. label and has been active since the 1970's. And a recent and conspicuous absence from the experimental music world has been broken by several recent releases of surprising freshness and relevance. It is unclear where MB leaves off and Land Use begins but Psychoneurose is definitely a clear and brilliant return to early MB techniques with several refinements in delivery and focus. Psychoneurose will be the clear weapon of choice for those who prefer their ambience with teeth and their Power-Electronics with more of the deep, vaster textures than violence.” [label description] “....Thank God, we gave Psychoneurose a listen, as this record is so spectacular that perhaps we will be searching out some of those other records to see if they are as good as they were claimed to be! .....in returning to the all-encompassing, utterly blackened, subterraneanly frigid, nightmarishly grim, soul-crushingly bleak, death-shroud ambience that Bianchi had produced back in the day. Expansive, Frankensteinian drones constanly broadcast a black energy, marred with tactile corrosive noises and synthetic twitches which could only be made by the same anaglog technology of Bianchi's classic recordings. So until those aforementioned albums come back in print yet again, Psychoneurose holds its own as a worthy substitute.” [Aquarius] | 2005 | €13.00 |
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| MACHINEFABRIEK | Daas | CD | "The tracks on "Daas" have been carefully picked to form a provoking, haunting journey. What the tracks have in common is a sense of nostalgic graininess. As with the music of Philip Jeck, The Caretaker or William Basinski, these tracks are full of degrading melodies and dusty ambience. 'Daas' is the previously unreleased opening track of the album, and features contributions by the great Richard Skelton. 'Flotter', 'Koploop' and 'Grom' were previously available on small run self released EPs, while 'Onkruid' was a track previously released on 'A Room Forever', as an expensive and extremely limited 12" boxset. All are now brought to a wider audience. Presented in a matt laminate digipak." [label info] "Next album comes from a project that also saw the daylight in 2004 just like aforementioned from Fire In The Head, though this is one of the few things in common between those two projects. Expressively we move right to the opposite side of the sound spectre here. Machinefabriek is a Dutch project from the Rotterdam-based sound artist Rutger Zuydervelt. The composer began his sonic explorations as a young boy taking lessons in piano and guitar but after that he went to the Art Academy of Arnhem, probably giving him the artistic and abstract approach to composing. Machinefabriek's music combines elements of ambient, modern classical, drone, noise and field recordings. His latest album titled "Daas" is an excellent piece of experimental ambient. There is a trend in the ambient world to combine the sound of ambience with modern classical, but in many cases the two styles do not melt and therefore doesn't float as one whole. Machinefabriek manage to integrate the acoustic elements into the digital spheres with a hauntingly beautiful end-result. Everyone interested in ambient music should keep an eye on this one." [NM/Vital Weekly] | 2010 | €12.00 |
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| MAEDER, MARCUS | Annex | mCD | "In architecture, an annex is an extension to a main building. Likewise, the pieces on this mini CD complement and supplement the approaches that Marcus Maeder presented in his latest work titled subsegmental. Here, too, the musical pieces are composed of very short sound segments reproduced at such low speed as to stretch out and form vast soundscapes. Maeder processes and shapes this acoustic topography, giving it a distinctive, surreal quality and populating it with strange beings and events. Those who enter the annex are confronted with highly suggestive soundscapes featuring objects springing out of the inaudible realm of darkness to form a cosmos of micro-events, only to escape perception again, like a ghostly presence brushing past in the dark. Marcus Maeder is a sound artist and composer. He studied Art at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Lucerne and is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Philosophy at the University of Hagen. Maeder runs the music label domizil, which he co-founded in 1996 with Bernd Schurer. He has worked as an editor and producer for the Swiss radio station DRS and has been working as a curator at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology of the Zurich University of the Arts since 2005. His artistic work focuses mainly on computer music and the artistic and media extensions of the term. As an author, Maeder has written on a number of topics in the fields of sound art and digital media." [label info] www.domizil.ch "Earlier today I was not at home, but in a friends house waiting for something. The weather was hot, and I lay down on his couch. In my bag was ‘Annex’ by Marcus Maeder, and I decided to play it. Around the house there was a lot of activity of people constructing a new house on one side (or perhaps putting an annex to it?) and on the other side motorized objects doing gardening work. Maeder’s music wasn’t very loud on, but it merged wonderful with the sounds coming from outside, even with all the windows closed. I fell asleep. Later on, now, I am at home again, listening again to ‘Annex’ in a more quiet surrounding of early evening (windows open). I am to understand that this work is an extension (for that is what an ‘annex’ is, in an architectural sense) of ‘Subsegmental’ (see Vital Weekly 702). I am not sure if Maeder draws from the same sounds as on ‘Subsegmental’, but he uses ‘very short sound segments reproduced at such low speed as to stretch out and form vast soundscapes’ – I couldn’t have this any better myself. The four pieces (sixteen minutes in total) emerge on the near silence, especially ‘Plateau’ is very quiet, much alike the eleven pieces on ‘Subsegmental’. Perhaps without many differences between this one and that one, but its simply beautiful stuff. Maybe its too early to play this music and I should wait until full darkness has set in, but its tranquility is simply great as it is." [FdW, Vital Weekly] | 2010 | €8.00 |
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| MALDUR ATAI | Borgata | CD | "A brutal murder was committed in Ostia beach near Rome on 2 November 1975. A car ran over a man, turned around and repeated the act. Pier Paolo Pasolini was the victim. The murderer was found and confessed to murdering Pasolini. However, later on, he claimed he was forced to do it. They threatened they would kill his family otherwise. Them naturally being the cops. Since the truth emerged only several years after closing the case, the majority linked the death of the famous society figure, poet, essayist and filmmaker with his outrageous movie “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom”. A friend of Pier Paolo stated that Paolo had been going to Ostia beach to meet some strangers who had stolen some rolls of “Salò”. A few bloodied fragments of the script were found in the pocket of Paolo’s jacket. More specifically, this was a leather folder containing a few bloodied pages. The murder case was investigated by a team of three detectives. And a strange thing happened then. One of the detectives stuck to a completely different version of the murder than the rest. He blurted it out to the media saying that “everything is much more complicated than someone’s trying to make it appear”. He was removed from the case by the authorities and subsequently disappeared. After a while the case was forgotten by the media. However, fifteen years later, Sergio Citti, the aforementioned friend of Paolo, told Paolo’s biographer, a journalist, that he was the only one who could actually disclose the actual circumstances of Paolo’s death. He recalled that a stranger came to his door introducing himself as a detective on Paolo’s case. The man looked deeply stressed, handed Sergio some pages of notes pointing out that they contained information on the cause of Paolo’s violent death. Without saying a further word the man left. Later Sergio saw the man’s photo on TV news. They announced that a police officer was missing. Sergio was shocked by this and threw himself into reading the notes. These were pages torn out from the diary, indicating that the writer was the officer of the special commission investigating the circumstances of Paolo’s death. He was called to recognise the body in the site of crime. He found a leather folder in the pocket of Paolo’s jacket. Some of the pages were missing, others were sunken with blood. The words in capitals on the folder said “The Third Secret of Fatima”. In the middle of the folder there was a clear text fragment with words “Bring me some wine, La Popessa. In a second, Sir”. The following text was illegible because of the blood stain half page large. Then one could read “Pope Pius XII feels sick. He is short of breath. He attempts to sit down, lowers his feet from the bed onto the floor but lacks any strength to stand up. La Popessa blows out the candles and leaving the Pope’s bedroom closes the door behind her”. The next pages were evidently torn out. The following page contained Scene No. 57, “A horrible stench pervaded the Pope’s death venue, while his face was morbidly pallid. As a doctor, I recognised the classic aftermath of tasting the cup of the Borgia”. No more text ensued. All the following pages, except the last one, were torn out. And THE LAST one was empty. The diary-author recollected that standing in this murder site he came to realise that someone in an awful hurry was terribly reluctant to let anyone see the content of the folder. Sergio read the entire diary of the detective. He had a clear idea what folder was meant. Once Paolo had mentioned to him that the shock caused by “Salò” was nothing in comparison to the fiery response his next film “The Third Secret of Fatima” would receive. He also hinted that the script covered not only the past, but also the future. The events shown in the film had indeed taken place in the past, and were meant to make the audience realise the horrible things awaiting them in the future. During their last meeting, Paolo hinted he was meeting someone important and, before closing the door, winked saying a strange thing – “Just remember the Satan entered Vatican in 1972”. The next day Sergio received a call from the police and leant the horrible news that Paolo had been brutally murdered. Sergio was invited to recognise the body. It was Paolo. Later on, Sergio was questioned about his last meeting with Paolo and the details he could remember. Sergio provided Paolo’s biographer with more details of the diary of the missing detective and the information that he remembered from the TV reports. They said nothing unusual had been found at the detective’s place. All things were where they belonged. The detective’s garments were lying nicely folded in wardrobes and drawers. The money found in the place made the police think the detective could not have been gone away. The only suspicious thing was the diary put open on the desk. All pages were missing, except the last one. And that was empty. A glass of water knocked down next to the diary perhaps implied a scene of rush or drama. Sergio then assumed that the stranger and the missing detective were one and the same person and the pages came from that same diary. The torn out pages contained the detective’s notes and assumptions, as well as other interesting and important details of the investigated case. The detective wrote that the name of the script found in the pocket of the filmmaker’s jacket - “The Third Secret of Fatima” - caught his attention. He did some investigation whether the murder was somehow connected to the script. He turned for help to the Vatican Curia. In the extensive official letter the detective asked for more information on the third secret of Fatima, for he had suspicions this could have been connected to the murder of the famous filmmaker. The official response was short. It read: “We sincerely regret the demise of the famous filmmaker. However, it is not in our competency to explicate the secrets of the Divine. This is a higher reality that is not subject to the mortals”. It was signed by Paul Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican Curia and the third most powerful person in Vatican. Later on, the detective received an anonymous letter from Vatican. The letterhead contained Vatican water marks. It read: “I am aware of your document. If you wish to find out more, please come to the specified derelict church at the given time”. The detective went to the meeting place in the dark rural site in the midst of the vineyards. The church had no doors. There was only a stone arch that looked either neglected or under reconstruction. Upon silently approaching the pulpit covered by a thick layer of dust the detective called out. He heard a hushed invitation from the pulpit to come closer. The voice agreed to reveal all known information on the condition that he will stay unknown. The detective concurred. Then the voice told him quite a number of interesting things about the third secret of Fatima. There exists a great power, a group of interests, aware of the ancient prophecy of Tibet predicting the recurrence of maldur atai cult. They seek to prevent the said return so that the truth is not revealed. They elaborated the plan of taking over Vatican and impeding the advent of the Messiah. This long-term strategy included such tasks as replacing the white popes with the black ones from the ranks of the Jesuit Order generals. The secret document in particular stressed that a very powerful element in the form of a child had been sent to the Earth, and would play a vital role in all spheres of influence as well as coordinate and rule all political, military and shadow forces resisting the advent of the redeeming Messiah. The agents of these spheres of influence suspect that Messiah is the maldur atai cult predicted by the legend of Nepal. It is believed that a man wearing a white long robe of the Pope was seen in the third apparition in Fatima. The children who witnessed the Marian apparition were scared to death. They recounted they had seen one more man in black, huge as a gorilla. The face of the man in a white robe was deadly pallid. He said nothing. He was foaming at the mouth. The man in black uttered the following words to the children: “I will make an entrance as a child exactly five years from now, I will break all the holy seals and make the world ready for the advent of the beast. And upon my arrival I will gain confidence of the most powerful in the world”. The children were frightened to death seeing the dreary face of the tall man. They named him a “Gorilla”. For many years afterwards the appalling man stayed in the children’s dreams and they screamed “Gorilla”, “Gorilla”, “Gorilla” in their sleep. The man in the pulpit suggested the adepts of maldur atai cult had sent a sign of warning from another dimension. The third secret of Fatima might have warned the humankind about the upcoming dreadful scenario. The man also said that the events of Vatican in the last decades implied a quite a number of parallels with what was revealed in the apparition in Fatima. The year 1972 was crucial for the Holy throne. The mysterious man did provide further explanations but suggested the detective read the press. The media was brimming with the coverage of these events. They concerned a few persons associated with the illuminati, Vatican, NATO, Zionists, cocaine and banks. The biographer asked Sergio whether he suspected that Paolo had been murdered for he had received information from unknown sources about the global conspiracy predicted by unnatural powers and had based his film script on this information? Sergio replied that Paolo had always liked to keep to himself both his creative ideas and his lovers, who might have included the members of clergy from Vatican. However, it was obvious that these events had nothing to do with “Salò”, while – to Sergio’s regret - Paolo was not completely open. All this was somehow connected to the filmmaker’s new film titled “The Third Secret of Fatima”. It has never been made. Only after reading the fragments of the detective’s diary, Sergio drew attention to this and realised what was happening in the head of Paolo when he was leaving to meet the strangers. Furthermore, why did they try to hide so much that the Pope’s life was threatened in Fatima and that the man who disclosed the attempt was named “Gorilla”? The biographer of Paolo’s life told Sergio that he had investigated the subject of the maldur atai cult and he found it strange - or perhaps it was only a coincidence - that both the last page found in Paolo’s jacket and the last page of the diary found in detective’s house were empty. Just like the pages found in the cells of the missing maldur atai adepts in Nepal. Or at least that’s what the local legends told. Sergio replied: “It is true that the coincidence is indeed weird”. Later the Paolo’s biography was published in small run. It contained all collected information about the death of Pier Paolo Pasolini, the filmmaker. The book titled “Borgata” did not receive a wide acclaim, although the promotion campaign and its headings loudly claimed that the book reveals the hitherto unknown circumstances of the murder of the filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, that the cause of the death is not “Salò”, but “The Third Secret of Fatima”, that the unshot movie was suppressed by reality and who killed Pier Paolo Pasolini. All these revelations made way to this book. “Borgata”, the forth full-length album by Maldur Atai, centres on the events described in this unpopular book." [label info] www.autarkeia.org | 2012 | €12.00 |
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| MAMA BÄR / MAMA BAER | Mitten im Wald | MC | "Kommissar Hjuler & Mama Baer are well-known to the crafting art scene in Germany with their extreme live performances and sculptures/pictures they regularly exhibit. Mama Bear's new solo release includes 3 tracks (Khmerzen 1 to 3) with very strange and dark soundtrack-ambient accompanied by crying / alienated voice overs - and on B-side the 10-minute madness "for the maincontrol" - a walk through non-existing forests. If you are into deep and scary soundscapes, this might be the right tape for you. Transparent C20-tape comes with natural object and is limited to 41 copies only." [label info] www.voluntarywhores.de | 2013 | €8.00 |
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| MANGAN, FELICITY | String Figures | LP | Felicity Mangan's first solo vinyl LP and first release for Elevator Bath is "String Figures", a stunningly beautiful collection of tactile drones and electronic tonalities infused with natural sounds and rhythms. This is fascinating, emotionally resonant work, novel in its inventiveness and impactful in its delivery. Created in the summer of 2024, the six pieces on "String Figures" sample and combine the resonant timbres of strings and electromagnetic textural fields with field recordings from wetlands. These elements were shaped through digital processing into polyphonic, angular assemblages. On side A, the austere minimalism and found sounds of "Watering Device" are followed by the gorgeous drones of "Cello Figures" while "Magnetic Moss" bounces electronic tones and pulses around the stereo field. Side B kicks off with "Invisible Strings", an elegiac ambient piece, which soon leads to the poetic and moving "String Thing". The concluding "Magnet, Paper, Frog" is the perfect combination of sundry techniques, offering a superb example of Mangan's singularity. As an album, it is a refreshingly varied yet thoroughly cohesive document. Indeed, "String Figures" is this highly unique and exciting composer's most compelling work to date and one that Elevator Bath is overjoyed to share with discerning listeners. - - - - Felicity Mangan is an Australian sound artist based in Berlin, Germany. She combines field recordings, electroacoustic composition, and electronic music techniques to create immersive, quasi-bioacoustic music aided by digital audio tools. Her compositions have been presented in multichannel installations, live performances, site-specific settings, and published works on labels such as Longform Editions, Mappa Editions, One Instrument, and Warm Winters, among others. Written, produced, and mixed by Felicity Mangan Tracks A2 and B2 contain samples of cello performed by Moritz Draheim Track B3 contains a sample of southern leopard frogs recorded by Kevin Songer Mastered by Stephan Mathieu at Schwebung Mastering Lacquer cut by Andreas Lubich at Loop-O Mastering Photography by Constanze Flamme; Layout by Colin Sheffield https://felicitymangan.bandcamp.com/album/string-figures ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Felicity Mangan’s String Figures is an immersive exploration of field recordings, electronic textures, and string timbres, blending natural sounds from wetlands with lush, slowly evolving drones and quasi-bioacoustic compositions. Across six pieces, she transforms subtle environmental cues—water, frogs, moss, and children at play—into meditative, minimalistic soundscapes that range from austere elegance to rich, enveloping resonance. In this beautiful collection of tactile drones and electronic tonalities infused with natural sounds and rhythms, Felicity Mangan combines field recordings, electroacoustic composition, and electronic music techniques to create immersive, quasi-bioacoustic music aided by digital audio tools. The six pieces on String Figures sample and combine the resonant timbres of strings and electromagnetic textural fields with field recordings from wetlands. She has the moon with her, by the water. From the picture it could be a pond or slow moving river, I can almost hear the slow moving water. What are she and the moon up to? Listen, so close to the water’s edge, lush in the brush and abundant sounding flora. There is a strong reflection in the water, she has a twin image. These elements were shaped through digital processing into polyphonic, angular assemblages, ranging from austere minimalism to sumptuous drones and elegiac ambience. Her compositions have been presented in multichannel installations, live performances, site-specific settings, and published works on labels such as Longform Editions, Mappa Editions, One Instrument, and Warm Winters, among others. Still your mind. Starting with an emphasis on field recordings which are enhanced, to become a classic EM Kosmiche drama, and growing from one long note from each member of the orchestra. The blending elements slightly wag and wave, tugging at all of the harmonics. Always a sumptuous ambience and quasi-bioacoustics, simple electronic poetics leveraged with the recording arts and deploying a variety of instrumental sounds. Consistently minimal in approach, with long sustained drone style tones, each track slowly fades in and slowly fades out. Side A: Kids are playing behind the sound of lawn sprinklers, juxtaposing austere minimalism and found sounds. I am attracted to the phasing patterns between several sprinklers. “Watering Device” (7:20) emerges very slowly, a low tone, a buzz, warm and sinister. Refreshing and wet from hissing, I could find no spills or drips, just kids playing in splashes. There is an ominous hum too. Here come the warm jets, with wind in the distance. “Cello Figures” (8:44) contains samples of cello performed by Moritz Draheim, zillions of tiny cellos playing one note, odd field recording of a dark tunnel and a squeaky toy being finessed into subtle barking squeaks, from within a shifting sandy cloud of bowed sounds drone style. These shifting clouds of sand are becoming stronger, they sort of swell and then diminish and then swell again, blending as time goes by. The richness increases like melted butter spreading over my ears dripping and getting into the deepest delicious places, disguised gorgeous drones. Deep dark bubbly “Magnetic Moss” (6:24) bounces electronic tones and pulses around the stereo field, a dark monotone boogie with a jittery low tone. In the natural world, it might be assumed that moss does not do much, it persists and constantly slowly grows, filled with tiny stringy chaos, magnetic pulls or pushes or nothing at all, and moss would be on the forest floor. Clearly magnetic moss is different. Dodging and weaving, the action is to just bubble away, a short wave radio in a wet cave, a loose beat, a grand bubbling boogie flow with textures." [Igloo Mag.] | 2025 | €22.50 |
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| MANIFESTO | Exit | CD | "Being a part of the alternative scene since more than 15 years past, Magnus Zetterberg's Manifesto has created a trademark of bleak and dark electronica, industrial textures and blackened ambient that satisfies a diverse taste of listening with it's manifold expression. Catching up with this act in 2008, in connection with the release of the album Core, the label found it only natural to get in touch again. Since then, Manifesto has released material on such labels as Silken Tofu and Bone Structure (to mention a few) and played live across northern Europe. Exit is the finalization of four years of transformative work where turbulence, creation and re-creation sets the thematics. The entering track unfolds existence as elusive and impermanent and onwards the harsh sides of reality push us towards entropy." [label info] ralignment.tictail.com "Manifesto is the solo project of Swede Magnus Zetterberg who has been issuing material under this name since 2000. Having previously released a series of albums, splits, live recordings and ep’s, ‘Exit’ is his latest 19th release and follows 2012’s ‘Rust’ album on Silken Tofu. Sonically Manifesto deal with soundtrack styled ambient music of a darker hue (aka ‘dark ambient’ for a more straight forward genre descriptor), which also fits within the recognizable traits of such music coming from northern European spheres. Musically speaking dank sub-orchestral drones provide the sonic bedrock, which is then augmented with a meticulous level of textual sonic detailing. The sound palate is also embedded with a high degree of mechanized tonality and jagged industrial based distortion in a few fleeting moments. Evidently Magnus has had formally trained in sound engineering and music production, with the results of this being absolutely demonstrated within the refined dark ambient approach on display. 5 tracks are featured, with each ranging from 5 to 13 minutes and which play out as variations on established dark ambient genre traits, where some pieces are dour and brooding, whilst others featuring driving and rhythmically pounding undercurrents. Yet collectively the greatest impression of ‘Exit’ is a strong ‘cinematic’ atmosphere and specifically that of a dystopian science fiction type motion picture. Although not necessary turning the tables of what can be expected from dark ambient music in 2016, this is still a complex, diverse and enjoyable listen, to very much constitute a soundtrack to a non-existent film. Mini gate-fold cardboard sleeve rounds out the packaging." [Noise Receptor] | 2016 | €12.00 |
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| MANINKARI | Continuum Sonore part 7>14 | CD | "Maninkari, a duo hailing from France, should be a well-known one for ambient lovers. They have already released six albums on renowned labels such as Conspiracy, Neuropa or Basses Frequencies. Their influences range from classical music through jazz and free improv ending with ambient and drone. Therefore, it is not easy to classify them as a modern post-industrial electronica combo. The duo works quite intensively. They have just prepared the second volume of their 2012 ”Continuum Sonore” album. What enchanted us about Maninkari while listening to part 7-14 ”Continuum Sonore” compostion of is their easiness in creating beautiful, but haunting melodies drowned in cinema-like atmosphere. It is not surprising as the duo have created music for films of Thomas Pantalacci. Their other advantage is varied instrumental textures. Apart from regular synthesizers and not so common persussion, they use atypical instruments, such as bodhran, viola, cimbalom, santoor. It brings them closer to the neoclassical genre. The CD is housed in an ecopak sleeve and is strictly limited to 300 copies. The cover was designed by Maninkari. ”Continuum Sonore 7>14” was mastered by Łukasz Miernik. The whole production process was overseen by Michał Porwet." [label info] www.zoharum.com | 2014 | €12.00 |
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| MARANHA, DAVID & Z'EV | Obsidiana | CD | "David Maranha, hammond organ. Z'ev, stainless steel discs, bass drum, maracas. Recorded live at zdb, Lisbon, 24 june 2010. Certain musicians names can speak for themselves, before even a note of music has been played. Their reputations proceed them, although of course there will also be those ignorant of both reputation and name. David Maranha - solo or with Osso Exotico - explores the territories opened up half a century ago by John Cale and Tony Conrad. Z'ev is the grandmaster of industrial/ tribal percussion. The fusion they create together is a magma of movement and stasis before which only legless cripples will remain motionless." [label info] www.sonoris.org "A meeting of minimalists, I'd say, but minimalists with a maximum output. I saw David Maranha once in concert at his organ, loud and long, and minimal, like Terry Riley on speed. Z'EV is a man to play percussion on stainless steel discs, bass drum and maracas and most his playing is minimal, letting tones do the work in the space it is played in, leading to heavy bouncing sounds. These two heavy weights plays a concert at ZDB in Lisbon on June 24 2010 and the result is this thirty-five some piece. It starts out moody and slow, silent with Z'EV playing the stainless steel discs, waving the listeners into some kind of obscure magic ritual which is about to take place. Tones bend in various directions and slowly the hammond organ on Maranha comes in and from then on things evolve in quite a natural way, but once everything is in place it no longer carries that ritualist tag, but unfolds itself as a great psychedelic piece of music. Terry Riley meets the Velvet Underground. When Z'EV picks up the maracas to play the bass drum, Maranha starts adding some fine clusters in the lower region, and both knit a very dense pattern of closely linked tones. Maybe just a bit short with a bit too abrupt ending, and next to being at the real concert, I can imagine the CD is best substitute." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2012 | €10.00 |
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| MARTINIS, SOCRATES | Small Hand of Bronze. 24 Poems & 14 Images | BOOK | "15cm X 16cm, PAPERBACK BLACK COVER W/ SILVER INK BILINGUAL EDITION (GR/EN) ON EDITIONS FARFOULAS, ATHENS GREECE AVAILABLE FROM ATHENS CENTRAL BOOKSTORES & SOON FROM DRONE RECORDS MAILORDER The collection small hand of bronze, a cycle of 24 brief poems accompanied by 14 blue ink paintings, is a geometry of elements from Socrates Martinis’ personal mythology, which until now was manifested partially in his published soundworks (changing pseudonyms, titles, texts, symbols, images, sound) and in his sole performance act (Position lines within an afternoon movement, reference to the painting Girl running on a balcony by Giacomo Balla) presented at the international festival Art Athina 2009. Socrates Martinis’ writing, minimal and quite pictorial, stretches out on the surrounding space to find stable points for the Idea to be tied to, folds within and then unfolds again, in a dialectical feedback between in and out. The existent space-time and the inner atemporal scenery, as two communicating vessels, become the background of the deconstructed projection of a myth based on the archetypes of light, cyclic motion, the erotic interplay and death. Influences which haunt the work can be traced back to the conception of atemporality, black eroticism and the mysterious sense of liberty in Marcel Duchamp’s Étant donnés, as well as in the oeuvre of Georges Bataille, to the fragmentation of the image for the sake of the absolute experience in the cubist paintings, to the depiction of motion (the spectrum) in the dynamic paintings of futurists like Giacomo Balla and Umberto Boccioni, to the sabotage of space-time and the enigma in the oeuvre of Giorgio de Chirico and to the intuitive eroticism of the surrealists." [blog info] http://socratesmartinis.wordpress.com | 2010 | €10.00 |
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| MASIN, GIGI | Plays Venezia | LP | LP black vinyl // LP gold vinyl ltd. 106 hand-numbered copies // CD // Tape ltd. 100 copies Five years ago, back in September 2016, Stefano Gentile published a photographic book entitled IL SILENZIO DEI TUOI PASSI (The Silence of Your Steps), which collected a series of 56 pictures, both in b/w and colour, dedicated to the nights in Venice. The book was a journey through the most remote "calli" and "campi" (streets, alleys and squares, as they're called in Venice) in search of the true 'breath' of the city, far away from the hordes of tourists who 'attack' it every day during daylight hours. On such occasion, renowned musician Gigi Masin composed a 30 minutes epic ambient track entitled VENEZIA 2016 which was the perfect soundtrack to the images included in the book. The track was published on CD and released bounded with the book itself in a limited edition of 480 copies only, and has been unavailable for years now. In 2021 Gigi Masin returned to that great piece of music and to its timeless sounds. Finally, Silentes can now offer PLAYS VENEZIA, Masin's latest work contanining a re-edited version of that 'pearl', accompanied by two unreleased tracks composed and recorded in the same period. Once again inspired by the city, Masin created an enduring and wonderful ambient masterpiece, a sort of return to the origins, to his home. Adding to the intrinsic quality of the originals, the tracks were beautifully mastered by Brandenburg Mastering in Amsterdam. PLAYS VENEZIA is simply an unmissable release and one of Masin's greatest accomplishment in a long carrier that never ceases to amaze us. 13.silentes.it/private_sounds/sps2143_gigi_masin_plays_venezia.htm | 2021 | €20.00 |
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| MASTER MUSICIANS OF BUKKAKE | Totem Two | LP | "Echoing like a long lost Werner Herzog soundtrack Totem 2 is a record of subtle Meditations and Deep electric Hallucinations from the Crystal Caves of the Northwest to the orchestral desert portals of Turkey. Totem 2 finds MASTER MUSICIANS OF BUKKAKE exploring the disappearance of the Mystic and the schisms of our age. In times when forces move against our souls these are the first sounds of music that can only be described as NO-AGE , a resistance is making itself known. Featuring members of EARTH, ASVA, BURING WITCH, THE DIMINISHED MEN, and more and special guests from SECRET CHIEFS 3 and the thriving Istanbul music scene. MMOB has now solidified into a 7-piece cosmic psych force. Like a reverse dark side of the New Age sound, on the Totem series Master Musicians of Bukkake perform ritualistic electric excursions into the outer and inner reaches. Relying more on the electric power of psyched guitars, analog synth chants, and exotic heavy percussion. This Totem Trilogy echoes with the delusions of a west coast death cult. Outer spaced gamelan, dusty fuzz rock from celestial deserts, meditations of a deranged Krishna gathering, and the Blurry acoustic guitar majesty of The Cascade mountains all reveal themselves here in epic form." [label info] www.importantrecords.com | 2010 | €19.50 |
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| Totem Two | CD | "Echoing like a long lost Werner Herzog soundtrack Totem 2 is a record of subtle Meditations and Deep electric Hallucinations from the Crystal Caves of the Northwest to the orchestral desert portals of Turkey. Totem 2 finds MASTER MUSICIANS OF BUKKAKE exploring the disappearance of the Mystic and the schisms of our age. In times when forces move against our souls these are the first sounds of music that can only be described as NO-AGE , a resistance is making itself known. Featuring members of EARTH, ASVA, BURING WITCH, THE DIMINISHED MEN, and more and special guests from SECRET CHIEFS 3 and the thriving Istanbul music scene. MMOB has now solidified into a 7-piece cosmic psych force. Like a reverse dark side of the New Age sound, on the Totem series Master Musicians of Bukkake perform ritualistic electric excursions into the outer and inner reaches. Relying more on the electric power of psyched guitars, analog synth chants, and exotic heavy percussion. This Totem Trilogy echoes with the delusions of a west coast death cult. Outer spaced gamelan, dusty fuzz rock from celestial deserts, meditations of a deranged Krishna gathering, and the Blurry acoustic guitar majesty of The Cascade mountains all reveal themselves here in epic form." www.importantrecords.com | 2010 | €14.50 |
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| Totem One | LP | "Vinyl reissue of the impossible to find first release in MMOB's Totem trilogy. Edition of 1000 copies. Like a reverse dark side of the New Age sound, on the Totem series Master Musicians of Bukkake perform ritualistic electric excursions into the outer and inner reaches. Relying more on the electric power of psyched guitars, analog synth chants, and exotic heavy percussion, Totem One echoes with the delusions of a West Coast Death cult. Outer spaced Gamelan, dusty fuzz rock from celestial deserts, meditations of a deranged Krishna gathering, and the blurry acoustic guitar majesty of the Cascade mountains all reveal themselves here in epic form on Totem One. Every sound and note played was put to tape by a group with a singular purging purpose. Totem One also features Vocals by MMOB honorary member Alan Bishop of the Sun City Girls." [label info] www.importantrecords.com | 2012 | €18.50 |
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| MATHES, JEREMIE |
Arkhaios
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10inch | "These two new 10" releases (of LP length) lead to an area where words and rational thinking are suspended, and a connection with deeper parts of your mind begins... JEREMIE MATHES is a French field recording artist (known for some excellent CDs on Unfathomless) living in Cambodia since some years. For "Arkhaios" he combined cavernous object drones (recorded at an abandoned factory site) with various instrumental sounds from ancient Khmer instruments (Tro u, Khim), all highly processed. You get the impression as being under the earth in a place populated by metallic amoeba or other smallest creatures, inside sewerage ducts or an deserted mine, exposed to the circulation of air... This is the spirituality of the underworlds! "Dissolving time, space, mangling sounds collected into a simulacrum of altered realities. A oneiric junction between the concrete world and other unknown territories." [J. Mathes] ed. of 300 copies, black vinyl, Artwork by Stijn Deprez, based solely on pictures realised by Jérémie Mathes." [press release] https://soundcloud.com/drone-records/jeremie-mathes-tomleiki ############################################ "The two pieces are based on same materials s "Uunartoq Qeqertoq" for the Drone Mind Serie LP [vol 04] on Drone records, and on my album "Fallow Memory" on Unfathomless label: A coalescence of acoustic sound sources recorded in an industrial complex of abandoned factories in South of France between 2010 to 2015. In-situ improvisations inside reverberant metal tanks, deserted warehouses that I had the possibility to infiltrate during my exploration of the site. Generating sound in these empty spaces mainly by using found objects, combined with instruments that I've brought as a Tibetan bowl, small bells, percussions, cymbal, a bow, and a violin. Capturing the inner substance, the hidden vibrant matter of various types of metallic structures, machinery, tubes, and pipes o extended my sonorous palette. All of these elements were used exclusively in the composition of my pieces. Dissolving time, space, mangling sounds collected into a simulacrum of altered realities. A oneiric junction between the concrete world and other unknown territories. Recorded, edited and composed by Jérémie Mathes [2017/ 2018]. Artwork by Stijn Deprez, based solely on pictures realised by Jérémie Mathes." [artist info] www.substantia-innominata.de/SUB-27.html | 2020 | €15.00 |
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| MATHIEU, STEPHAN | To describe George Washington Bridge | 10inch | "To Describe George Washington Bridge" is Stephan Mathieu's 2nd Dekorder release in the 10" format (reflecting his interest in old 78rpm records) after 2009's sold out "The Key to the Kingdom", and, we're happy to say, again it features two of the composer's most outstanding short pieces. Both are recorded utilizing similar methods as used on his most recent album "A Static Place" on 12K Records yet they are presented in an even more condensed and melodic way. As source material he used transcriptions made from the marvelous 25x 12inch 78rpm set G.F. Händel. "Twelve Concerti Grossi" performed by the Busch Chamber Players in 1946, and a Columbia 10" record from 1912 with Händel's usual smash hits from "Messiah"." [label info] www.dekorder.de "Just as on 'The Key to the Kingdom' (reviewed in Vital Weekly 666) and 'A Static Place' (see Vital Weekly 766), this one deals with picking up sounds from old 10" records through ancient gramophones. What happens beyond that is a bit unclear (sound being picked with microphones and using spectral analysis and convolution), but no doubt some form of computer processing which stretches the material to what is perhaps now trademark Mathieu music. Very spacious music, drone like, minimal. Mathieu finds much of his inspiration in colorfield paintings (Rotkho, Newmann) and his music reflects that, I think: quite an uniform mass of sound with the slightest changes boiling on and below the surface. Yet Mathieu always knows how to add a bit of melodic shimmer to his music, which makes it move a bit out y'r standard drone music. Quite a bit. Mathieu knows how to capture a fine mood in a relative short time span, as each side last about five minutes. Very refined as usual. But I guess you didn't expect this to be objective, or let alone critical?" [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2011 | €10.00 |
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| MATHIEU, STEPHAN & EKKEHARD EHLERS | Heroin | LP + 12inch | "Between Christmas 2000 and New Year 2001 producers Ekkehard Ehlers and Stephan Mathieu recorded an album of warm, soft, delicately crackling electronic music in the space of that week. It was christened with the ambivalent title "Heroin" and was released on CD via the label Brombron in 2001 and later in 2003 re-issued on Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork on double-LP with remixes the pair had commissioned as expansions. 17 years later Heroin sees its first vinyl release to include all 13 tracks from the original CD track-list on this LP + 12“ set. The centerpiece "Herz" finally receives its long deserved vinyl treatment (side C, at 45rpm) and on the flip side Thomas Brinkmann contributes a mirror in a magnificent remix of that very piece on side D. Ehlers and Mathieu were both highly prolific solo artists during the period 2000-2004, and in just two years after the initial release of "Heroin" each had produced over half a dozen new solo recordings: among them the serial masterpiece Ehlers' "Plays" (Cornelius Cardew, Hurbert Fichte, John Cassavetes, Albert Ayler, Robert Johnson) released as 5 stunning LPs in a series on Staubgold, while Mathieu's 'Full Swing Edits' spread over five 10" records plus his album 'FrequencyLib' on Mille Plateaux, 'Die Entdeckung des Wetters' on Lucky Kitchen and ‘The Sad Mac’ on Atsushi Sasaki’s Headz label were greeted to critical acclaim. Both artists were expanding their conceptual sonic approaches in the glow of developing laptop technologies which would to these times in 2020 seem quite primitive, but these two in that period used the state-of-the-art to aid and abet their conceptual visions, while at times the duo used unorthodox experimentation - yet always had a distinctively melodic and musical form at its heart and soul. Ehlers can be seen as a conceptualist, as a meta-musician who interrogates the mediums and methods of sound production - reflecting on the conditions and possibilities of improvisation (e.g. "Plays Albert Ayler") and exploits ideas of mutation and distortion of popular aesthetics played out within a ghostly form of divine pop beauty in his project März. Mathieu, originally a drummer and co-founder of what has come to be known as the Berlin 'Echtzeitmusik' scene. His approach could be similarly described as working a critical analyst and researcher: Subtly and precisely working in the realm of processing as a method of intervening in melodious/harmonic analog sound sources. Ehlers and Mathieu may not think too much about their singular productions and publications outcomes, but instead concentrate on the process and musical personality that characterizes their gesture- style itself stays in the background - and they usher a music from small minimal sound sources coaching a patient music of slow intervention - much like a refraction of light than a concrete painting or a blurred photograph - beatus accident. And indeed, "Heroin" is an album that embraces the happy accident being made up of reduced, often very catchy and very direct micro hooks which seem laser-guided into a space accepting obvious melodic beauty in what feels like an observation of musics unfolding and revealing it's DNA, embed with for a kind of yearning for innocence and naiveté - as if Satie were on the jukebox in "The Crying of Lot 49". Not to say the music is "reduced", but rather: 'restricted' and born from acceptance of limitations, and the artists allowing the sounds to just "be.." with some incremental degrees of coercion. The album not only sounds like that of 2 producers who are both dreamers and scientists, but that Ehlers and Mathieu chose to work with these means in a dialogue together to reduce pop music to its musical/tonal core, it is not Pop music anymore, rather a ghostly pointilistic itteration of song. "Heroin" is located at this transition, around that point at which tracks, that were or could have become pop compositions, irrevocably slip into a static harmonic nirvana. We are invited to follow the arch of Heroin in a slow-motion morphine musical haze. Heroin sounded timeless when originally released and proof is that it remains so, one wishes that Ehlers and Mathieu would convene again for a week, a month or an entire year to continue this process of slow rumination, picking affectionately over the sounds they both love - and then maybe when everything is condensed, evaporated they would write more songs with those sonic refractive elements that remain. Remastered by Stephan Mathieu, March 2020. Vinyl cut by Lupo @ Loop_O. Design by Caro Mikalef for Cabina." https://schwebung.bandcamp.com/album/heroin | 2020 | €26.00 |
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| MATTHEWS, KAFFE | Still a slapper | do-7 | KAFFE MATTHEWS ist wieder da mit puren Frequenz-Modulationen und minimalen pulsierendem elektronischem „Fuzz“, spannend arrangiert erinnert das an Releases aus der „material series“ von Staalplaat... superb ! “Kaffe Matthews is well known for her improvisational work with either electronics alone or combined with acoustic instruments. Her use of LiSa, live sampling software, makes her able to work with minimum input. A 30 sec. microphone recording on location should be enough for a whole live-set.... and it is. These two 7"-es contain 4 tracks and are to be heard as a set. Matthews starts with an atmospheric track consisting of not much more than simple tones, which hardly go above a few simple sine waves... but then again also not. The typical full and pulsating sound she produces makes that these simple tones are part of a wide spectrum of atmospehers, arranged in such a way that she actually doesn't need much more than tones to tell her story. The following 2 tracks ("a" and "slapper") show her talent for making the unsynchronised followable. Both these tracks live on an unstable heartbeat so to say, but nevertheless with a convincing rhythm/groove. Although a short track, "a" has a complete build-up. Repetition of elements over a calm stream of lower tones give this track a subtle drive and atmosphere. "Slapper" crackles furthur in a very energetic way, turn up the volume I suggest. Again this hard to follow beat, but steady enough to give you some sense of a tempo and the accompanying tapping foot. The last track returns to the world of overtones but in a more unsettling way, a good track to leave you behind a bit puzzled but also reassured and to make the circle complete.” [press-release] | 2001 | €10.00 |
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| MATTIN & RICHARD FRANCIS | Lisa Says | LP | "LP clear vinyl 33 rpm release date: 18.09.2012 artists: MATTIN & RICHARD FRANCIS title: Lisa Says order no.: aatp38 time: ca. 50 min sleeve designed by Richard Francis, comes with text insert. Clear vinyl 300 handnumbered copies. On “Lisa Says”: This LP captures the first transcontinental collaboration between artists Mattin and Richard Francis with sounds recorded in Stockholm, Berlin and Auckland, NZ. The mixdown portrays the current state of affairs in composed noise: filtered gritty sound blocks flow and float with no seeming direction when sudden breaks puncture the structure and create something like a melody. Well, almost. The music is accompanied by a text insert that documents a skype conversation between the two artists discussion the methods and aesthetics connected to this release and their ways of working in general. Mattin Bio www.mattin.org Mattin is a Basque artist working with noise and improvisation. His work seeks to address the social and economic structures of experimental music production through live performance, recordings and writing. Using a conceptual approach, he aims to question the nature and parameters of improvisation, specifically the relationship between the idea of “freedom” and constant innovation that it traditionally implies, and the established conventions of improvisation as a genre. Mattin considers improvisation not only as an interaction between musicians and instruments, but as a situation involving all the elements that constitute a concert, including the audience and the social and architectural space. He tries to expose the stereotypical relation between active performer and passive audience, producing a sense of strangeness and alienatio in that disturbs this relationship. Richard Francis Bio www.richardfrancis.net.nz Richard Francis has been releasing works on CD/vinyl, performing solo and in collaboration as a touring artist since 1996. He uses field recordings of acoustic and electronic sounds and a tone generator to compose sound works. He has released solo and collaborative music on a number of labels worldwide and runs his own label CMR through which he releases limited edition lathe cut records by New Zealand artists. In performance he uses a computer and electronics and has toured Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, USA and Europe. Since 2003, Francis has composed works for sound installation, participating in group and solo shows at galleries throughout New Zealand. He has collaborated for recording and performance with many artists, and has had recent published collaborative CDs with Jason Kahn (USA/Swiss) and Francisco Lopez (Spain). Collaborations for recording and/or performance: Bruce Russell, Francisco Lopez, Jason Kahn, Mattin, Birchville Cat Motel, Gate, MSBR, Tetuzi Akiyama, Lawrence English, Rosy Parlane, Howard Stelzer, Jason Lescalleet, Jay Sullivan, Empirical, Pumice, Kuwayama Kiyoharu, Phil Dadson, Anthony Guerra, Sean Meehan, Ishigami Kazuya, Antony Milton, James Kirk, MHFS, Tim Coster, Paul Winstanley, Takefumi Naoshima, Toshihiro Koike." [label info] "A project in two parts, one the actual music, as recorded on July 3 2008 in Berlin and one the conversation as a piece of text from August 31 2011 in which Richard Francis and Mattin talk about the recording from three years before, about their methods of working together but also with others. A fascination they have in common is about white and pink noise, and sustaining those sounds. It's an interesting text to read, as it clears up some interesting things but it's not entirely necessary to read the text to like the music I should think. The buzzing, cracking and sustaining sound, which sometimes hoovers closely above the threshold of hearing, reminds the listener of your ventilator or heater buzzing, or the faint noises from afar late at night. If I understand right, this record is for Francis an end to the way he working and for Mattin the start of a new working method, a more conceptual approach if you will. This record contains some very minimal music, with very few sound elements, but are fascinating to hear. Crackles of vinyl (not from the pressing), field recordings very remotely humming and the white/pink noise slowly washing ashore and moving away. All of this in a very quiet and contemplating way. If you think Mattin is all about noise then you should surely try this record for a change. Maybe this is more what you would expect from somebody like Richard Francis, but this is a great improvised electronic record. Excellent head space music." [FdW/Vital Weekly] www.aufabwegen.com | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| MAZUREK, ROB / EXPLODING STAR ORCHESTRA | Dimensional Stardust | LP | Marfa TX-based multidisciplinary abstractivist Rob Mazurek has made an indelible impact on creative music over the past 30 years. Emerging from the musical nexus of the 1990s Chicago scene, he’s written more than 400 compositions and is featured on more than 70 recordings (including International Anthem’s very first, IARC0001, "Alternate Moon Cycles"). He’s led or co-led many ensembles – including the Chicago Underground (Duo, Trio, Quartet & Orchestra), Isotope 217 (alongside members of Tortoise), Pharoah and the Underground (feat. Pharoah Sanders), Alien Flower Sutra (with Emmett Kelly), São Paulo Underground (his primary working group across his time in Brazil), and a duo with Jeff Parker – each of which possesses its own distinct musical personality. While Mazurek’s solo work as a musician expands from cornet, piano, and piccolo trumpet studies to embody musique concrete and electronic experimentation, his composition for large ensemble reveals an intuitive sense of scale. Commissioned by the Chicago Cultural Center and the Jazz Institute of Chicago in 2005 to assemble a group representing the diversity of the city’s contemporary avant-garde, Mazurek amassed a 14-piece ensemble and began composing music for what became his Exploding Star Orchestra (ESO). Including musicians from the often-segregated communities of Chicago’s North, South, and West sides – from his long-time collaborators in Tortoise’s expansive orbit, to Great Black Music luminaries from the hallowed AACM, to free jazz revivalists from the Umbrella Music group – ESO debuted in the urban epicenter of Chicago’s Millennium Park and, shortly after, went into John McEntire’s Soma Studios to record "We Are All From Somewhere Else" (Thrill Jockey, 2007). By the time of "Galactic Parables Vol. 1," ESO’s 2015 triple LP release on Cuneiform Records, Mazurek reflected to Pop Matters that "Exploding Star Orchestra is the conceptual, compositional and philosophical center of all my work... a life star of musical, visual and conceptual ideas." In 2018, JazzFest Berlin curator Nadin Deventer invited Mazurek to present a new iteration of ESO with musicians based in Berlin as well as Chicago. Meeting the commission with the boundless ambition characteristic of his artistic approach, he imagined a jubilee of fifteen musicians and improvisers, true to ESO’s ethos in their widely diverse backgrounds and voices, but more tightly arranged around his intricate compositions than ever before. Summoning an array of symphonic studies – from Béla Bartók to Morton Feldman to Gil Evans to Sun Ra to Pedro Santos to Bill Dixon to The Art Ensemble of Chicago – in an ecstatic and wholly original program, Mazurek’s November 2018 debut at Berliner Festspiele marked a new pinnacle in his distinction as a composer and conductor of Contemporary Music. “Mazurek’s arrangements burst in colors, making synesthetes of us all,” wrote Paul Acquaro in a review of the concert for Free Jazz Collective. When Mazurek returned to Chicago in Summer 2019, International Anthem took the opportunity to capture his new ESO compositions with a cast of collaborators from their collective constellation of artists. Over a handful of studio dates between August 2019 and March 2020, Mazurek channeled his arrangements through 11 musicians – Nicole Mitchell, Jeff Parker, Jaimie Branch, Joel Ross, Mikel Patrick Avery, Tomeka Reid, Chad Taylor, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Macie Stewart, Angelica Sanchez, and John Herndon – and commissioned his long-time lyrical collaborator Damon Locks to draft original texts for each of the titles and record vocal tracks. After three months of rigorous post-production, editing and assembly work, in June 2020 Mazurek completed his culminating new collection of ESO recordings: "Dimensional Stardust." "Dimensional Stardust" showcases the intricacy and complexity of Mazurek’s compositions but in their most potent, most compacted forms. Opting to focus on tight ensemble orchestration over passages of open improvisation, Mazurek distills a maximal orchestra of explosive improvisers into a beautifully restrained, graceful group exercise in melodic minimalism. The album features almost no “soloist” moments, excepting Jeff Parker’s other-worldy guitar meltdown on “The Careening Prism Within,” and when Nicole Mitchell’s flute floats to the front of the barrage on “Sun Core Tet.” Mazurek himself is sparsely present as instrumentalist, only occasionally joining the ensemble with his piccolo trumpet (notably on “Parable 3000,” where he shares leads with Mitchell’s flute and Joel Ross’s vibraphone, and his trills and textures haunt ghostly around Jaimie Branch’s trumpet counterpoint). Even Damon Locks’s voice is employed more like an ensemble instrument than a lead vocalist. Locks’ distinctively dry, abstract narrative flow beams in intermittently – sounding almost like fragments of Deltron 3030 through an Orson Wells-style radio transmission – climaxing in the album-closing poetry of “Autumn Pleiades.” And all the way through, the electro-acoustic poly-rhythmic percussion section (Chad Taylor, Mikel Patrick Avery, and John Herndon) churns, thrusting the music forward as the harmonic instruments collectively bow between frenzied, futurist chromaticism and soaring, pan-humanist pentatonic anthems. Somehow swirling the most adventurous elements of avant-garde jazz and contemporary classical into the most universal attractors of pop music, the cosmic opera of "Dimensional Stardust" is a pure spiritual extension of Exploding Star Orchestra’s unifying ethos, and a new peak in the prolific creative career of Rob Mazurek. ***"Dimensional Stardust" is the second album co-released by the North & South American partnership of International Anthem & Nonesuch Records, following Jeff Parker's early 2020 release, "Suite For Max Brown." International Anthem & Nonesuch Records are slated to co-release at least 6 titles over 3 years, details on future albums TBA. Outside of North and South America, these albums are marketed & distributed by K7 Records.*** Rob Mazurek - director, composer, piccolo trumpet, electronic renderings, modular synth Damon Locks - voice, electronics, texts Nicole Mitchell - flutes Macie Stewart - violins Tomeka Reid - cellos Joel Ross - vibraphone Jeff Parker - guitar Jaimie Branch - trumpet Angelica Sanchez - acoustic piano, electric piano Ingebrigt Håker Flaten - bass Chad Taylor - drums, percussion Mikel Patrick Avery - drums, percussion John Herndon - drum machines https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/dimensional-stardust | 2020 | €26.00 |
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| MCDOUGALL, JAMES & HIROKI SASAJIMA | Injya | CD | " “Sometimes, the impossible is a basket of new unlikely seeds – realizing the geographical difficulty of working in unison on the same site, we opted for using at least common geologic context, not knowing where this could lead us… What could come indeed out of distance, sensory communion, a mutual love for depicting the relief of things, its tactility ?…perhaps as with the best abstraction, a fertilizing stream, something perhaps larger than what the initial elements could have implied…something surprising even to us… “Injya” is the encounter of our combined wanderings, and most probably the emergence of an imaginary entity powerful enough to engage us in a strange way…”(James McDougall/layout by Daniel Crokaert)" [label info] www.unfathomless.net "Both of these artists can be regarded as 'new kids' on the block of field recordings, coming to the foreground in recent years with a plethora of releases on labels as Sentient Recognition Archive, U-Cover, Dataobscura, Test Tube, Resting Bell and Mystery Sea - the latter doing a solo release by both of them. On their subdivision Unfathomless they have a collaborative disc of music, based on field recordings made in their own locale (the Akigawa Valley/Otake Limestone Caves, Japan in Sasajima's case and The D'Aguilar Mountain Range, North West of Brisbane, Australia in McDougall's case) and then 'equally developed'. 'The sensitive issue of not occupying the same token sites was acknowledged and it was opted instead for a common geologic context' - whatever that means. Its a release that has some questions: for instance: is there any processing and if so to which extent? How does this collaboration work anyway? Are recordings from both locations simply played together, or has there been any kind of mixing going on? Its all not easy to say. I think there has been some form of processing, mainly just EQ-ing, bringing out more high or low end frequencies, especially in the third and fourth pieces. Also I think that in all four pieces they have searched for specific characteristics of the provided sounds and set them together, with some extent of mixing. I also kept thinking: why should I bother thinking of what they did or didn't do: these four pieces are very good, a culmination of field recordings that, once together, make great sense. Not minimal, hardly changing music, but vibrant, always on the move, full of tension, evocative and beautiful. Excellent, if not always the most original, but that is perhaps quite hard." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2011 | €14.00 |
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| MCFALL, CHRISTOPHER | I throw the Switches on the Midnight Snake | CD | https://unfathomless.bandcamp.com/album/i-throw-the-switch-on-the-midnight-snake [ante-scriptum/preface by Lucas Schleicher, June 2024, Buffalo, NY] The first time I read Zeno of Elea’s paradox of motion, my only response was disbelief. I stood up, walked across the room, and, faster than any tortoise could manage, picked another book from my bag. If motion is an illusion, I thought, it’s a tangible one, and I have to contend with its details even if I am deluded about them. Zeno’s example of the arrow that never moves doesn’t keep an arrow from anyone’s chest and I am always more tired after running a mile than I am walking down the street for a coffee. I was more than a little arrogant. Years later, after my temperament cooled, I found myself appreciating Zeno more. His argument hadn’t become any more convincing, but the responses he had elicited from other philosophers and mathematicians made the world seem even stranger and more fantastic than the frozen one he had tried to defend. What if, in order to solve Zeno’s paradoxes, we have to accept that time is indivisible? What if, therefore, motion cannot be incrementally examined? What if space itself makes no sense in discrete chunks? Listening now to Christopher McFall’s work, I’m reminded of these perplexing theories and I have the good fortune to wonder alongside him at the bottomlessness of space and time. McFall’s music is haunted by both. Music and time are inseparable in a trivial sense, but I Throw The Switch On The Midnight Snake accentuates the way time moves through a place, like a ball through the air. It is composed of minutes and seconds, but its subject matter is measured in eons. Even when familiar sounds roll to the surface and evoke photographic sensations, the effect of McFall’s arrangements dilates them so that they encompass the long parade of trains, cars, cattle, money, and people that passed through the East and West Bottoms of Kansas City, Missouri yesterday and 50,000 yesterdays ago. His subjects congregate together in a subterranean hum that percolates with memories and signs of World War 2, abandoned stock yards, distilleries, electric promenades, and flooded rivers; with the sound of insects, the reverberation of concrete tunnels, and the biting clank of steel on steel. The resonance of the industrial world echoes through his work, and so does something more personal. An active listener might hear a repetition of the home they grew up in, or stories their family told them about moving to a new place, or even the sound of a loved one’s voice. Listening to the album now, I can’t help but smell my grandfather’s workshop at night; the oil he used to polish his tools and the kerosene lingering in his collection of globe lanterns are as present to me at 42 as they were at 12. The connection is unintentional, but it’s buried in the layers of architecture, geology, history, industry, and technology that lie undivided in our collective memories and private lives. McFall digs into the refuse of Kansas City’s past and a thousand miles east I’m reminded of a clothbound book filled with photos of Native American art sitting on an old wooden desk covered with brass keys and paper. Movement is real, and it happens even when our bodies are at rest. For the consequences of Zeno’s paradoxes to be true, for motion and change to be errors of the mind, our power to stop and segment the world must be real. I must be able to examine this street in this country in this hemisphere, at this minute and second, with the stars at fixed points in the sky, and analyze its every detail accurately. I must be able to break time into its smallest parts, order it in a logical sequence, and use that arrangement of events to predict what will come next. There is a sense in which I have to stand outside the world in order to master it. I Throw The Switch On The Midnight Snake neither succumbs to nor encourages such delusions. Instead, McFall’s music points to the power of memory and the uninterrupted present in our understanding of place and time. We move through our lives because we are swept up in eternity, and some of our most precious comforts come in meeting others who have been carried away too, but still found peace in the flow. Zeno was wrong. Motion isn’t an illusion, but time is, and the life we encounter is always with us now, even when it has disappeared over the horizon. McFall heard its movements in Kansas City. Wherever you might be, you can hear it too. Listen. ~ "I Throw The Switch On The Midnight Snake" was created from field recordings captured along several train lines that transverse the Kansas City East Bottoms, Missouri, USA. These particular locations are unique because some of the trains routed through these areas make temporary stops to change conductors and/or conduct maintenance operations. Others, however, pass by uninterrupted and continue down the rails at full-speed. In this instance, the velocity of each train is notably distinct along with the character of sounds that accompany it, which makes these locations ideal for procuring a great range of recording content. I feel like the release captures what I'm wanting to say, in and of itself. Everyone will experience it in different ways, in their own minds. Maybe the entire process defers to the need for escapism. (Christopher McFall, June/July 2024) LOCATIONS : East and West Bottoms of Kansas City, USA. This work consists of layered and manipulated field recordings taken from several train yards and sourced between the Fall of 2023 and Spring of 2024. These works are in loving memory of the composer H. Stewart. May God and peace be with her, as she is greatly missed. Cover, card design + treatments by Daniel Crokaert. Based exclusively on photos by Christopher McFall. | 2024 | €14.00 |
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| MECHA / ORGA | 56:24 | CD | Filed under: polyphonic power-drones! Griechisches Projekt mit einem sonoren Drone one-tracker, der an HAFLER TRIO oder NIBLOCK erinnert, Obertöne überschlagen und überlagern sich wellenartig, das ganze wird allmählich immer lauter und massiver in einem fast unmerkliches Crescendo, das furios anschwillt, zum Ende hin gewinnen die Drones eine schon unangenehmen Druck & Präsenz ! Intensiv und definitiver TIP! “...as if a garden being planted and you are watching all the process from the bare earth to the colourful result, comes “56:24”... generating a drone layer which slowly starts the cultivation process where layers upon layers slowly build a delicate atmosphere and the way they expand and grow draws an even more colourful result, as if a swarm of insects spreads the pollen in our garden, helping it grow even more beautiful and even more colourful, lasting in a flabbergasting droning result... or at least, such was the atmosphere last march in Halandri where Yiorgis Sakellariou (aka Mecha-Orga) premiered this piece for us. And it was John Pallas, who by the time the set ended proposed absurd the cd release and didn't leave until we 3 shook hands... such also was our life in our 2006, like a fertile garden, with lots of releases and trips here and there, always ending with our occasional meetings at cafe Amarrylis in Kifissia for coffee (Mecha-Orga) & Shitloads of alcohol (absurd) or at “Varsos Kifissia” to enjoy our sweets & cofee (Mecha-Orga), hot-cold chocolate (absurd). and as a friend wondered of how the future will look like, we thought nice to picture Mecha-Orga on the cd's front cover sleeve, as a middle aged man, thinking of how he'll create his next piece-live set and a grey haired absurd on the cd label, probably in a meeting w-someone to discuss an upcoming release or project in one of editions_zero's side-ghost labels, book publishing houses, etc etc etc... comes highly recommended if you fancy instant trips to colourful droning soundgardens!!!” [Nicolas Malevitsis] "The name Mecha/orga keeps popping up in Vital Weekly and though not entirely a household name, it should be one, at least some day. His new CD could be of great help to achieve this. Mecha/orga is the name chosen by Yiorgis Sakellariou from Greece, who works since time under this guise (and plays regular music as well under various other guises and in various other capacities). The work, indicated by it's length, was created one afternoon in february last year, and played live there after a couple of time. No bullshitting about. The length becomes the title, and the listener can come up with his or her own story. Mecha/orga plays drone music. On a laptop. How much more simple can it get? Or rather does it have to be complex? No it doesn't. Over the course of the fifty-six minutes and twenty-four seconds Yiorgis Sakellariou plays a slowly unfolding piece of drone music, which seems to be growing in intensity throughout. When you think nothing more can be added, he adds another layer. And another. And another. Most suitable to play in the dark, at night and ghostly activities will surely occur. Or during the day, outside and watching plants grow. Multi-purpose music, I'd say. Great stuff. Powerful music." [FdW / Vital Weekly] www.void.gr/absurd | 2007 | €13.00 |
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| MEERKAT | Kapnos | CD | "In 2003 Maurizio Bianchi and Matteo Uggeri / Hue met through Afe Records; three years later Maurizio asked Matteo for a musical collaboration, which grew up quickly under the design of a long term project called "Between the Elements", a sort of music transposition of concepts that lies in the empty spaces between the natural elements, which are over-abused terms in the New Age music scene. Two albums were published in 2008: one about the concept of "clouds" ("Nefelodhis", by MB and the post-rock band Sparkle in Grey) and one about the concept of "desert" ("Erimos", by MB with Hue and Luca Bergero / Fhievel). One year later, the third chapter entitled "Kapnos" – Greek for "smoke" - is finally available. The industrial master contributes to back notes and concept, but keeps his hands far from the musical matter, leaving it to the expertise of ten of the most interesting experimental musicians of the Italian scene, united under the cryptic name of Meerkat. The Meerkat ensemble is formed by a group of musicians working in the field of experimental music, drones, microsounds and field recordings: Adriano Zanni / Punck, Matteo Uggeri / Hue, Luca Sigurtà, Luca Bergero / Fhievel, Davide Valecchi / Aal, Andrea Ferraris / Ics, Fabio Selvafiorita, Paolo Ippoliti (Logoplasm), Laura Lovreglio (Logoplasm) and Andrea Marutti / Amon / Never Known. The tracks on "Kapnos" present a surprising homogeneity in spite of the different attitudes of the artists, which mixed their experiences in each track creating new unforeseen connections, working in pairs or in threesome on each track. The Meerkat members also joint their efforts releasing the CD, which is in fact published by Afe (Andrea Marutti), Grey Sparkle (Matteo Uggeri), Nighthawks Tapes (Paolo Ippoliti) and Ctrl+Alt+Canc (Adriano Zanni). Under these premises, "Kapnos" represents an unique effort in the swarming Italian music scene of the '00s." [label info] "...The music is excellent - a fine mixture of styles and interests from these guys. All the elements one would expect are there, the field recordings, drones, ambience, microscopic detailed sounds. Great stuff here." [FdW / Vital Weekly] www.aferecords.com | 2009 | €12.00 |
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| MEIRINO, FRANCISCO & DAVE PHILLIPS | We are none of us | do-LP | "Francisco Meirino (Phroq) & Dave Phillips (Schimpfluch Gruppe) have collaborated on this extremely dynamic electro-acoustic studio album. Through meticulous arrangement of electronics, processed sound and field recordings they create a dark and unsettling audio narrative. 'We Are None of Us' exemplifies these two masters at the best of their craft. This 2xLP version contains 2 additional tracks not included on the CD and comes with download card for bonus live track, a recording of their full performance at Ertz Festival, Bera, Spain, 11 sept. 2010. Released in a limited edition of 200 copies." [label info] www.misanthropicagenda.com | 2012 | €29.00 |
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| MEIRINO, FRANCISCO & KIKO C. ESSEIVA | Focus on Nothing on Focus | LP | "A unique work stemming from a studio collaboration between Francisco Meirino and Kiko C. Esseiva. Using the same source material each artist composed one side of the LP. Assembled in 2012 and 2013 from hours of multitrackrecordings using reel-to-reel tape recorders, emf detectors, piezo transducers, analogue synths and various homemade sound objects. Discover, compare, enjoy the work of these two sound artists ! High Quality 180g Vinyl with excellent sound - not at least due to the cut done by Flo Kaufmann. Numbered edition of 300 copies." [label info] www.aussenraumrecords.com "Whether it’s relevant or not I don’t know, but immediately before listening to Focus on Nothing on Focus by Francisco Meirino and Kiko C. Esseiva in order to make notes for the final review, I watched a documentary about Joy Division. The record is a 12″ vinyl black void with a black label which you might think is a precursor to the abyssal darkness contained within. In fact after Joy Division’s bleak visions born of greyscale Manchester streets steeped in rain and the bedroom’s so cold, you turn away on your side, it was a relief to enjoy some movement, vibration and a surprising selection of fleeting semi-colours. four men on a bridge Assembled in 2012 and 2013 from hours of multitrack recordings as a duo, each artist was given one side of the record to present his individual composition using the original material as the building blocks. As the first release on Andreas Unterkircher’s Ausenraum label, the black and white cover picture of electrical equipment cut up and interrupted, repeated and sliced, slid out of place and readjusted, then partially contained within a perfect circle seems an apt metaphor for the processes etched into the grooves here. she filled her time pushing the pram round Salford There is an interesting YouTube video of Meirino and Esseiva playing together as a duo in an art gallery or something similar. They are set up against a side wall on a long table next to each other. Various people are seated in the white space, others walk in and out informally. Being able to see all this taking place, the physical approach of each artist is interesting and illuminating and offers some understanding into why each side of this LP sounds as it does. tear us apart Meirino stands bent over his black boxes of plugs and wires activating switches and summoning up raw electrical bleed and grime from the insides of these dark objects. He turns a torch on and off at intervals, and the completion and termination of the circuit is heard as a visceral thud. Essevia remains seated at his desk and, amongst other things, manipulates a tape recorder thoughtfully and subtly, reacting and operating within and against the bodily groundedness of the sputtering sound shrapnel exhibiting a concentrated intelligence and sense of purpose. Whether this performance formed part of the substrata from which this LP was carved I don’t know, but it is certainly an informative document. it’s a picture of a tomb For me all Meirino’s music seems to exist in a landscape with enhanced perspective and a very remote vanishing point: In other words the sounds are stretched out from incredibly distant thuds occurring below the horizon to crackles and clicks right up against the eardrum, as if generated inside the speakers themselves independently of anything else. growling like a dog Meirino places us on a ship negotiating a sea of fluctuating plasma. Creaks and groans from the rigging and the swell of undulating static gives way to scuttling creature in the hold. Early on a filament of light, a laser emission like a bowed violin note repeats a few times as a vestige of the sun’s benediction. Later, work of some secret nature takes place. Something rattles back and forth along rails as machines hum. Excited wings vibrate against the microphone and objects drop and roll across the hard floor. People talk, but the men’s voices are rudely cut off and are no more. A crescendo of metal and tooled desolation builds from nothing to form a rattling, prison riot cacophony then… suddenly we are in some dead pond where the water (or some other analogous fluid) carries sounds from afar. Unknown denizens of this inky pool signal to each other ever more frantically, again a crescendo… Nothing… Nothing… Nothing… Run-off groove… Ian’s dead Esseiva is an artist I have never heard before. Seemingly his compositional hand is more controlled than Meirino’s and the work focuses more closely on fewer competing strands. This approach yields a completely different experience, yet obviously both sides of the disc are united by their common provenance. Differences aside each promise is fulfilled in its singular entirety. I came off the phone and went back to the table Kiko C. Esseiva pledges breath and motors and grinding gears. A ribbon of steady sound unfolds and fades just once. This is a workshop in which the instruments that make this music are being built, and the very building of them is the music itself, and after they have finished playing, the dismantling of them is also the music itself. Sheets of steel and other substances are beaten in frantic rapidity. Tiny hammers pound. Insectoid nano-mosquitoes plague the workspace. Cut. Fibrillating electricity. Cut. A buffeted wire fence with mechanical animoids squeaking and chirruping in iron filing nests. Steel wool ruffles and frazzles. Cut. Dead air. A ball bearing rolls around an uneven plane causing other objects to become infectiously agitated and inexplicably animated. An organ plays itself, just once. Vibrating glass planes, jars, flasks and light bulbs. Cut… Near silence… Readjust to the tiny flecks of vinyl crackle not being part of the whole… And yet in a way they are… It all is… Run-off groove… Click… Click… Raise the needle. unknown pleasures" [Chris Whitehead / Sonicfield] | 2013 | €16.00 |
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| MEISSNER / SLAVIN / SACHS | Into the Void | CD | Eine Art "Hör-Film" dreier Audio & Video-Künstler aus Israel & Österreich basierend auf einer Spurensuche im jüdischen Viertel in Krakau... besonders das 11teilige "Into the Void" von SEBASTIAN MEISSNER ist sehr hörenswert: field recordings & Erzählungen werden verwebt mit dunklen Drones, Piano-tunes, Klezmer-Fragmenten, teils in langen sphärischen Stücken, teils cut-up mässig... RAN SLAVINS "Segments from the Snow" klingt Electronica-lastiger, aber auch bedrückend atmosphärisch & voller interessanter Sound-Arrangements & stakkatohaft-mechanischer Samples & Volksmusikverfremdungen... ERAN SACHS (u.a. Mitglied bei LIETTERSCHPICH) schafft mit "Memory Gaps" einen geräuschaft-melancholischen Raum, basierend auf zwei traditionellen jüdischen Klarinetten-Stücken, field recordings & Interviewfetzen... kommt mit Booklet und ausführlichen Liner-Notes.... "presence/absence:::into the void is a reflection upon the history and the recent changes in the krakovian neighbourhood of Kazimierz. The center of this meditation is the seemingly contradictory development of the last few years, which is showing that the attempts to re-animate jewish culture. The piece is working on the basis of an attempt of reversing the seasons: from summer to winter the 700-year-old Jewish district of Krakow. What struck Meissner at first sight, was the glaring contrast between the rich though often neglected presence of the material culture and the dreadful absence of the community exterminated during the Nazi days. Four months later, on 26 June 2003, at Krowoderska52 club in Krakow, Sebastian Meissner, Ran Slavin and Eran Sachs offered the final effects of their research in the form of series of pieces. They carefully crafted crunchy steps, freezing wind, cracking ice and conversations into a mesmerising film for ears’. The imaginative power of the music was reinforced by Slavin's video impressions — equally apt in conjuring up desolate though meaningful a digital environment referring to Nowa Huta —the empty large defunct metal industry zone.... Sebastian Meissner: works as music composer, sound designer and photographer in Vienna. Over the years his audio-visual works has been presented by curators of prestigious festivals and exhibited in international galleries such as Transmediale, Sonic Square, Podewil, Portikus Frankfurt, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Goethe Institute Buenos Aires, Kulturhuset Stockholm and Forsythe Ballet. His music and sound compositions - as Random Inc. - are released on music labels Mille Plateaux, Ritornell, Kompakt, Crónica and Beta Bodega. Ran Slavin: Works as film-maker and as audio-visual artist from Tel Aviv. His last opus in video is one of the most brilliant films that came from Israel during the last years : INSOMNIAC CITY. Premiering with the first part at the Venice Biennial of Architecture in 2004 and continuing with part 3 at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and international venues. Working with experimental cinema, digital and acoustic music, video art and live video/sound performances. Operating between contemporary art and new music, his visual work has been described as intense urban surrealism. His audio visual work is a culmination of balanced relations between sound and video, their interconnections. His work has been shown at the Pompidou, Jeu De Paum, Transmediale, Istanbul Biennial, Cinematheques in Israel and Paris, festivals in Berlin, Slovenia, Amsterdam, Austria, New York, China, Israel, London, Ukraine. His music and videos released on the music-media labels Mille Plateaux, Cronica, Sub Rosa. www.ranslavin.com Eran Sachs: works as composer, improviser, sound-artist and curator in Jerusalem. He plays this machine regularily in the Doom-Dub-Noise outfit Lietterschpich and John Zorn's "Cobra" improvising ensemble in Israel. His works have been released on Mille Plateaux and various labels in Israel. As a sound-artist his works tend fuse the sonic with the political, as in the case of "Yannun Yannun", which portrays the harrasment of Palestinian villagers by fanatic settlers. He founded and managed the Yad-Vashem bookstore - the only holocaust dedicated bookstore in Israel." [press release] | 2006 | €13.50 |
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| MELANCHOHOLICS | Solar Cafe | LP | By combining found noises and field-recorded nature with minimal fragile surfer-tone post-rock-guitars, drones and fuzzy low-end bass-lines, Melanchoholics create mad extensive soundscapes and almost cinematic soundtracks to psychotic euphoria and intoxicated wastelands. After releasing on Drone Records, MNDR and deafborn, Solar Café is their final low-end manifesto for low-end connoisseurs. Vinyl 12" contains download code including CD only Track "Nuclear Welfare" + bonus material "Postnovoletna Depresija" and "Disgusting however fascinating" Solar Café is the third and final chapter within the discography of MELANCHOHOLICS. It was recorded and mixed by MELANCHOHOLICS between 2006 and 2010. The Cover Artwork as of Solar Café was done by Derek Roczen. It's based on a series of stunning photos Benedikt shot during research for a documentary on the long waiting period for the summer solstice in the village of Flateyri situated in Iceland's Westfjords. Hence the album title “Solar Café”. Almost one year later Benedikt died of cancer at the age of 32. Melanchoholics managed to complete the album shortly before Benedikts departure. The album is released on 29.12.2014 via Eibon Records (CD) and Deafborn Records (12” 180g Vinyl). The vinyl-version of Solar Café is limited to 400 hand numbered copies. The album was mastered separately for CD and Vinyl by Michael Schwabe @ Monoposto. Sound of Solar Café On Solar Café Melanchoholics once again have set their attention directly to the lurid sides of human personalities: desperate internal fears. Simplistic structures and melodies fleshed out well with subtle textures and voices. The feeling is one of lamentation and dreariness as the sounds trudge along. Yet there is a warmth and smokiness to it as well. There is a colourful darkness before that day comes... the moment to celebrate the return of sunlight. www.melanchoholics.de "It's been a long, long time since I reviewed 'A Single Act Of Carelessness' by the German band Melanchoholics (see Vital Weekly 530). This trio was Benedikt on guitars, Philip on bass and Lutz on electronics; was, because the band no longer exists, so it seems, following the passing of Benedikt Bjarnason a few years ago. The music on 'Solar Cafe' was recorded from 2006 to 2010 and then it took some more time to finish the release. But the result is certainly great. With their previous release I compared it with the old ambient industrial music that was en vogue in the late 80s, when bands started to play guitars with cello bows, adding bits of conversations, made it all more atmospheric, but at the same time also with that dark, noisy undercurrent never far away. Music like passing dark clouds over an abandoned industrial lot, but Melanchoholics add more spacious guitars to the recipe, owing a bit to the world of post-rock. In 'Presence of Absence' they depict with the guitars vast open territories while the steady slow beat is like an oilrig. Get my drift? It's music that I quite like actually. It's both abstract and musical; it's both atmospheric and noisy - from time to time. It has that great cinematic quality to it. It's experimental music just the way I like it; like very much, actually. Perhaps one could argue there is not a lot of difference between this and the previous release, but with such as small output: who cares? One could care however about the fact that this band is no more and the musical development has come to an end. That's perhaps the saddest conclusion one could draw from this release. Sad but beautiful that's how it ends here with the final piece, 'Minus 1 One'." [FdW/Vital Weekly] "Drittes und letztes Album der Melanchoholics. In der Besetzung Gitarre, Bass und Elektronic / Fieldre-cording hatte das Trio seit 2003 zwei CDs, eine 7″ und verschiedene Soundtracks veröffentlicht, verbunden mit europaweiten Touren, abrupt beendet durch den plötzlichen, krankheitsbedingten Tod von Gitarrist Benedikt Kristofer Bjarnason in 2010, mitten in der Arbeit an der nun vorliegenden Veröffentli-chung, damals erst gut zur Hälfte fertiggestellt. Die Arbeit an der Veröffentlichung blieb liegen, der Veröffentlichungsdeal mit einem US-Label platzte und erst mit der Erkenntnis, trotz des Verlustes weitermachen zu wollen (bezeichnenderweise als Minus1one), beschlossen Bassist Phillip und Elektroniker Lutz, “Solar Cafe” als Vermächtnis der bisheri-gen Bandgeschichte zu vollenden und zu veröffentlichen. Wohl wissend, dass es Veröffentlichungen von Bands, die es gar nicht mehr gibt unterhalb eines bestimmten Bekanntheitsgrades und zwangs-weise ohne Live-Support definitiv schwer haben. Aber, trotz dieser Widrigkeiten, es hat sich definitiv gelohnt, diesen Schritt zu tun: “Solar Cafe” zeigt die Fähigkeiten der damaligen Melanchoholics gegenüber den bisherigen Platten auf einem neuen Stand; die bandeigene Art der Komposition, gleichzeitig wie auf dem Sprung befindlicher wie in der Zeit erstarrter Tracks zu komponieren, die zudem viel von tatsächlichen Songs zu haben scheinen oh-ne wirklich welche zu sein, ist auf “Solar Cafe” zu neuer Perfektion gereift. Und über allem eine Atmo-sphäre, die nicht trefflicher als durch den Bandnamen zu beschreiben ist: keine gefühlte oder gar auf-gesetzte Düsternis, vielmehr eine Art von wehmütiger Melancholie, die möglicherweise am stärksten durch die irgendwo zwischen Arpeggio und Anschlag changierenden Gitarren und die immer wieder präsenten, funkspruchartigen Fieldrecordings verursacht wird, unterlegt durch Flächen und Bassschü-be im Untergrund. “Solar Cafe” ist damit auch in seinen ruhigsten Abschnitten keine flächenartig ange-legte Musik wie die so vieler Anderer, die im Feld der experimentellen Musik ohne Schlagzeug bzw. Drumprogrammierung arbeiten: der paradoxerweise wie erstarrte Fluss dauernder Bewegung bleibt stets bestimmendes Moment. Rein musikalisch betrachtet, den ohnehin nicht zu beziffernden menschlichen Verlust bewusst ausge-klammert, definitiv ein herber Verlust, dass nach diesem Höhepunkt, passenderweise auf zwei Formaten veröffentlicht (Vinyl + CD), in dieser Form nichts mehr zu erwarten ist. Was bleibt ist diese wirklich gelungene Platte und die Chance, dass das Nachfolgeprojekt Minus1one vielleicht andere, aber ebenso interessante Wege verfolgen wird. Und jetzt: ihr." [Hellmut Neidhardt / Black mag] | 2015 | €16.00 |
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| Solar Cafe | CD | "By combining found noises and field-recorded nature with minimal/fragile post-rock-guitars, drones and fuzzy low-end bass-lines, Melanchoholics create mad extensive soundscapes and almost cinematic soundtracks to psychotic euphoria and intoxicated wastelands. After releasing on Drone Records, MNDR and Deafborn, Eibon Records proudly presents their final low-end manifesto for low-end connoisseurs. On Solar Cafe, Melanchoholics once again have set their attention directly to the lurid sides of human personalities: desperate internal fears and simplistic structures and melodies fleshed out well with subtle textures and voices. The feeling is one of lamentation and dreariness as the sounds trudge along. Yet there is a warmth and smokiness to it as well. There is a colourful darkness before that day comes... the moment to celebrate the return of sunlight. Comes in matte-varnished digisleeve." [label info] www.eibonrecords.com www.melanchoholics.com "It's been a long, long time since I reviewed 'A Single Act Of Carelessness' by the German band Melanchoholics (see Vital Weekly 530). This trio was Benedikt on guitars, Philip on bass and Lutz on electronics; was, because the band no longer exists, so it seems, following the passing of Benedikt Bjarnason a few years ago. The music on 'Solar Cafe' was recorded from 2006 to 2010 and then it took some more time to finish the release. But the result is certainly great. With their previous release I compared it with the old ambient industrial music that was en vogue in the late 80s, when bands started to play guitars with cello bows, adding bits of conversations, made it all more atmospheric, but at the same time also with that dark, noisy undercurrent never far away. Music like passing dark clouds over an abandoned industrial lot, but Melanchoholics add more spacious guitars to the recipe, owing a bit to the world of post-rock. In 'Presence of Absence' they depict with the guitars vast open territories while the steady slow beat is like an oilrig. Get my drift? It's music that I quite like actually. It's both abstract and musical; it's both atmospheric and noisy - from time to time. It has that great cinematic quality to it. It's experimental music just the way I like it; like very much, actually. Perhaps one could argue there is not a lot of difference between this and the previous release, but with such as small output: who cares? One could care however about the fact that this band is no more and the musical development has come to an end. That's perhaps the saddest conclusion one could draw from this release. Sad but beautiful that's how it ends here with the final piece, 'Minus 1 One'." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2015 | €10.00 |
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| MELVILLE | 17 TV Themes | do-CD | “2 x 17 masterpieces as a soundtrack for the cinema in your head and beyond: The hammering automatic rhythm of an Elka organ introduces us to Melville's film-music masterpiece, slowly moody echo-laden guitar lines, spooky keyboard chords, honey sweet theremin-sequences and lascivious female voices add to a "Blues noir", melodic and harmonic fireworks of references build up and make clear where we are. The cineastic escapades of the 50s and 60s and their heroes salute you: Alain Delon, Brigitte Bardot, Jean Paul Belmondo, Lino Ventura, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, Michel Serrault… all these stars are cast for this sparkling masterpiece on celluloid, which is neither B-movie nor blockbuster, but rather builds up to something new each time you listen to its soundtrack. Melville sets straight limitations to his genre, but he gives his listeners the freedom to choose: What used to be a horror movie in the vein of Dario Argento yesterday might be the diary of a psycho killer in the 50s in moving pictures. Melville produces soundtracks, soundtracks for the cinema in your head. He invites each listener to direct his own movies, to trip on Melville's soundwaves depending on what mood you are in. While film connoisseurs will be thrilled and find clear cineastic references, the living room of the average listener will suddenly smell of gun powder and lead while a francophile gangster blonde will aspirate erotic confessions. The second CD of the album is an image of the first one. It contains the exact order of tunes as the first CD but interpreted and remade by artists chosen by Melville. These artists come from all musical genres, ranging from earthy blues to avant-garde electronics and metal: The (ethno-)pop-project Binder&Krieglstein from Graz follows the Viennese avantgarde composer Jürgen Hofbauer, Reflector's doom laden metal stands next to Peter Plessas' innovative electronics, "New York-certified" theremin godess Dorith Chrysler and some acts from the avant-garde label "tonto", blues guitarist Christian Masser is followed by the minimal electronic freak marufura fufunjiru and Mego-darling Dr. Nachtstrom. An opulent array of innovative artists which clearly appreciate the genius and the brilliancy of the original.” [Soul Seduction] | 2005 | €16.00 |
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| MERRELL, TODD / AIDAN BAKER / PATRICK JORDAN | Nagual | CD | Verzaubernde Rausch-Drones und subtile Gitarren-Loops und Tupfer, ganz zart & betörend sensibel ist dieses Trio bei einer Aufnahme in HARTFORD, CT vorgegangen, die Teilnahme AIDAN BAKERs (NADJA) ist unüberhörbar. 600 Stück wurden aufgelegt und mit dem besonderen ARCHIVE-Artwork von SELDON HUNT ausgestattet. "long playing ambient dronescape focusing the combined efforts of Todd Merrell on shortwave radio and electronics, Patrick Jordan on shortwave radio and processing and Aidan Baker (Nadja) on guitar. Recorded live in 04 in Hartford. Comes packed in heavy stock center open sleeve with environmental mirror image landscape artwork courtesy of Seldon Hunt. Pressing of 600 copies." [label info] "... This live set finds Baker handling guitar duties, but you’d never know it from the sound, augmented by short wave radios, electronics, and various bits of processing, the sound here is deep and dark, a crumbling and epic expanse of rumbling shimmering low end. Roiling clouds of murky melodic fragments, distant swells, throbbing low end pulses, barely audible bits of static and washed out glitch. Very cinematic, if you were watching a film that was almost entirely dark, with just barely visible shifts in the various shades of black and grey. Lovely though, minimal and haunting. Think Coleclough, Chalk, Lustmord, that sort of ambient darkness. But the second track is an entirely different beast. Simple guitar strums, minimal melodies, the strings struck softly, the metallic buzz and clang ringing out into the ether, some sort of underwater slow motion Fahey, smeared and soft and dark and dreamy. The final half of the track, the guitar disappears completely, leaving streaks of feedback that sound like the cries of gulls, grinding slow motion slabs of shifting low end, whirling windlike whirs, almost like a manufactured nature recording. The guitar returns for the third track, drifting gently, while the background noise builds into a slow motion wash of sound, the track culminating in a cloud of chimes and reverbed percussion, seasick swirls and struck steel strings, before slipping languidly into the final track, a lugubrious underwater crawl, all of the sounds muddy and indistinct, a sonar like ping buried way down in the mix, underneath it all a thick blanket of constant whirring drones, quite lovely. Packaged in one of those cool, 6 panel, gatefold aRCHIVE sleeves, glossy paper, super striking image of forest and clouds, LIMITED TO 600 COPIES!!" [Aquarius Records] www.archivecd.com | 2007 | €13.50 |
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| MERZBOW | Eucalypse | CD / object | MERZBOWs Hommage an den vom Aussterben bedrohten australischen Eukalyptus-Baum! Kommt in einem noch nicht dagewesenen, aufschiebbaren runden Holzcover, massiv & bedruckt, mit 4 runden farbigen Inlay-Karten. Wohl eines der spektakulärsten CD-Covers ever ! Das Material (5 Stücke, fast 60 Minuten) ist höchst psychedelisch, pulsierend, in jeder Sekunde expandierend, mitreissend und zermürbend zugleich.... "A complete winner here from electronics wizard Masami Akita and Solielmoon Recordings. The music is some of the most psychedelic that I have heard from Mr. Akita, a panoramic kaleidoscope of metal machine noise and psycho New Age synthoblasters. This is the 360 degree apocalypse of the mind. The Merz is letting loose. This is a man who has recorded a lot of music in his lifetime. I would be very surprised if Merzbow himself is able to keep track of the vast volume of material that he has put out over the years. Sometimes, you don't really remember it after listening a few times. This one is really dramatic and sticks in my mind very clearly. I can very distinctly remember the first time that I listened to it while driving. The music is meant to echo the reality of the destruction of Eucalyptus trees, which is apparently a very terrible problem on the Earth that is disrupting the ecosystem. I can accept that, and it doesn't hurt that this story was told to me via this amazing release. The first track is an amazing psychedelic journey that by itself would make this release worthwhile. Track two opens with violent crashing blending into radio signal white noise static, and industrial sounds that echo the hectic feeling that Merzbow is trying to evoke. This is completely harsh and distinctive, some of the most compelling material from this artist since the noise heyday of the mid-90s and popular releases such as “Pulse Demon.” Each track (all sharing the title “Eucalypse”) has a separate and distinct theme that works very well one after another. The over-arching theme of ecological destruction comes across in a very sincere and horrifying manner through the amazing synthesizer and noise work on this release. It sounds like Jimi Hendrix going through TG's pedals in the ninth circle of hell as everything comes crashing down. It is awesome. The packaging is made out of Eucalyptus wood, ironic considering that the release is trying to decry the practice. Ol' Merz didn't cut the damn thing down himself though, so it all works out in the end. Accompanying this beautiful, awkward, and coaster-shaped wooden box are several round cardboard photographs of Eucalyptus trees with information about the release on the back. The entire thing is completely breathtaking. I assume that this is in some sort of absurdly limited edition, so if you come across this one snatch it up, it's great." [Heathen Harvest] "The Tasmanian Blue Gum tree, Eucalyptus globulus, is native to Tasmania and southern Australia. Eucalyptus trees are uniquely suited to the varied ecologies of Australia, and there is no other continent more closely associated with one genus of tree. Its leaves are the food of choice of the koala, and its flowers attract bees and hummingbirds. Out of approximately 300 identified species, Blue Gums are now the eucalyptus most frequently found in other parts of the world. Throughout the tropics they are known for their ability to dry out swampy areas, making them a valuable weapon in the fight against malaria, a disease caused by parasites carried in female Anopheles mosquitos, which breed in standing water. Eucalyptus globulus was first brought to India in the late 18th century. Large plantations were establish in Kerala in 1863, but other than small amounts of oil distilling, little use has been made of the fast growing trees. Instead, they have thrived in the moist, foggy hills, spreading far across the landscape and transforming the ecosystem in the process. With their deep roots they lower water tables, depriving native species of the moisture necessary to survive the annual dry season, while the anti-bacterial properties of the “blue gum” secretions they drop on the soil further suppress the germination and growth of other plants. An ancient and intricate web of life has been disrupted, and native plants, insects and animals are being driven to extinction. Humans, who have long been a part of the local ecosystem, are adaptable and will survive, but the biodiversity of an entire region is under threat from a single exotic species. It is truly a eucalyptus apocalypse. It is a eucalypse. At Soleilmoon, packaging and presentation are never overlooked. This release is presented in a hand-crafted round wooden box with screenprinted swiveling lid. The box contains one CD and four round, full-color cards. Only 1000 copies of this handsome CD have been made." [label info] www.soleilmoon.com | 2008 | €25.00 |
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| Oersted | do-LP | Merzbow's impact transcends the confines of traditional music, embodying an ethos of constant innovation and fearless exploration into uncharted realms of sound. Navigating through the annals of Merzbow's extensive career reveals an artist who, for over 40 years, has remained dedicated to reshaping our understanding of music and pushing the boundaries of sonic expression. We are thrilled to unveil the highly anticipated vinyl reissue of Merzbow's groundbreaking album Oersted. This album, originally released on CD in 1996, marked a significant milestone in the experimental noise music scene, showcasing the unparalleled sonic explorations of the legendary Masami Akita, known as Merzbow. Oersted is a sonic journey through realms of noise, texture, and intensity that have solidified Merzbow's status as a pioneer in the realm of noise music. The album features a collection of meticulously crafted tracks that push the boundaries of sound manipulation and composition, creating an immersive experience for listeners daring enough to delve into its sonic landscapes. The vinyl reissue, masterfully remastered for the first time by the esteemed James Plotkin, renowned for his unparalleled expertise, breathes fresh life and depth into the album's already rich and intricate sonic landscape, unveiling new detail within its reverberant dense tapestry and complex noise palette. Each track on Oersted is a aural sculpture, with layers of distorted frequencies, pulsating rhythms, and unexpected sonic artifacts that challenge conventional notions of music and sound. Features four untitled tracks originally on CD, each occupying an entire side of the vinyl, except for the track on side D, which shares the side with two bonus tracks. These tracks epitomize a profound and multifaceted sonic odyssey, harnessing various tapes and the raw power of analog instruments and tools such as EMS Synthia, metallic electronics, various filters, and processed audio mixer. Side A plunges the listener into a kaleidoscopic amalgamation of unrefined sound elements, steadily weaving together strata of intensity and textural richness that evolve dynamically over its duration. Side B embarks on a sonic expedition delving deep into mesmerizing rhythms and intricately woven soundscapes, crafting an immersive experience that challenges traditional notions of musical structure and form. Side C boldly pushes the frontiers of sound manipulation, employing dynamic tonal shifts and varying intensities to construct a visceral and immersive sonic landscape. Side D, in its initial segment, extends the sonic narrative into uncharted realms of noise and texture, maintaining a cohesive yet unpredictable sonic progression. The supplementary tracks in the latter part of Side D provide additional depth to Merzbow's sonic experimentation, showcasing distinctive sonic palettes and layers that harmonize with the album's overarching themes and exploratory essence. The original artwork for the 1996 CD digipack, curated by Masami Akita, stands out for its minimalism and visual impact. The pink outer cover, with only the artist's name and album title in silver-gray at the center, grabs attention with its bold simplicity, foreshadowing the sonic experience of the album. Inside, the green provides a pleasing contrast, with credits in silver-gray maintaining stylistic coherence. The vinyl reissue faithfully replicates the graphics with a gatefold cover, enhancing the visual impact of the original artwork. The blending of pink and green colors creates a striking visual effect, highlighting the beauty of simplicity in Akita's graphic design. Immerse yourself in the mesmerizing world of Merzbow's Oersted and experience the raw power and beauty of noise in its purest form. all tracks by masami akita ma plays various tapes, ems synthia, metallic electronics, various filters, processed audio mixer basic materials recorded at zsf produkt during late 1995 and 1996 some part of raw materials recorded on 1993 remixed by live tape manipulation with mk2 filter in zsf produkt, June 1996 remastered by james plotkin 2024 https://urashima.bandcamp.com/album/oersted | 2024 | €36.00 |
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| MERZOUGA | De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements | CD | Sound composition by Merzouga – inspired by Lucretius’ philosophical poem. On the Nature of Things In his poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) the Roman poet/philosopher Lucretius (c. 99 – c. 55 BCE) explores Epicurean physics and philosophy through richly poetic language and metaphors, as he presents an entire cosmology: based on the principles of atomism, Lucretius tries to explain the nature of the mind and soul, and the development of the world. While some of his ideas have been proven scientifically wrong, some of his thoughts seem strikingly reasonable even for the contemporary reader. Lucretius believes that, while everything in the universe is finite, the smallest elements (“The First Beginnings of Things”) themselves are eternal – moving through the void they collide, create forms and dissolve, just to collide again in order to create new forms. For Lucretius life is a beautiful chance-driven Dance of the Elements. His ideas, popular and highly controversial in Roman intellectual circles, were soon to be banned and eventually forgotten during the rise of Christianity. The poem was by chance rediscovered in the 15th century by the famous humanist Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459), most likely in the scriptorium of a monastery in Fulda, Germany. During the renaissance it eventually became a foundation stone of modern western philosophy and natural sciences. Translating the Book into Sound When Soila Valkama, the ars acustica-editor of Finnish broadcaster YLEISRADIO commissioned us to produce a sound-composition, we suggested to her a playful attempt of a sonic translation of Lucretius’ ideas. The listener embarks on a journey in which a universe of sound unfolds. Smallest sonic elements float through space, dark and chaotic, merge to create concrete forms, transform into different consistencies, from water to wind, from stone to dust, steadily in motion in a constant process of becoming and dissolving. Late in the piece the sounds of mammals and humans arrive, blurring again into a palimpsest-like structure when the circle is closing. We used field-recordings of nature, as an analogue for the “concrete forms” that are created by the colliding elements, but also concrete musical structures: fragments of melodies, tonalities, and rhythmic patterns in contrast to the more abstract material. Intertwined with the sound-composition we encounter fragments of Lucretius’ text in English and in Latin, carefully adapted and translated by Janko, and spoken by his brother, the actor Stefko Hanushevsky. The radio-piece consists of six chapters, transposing the structure of Lucretius’ six books into the compositional structure. There is no delay, no rest to interrupt the flow, we can constantly feel it, and we can see things, smell them, and perceive their sound. – Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book VI: 932+933 1 Track (38′22″) CD (500 copies) Credits Merzouga is: Janko Hanushevsky (prepared electric bass) and Eva Poepplein (electronics) Speaker: Stefko Hanushevsky Translations: Janko Hanushevsky Editor: Soila Valkama Commissioned and produced by YLEISRADIO/Finland. Artwork: U9 – visuelle Allianz The artwork was created by setting up paper in the garden and applying pens and brushes to the branches of a tree. All the traces of ink on the paper were created by the wind moving the tree, thus providing all the scource-material for the album’s entire artwork. Merzouga would like to thank Soila Valkama & YLE, Stefko Hanushevsky, Lasse-Marc Riek & Roland Etzin, Leopold Lenzgeiger, Sabine Kuechler, Markus Jarchow, Bohdan & Ewa Hanushevsky, and Felix & Waltraud Poepplein for their continuous support. This release was made possible by the generous support of SKE-Fonds. www.gruenrekorder.de/?page_id=16867 | 2019 | €13.00 |
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| MICHAEL, DAVID & SLAVEK KWI | MMABOLELA | do-CD | " ‘Sonic Mmabolela’ is a 2-week workshop/residency for professional and semiprofessional sound artists and composers with previous experience in the area of sound experimentation and field recordings. It takes place at Mmabolela Reserve, in the Limpopo province of South Africa, right at the border with Botswana. It involves field work, studio work and theoretical/discussion presentations. The workshop/residency has a special focus on creative approaches to the work with field recordings, through an extensive exploration of natural sound environments. It does not have a technical character but is instead conceived and directed towards the development and realization of projects of sonic creation by the participant artists/composers with the field recordings gathered." [Francisco Lopez website] "Note from unwritten diary of David: 3:45 AM. Time to get up. The Bushveld is already awake. Slávek and I are both dragging a bit, rushing to get out the door and deploy. After almost two weeks of nonstop recording, we are both tired and a little homesick. At this point in the residency we have already found a dependable dawn recording location in a dry creek bed just far enough away from Weederdooper homestead so that our microphones will not pick up breakfast activities and just close enough for us to make it back for a nap before the morning field session. In a strange way this location reminds me of another of Slávek’s favorite recording spots on a small tributary flowing into Lake Mamori in Brazil. Slávek and I share a room at Weederdooper, which makes these dawn sessions simple. Our equipment too tends to share space in locations we scout together during many of the field sessions. We each now have many recordings of the exact same events, but from slightly different perspectives. The dry river bed at Umzumbi, the hippos at Mmabolel Rock, the bridge to Botswana, the watering holes. Perhaps when we get back home we will make a CD together. CD 1: Slávek Kwi (Artificial Memory Trace) 01: Usvit (Dawning in Dry Riverbed) 02: Windpeckers 03: Lament of Longhorn Beetle 04: Subaquatic Insects, Terrapins, Fish Munching on Algae 05: From Perspective of Wasps 06: Baboons 07: Mouchy 08: Hippo-pota-muses 09: Noc Pt1 (Toads, Bats [via heterodyne detector], Xmas Beetles) 10: Transition (Xmas Beetles close-up) 11: Noc Pt2 (Frogs, Bats [via microphone], Insects) 12: Noc Pt3 (Cicadas, Frogs, distant Baboons) Excerpts: Track 01 Track 04 Recordings made by Slávek Kwi in November 2013 at the Mmabolela. Composed in between February and June 2014 in Beech House, Ireland. Trk 01-09 was originally constructed as multichannel piece titled “AfriKaa!” dedicated to children with autism. The Sound Expedition was funded by The National Concert Hall in Dublin; very special thanks to Ciara Cuffe and Simon Taylor for kind support. Extended thanks to David for making this publication possible. CD 2: David Michael 01. Slávek’s Dry Creek 02. Midnight on the Limpopo 03. Hippopotamuses at Mmabolel Rock 04. Umzumbi with Baboons, Bats 05. Duets 06. The Bridge to Botswana IV 07. Afternoon with an Impala Carcass Excerpts: Track 4 Track 6 Recordings made by David Michael in November 2013 at the Mmabolela. Produced in Sleepy Hollow, New York during various sessions in 2014. 19 Tracks (157′16″) Double CD (500 copies)" www.gruenrekorder.de | 2014 | €16.00 |
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| MIEVILLE, EMMANUEL | Ethers | CD | Slowly but o-so-surely, Emmanuel Mieville is building an impressive body of work, where each new album seems to make the previous one pale in comparison. And the music press would be wise to catch on to him. The man is discreet and unassertive, so is his music, but he – like it – cannot be dismissed as just another proponent of the field recording. For Mieville, music is some of the most spellbinding art for the ear out there in the aether. "Ethers" is Mieville's second album for Baskaru, and though the previous one certainly stands the test of time, this new opus pushes the bar higher, much higher. In the composer's own words, "Ethers is an attempt to give an earthy quality, a dense texture to drone music, to lower it from the 'skies'." Mieville first trained as a sound engineer, and then studied musique concrète at GRM. He grew up listening to creative radio programs and embraced field recording as a form of art. His latest works fully realized a synthesis of all these elements: the attentive ear to one's surroundings, the abstract approach to sound, the sense of drama that makes a field recording composition take life. Mieville has worked with Buto dancers, video artists, and like-minded musicians like Eric Cordier, Guido Huebner, and Benjamin Thigpen. After appearances on compilations albums, he released two CDs in Malaysia (on Herbal Records and XingWu), followed by his Western full-length debut "Four Wanderings in Tropical Lands" on Baskaru in 2011. Since then he released two thematic albums: "Buddha – Anima – Asia" (Obs*, 2012) on Buddhism, and "Concret-Sens" (Crónica, 2014), a homage to early musique concrète. www.baskaru.com "The last time I heard something from Emmanuel Mieville was in Vital Weekly 803, and that was his previous album for Baskaru. Mieville, a trained composer from GRM uses a lot of field recordings in his music, which he treats into music. I am not sure how Mieville works in creating his music, but it could very well be that he has many treatments of the same sound source and which are later stuck together and crafted into a piece of music, with all the subtle changes possible, which Mieville can choose from when doing this. I might very well be entirely wrong of course. His music can be compared to that of Whetham (or vice versa, but that's not the order I am hearing these releases): quite closed off blocks of sound, but somehow the work of Mieville sounds more coherent than Whetham on his new release. It also seems to be less closed off, with a bit more air in between the various treatments that he uses in his music. Whetham's music seems hermetically closed. There is fine vibrancy in the pieces by Mieville, shifting back and forth, ignoring strict classical rules of composition. Excellent release." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2015 | €12.00 |
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| MILITIA | Everything Is One | CD | " “Only sheep need a leader”. Aller derzeitiger Ideologie-Feindlichkeit zum trotz halten MILITIA an ihrem Ideal eines „positiven“, zeitgemässen Öko-Anarchismus fest und schlagen hier auch musikalisch neue und sanftere Wege ein, wenn sie harmonisch-polyphone Synth-Sequenzertunes mit eher hintergründiger Perkussion und vielen „handgespielten“ Elementen & Instrumenten verbinden. MILITIAs Musik ist aber auch immer noch beseelt von (heroischem?) Kampfgeist und Glauben an die (bessere?) Utopie, von pompösen Neo-Klassik- & Sprach-Samples, aggressivem Gesang und dickstem melancholischen Pathos. Musikalisch überzeugender Anarcho-Industrial!" [Drone Rec. 2005] “ Five years after the succesfull “The Black Flag Hoisted” CD finally thenew MILITIA CD!!! It contains 13 tracks (62,35 minutes) of the best MILITIA recordings ever. Beside the known and typical MILITIA percussions, samples and voices this time the tracks include a larger variety of different instruments: violins, accordeons, horns, clarinets played partly by guest musicians. Even a soprano singer takes part as guest musician. The CD comes in a special oversized foldout cover.” [label info] | 2005 | €18.00 |
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| MIMETIC DESIRE | Sacred Aim | DVD | " 'desire is the location of resistances to the norms of the culturalorder. mimetic desire begins by transforming models into obstacles and it ends up by transforming obstacles into models.' (mimetic, 2006) mimetic is the solo project of jerome soudan - a drummer for european industrial and experimental bands such as von magnet or column one. his classical background is best seen by his playing of orchestral percussion and computing pieces for contemporary music performances (with art zoyd & kasper t.toeplitz). he has also composed music for dance companies like ndt2 in the netherlands. in france, he wrote a pre-thesis about industrial music for the university of lyon (1993). also while in france he contributed to the industrial music scene by organising festivals and concerts in paris. in addition he developed a network for musicians in europe and he continued this network while living in berlin. after several releases on various european labels, mimetic has released his first dvd via a collaborative effort between ant-zen and parametric. 'sacred aim' feeds the eyes with a big collection of video clips that combine small scripts, visual effects, flashing colors, black & white pictures, moving puppet animations and more. this dvd follows mimetic's recent big tours in europa, u.s.a., canada and japan, in addition the dvd features bonus material - including an interview, a documentary about his eastern european tour, two concert tracks from canada, and some other special surprises. if you are familiar with mimetic's powerful mix of electronica and beats, symphonic textures and incredibly well-placed samples then you now have the opportunity to stimulate your aural senses. if you are not familiar then go discover an artist who is something else - a fine addition to the audio & visual world of ant-zen." [label info] www.ant-zen.com | 2006 | €7.50 |
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| MINIT | Now right here | LP | "Endlich was neues von einer unserer Lieblings-Drone-Bands, die inzwischen von Australien nach Berlin gezogen sind....wir hören hier auf drei Stücken kontemplative, extrem hypnotische Drone-Schichten, regelrecht leuchtende Klangteppiche, die sanft an Volumen und Dichte gewinnen und aus denen sich dann harmonische Strukturen herausschälen.. EMPFEHLUNG!!" [Drone Rec. info 2004] “A long awaited release from Sydney's Minit culminates in a masterpiece collection of spectral drone music. With their unhierarchical approach to the use of 'found' sound, a fuzzed out electric bass line sits neatly alongside field recordings of atmospheric hum - their individual sound qualities overriding their semiotic value, so that each sound, representing a layer, shimmers and swells within Minit's evolving, sonic habitat. Now Right Here, the title track as well as the album, is about being caught in the moment. From fragile harmonic and melodic intonations to towering, ecstatic drones and electrical disturbances this album captures a balance betwen noise and harmony, excitation and calmness, distance and intimacy - drawing you into a hypnotic, psychedelic sound-world that belongs uniquely to Minit. Now Right Here is a fragile, immersive and emotional album.Minit is JASMINE GUFFOND and TORBEN TILLY. They are currently living and working in Berlin.”[press release] “Overall the sound has become more detailled and more rich since my first encounter with them. Music with a highly trance like atmosphere, maybe even psychedelic. Quite nice indeed.” [fdw/Vital Weekly] | 2004 | €12.00 |
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| MIRT | Heading South | LP | "Backwards proudly presents the new album of great Polish artist MIRT! Heading South is the eighth Mirts' album. The record was created with great help of TER between 2011 and 2012. Like its predecessors it is to some extent a concept album. This time, derived from exotic vision of class B old adventure films and cheap comic stories. As usual this inspirations are barely visible and immersed in typical for Mirt hazy and dark mood. This are only some hints and whole album leaves a much wider scope for interpretation. After instrumental Artificial Field Recordings Mirt intended to record album with songs and after several earlier attempts he fail again, leaving only two track with voice. Don't miss this superb gem! Available in two editions: 100 copies as yellow vinyl and 200 copies as black vinyl." [label info] www.backwards.it | 2013 | €15.00 |
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| MLEHST | An old broom knows all the dirty corners | CD | Das MLEHST-Comeback nun auch auf CD; diese Klänge sind wirklich unangenehm und regen auf, ohne harsch noisig zu sein, ein schräger Tanz von Radiosinustönen, low-fi-Geräuschen und Rauschen, fast jegliche musikalische Grundkonzepte und Bestimmungsparameter sind hier ausser Kraft gesetzt! "Mlehst returns after years of silence, along with his unique (and prolific) experimental noise. As a bonus this digipak album has some alternate mixes of material from two recent LPs, but they fit well here and will seem like part of the whole work to most listeners. Commencing with noisy drones and reverberating percussive noises, the album takes a really varied journey through all kinds of noisy experimental, weird electronic, feedback, and droney sounds. There is a really unsettling and disturbing element to the music throughout the CD, which seems more controlled and natural than I had remembered in previous works. As intense as the sounds on CD can get, it is by no means a typical static harsh noise release. Everything has it's place and is totally under control, being precisely manipulated. Just how I like my noise... An incredibly solid and enjoyable release, through and through." [Diophantine Discs Top Releases of 2006] "Whether or not its because I am in the process of giving up smoking I don't know, but this album leaves me anxious and on-edge. Fantastic! So many recordings just leave you cold. An emotional conduit!" [METAMORPHIC JOURNEYMAN] | 2006 | €12.00 |
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| MODELBAU | Four Squared Wheel | CD | "Modelbau is one of the many names Frans de Waard (Kapotte Muziek, Goem, Wieman, Freiband, etc) uses for his music. Moving Furniture Records is proud to release the first proper CD by this project after many tape releases and a couple of CD-R’s. Frans de Waard in his own words about Four Squared Wheel: Somewhere in 2012 I had the idea that it was time for that all needed change, having played around with laptops for a decade or so. Actually it was something that was in the air for some time, as I already used cassettes in my work with Kapotte Muziek and in some of my solo concerts. With Modelbau (and yes, that is a deliberate misspelling of the word) I set a few parameters, such as using many cassettes, small synthesizers, little to no laptop and recorded as much ‘live’ as possible, plus to do only digital releases. Some of that still goes, but the digital releases only went out of the window pretty quickly. In 2012 I played a concert as Modelbau, carefully planned into a fifteen-minute composition and released the first (digital) album. Other work came along and I didn’t do much again as Modelbau, until in June 2014 I got various offers for solo concerts and while preparing those, I had a bunch of material recorded, which was released by various labels on cassette (Barreuh Records, Lichtung). During one of these rehearsal/recording sessions I picked up some guitar effect, which was in my way and thought it would be good to use that also in the set-up. Since then the palette seems to be complete; while preparing for concerts I record everything and select pieces from that to be released, with little to no change, save for doing a better beginning or ending when needed. In that respect the almost one hour long ‘Four Squared Wheel’ is a bit of a different work. It wasn’t recorded as part of a rehearsal, but rather in a more elaborate set-up in my studio, using my Philicordia organ, a microphone, guitar amplifier, guitar effects, mixing various signals on the spot into this piece, while retaining that ‘live’ feeling. It has four distinct parts with considerable gaps of silence in between. They are intended to stay as such. ‘Four Squared Wheel’ is the most drone based/ambient recording by Modelbau to date, and not something that would be easily re-created in a live situation." [label info] www.movingfurniturerecords.com | 2016 | €12.00 |
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| MODELL, ROD / MARIT WOLTERS | Cocoon | do-LP | Marit Wolters is a Viennese artist who creates sculptures that speak. They generate their own world of micro-sounds. Rod Modell is a sound designer operating primarily from Detroit (with an EU home-base in Amsterdam). Here, he moulded the sounds of Marit's works in the same way that she works her materials, creating a generative soundscape designed for museum playback during Marit’s exhibitions, constructed with sounds of Marit’s sculptures, drones, field recordings, and cosmic sounds. The result of this collaboration is COCOON, a 74 minute CD of music by Rod and Marit, with a 24-page 8" square booklet featuring Marit’s work. The package also Includes a poster that reproduces the original playbill from the debut exhibition of COCOON in Linz, Austria. A collector's item, limited and numbered to only 300 pieces. "The Ethereal Substance of Matter" by Mirco Salvadori It takes adaptation to begin this journey. We need to increase our perceptual sensors by adapting the transmission of touch to the apparently inert matter. Sight too must increase its visionary capacity, and hearing has the obligation to pick up even the most microscopic movement. Gradually, we levitate upon appearing in front of the substance. As protected in a transparent cocoon that allows contact, we penetrate through the undefined throbbing of a heart that is constantly springing into action, witness to a life that uses field recordings capable of recalling past glitches. Absorbed in the liquidity of sound we slowly immerse ourselves in the majesty of the deep dronic breath, driven by the power of the ambient wave that iterates its eternal oscillation. We are in, here where everything is an unlimited reverberation, almost a song of seductive ethereal substance. 13.silentes.it/private_sounds/sps2037_rod_modell_marit_wolters_cocoon.htm | 2021 | €36.00 |
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| MOHAMMAD (MMMD) | Roto Vildblomma | CD | "New edition limited to 111 copies. Mohammad is the project of: Coti K.: double bass, ILIOS: oscillators, Nikos Veliotis: cello. Having worked separately in the experimental field they decided to join forces in order to study and work on the principles of inter-modulation. Roto Vildblomma is the first Antifrost release on 2010 and the debut of Mohammad." www.antifrost.gr "Those familiar with Mohammad’s invented genre cello doom will know what to expect of ‘Roto Vildblomma’, their proto-drone debut. If you’re new, though, get all descriptions that go by the watchword “beautiful” out of your head: the music Mohammad make is as terse as dark ambient but as churning and uncomfortable as harsh noise. From ‘Som Sakrifis’ through to their psychogeographical album trilogy, their sound has remained steadfast and punishing, but ‘Roto Vildblomma’ shows their sound in process, rather than completion. Opener “Vildblomma” is as you’d expect -- gnarled, slogging cello going back and forth by rote. It’s on “Skora” where the act become momentarily unrecognisable, opening with a foggier and calmer iteration of their sound; electronics fumble in the distance as a bloodlet bass drone slowly begins to rumble. “Lamane Kradoj” continues this flittering exchange of tone and gentle noise, bringing in what sounds like rhythmic field recordings before handing over to the suspiciously low key (but eventually power-noised) “Letzen Tranen”. Listening to one of Mohammad’s records is very much like entering some grand hall moments before the doors lock; on this record, things feel more open-ended, as if Mohammad were sketching out ideas before a grand performance. These are still ominous and often scratchy drones, but you can hear slightly prettier versions of the band, ready for reduction (the actually quite gorgeous half-melodies of “Lumunis Vuori”, juxtaposed against heavy cello contact). A worthwhile listen for anyone who thought this band came from nothing." [Norman Records] | 2016 | €16.00 |
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| MOLJEBKA PVLSE | Fall in Woodland Cemetery | mCD-R | "With his first works released on well-known labels like cold meat industry, eibon records or fin de siècle media, mathias josefson's moljebka pvlse has fastly gained a strong reputation in the dark ambient/industrial world. including more & more field recordings in his sound, josefson soon departed from his typicial "swedish roots" to more droney sounds like his more recent productions on mystery sea, gears of sand, drone records or this very 3". minimal yet captivating droney field recordings!" [label info] www.taalem.com | 2008 | €5.00 |
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| MOLOCH | Die Isolation | CD | "A new opus comes from the woods of Carpathia. It is a despairing portrayal of the souls that are lost in the winter woods. Hypnotic sounds, like a thousand blades in a dance of a winter blizzard, leaving thousands of cuts digging into the body. Heart-rending screams of freezing flesh, summoning death, dissolving within echoes on the mountains. This album delivers cold, misanthropic and desolate mid-tempo, Nordic-influenced Black Metal, alongside melancholic Dark Ambient tracks. Crunchy distorted guitar minimalism, primal thrashing beats, and an overall raw necroish execution are reinforced by howling, tortured, grim vocals that recall the old Burzum era. For fans of Burzum, Striborg, Xasthur, Trist, Darkthrone." [label info] www.coldspring.co.uk | 2015 | €12.00 |
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| MOORE, ANTHONY | CSound + Saz | CD | "Touch.40 live at Iklectik. I received an invitation to perform at the 40th anniversary gathering, June 2022. Previous works for the label, 'Arithmetic in the Dark' and 'Isoladrone2020' illuminated the landing strip for a new work. It should be continuous -- a further play on moving and remaining. I wanted to balance the digital output of a CSound orchestra with an analog instrument and chose the Turkish saz, a sound I've loved and lived with for the last six decades. I prepared the ground for the live performance with a graphical interface for CSound and an EBow for the saz (along with some short pre-recordings of picking and strumming). Then, a few days before the concert, I got Covid. On the suggestion of Jon and Mike I recorded a live performance-for-one, (myself at home) which was played back at Iklectik. Unedited, unchanged, here it is." Three pairs of thin, wire strings on the Turkish saz are struck, and the resulting sound is harmonized, filtered and then sustained in an infinite but gradually shifting chord of harmonics. In addition, an EBow is used to excite the strings in real time. This sound is natural, untreated, and adds layers to the sustained chord. Subsequently, two Csound programs running in parallel are "fed" the natural sound of the saz and the output is heavily affected with filters, resonators, vocoders etc. These sonic gestures are allowed to take over as the original chord fades to leave the more transparent sounds of the Csound outputs. The organum returns with much warmer low end. The saz transformations thin out to leave a keening call. And finally, the last minutes are filled with a deep chord which fades to silence. Anthony Moore (b. August 1948) is a composer/musician, now based in the UK, formerly professor in Cologne for sound art and music working on the social and technical history of sound. He operates across many genres; ambient drone, musique concrète, electroacoustic, songwriting, and immersive, multi-channel sound installations. He continues to compose, perform and release work on various labels such as Touch, Drag City (Chicago), P-Vine (Tokyo) and others. Anthony Moore conducted a lengthy interview with Julian Cowley for The Wire, which appeared in October 2022 edition. https://reflectionsonsound.bandcamp.com/album/csound-saz | 2022 | €15.00 |
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| MOORE, ANTHONY / THERAPEUTISCHE HÖRGRUPPE KÖLN | Ore Talks | do-LP | " 'ore talks' limited edition release, gatefold sleeve with booklet. a double lp of essentially electronic and noise-based pieces paired with astonishing texts spoken by anthony moore. the concept is that objects of value, artifacts or minerals, buried deep in the ground send strange signals through the earth up to the planet's surface. they are detected by the ears and instruments of miners, explorers and archaeologists who are tuned-in to the subterranean frequencies. the album contains a large booklet explaining this idea and featuring many pages of eccentric writing about sound." [label info] Four sides of vinyl: this has served as a time constraint from the very outset of the project. With around 18 minutes per side giving an overall run time of 72 minutes, these time slots are designed to offer recordings of four sets of historical, technical processes and their devices. Each of the four chapters is conceived in two parts and realised in a number of actual compositions. A. VALVES / ROEHRE: 1. Their Electrons. The developement of De Forest‘s Audion. 2. Noise as signal and the power of redundancy. B. PIEZOS: 1. Reversibility; Loudspeakers as Microphones and The Transmitting Ear. 2. Mercury Acoustic Delays Lines. C. RECORDERS: 1. Wax Cylinders, Hill ’n Dale, Voices of the Dead. 2. Magnetic Oxide and Memory Machines, Storing Time. D. CRYSTAL SETS: 1. Waves; The Air as One Vast (negentropic) Library. 2. Farewell to AM, Fades to Infinity. A voice is transmitted through various materials; early microphones, the reproducer of an Edison phonograph, glass phials filled with mercury, piezo crystals, transducers, and piezo discs attached to polystyrene spheres, shortwave radios, old russian valves and the self-built circuitry of condensers and switches. What emerges are speech-driven patterns of noise, electronic music and occasional passages where the voice can be plainly heard in 14 separate pieces of widely differing durations. ORE THOUGHTS Galena to Stibnite, starting with lead, ending with lead; the history of soldering, cementing connections for currents of information and noise alike. In the undigital realm, noise is a context for the signal and can be information in itself. For example rotating surface noise is useful for finding the original speed at which early shellacs may have been cut. Redundancy is vital for a proper understanding of the world. So Ore Talks celebrates lead and soldering and making connections and, endotically, noise; noises at the outer ear but also of the inner ear. Perec and the Oulipians employ the term ‚endotic‘ as an antonym to ‚exotic‘ in order to focus attention on the everyday, on what might be dismissed as mere noise. The infraordinaire, as Perec calls it, is very much the subject of a historiographical approach that prefers to explore the lives and times of the distinctly unfamous; a more vivid, sensory history that concerns itself with sights and smells and sounds. In addition, Ore Talks posits a strange attraction between the discoverer and the yet-to-be discovered; between buried artefacts and the archeologist seeking to disinter them; between prospector and rich, subterranean lodes. The ‚ground‘ in the electrical field is a conductor that reaches into the earth. Simultaneously, metalliferous ores and objects alike call out to be uncovered in an equivalent act of active perception. The only prerequisite? Keep an ear to the ground; the telluric source for chthonic voices. Murmurings from below the surface: the call of buried things that seek to be disinterred. Anthropomorphism notwithstanding, there is something to be said for giving a voice to inanimate minerals. After all, their constituent elements come from the stars and have also given rise to us humans. Furthermore, when those same elements are alchemically transformed into compounds of metal and fillers of plastics, of quicksilver and piezo crystals, of the very air, water or copper that play host to sound in its various forms, transporting speech, then ORE TALKS emerges as a title with some resonance. And text too can be a ground from beneath which conceptual objects stem (voices in the grey matter). Here is a list of such objects that have been disinterred in no particular order from the paragraphs above. “Active perception; superluminality in the collapse of the sender/receiver paradigm” “A History of Simultaneity; how far back does same-timedness go?” “Noise in History, noise as history” “The importance of redundancy in human communication” “Sound and the continuum are products of each other” “What holds true for time also applies to sound; they both depend on disappearing as they come into existence.” “The speed of sound is a good rate at which to think about a speed of time” These and related topics are expanded over the following pages. They contain the sources for all readings recorded and subsequently transformed in the ORE TALKS experiments on this double LP. www.therapeutischehoergruppekoeln.de/ore.html "Antimonit Bleiglanz Coelestin... Ein erzernes ABC bis hin zu Zinnober. Verbunden mit 72 Minuten Text + Klang in vier Kapiteln / Vinyl-Seiten: a. Valves / Röhren b. Piezos c. Recorders d. Crystal Sets. Kreisend um Ore [Erz] = Mineralgemenge, die wegen ihres Metallgehaltes abgebaut werden, um es für Werkzeuge und Ähnliches weiterzuverarbeiten. Kreisend um L/ore, dt. Lehre -> Folklore = the knowledge and traditions, frequently passed along by word of mouth. Merke: Transmission is a vital part of the folklore process -> 1. Orality = Mündlichkeit -> 2. Literacy = Reeling and Writhing / Lesen & Schreiben -> 3. Technical Devices = Aufschreibesysteme. Es geht um Medientechniken: Alphabet - Grammophon... (Friedrich Kittler), um Recording Angels' Mysteries (Klaus Theweleit), um Dead Letters (Gregory Whitehead). Bevor Moore 1996 (bis 2015) Professor an der KHM wurde, hatte er mit Slapp Happy den Mond vom Himmel gepflückt, mit Pink Floyd gearbeitet und Soundtracks für Werner Nekes kreiert. Akademisch forschte er dann synchron mit Kittler über die Geschichte und Gesetzmäßigkeiten von Sound, über phonetische und klingende Techniken des Daseins und der Erinnerung. 2004 nahm er teil an Kittlers Sirenenexperiment, das vor Amalfi Odysseus' Affäre mit den Sirenen nachstellte. Zwischen '...and the Gods made love' und Moores 'Dogs of War' spielt sich alles ab, was es zu singen und sagen gibt. Polyphone Erkenntnis über Sound und Zeit, Noise und Information, gefiltert aus den Lebenserfahrungen von der Bronzezeit her. Darüber schreibt und spricht Moore mit medienarchäologischem Knowhow und einem Ohr für die chthonischen Stimmen. Innere Stimmen, wie sie zuerst noch bikameral fluktuierten (Julian Jaynes), dann akusmatisch, mimetisch, alphabetisch, speicherbar, decodierbar, repetierbar wurden. Die Namen Zeiss, Chladni, Tyndell und Helmholtz oszillieren steampunkabenteuerlich an den pythagoräischen Küsten wie Töne und Zahlen zwischen Rauschen und Offenbarung. Schwingquarze geben den Takt an. Memory Machines verflüssigen Vergangenes und Kommendes, um es zu fixieren, so wie Moores Sätze zu Science Fiction verschwimmen. Er raunt von The Etherial Skin of Interference, er wird poetisch, fasziniert von den Ur-Geräuschen, die Scott de Martinvilles Schweinsborsten-Phonautograph einfing oder Rilke der Kronen- Naht des Schädels zu entlocken gedachte. Klang wurde das mit Hilfe der Therapeuten Beck, Grewenig & Hennes (von The Knob, The Finger & The It), Langguth und Specht (einst bei 40 Sekunden Ohne Gewicht und Kunstkopf). Moores Stimme wispert und fitzelt subliminal unter löchrig-perkussiver Bruitistik, er reiht Zahlen oder verschwindet hinter sirrenden Spuren, taktilen Geräuschen, spurenelementaren Impulsen. Silben und Satzfetzen mischen sich mit Hilfe der Hörgruppe zu Kratzern, Partikelkollisionen, Radiowellen, Zeitrost, Reibung von Entropie und Negentropie, sprachmelodischem Blaseton, Frequenzpingpong. Umso überraschender daher die klaren, wenn auch für den Laien kryptischen Sätze über Interferenz, Simultanität, die Unschärfe des Now-Space, von Senden und Empfangen. Moore meditiert über Turings ACE und die Alchemie von Quecksilber-Laufzeitspeichern, aber die Sprache wird wieder verzerrt, der Noise dafür prickelig und wohltönend. Doch dann umfängt einen wieder im ursuppig, uhrsuppig brodelnden, radiowellenberauschten Äther protologisch wummernde Sonic Fiction, die zuletzt endlosrillenstottrig ausgroovt." [Bad Alchemy] | 2017 | €28.50 |
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| MORGEN WURDE | Für Immer | do-CD | "Morgen Wurde and his musical allies move on to score the unfathomable wonder of the Dasein. "Für Immer" is a further breakthrough to the core, emanating sounds which let dissolve all conceivable questions of man about life and death. Sounds that let all questions appear negligibly. The immersive finds are channelled into ambient/space/drone music hybrids with neoclassical and jazz noir elements, sometimes crossing paths with messengers of transcendental sounds like Abul Mogard, bvdub, Fennesz, Gas, Rafael Anton Irisarri or Tim Hecker. The elevating experience happens in Morgen Wurde's electroacoustic spaces, hosting singular virtuoso instrumentalists. Creating the "Morgen Wurde" form of lyricism and haunting soundscapes, this collaborative exploration takes space music to new highs. There are the stoically undulating sound masses, like the ambivalence of the awe-inspiring mysterious forces of nature, sometimes majestic, sometimes threatening. And there are the soloists, wandering through these sonic landscapes as masters of their art: Doug Perry on the vibraphone and Tetsuroh Konishi on the trumpet embody subtle sublimeness. The violinists bring in widely differing styles: David Strother skipping ardently on top of the seething sound masses, Georges-Emmanuel Schneider forming a mystic amalgam with the underlying soundscapes. Maria Estrella's transcendent vocal texture, nestling in solemn spheres, marks the epic finale. These musicians bring unique elements of life and humanity to the recordings, adding their very personal note and vision. The rich material called for addressing also the body. Artists from around the world answered this call for cosmic dance remixes: Altone (Japan) initiates the rite with his transcendently free-floating remix, incorporating sounds from various album tracks. Roman Ridder (Germany) then sparks the dance with a deep dub techno ride. Liuos (Finland) irresistibly animates the body further into a trance, before Cie (Germany) breaks loose the passionate fire of rave. Lostlojic (Ukraine) upholds the energy of peaktime techno, before Dmitriy Zakat (Russia) navigates through an absorbing bass intermezzo, followed by a sweeping post-dubstep adventure by Sébastien Job (France). Martin Schulte (Russia) pursues the explorative mission driven by minimal tech breaks. Thereupon Johnnyx Guitar (Germany) deepens the tempting occult spirit of the venture. Duckem (Greece) leaves the traveller with moody trip hop in a Blade Runner-style bar, before we come full circle with the beat version of Altone's remix, reaching out to eternity. Like all the best remixing work, these tracks are not intended as alternative versions of the originals. Rather the remixes can be considered originals of the respective artists who drew sounds and vibes from the "Für Immer" originals. This is the third album in the series of Morgen Wurde's electroacoustic sound processing-based albums, following “Brach Auf” (2016) and “Assassinous Act” (2017) which were released on Time Released Sound, Alameda. Besides, there are two albums “Letzten Endes” (2015) and “Als je zuvor” (2018) (both on Off Rec.) which were composed classically on the piano and then clothed with electronic sounds." https://morgenwurde.bandcamp.com/album/f-r-immer | 2020 | €15.00 |
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| MORT DOUCE | Locust Dreams | CD-R | "The latest from Poland's Mort Douce is named after a poem by John Siddique. Given the title, I expected to be besieged with insect chittering or else the maddening rush of descending swarms. Instead,the sounds are almost geological, like dropping a microphone into the center of the Earth and amplifying minute tectonic shifts, documenting the secret life of continents. What first struck me when listening to this album was how it evokes an epic sense of space. "Dream of Better Days" begins with what could be the industrial clatter of a steel refinery reverberating in vast halls of feedback and suffering a slow death. "Beneath the Flesh" could be a geologic gasp, like a crumbling ice shelf, and "All Stripped Down" evokes large bodies of colliding minerals. Things get more cosmic with"A Flash Flood in the Night," which evokes the radar blips of a moonlanding while debris bounces off of a vessel in low gravity as faint bits of melody are drowned in gaseous swirls. The brief "Sun in My Hand" continues the outer space vibe, as if howling interstellar wind is stressing the metal of an orbiting satellite. The album's only misstep is "Coarse State of Saturn." It starts with rasping,swirling sounds and deep tones that are soon overwhelmed, if nothing jacked outright, by a wearisome high pitch that induces headaches and makes dogs howl. Unfortunately, this annoying high pitch overpowers and obscures most of everything else occurring on the track, which is otherwise dense with activity. Still, it's only one track of six and doesn't spoil the album's stronger material. Succinct and deliberate, Locust Dreams makes its point without any unnecessary fluff or padding. A definite step forward, it's easily the best thing I've heard yet from Mort Douce." [Brainwashed] www.danhuser.org | 2008 | €14.00 |
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| MORTHOUND | Off the beaten Track | CD | "it might have been in the air after raubbau’s extensive box set and the subsequent live performances, it sure has been hoped for by more than a few, and here it is confirmed, the first morthound album in over 20 years: the title somehow gives it away, this is an absorbing exploration of the dark ambient realms, a sometimes outright frightening dip into the pit, yet composed with the expert knowledge of a now seasoned producer. way off the beaten track, morthound returns triumphantly to the fold. so the question is naturally, which of his own traditions as morthound would bj nilsen explore on this comeback - the industrial/noise-heavy, the brute, the cold ambient, the psychedelic, the ritual, or even the academic/experimental attitude of his post-morthound career? the answer is: all of the above, but enveloped in a totally coherent, updated approach, subtly taking up the threads and weaving them into a good 45 minutes of flawless dark atmosphere. the path off the beaten track starts in a tense, minimal and unexpectedly bass-heavy fashion with 'the device', before the epic 'between midnight and dawn' brings in the somber layers of synthetic darkness that are classic morthound; in 'the munich manual' we are confronted with weird off-key elements, and 'disquieted' turns out a malicious death industrial tune seething with distortion; 'disembodied voices' portrays emptiness as sound and 'the black forest' finishes the album with almost harmonious, calming beauty. the challenge of a comeback album after that many years is obviously to handle the balancing act between picking up and respecting your own legacy on the one hand side, and creating something meaningful for the present on the other. with 'off the beaten track the light don't shine' bj nilsen has succeeded in both, created an album that will find avid followers in different generations of listeners, and has all the potential to become a genre classic." [label info] www.raubbau.org | 2015 | €13.00 |
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| MOULDYCLIFF / POTTER / MOULDYCLIFF [MPM] | Canopies + Cathedrals | CD | Canopies : A roof-like covering of trees enclosing a large or wide natural space. Cathedral : Large edifice usually of stone, enclosing space reserved for spiritual contemplation. Vertical structures that strive for light and open spaces, defying gravity, and reason. A Tarkosvsky-esque transcendence of spirit and nature, time imprinted on an intertwining of sap and stone, branch and pillar, column, and trunk. This third MPM release is co-written by Phil and Jackson Mouldycliff, with studio treatments (mixing, mastering, and arranging) by Colin Potter. Additional field recordings used in the composition were provided by Dave Carson. It accompanies an installation under the same title, with visual material by Phil, Dave, and Sarah Robinson, to be shown at Wells Cathedral in the summer of 2025. The extended ambient piece weaves together found sounds from the interiors of ecclesiastical buildings and both temperate and tropical forests. The composition features bells, organ, choirs, wind through vegetation, birds, insects-both real and imagined. These elements are further layered with synthesised and sampled sounds, creating a seamless soundscape that embodies the connection between nature, architecture, and memory. https://icrdistribution.bandcamp.com/album/canopies-cathedrals | 2025 | €13.00 |
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| MUELLER, JON | The Whole | CD | "Der Avantgarde-Perkussionist übersetzt tradiertes Handwerk in Musik: "The Whole" mag sein Debüt für das Label Type sein, doch ist es bei weitem nicht Jon Muellers Einstand in der Szene. Über seine Mitarbeit in Bands wie Collections Of Colonies Of Bees und Volcano Choir mit Justin Vernon aka Bon Iver sowie mehreren Soloalben und Kollaborationen hat sich der Mann aus Milwaukee einen Namen als hervorragender Schlagzeuger und Perkussionist gemacht. Als Nachfolger seines Werks "Metals", einer Sammlung klassischer Heavy-Metal-Rhythmen, und den ausschweifend schönen "Physical Changes" war es für Mueller Zeit für ein grundlegendes Statement. Fasziniert von einfachen und akustischen Klängen, ließ sich Mueller sogar vom alten Kunsthandwerk der Shaker, einer amerikanischen Religionsgemeinschaft, und vom Quilt-Handwerk beeinflussen. Beides einfache tradierte Handwerksformen, die aber immer wieder misinterpretiert wurden. Diese fehlgedeutete Simplizität ist ein Leitmotiv von "The Whole". Mueller erschafft mit Schlagzeug, Dulcimer und seiner Stimme einen Sound, der gleichzeitig originell und verführerisch ist, der Spuren der Vergangenheit und Echos der Zukunft trägt.// The Whole might be avant-percussionist Jon Mueller's first album for the Type imprint, but it's far from his scene debut. Working in a plethora of bands for many years (including Collections Of Colonies Of Bees and Volcano Choir with Justin Vernon aka Bon Iver), Mueller has honed his sound to a distinct peak, and over the course of umpteen solo albums and collaborations has cemented his status as one of experimental music's most revered drummers. Following his epic works Metals (a collection of classic heavy metal rhythms) and the expansive and surprisingly beautiful Physical Changes, both for the esteemed Table Of The Elements label, Mueller embarked on the heady process of creating a "defining" work. Intrigued by ideas of simplicity and acoustic sound, Mueller's research drew him to Shaker crafts and quilt-making, both deceptively simple practices rooted in the transmission of ideas. Over time, these experiences were interpreted in many different ways, almost certainly inaccurately, and this miscommunicated simplicity is at the very center of The Whole. Through a rolling, unamplified snare drum (a piece of kit perfected over a year of intense practice), booming low toms, hammered dulcimer and his own voice, Mueller creates a sound that is wholly original and totally beguiling. There are traces of folk traditions and lines drawn to the avant garde idiom, but Mueller's sound is so singularly perfected, it is hard to connect him to specific peers. The Whole is an album that sounds like both a relic of the past and an echo of the future. The ideas are anchored in memory and tradition, yet the sound is alien and sometimes impenetrable. Over time, as the messages are stripped back, an unabashedly gorgeous piece of work is revealed. Like a good book, it requires patience and contemplation to show its beating heart." [label info] www.typerecords.com | 2010 | €15.50 |
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| MULO MUTO | Decomposing Cacophonies | CD | “Decomposing Cacophonies” was recorded in Zurich (CH) in July 2017 by Attila and Joel during a long session. The duo embarked on a metaphysical exploration of the cycle of life and more specifically, reflected on how organic matter decomposes. This experiment was transposed into sound and subdivided into different moments that accompany decay. It is violent, at times calm at other times agitated, it may be noisy as well as dreamy; definitely deadly and ready to get recycled into the apparently never-ending cycle of inorganic and organic restoration. We live to die in order to let other beings live. We die to live in order to let other beings die. The album was mixed shortly after the recording and mastered in January 2018 by Attila Folklor between the plains and the mountains of Ticino. The pictures were taken by Joel during the Autumn of 2017 around the Mittelland, while Huere Giulio carefully took care of the layout. From Luce Sia’s press release: LUCE SIA is happy to announce its release n. 052, made in collaboration with the Swiss label L’è Tütt Folklor Records! Mulo Muto’s new album “Decomposing Cacophonies” is a 66 minutes crescendo of magmatic and piercing sounds, divided in 8 acts, that creates an intense and powerful ode to putrefaction. «You will have with this means All the glory of the world, And therefore every darkness will go far from you. It is the strong force of every force, because it will win every thin thing, and It will penetrate every solid thing.» (From “The Emerald Table”) Out now on digipack CD, limited to 190 copies! Decomposers: • Attila Folklor: electronics, synths, electroacoustic devices, loops • Joel Gilardini: treated guitars, synths, electronics, loops Thanks to Sacha, Nebo and Huere Giulio. Recorded by Attila Folklor and Joel Gilardini. Mixed and mastered by Attila Folklor. https://lucesia.bandcamp.com/album/052-mulo-muto-decomposing-cacophonies | 2018 | €12.00 |
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| MULTER | Berge im Bunker | CD | "The two tracks on this release are based on the music that was originally composed for the Berge im Bunker exhibition by Barbara Meisner that ran from August 2008 to May 2009 in Dortmund. The collage is a repeating, light melodic environmental soundscape that creates an unheimlich feel, while incorporating all [multer] elements: loops, electronica , drones... Still it is not a typical release for the German duo as it is their most minimal effort up to date. The music will get the best out of your imagination. CD (NO CD-R) limited to 200 copies." [label info] www.consouling.be "Zwei Stücke mit auditiv ähnlich gelagerter Faktur. Der Soundtrack zu einer Installation rückt [multer] von der gegenwärtigen Theorie einer Konzeptband in den unheilvollen Kunstbetrieb. Dabei sind die Klänge von [multer] unter dem Corrige von N seit jeher Träger von Stimmungen und emotionalen Miasmen, deren Inhalte sich durch das Goutieren im klanglichen Zusammenspiel noch mehr aufzuladen scheinen. »Berge Im Bunker« klingt aber so wenig kunstaffin als nach einem gewagten Experiment in Zeit und Raum. Die Musik ist defizitär sparsam, die Verwendung hochauflösender Echoschleifen geradezu gewollt zeitbrechend. Was sich nach einer minimalen Tapete für stehendes Kunstgut ausnimmt, funktioniert auf der Hörebene ohne visuelle Kontrapunkte ebenso. Das Album wirkt in den zwei Titeln gekonnt zerbrechlich, die Gitarre surrt melodramatische Arpeggien ab während der Raum sich durch sanfte Gongklänge in eine mantraartige Struktur verdickt, die sich nur durch den immerwährend wiederholenden Absatz markiert. Wiederholung, das sah selbst Cage als wichtig und nötig an denn nur so kann sich Veränderung einschleichen. Hier brechen [multer] mit dem gewohnten Bild einer rhythmisch veräderten Musik, die sich auf »Berge Im Bunker« mit einem Male in ein Zerrbild ihrer selbst verwandelt. Nicht für jeden ein Gewinn, aber ein grandioses Zusammenspiel von Kunst und Konzeption. 5/5 " [Thorsten Soltau / AEMAG] | 2010 | €13.00 |
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| MURCOF | Utopia | CD | "When Fernando Corona released Martes, his first album as Murcof, back in 2002, it was a bolt from the blue: a work of such clarity and strength of character that it became an instant genre classic. The album’s reputation spread by word of mouth, and it continues to sell as strongly now as it did when it was released, subsequently becoming one of The Leaf Label’s biggest selling albums. Corona is currently putting the finishing touches to his second Murcof album, scheduled for release in September 2004 on CD and DVD in full 5.1 sound. But before that comes Utopía, a specially priced collection featuring sympathetic reworkings of tracks from Martes, the two tracks from 2003's exceptional Ulysses 12", both tracks from the Utopía Remixes 12" (April 2004) and two further previously unreleased Murcof tracks, ‘Una’ and ‘Ultimatum’. More a companion piece to Martes than a prelude to the new album, Utopía distils the essence of the first album into sinuous new forms. The remixers employed here are a typically global bunch for The Leaf Label, including Sutekh (Context Free Media/San Francisco), Supersilent producer Deathprod (Rune Grammofon/Oslo), Icarus (The Leaf Label/London), Corona’s Mexican collaborator Fax (Static Discos/Mexicali), Jan Jelinek (Scape/Berlin), Geoff White (Force Inc/USA) and Colleen (The Leaf Label/Paris) delivering her first ever remix." [label info] www.theleaflabel.com | 2004 | €11.50 |
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| MURMER | What are the Roots that clutch | CD | "It was a cavernous tone that broadcast from a ventilator duct that inspired Patrick McGinley to begin collecting field recordings and working them into his slow-arc compositions. At the time when he heard that particular tone in that particular city at that particular time, he had no gear to recording device on hand. Over the next fifteen years (and counting) McGinley has eased into a peripatetic lifestyle, wandering the European countryside and forests (but never straying too far from the thrum and spark of civilization) in search of the same epiphany with his head rattled to the sound of a cavernous air duct. Around 1996, McGinley adopted the moniker Murmer for his compositional work; and though his work often steps into the quieter realm of sound construction, much of his field recordings and resultant compositions privilege interference and disturbances that occur within any given sound ecology. Those sounds could be the elusive tone from that ventilator, the polyrhythmic chorus of chirping frogs, the abstracted roar from an Arctic wind tearing across the Black Sea, or the metallic skree from a bowed antenna perched atop a Soviet-era observatory. What Are The Roots That Clutch marks McGinley's first full album in nearly 5 years, but it marks an elegant continuation of his previous album We Share A Shadow. The five chapters of this album can't easily be associated with any specific location; instead McGinley overlaps and crosshatches his field recordings and abstractions into acousmatic passages with ghostly, half-melodic qualities. Even the two unprocessed recordings of the album are impossibly complex in their accretions of sound. McGinley's composed pieces embrace lithe, mysterious drones whose mossy, damp atmosphere perfectly situate with tactile crunches, tactile events, and signal noise generation. Eels and leaches would not be out of place in such an environment; but the subaquatic murk snaps into a hallowed manifestation of ritualized minimalism at the album's finale -- one that LaMonte Young and Angus Maclise might have conjured in 1968 with clattering percussive elements and a hypnotic blur of harmonic drone. What Are The Roots That Clutch is limited to 400 copies and comes housed with letterpress artwork." [label info] www.helenscarsdale.com "Patrick McGinley just carries on. Working as Murmer since 1996 he has a strong love for the world of field recordings and electronics. Since quite some time now he lives in Estonia and walks the woods to tape his sounds, takes them home and then transforms them in whatever mysterious way. Five long pieces, from mere six minutes to eighteen minutes. The two pieces that stay under ten minutes are 'unmanipulated found sounds', the other three are 'composed from found sounds, found objects and live room feedback'. Its easy to tell the difference between one and the other. The 'pure' pieces are indeed pure pieces in which we hear the obscure sounds of motors, ventilators, or otherwise objects moved by say wind, while in the other three, McGinely chooses for a slow built up of events. A simple, single sound starts up and then slowly more and more sounds are added, sine wave like sounds leap slowly in and then at one point you'll notice that the entire piece seem to have changed and you have a full on, minimal yet maximum output sound, such as for instance in the fifth (untitled) piece when the pots and pans in the kitchen start to vibrate and we have an interesting minimalist clutter piece, that is halfway between a drone piece and a Velvet Underground jam. Maybe that's where the real surprise of this release is, in that development of field recordings towards very interesting (and very good) minimalist, electronic music." [FdW/Vital Weekly] "In looking at his discography alone, Patrick McGinley (aka Murmer) might not seem to be such a prolific artist; although he's certainly dedicated his entire existence to the pursuit of the field recording, its use in composition, and avant-garde sound practices in general. Each week, McGinley produces the ever enlightening Framework radio series dedicated to those very topics, starting out of Resonance FM in London with syndication now reaching several dozen adventurous radio stations across the globe. He's also active in curating a quarterly series of small cd-r editions of sound ecology, phonography, and field recording based sound art; and he also is an active participant in the Estonian avant-garde, as he's currently planted himself in the university city of Tartu. What Are The Roots That Clutch is his first full album in nearly seven years. Has it really been that long? That said, McGinley did work on a brilliant collaborative project with John Grzinich and Yannick Dauby, and he released a 3"cd-r for Taalem, both of which came out earlier this year in 2012. McGinley quips that he put the recordings aside to this record for well over a year, which may account in part for the delay; but ultimately, all of the recordings from Murmer are timeless. What Are The Roots That Clutch is no exception. The field recordings that McGinley collects hedge towards disturbances in any given sound ecology, as found in the abrasive textures from a busted exhaust vent comingling with the Aeolian harmonics from the sustained gusts streaming down from the North Sea. McGinley does include two relatively unaltered field recordings (probably some minor filtering, but that's all) within the thoroughly abstracted and droned out compositions. One of these features a very eerie fundamental harmonic drone, obviously being activated by the wind and coupled with a glistening rattle and an unfurled flapping. The three elements here make for a surprisingly musical, if totally alien sounding piece that's akin to the Alan Lamb wire recordings. The album's 17 minute centerpiece is a slow building blur of industrial resonance and densely layered aquatic filigree that melts into chunks of clattering ice (it could be wood or glass... but ice is just so much more poetic to consider given the context); but the album's finale is where McGinley really gives us something to sink our teeth into. A comparatively harsh stutter of electrical abrasion builds up to a crescendo through water-tank rumblings and fire and / or water textures. At the peak, McGinley snaps to a downright psychedelic raga of back-masked belltones, harmonium drones, and percussive clatter that all comes together in a minimalist chorale on par with anything that Angus Maclise mustered in his dervishes and mantras. As great as McGinley's last record was, What Are The Roots That Clutch might be even better. Handsomely packaged in letterpress artwork whose ochre-yellow hue matches the color of an Estonian farm house he's quite fond of. Limited to 400 copies." [Aquarius Rec.] | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| MURRAY, BRENDAN | Commonwealth | CD | Dröhnminimalismus pur! Poly-Drones die sich in endlosen Wellen umeinander legen, regelrecht anfangen zu schlingern. Aufs "erste Hören": Statik. Beim genaueren Hinhören: Eine unendliche Klangfülle, tänzelnde Obertöne, schwingende Frequenzen in multiplen Schichten, stetige Veränderungen und Verschiebungen. Der Drone-Gott steckt in den Details! Eine sehr feine Aufnahme des Bostoner Klangkünstlers BRENDAN MURRAY! "Nie wurden Sehnen mehr gedehnt als über Murrays 49 Minuten Commonwealth. Nur Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue oder Jean-Francois Laporte erzeugen solch sture Dronegebilde, in denen schüchterne Obertöne zu gigantischen Kolossen mutieren und Langatmigkeit den klaren Ton angibt. Harmonieansätze tauchen in diesem Wall aus Gitarre und analogen/digitalen Soundmanipulationen nur ganz spärlich auf und entblößen sich rasch als hilflose Wegweiser vergangener Genres. Nostalgie spielt allerdings keine Rolle, Commonnwealth schabt nach vorne, dezentriert Zeit und vermag sogar den Bewegungsapparat zu blockieren. Liest sich eventuell zu statisch, wirkt unter der Oberfläche aber äußerst drastisch. " [Ed Benndorf / DE BUG] "Brendan Murray has become a central figure in Boston’s sound art vanguard through a reputation of exceptional live performances and a growing catalogue of slow-shifting compositions for rarified drones. A single crescendo terminating at the end of 49 minutes, Commonwealth is an epic investigation into subtle harmonics and overtones expressed through layered slippages of pure sound. Conceived through guitar, analog synthesis, and plenty of digital manipulation, Commonwealth expresses a rare confidence in Murray's finely tuned detailing of sinewy tonalities and sculpted megalithic surfaces. Murray himself has qualified this album as a "sincere bow to 'classic' minimalism," and Commonwealth is a worthy parallel to the work of Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue, and Iannis Xenakis." [label info] "We've ballyhooed Brendan Murray's exceptional, yet perennially overlooked drone & din work in the past; but nothing could have prepared us for Commonwealth. Damn, this guy is good. No, wait; he's fucking great! After a handful of cd-r productions, a Twonicorn cassette, and a fine cd release on Intransitive of processed shimmer, shifting frequencies, and some low-end girth rumblings for our bligatory SUNNO))) reference, Brendan Murray has produced his best work to date with Commonwealth. Compositionally, it's incredibly simple: a drone goes up, and it goes down. It lasts a little under 50 minutes. But buried with this single minded composition, there are thick spun rumbles, reflective vibrations, sympathetic sub-harmonics, and rich tonal frequencies. Out of the constant tectonic whir that introduces Commonwealth, shimmering clusters sound like a battery of reed organs or hurdy-gurdies, slowly modulating into heavier, deeper drones. We've been told that the source material for these sounds is guitar, although you'd be hard pressed to hear anything guitar-shaped anywhere on the disc. It's far more like the hallowed minimalist sound of Charlemagne Palestine and La Monte Young. Dare we say, it's better? Yes, Murray's drone hums like a perfectly tuned machine, with multiple pistons purring in a steady progress along Commonwealth's compositional arc. When Murray shifts the focus of the album downward, which begins not even halfway through the piece, the descent is noticeable; but it actually becomes Murray's most fertile work within Commonwealth. Here, low rhythmic thrumbs crawl beneath the surface of the slowly collapsing drone, precluding its inevitable terminus. Perfect trance-enducing dronemuzik. Fans of Aidan Baker, Andrew Chalk, and Phill Niblock should definitely take note!" [Aquarius Records ] "... Much louder and less subtle, this is loud drone music, one of the kind that Niblock plays live. Although playing music on headphones is not something I usually recommend, this piece sounds pretty fine on headphones, pressing air against your ears, making a thunderous storm, which shoots right in your brain. Towards the end the volume drops a bit in favor of more heavy weight bass sounds, forming the natural ending to a heavy work. Murray delivers, once again, a mighty fine album that will be another step forward in recognizing him as a true master of the genre. Fans of classical drone music be aware - this is the classic of the future." [FdW / Vital Weekly] www.23five.org | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| MUSIC OF TRANSPARENT MEANS | Selected Live Recordings | LP | "Selected Live Recordings is the third release De La Catessen Records has divined from the archives of New-York-via-Adelaide minimalist composer Alex Carpenter, and the second in this series for his shape-shifting collective, Music Of Transparent Means. It follows the two side-long fantasias of 2021's self-titled album; this time, we pan out slightly, to grant the listener a varied and yet more complex understanding of the material Carpenter was writing and performing when this music was happening, during the noughties. On this album, you can hear the results of some intensive explorations of the possibilities of minimalism both at its most delicate, and at its most feverish. The heavenly stasis of "Disappearance #1", for massed wine glasses and bowed guitars, feels like being jettisoned in a water tower filled with ether; the wooziness of "Burial Music" captures something of the spirit of Fripp & Eno's (No Pussyfooting), but as though the tape is slowly disintegrating; the music is blurred at the edges, warped and sidereal. Perhaps the centerpiece of Selected Live Recordings, though, is the simple, yet ravishing, "Rose Street Womb". With its performers given a simple set of instructions -- to continually repeat and elongate a series of phrases, while listening and responding to the overall sound of the ensemble -- its pastoral psychedelia recalls the gentle slippages of Arthur Russell's landmark composition, Tower Of Meaning. Elsewhere, "Mountain Piece #2" is a thunderstorm for massed drums, while "Second Presencing" uses delays as a structuring device to paint an "audio canvas" from a clutch of damaged tones. Throughout, you can hear Carpenter's knowledge and deep study of the history of minimalist composition -- he has written extensively on the work of La Monte Young, and there is certainly some aesthetic and ideological crossover with the likes of Phill Niblock, Terry Riley, and Arnold Dreyblatt. But it is also very much his own thing, the result of an intensive period of study and exploration of the possibilities, not just of minimalist composition, but also of Just Intonation. With the material long whispered about in reverent tones, and circulating on CD-R only amongst a small group of like-minded souls, De La Catessen's ongoing series of releases of Carpenter's music is a major development, bringing to light one of minimalism's hidden histories." [press release] "From Iggy on the cover of Raw Power to Black Sabbath, circa 1980, in Milwaukee, from the ’52 Cleveland riot through to Suicide in Brussels, a healthy dose of chaos and danger is at the heart of all great rock music. So, it comes as no surprise to hear Alex Carpenter, the musician behind Music Of Transparent Means (MOTM), talk about chaos as core to the development of his music: “Even though there was this purity and mathematical elegance throughout some of the thinking and theory, what I remember almost more than that was the chaos and the mess, the forcefulness, the saturation and obliteration. The clear ideal gave way to this kind of loud, intense chaos, which in turn opened a path back to the clear.” Music Of Transparent Means has always struck me as a particularly rock-reverent kind of minimalism, as though Alex has removed all the excess baggage that rock has picked up over the decades and focused on its most important aspects: noise and intensity, energy and mayhem. There is, of course, a great tradition of rock minimalism, from the Velvet Underground through AC/DC to Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, on into Band Of Susans, Spacemen 3 and Loop, but Alex’s music is curious for the way it flips the script on those examples and gives us an altogether different take on the intersection of these two forces. You can hear the ‘elegant chaos’ of Alex’s compositions throughout this second archival release by the ensemble, which is filled with music that’s both seriously beautiful and deliriously serious. If the first MOTM release on De la Catessen gave an extended view into Alex’s work, with one long piece per side, here we have excerpts from performances throughout the years, allowing a more expansive take on both process and outcome. What strikes me, listening to this music, is the way that Alex indeed allows chaos to take its own non-form, to coalesce and congeal into huge, abraded blocks of sound, to allow the meeting of musicians, many from different walks of life, to morph into one throbbing brain at the centre of the sonorous universe. Hearing “Rose Street Womb” for the first time in over a decade, I am also momentarily surprised by how much it echoes another favourite composition of mine, Arthur Russell’s early ‘80s piece, Tower Of Meaning. In “Rose Street Womb”, musicians are each given one short phrase, or a series of them, “which were continually repeated (either fully or partially) and continually elongated,” Alex recalls. “Performers were encouraged to listen less to their own part and more to the overall ensemble.” Here, you can hear that collective mind flame into being, where a ticker-taping tessellation of tones builds abstract architectures. It’s a collectivity that’s echoed in the brief excerpt from “Mountain Piece 2”, for massed drums, though this concerns itself more with the dynamic of rise and fall, and the collapsing of our distinct sense of rhythm and texture; it’s an exhilarating rush of projected energy. By contrast, the woozy, sea-sick strands of melody in “Burial Music” obliterate themselves via the delay feedback system that Alex has constructed (shades of Fripp and Eno in the (No Pussyfooting) mirror-verse here), eventually leading to simple phrases collapsing in on each other, “resulting in a sort of ‘burial of melody’,” Alex confides. This focus on delay as a structuring force is also evident in the following “Second Presencing”, where Alex draws out what he terms an “audio canvas” by “increasing the delay time to over five seconds, thus opening a space in which I could react musically and build upon burgeoning patterns and gestures,” with a “slow change of harmonic centre”. If the delay pedal is so often the curse of lazy experimental and post-rock music, an easy route to padding out the tonal spectrum, Alex, on the other hand, uses it with indeed a painterly caress, using the parameters and extremities of this phenomenon to offer different ways of composing and responding to sound as it unfolds in real time, in front of our ears. The closing excerpt from a 2002 performance of “Disappearance #1”, for wine glasses and bowed guitars, has particular personal resonance for me – attending this show at SEAS Gallery was the first time I’d encountered Music Of Transparent Means, on the recommendation of Alex’s and my mutual friend (and general all-round mensch of Adelaide music) Nigel Koop. I recall being struck by the eloquence of the sound and tested by its duration. For Alex, “Disappearance #1” was a significant piece – “the result of a painful re-entry back into performance after a long period of getting hung up on theory,” he remembers, “in particular the history of Western tuning and the idea of returning to some rarefied (and impossible) ‘perfect sound.’ Writing in just intonation definitely helped with the re-entry, but ultimately I realised I wanted more energy and chaos, even if it was in the service of striving towards some type of perfection.” When I interviewed Australian musician Oren Ambarchi many years ago, I asked him why he was so moved by minimalist composers like Phill Niblock. His answer was simple: “I like it because it rocks.” Listening, with some intensity, to Alex’s music after some time away from it, I’m struck by the way it also collapses dualities – elegance and chaos; body and mind; heart and head; rock and minimalism. In here, we can experience something that’s fundamental, I think, to what we’re all looking for, perhaps moreso on the level of the unconscious, whether we’re lost in the zone at a heady recital or caught up in the tidal waves of noise rolling off the stage at a gig; deep, identity-dissolving sensory obliteration. Like being caught in the middle of the holocaust of sound that my bloody valentine erupt into at the end of their gigs, during “You Made Me Realise”, you’re blissfully lost, and not a little concussed and confused. “The goal was to exhaust people first,” Alex concludes. “To get them to a point where these perceptual habits stopped serving them. Like meditating on a word until it loses its referential significance or magnifying an image until its normally recognisable shape becomes unstable. It’s only after these surface layers start breaking away that we can start clearing a path towards a more direct engagement with the material.” [Jon Dale] https://transparentmeans.bandcamp.com/album/selected-live-recordings-2 | 2022 | €25.00 |
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| MUSLIMGAUZE | Izlamaphobia | do-CD | Re-release dieses Klassikers von 1995, dürfte zu einem der besten MUSLIMGAUZE-Werke gehören, sehr druckvoll und originell. “Rerelease of muslimlim 001 with new artwork in a limited edition of 800 It was first in what continues to be a series of limited-edition subscription-only releases from Staalplaat, Izlamaphobia starts with an aggressive blast, "Hudood Ordinance." With a rhythm track consisting of extremely tweaked and processed electronic beats and bleeps, with only the gentlest of Arabic string instruments deep in the mix to relate things to a more familiar Muslimgauze sound, the song sets the general mood for the rest of Izlamaphobia. This said, Bryn Jones' specific talent is such that even without that, this would still sound like him, his trademark care and obsessiveness in terms of percussion again evident. Two discs long and with a variety of romanticized (some might say stereotypical) songtitles like "The Eternal Illusionist of Oid Bachdad" and "Lahore Morphine Market," Izlamaphobia has two chief artistic themes, if anything. On the one hand, Jones' incorporation of hip-hop and funk beats has never been stronger, providing songs like "Gilded Madrasa" and "The Public Flogger of Lahore" with a wickedly fierce kick and drive. On the other, the strained, alien treatments on many of the songs would be well at home on innumerable Warp Records releases of the '90s, with squelching rhythms, undanceable dance tracks and, quite unsurprisingly, a desire to avoid expected techno clichés. With these two strains combined on many songs by Jones, the results are wonderfully slamming, strange tracks such as "Khadija and Fereshta." Not everything is quite so dramatically different from past Muslimgauze releases, with the incorporation of multilayered acoustic percussion cropping up more than once, such as on "Hijab Muzzle." Everything is just that little bit dirtier in sound, though, and all the more intriguing for it. Some tracks are mere snippets and others don't quite deliver on their promise, but all in all Izlamaphobia is yet another Muslimgauze success.” [press release] www.staalplaat.com | 2005 | €22.50 |
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| Tandoor Dog | CD | "In 1998 Staalplaat and Muslimgauze were on a conquering spirit. Bryn Jones (1961-1999), the man behind Muslimgauze delivered new works, almost on a weekly basis and was more than happy to see them released straight away. Unlike others, Staalplaat was never shy to release larger works, lumping various works together, such as the 9CD “Box Of Silk & Dogs”. Allowing free reign in editing, the 4LP box set ‘Tandoori Dog”, contained the LP of the same name, which saw only eight out of the ten original pieces. Now released as a sole CD, the complete, ten track “Tandoori Dog” is released on a limited CD, spanning in total sixty minutes of music. Muslimgauze didn’t fail in this highly productive period. Peaking as never before, his music here carries all that makes Muslimgauze the unique artist he is. Taking his influences from what can be loosely called the Middle East, but extending that to as far as Pakistan, Jones samples freely percussion, instruments and voices and adds these to his own sequences and instruments, such as the tabla. The melting pot that is the studio blends this together, in hypnotic pieces of music. Captivating, minimal, groovy, but rather than being slick and commercial, this is the roughly shaped electronic world of Bryn Jones. All of this motivated and inspired by events in the Middle East, as reflected through the titles Jones picked for his work. A strong pre-occupation with the fate of the occupied people in the Palestinian lands and an unashamed love for such controversial groups as Hezbollah. With the re-issue of “Tandoori Dog” another keystone work by Jones is finally being available again." [label info] www.staalplaat.com | 2013 | €15.50 |
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| Minaret Speaker | CD | "While the human voice has often been an element in Bryn Jones’ work as Muslimgauze, rarely did he highlight it as much as he does in these two newest releases from the Muslimgauze Archive Series. While elements of Minaret Speaker appeared on the 7” of the same name released by Staalplaat in 1996, much of the strongest material here is previously unheard. Jones’ normal practice was to send in tapes to the label with only a title for each tape as a whole, then provide individual track titles before each release. Sadly, with his passing in 1999 we are left with many projects where he provided album titles but, barring a séance, the tracks themselves will always remain untitled. The material on Minaret Speaker can be broken into two groups; the first, the ten tracks that make up the bulk of this release, make clear immediately why Jones picked that title for the album, with the ten-minute “Minaret Speaker Track 1” serving as a duo for his trademark digitally distorted percussion loops and what certainly sounds like a recording of a call to prayer, or adhan. The voices on the tracks here are ones that may well have come out of an actual minaret speaker at some point. One these tracks, as the musical backing gets harsher and more distorted, the voices reach towards deliverance; the results, even on wordless interludes like the string-based “Bamboo Bound” is something that can seem more approachable than some of Jones’ work as Muslimgauze. The four Rest tracks that make up the end of this release form a brief bonus EP of even lower-fidelity-than-normal works in progress from Jones, with “Rest Track 1” immediately sounding like Jones putting his own work through some new contortions. At times this material gets and fuzzed- and dubbed-out as anything in the Muslimgauze discography, a perfect accompaniment to the mix of soaring and pulverizing music found on the rest of the album." [label info] www.staalplaat.com | 2015 | €16.50 |
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| Turn on Arabic American Radio | do-LP | The relationship between Bryn Jones’ music as Muslimgauze and the track/abum titles he would provide (sometimes right on the tapes he would send in for release, but often determined later, sometimes even giving two different pieces months apart the same title, accidentally or not) has always been a little mysterious. Jones himself can no longer be asked, and as we continue to investigate the swathes of material he provided, you hit sources like the DAT or DATs that make up the contents of the new double LP »Turn On Arab American Radio«. Nine tracks, the first LP/four tracks titled »Turn On Arabic American Radio,« and the other LP/five tracks labelled only »Arabic American Radio.« None of them sound particularly radio-esque, although given the simultaneous vastness and ornate focus of Jones’ Muslimgauze work that gap between name and sound is far from atypical. Instead here the de rigeur percussion loops that underpin this particular set of tracks, while occasionally clipping into the fierce distortion that Jones either loved to use or couldn’t get away from, steer away from both the more consistent application of that distortion as well as the Middle Eastern and Asian influences he often used. It’d be a stretch to call anything here basic boom-bap production but they come closer to it than a lot of Muslimgauze production. And while those loops are, as always prominent, they’re not actually the focus; settling into steady vamps as structures for Jones to pursue an extended and often more gentle exploration of the other sample sources he has here. There are stringed instruments, the sound of water, but most prominently or strikingly the human voice. Nothing is in English but tone and the occasional word ('familia', 'passport') still provide guides. There are ululations, snatches of melody; but most often speech, dialogue, often tense and harried sounding. Is this what Jones was thinking of or referring to with his Arabic American Radio? As with so many other questions about Muslimgauze, we’ll never know the answer to that one. (Most pertinently in this case we might wonder who appears here, and what the context of these recordings is. But Jones never provided that with his submissions.) Here, even though those inexorable loops pound on, indefatigable, that emphasis on some of the people Jones chooses lends a measured gentleness to much of »Turn On Arabic American Radio«, at least within the context of his body of work. The last thing you hear at the end of the second LP is one last question from one of the many speakers on this peculiar Muslimgauze radio, echoed away into infinity. We may never have answers, but those questions continue to resonate. https://www.discogs.com/release/25889791-Muslimgauze-Turn-On-Arabic-American-Radio | 2023 | €33.00 |
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| MV&EE MEDICINE SHOW | The Uranian Ray | LP | "This beautiful vinyl LP edition MV & EE MEDICINE SHOW's 'URANIAN RAY', originally released on the legendary CHILD OF MICROTONES label in 2004, is a stunning 'get-hi-fidelity' remastered reissue prepared on the spirited channels of the SPECTRASOUND mastering system developed by MATT VALENTINE himself. Therefore a fresh take on a previous favorite, the lunar brother to 'MOON JOOK" hand picked from their catalog by SPIRIT OF ORR, capable of achieving a glorious exit velocity, and slightly rearranged for the time limits & opportunities vinyl provides. Limited single pressing on black vinyl." [label info] | 2007 | €15.00 |
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| MYTRIP | Keeper | LP | "The new Mytrip full-length album “Keeper” is a work of progress and growth, of pushing oneself out of comfort zones while managing to stay true to a carefully nurtured and developed aesthetic. A continuation of the sound hinted at in “Filament” (Amek, 2016) and Angel Simitchiev’s recent work with other projects, “Keeper” is a more rhythmic and loop-based work that explores and juxtaposes a plethora of atmospheres and moods, thus resulting in a sonically and emotionally complex and mature piece of music that manages to communicate its author’s singular vision. The backbone of “Keeper” was originally written for a live performance at the Bulgarian National Radio in October 2018. Self-recorded with the intention to be preserved as a live album, most of the music retains the original structure, feeling, and intensity of this first performance but was further explored and expanded during recording sessions and selected live shows throughout the next year. Some ideas were dismissed while others were expanded on. As a result, “Keeper” has become a record that is polished and meticulous, while sounding and feeling utterly real, raw, and immediate." https://amekcollective.bandcamp.com/album/keeper "It has been a couple of years since I last checked in with the activities of Mytrip, but their 2016 album Filament was an excellent release which has received occasional spins over the years. In my review from 2017 I noted it: ‘operates at the border regions between dark ambient, drone, (modern) industrial and (abstracted) experimental techno, therefore encompassing a sound that defies easy categorisation’ (full review here). Keeper is the brand-new six tracks album and while continues also substantially builds on the earlier sonic framework by blending its elements in more varied yet unified way. Also, according to the promo blurb, the core of the album has its basis in a 2018 live performance at the Bulgarian National Radio, which has been further expanded and reworked. Eyepiece opens the album with amorphous and ethereal drones blended with jittery programming and functions to immediately draw focused attention, before the mid-track it twists off in a different direction with sustained synth melodies. We Are All Shadow People follows and has a sense of stationary motionlessness resulting a series of duelling looped textures and abstracted synth lines. In then arcing away from this stasis, Unsealing Colossus divergently features widescreen vistas with sweeping ‘wind textured’ drones, muted melodious pulses and other semi-fractured rhythmic elements. Blood Black Like Water is then as brooding as the title suggests, based around a murky aquatic churn and throbbing base pulse, while a slow bass kick edges the track forwards. Upheaval shifts the mood again and is extremely filmic in tone, given its driving / throbbing techno pulse and maudlin cinematic synths, while the album’s concluding piece Warmth Patterns, is perhaps the most melodious track of all, with interweaving ‘glimmering’ textures (and perhaps draws a fleeting compassion to the likes of Fennesz). Each of the six album tracks sits at around the five-minute mark, meaning the total run time is around 30 or so minutes, yet given its compositional variation it nebulously feels to be much longer than this. Equally the abstracted line-work found within nature as illustrated on the the cover is a suitable visual metaphor for the flowing complexity of the music. More varied, freeform and self-assured than Filament, Keeper is equally immediate as it complex in sonic construction, meaning it draws attention on first listen and maintains it on repeated rotations. Recommended." [Noise Receptor] "Angel Simitchiev is the man behind Mytrip and also acting as the label boss here and as such we know him as a man who loves mood music of the somewhat darker variety. It has been a while since I last heard a full-length work by Mytrip (Vital Weekly 1059 I believe) and I wrote that he "no doubt plays guitar, electronics and field recordings", but that was based on nothing, to be honest. There is a picture of Mytrip on the insert, just second before he starts performing and there is no guitar in sight. A laptop, some 'gear' and that's all. Maybe there has been a shift towards different instruments in recent years that I am not aware of. In the music, this shift is quite clear. The music was written for a show in Studio 1 of the Bulgarian National Radio and later on, some fragments were dropped and others expanded upon. The dark mood from field recordings tuned and turned in drones is a still a presence but rhythm also plays a role now. Not stomping around, but carefully placed when needed, and omitted on other occasions. In 'Upheavel' the "rhythm" sounded like a Muslimgauze sample from the 'Azzazin' era. There is a warm glitch effect to most of the music here, which makes a nice effect for a change. It is perhaps a reminder of the warm days of laptop glitch from a long time ago, but Mytrip cleverly combines this with the best of processed drones and spacious dark ambient music, stringing together another hybrid of what ambient can be. Not something that is entirely new but with the addition of rhythm samples coming up with six fine slabs of dark mood music, which, strange as it may seem, never is the sound of despair, but of light and hope. Maybe I am all wrong but that's how it all sounded to me. Great record, all together." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2020 | €16.00 |
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| N [XX] (HELLMUT NEIDHARDT) | Tremonia | LP | N is one of the most profiled German drone / ambient artists - being active since the early 1990s he has released more than 50 records. On "Tremonia" he returns with the idea to picture a certain place musically - his approach goes further than before, using field-recordings for the first time. "Tremonia" is located under a row of 17 railway-bridges very close to the central station of Dortmund. Those bridges are played by the trains entering and leaving and also give house to an unknown number of homeless people. All these impressions can be heard on the field recordings of "Tremonia" taken in the early morning hours. Technically the record still sticks to N's "no overdub" rule with solo recordings: The field recordings were played over a third amplifier while recording the guitars, thus the mix was done live. Part of the tracks had been selected by Urbane Künste Ruhr for a compilation of places described by music. heavy handprinted rough cardboard covers, black polylined inner sleeves, 180g black vinyl, strictly limited to 100 copies https://n1511.bandcamp.com/album/tremonia | 2023 | €33.50 |
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| N / SEGMENT | Karnap | 7inch | Ganz wunderbare split-Single zweier MULTER-Leute, zarte Gitarrenpickings und E-Bow-Obertöne, zu schön für diese Welt ! Two MULTER – members with solo-tracks (or one remixing material of the other), two brilliant tracks of intellligent guitar-ambience. Our deepest recommendation ! “[multer] guitarist Hellmut Neidhardt has nearly finished a pure guitar-album under the project name 'N'. Last mastering activities with Thomas Köner are currently carried out. But before the album is released, this single, on which 'Segment' cared for editing some guitar-takes, is published. Pure guitar sounds! Two songs are the result, with a grace reminding us of heavenly crowds of angels, kept in house arrest and spending their time imitating with harps and violins the bustle of ants or dragonflies. Heavenly beautiful.“ [press-release] www.genesungswerk.de | 2001 | €8.00 |
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| N O [HELLMUT NEIDHARDT & PREMONITION FACTORY] | 0 1 | LP | N-O is an ambient drone project formed in Dortmund Germany in 2012. The line-up exists of N / Hellmut Neidhardt on guitar and Premonition Factory / Sjaak Overgaauw on synth and FX. Although both do have a different style, their joined sound nicely melts together in endless clouds of ambient textures and beautiful atmospheres. Its minimalistic approach and high improvisation level are the keys of what they call an inspiring collaboration unveiling the secrets of a new musical world. https://premonitionfactory.com/n-o " '0 1', my collaboration with Premonition Factory, is something like the complete opposite to 'Disrupt / Construct', both in music and making: Hazy drones of interwoven guitar and keyboard trails hanging in the air like a three dimensional carpet of fog over a river. When playing our tour back in the days, Premonition Factory and me discovered quite fast that we have a similar way of composing: mostly just starting the machines and then going somewhere, always with a good care in keeping the atmosphere, but also trying to expand the first sketch to something bigger. With a sound that really interweaves, transforming both instruments into one. The music on '0 1' has been composed playing together live in the studio; there was no later editing or changing parts, these are our original recordings... Again, this record is packed in that super raw cardbox; this time with a somehow washed-out picture showing the foggy banks of a small river I lived very close to the last 23 years... Well: ...and N O / '0 1' just means, that there will be a number '0 2' in the not too far future... Trust us." [Hellmut Neidhardt} | 2019 | €26.00 |
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| NADJA | Under the Jaguar Sun | do-LP | "Packaged in a full color custom made book bound gatefold sleeve with 180 gram vinyl. Note: The vinyl version features three mixes by Nadja and one mix by Edward Ka-Spel using the 2xCD set as source material so the music is very different from the CD version. “Night and day, you are the one. Only you beneath the moon or under the Jaguar Sun…” Now you’re messing with a sun of a bitch. Let’s count backwards. The second disc in this set “Quetzalcoatl” diffuses into the air an alien vocabulary of electronicesque gargles and hums. A soundtrack made from the residue left after a subterranean dowsing for the echoes of collapsing stars. These disembodied post-transmissions form up in a Minerva’s Web of sunken Titanic ghosts, slow moaning as from distant caverns. Disc one of the set, “Tezcatlipoca” is the actual collapsing of stars. Or, perhaps the exploding majesty of every day’s new sun being reborn, as it once again defeats those Xibilba’s and rises to arc through its dominion again. This monstrous soul goes from grumbling angrily to mowing the heavens. Parts even cross into early Swans territory with aggressively fractured pacing. But all roads lead to the final track which is an epic length doom metal anthem of sweating proportions. Wave after wave of crushing fuzz slowly pummel speakers into diamonds and rust. A relentless solar rotorvating blasterpiece. Which brings us to part 3 of this 2 CD set. Both CD’s have been composed to also be played simultaneously, in a much more useable fashion than the Zaireekas of the world. So, if “Tezcatlipoca” is overground and “Quetzalcoatl” is underground (or, more likely, the reverse) their combination must be all things….and no things. Maybe the sound of the end of things. The resultant juxtaposition is a colossal celestial being smiling down on all he tramples." [label info] www.blrrecords.com | 2010 | €26.50 |
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Ruins of Morning
(SOLD OUT) |
10inch | "RUINS OF MORNING shows NADJA in a very experimental & dark poetic mood. Their contribution for the "Substantia Innominata"-series (dealing with / drawing inspiration from the "Unknown", "Unnameable" or "Not-Knowable") comes in two long parts based around one musical theme that appears again and again (a great dark harmonic phrase moving through different levels through this epic track), linked by very beautiful drone-sections & more noisy outbursts. Song-orientation and a more experimental sound-art approach are thus combined perfectly. The phantastic lyrics from Aidan Baker point in a very poetic way to an utopian new morning where material values play no role anymore, but a new state of sensual being is settled in an almost J.G.BALLARDian way, when perceptions of the environment (sky, lights, sun) and the beloved (eyes & skin) fall into one. Or is this a nocturnal boundless dream-phantasy? The wish / fear to return to mothers womb, a state where everything is one (one is all) again? These lyrics open up a scope of vague possible interpretations witch match up perfectly with the impressing music; a music that describes "The Unknown" in strong metaphors of surrealistic psychic states of being. Experience the avantgardish drone-metal duo at their most dark & beautiful and on their very first 10" ! Edition of 500 copies on GOLDen vinyl, fantastic artwork by Marcin Lojek (ibsendesign.pl). One track in two very long parts, playtime 40+ minutes!!" [label info] RELEASE DATE 10. APRIL 2010 !! www.substantia-innominata.de "...In this series things evolve around 'Unknown', 'Unnameable' and 'Not-Knowable'. Nadja plays one piece, cut in two. Here they use more guitar like sounds, as Aidan Baker is the guitarist and vocals, while Leaf Buckareff plays the bass and Nadja find themselves in the shady zone where drone meets metal. The a-side is a mellow piece, if that is an appropriate word for the world of Nadja, but the b-side opens with a wall of sound type of drumming and then another wall of guitars, playing some of the darkest, slow metal music. Hardly drone like, which seems to an entirely different thing, but I must say there is something to say for the fact that this is drone like: the whole piece, both sides, works wonderfully well as a piece of dark ambience, the apocalyptic version of drone music. Not for the weak of hearth and mind!" [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2010 | €15.00 | ||
| Autopergamene | CD | "Call it drone-doom-dirge-shoegaze or any other in vogue nomenclature you like. It doesn’t matter. The music is so sublime and superb that we consider a waste of time trying to further categorize the spiraling sounds exhaling from a NADJA album. They are simply the true originators of this bred of blissful, seriously intense and ominously ethereal heavy sounds. Autopergamene finds the duo at the peak of their sonic language of slow-blooming, heavily nuanced ambient guitar constructions and epic heaviness. From blissful, paced and almost orchestral hymns to lush acoustic guitars and super distorted, fuzzed out rumbling sludge riffages. Breathtaking. Lavishly assembled in a custom 6-panel digisleeve packaging housing a 6 cards set with beautiful watercolor paintings and artwork by the gifted Portuguese artist L Filipe dos Santos. Superb mastering via James Plotkin. Limited to 800 copies." [label info] www.essence-music.com | 2010 | €14.00 |
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| Flipper | LP | "Over the roughly ten years of their musical activity, Nadja has undoubtedly become one of the most well-known and influential Drone bands around – and rightly so. Their unique soundscapes, characterized by epic soundscapes, radiating synths, and hushed vocals have a truly mesmerizing effect and capture you with their bizarre beauty. On this album, Nadja explore new territory and focus on the endless ocean of the mind. Aidan and Leah are joined by Peter Broderick on violin, and Angela Chan on viola. Tracklist: A1 - Drown (10:08) A2 - Song For The Sea (12:38) B1 - Wrapped In Plastic (12:15) B2 - Hands (9:00) As the name already suggests, this album is dedicated to dolphins, with all profits being donated to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation. All releases on Oaken Palace Records are produced by a Gold Standard carbon-neutral and ISO14001-certified company. The sleeves are made of 100% sustainable paper, and non-toxic printing colours are used. Limited edition of 500 on 180g clear vinyl. All records come with a free download code." [label info] www.oakenpalace.com | 2013 | €20.00 |
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| Queller | CD | "Second edition on CD. Strictly limited to 450 copies housed in our luxurious, sturdy tip-on mini-LP gatefold packaging. Features slightly modified and expanded artwork, including a silkscreened poster and die-cut bellyband. Nadja’s absolutely unique and incredible splicing of extreme doom, shoegaze and experimental music that the Canadian duo – currently based in Berlin – likes to call dreamgaze is of such beauty and heaviness that it can crumble skyscrapers and mesmerize souls in absolute bliss and colossal majesty. Calmer and more structured when compared to their other albums, Queller is their newly crafted masterpiece where the band explicitly dives back into the new wave and post-punk era to combine those influential sonorities with an amalgam of immense and gorgeous sludging heavy guitar constructions. As the mastermind Aidan Baker wisely says, “Killing Joke, Joy Division and Wire reinterpreted through the Nadja spectrum”. The ethereal, lush and slow-motion heaviness of tracks like “Dark Circles” and the crushing blasts of “Lidérc” per se are true statements of an album of epic proportions. Nadja at its absolutely best. Fantastic artwork by Error! Design and mastering by James Plotkin." [label info] www.essence-music.com | 2016 | €15.00 |
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| SV | LP | "Comprised of a long, single 42 minute composition, this album combines Nadja's layered, textural noise with polyrhythmic drum patterns that, in their structure, approach industrial that might almost be danceable. Pounding, punishing machine-like hypnotic pulses, harsh cymbals and caustic textures grow together and collide in a massive metallic maelstrom of piercing doom-dirge heaviness. It's a surprising, yet rewarding departure from your typical Nadja dose of slow-blooming, nuanced ambient guitar constructions. The CD comes in a miniature-LP sized custom 6-panel digisleeve with gorgeous artwork by Seldon Hunt and mastering by James Plotkin. Limited to 600 copies." [label info] https://brokenspine.bigcartel.com/product/nadja-sv | 2024 | €21.50 |
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| NADJA / AIDAN BAKER | Nalepa | LP + CD | NADJA | AIDAN BAKER NALEPA After their highly acclaimed album “Luminous Rot” (Southern Lord), Nadja continue their body of doom drone shoegaze works with the instrumental album “Nalepa”. On “Nalepa” Nadja are joined by Ángela Muñoz Martínez on drums, also known as one of the percussionists in the always evolving Hypnodrone Ensemble. The three musicians teamed up for a live in studio session at Funkhaus Berlin, after being invited by Jake Muir, with the aim “that we might do something different in the studio than we normally would ourselves” (Aidan Baker). The former DDR broadcast studio with its giant studio rooms, is the perfect place for an epic drone doom session, providing enough room for all the sounds to sprawl. “Nalepa” features the studio session, divided into six parts, or two parts on vinyl. The first half is a pushing forward doom beast, featuring repetitive themes, while the second part comes with a more experimental seething approach, like a volcano close before eruption. The album has its own haunting libertine mood and sounds different, compared to other Nadja albums featuring drummers. Have a listen on soundcloud. In a follow up session some weeks later, Aidan Baker also recorded a solo album at the illustrious Funkhaus Berlin that is featured as a CD, which comes with the Nadja LP. “Nalepa” by Aidan Baker features four dynamic tracks, moving somewhere between ambient, drone, jazz and space rock. All sounds on that record are played live by Aidan. He played drums over live-looped guitar and bass patterns, to create four exceptional energetic pieces. “Nalepa” comes in an edition of 250 copies on LP+CD. Black vinyl with printed labels and reverseboard printed sleeve on 300g cardboard. The CD is housed in a reverse board printed cardboard wallet. Both formats are featuring artwork by øjeRum. Nadja – Nalepa LP Funkspiel I (8:25) Funkspiel II (10:50) Funkspiel III (6:58) Funkspiel IV (12:25) Funkspiel V (7:54) Funkspiel VI (5.24) Aidan Baker – Nalepa CD Radioplay I (10:46) Radioplay II (11:24) Radioplay III (8:38) Radioplay IV (11:18) Credits: Nadja Aidan Baker (guitar) Leah Buckareff (bass) Ángela Muñoz Martínez (drums) recorded live in studio 01.02.2020 at Funkhaus Berlin by Jake Muir, Matias Santos and Olívi Mamberti Aidan Baker Aidan Baker (guitar, bass, drums) recorded live in studio 27.03.2020 at Funkhaus Berlin by Jake Muir, Matias Santos Technical: LP + CD / Limited to 250 copies LP comes on black vinyl / reverseboard printed sleeve / printed labels CD comes in wallet / reverseboard printed sleeve https://www.midirarecords.com/release/md-100-nadja-aidan-baker-nalepa/ | 2022 | €32.00 |
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| NALLE | The Sirens Wave | LP | 180 gram deluxe gatefold vinyl version. "Imagine for a moment the Wicker Man manned by the late Teiji Ito -- resident avant composer for Harry Smith & Maya Deren -- with psych-folk giants Comus sitting in for good measure and you've got some idea of what Glasgow avant folk trio Nalle have put together on their mesmerizing sophomore effort, The Siren's Wave. Centered around Hanna Tuulikki's rich and expansive vocals, with a heady, kaleidoscopic mix of vintage whirling oscillators, Moog synths and buzzing harmonium, alongside the intrepid string explorations of Chris Hladowski and Aby Vulliamy, these six pieces continue the long trek through other worlds of sound to form a dense, cohesive suite that meshes everything from Japanese gagaku, European plainsong, Near Eastern modal drones and more. With Siren's Wave, Nalle have procured a special place where folk conventions are curiously uprooted & seamlessly meshed with otherworldly avant tendencies. Features members of The Family Elan, Scatter & the One Ensemble of Daniel Padden." [label info] www.locustmusic.com | 2008 | €18.00 |
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| NAM-KHAR | Sur Chöd | CD | The Ritual/Drone collective Nam-Khar return to our Winter-Light label with their latest inner outing entitled 'Sur Chöd'. This is Nam-Khar's second release with Winter-Light, after the very successful and well received 'Secret Essence/Sangwa Dupa' album in 2018. The music has evolved .... "Sur Chöd" is composed of 6 long-form pieces, each piece transforming and morphing in to a musical entity within it's own right. The traditional percussive elements are still there in the music, deployed in full force alongside more subtle uses of these instruments. It is the use of the drone and bass elements that have changed on this release. The small vacuous pockets which Nam-Khar use so well are soon filled with warm, thick drones, synthesised sweeps and enlightening cosmic sounds. It once again creates that space for the listener to move into for contemplation and reflection, to energise and focus through the welcome isolation space created by Nam-Khar's atmospherics. Pushing the inner-traveller ever further onwards, along different trodden paths. Ritual ambient, dark ambient, drone, industrial and subtle tinges of dark-jazz await the listener on this deep and diverse release from Nam-Khar. https://winter-light.bandcamp.com/album/sur-ch-d "Two years after its first album on Winter-Light label, Nam-Khar is back with the “Sur Chöd” full length, which seems as a natural evolution of the project, yet while keeping its specific style of Eastern aural mysticism, the project is infusing a handful of fresh spicy ingredients to their music. Already on the first track based on the sounds and echoes of horns and gongs you may notice a subtle yet quite atmospheric layer of the shade and colour I cannot recall it was present on “Secret Essence/Sangwa Dupa”. But it is with the second piece, “aDre” that all the fun begins. Of course the word “fun” should be filtrated by sensitivity of an introversive dark ambient supporter, like me for that matter. How the drones flow, blend and morph one into another… It is made with all the principles of the genre, takes you far above the Himalayan peaks and lets you float blissfully. If you know me a little, you know that I’m not so fond of the pitch-black side of the genre. There always should be at least a faint glimpse of light, an atmospheric or oneiric foothold, so to speak. On “Sur Chöd”, Nam-Khar finds a perfect balance while maintaining this “tibetan” spirit from the previous releases they managed to create a veil of still mystic, yet a more universal aura. Something that cannot be limited by the monikers related to a certain culture. It is as profound as the Nature itself. It still can be overwhelmingly dark, like “Dregs Pa”, yet I feel this time it is a facade, an opening gate for the unknown, vast realms of the world beyond. How the drones intermingle one with another forming these beautifully esoteric structures may at some points recall the darker works by Klaus Wiese or Mathias Grassow and since I’m a die-hard fan of both German artists, I can’t be more happy of that fact. “gNod sybyin” is evidently the best example. Along with these specific eastern drums and a silky glacial background it results with possibly the most sublime composition of the whole album. On this album Nam-Khar has evolved into a five person ensemble. I’m not sure exactly how the personal constellations looked in the past (most of the time I was convinced that it is a one-man project, to be honest), but I suspect there’s some fresh blood on the board this time and this different perspective is noticeable, yet it doesn’t conceal what Nam-Khar is about. Nice example of stimulating diversity in favor of the project’s coherent style is “Gangs chen mdzod lnga”. Atmospheric scapes, reverbed tinkles, ritual sequences and silence being a crucial part of the whole composition. No single unwanted sound. The final track has been made in collaboration with Akoustik Timbre Frequency, the project by Priapus23, who’s also known as a CEO of a ritual dark ambient label Sombre Soniks. And this is another “Sur Chöd” highlight, an unconditionally stunning fusion of divine drones, unrushed beats and a handful of tiny ornamentations. This one may not be exceedingly intricate, but in this case the artists prove that simplicity is a virtue and I found myself listening to “T’ew Rang” several times in a row, on repeat. I would say it’s Nam-Khar’s best work up-to-date. I still appreciate “Secret Essence/Sangwa Dupa”, as I wrote in a review that album was more than decent, but I have to admit that I find some moments too “straightforward dark” to me, so I have to be in a proper mood to play that CD. “Sur Chöd”‘s palette of emotions is far more broad and giving even more possibilities for your own inner journeys. Where will it take you? Check for yourself." [Santa Sangre mag] | 2020 | €13.00 |
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| NAMBLARD, MARC | F. Guyana | CD | "The field recordings of « F.Guyana » have been realized in the forests and the costal regions of French Guiana between the dry season and the « little rainy season » (November/December 2014, 2015 and 2016). 1. Awala — Plage des Hattes, Awala-Yalimapo. Softness of the setting sun with a greenbrown sea tainted with red as a backdrop. Waves hemmed with foam and a hot breeze blurring the sound of palm trees and crickets make a répétitive music. 2. Crique Popote, Rhinella marina — Crique Popote, east of Saül. Beginning of the night. Cane toads (Rhinella marina) come out of the forest and cautiously step into the world of a creek which is still sleepy at the end of the dry season. Their powerful sonorous trills intermittently punctuate the silky humming of nocturnal insects. 3. Crique Popote, Cacicus cela — Same location, at daybreak. The first rays of the sun spray gold dust on emerging treetops. A colony of Yellow-rumped Caciques caw their wacky repertoire in the crystalline air. Guianan Red Howler Monkeys and cicadas – among other early risers – also make their way through thèse dream-like surroundings. 4. Pics et Colibris, Woodpeckers and hummingbirds — On the dirt road to Saint-Élie, near Sinnamary. On either side of the road, a confused, impenetrable forest edge where even the whirring sound of hummingbirds and high-pitched droning of cicadas appear to be held back. Yet, here also, the forest offers a remarkable sensation to ears who like to listen, where each call, song or drummed sound seems like a cleverly written note on a timeless musical score. Above our heads, a woodpecker hammers at a piece of bark, tears it away and abandons it before flying away. 5. Boeuf Mort, Dark night — On a path called ‘Boeuf Mort’, near Saül. The dark night shivers. In the foreground, a tiny tree frog, Pristimantis inguinalis, pulses its brief resounding note, alternating with the trisyllabic call of Vitreorana oyampiensis, a Small glass frog. A Variegated Tinamou (Crypturellus variegatus) finally betrays its presence with its characteristic whistling. 6. Kaw Mountain, Manucus manucus — Kaw mountain, late morning, in the jumble of a secondary forest. Several White-bearded Manakins (Manacus manacus) have gathered in a courtship display area and fly about at prodigious speed, disseminating sparks of sound produced by their vibrating wings. Several doves (probably Leptotila rufaxilla) as well as a Northern Slaty Antshrike (Thamnophilus punctatus) can be heard in the background. 7. Petit Saut, Ara chlroropterus — Late afternoon, south of lake Petit Saut. A magical moment after a short but generous shower. In just a few minutes, and as the forest has finished shaking off the rain, a composite whisper builds up. Voices appear, rise, multiply themselves and at times whirl around. Perched on tall candle-like dead trees, Red-and-green Macaw (Ara chloropterus) converse and enjoy the sound of their vocal explosions propagating over the vast space. 8. Forest drones — Hypnotic summary of the throbbing sound of the primary forest early in the morning with Black Spider Monkeys (Ateles paniscus), Guianan Red Howler Monkeys (Alouatta maconelli), Stingless bees (Melipona sp.), cicadas and crickets taking the lead roles. 9. Kaw Mountain, Post-explosive breeding — Kaw mountain, late December. Close to a temporary forest pool. The intense downpours of the previous days have triggered the first mass amphibian breedings, accompanied by a cumulative chorus so powerful it represents a real danger for the unprotected human ear. Today, early in the night, the activity is moderately intense and enables us to appreciate the phenomenon. Two species of Leptodactylus (Leptodactylus cf. knudseni, Leptodactylus aff. mystaceus), displaying varying degrees of depth and quaver, and Dendropsophus (Dendropsophus leucophyllatus, Dendropsophus aff. minutus), with sharp high-pitched sounds, take the lead role in this hallucinogenic soundscape heralding the beginning of the rainy season. 10. Crique Douille, Arada — Chemin gros arbres, south of Saül. Typical soundscape, near a small creek, transmuted by the steady and hesitant arrival of a Musician Wren (Cyphorhinus arada). 11. Caribbean inspiration — Back to the ocean, near Cayenne, at dusk. Wanderings amongst fireflies, between a stretch of fallow land illuminated by a choir of Johnstone’s Robber Frogs (Eleutherodactylus johnstonei) – a small amphibian originally from the Caribbean – and the edge of a marshy forest, alive with groups of Snouted Treefrogs (Scinax boesemanni, Scinax ruber) and Crested Forest Toads (probably Rhinella cf. margaritifera). Accompanied by the muffled and haunting rhythm of waves crashing on the beach and beating the reefs… 11 Tracks (72′22″) CD (500 copies) | 2017 | €13.00 |
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| NATURAL SNOW BUILDINGS | Terror's Horns | LP | "Da ist es wieder, das französische Psychedelic Dronefolk Duo. Ihr 2013 wiederveröffentlichtes Album The Snowbringer Cult hat mich damals aus den Socken gehauen. Das war das reinste Hitfeuerwerk und in dem Jahr nicht umsonst als zweitbestes Album noch vor dem damaligen Release meiner Lieblingsband Troum plaziert. So konsequent hittig gehts diesmal nicht zu, aber dafür noch ein wenig verspulter. Hits gibts aber mit dem eher psychedelisch-folkig gehaltenen „Sun Tower“ und dem eher ambient-dronigen „The Rising Portal“ dann auch noch. Insgesamt so spannend und visionär, daß ich das nächste Album jetzt schon kaum erwarten kann." [Sibylle Bölling/Pretty in Noise] "After a string of Natural Snow Buildings reissues, each more elaborate then the last, Ba Da Bing presents their first ever release of new material from the band. For a group known for its use of horror imagery and lyricism, perhaps the most shocking thing of all is that this album clocks in at just under 45 minutes. If there ever was a release that served as the proper entry point for Natural Snow Buildings, Terror’s Horns is it. It would be a stretch to call this Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte’s pop record, for Terror’s Horns continues the duo’s tradition of combining many layers into sometimes blissful, sometimes contemplative, often menacing conditions. Stringed instruments trill, percussion gongs, feedback hisses and vocals maintain near monotone as if in a cultish trance. The songs still unveil themselves slowly, and the album’s progression lends the impression of descending down through the depths, past hidden cavities and chambers never to be unseen once experienced. Terror’s Horns features new artwork by Gularte that pays tribute to the backwoods horror of massacres involving chainsaws." [label info] "Yes, there are a plethora of insanely limited editions published for and by Natural Snow Buildings and their satellite projects; but with their recent dealings with Ba Da Bing, the problematic availability has been alleviated somewhat. Of course, there was a tiny cd-r bonus edition that was coupled with this album but only available in pre-order direct from the label. No shops got any of those; so, we apologize in advance that we cannot offer that version. HOWEVER, we do have this amazing album itself, from aQ fave death-folk explorers Natural Snow Buildings. There's long been a haunted thread that traces through all of the work from the French duo of Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte, whose long-form tangles of ritualist drone-rock minimalism and sprawling, opiated psychedelia harks back to International Harvester, Flying Saucer Attack, and Kemialliset Ystavat. Here on Terror's Horns, Natural Snow Buildings plumb the depths of an emotional gloom and shuddering despair with this epic, cinematic album. The two have long specialized in expansive tracks of shimmering guitars, woodwinds, and bowed instruments that could be psalters, zithers, and / or violins, all of which blossom into sublime masses of dronological impressionism; and on Terror's Horns, Natural Snow Building engage in a sound far more elegiac and funereal and heavier than heard on any of their previous recordings. The freak-folk transcendence of NSB still will embrace the unsettling falsetto of Ameziane and the percussive clatter of Gularte, with the swirling psychedelia tumbling downward in lush cinematic collapse, with heavy minor-key chords and reverb saturated rhythmic plod providing plenty of parallels to the early days of Barn Owl and the latter days of Earth. Beautiful as always, these Natural Snow Buildings, if much darker than in days gone by." [Aquarius Records] | 2015 | €20.00 |
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| Terror's Horns | CD | "Da ist es wieder, das französische Psychedelic Dronefolk Duo. Ihr 2013 wiederveröffentlichtes Album The Snowbringer Cult hat mich damals aus den Socken gehauen. Das war das reinste Hitfeuerwerk und in dem Jahr nicht umsonst als zweitbestes Album noch vor dem damaligen Release meiner Lieblingsband Troum plaziert. So konsequent hittig gehts diesmal nicht zu, aber dafür noch ein wenig verspulter. Hits gibts aber mit dem eher psychedelisch-folkig gehaltenen „Sun Tower“ und dem eher ambient-dronigen „The Rising Portal“ dann auch noch. Insgesamt so spannend und visionär, daß ich das nächste Album jetzt schon kaum erwarten kann." [Sibylle Bölling/Pretty in Noise] "After a string of Natural Snow Buildings reissues, each more elaborate then the last, Ba Da Bing presents their first ever release of new material from the band. For a group known for its use of horror imagery and lyricism, perhaps the most shocking thing of all is that this album clocks in at just under 45 minutes. If there ever was a release that served as the proper entry point for Natural Snow Buildings, Terror’s Horns is it. It would be a stretch to call this Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte’s pop record, for Terror’s Horns continues the duo’s tradition of combining many layers into sometimes blissful, sometimes contemplative, often menacing conditions. Stringed instruments trill, percussion gongs, feedback hisses and vocals maintain near monotone as if in a cultish trance. The songs still unveil themselves slowly, and the album’s progression lends the impression of descending down through the depths, past hidden cavities and chambers never to be unseen once experienced. Terror’s Horns features new artwork by Gularte that pays tribute to the backwoods horror of massacres involving chainsaws." [label info] "Yes, there are a plethora of insanely limited editions published for and by Natural Snow Buildings and their satellite projects; but with their recent dealings with Ba Da Bing, the problematic availability has been alleviated somewhat. Of course, there was a tiny cd-r bonus edition that was coupled with this album but only available in pre-order direct from the label. No shops got any of those; so, we apologize in advance that we cannot offer that version. HOWEVER, we do have this amazing album itself, from aQ fave death-folk explorers Natural Snow Buildings. There's long been a haunted thread that traces through all of the work from the French duo of Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte, whose long-form tangles of ritualist drone-rock minimalism and sprawling, opiated psychedelia harks back to International Harvester, Flying Saucer Attack, and Kemialliset Ystavat. Here on Terror's Horns, Natural Snow Buildings plumb the depths of an emotional gloom and shuddering despair with this epic, cinematic album. The two have long specialized in expansive tracks of shimmering guitars, woodwinds, and bowed instruments that could be psalters, zithers, and / or violins, all of which blossom into sublime masses of dronological impressionism; and on Terror's Horns, Natural Snow Building engage in a sound far more elegiac and funereal and heavier than heard on any of their previous recordings. The freak-folk transcendence of NSB still will embrace the unsettling falsetto of Ameziane and the percussive clatter of Gularte, with the swirling psychedelia tumbling downward in lush cinematic collapse, with heavy minor-key chords and reverb saturated rhythmic plod providing plenty of parallels to the early days of Barn Owl and the latter days of Earth. Beautiful as always, these Natural Snow Buildings, if much darker than in days gone by." [Aquarius Records] www.badabingrecords.com | 2015 | €14.00 |
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| NEAU, PHILIPPE | Etang Donne | CD | Saisir la densité impassible de l’eau. Le jour. Le chant des oiseaux. La nuit. La clameur des nuages. L’été. Le souffle des arbres. Au printemps. Celui des poissons, à l’automne. Le bourgeonnement des arbres. Soleil zénithal. L’éclosion des fleurs, un soir de pleine lune. Les vaguelettes poussées par le vent sur la surface écarlate de l’étang. Le déplacement furtif des branches des saules sous une pluie diurne. Le saut des insectes à la lumière chaude. Le cri rauque du coq. En hiver. L’air lourd un matin brumeux … l’ombre fine des grenouilles sautant au passage du vent … Cartographier par le son un lieu. Arpenter soniquement … sonder sonorement un paysage … PhonoGraphier l’étang du village où je vis, m’est apparu comme une évidence pour ce projet. Cet élément naturel, morceau de paysage à la fois liquide et organique, travaillait déjà mon imaginaire pictural et mental depuis plusieurs années. Se situant à quelques pas de l’atelier, je m’y rends pour respirer, observer, enregistrer des images, prendre des matériaux, enregistrer des sons. Il existe un lien caché entre ce lieu et un autre imaginaire que j’ai appelé muori pour un cycle de peintures. Un lien caché avec les îles de la Réunion et des Antilles habitées un temps. Du reste, l’étang de Saint Jean sur Erve, à la sortie du premier confinement, a vu en son centre émergé une île. Etrangeté de la tectonique des plaques et des rencontres imagées, imaginaires. Cette captation s’est étendue sur un temps assez long, finalement. Plusieurs années, par petites touches afin de former des croquis, vagues, des esquisses incomplètes, sourdes à certaines fréquences ou couleurs du lieu. Les prises donnent lieu parfois à quelques gestes ou rituels avec ou dans la matière organique de l’étang. L’eau clapote. Les pas se font moelleux. Les oiseaux enchantent l’espace. Les gouttent glissent sur le bois du chêne. L’écureuil s’enfuit à mon approche. Le couple de hérons traverse sur l’autre rive en fonction de mes arrêts. Les marches sont plus ou moins longues. Elles ont lieux à divers moments. A la recherche d’une surprise, d’un son nouveau, d’une révélation. Le paysage est saisi dans un mouvement continu et cyclique. Les matières sont ensuite confrontées, assemblées, découpées, développées, remodelées, juxtaposées, superposées pour former un paysage, autour de l’étang, mémoire phonique et réserve d’images. Couches après couches le paysage imaginaire se transforme, bouge et finalement il mue en peinture fragile et tangible. Etang donné* apparait ou voudrait apparaitre comme un paysage mental, un espace sensible, une peinture sonore non pas réaliste, ni narrative du lieu visité, sondé, regardé, arpenté, traversé, vécu mais l’aboutissement d’une expérience de cet étang. Une pièce sonore aux allers et venues contractées, aux mouvements de balancements, aux « retours » incessants, aux cercles concentriques formées par les multiples passages. Le morceau éclot. La peinture se fait dense. Les sons enflent. Une « présence » résonne en nous. On entre dans la matière du lieu, composite, organique. *(Le titre du morceau rejoue celui de Marcel Duchamp, histoire d’eau aussi) (philippe neau, 25 June 2021) ~ Capture the unshaken density of water. The day. Birdsongs. The night. The clamour of the clouds. Summer. The breath of the trees. In spring. That of the fish, in the fall. Budding trees. Zenith sun. The blooming of flowers on a full moon night. The ripples blown by the wind across the scarlet surface of the pond. The furtive swing of the willow branches under a diurnal rain. Leaping insects in warm light. The hoarse cry of the rooster. In winter. The heavy air on a misty morning … the flimsy shadow of the frogs jumping in the breeze … Mapping a place by sound. Sonically pacing … sounding a landscape … PhonoGraphing the pond in the village where I live seemed obvious to me for this project. This natural element, a piece of landscape both liquid and organic, had already fuelled my pictorial and mental imagination for several years. The pond being a few steps away from the workshop, I often go there to breathe, observe, record images, take materials, record sounds. There is a hidden link between this place and another imaginary world that I called Muori for a cycle of paintings. A hidden link with the islands of Reunion and the West Indies that were once inhabited. Moreover, an island surprisingly appeared right in the centre of the pond of Saint Jean sur Erve, at the end of the first lockdown. Strangeness of imagery plate and picture tectonics. Oddity of imaginary encounters. This capture went on for quite a long time, after all. Several years, by small touches, in order to form sketches, waves, incomplete sketches, deaf to certain frequencies or colours of the place. The takes sometimes trigger gestures or rituals with or within the organic matter of the pond. The water is lapping. The steps are soft. Birds enchant the space. The drips glide over the oak wood. The squirrel fled as I approached. The pair of herons crosses to the other side mirroring my wanderings. These walks vary in length. They take place at various times. Looking for a surprise, a new sound, a revelation. The landscape is captured in a continuous and cyclical movement. The materials are then confronted, assembled, cut, developed, remodelled, juxtaposed, superimposed to form a landscape, around the pond, a collection of sound memory, a stockpile of images. Layer after layer, the imaginary landscape transforms, moves and eventually turns into a fragile and tangible painting. Etang donné* appears -or would like to appear- as a mental landscape, a sensitive space, a sound painting that is neither realistic nor narrative of the place that was visited, probed, contemplated, surveyed, crossed, lived in, but simply the outcome of an experience of this pond. A sound piece with condensed comings and goings, swaying movements, endless “come backs”, concentric circles formed by multiple visits. The song hatches. The painting becomes dense. The sounds swell. A “presence” resonates within us. We enter the material of the place, composite, organic. *(The title of the piece aludes to that of Marcel Duchamp, Histoire d’Eau Aussi -, meaning “also a story of water”. Etang donné translates as « given Pond » with a pun in French meaning « Given that») (translated by Florence Collobert, June 2021) LOCATION : étang de Saint Jean sur Erve (small town in Mayenne), France 48°02'06.5"N 0°23'18.6"W Source recordings made between 2018 - 2020. Mastered by Flavien Gillié. Cover & card design + treatments by Daniel Crokaert. Based exclusively on photos by philippe neau. Portrait by philippe neau. Glass mastered CD. Packaged in clear vinyl sleeve with folded insert and additional art card on 350gr satin paper. Limited edition of 170 hand-numbered copies. https://unfathomless.bandcamp.com/album/tang-donn | 2021 | €14.00 |
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| NECKS, THE | Travel | do-LP | Travel, the 19th studio album by Australian improvisational trio The Necks, documents their recent practice of starting each day in the studio with a 20-minute trio improvisation. The recordings offer some of their most ecstatic and captivating music cut to tape. As bassist Lloyd Swanton puts it: “It’s a really nice communal activity to bring us together in focus each day, and some lovely music has resulted from it.” Although a straight “live” improvisation has never been recorded in the studio by the band, these tracks (save for some light overdubs and post-production) feel closest to their 30 years of celebrated live performances. In 2017 Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ label released the band’s lauded Unfold, which first offered up this uncharacteristic studio work: four sub-20-minute pieces - instead of the typical 60+ minute arc for which the band is known - along with an obfuscated track list which leaves play order to the listener’s hand. The album quickly sold out, and persists as a treasure in collections or as a high-priced ‘Want’ on Discogs. Travel marks a return to this double-LP format, offered in a beautiful gatefold package that features photography by Traianos Pakioufakis and impeccable mastering by Doug Henderson. Produced by The Necks Recorded by Tim Whitten, Studios 301, Alexandria, Australia Mixed by Tim Whitten, Forbes Street Studios, Woolloomooloo, Australia Mastered by Douglas Henderson, micro-moose-berlin, Germany Photographs and design by Traianos Pakioufakis Thanks to Jordan Verzar, Regina Greene, Lee Paterson https://thenecksau.bandcamp.com/album/travel "For the last 25 years, the Australian trio have created a radical new open form for musical improvisation with hour-long performances that touch upon motorik rock, minimalist composition, drone and more.... " THE WIRE | 2023 | €39.50 |
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| Travel | CD | Travel, the 19th studio album by Australian improvisational trio The Necks, documents their recent practice of starting each day in the studio with a 20-minute trio improvisation. The recordings offer some of their most ecstatic and captivating music cut to tape. As bassist Lloyd Swanton puts it: “It’s a really nice communal activity to bring us together in focus each day, and some lovely music has resulted from it.” Although a straight “live” improvisation has never been recorded in the studio by the band, these tracks (save for some light overdubs and post-production) feel closest to their 30 years of celebrated live performances. In 2017 Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ label released the band’s lauded Unfold, which first offered up this uncharacteristic studio work: four sub-20-minute pieces - instead of the typical 60+ minute arc for which the band is known - along with an obfuscated track list which leaves play order to the listener’s hand. The album quickly sold out, and persists as a treasure in collections or as a high-priced ‘Want’ on Discogs. Produced by The Necks Recorded by Tim Whitten, Studios 301, Alexandria, Australia Mixed by Tim Whitten, Forbes Street Studios, Woolloomooloo, Australia Mastered by Douglas Henderson, micro-moose-berlin, Germany Photographs and design by Traianos Pakioufakis Thanks to Jordan Verzar, Regina Greene, Lee Paterson https://thenecksau.bandcamp.com/album/travel "For the last 25 years, the Australian trio have created a radical new open form for musical improvisation with hour-long performances that touch upon motorik rock, minimalist composition, drone and more.... " THE WIRE | 2023 | €16.50 |
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| Bleed (colour vinyl) | LP | https://thenecksau.bandcamp.com/album/bleed "Back in full force, Northern Spy returns with what might just be the best record we’ve heard all year: The Necks’ “Bleed”. A creatively visionary and astounding immersion into the band’s singular realm of sonority, unfolding at a glacial pace over the 42-minute composition’s duration, these two vinyl sides comprise some of the most tense and ambitious moments we’ve ever heard from one of the most important bands working today. Since their founding during the second half of the 1980s, the Australian trio, The Necks - Chris Abrahams, Lloyd Swanton, and Tony Buck - have slowly emerged as an entirely singular force within the global landscape of experimental music, weaving remarkable, free flowing improvisations that rest within the border regions between Minimalism and jazz. Marked by astounding sense of artistry and musicianship, there is, quite simply, no other band like them. Just a year on from 2023’s absolute stunner, “Travel” - The Neck’s second outing with the American imprint Northern Spy - the trio returns to the label with “Bleed”, a single, 42-minute composition, unfurling at a delicate, glacial paces that seems to distill the nearly 40 years of collaboration within its dazzling interplay, endlessly pushing toward new, uncharted ground. Issued by Northern Spy in two beautifully produced vinyl editions - black and green - as well as a CD edition, housed in a deluxe wallet with printed inner sleeve, it’s yet another towering and entirely engrossing achievement by one of the greatest bands working today. Drawing upon the diverse musical backgrounds of each of its members, The Necks were founded in Sydney, Australia, in 1987 by Chris Abrahams (piano / Hammond organ), Tony Buck (drums / percussion / electric guitar) and Lloyd Swanton (bass). Even from their earliest emergence into the global consciousness with their debut full-length, 1989's “Sex”, the group entirely stood out from the pack, demarcating a minimal zone at the more experimental reaches of jazz (if it can even be called that thing). Defined by a rare sense of acoustic purity, restraint, and a singular creative vision, guided into being by unparalleled musicianship and mutual respect amongst its three members, over the decades, and across roughly two dozen full-lengths, The Necks have ebbed and flowed, creating a music that feels remarkably open while precise, their pieces evolving slowly over their durations, focusing the ear toward microscopic details, in understated tapestries of sonority that engage an endless sense of surprise from the most elemental means. In the simplest sense, The Necks are a band that feel as though they have nothing to prove - three artists in close conversation, easing forward as a single, collective force - while making music that is earth-shatteringly understated to profound effect: the minimal, maximised. Their latest, “Bleed”, might just be their most striking statement, to this effect, to date. Comprising a single, 42-minute composition, the album displays a clearer bearing of its sophisticated inner workings and tensions than some of the band’s previous releases. Constructed from the trio’s familiar pallet of structures, “Bleed” is a glacial movement of rhythmical and textural elements, and tones produced by piano, bass, and drums, with guitar occasionally woven in. An open and spacious image of creative restraint, Abrahams, Buck, and Swanton’s interventions and responses hang in the air with grace, flirting within an expanded sense of time that withholds the satiation of tension and release that has helped define The Necks' sound over the years, feeling at times so deconstructed and drawn out, that it, in moments, undermines an explicit sense of musicality: presenting a musical journey where the arrival is the journey itself. Nothing short of astounding, and as close to a masterpiece as The Necks have ever produced, “Bleed” is a listening experience that holds the potential of changing our perceptions of music itself and the possibilities presented by group collaboration. In the most subtle of ways, it represents a giant leap for the group. If The Necks are a group that sound like no one else, “Bleed” is a record that almost defines that sound but could only be made by them. Issued by Northern Spy in two beautifully produced vinyl editions - black and green - as well as a CD edition, housed in a deluxe wallet with printed inner sleeve, this a ten out of ten and beyond. Easily among the best records of the year and absolutely essential for everyone under the sun." [Soundohm] "Australian minimalist-jazz trio The Necks’ new studio album, Bleed explores a sublime language of stillness. With a single, 42-minute composition, The Necks masterfully express the unspeakable beauty of decay and space in yet another totally distinct entry in a vast and stunning body of work." [press release] | 2024 | €30.50 |
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| Bleed | CD | https://thenecksau.bandcamp.com/album/bleed "Back in full force, Northern Spy returns with what might just be the best record we’ve heard all year: The Necks’ “Bleed”. A creatively visionary and astounding immersion into the band’s singular realm of sonority, unfolding at a glacial pace over the 42-minute composition’s duration, these two vinyl sides comprise some of the most tense and ambitious moments we’ve ever heard from one of the most important bands working today. Since their founding during the second half of the 1980s, the Australian trio, The Necks - Chris Abrahams, Lloyd Swanton, and Tony Buck - have slowly emerged as an entirely singular force within the global landscape of experimental music, weaving remarkable, free flowing improvisations that rest within the border regions between Minimalism and jazz. Marked by astounding sense of artistry and musicianship, there is, quite simply, no other band like them. Just a year on from 2023’s absolute stunner, “Travel” - The Neck’s second outing with the American imprint Northern Spy - the trio returns to the label with “Bleed”, a single, 42-minute composition, unfurling at a delicate, glacial paces that seems to distill the nearly 40 years of collaboration within its dazzling interplay, endlessly pushing toward new, uncharted ground. Issued by Northern Spy in two beautifully produced vinyl editions - black and green - as well as a CD edition, housed in a deluxe wallet with printed inner sleeve, it’s yet another towering and entirely engrossing achievement by one of the greatest bands working today. Drawing upon the diverse musical backgrounds of each of its members, The Necks were founded in Sydney, Australia, in 1987 by Chris Abrahams (piano / Hammond organ), Tony Buck (drums / percussion / electric guitar) and Lloyd Swanton (bass). Even from their earliest emergence into the global consciousness with their debut full-length, 1989's “Sex”, the group entirely stood out from the pack, demarcating a minimal zone at the more experimental reaches of jazz (if it can even be called that thing). Defined by a rare sense of acoustic purity, restraint, and a singular creative vision, guided into being by unparalleled musicianship and mutual respect amongst its three members, over the decades, and across roughly two dozen full-lengths, The Necks have ebbed and flowed, creating a music that feels remarkably open while precise, their pieces evolving slowly over their durations, focusing the ear toward microscopic details, in understated tapestries of sonority that engage an endless sense of surprise from the most elemental means. In the simplest sense, The Necks are a band that feel as though they have nothing to prove - three artists in close conversation, easing forward as a single, collective force - while making music that is earth-shatteringly understated to profound effect: the minimal, maximised. Their latest, “Bleed”, might just be their most striking statement, to this effect, to date. Comprising a single, 42-minute composition, the album displays a clearer bearing of its sophisticated inner workings and tensions than some of the band’s previous releases. Constructed from the trio’s familiar pallet of structures, “Bleed” is a glacial movement of rhythmical and textural elements, and tones produced by piano, bass, and drums, with guitar occasionally woven in. An open and spacious image of creative restraint, Abrahams, Buck, and Swanton’s interventions and responses hang in the air with grace, flirting within an expanded sense of time that withholds the satiation of tension and release that has helped define The Necks' sound over the years, feeling at times so deconstructed and drawn out, that it, in moments, undermines an explicit sense of musicality: presenting a musical journey where the arrival is the journey itself. Nothing short of astounding, and as close to a masterpiece as The Necks have ever produced, “Bleed” is a listening experience that holds the potential of changing our perceptions of music itself and the possibilities presented by group collaboration. In the most subtle of ways, it represents a giant leap for the group. If The Necks are a group that sound like no one else, “Bleed” is a record that almost defines that sound but could only be made by them. Issued by Northern Spy in two beautifully produced vinyl editions - black and green - as well as a CD edition, housed in a deluxe wallet with printed inner sleeve, this a ten out of ten and beyond. Easily among the best records of the year and absolutely essential for everyone under the sun." [Soundohm] "Australian minimalist-jazz trio The Necks’ new studio album, Bleed explores a sublime language of stillness. With a single, 42-minute composition, The Necks masterfully express the unspeakable beauty of decay and space in yet another totally distinct entry in a vast and stunning body of work." [press release] | 2024 | €16.00 |
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| Bleed | LP | https://thenecksau.bandcamp.com/album/bleed "Back in full force, Northern Spy returns with what might just be the best record we’ve heard all year: The Necks’ “Bleed”. A creatively visionary and astounding immersion into the band’s singular realm of sonority, unfolding at a glacial pace over the 42-minute composition’s duration, these two vinyl sides comprise some of the most tense and ambitious moments we’ve ever heard from one of the most important bands working today. Since their founding during the second half of the 1980s, the Australian trio, The Necks - Chris Abrahams, Lloyd Swanton, and Tony Buck - have slowly emerged as an entirely singular force within the global landscape of experimental music, weaving remarkable, free flowing improvisations that rest within the border regions between Minimalism and jazz. Marked by astounding sense of artistry and musicianship, there is, quite simply, no other band like them. Just a year on from 2023’s absolute stunner, “Travel” - The Neck’s second outing with the American imprint Northern Spy - the trio returns to the label with “Bleed”, a single, 42-minute composition, unfurling at a delicate, glacial paces that seems to distill the nearly 40 years of collaboration within its dazzling interplay, endlessly pushing toward new, uncharted ground. Issued by Northern Spy in two beautifully produced vinyl editions - black and green - as well as a CD edition, housed in a deluxe wallet with printed inner sleeve, it’s yet another towering and entirely engrossing achievement by one of the greatest bands working today. Drawing upon the diverse musical backgrounds of each of its members, The Necks were founded in Sydney, Australia, in 1987 by Chris Abrahams (piano / Hammond organ), Tony Buck (drums / percussion / electric guitar) and Lloyd Swanton (bass). Even from their earliest emergence into the global consciousness with their debut full-length, 1989's “Sex”, the group entirely stood out from the pack, demarcating a minimal zone at the more experimental reaches of jazz (if it can even be called that thing). Defined by a rare sense of acoustic purity, restraint, and a singular creative vision, guided into being by unparalleled musicianship and mutual respect amongst its three members, over the decades, and across roughly two dozen full-lengths, The Necks have ebbed and flowed, creating a music that feels remarkably open while precise, their pieces evolving slowly over their durations, focusing the ear toward microscopic details, in understated tapestries of sonority that engage an endless sense of surprise from the most elemental means. In the simplest sense, The Necks are a band that feel as though they have nothing to prove - three artists in close conversation, easing forward as a single, collective force - while making music that is earth-shatteringly understated to profound effect: the minimal, maximised. Their latest, “Bleed”, might just be their most striking statement, to this effect, to date. Comprising a single, 42-minute composition, the album displays a clearer bearing of its sophisticated inner workings and tensions than some of the band’s previous releases. Constructed from the trio’s familiar pallet of structures, “Bleed” is a glacial movement of rhythmical and textural elements, and tones produced by piano, bass, and drums, with guitar occasionally woven in. An open and spacious image of creative restraint, Abrahams, Buck, and Swanton’s interventions and responses hang in the air with grace, flirting within an expanded sense of time that withholds the satiation of tension and release that has helped define The Necks' sound over the years, feeling at times so deconstructed and drawn out, that it, in moments, undermines an explicit sense of musicality: presenting a musical journey where the arrival is the journey itself. Nothing short of astounding, and as close to a masterpiece as The Necks have ever produced, “Bleed” is a listening experience that holds the potential of changing our perceptions of music itself and the possibilities presented by group collaboration. In the most subtle of ways, it represents a giant leap for the group. If The Necks are a group that sound like no one else, “Bleed” is a record that almost defines that sound but could only be made by them. Issued by Northern Spy in two beautifully produced vinyl editions - black and green - as well as a CD edition, housed in a deluxe wallet with printed inner sleeve, this a ten out of ten and beyond. Easily among the best records of the year and absolutely essential for everyone under the sun." [Soundohm] "Australian minimalist-jazz trio The Necks’ new studio album, Bleed explores a sublime language of stillness. With a single, 42-minute composition, The Necks masterfully express the unspeakable beauty of decay and space in yet another totally distinct entry in a vast and stunning body of work." [press release] | 2024 | €29.50 |
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| Disquiet | 3 x CD | On Disquiet, The Necks stretch their immersive, shape-shifting sound across three discs and more than three hours of labyrinthine, patient intensity. This is their twentieth studio recording and it marks the 39th year of the band’s existence. Meticulously recorded and sculpted, the four extended pieces on Disquiet see Tony Buck, Chris Abrahams, and Lloyd Swanton pushing at the outer edges of their collective intuition, building and unraveling hypnotic structures with microscopic focus. Present is the usual arsenal of piano, double bass, and drums, and all the in-between of sounds undefined and sources obscured. The music of The Necks has always carried a profound sense of shared responsibility –– between the players, of course, in their utter commitment to the improvisational –– but also between the work and its audience. With music so open, there are profound opportunities to choose: what to focus on, whether to focus at all, etc. Disquiet takes this further: there is no particular listening order prescribed. There is no “Disc 1, Disc 2, Disc 3.” The music itself seems to stretch time, and this presentation challenges ideas of sequencing. The Necks, one may argue, are a mode of discovery as much as they are a band. Regarding the sound itself, The Necks’ signature restraint and textural depth remain, with subtle tonal shifts, evolving motifs, and roiling phases of keen and propulsive clatter, strains of subdued surprise and unmatched intentionality –– as ever, expansive and absorbing. Composer: Abrahams/Buck/Swanton (control) Recorded by Tim Whitten, Rancom St Studios, Botany, Australia Mixed by Tim Whitten, Forbes Street Studios, Woolloomooloo, Australia Mastered by Douglas Henderson, micro-moose-berlin, Germany https://thenecksau.bandcamp.com/album/disquiet | 2025 | €37.50 |
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| NECROPHORUS | Underneath the Spirit of Tranquility (Redux Version) | CD | "Underneath the Spirit of Tranquility” (redux version) by Necrophorus (Peter Andersson from raison d'être) is a painted story canvas for the otherwise unreachable astral world. Adorned with esoteric ambiences, one feels as though embarking on a path of inner ascension while breathing the immaterial tranquilities. This redux version of 'Underneath the Spirit of Tranquility' (originally released 1996) has been carefully re-mixed for enhanced experience and spiced with two additional tracks. The artwork consists of drawings by Elinros Henriksdotter. Comes in a folding cover with 6 extra charts. Strictly limited to 500 copies." [label info] www.wrotycz.com | 2011 | €12.00 |
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| NERELL, LOREN | Taksu | CD | „Fourth World Ambient“ nennen die liner-notes die Musik von LOREN NERELL, der wieder aus einem reichen Fundus an field recordings schöpft, die er auf BALI gemacht hat... Musik in „ewiger Gegenwart“, ohne Anfang oder Ende, ohne Vergangenheit oder Zukunft, als reine atmosphärische Schwingung. “ Loren Nerell's association with Soleilmoon Recordings dates back to his 1996 release "Lilin Dewa", as well as the more recent "Indonesian Soundscapes". "Taksu" takes cues from both of these albums, blending environmental sounds and Balinese instruments together into a glowing, amorphous cloud of spine-tingling sound. Two musicians come to mind when listening to "Taksu": Jon Hassell, who popularized Fourth World music, and Brian Eno, the father of Ambient music. While sounding nothing like the work of either artist, Loren Nerell's music takes inspiration from both of them. His music is evocative of mist-covered mountains and slow-motion waterfalls, so it owes something to Hassell. But it also pays tribute to the patient genius of Eno, with its endlessly evolving atmosphere, in which there is no beginning or end, only the present. The crowning touch on this project came from Steve Roach, stalwart Ambient Music pioneer and long-time friend of Loren's, who came in to provide the final spacial treatments and mastering of the CD. In his liner notes for the CD booklet, Djam Karet founder Chuck Oken, Jr. describes the music as a "sound pool" that the listener is immersed in. His words couldn't be more accurate, and it's no exaggeration to say that putting this record on is like waking up at sunrise, deep in the tropical Balinese rainforest, surrounded on all sides by the sounds of the jungle. To describe ambient or atmospheric music as "a soundtrack" is clichéd, but it's really the best way to talk about "Taksu". It truely is a very special album, and one that asks to be seen, not merely heard.” [label info] | 2003 | €12.50 |
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| NEST (Otto Totland & Huw Roberts) | Body Pilot | 10inch | "Nest is the collaborative project of Huw Roberts (Wales) and Otto A. Totland (Norway). Using a combination of acoustic instruments, field recordings and sample manipulation, the two work together to create instrumental music linked closely with their environments. While unmistakably a Nest record, the material on 'Body Pilot' marks a more restrained, pared back development of Nest's sound. The palette used to craft these pieces is sparser than on previous recordings, placing greater emphasis on the nuances and subtleties of each sound. 'Stillness' opens proceedings on familiar ground. Gently sustained strings rise from a near inaudible hum and are accompanied by slow, resounding piano notes. The pace is glacial, each sound unravels and unfolds in sequence painting a vivid picture of the record's opening scene. The muted greens of an open plain as it tapers into the distance and the pearl-white of the sky, featureless save the bas-relief of a distant mountain range. The landscape resonates in sympathy with the beckoning drone of a propeller engine. On 'The Dying Roar', we find ourselves borne aloft amid turbulent skies. Brass and woodwind instruments swirl and eddy, growing in intensity until, like the ground disappearing below, they blur and fade into nothing. The engines are cut and we glide silently into the white. Solo piano plays out the piece and closes the first side of the record. In sharp contrast with the pieces preceding it, "Koretz's Meteor" opens with the haunted drone of an electronic synthesiser. Unidentifiable sounds and effects clamour for space around the rising growl, sweeping from left to right, submerging and resurfacing. A camera shutter opens and closes, cicadas sing in the night, what could it be, that burns so bright? 'Body Pilot' comes to a close with 'The Ultimate Horizon', a detached, isolated piece of music. Sounds speed up and slow down like the on / off of a propeller, sub-bass rises and falls, passing above and below hearing level. The track fades as we travel beyond the infinite." [label info] www.serein.co.uk | 2011 | €13.00 |
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| NETHERWORLD | Kall. The Abyss where Dreams fall | CD | ".... In a tradition that is anchored, at the same time, in avant-garde, ritual soundz and dark-ambient, with a typically Italian touch, NETHERWORLD gives a peculiarly and elegantly organic and palpable feel to sounds that, in the hands of others, would maybe fall flat …and it is as if the sound universe conjured by the magic of NETHERWORLD was strangely…how could one say? OCCUPIED. Each moment, each twist and turn of this sound adventure bears infinite richness and elasticity, at all times …those are rather ‘busy’ sound layers but each of the elements has sufficient breathing space and can differentiate itself from the other surrounding components. This antagonism represents one of NETHERWORLD’s greatest strengths. Another noteworthy antagonism: this tendency to propose us ambiences that are excessively introspective, subdued, withdrawn into themselves, but which, at the same time, expand, subtly dilate to occupy an incommensurable space. Upon the first notes (or pulses??) of the opening track, ‘’KALL’’, this infinite abyss, envelops us and our dreams sink, dissolve, reinvent themselves…The sound propositions found on’’KALL’’ have enough movement and density to please the ones fond of depth in their music, but the overall ‘purified’ feel will please the most discerning purist. For the occasion, MONDES ELLIPTIQUES once again used the mastering talents of JOHN SELLEKAERS @ METARC and it is CHRISTIAN SA LETTE who put his savoir-faire in our service for the design of the sleeve and images. Limited to 441 copies! Deluxe cardboard sleeve." [label description] "Netherworld is Alessandro Tedeschi and on the album 'Kall - the abyss where dreams fall' he shows his interest in cool ambient and drone related kind of music, that slowly and patiently unfolds in the space. The music is presented in four tracks that are called 'Kall', from part one to part four. What's most present in the 14 minutes of the first piece is the pulsating drone atmosphere, that sounds very gentle and is put in the front, while from time to time there are other sounds too that are appearing in the background and are adding a specific and slightly tribal sounding sense to the track. The sense of tribal ambient music is even more present in the second piece, while in the third longer piece of 21 minutes, there are motives similar to those in the first track - slowly unfolding layers of sounds that are coming from the cooler corners of the ambient spectrum, a kind of atmosphere that is present through the whole album. 'Kall - part 4' is no exception in the sounds that Netherworld uses in the music on this album. The fourth part is as smooth ambient music as the previous parts, it is the smoothest track, with almost 8 minutes of few slowly shifting layers of a kind of sustained, unusual, calm and sometimes linear sounding and spreading ambient music, a kind of aesthetic and approach to the music that is mostly present on the whole album, that is not a typical ambient aesthetic, but it crossovers the border-lines between the ambient and drone kinds of music." [BR / Vital Weekly] www.angle-rec.net | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| NEUFELD, SARAH | Hero Brother | LP | "Sarah Neufeld is a violinist and composer based in Montréal, Canada. Best known as a member of Arcade Fire, she is also a founding member of the acclaimed contemporary instrumental ensemble Bell Orchestre and has performed and recorded with many other groups, including The Luyas, Esmerine and Little Scream. Neufeld began developing pieces for solo violin in a more formal and focused sense in 2011, though she has made improvisation and solo composition part of her process and practice since first picking up the instrument at a young age. Neufeld counts Bela Bartok, Steve Reich, Iva Bittova and Arthur Russell among the formative influences for her solo work, in tandem with an ear for the textures and sensibilities of contemporary electro-acoustic, avant-folk and indie rock music. Neufeld's debut solo album Hero Brother indeed channels all of the above, flowing through shifting atmospheres and oscillating between restrained, stately ambience, emotive études, and raw kinetic energy. Small touches of wordless vocalisation, harmonium and piano supplant the violin in a few places. The album was recorded in Berlin by pianist and producer Nils Frahm, with Neufeld's performances captured in a number of locations with site-specific acoustics, including an abandoned geodesic dome, an underground parking garage, and the legendary Studio P4 orchestral recording hall at the broadcast complex of the former GDR. Hero Brother will be released on Constellation Records in August 2013. Sarah has recently premiered her solo music at BAM (Brooklyn), the WSO New Music Festival (Winnipeg) and Wavelength Festival (Toronto), of which Exclaim magazine wrote "the highlight of the night was most certainly Sarah Neufeld, whose compositions range from Reichian to folksy without skipping a beat; she uses violin squeals, growls, scrapes and slides to express varying emotions and stomps the stage beneath her for percussion. Packaging notes CD comes in a custom gatefold jacket printed on thick 24pt. paperboard with a printed CD dust sleeve. LP is pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl at Optimal (Germany) and comes in a heavyweight jacket with black poly-lined audiophile dust sleeve, credit insert, pull-out art poster and download code for 320 kbps MP3 copy of the album. Artwork by Tracy Maurice." [label info] | 2013 | €22.00 |
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| Hero Brother | CD | "Sarah Neufeld is a violinist and composer based in Montréal, Canada. Best known as a member of Arcade Fire, she is also a founding member of the acclaimed contemporary instrumental ensemble Bell Orchestre and has performed and recorded with many other groups, including The Luyas, Esmerine and Little Scream. Neufeld began developing pieces for solo violin in a more formal and focused sense in 2011, though she has made improvisation and solo composition part of her process and practice since first picking up the instrument at a young age. Neufeld counts Bela Bartok, Steve Reich, Iva Bittova and Arthur Russell among the formative influences for her solo work, in tandem with an ear for the textures and sensibilities of contemporary electro-acoustic, avant-folk and indie rock music. Neufeld's debut solo album Hero Brother indeed channels all of the above, flowing through shifting atmospheres and oscillating between restrained, stately ambience, emotive études, and raw kinetic energy. Small touches of wordless vocalisation, harmonium and piano supplant the violin in a few places. The album was recorded in Berlin by pianist and producer Nils Frahm, with Neufeld's performances captured in a number of locations with site-specific acoustics, including an abandoned geodesic dome, an underground parking garage, and the legendary Studio P4 orchestral recording hall at the broadcast complex of the former GDR. Hero Brother will be released on Constellation Records in August 2013. Sarah has recently premiered her solo music at BAM (Brooklyn), the WSO New Music Festival (Winnipeg) and Wavelength Festival (Toronto), of which Exclaim magazine wrote "the highlight of the night was most certainly Sarah Neufeld, whose compositions range from Reichian to folksy without skipping a beat; she uses violin squeals, growls, scrapes and slides to express varying emotions and stomps the stage beneath her for percussion. Packaging notes CD comes in a custom gatefold jacket printed on thick 24pt. paperboard with a printed CD dust sleeve. LP is pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl at Optimal (Germany) and comes in a heavyweight jacket with black poly-lined audiophile dust sleeve, credit insert, pull-out art poster and download code for 320 kbps MP3 copy of the album. Artwork by Tracy Maurice." [label info] | 2013 | €14.00 |
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| NEW BLOCKADERS (THE) | Live at Hinoeuma | pic-LP | Great droning & earthquaking noise, a firestorm of sounds on many levels & with micrologic developments.... recorded live in London 2003. Soon to be rare ! “Recordings from a live performance in London during 2003 by one of the true legends of the experimental/ Anti music Scene. Totally destroyed dada-noise on a beautiful picture disk featuring collage artwork by TNB. ltd. 400” [Self Abuse] “It doesn't get more physical than this. Imagine Daniel Menche in a violent mood coupled with english actionism! A terrific end to a terrific anti-career.“ [Love Rosenström, Segerhuva] | 2005 | €28.00 |
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| NEW BLOCKADERS / MAMA BÄR / KOMMISSAR HJULER | Keine Hände | pic-7inch | "Although it doesn't say anywhere on the beautiful picture disc, the 7" is a three way collaboration between Mama, Hjuler and The New Blockaders. A fine pairing I'd say. The squeaking metallic sound of the Blockaders with the crazy voices of Baer and Hjuler, along with some unclear tape manipulations make up to fierce statements of noise. And with such time restrictions, I'd think this is spot on. I have no idea why there is absolutely no information on the record itself or on the nicely printed insert. I assume its not shyness, if you care to create such a racket." [FdW/Vital Weekly] www.psych-kg.de | 2011 | €18.00 |
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| NEW BLOCKADERS / THURSTON MOORE / JIM O'ROURKE | The Voloptulist | maxi-CD | "Some sick, cold atmospherics on this first time colaboration between The New Blockaders, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke and guest Chris Corsano. Track one - TNB with Thurston Moore - is a brooding death tone overlaid with grinding, scraping noises that become increasingly beast-like as the track progresses. Track two - TNB with Jim O'Rourke - is more subtle but equally as menacing. Manipulated white noise and radio waves collide head on at the two minute mark with some muffled, claustrophobic percussion, courtesey of Corsano. Short, sweet and tense as f**k. Recommended." [label info] "...The disc is divided into two pieces, the first being the collaboration with Thurston, which turns out to be a particularly obscure drone piece, constituted from hissing feedback tones, tape crackle and some sort of chaotic, mechanical sound sources. The piece evolves infinitesimally over the course of its fourteen minutes, rendering an uncompromising, though highly textured vision of analogue sound sculpting. The other, shorter piece '840 Seconds Over' continues in its predecessor's campaign of high frequency feedback manipulations this time with the addition of some caterwhauling noise oscillator free jazz and typically virtuosic improv drumming from Corsano. It's a real force to be reckoned with, and the crispness of Corsano's kit works perfectly against the hiss and fizz from the tape-heavy, droning elements. It's all over rather too soon (the whole thing clocks in at just over twenty-one minutes), but you can hardly expect anyone to keep up these levels of intensity for prolonged periods, can you? Superb, top-flight noise." [Boomkat] | 2007 | €10.00 |
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| NEXT CITY SOUNDS | Interfaces | CD | As part of the 20th KAMUNA (Karlsruhe Museum Night), so-called ›in-situ perfor- mances‹ took place at three locations in Karlsruhe on August 4, 2018: The project room ßpace, the artist-run space Halo ARS and the pedestrian zone Kaiserstraße were connected to the ZKM via an outgoing audio data stream. At ßpace, sound artist Lasse-Marc Riek condensed naturalistic field recordings, noise and soundscape recordings into a sonic live collage. The live electronic duo Lintu + Røyk per- formed with modular synthesizers and broadcasted live electronica from Halo ARS in Karlsruhe’s Oststadt. The members of KITeratur presented their participative performance ›SYNONiMUS‹ in the pedestrian zone in the Kaiserstraße, while the No Input Ensemble performed in the subspace under ZKM’s blue Cube. At ZKM, all incoming signals were fanned out in a kaleidoscopic manner and pro- cessed artistically in a multi-room sound installation by Yannick Hofmann, Marco Kempf, Benjamin Miller, Barbara Nerness, Sebastian Schottke and Dan Wilcox in the Cube, in the Cube vestibule and in the underground car park at ZKM. This audio recording was made in the ZKM Cube, where the KAMUNA visitors could determine the sound mixing of the audio data streams via an interactive interface specially developed for this project and experiment with the sound material using a battery of interconnected sound aliena- tors and effect pedals. Riek’s naturalistic soundscape recordings and field recordings, Lintus + Røyk’s syn- thesized electronic sounds, the voices of the participative speech performance of the university group KITeratur as well as the ethereal sound and feedback noises choreographed by the No Input Ensemble condense proportionally into this 60-minute experimental audio piece, whose tonal quality ultimately oscillates between Ambient, Drone and Musique concrète. ›Next City Sounds: Interfaces‹ took place as part of the EU project ›Interfaces‹ (EU funding programme ›Creative Europe‹) on the occasion of the Karlsruhe Museum Night 2018. https://www.gruenrekorder.de/?page_id=18150 | 2020 | €13.00 |
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| NIBLOCK PHILL / KASPER T. TOEPLITZ / FRANCK VIGROUX | BestiaIRE | LP | A. Noizzze + I R E live Music by Phill Niblock Performed by Ensemble IRE trio Kasper T. Toeplitz (e bass) Franck Vigroux (e guitar) Hélène Breschand (e harp) pre-recorded tracks by PHILL NIBLOCK B. Bestia Composed & performed by Kasper T. Toeplitz (e bass) Franck Vigroux (electronics) ‘NOIZZZE‘ music commissioned to PhilL Niblock With the support of La Muse en circuit / Cie D’Autres Cordes Mastering & Cut by Fréféric Alstadt at Ångström Studio Brussels Pictures, graphics & layout by Cedric D’hondt ©Matière Mémoire éditions / Art Sonore Sprl MATME006LP | 2020 | €24.00 |
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| NIBLOCK, PHILL | Nurturing Exhibitions | BOOK + 2 x CD | Six musical compositions by Phill Niblock, soil and cutting tree of Amanatsu orange from Masanobu Fukuoka Natural Farm, wooden pedestals, speakers, wooden benches, wooden planter, acrylic case, water, sunlight. An exhibition by Mathieu Copeland. Nurturing Exhibitions was one of two concomitant exhibitions that formed Exhibition Cuttings at Le Forum / Fondation Hermès in Tokyo, Japan between April 23rd (Fri.) and July 18th (Sun.) 2021, a time of closed borders when lives were mainly mediated through screens amidst various lockdowns. A rich and fleeting ecosystem of new hybrid organisms nurtured by an environment in constant evolutionary motion, adapting in time, Nurturing Exhibitions consisted of an Amanatsu tree temporarily transplanted to the gallery space. Combined with the music of Phill Niblock that was played continuously, at times to a closed empty gallery, the photographs that compose this book portray the exhibition’s entire lifespan, from a composition being recorded to a ripe fruit being picked. Herbal Cooled2 (23:07, 2019) Deborah Walker, cello. The tones were recorded at Marcus Schmickler’s P I E T H O P R A X I S studio in Köln Germany, with Marcus Schmickler engineering and with a Brauner microphone; the construction of the piece was done at Experimental Intermedia in NYC by Phill Niblock, using ProTools software. Born in 1981 in Italy. Deborah Walker is a cellist, a new music performer and improviser based in Paris. Noizzze (23:05, 2020) Ensemble I R E – Kasper Toeplitz, electric bass; Franck Vigroux, electric guitar; Helene Breschard, harp. All Instruments were played acoustically, not amplified. The tones were recorded at the La Muse Studio, near Paris France; the construction of the piece was done at Experimental Intermedia in NYC by Phill Niblock, using ProTools software. The Paris based Ensemble IRE is founded by composers Kasper T. Toeplitz and Franck Vigroux, featuring Helene Breschand, Philippe Foch and Christophe Ruetsch. Poom3 (28:02, 2020) Stephen O’Malley, electric guitar. The tones were recorded at the Trace. Elements Studio in NYC, with Robert Poss engineering; the construction of the piece was done at Experimental Intermedia in NYC by Phill Niblock, using ProTools software. Born in 1974 in USA. Stephen O’Malley is an American guitarist, producer, composer, and visual artist. He has conceptualized and participated in numerous drone doom, death/doom, and experimental music groups, most notably Sunn O))). ExplMaranhaLisbon (23:05, 2020) David Maranha, 4 bowed bass, 4 bells, 6 violins, 6 glass harmonicas, 4 double cane flutes, 4 shruti boxes. The piece was realized by playing from a score by Phill Niblock, realized with assistance by Guy De Bievre; and recorded and mixed in David Maranha’s own studio in Lisbon. Born in 1969 in Portugal. David Maranha is a Portuguese avant garde musician and artist, known for his work with Osso Exotico and his collaborations with Z’ev, Stephan Mathieu, Phill Niblock, David Grubbs, and Akio Suzuki. ExplVoxHumana (23:13, 2021) The Vox Humana Vocal Choir, Soprano: Maiko Inamura, Mikiko Kamiya; Alto: Kiyo Irisawa; Tenor: Seiji Kanazawa, Hatsugai Takashi; Bass: Eitaro Matsui; Founder and Director: Ryuta Nishikawa The piece was realized by singing from a score by Phill Niblock, realized with assistance by Guy De Bievre; recorded in Tokyo, Japan under the supervision of Nao Nishihara, with Miho Miura as recording engineer and mixer. An ensemble organized by Ryuta Nishikawa and other vocalists from Tokyo University of the Arts. Started in 1996, Vox humana has been pursuing the possiblity of new creation by human voice. Their repertoire includes the polyphony music before Renaissance and the contemporary music of the 20th century, which we can enjoy at their periodic concert. Vlada BC (20:01, 2013) Elisabeth Smalt, viola d’amore. The tones were recorded at Marcus Schmickler’s P I E T H O P R A X I S studio in Köln Germany, with Marcus Schmickler engineering and with a Brauner microphone; the construction of the piece was done at Experimental Intermedia in NYC by Phill Niblock, using ProTools software. Born in 1964 in the Netherlands. Elisabeth Smalt is a viola player who works exclusively as a chamber musician, in styles varying from period instrument performance to extremely new music. https://www.matiere-memoire.com/page-d-articles/phill-niblock-stephen-o-malley-deborah-walker-2cd-in-48-pages-book | 2023 | €48.00 |
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| NID | Plate Tectonics | CD | Aufnahmen eines Konzertes aus Arnheim, Niederlande, vom Dezember 2002, in Studio-Qualität. Allertiefste dumpfe Dronescapes & verlangsamte Stimmen, Klassik-found sounds, glockige Klänge, obskure Vinyl-loops, immer dunkel & ominös & in einem dynamischen Feld voller unerwarteter Sounds. Eine recht einmalige Verbindung von Vinylloop-Plunderphonics, tiefbassigen Dronescapes und Geräuschen von selbstgebauten, oft ober-obskursten Gerätschaften und Objekten. "Crawling back into the wound: NID 1995 – 2007. NID is an experimental group whose aim it is to challenge conventional concepts and structures of electronic music by experimenting with the source of sounds. The music is created on the spot, making each performance a genuine and unrepeatable event. It has been described as moving sound-objects, improvised electronic noise, or broodng ambient music. It has been compared to an underwater-journey, a pathway to the inner self. Given enough volume, it certainly affects the body as well as the mind. In which way remains open to the listener’s psyche. NID was formed in 1995. Over the years the core-members have performed in art-galleries, rock-clubs, bars, water-reservoirs, cinemas, as well as at industrial and electronic festivals and in record shops. In 1998 they were invited to play onboard the MS Stubnitz when it was anchored in the harbour of Stockholm as part of the “European Culture Capital” activities. They were also involved in the 2001 Six And More & R:IP jubilees, improvising with 30 other electronic free-jazz musicians. As for the group name… A “nid” is a curse or insult with homosexual connotation that was frequently in use in the Viking age. It brought a depth to the concept of honour and shame. It could be used as a challenge or simply to ridicule another (which was a challenge per se). It could reveal anyone else to be no better than he was, and it undermined social structures. NID disbanded in 2006. Chris Sidgell continues in various projects, most notably his solo project B-Tong. Jürgen Eberhard releases music under the name Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim. This is NID’s one and only proper CD release. The sound on this work may appeal to fans of Lustmord, New Blockaders or collage post-industrial in general/experimental ambient. The music on this CD was recorded live in Arnheim by Mars Wellink (Vance Orchestra). The cover was done by Katja Wahl..." [band info & press release] "While not new, we only just discovered NID, and our discovery came about in a very random manner, considering various related works were right under our nose. We listed a killer 4 way split 12" a while back called One Man Drone, and our favorite track from the spit was a piece by a group called B(degree)Tong. We later discovered that the man behind B(degree)Tong was previously a member of German experimental sound-collective NID. But what we did not know was that NID was sometimes also known as Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim, a group who had various releases on the Drone Records label, one of which is included on the recent tUMULt collection of out of print Drone singles. So now it's sort of come full circle and we have this, the only proper full length recording (as far as we know) from the group NID, aka Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim and it's pretty amazing. Pretty bizarre too, but then with a (sometime) name like Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim, what else would you expect? Three looooooooong tracks. Each an epic, incredibly varied soundworld, blending found sounds and field recordings with drones and intense blasts of layered sound. The opener begins with a muted cacophony of birds and crickets, before disappearing into a roiling black cloud of rumbling low end and distant droning guitar buzz. It almost sounds like sticking your head out of a speeding car, the wind whipping by and causing all sorts of distortions, but blurred into an impressively massive wall of sound. Within all this whipping sonic wind and rumbling whirs, are strange bits of percussion, the clang and bang of metal on metal, shakers and simple rhythms, they drift briefly in the eye of the storm, before the drone drops again, even more furious than before, until it fades out amidst the dreamy shimmer of female vocals and haunting minor key melodic buzz. Really intense and strangely beautiful. The second track is another deep cavernous roar. A bit smoother than the previous number, but not for long, bit of metallic buzz surface amidst the undulating rumbles, with some serious dynamic spikes, some of which sound like brief bursts of SUNNO 0))), and others are even lower and more aggressive bits of low end exploration. There are bits of static and random buzz here and there, but mostly it's black and dark, a massive growling beast, slowly uncoiling into a monster that blocks out the sun. Near the end of the track, the darkness abates and in its place is a strange skipping stuttering snippet of music, wrapped in hazy distortion and looped into a mesmerizing rhythm, repeated over and over and over, gradually crumbling and becoming more and more distorted before erupting into a final burst of chest rattling low end, finally slowing down and sputtering to a halt. The final track is over twenty minutes and is the most melodic of the bunch. Beginning with a looped cycle of xylophone melody, over a throbbing low end pulse and streaks of keening distant guitar and bits of operatic female vocals. Very ominous and mysterious sounding. When suddenly everything stops, and there's a guy with a British accent ranting over someone ransacking a kitchen, breaking glass, clanging cutlery, and suddenly it's gone, and we're back in some new dronescape, a mumbled voice looped into a haunting mantra, beneath distant thunder like rumbles, and little blurs of high end melody, indistinct, but gradually building in intensity. The drones drift away leaving birds and voices, and some strange bits of hiss and skree, before transforming into a plodding doomdrone beast. A simple stretched out rhythm over cavernous thrums and the sound of subway cars, everything pulsing and throbbing, a bizarre bit of dark collage, that manages to be strangely musical and completely hypnotic. An amazingly weird record, and absolutely essential listening for the drone obsessed, which we would assume should be most of you..." [Aquarius Records] "Posthumous release by this Swiss-German trio dedicated to mostly drone-bound sounds, noise manipulation, foggy samples and dialogue snatches. Here, three lengthy pieces encircle some fantastic voyages through muted hum, looped voices, gentle vibrations and the stench of noxious ooze. The last one, ‘35000 Feet Below the Ocean Surface’, clocks in at almost 22 minutes and hints at a leather-clad NWW surveying a desert of black ash. Which works a treat for me." [RJ, Adverse Effect] | 2007 | €13.00 |
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| NIEDOWIERZANIE | Attendre | LP | "Three years and many live gigs after the self-titled debut, Niedowierzanie’s music has lost nothing of his maestria and exotic flavour. The complex compositions using a variety of acoustic instruments and digital effects still tell us of faraway places, conjuring vivid pictures of south-American landscapes, Mediterranean balconies and eastern harbours. But it has also become more accessible, leaving behind the long experimental pieces and turning instead to shorter, more rhythmic, even danceable songs full of Bohemian romanticism and Mediterranean flair. Dreamy, lazily swaying ballads alternate with somber pieces like funeral marches in the heat and dust of a summer evening, revealing sudden pangs of unease and anguish behind the flowing southern nonchalance. With “Attendre”, Niedowierzanie delivers a masterpiece of Post-Mediterranea worthy of such legends as Novy Svet or Mushroom’s Patience." [label info] | 2011 | €16.00 |
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| NILSEN, BJ & STILLUPPSTEYPA | Passing Out | CD | Dritter Teil der nordischen "Drone & Alkohol-Intoxikation"-Trilogie, die den Zustand des Wegtretens zwischen Wachheit und Dämmerzustand klanglich adäquat wiederspiegelt; im tiefen Drone-Morast erscheinen Traumbilder, -gedanken & akustische Sequenzen der Realität auf. In paradoxer Weise ist man dann in der Lage, sowohl unbewusste wie bewusste Geistes-Inhalte zur gleichen Zeit wahrzunehmen...(sagen die Erzeuger dieses Albums). PASSING OUT ist ein One-Tracker von fast 70 Minuten, tiefgrummelnd-bassig und sonor und von mysteriösen, atmend-ächzenden Sounds durchzogen.... "The first chapter found the drink. The second came after a night of intoxicated shouting. The third chapter is inevitable: Passing Out. The Nordic sound artists BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa have authored the last component to a trilogy of isolationist compositions for barren field recordings and lumbering electric drones, thematically linked in the psychotropic effects of alcohol. In doing so, they have issued a brief statement in defense of their research: "It's been four years and three studies, Passing Out being the final. Even in its most general, colloquial usage, Passing Out indicates the occurrence of a state that is incompatible with active behavior. It is possible that the individual could experience both consciousness and unconsciousness at the same time while encountering Passing Out." Yes, Passing Out is a crepuscular recording, with the flickering of twilight further dimmed by the distant Arctic sun in wintertime and the blackened numbness of too much drink. With one singular track that spans 60 minutes, a nearly constant thrum and rumble of monochromatic low frequencies casts a grim pall upon the precisely dialed-in modulations and vibrations. Spectral guitars, maudlin tunes from haunted radios, angrily growling voices, and field recordings of wind-whipped snow and ice bury themselves deep amidst these subharmonic drones. All of these tease at the edge of perception, sculpting the narrative of the drone into a vehicle for unhinged expressionism of varying degrees of horror, melancholy, beauty, and oblivion. The Swedish born BJ Nilsen defines his work as "focused upon the sound of nature and its effects on humans, and the perception of time and space as experienced through sound." He has numerous recordings on Touch and has collaborated with the likes of Chris Watson, Christian Fennesz, and Z'ev. The Icelandic citizens Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson are Stilluppsteypa, whose electronic abstractions engage absurd theatrics that mar the pristine surface of minimalism..." [label info] "....The complete and total isolation of the music, the long passages of seemingly no action (there is just one piece, clocking it at 68 minutes), with then a sudden break, a melody filters in, the radio starts humming and field recordings - that backbone of so much in Vital Weekly and certainly here - make this an album of not just pure drones or just processed field recordings, but the strange elements thrown in, give this album a stranger, almost alien feel to it. If it's the equivalent of passing out is a bit hard to say: the act of passing out on alcohol prevents you from remembering anything. This is however their best album to date and makes a strong trilogy." [FdW / Vital Weekly] "...Deep resonant vibrations abound, with some creepy breathing in your ear whisperings that may be those Leif Elggren vocals that Benny was talking about. Gradually, all of these deep drones and shadowy overtures glide into a slumbering descent. But the Icelandic weirdoes in Stilluppsteypa couldn't just let the album drift away without their absurdism forcing through the door, as they blurt with a clinical repetition of blooping electronics smashed and grabbed from Raymond Scott circa Manhattan Research. It's an unsettling climax to the album, but one that works brilliantly through Stilluppsteypa's expert use of electro-acoustic black humor. But it's drone that dominates the album, as angelic wash and devilish rumble collude to end this magnificent album. Oblivion never sounded so good. Passing Out is beautifully packaged with letterpressed and silkscreened artwork. Very nice." [Aquarius Records review] www.helenscarsdale.com | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| NIMH | Line of Fire | CD-R | “ Gloom, heavy electronic textures, over which islamic voices and environmental depiction of a war zone entwine. Sounds like being there in a nightmare, definitely. Static, suspended, a feeling of hopelessness and human suffering all over, pernicious, persistent. Scarcely noted, high quality colour printed sleeve, that seems to invite you to drown in the listening experience - and come out transformed.”[G.Ippoliti] | 2005 | €10.00 |
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| The Unkept Secrets | CD | "After few months of distance from the escape of "The Missing Tapes" and the relative "Rework" by Aube, Nimh (Giuseppe Verticchio) sets aside the ethnic-lysergic visions that have characterized the previous album and continues along the distance of sonorous search and fascinating experimentation electronic, already undertaken with works which "The Impossible Days" and "Subterranean Thoughts", ulteriorly expanding just the range of sounds and instruments set, revealing the own "secrets" through new, dark but stylistically a unclassifiable CD, in which it arranges with extraordinary originality and in an absolutely personal and unknown elements of drone music, dark ambient, electronics, ritual, ethnic, field recordings, and enriching in particular every track with the recurrent presence of evocative sounds of electric guitar in varied filtered and elaborated way. The search goes on..." [label info] "This is an other perfect Nimh record, a world of magnetic, somnanbulic, fuzzing, moving electronic textures and drones covered by glacially melancholic guitar parts. These recent years there have been many descent projects published under the dark ambient - prog electronic label, but The Unkept Secrets is exceptional, reaching a degree of composition and complexity rarely obtained in this specific genre. Meridians opens the album with an intimate, colourful, extatic droning minimalist guitar composition with lot of reverbs and reasonances. A majestic, almost hallucinatory electronic piece. Narrative voices & mysterious abstract noises also come into the mix. As suggested by the title, Visions in Black is a haunted, gorgeously dark piece with abundant guitar's fuzzed out static notes, ghostly dark noises. The composition ends up with an almost funeral electronic choir. Strangely beautiful, the sound of the apocalypse or forgotten memories. The call reaches the listener into a parapsychological world made of echoing guitar tricks, floating electronic waves. A more dreamy-like composition, perfectly executed and really vibrant emotionally and physically speaking. Linga is just fantastic, a real buzzing drone trip with tribal-ethnic elements. An immersive medley of acoustic / electronic elements, it makes me think about shamanic sermons & ceremonials. The title track opens the way to a really sinister, dark musical ritual that turns into a shimmering, suspensful incantation dominated by harsh guitars and doom-like epic drones. The ending nightmare is a claustrophobic, intoxicated electronic piece for loud guitars, creepy noises and acoustic exoticism. The last tune is a more relaxed, tranquil affair after an intense musica ride throw lost deep memories. A totally absorbing electronic mantra, a real pleasure for the ears. Clearly among my all time favourite experimental electronic records with a things from Maurizio Bianchi, Maeror Tri and Aeolian String Ensemble. So recommended." [Prog Archives] | 2007 | €12.00 |
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| NNHMN | Deception Island | CD | NNHMN returns to Zoharum with "Deception Island" a compilation CD of tracks taken from vinyl EP-s titled Deception Island Part 1 and 2 respectively, released by Spanish Oráculo Records. As expected, the duo of Lee and Michal Laudarg deliver hell of a ride. Dark Wave, Synth Pop, EBM, New Romantic, Dark Disco - you name it. Spirit of '80s nostalgia is strong in this music. It's hard to listen to this without nodding your head or moving your hands and feet. Deception Island is very propulsive. From the first synths of "In Darkness" to the last beats of "Nachtgang" NNHMN keeps you enslaved on the dancefloor. The track order has been slightly rearranged so the compilation has a more album feel and makes you find yourself listening to it for the third time in a row moving and watching the stars. You just don't want it to stop. Restless dance of the night endless. CD edition of 300 copies comes in "silk" digipack. https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/deception-island-full-length-album "The Berliner based Polish duo of NNHMN last year released two EPs entitled “Deception Island 1” and “Deception Island 2” on Oráculo Records. Zoharum this year released both EPs together as an album featuring the ten original songs. Content: NNHMN is a band I personally consider as one of the greatest revelations from the past few years; Minimal-Electro-Wave music, which is clearly reminding me of the sterile- and cold atmospheres of the 80s. The whispering and totally emotionless way of singing of Lee creates an icy, sensual touch while Michal’s sound production creates a kind of dark-cellar dancefloor sensation. + + + : If there’s one band that awakens my curiosity on each new work it for sure is NNHMN (Non Human). They aren’t setting the world alight, but creates a fascinating vintage exposure with a true Minimalistic approach. The typical melodic strings, dry snares and icy sequences are reminding me of the 80s. I think it’s a real good thing both EP’s have been assembled as a full length album and there are some brilliant songs on it like “Deception Island”, “Education Lost”, “In Darkness”, “Nachtgang” and “Robot Woman”. – – – : This album is a kind of compilation so if you already know both “Deception Island”-EPs you’ll be not surprised. Conclusion: I remain totally addicted to the impressive Minimalism of this Berlin based duo; this is how Electro-underground music has to sound!" [Side-Line] | 2021 | €12.00 |
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| NOISE RECEPTOR JOURNAL | Issue No. 12 (August 2024) | mag | Illuminating the post-industrial underground. Noise Receptor Journal: sound with impact -- analysing the abstract is one of the most well-respected underground zines dealing with post-industrial music, with a particular focus on dark ambient, death industrial, heavy electronics, and power electronics. Noise Receptor Journal is targeted at an audience who values the permanence of print media over the transience of web-content. ISSUE NO.12 CONTENT Long-form and detailed interviews with: BJNilsen, Innere Front, No Guard, TeHÔM, Tone Generator & The Body Without Organs The Society of Control: in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Tone Generator (aka Dominic Guerin) NWN!/Hospital Festival, Osaka, Japan show report + 30 photos CLUTCH 2 show report + photos Reviews: 50 detailed reviews. Artwork: cover and 10+ pages of original artwork by Tone Generator (aka Dominic Guerin) Originally released August, 2024 Noise Receptor Journal : documentation of the post-industrial underground : Review "A wonderful journal documenting a niche of underground culture while being a cultural document itself." -Karin / Galakthorrö "Noise Receptor zines... epic stuff in handy format. I enjoy the author's style; he artfully penetrates deep into the music and knows the history... It feels good to get a nice zine in your hands. Check it out." -Infinite Fog Productions "Outstanding coverage of the true underground dark ambient/death industrial/industrial scene." -Jason Mantis / Malignant Records "What I enjoy about Noise Receptor is the timeless nature of it. Very good complement to blogs, but which I feel don't really give the written content justice." -Kristian Olsson / Alfarmania / Styggelse "While xerox will always be the most sacred of all zines formats, all print is welcome in the era of online corruption that has eroded every facet of society. Keep up the important work." --Dominick Fernow / Prurient / Hospital Productions About the Author RICHARD STEVENSON is an underground music writer and avid supporter of obscure and 'difficult' forms of music, notably the post-industrial underground. The five issues of his first zine, Spectrum, were collected and reissued in book form in 2019 as Spectrum Compendium. His second zine, Noise Receptor Journal, first appeared in 2013 and is currently ongoing. | 2024 | €13.00 |
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| NOISES OF RUSSIA | Experimental Structure | CD-R | Von dieser extrem interessanten russischen Performance-Gruppe sind Releases nur schwer zu bekommen. Hier ein Mitschnitt aus St. Petersburg vom Oktober 2008, als sie hinter TROUM auftraten und mit diversen Gastmusikern eine theatralisch-expressive Stimmung heraufbeschwörten, sehr dunkel & geräuschaft & voller Spannung.. "Nowadays Noises Of Russia is one of the most known groups on the Russian experimental post-industrial scene, mainly because of their numerous concerts and CDR-releases, published by their leader - Gosha Solnzev aka 1g0g ("Van Gog") - on his own label ElectroIndustria. This release has captured one of such concerts which took place at the Experimental Sound Gallery (ESG-21) in St. Petersburg in October 2008... This concert was peculiar because of the non-traditional band line-up which aside from 1g0g included some of his friends: musicians Nikolay Kalmykov (Hladna), M.M. (Kryptogen Rundfunk), Igor Potsukailo (Bardoseneticcube) and Evgeny Savenko (Lunar Abyss Deus Organum), and also VJ Alco (video projection) and Grigory Glazunov (ODDDance Theatre, butoh dance). By common efforts these comrades performed totally improvised material quite typical for the "St. Petersburg post-industrial wave" and combining elements of collage, industrial, noise and ambient. Field recordings and voice manipulations, metal percussion and rough analogue signals, guitar semi-melodies and various sound effects - all this is harmoniously blended in the unified psychedelic soundsphere." [label info] http://zhb.radionoise.ru/ | 2008 | €7.50 |
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| NORDVARGR | Resignation IV | CD | Nordvargr Announces the Release of Resignation 4, the Fourth Installment in the Resignation Series Swedish dark ambient and experimental artist Nordvargr (Henrik Nordvargr Björkk) is set to release the highly anticipated Resignation 4, continuing his sonic journey through rhythmic, atmospheric, and melancholic soundscapes. Building on the foundation laid by the Resignation trilogy, Resignation 4 expands the project’s signature blend of techno-inspired beats, dark ambient textures, and hypnotic soundscapes. A Continuation of Sonic Exploration Resignation 4 picks up where the acclaimed 2022 Resignation box set left off, offering a deeper dive into Nordvargr’s evolving sound. The album maintains one foot firmly in the techno scene, while also embracing moments of eerie calm and reflective melancholy. It is an album where rhythmic pulses and deep atmospherics converge, presenting a sound that is at once mesmerizing and abrasive, pushing the boundaries of electronic music. This latest chapter sees Nordvargr taking his unique grasp of genre fusion even further, blending ambient melancholia with hard-edged, rhythmic elements. Fans of both experimental electronics and the fringes of techno will find Resignation 4 to be a captivating continuation of his visionary work. Origins and Evolution of the Resignation Series The Resignation project began in 2008 as an exploration of rhythmic, repetitive music paired with dark ambient soundscapes. It was born from a collaboration between Nordvargr and Nils Ekholm, merging techno-inspired beats with samples from old 78 RPM records. The first album in the series was described as “techno, if invented in the late 1800s,” drawing inspiration from the ill-fated 1897 North Pole expedition by S.A. Andrée. Over the years, the project has grown, with each album taking a distinct direction—ranging from dubby techno atmospheres to harsher, noisier electronic soundscapes—culminating in the haunting, cinematic experience that is Resignation 4. Along the way, the project has evolved from its early experimental roots into a genre-defying force, standing at the crossroads of ambient, techno, and industrial music. A Look Back at the Trilogy The Resignation trilogy was re-released in 2022 as a deluxe box set, remastered with unique and exclusive material, including previously unheard demo recordings and bonus tracks. This set offered listeners a complete exploration of the project’s evolution, from the early rhythmic ambient experiments to the harder, more distorted sounds of later volumes. Note that the quickly sold out 3CD has now been repressed. Tracks like Totem Visitations, originally composed for a Polish film soundtrack, showcased Nordvargr’s ability to craft immersive sonic environments that complement the darker edges of film and narrative. Looking Forward: Resignation 4 With Resignation 4, Nordvargr continues to refine his signature style, exploring new territories of sound and emotion. This album promises to be a highlight of his prolific career, offering a bold and dynamic listening experience for fans of experimental and rhythmic electronic music. Release Formats and Artwork The album will be available in multiple formats: •Vinyl: Edition of 300 copies. 100 Special Edition on marbled brown & Black vinyl and 200 copies on black vinyl. Printed Innersleeve and matte lamination. 9 Tracks. Running Time 39:57 EAN: 3770033798171 •CD: Edition of 300 copies in 4 panel Digipak, matte lamination. 9 Tracks. Running Time 39:57 EAN: 770033798164 The stunning album artwork and photography are created by Sandrine Pelletier, capturing the stark, otherworldly aesthetic of the Resignation series. Resignation 4 continues Nordvargr’s exploration of the balance between beauty and brutality, inviting listeners to immerse themselves in a world where atmospheric depth meets rhythmic intensity. https://cycliclaw.bandcamp.com/album/resignation-iv | 2024 | €14.00 |
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| NULL, K.K. | Akumu | CD | "Japanese experimental music legend Kazuyuki Kishino now presents his new CD album entitled Akumu (Nightmare). On this album Kazuyuki tests his own limits into the darkness and focus all his artistic skills on creating a personal cinematic audio nightmare. Akumu is like being caught in a spiderweb that sticks and creeps to your skin, there is no escape. Akumu is a truly imaginative and terrifying electronic album that gives us a new and unique edge on the artist and sound master Kazuyuki Kishino's universe. This is the dark masterpiece of K.K. Null...Deluxe 6 panel digipak comes with beautifull stylish design/photography by Salt." [label info] "Akumu finds KK Null once more dragging the listening into a heady, shifting and highly effective audio movie for the mind with his distinctive mix of electronica, ambience, noise matter, field recordings & heady cinematics. As the albums artwork of frozen spiky organic matter and thawing firns suggest this has a very cold, barren yet alien beauty to it. And to my mind the album it rather brought to mind a soundtrack for travels through a strange isolated high radiation zone- like something from Tarkovsky Stalker but with more of twisted sci-fi angle. A few examples of this come with the opening track that switchers between eerier gong/ bell tone laden gothic ambience & sudden seering sound oveloads. This pictures in ones mind a deserted & overgrown market square that's still strangely ringing with the towns bells, with the sudden power-up’s and boil tones akin to been engulfed by radiation high spots that make your Geiger counter go mad. Track five is an building and kaleidoscopic audio slice of cold, mechanical, gone-haywire electro dread and intensity bringing to mind walking through a deserted car factory that’s starts operating on it’s own. As Null buildings up a detailed & at times jarring sound tapestry of purring, buzzing, scuttling, static hits, circuit board mournfulness and stale radiation heavy drone feeds. Really through out the album walks wonderful between tension, dread, jarring moments and general very heady and detailed audio scaping. Another masterfully structured and built slice of internal soundtracking from KK Null which with repeat listens reveals more sonic facets and deeper atmospheric emersion." [Roger Batty, Musiquemachine.com] www.hentai-vital.com | 2008 | €15.00 |
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| NURSE WITH WOUND | TRIPPIN' MUSIK (black vinyl) | 3 x LP BOX | " ’Trippin’ Musik’ is Nurse With Wound’s most significant new dose in a while, collecting 3 epic discs of steeply psychedelic sonics that may well alter your breathing and heart rates and mental state. No tracklisting provided, play however tf you like. Following from the reissue of NWW’s ’Soliloquy For Lilith’ boxset, ‘Trippin’ Musik’ relays the most recent findings from Steven Stapleton and co’s ongoing psychedelic research / surrealist reconnaissance / occult practice in electro-acoustic and avant-garde spheres. As the title suggests, it’s one for the journey, taking up whole sides of vinyl with intensely and intently focussed recordings that often take over 20 minutes to say their psychedelic piece in a cryptic language of abstraction. Whether you take drugs to listen to this music or not, the effect is likely to live up to the title, but we’re pretty certain it will be stronger with than without. One disc features a whole side of what sounds like a folk song fractalised and slowed down by Carl Stone, while another also sees them strung out in desert guitar scenes sort of like a digitized interpolation of Earth jamming with Soisong, and the side of rapidly panned gasps is practically guaranteed to send your head into a tailspin given the right conditions, before it all shores up in a deeply lysergic scene of strolling, head-squashing, liminal/laminal electronic timbres that feel like classic kosmische slowed down and exhaled by an AI. Trust the efficacy of ’Trippin’ Musik’ for psychoactive potential is right up there with the most potent sonic substance. Approach with spare time and a well stocked freezer for best results." [Boomkat] | 2020 | €51.50 |
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| The Sylvie and Babs High-Thigh Companion | pic-LP | Ok, here it is – Sylvie & Babs as a picture disc LP, with new Babs Santini artwork. Was it always supposed to be this way? Who knows? But it won’t be around for long. One pressing and that’s it, buy or die – you know the drill. “Sylvie and Babs is one of the most memorable, playful, and fascinating albums in the NWW oeuvre (though a decidedly unrepresentative one)…few (if any) other artists could’ve woven capricious contrarianism, low humor, bad puns, endless non-sequiturs, and chaos into such a satisfying whole“ – Anthony D’Amico | 2021 | €33.00 |
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| 3 Lesbian Sardines | LP | https://www.dirterpromotions.com/releases/nurse-with-wound/3-lesbian-sardines/ Three lesbian sardines! Shouted by a heckler at a performance by the Dadaist Hugo Ball on stage at the Cabaret Voltaire. Is a perfect title for Nurse With Wound’s final appearance at the ‘Great Monster Dada Show’ at the legendary Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Oslo, 2019. The largest exhibit of dada art and artefacts this century, over 250 artworks by 43 artists including Kurt Schwitters, Jean and Sophie Teuber Arp, Hannah Hoch, John Heartfelt, Tristan Tzara, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, Raoul Hausmann, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray. This electric performance captures the band at their most eclectic and playful. Here six tracks feature the classic line up of Steven Stapleton, Andrew Liles and Colin Potter including the toe tapping crowd pleaser ‘Flea Circus’ – a mutant hybrid of Kraftwerk and Aphex Twin and is amongst the best the band have ever recorded. ‘Broken America’ is timely reminder of the dire situation we are all facing with the arrival of Trump’s America. The cover features stunning new artwork by acclaimed artist Babs Santini. 500 copies only in NEON GREEN VINYL. SIDE ONE 1/ WEIMAR DRILL HEAD 2/ 3 LESBIAN SARDINES SIDE TWO 1/ TRANSFERENCE (DID MARCEL STEAL ELSA’S URINAL) 2/ DOING WHAT WE ARE TOLD MAKES US FREE 3/ BROKEN AMERICA | 2025 | €30.00 |
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| O PARADIS | Pequenas Canciones de Amor | CD | "The 1st thing that comes to mind when I hear O Paradis is Novy Svet and lookie lookie Jurgen Weber from just that project worked and wrote some of the material. It has the same campy cabaret vibe as Novy Svet. Though there are more eastern and gypsy elements into the Folkish overtone. I all honesty the 1st track was a tough listen to get through. There are moments were I really wonder where O Paradis are going with this. They are very akin to Spiritual Front in song structure and ideals as well. I do like the lazy horns and heavy bass elements that add an avant jazz overtone. ‘Pequenas Canciones De Amor’ being in Italian some of the time is a bit hard for me to follow from time to time but there are really some beautiful track especially when the female vocals are mixed with the very lounge sung male vocals. A truly shining moment is the Bob Dylan song so well done by the mighty Johnny Cash called " its aint me, Baby”. The additional accordion piece which is incorporated really adds to the fullness of the track. Sometime I think O Paradis really want to be Novy Svet as some of the more dark ambient/ martini/ martial moments could come off one of their releases. I was always a sucker for Novy Svet so it’s something I greatly missed. I'm shocked that labels like Punch, WKN or Soleilmoon didn’t jump at the chance to release this title. Some of these tracks I think are in Spanish like Novy Svet did from time to time as well. As ‘Pequenas Canciones De Amo’ goes along the CD get stronger and stronger and a more complex beast that is hugely expansive and almost epic at times, which also include moments of even stirring neo-classic movements. This new label Tourette based of Texas USA have given a release to stand up with the bigger labels mentioned above. It comes in a wonderful digipak as well. Just to add to the magic of it all. I will be looking forward to hearing more from O Paradis and Tourette in the future." [Clint Listing /Judas Kiss] www.touretterecords.com | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| O PARADIS / ESCAMA SERRADA | La Corte del Rey Pescador / La Reina esta mala | 2 x CD | "I have been a follower of Ô Paradis since I purchased “El Juego Negro” a couple of years ago. Demian has always managed to present groovy, Mediterranean neo folk, with a large assortment of samplers, noises and improvised instruments, and most always caressed by Demian’s voice. Frankly, “La Corte Del Rey Pescador” is, in my opinion, one if his best results yet. He seems to have polished the sometimes crude angles of his previous records. The fluidity of the record is astounding, and the music has become riper, settled, like a fruit fills with juice in the spring sunlight. “La Corte Del Rey Pescador” reminds me more than ever of Corcobado, with a darker, more experimental sound. Especially the use of the bass and the introduction of diverse experimental melodies take the music that step further. The lyrics seem to have also developed, into an intimate world, full of metaphors and sparkled with direct statements. The swing of “La Verdad De Los Peces” is transformed into the dark pop ballad of “El Paraiso Perdido”. The languid “Solo Un Desierto”, with a naïve piano melody, becomes a folk masterpiece that disintegrates into the violent dark tune “El Trono De La Razon” to then let the record close with the brilliant, moving, “Mi Dios”. Twenty minutes definitely come out as being too scarce. A must for true folk, experimental pop and simply great music lovers." "The debut album of Sergio Méndez comes through Tourette Records as part of the pack “La Corte Del Rey Pescador/La Reina Está Mala”. Sergio and Demian from Ô Paradis have a friendship that has culminated in the release of this double work, in which they have actually worked together on some tracks. However, don’t be mistaken, Escama Serrada doesn’t sound like Ô Paradis except maybe with some ingredients of the music production. But, hey, bread and cake also share ingredients yet they taste quite differently. Samplers, parchments of songs, melodies - but especially noise, sometimes thick, sometimes hard, are present as well. Always undulating and pulsing, creating the main bases for each song. Escama Serrada basically presents a sort of dark ambient, adding some martial spice at times and a lot of dark punk attitude at others. Perhaps the music is similar to a modern day nihilistic version of Einstürzende Neubauten, or deconstructed rock stricken through a machinery surface. I love the way the songs are connected to each other, and it seems the hand of Demian is visible here, since his Tourette release is perhaps also the one in which the fluidity of the record is the best in his career. Also, both records have seven songs, mirroring each other. My personal favorite is track “IV” with its haunting guitar that is slowly shaded by the atmosphere around it. Promising ambient, with ample possibilities and, appreciatively, a distinct personality." [both reviews from SIDE-LINE] www.touretterecords.com | 2009 | €22.00 |
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| O YUKI CONJUGATE | 1983 Unearthed | LP | EARLY WORKS OF CHARMING INSIGNIFICANCE' Previously unreleased, these tracks are the missing link between the band's Untitled 10" and Scene In Mirage LP. A shadow album to their debut, it shows the inner workings of a group of Nottingham 19 year olds finding thier sound, embracing electronica but moving towards ambient. At times naive but always charming. This excavation is based on a very deep dive into the various cassettes and master tapes of their archive. While OYC had thought they'd documented their early years sufficiently with the Ambiguism box set, it soon became obvious the task was incomplete. They reassessed many unreleased tracks they had previously thought insignificant and of no value, and were surprised to discover that wasn’t the case. 1983 Unearthed can be seen as a forerunner to Scene in Mirage, sharing the same format of two opposed and contrasting sides. The U side (tracks 1-6) is compiled from unreleased beat-driven cassettes, while the Y side (tracks 7-10) is primarily from the ambient soundtrack to an early unreleased version of their Peripheral Vision video. Despite the radically different approaches, this record shows that 1983 was a defining year for the band as they strove to find their sound. Side U Source: stereo cassettes Instrumentation: SH09, TR606, guitar, bass, radio & found sounds, clarinet, bugle, WEM Copicat, syndrum, BOSS flanger, phaser & auto-wah. Recorded at The End Room, Babbington, Notts. Side Y Source: 4 track cassette & quarter inch studio masters. Instrumnetation: MS20, Powertran DDL, marimba, flute, location & found recordings. Recorded at Complex Studio, Leeds. Tracks Y2, Y3 & Y4 originally made for the video 'Peripheral Vision' (1983) A FINAL IMAGE ARCHIVE RELEASE. All tracks by Elliott/Horberry/Horberry/Hulme Except 8 & 9 by Hulme/Orpheus https://oyukiconjugate.bandcamp.com/album/1983-unearthed-3 | 2025 | €22.50 |
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| O'NANCY IN FRENCH | O'Nancy in French | CD | "Finally on CD!!! The epic, noise industrial music by a cult duo (known from collaboration with John DUNCAN and his CV MASSAGE) from Japan in 1984. Remastered by Nobuo Ishizaki. The CD was issued in a limited edition of 200 copies in jewel cases including a four-page booklet with liner notes in English and Japanese by Takuya Sakaguchi." | 2016 | €12.00 |
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| O'ROURKE, JIM | The Visitor | CD | "JIM O’ROURKE returns with his first new solo album since 2001. All the classic O’Rourke-isms are here, for you musicologist types: percolating banjos, smooth electric leads, organic, kicking drum sounds, the flickering of shakers to the left and right, mellow but ominous woodwinds, sounds that indicate “vintage” (before turning left and running out the door), sonic jokes, sonic tear-jerkers, sonic jerkoffs, all wrapped in spacious yet subtle left to right placement of everything in the picture. There’s moments of low comedy next to high drama and juicy melancholy with a seeming lack of regard for proximity. Plus—sudden surging rhythms! The Visitor is sort of “O’Rourke Does O’Rourke”—Jim re-contextualizing everything he’s done over the years, and throwing out the bullshit. The one thing you won’t hear is his voice—perhaps another O’Rourkian self-examination? Or maybe he’s just saving it for all the name-calling on his next album." [label info] "You probably can't find a musician with a wider breadth of sound, or more sonically varied releases, than Mr. Jim O'Rourke. During his vast career he's made everything from harsh noise to delightful pop, was part of one of the more influential groups of the last few decades, Gastr Del Sol, collaborated with Nurse With Wound, became a member of Sonic Youth, was at the forefront of the '90s experimental electronic renaissance, made some crunchy rock albums with his Wilco pal Jeff Tweedy, and the list just goes on and on. These days O'Rourke has slowed down his output considerably so a new release is both much more anticipated as well as a total unknown as to which side of Jim O'Rourke will be on display. With The Visitor, O'Rourke emerges with his first new full length in many years and wow the wait was worth it! The Visitor is one long track clocking in at around 37 minutes but it almost serves as some kind of early morning daydream song cycle with a spectrum of nuanced sounds that make us think of Van Dyke Parks arranging a John Fahey album or what a more restrained James Blackshaw record might sound like. The record starts with very hushed noodling guitar and as the piece goes on the sounds expand in richness as extra flourishes of bells, piano and other lushness flesh out O'Rourke's delicate guitar playing. Hard to avoid this cliché, but The Visitor really is a total journey, at first you don't really know where it's going and you're not sure if you necessarily want to follow but as the piece evolves it completely grabs a hold of your attention until you are lost in its slowly unfurling sonic voyage. Highly recommended!" [Aquarius Rec.] www.dragcity.com | 2009 | €13.00 |
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| Hands That Bind | LP | "In addition to his day job transforming pop music with his own records, as well as those of Gastr del Sol, Loose Fur and Sonic Youth over the past few decades, Jim O'Rourke has been contracted for several dozen film scores over the years as well. It makes sense -- his abilities as an improviser, composer and producer allow him to interpret cinematic moments with a unique understanding for their construction and how they work. It doesn't hurt that Jim's a well-versed cineaste, a complete and total fan of watching films, which has given him a preternatural understanding of the role of music in movies. What doesn't make sense is how Hands That Bind is the first film soundtrack of Jim's to ever receive worldwide release! He's worked with filmmakers of international repute, like Olivier Assayas, Allison Anders, Werner Herzog and Kôji Wakamatsu! He served as music consultant on Richard Linklater's 2003 laff-fest, School of Rock! He's played in ensembles of award-winning documentaries and films alike! ... Made for an indie film that's been seen by festival audiences and not enough others, the soundtrack for Hands That Bind is a moody, atmospheric delight. Jim's roots in composition via tape-editing have evolved into a sophisticated assembly of found-and-processed sounds that achieve highly musical, near-orchestral majesty as they hang in the very air of the drama that unfolds in Kyle Armstrong's Hands That Bind. Described as a 'slow-burn prairie gothic drama' set in the farmland of Canada's Alberta province, and starring Paul Sparks, Susan Kent, Landon Liboiron, Nicholas Campbell, Will Oldham, and Bruce Dern, Hands That Bind is a spellbinding trip to the existential bone of rural working life in North America. As conflict rises over the hard-worked patches of land that provide a mere and mean existence, a desperate air settles in, as a series of mysterious, often supernatural occurrences rock the small community. O'Rourke's vaporous, serpentine musical backdrops and atmospheres reflect the obsessions and distractions of the film's principles; moods of all sorts seen or otherwise implied. Additionally, the music highlights cinematographer Mike McLaughlin's closely observed accounting of the farmers' environment, as well as the striking widescreen images of the big sky country with unnerving flair. For fans of Jim's ongoing steamroom series as well as collectors of soundtracks, Hands That Bind will provide hours of engrossing listening..." [press release] https://jimorourke.bandcamp.com/album/hands-that-bind-original-motion-picture-soundtrack ################################################# "The experimental producer and composer’s score for the prairie gothic film is luminous, faintly menacing, and clouded with uncertainty. In Kyle Armstrong’s Hands That Bind, horror is hiding in plain sight. The film, which premiered in 2021 and is due for theatrical release this fall, is set amid desolate Alberta farmlands—a space whose relentless flatness you might assume allows for few mysteries. Straight roads stretch endlessly toward the horizon; barns outnumber trees by a wide margin. Any approaching threat ought to be visible from miles away. But in the world of this carefully paced prairie gothic, unsettling events arrive from out of nowhere, leading to more questions than answers. Who, or what, is mutilating the farmers’ cattle? Who’s in the black sedan making ominous drive-bys? And what are those lights swirling in the sky? The crucial question, which drives the film’s grippingly human drama as well as its more cryptic events, is philosophical in nature: whether we can ever truly be certain about anything. “My opinion isn’t going to solve anything for you, because my opinion is that I don’t know,” remarks a bartender played by a scene-stealing Will Oldham, as he turns off a Scratch Acid song on the stereo. “Certainty is the rare exception to the rules of life. Whatever’s easiest to swallow is what most folks gravitate towards. Even if you lie to yourself, as best as you can, and look for something you call true, well, whatever your theory is, it’s probably wrong.” Jim O’Rourke’s soundtrack is perfectly calibrated to this unforgiving space squashed between parched fields and blown-out sky. His palette—detuned piano, watery vibraphone, and a muted, amorphous shimmer that might be harmonium or synthesizer—matches the film’s dusty tones of beige and pewter and mobile-home brown. A high-end fizz resembles the incessant whine of crickets; the occasional spritz of static mimics the strange electrical phenomena on screen. Closer in spirit to the longform drone works of his Steamroom series than the fingerpicked Americana of Bad Timing or the mischievous classic rock of Simple Songs, O’Rourke’s instrumental score is, much like the landscape of the film, flat, faintly menacing, and miserly with its details. (Another comparison point might be the Boxhead Ensemble’s 1997 soundtrack to the film Dutch Harbor: Where the Sea Breaks Its Back, featuring O’Rourke alongside Chicago luminaries like Ken Vandermark and Douglas McCombs.) It begins gently enough, with a high, lonesome harmony reminiscent of a freight train’s distant whistle. An acoustic bass plucks out a tentative melody. These opening passages move with pastoral ease. But the music quickly sours, clouded with uncertainty, as dark, shapeless figures clamber up from the lower register to disturb the tranquil upper reaches. Light is one of the film’s unspoken subjects—the implacable sun beating down on sere crops, the bokeh-like orbs cutting curlicues in the night sky—and O’Rourke’s soundtrack has similarly luminous properties. He favors soft attacks that come on like a backlist mist, and streaks of dissonance that flash out and disappear, swallowed up in the dull radiance. The 38-minute score cycles through just a handful of themes and motifs, stirring them occasionally, as though to keep them from sticking. Halfway through, with “A Man’s Mind Will Play Tricks Upon Him,” brushed cymbals and plucked bass kick up a groove beneath a chiming piano melody; it’s one of few places where the record approaches anything resembling a song. But the moment is fleeting. In the concluding “One Way or Another I’m Gone,” the drumbeat returns, but this time there’s no lightness to it. It plods sullenly as jabbing tritones, a constant throughout the album, hint at a nameless evil. The soundtrack ends as it began, hovering in a nebulous interzone, neither major nor minor—ambiguous, ambivalent, unresolved.\\\" [Pitchfork] ############## Eight years after “Simple Songs”, his last solo outing with the label, the towering talent of Jim O’Rourke returns to Drag City with “Hands That Bind”, the first LP in his long career to offer a proper release to his soundtrack work. Composed for the director Kyle Armstrong’s 2021 film of the same name, the album\'s eight sublime musical complements interweave subtle melodic elements, bristling electroacoustic structures, and moody ambiences, collectively bridging the distance between O’Rourke\'s experimental work and his deft hand in the realms of pop. As absolutely brilliant as they come. On the occasion of the release of “Hands That Bind” we are glad to announce a promotional sale with 15% off for members and 10% off for everybody on all available Drag CIty items, valid until Sunday at midnight or while stocks last. The endlessly fruitful relationship between Jim O’Rourke and the Chicago based imprint, Drag City, traverses the better part of the last thirty years, with the label providing platform and support for one the great musical voices of our age. Beginning with his band Gastr del Sol\'s seminal second LP, “Crookt, Crackt, or Fly”, and running through his legendary suite of pop masterstrokes, - “Bad Timing”, “Eureka”, “Halfway to a Threeway”, and “Insignificance” - his involvement with projects like Loose Fur, The Red Krayola, and Mimidokodesuka, and a great deal more, his output with Drag City is a truly remarkable thing to behold, providing a snapshot into a restless creative mind within a collective body of intoxicating sounds. His last, 2015\'s “Simple Songs” build on the instrumental trajectory established by its predecessor, “The Visitor” (2009), but his latest, “Hands That Bind”, however, charts a new, surprising path. Composed as the soundtrack for the director Kyle Armstrong’s 2021 film of the same name, the album’s subtle melodic elements, played against bristling electroacoustic structures, bridge the distance between his more experimental work, largely housed in recent years on his own Steamroom imprint, and the pop-oriented work historically located on Drag City. Absolutely stunning from its first sounding to the last, “Hands That Bind” is yet another creative milestone from Jim O’Rourke that’s impossible to get off the turntable once the needle drops. Ten out of ten and not to be missed! Jim O’Rourke is among the great voices of his generation. He is a true musical polymath, whose diverse efforts, since his emergence within the Chicago scene during the late 1980s, have continuously altered the creative landscape. Across more than a hundred albums, he has carved a relentless path, refusing conceptual stasis and the boundaries of genre and idiom, producing a body of work with such a profound impact and influence, that is so striking, forward-thinking, and important - while displaying a consistently unparalleled bar of quality - that it transcends the basic notions of art; becoming a network of sound, mirroring the pathways of an endlessly curious and uninhibited mind. O’Rourke’s music is thought unfolding in real time. Unbridled creativity in pursuit of the unknown. Since his move to Japan during the late 2000s, O’Rourke’s recorded works have generally veered toward two polarities - direct, jointly billed, conversant collaborations with peers like Haino Keiji, Peter Brötzmann, Oren Ambarchi, Giovanni Di Domenico, Mats Gustafsson, Akira Sakata, Kassel Jaeger, and Fennesz, among numerous other, and privately created solo efforts falling under the banner of Steamroom - increasingly only issued as direct digital downloads. There has, however, been another body of work rumbling below the surface that has yet to receive a single proper release. Over the last few decades, O’Rourke has been composing several dozen film soundtracks for widely celebrated filmmakers like Olivier Assayas, Allison Anders, Werner Herzog and Kôji Wakamatsu. At long last, this mysterious area of the artist’s creative explorations begins to be more accessible with the release of “Hands That Bind”, composed for the director Kyle Armstrong’s 2021 film of the same name and his first film soundtrack to receive a proper release. Anyone who knows much about O’Rourke is aware of his deep passion for film. Since his teens on the outskirts of Chicago, he has remained a devoted cinephile, which naturally, being the person and artist that he is, has cultivated an intimate understanding of the place and operation of music within the idiom. Any doubts to this end will be quickly laid to rest by the profound beauty and subtlety of “Hands That Bind”, composed for a “slow-burn prairie gothic drama” set in the farm-land of Canada’s Alberta province, that stars Paul Sparks, Susan Kent, Landon Liboiron, Nicholas Campbell, Will Oldham, and Bruce Dern, within which a series of mysterious, often supernatural occurrences, rock the small community. Into these narratives and happening, O’Rourke composed eight sublime musical complements ranging from moody and atmospheric electroacoustic marvels that interweave long-tones and textural elements, drawn from diverse resonant sources, to more explicitly musically melodic and percussive pieces like “A Man\'s Mind Will Play Tricks On Him” and “One Way or Another I\'m Gone”, that return the ear to O’Rourke’s roots in post-rock and jazz. Joined collectively, these works evolve at glacial pace into a freestanding journey of startling proportions, building bridges within a single structure across the versatility and range that the artist has historically reserved for more discreetly located works, notably his poppier efforts for Drag City, and his more experimental works released on Steemroom. Immersive and intoxicating, while displaying an understated elegance that only O’Rourke is capable of, whether regarded as a complement to moving image or a freestanding musical gesture, “Hands That Bind” is an absolute musical masterstroke of unparalleled brilliance, building on his long history of tape collage to construct a profoundly sophisticated assembly of found-and-processed sounds into orchestral majesty. Issued by Drag City as a beautifully produced LP, this is O’Rourke at his best. Ten out of ten and impossible to recommend enough. [Soundohm + press release ] | 2023 | €27.50 |
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| O'ROURKE, JIM & C.M.VON HAUSSWOLFF | In, Demons, In! | LP | The time-stopping tract of ’In Demons In!’ is a naturally elemental drone collaboration between eminent experimentalists Jim O’Rourke and CM Von Hausswolf for their eternal admirers at iDEAL Recordings Offering a transfixing peek behind the curtain of pure black hole drone dynamics, ‘In Demons In!’ finds the American in Japanese exile and the proclaimed monarch of the imaginary kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland meeting on common ground after 26 years of international correspondence. Initiated in Tokyo 2016 and completed over the proceeding two years in Japan and Sweden, the uncompromisingly adventurous results are galactic in scope and viscerally metaphysical in presence, conjuring scales of abyssal bass and diffused, atomised, abstract dark matter that make the listener feel like a speck of stardust floating in infinity. Using sound as a magickal tool for psychic transport and to finely model notions of the metaphysical that typically elude human comprehension, the near 40’ work feels to collapse billions of years into a glacial moment. Location recordings made in Kathmandu lend an barely there iridescence, like microbial filaments flickering in the endless darkness, to their plunging, subharmonic basses and vaporised mid-upper registers, where spectral forces comb thru the piece, only very gradually altering the weightless keen of its planetary mass and mental traction. Ultimately, and fans are likely to agree, ‘In Demons In!’ amounts to a vitally definitive entry in both artists’ catalogues, marking right up there with the most abstract wonders of O’Rourke’s electro- acoustic Steamroom volumes, while manifesting some of the most fascinating results from Von Hausswolff’s ongoing investigations into drone music’s paranormal properties. In other words: it’s Grade A+ zoner music. | 2019 | €25.00 |
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| OBLIVION ENSEMBLE | Seraphim Hallucino | CD | Nach langer Wartezeit endlich ein neues Album für das US-amerikanische Projekt um BRANNON HUNGNESS und JOHN BERGSTROM, die vor Jahren auch eine EP für Drone Records eingespielt haben. SERAPHIM HALLUCINO ist ein erdrückend intensives, dunkles Werk basierend auf Instrumental-Improvisationen, die später im Studio ausufernd bearbeitet wurden... mit elektro-akustischer Finesse ausgestatteten Dronescapes, die geheimnisvoll & geräuschhaft tönen, man scheint wie in einem surrealen (Alp?)-Traum gefangen zu sein, immer wieder schlittern diese Sounds am Bewusstsein vorbei, um dann in überraschenden Arrangements wiederzuerstarken... eine einzigartige, filmische Atmosphäre wird erschaffen. Grossartiges Album! "The music of Oblivion Ensemble remains as elusive and surreal as the ever-shifting cast of musicians and performerswho participate, knowingly, or unknowingly in their work. Founding members are John Bergstrom and Brannon Hungness (aka Figure). Hungness is a virtuoso experimentalguitarist and composer and a former member of the Glenn Branca Ensemble. Bergstrom is a computer-musicgearhead and a film composer with a classical music pedigree, and mastermind behind the industrial-noise assembly Torse. Seraphim Hallucino is Oblivion Ensemble’s fifth full-length release, the first since the virtual opera “Nightmare:Sinistrotorse” (Complacency, 1995). At Seraphim Hallucino’s source are strange, electro-acoustic improvisations of percussion, trumpet, voice, synthesizers and guitar. These improvisations are sculpted and sampled, twisted and turned, shaped into building and diminishing moments, and, at times appearing alone, pure and unmodified. Deeply imbedded in the music and fragmented lyrics are secrets, intertwining themes, voices, and imprinted messages. All come together to create an enormously complex, mercurial mix of surreal, dynamic and dark sounds. To fully appreciate the scope and intricacies of Seraphim Hallucino, headphones in a darkened room are highly recommended. "The band most likely to compose a fitting soundtrack for the end of the world. ” [Sorted magAZine] “Visionary gothic psychedelia. [The Wire] "the most undefinable gorgeous musical anything that I have ever witnessed ... a beyond great performance, chilling and anxious. [Best of Times]. In superb digipak, with artwork by Matt Vickerstaff of darkwaveart.co.uk." [press release] "... Eerie textures are easily combined with chaotic and hectic movements. I am not sure wether we should see all twenty-two pieces as part of the total, or wether they are all separate, I rather believe the first, since some parts do flow nicely into each other, thus making the greater picture. There is a darker undercurrent on this CD, which doesn't make it easy to grasp, but it unfolds great beauty when explored in depth (and in dark, I presume)." [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2007 | €13.00 |
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| OJERUM (øJERUM) | 7 Sjaele | LP | After releasing “Selv I Drømme Lyser Den Første Sne” øjeRum returns to Midira Records, with a new album, called 7 Sjæle. “7 Sjæle” features seven tracks, splitted on two 20 minutes long sides. On side A you will find six short tracks focusing on different minimal themes and on side B a nearly 20 minutes long track takes time to evolve more minimal themes into a fragile soundwall of loops. Even without all the typical sounds of a vinyl, you can also here the warm aura of the tracks by listening to the digital version. Nevertheless this record is made for vinyl listening. We also wanted to focus on the typical collage artwork of øjeRum, so we divided the elements of the cover artwork into its origins, so that the sleeve comes as a die cut cover with a printed 12inch insert. The album comes in an edition of 200 copies. 100 on transparent clear vinyl and 100 on golden vinyl. The album features a two sided inlay and a download code for the album and the full length video for “Syvende Sjæl”. Physical copies are available here: www.midirarecords.com/portfolio/ojerum-7-sjaele/ credits released October 11, 2019 music and artwork by Paw Grabowski mastering by Antonio Gallucci https://midirarecords.bandcamp.com/album/7-sj-le | 2019 | €25.00 |
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| OKO / UCHO | Skrawy | Video-CDR | Schon die zweite film/sound-Zusammenarbeit des polnischen post-Industrial Projekts UCHO, mit dem Filmemacher OKO. Amorphe grün-gelbe Wellen und Muster die wie lebendiges Material erscheinen, abstrakte Collagenbilder und cut-ups, mit dunkel-glühenden ambient-noise Sounds unterlegt. Ein reinster synästhetischer, abgründiger Genuss ! Läuft auf jedem PC. ”New pictures & music. Truly alchemic journey! DIVX for PC users. Fantastic sounds & colours. Total time 28 min. Hi-fi stereo. Full colour cover on high quality photo paper packed in DVD box. Full recommendation!” [Nefryt] | 2002 | €12.00 |
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| OM | Pilgrimage | CD | "The mighty return of the transcendental RIFF! The third Om record! By now the methods and purpose of their ultra heavy music of the spheres is clear. The music on this album, much like the first two, is stripped to its essence. Bass and drums churning out super hypnotic heaviness and repetitive chant-like vocals creating a cyclical whorl of trance-rock divinity. With a lot of new releases from bands we love, change in sound and development of style is important, Om seem to operate with different principles than the average rock and roll outfit. The consistency of their sound lends itself to the eternal nature of the music, as if all three of their records are really just movements in some expansive, cosmic symphony. Within Om's canon, change is felt like the passing of time without the aid of a clock or calendar, existing in the infinite void. And what an ass kicking void it is! The riffs and rhythms on Pilgrimage are certainly just as good as those on either of their previous releases, which means amazingly heavy and heady slabs of stoned out ROCK! The record starts off with the title track, which is an expansive slow burner. Mesmeric and spiritual, soft spoken vocals and a propulsive tom and tambourine beat. The riffs on this track, as well as the bulk of Om's material, have a certain eastern quality, like some strange Sabbath-raga meld, and they go on forever and ever, taking the listener on some sort of mystic celestial voyage. By track two, "Unitive Knowledge Of The Godhead", the fuzzed out bass distortion kicks in, and the sound gets HEAVY! This Sleep-like heavitude continues into the 11 plus minute "Bhima's Theme", by which point in the album the listener is more than likely completely transfixed, eyes a-glaze with the eternal riff burned into their brain. The last song on the album is "Pilgrimage (Reprise)", which makes for a very circular experience, like when listening to the album all the way through, time disintegrates and 32 minutes seems like a split second or a week or an eternity! Heavy, mannnn... Possibly one of the most distinctive things about Pilgrimage is the recording itself. This album sounds fucking great! We mean, for a band that just consists of bass guitar and drums, you could not pick a better engineer than Mr. Steve Albini, whose forte has always been the rhythm section, and he completely nailed the sound! It's warm and cavernous, and completely swallows the listener whole. So, if you are in tune with the amaranthine vibes of Om's two previous records, you will most certainly appreciate this one as a continuation on the path towards the essence of musical anima mundi! RIFF TO ETERNITY!" [Aquarius] www.southernlord.com | 2007 | €15.00 |
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| ONODERA, YUI & CELER | Generic City | CD | " 'Generic City' is the debut release for Two Acorns, a new label/publisher curated by Will Long of Celer. 'Generic City' is presented in a custom-designed CD package, created by mondii, with photography by Danielle Baquet-Long, and mastered by Taylor Deupree. 'For this collaboration work, I made a lot of field recordings. Songs of migratory birds that come to a big lake only in winter, the sound of breaking ice, frozen on a lake, the peal of huge bells in a temple, voices in prayer to the Buddha, footsteps in the subway, on the ground, made by coming and going people, machine sounds at a construction site, rain flowing into a steel pipe with a hard sound, the oscillation sound of rubbing iron which was recorded through a contact mic set on steel, the conversation of people walking in the city, noise of vehicles and trucks, kids voices from an elementary school, and so on. Like a time trip to transcend places, these sound-scapes are presented as a imaginary tale. To collaborate with foreign artists became a chance for facing Japan again for me. Reflecting on each of our localities to compose let us be aware anew of the vernacular which has been lost in the global world. Artists can't be unrelated to the characteristics (culture) of places (surroundings) where they live, and they are influenced obliviously in some way. By watching our everyday surroundings closely, we can engender a most realistic language of where we live, and how we think. I sense that peculiar, unfamiliar cultures and customs are invaluable wealth in human history.' - Yui Onodera 'In this collaboration work with Yui Onodera, we contributed many instrument sounds, and field recordings such as the streets of Los Angeles, rain on our doorstep, water draining into the gutter, cars passing on wet and slippery streets, people walking on their way home from work, talking in an airport baggage claim, crosswalks, airliners flying over, taxi rides, riding bikes through traffic, conversations in restaurants, the Metro Link train in Los Angeles, and walking on quiet streets. In our part of mixing, since we were working with someone's instrument sounds and field recordings from a city that we haven't visited, much was left to our imagination to re-create an environment and city setting for the piece. Trying to keep a balance between the heavily processed material and the entirely unprocessed material, created a natural bridge of movement inside the city. Processed elements became backdrops and scores to real activity, sometimes simply drifting away from the daily life, or the finding the soul of the pieces. When these two entirely different cities came together, it created an all new way of looking at, and hearing the city's movements around us. Cultures parallel one another, with the views of the skylines and empty streets left the only visible evidence of similarity.' - Danielle Baquet-Long, Will Long " [label info] www.thesingularwe.org/twoacorns "Two Acorns is a new label started by Will Long, one half of Celer. He deals with 'things you can hold in your hand, or keep on your bookshelf, to keep these feelings, memories, and experiences. There is no replacement for the smell of a book, the spin of a CD player starting'. Hear hear. The label starts of with a collaborative release of his band Celer (which was Long and his partner Danielle Baquet-Long, who passed away) and Yui Onodera. The latter provides field recordings, electronics, guitar, violin, piano and musical box, while Celer holds the mixing board, cello, violin, piano, field recordings, theremin, electronics and ocarina. I am not sure but I don't recall seeing many collaborations of Celer, but the result, four lengthy pieces work out quite well. Its probably everything you would expect from such a collaboration (you could debate wether that is good or bad), but the gentle, sustaining, of course drone - a word that can't be avoided when talking about Celer nor Onodera - like atmospherics work quite well, but what seems interesting is that many of the field recordings go unprocessed into the mix. Lots of rain, water, animals, street sounds, stuff that seems to be picked up with contact microphones and such like, and they bathe quite well in the string of sounds woven together on the various instruments. They add a great spice to the music, which doesn't stick that much in the world of 'just' drones too much. Beautifully ringing overtones, 'heavy' street sounds, air traffic and crackling of leaves: together they create a mighty fine aural landscape. Beautiful." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2010 | €12.50 |
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| ORBIT SERVICE | Songs of Eta Carinae | CD | "The first 1000 are in a 5 color gatefold boardstock sleeve. What if the star baby at the end of '2001: A Space Odyssey' was the product of Thom Yorke and Roger Waters? Orbit Service at your service. Wish you were here... An altruistic dark side of the moon proposition, Eta Carinae is a star 120-150 times the size of our own sun that lies a mere 7000+ light years from this island Earth. Discovered by no less than Edmond Halley his bad self in the late 17th century, Eta Carinae has been observed to fluctuate between telescopic and naked eye proportions over the past 3 centuries. Eta Carinae is in the last throes of its long life, with only about another 100,000 or so years to go before a likely supernova. It seems fitting that one of the most majestic and awesome of the celestial bodies should be serenaded by someone. Orbit Service have certainly taken space, the atom mother, to heart in this progressive ode. And like the star in their eyes the album expands and contracts from white hot to blue cool. The resultant cosmic astro-dirge howls in a bubbly flurry of electro-buzz and slowly pulsing drumbeats. Vocal whispers rise into muted wails, pushing against the very fabric of firmament itself before being drawn back into the gaseous miasma of the star-field. Violence and silence interlaced, as in the life of a sun. Or in the life of a son. The lyrics cast shadows on the stuff of terra firma and of the heart as well, making this just as much about inner space. Orbit Service's cris de coeur is a shaded psychedelic parallectrogram that almost answers the question: what if the star baby at the end of '2001: A Space Odyssey' was the product of Thom York and Roger Waters?. Orbit Service at your service. Wish you were here..." [press release] | 2006 | €13.00 |
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| ORGANUM | Die Hennen Zähne | mCD | Vier grossartig komplex scheppernde & ritualisiert-perkussiv tönende ORGANUM-Stücke, die eigentlich als zwei 10”es rauskommen sollten, wobei nicht ganz klar, ob es sich komplett um älteres Material handelt. ’MAUS’ ist ein geniales metallurgisch-obertoniges Power-Drone-Stück, wie es wohl nur ORGANUM hinkriegen kann ! „A four track mini CD combining the never released two 10inch's 'Maus' (DS57) and 'Die Hennen Zähne' (DS66). 'Die Hennen Zähne' opens with 'Die Kralle', actually a David Jackman track from his archive recorded in the early 1980's. Next is the title track 'Die Hennen Zähne', a joyful noise not unlike some of the TNB/Organum material incl. the sound of broken glass and tibetan horns, best to be experienced LOUD. 'Maus' is the centre piece of this mini album and typical 'old school' Organum. The album closes with the more quiet and haunting 'Kazi', a live improvisation featuring collaborator's Michael Prime and Emma O'Bong. Digipack. 600 copies. Total playing time: 18:18 min.” [press release] | 2005 | €12.00 |
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| Die letzte Musik vor dem Krieg | 7inch | Schöne geräuschhafte NEUE Stücke von ORGANUM, scheppernd-schrottige Konkret-Noises wie sie wir lieben vermischen sich mit ruhigem Klavier und Horn-Attacken... “Two brand new pieces from 2003. Piano on side A and tibetan horns on side B add new sound colours to the classic Organum drones. Edition of 500 copies in picture cover.. Playing time: 6.39 min.” [label info] | 2003 | €8.50 |
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| ORGANUM ELECTRONICS | Solitude | CD | “In the everlasting silence of the universe Dark clouds reflect upon shimmering water The voiceless radiance of solitude Dissonant overtones in dark clouds Pierce the eternal veil of night The rivers rage ceaselessly Burst Swiftly, cloud-shadows and sunbeams White flames burning through a dark sky Wrapped in its own eternity Wild and forsaken No sound is tamed Release and rebirth, revolve, subside and swell Inescapable and incessant in motion The path of that unfailing sound A harmony Ancient and solemn The voiceless radiance of solitude” David Jackman’s music, both as Organum and under his given name, is typically characterized by repetition, brevity and a deadpan aloofness. He’s made plenty of extremely short (sometimes one-sided) 7” singles, albums containing multiple slight variations on a single piece, and albums of compositional (if not sonic) minimalism. It’s Jackman’s typical move to provide very little information beyond a word, or sometimes an image. Lately, he’s been predisposed to not even providing an image; just as few words as possible on a white background, nothing more. Naturally, he does not seem to do interviews and has no web presence. As listeners, we’re left to apprehend the music as itself. No guidance into his hermetic world. I find it refreshing. Whatever your experience of an Organum album is, that’s all you get. Thankfully, each emission is thought- provoking enough to get lost in and monolithic enough to encourage both passive and active engagement. 8Howard Stelzer] "In Vital Weekly 1216, HS reviewed 'Electronics' by Organum, which was quite the change for Organum’s David Jackman. In the last decade or so, Jackman used quite a lot of real instruments to construct a bizarre composition that may or may not be the same. After that came 'Stillness', not reviewed on these pages, and the name was changed to Organum Electronics, which is also the banner for 'Solitude', a thirty-six-minute piece of harsh electronics. Oddly enough, the artwork didn't change and is still similar to the artwork of his 'quieter' phase and which I think is pop art without the images. I have no idea if David Jackman acquired a set of modular electronics to do this, or if this is something he always had but not used a lot. The loud character of the music brings back memories of the very first record I heard from Organum, 'In Extremis'. I always thought that was made with acoustic instruments played with mechanical objects and slowed down, and I might be wrong. It had that density of ringing sounds that I enjoyed a lot back then and still do; Organum is one of the three or four musicians of whom I own a lot of records. That sort of density I also find in 'Solitude', even when it might be all electronics. It sounds like being trapped in the machine room of a large ship. The more you concentrate, the more little nuances appear in the music, an odd sense of movement in a standstill notion. The music might be loud, but it has not the similar aggression I find in some noise records. There is, odd as it may sound, a soothing aspect to the music. I am a fanboy, I admit that, and that means Organum can't do wrong. It was a bold move to change the style of music for David Jackman, but most enjoyable!" [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2021 | €14.00 |
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| Fiire | 7inch | A short(er) blast and a typical example of OE‘s Happy Noise. First (and last ?) OE music on vinyl. Edition of 150 copies on Black Vinyl. | 2026 | €13.00 |
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| ORPHANAGE COMMITTEE | The Seven Sacraments | CD | The Orphanage Committee is an ever-changing sound art project. Has Orphan S.C. Wallace now become religious? Not likely, but you have to admit that 'The Seven Sacraments' is a damn fine topic to expand your mind! This wonderful soundwork collects two lengthy compositions interpreting the Sacraments and being powered by real organ sounds. A true easy/uneasy listening experience to reach your personal Eargasm! Hell yeah! (Reverend EE) CD Limited to 100 cps in a jewel-case or DL Tags: abstract, ambient, field recording, experimental, mental muzick https://eetapes.bandcamp.com/album/the-seven-sacraments "Holy cow - sorry - but when I ended my review of the previous release by The Orphanage Committee, only four weeks ago (!), with "made me curious about where the Committee is heading next; I can't wait", I didn't expect the answer so soon. Belgium's Orphan S.C. Wallace releases an album with "two interpretations of the Seven Sacraments, being baptism, confirmation, eucharist, penance, anointing of the sick, holy orders and matrimony". Of course, this is very Catholic, and I have no idea how seriously we should be looking at this. Maybe it's a parody, or perhaps it's all serious business. Also, on Catholicism, I wrote before; that, "as a good Catholic boy, I don't care [about prayers], repent on my last day and go straight to heaven". I hope that works out one day (not too soon). Each of the two interpretations consists of seven parts, distinctly different, yet each flowing in the next. Unlike the previous LP, The Orphanage Committee returns to his first work (VItal Weekly 1319) and offers some more moody, synthesizer-based music. Not part of the cosmic school, perhaps, but repeating sounds, a bass line here and there, a repeated melodic loop. To top it off, there are field recordings, ranging from the schoolyard, radio and television. It's unclear what the relationship is between the spoken word and the seven sacraments; as far I could see, not a lot, and they were used in a more ornamental way. Face value, the music has very little to do with anything remotely religious, so even for atheists (for people of other faith), this is the most enjoyable mood music. So, if the correct order of the releases is the one in Vital Weekly 1372 as the debut, and in 1319 the follow-up, and then this, we can say that working with the more atmospheric end of synth-based music has his preference. A most enjoyable route to take, and the result is quite good." [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2023 | €13.00 |
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| ORPHAX | Dream Sequence #3 | mCD-R | this is third release in a series of 3”s with experimental ambient/drone pieces with a dreamy touch. "dream sequence #3" was recorded with audiomulch and reaper between april 28th and july 10th, 2016. the picture was taken at moerenburg, tilburg. a natural water filtration and where there once used to be a castle. www.taalem.com | 2017 | €5.00 |
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| ORPHAX & MACHINEFABRIEK | Weerkaatsing | CD | Weerkaatsing is the first collaboration by Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek) and Sietse van Erve (Orphax), both active players in the Dutch experimental electronic music field. While their paths did cross many times at concerts either as visitors or as performing artists, never before these prolific musicians got together. And as with so many collaborations also this one has a story behind it: Reflectie (Orphax) The idea behind this collaboration started in 2007, when Rutger released his EP Stofstuk and following this the remix album Kruimeldief. For years since the release I was intrigued by this little piece and the various remixes, and always had the idea of making a remix myself (and actually to start a series of unrequested remixes). Finally in 2016 I took the time to really work on this Stofstuk remix. With some magic and other forms of witchcraft I created the almost 20 minute long drone piece Reflectie, based solely on the Stofstuk piece. I tried to put a real Orphax touch to the work, but without losing the true Machinefabriek sound. As such it really felt for me as if we did a collaboration; and it was screaming for more. So I told Rutger about this and after I sent him the piece the idea came he would also remix one of my works. And from there this collaboration really kicked off... Spiegeling (Machinefabriek) The first time I met Sietse was at a gig in Utrecht, probably in 2006 or so, but I’m not sure. Since then, I saw him at so many gigs… one of the regulars of the scene, I’d say. Anyway, in 2007 I invited a load of artists to make a remix of my track ‘Stofstuk’. The results appeared on the album ‘Kruimeldief’, but what was missing was Sietse’s remix. At least, that’s what I found out recently. Apparently he had been ‘secretly’ working on a beautiful 20-minute remake of my track. Damn, it was too nice not to do anything with it, so we decided that I should return the favour and do a remix of an Orphax piece. I choose 'Geluiden van de Eerste Dag’, of his 'Tragedie van een Liedjesschrijver’ album, the piece that resonated the most with me. And the rework was done in no time. Not because I was in a hurry, but because the basic material of the track was so grateful to work with. I added a few looped snippets of violin which I recorded at a rehearsal (for another piece), and these worked perfectly with Sietse’s sounds. ‘One plus one equals three’, I’d say (cliché or not). Weerkaatsing (Together) So then we had two remixes. We had already decided to release this somehow, but it didn’t feel complete yet. That’s when ‘Weerkaatsing’, the title track, came to life. The most ‘collaborative collaboration’, and our favourite track of the album. It’s like the table tennis illustration on the cover; we kept bouncing sounds back and forth, until the track was finished. Which, again, didn’t take long. We were clearly on the same wavelength, and together with the other two tracks, we think it’s a really solid drone album. movingfurniturerecords.bandcamp.com/album/weerkaatsing "In a small country like The Netherlands there is a small, lively scene of experimental musicians, who bump into each other quite a lot and it is almost inevitable that there will be collaborations. Sietse van Erve, also known as Orphax bumped into Rutger Zuydervelt, alias Machinefabriek, bumped into each other a lot, as players of concerts or visitors to other concerts. Orphax was also interested in 'Stofstuk', an early piece by Machinefabriek (see Vital Weekly 573) that got quite quickly a remix CD to its name (see Vital Weekly 586). Van Erve was not on part of that remix project but over the years worked on a remix of his own and when Rutger found out, he decided to thank by doing a remix of an Orphax piece, 'Geluiden van de Eerste dag' from 'Tragedie Van Een Liedjesschrijver' (see Vital Weekly 899), in a twenty minute piece. To top it off they worked on a joint piece of music, bouncing sound files back and forth and now all three pieces. These three pieces are now to be found on 'Weerkaatsing', which means reflection, just as all three pieces have titles which Dutch synonyms for 'reflection'. Many works by both artists have been reviewed in Vital Weekly, and if you read what was written over the years, you know the words 'drone' and 'ambient' have been used quite a bit. This collaborative is not different and both play what their fans, me included, expect them to do. Where Machinefabriek has the sustaining organ sound Orphax is known, along with the stretching of bell sounds, Orphax uses the violin loops of the original and even allows for some rough cuts. Machinefabriek seems to be at his most minimal in this piece, in awe of Orphax, I'd say, and Orphax returns by showing a more musical side. In their duet piece they go for the more conventional drone approach and it consists of many layers of Orphax' old organs picked up in a space with a microphone adding an excellent space feel to them, and it gets a lovely treatment. This CD has a great cover too, courtesy by Zuydervelt. An excellent release." (FdW/Vital weekly) | 2017 | €12.00 |
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| ORSI, FABIO | Osci | LP | Italienischer Newcomer auf SMALL VOICES mit einer von Nostalgie und Melancholie durchdrungenen Drone/Ambient-Produktion, field recordings und traditionelles Folk-Material wird z.T. loopig verwebt mit Gitarren- & Synth-Klängen, 3 nostalgische Postkarten runden das verträumt-nostalgische Bild ab... für Atmo-Melancholiker. “SmallVoices is happy to present a new Italian promising artist: Fabio Orsi. 'Osci' is a two long tracks album (remixed by Gianluca Becuzzi/Kinetix) of ambient drone music, field recordings and experimental melancholic soundcapes... Using processed folk music parts (taken during folkloristic festivals, typical of the Apulian folk tradition), Fabio creates a dreaming atmosphere crossing between balls and bellows, silence and spirituality, everyday life: at home, in a church, in the countryside, at the small-town feast. All these sounds mixed and processed through digital machines: an encounter between modernism and tradition. Image a sort of mixture between Alio Die's ambient works, William Basinski's melancholia, Phil Niblock's experimentalism. Fabio Orsi plays: guitars, samples, field recordings, laptop. The black heavy weight vinyl was packaged in an elegant sleeve and including 3 postcards.” [label info] “Osci is a deep hole into the ground of the loved/hated traditional music. It is a snatch with the past, watching it from unusual perspective, with deforming lens under coloured lights. Osci never meets "Art", it is something like a hack. As the sickle relates about the man, but it's completely unconcerned with their destiny. He speaks the speech of crickets and ants. Time no exist. Telephone are not used to ring and the bees are assembling a "flying saucers" with the elements of an old washing machine. Telephone doesn't know how to ring and voices are gliding in to the dark from mouths full of soil and cheap beer, talking about obscene love proposals. Under the Sun we reverse a big stone and the name of a girl crawls out, into the grass. Someone picks up it from the ground, and put it on the neck as an amulet. Violin's strings clasp the heart in an August night. Flames itching the flesh with pain. Finally our body shows infinite chances. Inside and outside. Every single pore is a hole. Inside is outside. A blink. We would like to shake the skin from bodies, jumping in the fire. A blink. Then we leave by car, disappearing on dusty roads. Sentenced to a slow craziness. All the rumours pushing under the scab. Where the streets are swelling as the veins and the buildings are collapsing, we plant a microphone, cold as a needle.” [liner notes] | 2006 | €15.00 |
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| OSSASERPIA | Mvsic for Solve et Coagvla | CD & book | "Vladimir Igoshin (Ossaserpia) has created Opus alchymicum, spectacular account of the »work« of the musickal alchemists who developed a symbolic kind of psychochemistry, aimed at producing the gold of mystical illumination through celestial musick. See theories by Robert Fludd (Robertus Fluctibus) and Rosicrucian theories of the monochord. Very unique drone chamber musick with some strange industrial elements. Vladimir Igoshin is known for his contributions to HCD compilations such as Lust From The Underworld and/or AL: 100th Anniversary. Special art-work for an oversized hard-bound book (A5) designed by fantastic Madeline von Foerster! Special limited edition consists of 500 hand-numbered copies in hand-made box covered with rustish top-notch embossed Quilt 120g paper. The oversized embossed hard-bound book (A5) printed on Gmund Kaschmir cream 170g and embossed CD sleeve-jacket again on Quilt 120g paper. Very rare print for all fans of occult & alchemy! Special limited box on request only!" label notes] "Genre: Dark Ambient / Drone / Neo-Classical (Chamber) / Industrial. In today’s climate where record labels seem intent on cheaply mass produced releases to make a few quick bucks it comes as a relief to find a record label that actually cares about the presentation to match the music they release. Stepping into the, highly deserved, limelight is the Czech HORUS CyclicDaemon record label founded by Martin Mrskos. All their releases, well the ones I’ve been lucky enough to track down, have been impeccable in every respect. What went before though has been overshadowed by this latest release by the artist Vladimir Igoshin recording as Ossaserpia. I doubt many labels would have the balls to put out a recording housed in an actual hard bound book, A5 sized, in quality 120g paper and beautifully illustrated by the artwork of Madeline von Foerster. My eyes still can’t take it all in. I’m not by any means up on Art by any stretch of the imagination but I knows what I like and I like what I see set before me. The illustrations saying more than any amount of words can possibly describe. Which they need to as there are no words to accompany the pictures. A wise decision as it leaves the listener to use their own creative imaginations to make of it what they will as they listen to the music. For this book is best used in conjunction with the recording. Which I suspect was the way it was meant to be. Separated both are superb stand alone products. Together they open up undiscovered realms that feeds the senses. The touch, smell and sights of the book complimented by the aural grandeur that Vladimir has composed. Based on the theories of Robert Fludd (Robertus Fluctibus), 1574-1637, a Kentish Anglican alchemist, mathematician, astronomer, cosmologist who wrote thirteen published works in his lifetime and the Rosicrucian theories of the monochord. Please Google these for I have not the time, nor the intellect required, to go into great detail here, the music expands on the theory that alchemists developed a symbolic kind of chemistry aimed at producing the gold of mystical illumination through celestial music. Clear as muck then. The concept may well be shrouded in unintelligible mystery to a Neanderthal knuckle scraper like myself but even I could see what the artist has tried to envision through his music. Featuring, what I can only call, a Medieval vibe mixed in with modern Industrial noise and drone sensibilities the twelve tracks are a treat for the ears. Though you will need to give it a couple of spins to really get inside every nuance that Vladimir has created. From the off perceptions are challenged by the dirge drones and assorted muted ‘noise’ effects that spread like wildfire from the speakers. The bass tones are heavy duty and tinted with a dark apparel. Move past this introduction and the speckles of Neo-Classical / Chamber music begins to shine forth and suddenly the music takes the semblance of form as Vladimir throws all manner of different black musical combinations into the cauldron that bubbles with an intensity you never realised possible. You are treated to a music born of fire and brimstone from an age past brought to life in the present day. As your eyes scan and feast on the pictures of storm clouds, dragons and entwined couples the music conjures them in the minds eye. At its heart the music is surprisingly downbeat and steeped in dark oppressive moods where tranquillity appears smashed to a pulp. For all the unsettling swings the music takes, and it takes a lot, it ends on a note of triumph. A glimpse of fortitude winning against all odds. Unlike many recordings that have tried to re-create the whole ‘magical’ dark ambient experience ‘Mvsic For Solve Et Coagvla’ is the only one I’ve encountered that has actually got under the skin of its subject matter. I’ll not pretend that it is by any means an easy recording to get into and many of you may be put off by the way Vladimir has tackled the subject in such an uncompromising way. This might have been the Achilles heal for a lesser experienced musician but Vladimir’s music is created in such a way that through repeated plays you become more accustomed to the sounds until finally the clouds break and the full visionary aspects opens up before your ears. If there was such a thing as a perfect 10 for both presentation and music working in harmony and tandem with each other then ‘Mvsic For Solve Et Coagvla’ would be it. I tell you now that it will be one of the most sought after recordings for music lovers and collectors alike this year. With only 500 numbered copies you’ll need to act fast…or live to regret it." [Alan Milne / Heathen Harvest] label-website: www.horus.cz | 2006 | €26.00 |
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| OSSO EXOTICO |
VII
(SOLD OUT) |
7 | "OSSO EXÓTICO hail from Lisboa, Portugal, and since their early releases (three LPs) they have developed a truly unique style – an atmospheric, meditative ambience created through the use of concrete classical instruments. Their last CD Church Organ Works (on Sonoris, France) was played entirely on church organs.... This EP could be considered a follow-up to the CD. The material presented here was likewise produced solely on church organs. OSSO EXÓTICO don't play the organ in the orthodox, classical manner; they instead create a minimal lull, both orchestral & droneful, using the natural reverberation of the church, thus evoking full, other-worldy atmospheres. This EP might make you listen attentively to a different kind of organic harmony. The "music of the spheres" can be found here!! CLEAR VINYL, COVERS CONTAIN SPICES! ALL 7"es APPEAR IN A LIMITED & NUMBERED EDITION OF 250 COPIES." [press release] | 1999 | ||
| OTTE, HANS | Minimum:Maximum / Orient:Occident | CD | Aufnahmen von 1973 und 1977 vom poetischen Klang-Puristen und Minimalisten HANS OTTE. Stimme, Glockenspiel, Radiowaves, instrumentelle Geräusche, werden zu reduzierten aber wirkungsvollen Klangbildern verwoben, eine direkte Umsetzung von verwobener Klang- und Lebensphilosophie spiegelt sich hier wieder. “minimum:maximum (1973): texts / sounds / pictures. An environment (simultaneous concert in Stockholm and Bremen) for two organists: Karl-Erik Welin and Gerd Zacher, keyboard instruments. orient:occident (1977): for two woodwind-players and tape: Ingo Goritzki, oboe; Hans-Wilhelm Goetzke, clarinet. "Perhaps best known for his piano work 'Book of Sounds' these two works by German composer Hans Otte were composed in the 1970s. In that decade his aesthetic creed became increasingly clear: 'the search for the character and individuality of sound as such, which must be rediscovered and re-experienced independent of superimposed structures. The composer understands the dialogue with sounds as the discovery of their nature.' (Ute Schalz-Laurenze). While Hans Otte was an enthusiastic, one might say visionary promoter of fellow composers, such as John Cage and David Tudor, whose impacts had registered to the general public long after their force reached the surface, he nevertheless remained deeply committed to his own music. Otte's writings, simple lines that say: 'words are just something added on'; 'all great things laugh'; 'when something is reminiscent of nothing'; and, 'it's really something -- that voice that was once in the mouth,' all direct us to his music, because: 'everything always happens: Now.' It is Otte's music that betrays his particularity of thought to what (is everything), how (it happens), and when (is now). Words are just something added on. Collectively, these aphorisms reflect an aesthetic that dispenses with words which may address themselves to an understanding of the world. Here, however, the world to be understood is indescribable. What is everything? When is now? How does it happen? The message is that words tell, music is. Listen. The titles of these works: orient:occident and mnimum:maximum, suggest a relationship between seemingly disparate things to remind us of Otte's adage: 'It is the gardener who owns the garden.'" [label info] wwww.pogus.com | 2005 | €14.00 |
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| OUR LOVE WILL DESTROY THE WORLD | Beautiful Monolith two | 7" | "No Progression. No Movement. No Entertainment. No Narrative. No Musical Journey. No Drone. No Collector Scum. No Reviews. No Fans. Just electrified bloodbaths and blitzkrieg ragas from Nowhere, New Zealand, in search of fleeting moments of infinite density; where everything is louder than everything else, time slows to a crawl, and brains under stress slip into warm, prickly comas. Primitive electronic bumps and cannabanoid-campfire pulses clump into clusters and march like stars on their gigantic skyward axis. Think Coltrane, Think Public Image, Think Amon Duul, Think Conrad, Cale, or MacLise. Think Prandit Pran Nath being chewed up by Hanatarashs tropical piranha collection. Fluorescent, super-dense, trance-music to scare away the fools who buy records from the “drone” section." [label info] www.quasipop.org | 2009 | €6.50 |
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| OUSTAD, KRISTOFFER | Filth Haven | CD | "As one half of Swedish/Norwegian industrial duo K.N.O., Kristoffer Oustad is no stranger to the Malignant roster, and yet within the broader context of the K.N.O. sound, his exact contributions were never fully known, or at least immediately recognizable. Listening to his debut solo recording, it becomes evident that the more emotive and moody qualities within those recordings seemed to be his primary responsibility. The 7 tracks that comprise Filth Haven operate on a palpable psychological level and are perhaps some of the most personal and deeply emotional recordings Malignant has released. Oustad shows an innate ability to craft intricate and detailed pieces of grey hued, analog darkness that feel suspended in time… dreamlike and meditative, yet always hinting at something ominous on the horizon, as gradually shifting textures, drifting tones and haunting melodies intersect in a hazy, somnambulant procession. While the method for composition (analog synths, guitar, and field recordings) may have been the same, each track is uniquely different than the next, but in the end, feels tightly bound together by a cinematic framework that sinks deep into your consciousness. An absolutely astounding and rewarding work for those that appreciate all manner of dark music." [label info] www.malignantrecords.com "Filth Haven is the first full length release published by the Norwegian Kristoffer Oustad under his own name. In the past Oustad has offered several albums and compilation works under the moniker of Kristoffer Nyströms Orkester (a power industrial duet formed with Peter Nyström of Megaptera) and Plague Machinery and the post-metal, avant-garde industrial project V:28. Filth Haven is an ultimate bleak, demonic and epic soundscaping inferno. Massive, absorbing and grimy, the dark instrumental music rituals offered here are made of brooding droney chords, treated found sources, ultra-sonic electronic assaults, micro signals, harsh noises, disembodied chants and treated hypnotic-like percussive elements. The whole orchestration is amazingly captivating and exceptionally turbulent, as if we enter in complete nightmare-ish hallucinations which send us back to primordial origins or to some forgotten cosmic events. ‘Filth Haven’ is a tremendously hell-ish narrative album, a sublime illustration of infernal scenes of extravagance and final desolation we can appreciate in terrifying painting visions of John Martin, John Charles Dollman or Adolf Hiremy-Hirschl, just to name a few. The apocalyptic mood is interrupted by rare field recordings as in the otherworldly Acheron-like droning sound tapestry of “Row me over.” Mesmeric splendor, compelling musical procession and dark contemplative estates that will ravish addicted fans of isolationist ambient music and anything related to post-industrial experimentalism. With this album Malignant Records proves one more time that they figure among the most iconic producers of shimmering industrial ambient music. Filth Haven is definitely a recommended album for collectors as well as beginners in the genre." [Philippe Blache, IGLOO MAGAZINE] | 2015 | €12.00 |
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| OVAL LANGUAGE / RLW / DAS SYNTHETISCHE MISCHGEWEBE | Sprechzimmern (Hommage an Carlfriedrich Claus) | CD | "Distance, busyness, sporadic communication occupied with other topics are often the reason why common interests are discovered only late and by accident. Carlfriedrich Claus, sound poet and graphic artist with a largely concealed output, working in the no-man's-land of Annaberg-Buchholz, near Chemnitz, Germany, was with some exceptions only discovered after the fall of the wall. Creating a work of vocal utterances not only composed with great sophistication, but underlined with intense philosophical research. How could we not be enthusiastic and even euphoric when digging through the layers of his multi-faceted body of work that has progressively been published as deserved, which wasn't the case during the GDR regime that had him withdrawn his title of a professional artist. Concentrating on a few basic elements, intuition and chance as creative tools backed by intense theory and contextualization, working methods we all strive for ourselves. It was just a matter of time and time it took, but it was worth it, to do our own take inspired and in homage to this great man to whom we feel so linked. This is not a collaboration of working on each other's sound files, it rather is to let each other know, to compare where each participant's exploration is positioned and how the distinct works could be arranged together in order to allow for a varied but continues listening session. A process of filtering and combining, adding and eliminating, varying density and permeability. a homage to Carlfriedrich Claus of fermenting language / aggregated resonances / swoosh-combined speech transparency: historical-philosophical vibration / distorted densification = experimental retail salesman / articulating principal latency / private suspect statesmanship / destructive-combinatorial / an evening live in annaberg - buchholz: tol & rlw & dsm / chronicled, condensed and constellated in 2014. full coloured artwork based on an original drawing by Guido Huebner (dsm) edition of 300" [label info] scrotum-records.de | 2015 | €12.00 |
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| PACIFIC 231 | Ethnicities | CD | Das Industrial-Projekt von PIERE JOLIVET, der auch Bestandteil der fantastischen VOX POPULI! gewesen sein soll. "Ethnicities" ist eine Zusammenstellung von bisher unveröffentlichtem Material. "'Ethnicities is an electro-acoustical scope of unreleased recordings of Pacific 231's post-industrial period. Successive and consecutive cuts were made until he put together the concept of the album as: pluri-cultural diversity of the sounds, tropical steams, exotic journeys & electronic man-made build-up manipulations, urban dins and industrial mazes, ' Ethnicities ' is a psychedelic and unexpected patchwork from Pacific 231." [label info] www.rotorelief.com | 2006 | €15.00 |
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| PADDEN, DANIEL | Pause for the Jet | LP | "DANIEL PADDEN kannte ich bisher als einen der Volcano-The-Bear-Bären. Nach Glasgow umgezogen, ging er auf Solopfade, erst als The One Ensemble Of Daniel Padden und mit Pause for the Jet (Dekorder 026) zum zweiten Mal unter dem bloßen Familiennamen. Seine Vorlieben für schräge Sounds aus fernen Ländern, für seltsamen Kraut- und wagemutigen Artrock sind darauf collagiert zu Songs und Instrumentals mit surrealen Haupt- und Nebenwirkungen. ‚Crow Crow Growth‘ mischt das Timbre von Charles Hayward mit Saitengezupfe und Ethnopercussion zu einem wehmütigen Folksong. ‚Sponge Shipwreck‘ lässt 33 Sekunden lang den Geist von Harry Partch erscheinen, ‚The Ghostly Whole‘ nur den Geist einer alten Kirchturmuhr, während Ratten pizzikato Kontrabass knabbern. Die Residents und Nurse With Wound haben ähnliche Seancen abgehalten, ähnlich von Recording Angels behütete Träume geträumt. ‚Three Farewells‘ mischt Posaune, Bassklarinette und Cello und loopt dazu einen elegischen Gesangsfetzen, bevor mit ‚The Liar Inbetween‘ wieder ein fast straighter Song erklingt, auch wenn die Begleitung erst nur seltsam verzupft und verschrappelt daher kommt und sich dann doch elektrisch verdichtet. Auf ‚The Shadow Of Lunch‘ tutet eine asthmatische Harmonika, die Kopfstimme dazu wackelt auf hölzernen Stelzen. Auf rostig schnarrenden Twangs schwimmt ‚Narwhal‘ dahin, um auf morbiden Trommelschlägen zu stranden. Katzenjämmerliche Salonmusik quietscht in allen Scharnieren, bevor Padden nach ‚Arc Fankle‘ mit seiner stotternder Percussion und ‚Bustle‘ mit seinem Bassklarinettengebrummel a capella ‚English Again‘ anstimmt. Seltsam, aber seltsam schön." [Bad Alchemy] "Since 1995 Daniel Padden has been a member of Volcano The Bear, with several highly regarded album releases on Nurse With Wound's United Diaries label, Textile and Beta-Lactam Ring Records. After his move to Glasgow he started The One Ensemble Of Daniel Padden as an outlet for his solo recordings with releases on Catsup Plate, Secret Eye and Textile. When The One Ensemble slowly metamorphosed into a band of its own, Padden started to record his solo output under his birth name, with last year's "The Isaac Storm" on the Ultra Exzema label being the first seminal result. Over the years Padden has developed a strong fascination for obscure musics from all over the world (re his recent "Epiphanies" article for The Wire magazine): mouth organ love-songs from Thailand, The Ramayana Monkey Chant from Bali, Khene pieces from Laos; so-called world music from Burundi to Bulgaria. Combining these interests with his love for British Folk and Art Rock (This Heat, Robert Wyatt), Kraut Rock (Faust), Free Jazz, the surreal collage techniques of Nurse With Wound and the odd humour of The Residents, he has developed a totally unique and highly personal musical vision without ever sounding overambitious or directionless. Gorgeous song-writing is seamlessly transformed into pure fuzz or string drones, suddenly interrupted by some improvised reeds or collapsing percussion, all within the blink of an eye, and never losing its natural flow, "Pause for the Jet" is already an auspicious aspirant for our "Record of the Year"."[label info] www.dekorder.com | 2008 | €12.00 |
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| PAIN NAIL | Magneettinen Kohtalo | CD | 2024 Repress in 6 panel digisleeve. Recorded between 2006-2012. 40 minutes album consisting large variety of material from gloomy brooding heavy electronics to rusty and dark rhythmic metal percussion industrial and epic atmospheric tracks. Aggressive vocals and dirty analogue sound. | 2024 | €13.00 |
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| PALESTINE, CHARLEMAGNE | Dingggdongggdinggg Vs. Singggsonggsinggg | LP + 7inch | Singing songs while playing ding dongs, Charlemagne’s solo voice over the bells of his studio carillon is a premiere in his recorded works, and - to our knowledge- the first voise/carillon record in musical history. All the little shamanic stuffed deities inhabiting the carillon added their souls to the spirit of the reverberating songs, including a song in memory of Mika Vainio. pressed in 1000 hand-numbered, yellow vinyls. 240 Come with a 7"«, engraved with an exclusive track on one side and etched with a Charlemagne drawing on the other. Dedicated to the memory of Mika Vainio Charlemagne palestine : Carillon & voice Recorded by Frédéric Alstadt at Charlemagne Palestine’s workshop, brussels august 25 & 26, 2017 Mixed by Frédéric Alstadt & Cedric D’hondt at Angström Studio This Album is mastered and cut by Frédéric Alstadt at Angström mastering, brussels Pictures and layout by Cedric D’hondt The photos were taken in Charlemagne Palestine’s workshop, brussels Produced by Christopher Denruyter & Cedric D’hondt for Matière Mémoire editions © matière mémoire editions - art Sonore Sprl - www.matiere-memoire.com matme001lp https://charlemagnepalestine.bandcamp.com/album/dingggdongggdinggg-vs-singggsonggsinggg | 2018 | €36.00 |
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| The God Bear Archives I | do-CD | During the year 2021, Charlemagne entrusted us with numerous archives recently found on audio cassettes dating from the 70s and 80s. After a long process of listening and selection, we are pleased to present the first volume of these archives to you. ALL MUSIC, instruments & voices by charlemagne palestine Except CD2 track4 by Simone Forti & Charlemagne Palestine Track selection by Karbé dinel / Cassette digitization by Lionel Hubert Mastering by Frederic Alstadt at Mont analogue Mastering COVER PICTURE BY Henry Ughetto "Pour charlemagne palestine" 1998 THANKS TO Charlemagne palestine, Aude Stocklet & Lionel Hubert The tracks coming from old audio cassettes, we have chosen to keep the defects of the tapes so as not to alter the work. Copyright by matière mémoire éditions / GODBEAR series MMGO005CD https://charlemagnepalestine.bandcamp.com/album/the-god-bear-archives-i-unreleased-tapes-from-the-70s-and-80s | 2023 | €23.00 |
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| The God Bear Archives II | do-CD | All music, instruments & voices by charlemagne palestine Except CD1 track7 by Simone Forti & Charlemagne Palestine Track selection by Karbé Dinel Cassette digitization by Lionel Hubert Mastering by Frederic Alstadt at Mont analogue Masters Graphic & layout by Cedric D'hondt Cover picture by Kevin Clarke, RAGA TODI, ca 1984 Inside picture by Kathy Agnoli, Toronto 1976 CD’s picture by Sylvain Hitau, NEWLOOK #86 PP 32-33, 1990 Thanks to Charlemagne palestine, Aude Stoclet, Kevin Clarke & Lionel Hubert The tracks coming from old audio cassettes, we have chosen to keep the defects of the tapes so as not to alter the work. https://charlemagnepalestine.bandcamp.com/album/the-god-bear-archives-ii-unreleased-tapes-from-the-70s-and-80s | 2024 | €23.00 |
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| Dingggdongggdinggg Vs. Singggsonggsinggg | LP | Singing songs while playing ding dongs, Charlemagne’s solo voice over the bells of his studio carillon is a premiere in his recorded works, and - to our knowledge- the first voise/carillon record in musical history. All the little shamanic stuffed deities inhabiting the carillon added their souls to the spirit of the reverberating songs, including a song in memory of Mika Vainio. pressed in 1000 hand-numbered, yellow vinyls. 240 Come with a 7"«, engraved with an exclusive track on one side and etched with a Charlemagne drawing on the other. Dedicated to the memory of Mika Vainio Charlemagne palestine : Carillon & voice Recorded by Frédéric Alstadt at Charlemagne Palestine’s workshop, brussels august 25 & 26, 2017 Mixed by Frédéric Alstadt & Cedric D’hondt at Angström Studio This Album is mastered and cut by Frédéric Alstadt at Angström mastering, brussels Pictures and layout by Cedric D’hondt The photos were taken in Charlemagne Palestine’s workshop, brussels Produced by Christopher Denruyter & Cedric D’hondt for Matière Mémoire editions © matière mémoire editions - art Sonore Sprl - www.matiere-memoire.com matme001lp https://charlemagnepalestine.bandcamp.com/album/dingggdongggdinggg-vs-singggsonggsinggg | 2018 | €15.00 |
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| PALESTINE, CHARLEMAGNE & Z'EV | Rubhitbangklanghear Rubhitbangklangear | do-CD | "Second time in 20 years Palestine and Z'ev are performing together. First time they're recording it! Unreleased material from Charlemagne's lair, a place now called Charleworld, where both fellows spent 3 days in June 2010. Part of our Sub Rosa/Laboratoire Central sessions. 'i first started to play the bells while at high school of music + art in the sixties at st. thomas church across the street from the museum of modern art in manhattan!! i played everyday for years!! in the eighties i met z'ev in amsterdam!! i'd known him for 20 years before he suggested one day that we perform together, which we did at lem barcelona in 2007!! later after seeing and hearing the carillon at my studio in brussels he suggested that we perform and record together there, which we did in 2010!! here's / hearsz what we did!!!!' charlemagne palestine " [label info] www.subrosa.net "Unter den Minimalisten ist Charlemagne Palestine sicher derjenige, der im etablierten und institutionalisierten Musikbetrieb weniger als seine Kollegen wahrgenommen wird. Die Auftritte und Aufnahmen Palestines hatten bzw. haben – nicht nur wegen dem Moment des Repetetiven (der sich auch im Titel widerspiegelt) – (auch) immer einen gewissen rituellen Charakter, etwa wenn z. B. die Stofftiere aus der extensiven Sammlung Palestines auf der Bühne drappiert wurden (vgl. die Rückseite der CD) und er sich den obligatorischen Cognac (der hier das Cover ziert) einschüttete. Und auch Z’EV hat sich sowohl musikalisch als auch schriftlich (in Rhythmajik, Practical Uses of Number, Rhythm and Sound, das bezeichnenderweise ursprünglich von Temple Press veröffentlicht wurde) mit dem, was Musik alles bewirken kann, auseinandergesetzt. Über das zuletzt genannte Werk schrebt Z’EV, es handele „not about music but spells out the use of rhythm and sound and proportion for Trance, Healing“. In den Linernotes der Doppel-CD schreibt Palestine, er und Z’EV hätten sich 20 Jahre gekannt, bevor sie 2007 den Entschluss fassten, zusammen aufzutreten. Die auf „RubhitbangklanghearRubhitbangklangear“ enthaltenen Aufnahmen stammen aus dem Jahr 2010 und wurden in Palestines Studio in Brüssel gemacht. Auf der ersten CD finden sich die gemeinsamen Arbeiten: Während Palestine auf seinem Carillon -eine Art überdimensionales Glockenspiel- Melodien minimal variiert spielt, schlägt Z’EV seine schweren Bass-Trommeln. Was anfangs noch nebeneinander herzulaufen scheint, fügt sich im Verlauf der 18 Minuten zusammen; das Stück entwickelt sich zu einem repetetiv-perkussiven Mantra, das fast schon sakralen Charakter hat. Die zweite Duoaufnahme beginnt wesentlich zurückhaltender: Während die Glocken behutsam und langsam geschlagen werden, sind Z’EVs Beiträge kaum noch rhythmisch zu nennen, klingen so, als spiele er eine riesige Klangschale. Der dritte Track enthält dagegen erratischer klingende Perkussion, man meint, Z’EV wanke vom Cognac beschwingt durch eine Fabrikhalle, das Carillon ist hier stärker im Hintergrund. Das ist das vielleicht atonalste Stück auf dem Album. Die zweite CD enthält die Soloarbeiten und auch wenn diese nicht wirklich schlecht sind, so fallen sie im Vergleich zur ersten CD etwas ab, wobei die schiere physische Präsenz Z’EVs, die sich auf dem 46-minügen Abschlusstrack zeigt, schon beeindruckt und den Hörer – je nach Disposition – vielleicht tatsächlich in Trance versetzen kann." [M.G./African Paper] "Here's two men who have been around since the 60s and both considerable ties to the underground, perhaps Z'EV more than Palestine. But neither have been elevated into the world of high art and are easy to approach. They met in Amsterdam in the 80s and have played a concert before, but only in 2010 they actually recorded material together at Charleworld, Charlemagne Palestine's own place, where has a carillon set up. The picture on the back shows what this looks like. Palestine up in the air playing the bells and Z'EV on the floor with his percussion. In '#3' the playing is somewhat chaotic and aided by natural reverb, but it's my least favorite piece of the three collaborations. In the other two we find an interesting drone like layer, played by Z'EV on a large skin drum and which adds a great texture to the more controlled playing of Palestine. In "#2' Z'EV only seems to rub the skins and makes it even more intense and creepy. I stopped the music because I wasn't sure if I was just hearing the music or something outside happened. That's the great mark of quality, I think. Those two long opening pieces would have been great enough by themselves. There is also a second CD with solo works. Palestine is brief here, just under eight minutes with a fine piece of carillon music, and 'Solo Z#1' sees Z'EV exploring more of those drone like sounds like on the second duo duo piece while his second piece lasts forty six minutes and we hear him like at least I remind me from the first time I heard his music (mid 80s). Banging metal percussion, aided with natural reverb, in what seems now proto-industrial music from an acoustic perspective. Excellent stuff here, this is the Z'EV I haven't heard in quite some time. Great package of excellent contemporary music all around." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2013 | €16.00 |
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| PALO ALTO | Difference and Repetition - A Musical Evocation of GILLES DELEUZE | do-LP | "This new album (the tenth in their discography) was born from two ambitions: to pay tribute to Soft Machine's Third on form (4 sides / 4 titles) and to philosopher Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition is the title of his thesis) on the contents. The 4 long pieces of this double concept album were developed over 2 years and each has a different style and climate. Bold and kaleidoscopic, Difference and Repetition perfectly synthesizes the musical and literary obsessions of Palo Alto. Palo Alto Formed in Paris in 1989, Palo Alto released his first album (a cassette) on the Italian label Old Europa Cafe in 1990. The year 2020 is therefore an opportunity to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this first stone, the founder of a discography rich with 10 albums. The band is now composed of Jacques Barbéri (also a science fiction author), Laurent Pernice (ex-member of the French industrial band Nox) and Philippe Perreaudin (also coordinator of several compilations and reissues: Legendary Pink Dots, Un Département, Nino Ferrer Revisited, Ptôse, Hardy Fox…). Literature, and particularly science fiction, is a leitmotiv in the band's work. Antoine Volodine, Thomas Pynchon, Philip K. Dick, Lewis Carroll or J. G. Ballard have been invoked many times. In recent years, Palo Alto has multiplied musical collaborations with, among others, The Residents, Ptôse, Klimperei, Tuxedomoon... From industrial music to inextricable electronic ramifications, by making a detour through improvisation, the musical universe of Palo Alto is multifaceted. Their new album is no exception to this rule… " https://subrosalabel.bandcamp.com/album/difference-and-repetition-a-musical-evocation-of-gilles-deleuze "Palo Alto aus Paris gibt es seit 1989 und mit "Le Clos" erschien 1990 ein erstes Album (auf Tonbandkassette), dem bisher ein gutes Dutzend weitere gefolgt sind. Das Projekt um Jacques Barbéri nennt als Einflussgeber Tuxedomoon, Art Zoyd, The Legendary Pink Dots, Coil, The Residents, Can und Cabaret Voltaire, und betätigt sich vornehmlich in experimentell-elektronischen Gefilden, verunreinigt seine Musik aber auch mit Punkig-Schrägem, New-Wave-Artigem oder Modern-Kammermusikalisch-Klassischem. Ich machte erstmals mit dem 1998 beim Musea-Unterlabel Gazul Records erschienenen Album "Transe Plan" Bekanntschaft mit der Formation, und auf jenem geht es auch weitestgehend elektronisch und experimentell zu. Zum 30sten hat man dann das wohl bisher ambitionierteste Projekt verwirklicht. Ein Doppelalbum hat man sich vorgenommen, von der Form her wie "Third" von Soft Machine, also mit vier seitenlangen Nummern, welches sich mit dem Werk des 1995 durch Selbstmord verstorbenen französischen Philosophen Gilles Deleuze befasst. Dazu hat man sich einige musikalische Gäste gesucht: Den von Deleuze beeinflussten SF-Schriftsteller Alain Damasio als Vorleser, Richard Pinhas, der einstmals bei Deleuze studiert hat, an der E-Gitarre, Thierry Zaboïtzeff am Cello und Rhys Chatham an der Trompete. Das fertige Werk wurde schließlich Ende 2020 vom Belgischen Label Sub Rosa als 2xLP oder CD veröffentlicht. Mit Soft Machine hat die Musik eher wenig gemein. Aber, es ging ja auch nur darum ein ähnlich ausladendes und gestaltetes Album zu veröffentlichen. Ein paar jazzig-rockige Spuren sind auf "Difference And Repetition - A Musical Evocation Of Gilles Deleuze" aber auch auszumachen. Ansonsten ist dies eine Art von elektronischer Musik, oft rhythmisch voran schreitend, bestimmt von programmierter Perkussion, vornehmlich aber dominiert von allerlei Synthesizererzeugnissen und bisweilen heftigst verfremdeten Saxophonklängen, in die je nach Stück weitere Blasinstrumente, Cello, Bass, E-Gitarre und Textrezitationen eingewoben wurden. Vor allem im dreiteiligen "Triptych" verliest Damasio Texte, einen eigenen bisher unveröffentlichten über Deleuzes Tod (der auch im Inneren des Digipacks abgedruckt ist), aus Deleuzes Buch "Capitalisme et Schizophrenie" (1980) und aus seinem Roman "Les Furtifs" (2019), durchaus engagiert und intensiv, ganz im Stile des "Concerto Delle Menti" von Pholas Dactylus. Man kann, auch wenn man den französischen Text kaum folgen kann, nur gebannt zuhören. Die restlichen Stücke sind vorwiegend instrumental gehalten, nur im einleitenden "The Tears of Nietzsche" wird kurz ein Text von Richard Pinhas’ verlesen (aus "Les Larmes de Nietzsche – Deleuze et la musique“, 2001), und sind recht stark von den jeweiligen Gastsolisten geprägt. Im eben genannten ersten Track ist Pinhas’ E-Gitarre klangbestimmend und die Nummer klingt dann über weite Strecken wie das recht typische Gitarrendröhnen, welches auch auf den Soloalben des Franzosen meist zu hören ist. Palo Alto, insbesondere Berberis Sax, sorgen aber für eigenen Charakter. In "Rhizom" knarzt Zaboitzeffs Cello erst bedächtig, dann immer wüster, eingebettet in eine hypnotisch dahin schreitende Space-Elektronik, in der das 'Tibetanische Horn' Barberis aber auch exotische Akzente setzt. Im abschließenden Titelstück ist dann Rhys Chatham tonangebend, allerdings nicht an der E-Gitarre, sondern mit einer heiser-krächzenden Trompete, übrigens oft begleitet von einem Damenchor (genannt 'Les Bottines'), der stellenweise fast für Zeuhl-Atmosphäre sorgt. Eine recht schwer zu kategorisierende Musik ist auf "Difference And Repetition - A Musical Evocation Of Gilles Deleuze" zu finden. Als dynamischen Avant/Kammerprog, dröhnenden E-Gitarren-Elektrorock, krautige Elektronik oder als pulsierendes Electronicagemenge könnte man das bezeichnen, oder als eine dichte Verschmelzung dieser Ingredienzien, angereichert mit allerlei freiem Klangbasteln. Das Ergebnis ist jedenfalls reichlich originell, intensiv, voluminös, packend und auf jeden Fall sehr progressiv. Ich denke einmal, dass Avantprog-Freaks bzw. Zaboitzeff- und/oder Pinhas-Fans, die zudem die weiter oben genannten Vorbilder (oder einige derselben) schätzen, von "Difference And Repetition" (übriges auch ein Buchtitel Deleuzes) begeistert sein sollten. Ein später Höhepunkt des Progjahres 2020!" [Babyblaue Seiten] | 2021 | €20.00 |
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| PAN SONIC & CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE | Mort aux Vaches | do-LP | "Vinyl re-issue of the work initially released on CD by Staalplaat in 2000. First time on vinyl, remastered, with new cover design (a 1974 drawing by Charlemagne Palestine). This is the first release in the 'GodBear' series, a project consisting in the re-issue of existing works and production of unreleased material by Charlemagne. In partnership with the Charlemagne Palestine Foundation." [label info} "Pan Sonic + Charlemagne Palestine’s 20 year old drone album finally takes a new life on LP with this first pressing via Godbear following Staalplaat’s long sold-out CD Forming the 2nd meeting on record between Palestine, Vainio and Väisänen after their 1997 hook-up with Pita (Peter Rehberg) on ‘Three Compositions for Machines’, their follow-up is slimmed down to the legendary pianist and Finnish wave shapers for an exceedingly tense, minimal, excursion marrying glacial microtonal chords licked with underlying, rhythmic subbass disturbance and occasional, off-key, distorted moraine that buckles the microtones from below. Both sides of the equation maintain a tense equilibrium throughout the album, which, while originally divided in five parts, played thru seamlessly, whereas this new vinyl cut dedicates nearly a side per piece. Across its taut body Palestine and Pan Sonic sustain gossamer fine chords and swollen, sometimes unruly bass, appearing to under-do each other and never making any moves, but the tension just gives at point, sinking into subbass mire and slipping trains of thought out of line. It’s perhaps not entirely typical of either of them, and achieves a modest mix of their respective sensibilities." [Boomkat] | 2019 | €34.00 |
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| PANHUYSEN, PAUL | A Magic Square of 5 to look at | CD | Endlose Zeitlupenwellen von langsam dahinächzenden Sirr-Teppichen, als konzeptuelle Grundlage der Klangkunst-Komposition diente ein „magisches Quadrat“ und die entsprechende Mathematik der „kosmischen Harmonie“... interessantes Konzept und überzeugendes Klangergebnis von diesem eher im Ausstellungs/Installations-Betrieb arbeitenden Klangkünstler.. “OK, for all the math freaks out there, this is a must have. This CD by one of the most famous Dutch sound artists with a resume as long as both my arms is one big mathematician's wet dream. The theory of a magic square is simple enough, but not so simple that I would be able to reproduce it correctly here. What Panhuysen has done is to transpose the theory to image and sound (all the details about this can be found extensively in the booklet). Sounds boring? Well, it may sound that way, but the result is great! Especially the resulting 30 minute sound piece is a sheer beauty. Sine waves are played according to the rules of the magic square and some additional rules and the result is a piece that is hauntingly evocative, yet dry as a desert. This strange contradiction gives the work its strength and tension. The piece was originally conceived as a four channel sound installation but works very well in the CDd format. Together with the booklet and text it is a very hermetic work of art, extremely modernist, and therefore a welcome statement in times of relatively random digital number crunching. A very good work.” [MR, Vital Weekly] www.beequeen.nl/plink.html | 2004 | €13.00 |
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| Pendulum Change | LP | "First vinyl LP edition by Dutch sound and visual artist Paul Panhuysen since 1986. In terms of sound art, Paul Panhuysen is well-known for his long string installations, yet he has produced a vast amount of other sound installations using different materials and sound sources ranging from various instruments to animals such as birds. This LP contains a recording of the installation "Pendulum Change Ringing", displayed at Pand Koloniale Waren in Hasselt (Belgium) in 2012. The installation consists of twelve engraved Turkish metal platters, each mounted onto a black plastic bin, and placed in a 20 meters long row. The rim of each platter is hit by a metal pendulum operated by a tiny electromotor. Each hit causes the platter to resonate with a rich sound texture full of dissonant overtones. During the recording, the twelve pendulums are activated one after the other. The paces at which they swing differ due to their rods having different lengths. This causes interlocking rhythmic patterns to emerge that become more complex with each step and never stay the same. Hits aggregate into clusters, then thin out again. The sound is not chaotic, yet its regularity is hard to comprehend. "You might call Pendulum Change Ringing a typical Paul Panhuysen piece: it works according to a system, quite a simple one in fact, but its effect surpasses that apparent simplicity by far." (René van Peer) Edition of 300 copies. Full-color sleeve with photos of the installation and liner notes by René van Peer. Black poly-lined inner sleeve." [label info] www.edition-telemark.de | 2014 | €22.00 |
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| PANIS, RAPHAEL | Meta | CD | "Raphaël PANIS is a composer and a searcher, fascinated by sound : his works take the listeners at the heart of the vibration, into the intimacy of the microscopic disturbances. His studies at Annecy CRR ans Paris CNSMDP (new technologies section with Louis NAON) allowes him to create his own instruments for live performances. He associates his sound installations with plastic works for various centers of art. He also composes for dance. "Meta" consists of a multiplication of the sound layers (stratas), reminders and variations around sound elements, similarity and disparities to create a rich and coherent hearing universe." [label info] rpanis.blogspot.fr | 2012 | €10.00 |
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| PAOLO CAMPANA | VINYLMANIA (FILM) | 2 x DVD | "A trip into the grooves, Vinylmania is a 75 minute feature length documentary about an object that has never lost its soul: the vinyl record. An epic love story, the film is filled with fascinating characters and internationally recognized artists including PHILIPPE COHEN SOLAL (Gotan Project), WINSTON SMITH (Dead Kennedys, Green Day record sleeve artist), PETER SAVILLE (Joy Division, New Order record sleeve artist) and DJ KENTARO (2002 DMC World DJ Champion). Devotion, ecstasy, infatuation, agony – all feelings that the director of the film, Paolo Campana, has experienced from childhood and shares with like-minded record collectors, Djs, musicians and artists (the said vinylmaniacs) in the documentary. Set in 11 different cities worldwide, the director sets out on a global road trip to find out what role vinyl records play in the 21st century." [publishers info] "Wenn das Leben mit 33 Umdrehungen pro Minute läuft: Doku von Paolo Campana. "Als Kind wurde ich von meiner Mutter immer mit einer Schallplatte von Mozart geweckt", sagt Paolo Campana, Filmemacher und DJ aus Turin. "Seitdem läuft Vinyl durch meine Adern." Der italienische Regisseur möchte verstehen, woher seine große Leidenschaft für Musik und Schallplatten kommt. Also tauchte er für seinen Dokumentarfilm in diese Welt ein und bewegte sich sprichwörtlich undercover. In "Vinylmania" führt uns der Regisseur durch die Facetten eines Objekts, das nie seine Seele verloren hat. Er spürt dem nach, was Vinyl in einer digitalen Welt so legendär macht. An vielen Orten der Welt begegnen wir einer Gemeinde von Sammlern, DJs, Musikern und Künstlern. Die Zuschauer erkunden die Läden, in denen die Leidenschaft zum Fieber mutiert, und die Fabriken, die wieder damit begonnen haben, Millionen von Platten herzustellen. Denn: Die Vinylplatte ist zurück! ",Vinylmania‘ ist sich seines grundsätzlich nostalgischen Ansatzes bewusst, aber lässt sich dadurch nicht beirren. Das macht die Dokumentation zu einem großen Fernsehvergnügen." (Spiegel Online). Extras: Limitierte Edition inkl. Bonus-DVD: 8 Musikclips (Berlin, Prag, Paris, London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Tokio); 15 Bonus-Tracks – Interviews mit Sean Bidder (Vinyl Factory), Richie Hawtin (DJ, Produzent), Peter Saville (Designer), Guy Schraenen (Kurator), John Stanley (Schriftsteller), Dubplate & Mastering, Laser Turntable, Matt Mikas (Sammler), V. Vale (Re/Search), Klaus Florida (Bassist Dead Kennedys), Luxuria Music (Webradio), Eilon Paz (Dust & Grooves), Cesar Montesano (Sammler); Google-Map ausgewählter Plattenläden weltweit "›Vinylmania‹ ist ein wahres Vergnügen. Er spürt erfolgreich der kulturellen Explosion rund um das Wiedererwachen von Vinyl nach und behandelt darüber hinaus auch die Leidenschaft und Liebe zur Musik. Jeder Musiker und wahrer Musikfan wird den Film sehen wollen.“" Record Store Day "„Wenn man einen DJ auflegen sieht, dann ist das, wie einem Küchenchef beim Kochen zuzusehen.“" DJ Kentaro "„Vinyl ist wie Jazz. Seine Sound-Nuancen sind einzigartig.“" DJ Kobayashi "„Das ist meine Kindheit, meine ganze Geschichte…“" Philippe Cohen Solal, Gotan Project | 2012 | €12.00 |
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| PARALLEL LINES | White Fur / Black Cathedral | LP | "Parallel Lines ( /// ) is a Canadian improv-instrumental jam band comprised of Eric Quach (Destroyalldreamers, thisquietarmy) from Montreal on guitar, Ryan Ferguson (Sianspheric, Electroluminescent) from Hamilton on synthesizers, and Pascal Asselin (Below The Sea, Millimetrik) from Quebec City on drums. With 1000 km separating the 3 members and several years of crossing each other’s paths, sharing the stage with their various projects – the concept is simple: whenever the occasion arises during their busy schedule – jam and press record! In 2011, Parallel Lines met at the Christ’s Church Cathedral in Hamilton, Ontario to record their next album, which is now available as the first release on Oaken Palace Records. Eric Quach’s typical, haunting guitar sounds blend with spaced-out synth loops and pulsating drumming, creating a sonic landscape that leaves you with a bright and relaxed smile on your face. This is music to dream and drift away, a must-have for fans of Quach’s solo projects and, in fact, for everyone who enjoys psychedelic music! The Animal: Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus) Polar bear Parallel Lines dedicate their album to the most famous animal of their home country, namely the polar bear. All profits are donated to Polar Bears International, the world’s leading polar bear conservation group. As of 2008, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) reports that the global population of polar bears is 20,000 to 25,000, and is declining. In 2006, the IUCN upgraded the polar bear from a species of least concern to a vulnerable species. It cited a “suspected population reduction of >30% within three generations (45 years)”, which shows the urgency of conservation efforts. Risks to the polar bear include climate change, pollution in the form of toxic contaminants, conflicts with shipping, stresses from recreational polar-bear watching, and oil and gas exploration and development.The IUCN also cited a “potential risk of over-harvest” through legal and illegal hunting. If you want to learn more about polar bears, check out the extensive resources at Polar Bears International." [label info] www.oakenpalace.com | 2013 | €18.50 |
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| PARALUX | La Laguna / Lux-ed | DVD-R | "PARALUX is a nickname known for collaborating with her images on the live concerts of Tzesne. This is her first published work. Two video pieces that are produced far away from from the speed of the live context, two re-composed films made from the material collected from her performances. Video-ambient to be enjoyed at home!" [label info] "The first release by Paralux, an 'one woman visual band' with the DVD-R as her first release, containing two short films with soundtracks. The music is dark but in 'Lux-ed' there is a very nice, desolate trumpet that almost sound like 'The Last Post', against a wall of dark humming synthesizers. Visually it is a bit of an assembly of pictures that don't seem to make much sense. In 'La Laguna' the sea plays an important role, both in the visuals as well as in the music. It seems that what was filmed was also taped and only slightly processed. Wind blows straight into the microphone. I must admit I liked the music from the first film and the images of the second. Both mastered the excitement of ambient music, but in both pieces there is also something lacking. Nevertheless it's a most promising start." [FdW / Vital Weekly] www.seriesnegras.org | 2007 | €9.00 |
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| PARCA PACE | Raumspannung | CD | https://raubbau.bandcamp.com/album/raumspannung after parca pace’s intense and challenging debut of 1999 jan carleklev took good care of his other projects - and it wasn’t until he had put out seminal albums with azure skies, mago and sanctum respectively before he turned to his most intimate outlet again. so in 2005 the sophomore parca pace cd surfaced on cold meat industry (which was still going strong at the time). ‘raumspannung’ proved a surprisingly sympathetic conceptual album, combining industrial undertones with a wealth of neo-classical composition. clocking in just under 50 minutes again, this time it came in neatly divided nine separate tracks, accompanied by a lavish explanation of the conceptual background: living between walls, dealing with isolation, tearing down walls. tension is expressed through the omnipresent contrast of a - sometimes outright pompous - melodic lead with noisy feedback and subtle rhythms. plenty of variation, perfectly arranged ensured high entertainment value for the genre connoisseurs. elaborate composition and a remarkable knack for detail led to very favorable responses upon the release of ‘raumspannung’ and have since safeguarded the material successfully against the ravages of time. still topical and enjoyable, parca pace’s second - and so far last - album is well worth to be saved from oblivion! | 2005 | €13.00 |
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| PARMEGIANI, BERNARD | Memoire Magnetique Vol. 1 | LP | "Transversales Disques is very glad to announce the release of « Mémoire Magnétique, vol.1 » spanning 1966-1990, revelatory collection of commercial and secret music by electronic music pioneer Bernard Parmegiani. This series of rare application music compositions are representative of the vast scope explored by Parmegiani. Far from the strict format of concert music, its codes and usages, this music designed to fit with the screen is a work of amazing freshness and spontaneity. It is pervaded with a singular balance, between minimalist music and a more articulated language. There is a space for melody, for word repetitions. Actually, repetition is a constant feature, blurring the line between his concert work and the rest. More than a border line, it seems to define two worlds, which communicate through it. With an impressive number of application works, and some time spent at the head of the Sound / Image sector in the research service led by Pierre Schaeffer, the composer has managed to build up a framework designed for research and mutual exchange. Bernard Parmegiani presents us with lights, gestures, lines, various registers. Besides, how could one perceive these pieces of music without the pictures they are supposed to enhance? Each title is suggestive, and the best answer is in the field of imagination. In the middle of the B-side, there is a true gem dated 1977. In this second extract of “Versailles… peut-être“ Bernard Parmegiani gives us a glimpse of the future. One can feel the pulse of the 80’s and of the first accents of Techno Music. It feels like driving a drop head car at 134 BPM, faster than on Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn”. One can also sense that soon the LFO will be replaced by the drum-machine. Listening to these pieces of music arouses the same sensation as reading the prose of an author already known for his poetry. If one has never read his poems, here is the record that will open the door on a new world to be discovered / Maxime Barthélemy. Remastered high-resolution audio transferred directly from the original tapes. Exclusive Liner Notes + OBI STRIP https://transversales.bandcamp.com/album/m-moire-magn-tique-vol-1-1966-1990 | 2018 | €24.00 |
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| Memoire Magnetique Vol. 2 | LP | Transversales is very glad to announce the release of « Mémoire Magnétique, vol.2 » spanning 1966-1993, revelatory collection of short and secret music by electronic music pioneer Bernard Parmegiani. The second volume of this compilation allows us to discover some of unreleased rarities from Bernard Parmegiani’s personal archives and unpublished recordings which were composed for the screen or the performing arts. Remastered high-resolution audio transferred directly from the original tapes. Exclusive liner notes and pictures. Musique originale composée, interprétée et enregistrée par Bernard Parmegiani. Production exécutive : Jonathan Fitoussi & Sébastien Rosat. Mastering à partir des bandes originales : Jonathan Fitoussi. Direction artistique & graphisme : Jean-Philippe Talaga. Traduction : Michèle Parent. (P) 2021 Transversales Disques ® sous licence exclusive de Claude-Anne Parmegiani A1 / "Témoignages" - 1972. Générique pour la série télévisée de Pierre Houdain. A2 / "Pop secret" - 1970. Version remixée pour concert de la musique créée avec le groupe "Third Ear Band" au Royal Festival Hall, Londres. A3 / "Voyage Conseil" - 1970. Musique pour la publicité de : "Voyage Conseil". Version non utilisée. A4 / "Lion d'or" - 1988. Générique pour l'émission radio de Georges Léon diffusée sur France Culture le 22/02/1988. A5 / "Flash sports" - 1975. Indicatif de l'émission télévisée éponyme diffusée sur Antenne 2. A6 / "Spot pub" - 1971. Spot publicitaire non identifié, non utilisé. A7 / "Journal TV 2" - 1981. Indicatif du journal télévisé d'Antenne 2. A8 / "Stade 2" - 1976-1986. Indicatif de l'émission : "Stade 2". Antenne 2, émission sport. Animation : Peter Foldès. A9 / "L'art au monde des ténèbres" - 1982. Série documentaire télévisée de Mario Ruspoli. A10 / "Sonal Roissy" - 1971-2005. Signal sonore de l'aéroport Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle. B1 / "Bongo fuego" - 1967. Film d'animation de Peter Foldès. B2 / "Electrorythmes" - 1966. Version remixée pour concert ; film de Peter Foldès avec la chorégraphe Marpessa Dawn. B3 / "E Pericoloso sporgersi" - (élément) - 1991. Musique radiophonique ; commande de France Culture. B4 / "Une mission éphémère" - 1993. Film d'animation de Piotr Kamler. B5 / "Une honorable partie de Gô" - 1978. Série documentaire télévisée de Jean-Emile Jeannesson, "Lettres du bout du monde". B6 / "Sonal Roissy" - (inédit) - 1971. Maquette de signal sonore pour l'aéroport Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle. Version non utilisée. https://bernardparmegiani.bandcamp.com/album/m-moire-magn-tique-vol-2-1966-1993 "Belonging to a growing body of previously unreleased work culled from the archives of Bernard Parmegiani, the always incredible Transversales Disques returns with “Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 2”, the second instalment in their series of albums focusing on the composer’s work for film, television, and the performing arts. An inevitable revelation for even the most devoted of Parmegiani’s fans, we’re also making it available as part of a specially priced bundle with brand new represses of “Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 1” and “Rock (Bande originale du film, 1982)” for those who missed them the first time around. So good. Over the last few years, the Paris based imprint, Transversales Disques, has set a remarkable standard for archival releases, bringing us a treasure trove of previously unreleased recordings by Pierre Henry, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Luc Ferrari, Igor Wakhevitch, Philip Glass, Ariel Kalma, François Bayle, Ennio Morricone, and numerous others. While by no means the limit of their focus, the imprint has offered special attention to works by French pioneers of electronic music, particularly those associated with Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète (GRMC) and Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM). Central to this modus operandi is the work of Bernard Parmegiani. Back in 2017, they brought us the composer’s incredible 1982 soundtrack, Rock, created for Michel Treguero’s film of the same name, followed by the LP, Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 1 in 2018. After three years of waiting, the label is back with the second instalment of rare sounds by Parmegiani, Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 2, accompanied by brand new represses of Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 1 and Rock (Bande originale du film, 1982), which have been out of print since their initial release. As a special celebration, we’re offering them individually or together as a specially priced bundle. They’re 20th Century electroacoustic music at its absolute height, hugely historically important, and not to be missed. Bernard Parmegiani’s contributions to electronic and electroacoustic practice are now regarded as among the most important in the history of 20th Century Music, but this wasn’t always the case. For much of his career, the composer lingered in the shadow of his more famous peers at Groupe de Recherches - Pierre Schaeffer, Luc Ferrari, François Bayle, etc. Some of this was a consequence of circumstance and idealism. Gifted with a deep belief in access and humor, Parmegiani believed in the profound potential of electronic and electroacoustic sound, seeking to integrate it into everyday life, particularly through forms of mass distribution activated by radio, film, and television. A great deal of his output was created for these contexts - remaining unreleased on physical formats - while he supported himself as a sound engineer and as the head of the Music/Image division of French television. It is into this rarely heard body of recordings which Transversales Disques takes us once again. Like the first instalment, Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 2 culls its material form the composer’s personal archives and unpublished recordings of material created between 1966 and 1993, focusing specifically on his output for the screen and the performing arts. Standing as a largely unacknowledged counterpoint to more famous works like De Natura Sonorum, La Roue Ferris, Dedans Dehors, Chants Magnétiques, and Chronos - created during same period covered by the collection - these works unveil a lesser-known vision of Parmegiani, one that embedded himself in the subconscious landscape of the French public, with sounds that were often heard without acknowledging their genius or source. Comprising 16 revelatory tracks, of relatively short lengths - from 13 seconds to just over 8 minutes - Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 2 covers a brilliant range of material, from sci-fi tinged arpeggiating synths, brooding minimalist expanses, semi psychedelic meanderings away with free-flowing texture, pastoral meditations, playful, percussive musique concrète, pieces that flirt on the edges of kosmische and Berlin school electronics, and so much more. Encountering the composer in the throes of his deepest passion - working alongside the visual realm - just when you’d thought you’d heard it all, Transversales Disques digs up more gold from the archives of Bernard Parmegiani, expanding our vision of the astounding talent and range of one of the most important sonic artists of the 20th Century. These previously unreleased rarities have been remastered from the original tapes in high-resolution audio, and come complete with exclusive liner notes and pictures. As engrossing as records come, and an absolute blast to listen to. Not to be missed! Across 17 despite works, Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 1 spans 24 years of Parmegiani’s output of music designed to integrate with the screen, drawing on a framework the composer developed for research and mutual exchange between sound and image. It should come as no surprise, given the overwhelming creative talent which Parmegiani possessed, that these efforts more than stand on their own when separated from the images with which they were designed to speak. The LP is an overwhelmingly powerful body of revelatory sound. Not unlike his soundtrack for Rock, Mémoire Magnétique, Vol. 1 pushes the boundaries of what the work emerging from Groupe de Recherches is often perceived to have been, if not the very notions of what qualifies as avant-garde. Imbued with Parmegiani’s overwhelming humor and playfulness, it offers nods to a countless range of musical idioms and fields of practice - often painting a dark, dystopian technological, rhythmic landscape with aural touchstones ranging from techno, Kraftwerk, and John Carpenter soundtracks, with a peppering of the clown show, reminding us that Parmegiani began his career as a mime. There’s no question that Transversales Disques is taking the high road, bringing us into wild, wonderful, and often overlooked bodies of organized sound which rewrite almost every standard narrative of history. These works are some of a Bernard Parmegiani which all too few heard, belonging to a way of working which captures the idealism closest to his heart. Absolutely brilliant creatively - a challenging field of imagination and an endlessly thrilling listen. Transferred directly from the original tapes with exclusive liner notes, if you missed the first pressing, don’t sleep. This is an absolute must for any fan of Parmegiani, GRM, soundtracks, and electronic music at large." [Soundohm] https://bernardparmegiani.bandcamp.com/album/m-moire-magn-tique-vol-2-1966-1993 | 2021 | €26.50 |
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| Memoire Magnetique Vol. 3 | LP | NEVER BEFORE RELEASED Unreleased rarities from Bernard Parmegiani’s personal archives. « Mémoire Magnétique, vol.3 » spanning 1967-1971, revelatory collection of short and secret music by electronic music pioneer Bernard Parmegiani. Remastered high-resolution audio transferred directly from the original master tapes. Exclusive liner notes and pictures. Transversales is very glad to announce the release of « Mémoire Magnétique, vol.3 » spanning 1967-1971, revelatory collection of short and secret music by electronic music pioneer Bernard Parmegiani. The third volume of this compilation allows us to discover some of unreleased rarities from Bernard Parmegiani’s personal archives and unpublished recordings which were composed for the screen or the performing arts. Musique originale composée, interprétée et enregistrée par Bernard Parmegiani. Production exécutive : Jonathan Fitoussi & Sébastien Rosat. Mastering à partir des bandes originales : Jonathan Fitoussi. Direction artistique & graphisme : Jean-Philippe Talaga. (P) 2025 Transversales Disques ® sous licence exclusive de Claude-Anne Parmegiani L'ARAIGNELEPHANT (1967) Musique pour le film de Piotr Kamler NARCISSUS ECHO (1971) Musique pour un film d'animation de Peter Foldès SADIQUEMENT VOTRE I (1968) Musique pour une émission TV de Michel Wichard"Agrippe-le Agrippine !" SABLES (1970) Musique composée pour le film de Lucien Clergues LA VILLE EN HAUT DE LA COLLINE I (1968) Musique pour le film de Jacques Vernier JE, TU, ELLES (1969) Musique pour un film de Peter Foldès LABYRINTHE (1970) Musique pour le film de Piotr Kamler | 2025 | €29.00 |
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| PARMERUD, AKE | Necropolis | CD | “Dreaming in Darkness” (2005), “Crystal Counterpoint” (2009), “ReVoiced” (2009), “Necropolis - City of the Dead” (2011). “Dreaming in Darkness is forged primarily from small sounds, spaced apart from one another. A chime, a chink or a clunk, and then silence before a scrape or a click or a bump. It’s fragmentary, the origins of the sounds unclear. Taking the question of what a person who cannot see dreams about, Parmerud explains that the piece is an attempt to create surrealistic fragments of a blind person’s dreams. As the piece progresses, the sounds become increasingly densely packed, and with longer durations and overlaid, building sinister abstract scenes: in fact, not so much scenes as shifting shadows and variations in light. The bubble of conversation marks the opening moments of Crystal Counterpoint: a recording which sounds like a restaurant or party, the chinking of classes and general hubbub of people grows and stops abruptly with the chime of a glass. Inspired by the sounds of the parties Åke’s parents used to host, and which he would hear from upstairs, the piece uses the very same glasses to create a wealth of sounds, from long, low drones to higher hums, elongated undulations and quick, bright glissandos. Grand swells of sound rise and cease suddenly, replaced by strange, quiet drifts of sound: it’s very easy to forget exactly what you’re listening to. But if anything, awareness of the origin of the sounds only heightens the experience, as you’re likely to marvel and wonder just how glasses could sound like an oboe or high winds across mountain tops. In his notes, Parmerud notes that there already exist a large number of recordings which explore glass sounds, and it is, indeed, an interesting piece to place alongside Miguel Frasconi’s Standing Breakage (for Stan Brakhage) (clang records, 2016). ReVoiced moves away from musical abstraction and instead uses the voice as its instrument. A single voice is layered up on top of itself exponentially until a whole crowd of one voice is speaking. It’s actually quite a disconcerting experience. Voices are subject to all kinds of manipulation: sped up, slowed down, pitch adjusted, stretched, overlaid, echoed and delayed, in myriad permutations. Chants and dialogue and ululations, crowds and multiple languages meld together, and gradually, extraneous sounds — hard, heavy slabs of sound — crash in, while sharp-edged sounds slash for create a dull, percussive element to the slow-building torture of the familiar becoming twisted, distorted, abstracted and unfamiliar. The final track, Necropolis — City of the Dead, is a musical tour through the catacombs of an imaginary city which contain the remains of some of the greatest music of all time. ‘But the condition of the musical bodies that rest in the crypts is unfortunately in various states of decomposition’. As such, in combining a well-worn joke (which is usually about Mozart when I’ve heard it) with a project to assimilate and deconstruct fragments of existing works, Necropolis is a sort of a collage. Classical, jazz, film soundtracks, many renowned and bordering on recognisable, at least in essence, all fade in and out and collide against one another. While the title track may pick over the bones of musical history, it equally breathes new life, and the same is very much true of the work as a whole: the parts are disparate, fragmentary, scattered in origin from around the globe and individually amount to not very much at all. But the sum is spectacular, an experience which is thought-provoking and which has the capacity to be quite unexpectedly affecting.” By Christopher Nosnibor in Aural Aggravation, May 3, 2016 | 2016 | €15.00 |
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| Growl | CD | "Composer Åke Parmerud is from Göteborg, which is also the home of underground labels such as Fang Bomb, Release The Bats, and Beläten, names on which we can always rely to provide solid blasts of depressive post-industrial noise and drone music. Parmerud isn’t exactly cut from the same cloth, being as how he’s a prize-winning and classically-trained electroacoustic maestro, but there are moments of tasty darkness on his Growl (empreintes DIGITALes IMED 15132) collection which appeal to a macabre chap like myself. La vie mécanique, for instance, is a pretty effective critique of modern industrialisation, or at least an observation on it, and takes the hoary old dystopian cliché of “modern man becoming machine-like” and dusts it down for an update that involves samples of machinery blended with Techno music. In this lively composition of clattering beats and metal, it’s far from clear where the factory machines leave off and the dancefloor begins; it’s intending to convey something about the body being broken down into smaller units, much like the cogs of a machine being taken apart. Parmerud also makes a commentary on the contemporary use of machines (laptops, presumably) for making music. I wish he’d be a little less equivocal about it, both in his notes and his music, but it’s a nifty statement. Maybe serious composers shouldn’t dabble with Techno. However, if you think men of Parmerud’s generation should leave the kids’ music alone, you’ll be even more appalled by the idea of Growl itself, where he drily observes “metal music is big in Sweden” from his lofty position, and borrows some ideas from his youngest son who plays in a metal band. This might be Aron Parmerud who plays his “axe” for Marionette, a Death Metal band who made a couple of albums for Listenable Records. What the composer has done here is zero-in on the throat-shredding vocals that characterise a lot of the music in this genre, and through arranging samples of voices shrieking “Hell Is Us! Die We Must!”, has built a virtual “growlers choir”. With the dark techno backing, electronic effects, and gloomy ambient tones, this works surprisingly well, even if it sounds too “expensive” and well-produced for a genuine metal album and has far too many interesting dynamics. He also misses the claustrophobia and genuine sense of doom. But even so Parmerud turns in a strong piece of work, and in any case he wasn’t setting out to produce a metal album. What else are the “young people” interested in these days? Vinyl records, of course! So listen in to 2011’s Grooves if you want to hear what Parmerud can do when sampling the black stuff. The source material for this was the vinyl collection of his friend Kai Hanekken; in fact the composition seems to have been a by-product of a digitisation project requested by said Hanekken, who urged the composer to pick up the gauntlet and create a composition. He gave in. What gets sampled are run-out grooves and vinyl “noise”, i.e. crackles and clicks and such; Parmerud seems to have been only too aware that doing this was already something of a well-worn cliché, but again he liked the challenge and wanted to see if he could invert it and bring new life into the idea. Although best heard at high volumes and played back through a multi-channel system, Grooves still succeeds on your home CD player and delivers a suffocating density which is clearly one of this composer’s trademarks. Continuity is severely disrupted by the multiple edits, and the speed with which the layers of abstract noise pile up is incredibly alarming. You’ll feel like you’re trapped on an enormous spinning black disc of death. Also here: 2014’s Electric Birds derived from birdsong samples (yet another instance where Parmerud had promised himself he would never make a piece like this), and Transmissions II, the most recent composition. It derives from a multi-media work where, if seen live, a singing choir are able to manipulate sound signals in real time. Some fascinating complex electronic layers result, and it sounds a lot more contemporary than some of the formal music that often gets released on this label, and is every bit as convincing as any given Mego release from the last few years. Sometimes proper composers make a ninny of themselves when they try and get “with it”, but Åke Parmerud has nothing to be ashamed of here." [The Sound Projector] | 2015 | €14.50 |
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| PARSONS, DAVID | Chakra | CD | Chakra is David's third album on gterma. The album carves and weaves its way through the mysteries surrounding the seven Chakras starting at the crown and working towards the foundation. Headphones strongly recommended. https://gterma.bandcamp.com/album/chakra "After “Puja” and “Stupa”, “Chakra” is the third album by New Zealand-based composer David Parsons on the Swedish G-terma label. This time around, the tracks on “Chakra” were very much gear-inspired. David purchased a couple of Synthstrom Deluges, a locally made portable synthesizer, sequencer and sampler from Wellington designed for the creation, performance and improvisation of electronic music. This brilliantly designed piece of gear -running on an internal rechargeable battery- offers pretty much unlimited sampling storage and more composing tracks than one would ever need. In addition, they can also control all David’s other hardware and software synths. About 70% of the album’s music was created in the outdoors during holiday down south with this portable gear. It ended up as a 62-minute inner journey (overall a bit more rhythmic than Parsons’ last releases) of slow progressing, minimal-angled and lush swirling sound waves. These meet up with David’s signature aural Tibetan and Asian flavours as well as some occasional monk chants. Its effect is dreamful, hypnotizing, and immersive and even becomes fulfilling when the intrinsic power trail of the 10-minute delight “Manipura” washes over the listener. Thereafter, David’s takes his listeners to great heights with the atmospheric, minimalist painting “Svadhisthana” (moving into “Himalaya’s” pure soundwaves), then rounds out the fascinating journey beautifully with the rhythmic-spiced, intense “Muladhara”. The excellently mastered “Chakra” is a winner on all fronts making a great addition to Parsons’ discography. Headphone-listening is strongly recommended." [Sonic Immersion] | 2019 | €13.00 |
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| PBK & MODELBAU | The Dead Time | CD | https://oxidation.bandcamp.com/album/the-dead-time "In music, separating the wheat from the chaff these days is not easy, one has to apply some kind of compulsion and instinct towards interesting releases. “The Dead Time” was made out of processing sonic information in the passing of time, yet what makes this music stand out from the passing and make it “dead”? "I am interested in the alchemical breakdown of things and the results of pure accidents.” -Phillip B. Klingler Frans de Waard and Phillip B. Klingler are rooted in the experimental music scene. Both are still at the forefront of pushing the boundaries of underground and formal electroacoustic music. This album was made of collages of recordings De Waard made in 2014, fermenting on Klingler’s shelve until summer 2021. One day that summer, Klingler awoke with a premonition about the work, which started an intensely creative period. He created three collaborations: 'The Dead Time' with De Waard, a PBK & Nocturnal Emissions LP, and the CHAIN LETTER EXHORTATION Series. "It's the same way I like to paint: only when inspired to do so, and without preconception.” as Klingler states. Both composers are daily concerned with archival matters, so they have a deep intellectual and experiential understanding of the importance of work and detail, no matter how small or few the edition. To my knowledge, this quality translates into the depth of sound, fragility and sensibility, the compositional approach of the unknown by the use of transformed field recordings, digital processed, mixer feedback, synthesizers and sample players, which allows them to enter this abyss of a personal and yet collaborative esoteric space. As Klingler puts it: “I think it was very nice to leave the tracks as "miniatures" with their characteristics, not attempting to be epic in scope, but more like the experiments of the 1950's/60's - Dutch composers of the Phillips Research Laboratory, where all ideas of creativity were embraced, even somewhat incongruous combinations. (..) The compositions are made, but they are abstract, no narrative”. The “miniatures” sound like deep, personal, little moments of awakening, fermented by time, but then again appearing to be free from it: “We have imposed our own very personal process(es) on the audio to create sounds that belong to something but also subvert that thing.”, as Klinger states. This is a robust and thoughtful work of two composers always deeply involved in their game and firmly immersed in its execution. Favourite piece: “Knife”." [MC / Vital Weekly] | 2021 | €13.50 |
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| PECORELLI, DANIELE / MARK SCHAUB | & | LP | " &, first production of the newborn Anomala Soundscapes wants to be a programmatic manifesto of what the label intends to realize. The debut album of a new label has the difficult task of giving the editorial imprint in one fell swoop. Vinyl was chosen as the format and split album as a formula. The format of the vinyl was not chosen for the alleged better listening quality compared to than other media, but rather and above all for to recover a certain now rare “listening ritual”. The & project was intended to be released as a vinyl record from its very origin. Each side separately presents the work of one of the two musicians, neither of whom had heard the work of the other until the release. Who’ll frame my memories in ash Daniele Pecorelli We are our consciousness, and our consciousness is the form and content of our memory. What happens to our memories the moment we die? They become an electrical residue that fades away. As we are conscious that our memory is falling apart, a new consciousness arises that in turn disintegrates into kaleidoscopic fragments until they dilate into the final moment of our recorded time. Combustion Mark Schaub Material, rough, sometimes unprejudiced, dark but carnival, tries to render the idea of transformation in an informal way without emotional variations. In particular chemical transformation, the allusion to fire is made explicit by the title. The transformation is an action of opposing forces and from the tension develops the passage that explores all the audible frequencies (even inaudible) trying to materialize the intimate tension of the matter and the dissolution of the same in the final suspended and almost incomplete." | 2019 | €22.50 |
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| PENNY RIMBAUD'S L'ACADEMIE DES VANITES (CRASS) | Yes Sir, the Truth of Revolution | CD | "CRASS WAS THEN - THIS IS NOW. WAKE UP TO IT CRASS' album, 'Yes, Sir, I Will', was possibly the most angry and hard hitting attack on the political/military/industrial complex ever consigned to vinyl. Written by Penny Rimbaud in 1982 at the height of the Falklands conflict, it seethes with righteous indignation over what he saw as a pointless but vicious exercise in vote catching by a government whose popularity was severely on the wane. So powerful was this critique that it led to threats of prosecution by that very same government, threats which were typically used by CRASS to further their attacks on it and its tyrannical leader, Margaret Thatcher. Over thirty years later, in 2014, Rimbaud was asked to participate in the Rebellion Festival, a yearly punk gathering held in Blackpool, UK. Realising that the opening date of the festival closely coincided with that of the euphemistically named 'Great War', Rimbaud and the festival organisers agreed that as an appropriate response they should open the event with a performance of 'Yes, Sir, I Will'. In preparing for this performance, Rimbaud began to question the relevance of some of the content of 'Yes, Sir'. It seemed to him that much of it was pertinent only to the time in which it was written, a time when a genuine social uprising had appeared to be a very real possibility (one that was violently and conclusively squashed during the miners' strike of 1984). But times change and there was, he now felt, an element of aggression within the work which veiled its essential message of love and peace; it was a passion that could all too easily be mistaken for blind anger. With this in mind, and inspired by John Lennon's 'All You Need is Love', he set about rewriting 'Yes, Sir' from what he describes as a more Taoist viewpoint. Through replacing screams of anguish with laments of love, he was largely able to satisfy his wish to change 'Yes, Sir' into an expression of compassion, that being the hugely demanding realm of love in its unconditional form. For the Rebellion performance of the now retitled 'Yes, Sir, the Truth of Revolution', Rimbaud was joined by CRASS' lead vocalist Eve Libertine plus a group of leading musicians from the London jazz scene with whom they'd worked extensively in the past. Named 'L'Académie des Vanités', the band consisted of Eve Libertine/vocals, Penny Rimbaud/vocals, Louise Elliott/sax, Kate Shortt/cello, Jennifer Maidman/guitar, Phil Robson/guitar, Thad Kelly/bass and Gene Calderazzo/drums. The live recording of that show, presented here, captures all the tense excitement created by presenting a primarily punk audience with complex poetics of love, accompanied by equally demanding freeform, improvised jazz. However, as had generally been the case with CRASS' output, wild, willing and worrisome, it would be wise to expect the unexpected. Equally, through its progressive and colourful imagery, the vibrant packaging designed by Gee Vaucher shows a refusal to harp back to the illusory golden past of punk dreams and conceits. 'We are poets, armed with the cobblestones of love, unconditional, uncompromising, beyond need of proof.' However, if proof is needed, it will most surely be found in the content of this radical, imaginative release." [label info] www.coldspring.co.uk | 2016 | €12.00 |
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| PERNICE, LAURENT | Presque Nature (Musique Immobiles 26-30) | CD | When buying this album, you'll also get a free download code for "PSL drones", a 20-minute track belonging to the Musiques Immobiles series and previously released in the "taâlem advent calendar 2024". Presque Nature, Laurent Pernice's brand new CD, will take you on a musical journey to one of the most remote parts of Vanuatu (Wunavae, on the west coast of Espiritu Santo Island), but also off the coast of La Ciotat, in the underwater depths of the Mediterranean, or even in areas of the Camargue that are off-limits to the public... You can also listen to sunrises in the Hardelot forest (near Boulogne-sur-Mer, north of France) or in the Vigueirat marshes (near Arles, south of France)... This journey of just over an hour, divided into five minimalist and contemplative sections, was composed (or rather uncomposed) over a period of ten years, during the composer's travels. They are a bit like sound sketchbooks. The concept of Musiques Immobiles was conceived by Laurent Pernice in the late 1980s and continues to fuel his inspiration today. review in Vital Weekly 1500 Lastly, there’s Laurent Pernice, a former member of the French band Nox, whose later interests lie in the use of the sampler and electronics. I reviewed various of his releases. On this new release, he plays synths, piano, gopichandi, zither, bells, gigo, and gong, along with field recordings, which are listed per track. He did a fair bit of travelling; one doesn’t see Vanuatu often mentioned on a cover. The previous release I reviewed, ‘Antigone’ (Vital Weekly 1443), was a rather delicate one, and this one isn’t different. The music and field recordings are two separate entities. He plays music to fit the field recordings, or he has fully formed musical pieces and uses the field recordings as an extra, or perhaps it’s a combination of both. Unlike Moljebka Pvlse and Northam, whose drone and ambient pieces are abstract and devoid of melody, Pernice’s music is characterised by the gentle melodic touches he adds to the drones. These are primarily piano notes, and one could see a link with Harold Budd and Brian Eno at times, which Pernice extends to using percussion relatively sparsely. Depending on your mood, I’d say this is the perfect ending to a night of abstract drones, with a melodic bit at the end, or at the start and end, accompanied by Moljekba Pvlse’s haunting soundtracks. But on a sun-soaked, early Autumn day (what am I doing inside the house? Oh, it’s the last Vital Weekly), this is the perfect mellow soundtrack for such a day. (FdW) credits released November 7, 2025 All instruments (synths, piano, gopichandi, zither, cymbals, bells, jingo, gong) played by LP. Except for ‘Six Jours’: fujara and batas drums played by Px Hal. All field recordings made by LP. Composed, recorded and mixed by LP between 2012 and 2022 at Studio du Cabanon, Marseille, France. — 01 - Six Jours Field recordings were made in the forest on the East Coast of Espiritu Santo island, Vanuatu, in 2012. — 02 - Aussi loin April 2015, at dusk, in the area of Vigueirat marshes in Camargue, France, that is off-limits to the public. You can hear the call of the eurasian bittern, which sounds like a bottle being blown into. This bird, more than any other, is in danger of extinction. — 03 - Lever du jour 1 (Vigueirat) Harmony and melody based on Carlo Gesualdo's madrigal ‘Moro, lasso! al mio duolo’ (n° 17 of the Sixth Book). Sounds of nature recorded at dawn in April 2015 near the Vigueirat marshes in Camargue, France. — 04 - Un rêve subaquatique Underwater recordings made in La Ciotat Bay, France, in 2021. — 05 - Lever du jour 2 (Hardelot) The sounds of nature at the origin of this piece have been recorded around 5 AM, in August 2012, on the edge of Hardelot forest, Pas-de-Calais (France). Mastered by Flavien Gillié https://taalem.bandcamp.com/album/presque-nature-musiques-immobiles-26-30-alm-146 | 2025 | €13.00 |
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| PERSONAL BEST (MAGAZINE) | N°6 | MAG | PERSONAL BEST #6 Published january 2016 Format: 210 x 285 mm 100 pages Colour Interviews with: SKASET (Norway) LUCAS ABELA (Australia) MARCIA BASSETT (USA) CRYS COLE (Canada) JOE MCPHEE (USA) SODADOSA (Indonesia) PBK (USA) Topics covered includes: meeting Sun Ra, starting to play the sax at 28, Forbidden Planet, The Nihilist Spasm Band, PO, poerty, Chicago, UFO sightings, science fiction, politics, stagnation, the scary middle class, hatred of reverb, changing guitar strings in 23 seconds, that Manowar were never hip, 33 or 45 or in the middle, returning to rock, how play glass on your face, playing drums on a trampoline, playing power tools on turntables, Loop Station hatred, scares and scars, cutting your throat on purpose, noise scene guilt, INXS as the gateway, art scene carbon print, painting skulls, playing loud, eating lobsters, noise bombing in Indonesia, salt, broken radios, disco tracks that goes nowhere, Albert Ayler's wonkyness, loosing faith in expressionism, lack of dynamic and textural shifts, shock aesthetics, preserving artist archives, and much more. marhaugforlag.no/personalbest6.html | 2016 | €10.00 |
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| PETIT, PHILIPPE | Henry: The Iron Man | CD | "One lost lemonish night sleepwalking on a lost country road I dreamt that Shinya Tsukamoto was working on a blurred remake of "Eraserhead", and I was to soundtrack the grotesque mutation of Henry into an "Iron Man". I decided to manipulate and take advantage of the vinyl material to fondle crackles and released noises, to process textures and their resonances into vertiginous travellings of sound ; conjuring up flashes of disturbing black & white grainy sounds, behind-the-scenes close-ups, rapid nightmarish stop-motion effects. I embarked on a visceral musical voyage, an intricate and imaginative soundtrack gathering both organic and sonic elements and giving life to a noisy magma where unexpected clicks stumbled over interferences, where digital accidents happened and drones and acoustic resonances filled the spaces in time. The music sprang on me and got caught in my eye. A few years ago BiP_HOp had started a series called "Reciprocess", thus to celebrate 10 years since the inception of the label + my 25 years of activism/DJing I composed a 70+ minute soundtrack, cut it into pieces which were sent to friends to add their spices to. The Wire magazine liked the idea and agreed to give it away with their issue # 301, in March 2009. AIDAN BAKER & Philippe Petit CHAPTER 24 & Philippe Petit COSEY FANNI TUTTI & Philippe Petit SIMON FISHER TURNER & Philippe Petit KLANGWART & Philippe Petit DOUGLAS BENFORD & Philippe Petit MARKOVO & Philippe Petit BELA EMERSON (feat. vocals from RANDALL FRAZIER) & Philippe Petit KUMO & Philippe Petit EUGENE S. ROBINSON & Philippe Petit SEVERIN 24 (feat. vocals from KATHY COMPTON) & Philippe Petit JASON FORREST & Philippe Petit LYDIA LUNCH & Philippe Petit JEAN-HERVÃ� PERON (art-Errorist/Faust) & Philippe Petit STRINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS (Hervé Vincenti & Philippe Petit) SYBARITE & Philippe Petit JESU & Philippe Petit dDAMAGE & Philippe Petit Born in Marseille, South of France, where I started Djing, animating radio shows and editing zines in the 80s. In the 90s I contributed articles (under the pseudonym Candy Apple Grey and Filth Simpson ) for such magazines as Ruta 66 (Spain), Merlin’s Music Box (Greece), Maximum R&R (USA), What Wave, Cryptic Tymes (Canada), and French-written Taktik, Rage, Rocksound, Best, 491, Abus Dangereux, and many many more that no one will remember of… In those days, I had some fun and interviews w/ such bands as Nirvana, Fugazi, L7, Neurosis, Fuzztones, Babes In Toyland, Mudhoney, Pixies, Cynics, Dum Dum Boys, Alice Donut, Brood, Grotus, Fleshtones, Buzzcocks, Nick Cave, Sting Rays, Poison Idea, Jon Spencer, Soft Machine, Lydia Lunch, No Means No, Godflesh, Steve Albini, Gallon Drunk, Melvins, New Bomb Turks, and many other “noisy-rock” luminaries. In 1991, I started Kinetic Vibes Music, a Garage Punk zine and label releasing music by: Willie Loco Alexander, Pleasure Fuckers, Dead Moon, Bevis Frond, Lust-o-Rama, Ultra 5, Overcoat, Cryptones, Devil Dogs, La Secta, Dirteez, Tommyknockers and some other… Still available the mythical compilation “Electric Carnival” gathering 23 bands from 10 countries. In 1993 I founded the experimental label Pandemonium Rdz. Working with the likes of Guapo, Zeni Geva, Ground Zero, Condense, Cows, Headcleaner, Drive Blind, Double Nelson, Alboth!, Melt Banana, God Is My Co-Pilot, Samiam, Burning Heads, Cerberus Shoal, Flying Luttenbachers, Unsane, Bästard, Kepone, Ron Anderson, Ruins, Hint, Andy's Car Crash, Spaceheads… That is well documented there and many releases are still in print: www.pandemoniumrecords.com 41 records later, I needed to rejuvenate and started a new label: BiP_HOp was physically born in 2000 and will document avant electro for the century to come... A webzine, a radio show, organizing live events, and above all a label documenting the state of electronic art and sound design, unconventional sound adventures, modern ambient, contemporary alliances between acoustica vs. digitalia... Musics challenging the ears and the mind. www.bip-hop.com In 2000 Philippe Petit became Dj/ip@bip-hop.com chosing to use my e-mail address to keep contact with the listeners… Under this moniker I have been invited to play festivals and some of the best venues in Europe, Northern america, and even recently Mexico. According to me a DJ is not only an instrument for dancing but as a living musical library I should also take the audience to a new cultural trip / discovery. I want to entertain listeners and to open new "doors of perception", to create a virtual world to enable them to forget about their own existence for a short while. Sometimes I feel an urge not to be solo onstage which led me to start the duo Ear_Thrillerz. ; the now defunct group Deviationists ; and most actively these days the international collective : Strings Of Consciousness. www.stringsofconsciousness.info Today I still animate a radio show for Radio Grenouille which is the biggest non-commercial local radio www.grenouille888.org/dyn/ I still write in Noise Magazine. A bi-monthly mag, printing 25 000 which can be found in newstand all around France and is the best one dealing with Rock, indie rock, metal, post rock, punk, stoner doom, industrial, experimental, prog, Noisy music. Also a website (3000-3500 unique visitors/day) http://www.noisemag.net/ " [label info] www.blrrecords.com | 2009 | €10.00 |
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| PHELIOS | At the Mountains of Madness | LP | "With its majestic atmosphere, complex dronesaceping and deep cushions of textural shamanic percussions Martin Stürtzer paints with his 5th album of Phelios another aural picture. This is channeling the unimaginable and connects with the cubes and subterranean caverns of echoing, vaporous, wormily honey-combed mountains of madness. Epically scaled soundwaves creating a fantastic, daemoniac glimpse, among the churning zenith-clouds, of what lay back of those other violet westward mountains which the Old Ones had shunned and feared." www.deep-audio.de/pheliosmount | 2019 | €18.00 |
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| PHILLIPS, DAVE | Proceed with Inquiry | DVD | "The contained DVD comprises video works, live performances and collaborations by radical Swiss sound artist DAVE PHILLIPS, sonically active since 1987, part of the notorious SCHIMPFLUCH GRUPPE (with Rudolf Eb.er, Joke Lanz) since 1991, having left his signature in numerous bands, projects and collaborations. DAVE PHILLIPS uses sound as a means to activate primordial emotions otherwise hidden underneath the debris of civilization. His concept is called “Humanimalism” accordingly, meaning a state of mind that overcomes religious, material und supremacist charges of evolution, acknowledges itself as part of a whole and has grown into an empathic, conscious and connected creature allowing emotion and instinct their equal part in decision-making. This collection presents his multifaceted work in composition, performance, psycho-acoustics, sonic rituals, voice, video, field recordings, objects and electronics, etc. in a yet unknown complexity and coherence of motion pictures. His performance work is revealed in all its undiluted brutality, the urgency and topicality of his work and his message is clearly evident, captivating and intensely documented. Along with DAVE PHILLIPS’ video works created between 2014 and 2016, the DVD is a document of unique solo live actions and the notorious Paris 1996 performance of SCHIMPFLUCH-GRUPPE, as well as recent collaborations with G.X. JUPITTER LARSEN, and video artists PAKISE AKIN, JAN VAN HASSELT and REMOTE-CONTROL RECTUM, who in turn created their visual interpretations of PHILLIPS' audio works. It all amounts to a mind-expanding experience, playing with altered perception and throwing back the viewer onto his own vision." [label info] "...Merely approaching, let alone summarising, the work of Dave Phillips is near impossible. Active for 25-odd years in multiple artistic fields (including appearances on almost 200 releases), his contribution here to the DVD component of the release is characteristically challenging. The work is delivered in three parts: video works, live performances, and collaborations. The video works are varied with clear effort put into editing and sound composition. They’re often jarring and disorienting, always intimate, and personal. Some are abstract and intangible while others are precise and brutally polemic. There is slap-to-the-face activism in spades, including a sobering piece on humankind’s exploitation of the Earth and its animals (‘How sad, that nature speaks and we don’t listen.‘). Phillips’s use of footage depicting animal vivisection, cruelty, and industrial slaughter is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, as is the screaming text (‘Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance!’). But these pieces are clearly meant to shock and are more about our complacency and willingness to let them happen than about the actions themselves. The collaborative works are interesting enough, though they are not as strong as Phillips’s solo contributions. He seems to supply audio primarily over his collaborators’ mostly impressionistic visuals. Many could display rather comfortably on a screen in a respectable art gallery. The live performances are highly entertaining and showcase a theatrical grotesquerie typical of the Schimpfluch-Gruppe of which Phillips is a core member. Indeed, the best of the live recordings here has him on stage with Rudolf Eb.er for a Schimpfluch-Gruppe action in Paris. Contact mikes in mouth, their faces slam repeatedly and unceremoniously into bowls of spaghetti. It’s bleakly humorous and very uncomfortable.... " [Heathen Harvest] silkentofu.bigcartel.com/product/dave-phillips-proceed-with-inquiry-dvd | 2017 | €13.00 |
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| Sixth Mass Extinction | LP | "black vinyl lp in embossed sleeve, edition of 300. comes with a free 8 page newspaper featuring articles that offer a broad view of what homo sapiens has achieved in terms of coexistence and in taking care of its home. 1. Things Falling Apart 21:12 2. Radical Hope 20:12 about things falling apart - composition for three PA’s (stereo version): the original 6 channel piece was commissioned by bad bonn kilbi festival düdingen switzerland 2018. radical hope - live action (studio version): this incarnation of live action was initiated in january 2016 and has developed since. triggered by a broken heart, it’s a critical analysis of subjective behaviourisms, self-reflections, self-criticisms and conclusions thereof. the subsequent translation of derived intentions into ritualised actions include purging, activating learning and healing processes, self-betterment, empowerment and hair-burning. has since morphed into a piece about the relationship of the human as a species with planet earth as a cherished entity, such as a loved one, a friend, a partner, a companion, a parent or a family member, a home or an origin. all audio by dp. decomposed may to november 2018 for schimpfluch. mastered by riccardo mazza. artwork by brett wagg using photos by dp. https://totalblack.bandcamp.com/album/sixth-mass-extinction Dave Phillips INTERVIEW by CHAIN DLK ( By Vito Camarretta - August 11, 2021) dave dp phillips long story short fields of re/search: existences and behaviourisms humanimalistically. works that oppose the omnipresent restriction and reduction of life and living, that activate primordial shared emotions otherwise hidden under the debris of civilization, inviting rumination, encouraging intervention, endorsing catharsis, liberating, cleansing. therapeutical stimulation is acknowledged. sonic activism, ritual protest music, humanimalism methods: audio de/construction, composition, sonic rituals, psycho-acoustics and performance tools: voice, body, fieldrecordings, electronics, objects, video reason for this interview: his recent release “to death” (7th July 2021, Misanthropic Agenda) enjoy the reading! Chain D.L.K.: Hi Dave! How are you doing? Dave Phillips: Quite alright. I moved house earlier a month ago, I’m settling in… Chain D.L.K.: I heard you recent ‘to death’ and I honestly think it’s a listening that I would likewise honestly recommend in this historical stage… but before focusing on it, even if those well-informed readers of our zine, whose memory has not been reset yet, don’t really need any introduction, how would you introduce yourself, your sound art and its direction(s)? Dave Phillips: Puh. Well. My music is rather free, abstract, “cinematic”, and personal. It sounds more organic than it does electronic. What I seek in sound/music is altered states of consciousness, states of trance and liberation, cathartic and purging kind of highs, some sort of elevation. Sound for me is communication, so I like it to have some sort of narrative, intentionality, something shared. I’m interested in the effect of sound as much as its aesthetic form. Sonically I’m inspired by contemporary (classical) composition, the sounds of insects, traditional music, improvisation/free music, bass music, as much as the energy of radical punk and metal. Literature is a big inspiration too. My sound work is often accompanied by topical contexts that touch on environmental and existential issues but are more driven by the interconnectedness of things, the thing that some call chaos, this enormous ecosystem that we are a part of, the kind of free life that is uncontrollable and beyond our systems of control or scientific measurement or language. I call my music “ritual protest music” – I protest against the reduction and restriction of life – I describe my way of approaching sound as “sonic activism”. Uhm, long “introduction” but there you go…. just open ears… Chain D.L.K.: The last outputs I vividly remember of yours, who reached somehow my desk (I often don’t know how or why some sonic entities reach my desk, besides the fact someone delivers them to my mailbox), has been a super limited split with Emerge on Nazlo, that was a tribute to Dmitry Vasilyev. Have you ever met him? Which tracks did he leave in your memory? Dave Phillips: I met Dmitry Vasilyev a bunch of times. The last time was in September 2018 when Dmitry had organized a tour for me and emerge in Russia. We met in Sevastopol before embarking on a tour together. The day before our tour began, we went swimming in the Black Sea and Dmitry drowned. The tape you speak of is a reaction to that tragic loss. Dmitry’s enthusiasm for and energy invested in experimental music was amazing… Chain D.L.K.: I have to amend… There’s also a CD from Attenuation titled ‘Post Homo Sapiens’, but I honestly haven’t unfolded it yet… What a shame! Can I get excused for that? What should I expect? Dave Phillips: Of course! Post Homo Sapiens imagines a world where insects and plants rule. Dave Phillips imagephoto courtesy of Jesse Newman Chain D.L.K.: I enjoyed the reading of some of your texts (ref: https://www.davephillips.ch/texts), the last of which includes many interesting and praiseworthy ecologist thoughts and reflections, but it dates back to 2015. Are you writing some new text for the recent evolution of human history? Dave Phillips: “For the recent evolution of human history”, haha. Besides writing, I collect and present texts too, and my texts sometimes take from articles and books that touch me. For the “sixth mass extinction” LP (2019) I collected a bunch of articles that together offer a picture of how humans are doing in terms of coexistence with other beings on this planet. It’s probably no surprise that we’re not faring very well – what we seem to be good at though is causing mass extinction and destruction. Said articles were accompanied by a profound text by professor Jem Bendell on “navigating climate tragedy”. For an upcoming split with sist en 343 called “thinking future coexistence,” I used a text by Charles Eisenstein on what happened since corona blessed us – this should be out in the autumn. I am supposed to write something for an upcoming compilation, but I haven’t got there yet… Chain D.L.K.: So let’s go back (or forward) to ‘to death’. I remember the words of a Tibetan monk on this subject, who said that we have to notice that when a baby comes to life cries, and we smile, when a person comes to death (let’s say so) sometimes has a smiling expression on his/her face, while we cry. Is this somehow ironic viewpoint close to the meaning of death you were referring to on your last release? Dave Phillips: Yes, very much so! Accompanying my father on his last journey was a profound experience that demystified death to an extent where it mostly wasn’t this “horrible thing” that people often seem to associate with it, but something quite different…. somehow magical, often peaceful and serene – my father was smiling a lot as he lay dying – and also somewhat unbiased, more to do with “life (in all its stages) never fails to amaze me”, where often opposing angles together make the whole. Chain D.L.K.: I think that most of the weirdest consequences of this likewise weird pandemic crisis can be interpreted by using the filter of human fear of death. How did this situation influence your ‘to death’? Dave Phillips: I was living in such intense reality bubbles at the time of the pandemic that the pandemic itself seemed to be happening on a side-stage, it didn’t seem to have that much impact on me. In hindsight, though, I realize it played into my perception more than I acknowledged. It affected my perception of the world. The slow dying of my father seemed to go hand in hand with the dying of something that somehow defines us as humans, as we grow more and more separate and distanced from one another and from purpose and freedom – as we have from the “natural world” at large, a separation that we are imposing on us more and more. That’s a slow dying. I mean, the empire is failing and falling, it will crash, no doubt, it’s just a question of when and how. And it sure won’t be pretty. People, please remove your filters! Chain D.L.K.: I also enjoyed the fact that in the title, there seems a first part missing. You can expect an ‘Hymn to death’, an ‘Ode to death’ or even a ‘Yell to death’! But it’s as it is… just ‘to death’! How did you draw inspiration for it? I read it was somehow related to your father’s last moments (of course you have my deepest sympathy). Dave Phillips: Thank you. Yes, it’s mainly inspired by my father’s illness, which was devastating and my being his carer for the last 15 months of his life. I witnessed his person being eaten away by disease – in a way, he was gone before death gave him peace. At the same time, I found myself in a role that made sense on so many levels, and somehow I managed to pull it through – I’m so glad I did. Taking care of the old is like taking care of the young, is like education, is like a purpose in life – outsourcing that to a paid service or a job or some system is missing out on profound experiences, on things essential, maybe on things that define us as animals or mammals or tribal beings. Something that teaches more than schools or universities can, but also demands more. So really it’s more about the journey, the path, the story of accompanying someone all the way “to death” and all that it sets free. My father’s wish was to die at home, and I’m glad that my siblings and I made that wish come true. But this journey also leads to other related topics. There are many readings of the title. The ode/hymn “to death” is certainly in there, probably poking at the wish to demystify death as the huge taboo that it still is. the title also addresses what we’re doing to planetary life – to plants and other animals. Thus, also what we’re doing to ourselves: when I view my father’s disease in a global context, it’s a common cause – nowadays. The main causes of death in our times show us how sick our allegedly “civilized” way of life makes many of us. So much human waste. We are “civilized to death”. And then there’s what this is all doing to us emotionally and existentially – areas where many of us seem more dead than alive, where we merely function and follow rules. The slow death of human potential through our educational systems and through our imposed “normality” is part of that. The death of freedom through total control of life, as per recent events. I mean, life IS uncertain – that’s the exciting part, isn’t it? All our puny attempts to create “safety and security” are laughable if they weren’t so devastating in what they actually do to us – but we’re like animals born in captivity. Our established political and economic systems seem rather dead too – I mean, an economy that functions linearly is just grossly inadequate for a world and lives that happen in cycles. So there are many paths and pointers “to death”. I can also turn it around: if death is the only certainty in life, then a tribute to death is a celebration of life! Chain D.L.K.: What are the reversed words in the opening ‘A Cycle Completed’ to say? Dave Phillips: The tone matters more than the words. What do you hear? Chain D.L.K.: Death is maybe the aspect of existence that keeps the strongest taboos still on. Do you agree with such a statement of not? Dave Phillips: Yes, that’s also why I wanted to make an album that demystifies that, that steers us away from this taboo, from this conditioned denial or shame, this refusal to face all aspects of existence. I wanted to describe death as what it is, part of a cycle as natural as birth, something to encounter and to know, not something to primarily fear. On the contrary, I feel the awareness of death is one of the driving forces of life, it brings out deep emotions which frankly make me feel very alive. Death the experience has many beautiful aspects to it, at least in my experience. To reduce death – or this album – to just something “dark and scary” is merely scratching the surface – it’s looking away. If we could include death in the bigger picture as something normal, we may enjoy more freedom in our lives… Chain D.L.K.: That piercing scary and somehow beastly scream on “To Death We All Go, The Sooner The Better”… how did you grab it, if it can be said? Dave Phillips: I often start a recording based on notes I made or impulses, ideas about sonics, and sentiments. The tape starts running and… I try to put these sentiments into sound, and then… often things happen, I get carried away…. I go places, I enter different states of being, it’s like I travel like I’m somewhere else. Then sometime later, thump, I land again, it’s like I’ve returned from far… and sometimes it even translates onto tape ;o) Like this album. I didn’t plan to do something about this particular topic, or about my father. I had a bunch of ideas noted, things I wanted to work into, but nothing like “to death”. Then I started recording. It was like a trance. It just poured out of me. The basic recordings happened within about ten days, basic structures of pieces were completed the following week. When I started listening back to what I had done, I was surprised. Then I realized what it’s about… Chain D.L.K.: Paraphrasing and quoting the title of one of my favorite tracks of the album, what’s the real catastrophe you wanted to represent or maybe exorcize? Dave Phillips: “The real catastrophe is that humanity continues”. It refers to the coronavirus and a reason why it might’ve appeared. I mean, we humans have vastly overpopulated this planet, and we are a very sick civilization, we’ve taken a couple of wrong turns too many, and we’re destroying not only our home but also that of all other inhabitants and them with it. It’s time we became extinct, or at least drastically reduced in numbers. We, humans, are the catastrophe… haha… it’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek, my sense of humor, though I reckon part of me means it ;o) Chain D.L.K.: Is there any moment of ‘to death’ that you want to keep deliberately indecipherable? Dave Phillips: Honestly, I try to be transparent with all that I do. My intentions, sentiments, feelings, it’s all there really. I don’t try to be cryptic or mysterious. On the other hand, it’s very subjective – I’ve put things out into the world that I thought were obvious and then find myself surprised by very different interpretations. So in this work, there are wordings, for example, that are only my own words for this particular moment, this context, they are subjective and not telling in terms of a narrative, so they needn’t be clear, they are only relevant in terms of opening spaces, it’s your own words or sentiments that take you through those spaces, and that’s fine. Chain D.L.K.: Any plan to lend or adapt ‘to death’ for other forms of art (theatre or video art maybe)? Dave Phillips: Not for now. The way this album poured out of me, the way it happened, this format is quite right for now. Emotionally, I’m quite elsewhere now anyway, also thanks to having this album happen. Chain D.L.K.: Any work in progress? Dave Phillips: Always :o) I’m currently finalizing two pieces for a 7″ for a young Portland label, and a comp track, but there are other pots cooking too… Visit Dave Phillips on the web: https://www.davephillips.ch/about https://dave-phillips.bandcamp.com/ https://soundcloud.com/dave-phillips vimeo.com/davephillips | 2019 | €20.00 |
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| Should A Seeker Not Find A Companion Who Is Better Or Equal, Let Him Resolutely Pursue A Solitary Course; There Is No Fellowship With The Fool / Cicada Trance | do-CD | "should a seeker not find a companion who is better or equal, let him resolutely pursue a solitary course; there is no fellowship with the fool" dave phillips' trajectory as an experimental recording artist began in the mid-80s, with a punk background that expanded to wilder and more nuanced territories as a solo artist. having utilized field recordings, both raw and arranged, for over 20 years, not to mention his well-established work with bombastic body sounds, surrealist strings, and tribal percussion, phillips has honed his use of source material in a way that comes off more as a soldier's sense of duty than anything resembling a hobby. with "should a seeker... / cicada trance", he returns with two badly needed physical issues of integral field recording-based pieces that were previously only available for digital download. "should a seeker..." was initially published as a digital release on the radical matters label in 2008. it is a structured arrangement of sounds with reptilian, amphibian, and insectan origin, remastered for physical release in 2023. for over 56 minutes, gurgles, primal roars, and screams from creatures of the night swirl in and out of the stereo spectrum in complex, yet somewhat rhythmic patterns, for an almost hyperreal effect. from dave phillips about cicada trance: the main insect featured here is the first one that drew me to another world, through its sound. a piercing high ringing frequency that seems to go on and on, often alternating with a slower, winding kind of motion, until the sound rises, peaks and drones again. some of these cycles are short, a minute or two a round, others seem to go for an hour, their winding down phase often partly silent; many play in 10 to 20 minute cycles. their song can differ from one region to the other, like dialects. their sound can be heard for miles. it’s ear-splitting loud when you’re close. i’ve been wanting to do this piece for a long time, maybe since i returned from my first half year in thailand, early 1995. one recording herein is from then. mostly i don’t see these musicians. many locals all over south east asia told me that these are cicadas. a few others gave other names. i never verified any further. i hear individuals and tribes, not really species. besides, there are all sorts of sonic individuals in these recordings, and i don’t think they care much about what we call them. recorded in thailand, vietnam, indonesia and south africa, most of these are daytime sonic activities, one is nocturnal. all play in hot climates, frequently during the hottest time of day. two are desert inhabitants (kgalagadi), the others live in the humid heat of tropical rainforests. i often wonder what goes on in these creatures when they’re playing. when they sing or stridulate, or whatever you want to call it, it’s vibration, it’s ongoing, repetitive. it’s being in the very immediate here and now. the common scientific explanation is “mating call” (another scientific favourite is “territorial call”). this may explain one of many reasons, but reasons apart from “functional” ones seem excluded. i could imagine these singing ringing cicadas create trance states. like being high on life, ultimately immersed in the present moment and their immediate surroundings and celebrating it. maybe their sound creates altered states of consciousness also in other beings. immersion - to be part of something assembled jun ’21 - jan ’22 in zug and brugg, switzerland dedicated to the most important beings on this planet - insects alternate headphone listening is recommended www.davephillips.ch https://nopartofit.bandcamp.com/album/should-a-seeker-not-find-a-companion-who-is-better-or-equal-let-him-resolutely-pursue-a-solitary-course-there-is-no-fellowship-with-the-fool-cicada-trance "As we all know, you can easily find noise music in nature. I am not a biologist, but I think cicadas exist in many countries, warm countries or just during the summer in some others. They are fascinating creatures, and many musicians have used recordings of them. Dave Phillips is the latest, and we know him as give or take, a man of noise music. In 1995 he spent six months in Thailand, and ever since, he has wanted to do a piece of music using recordings of cicadas. This now comes as 'Cicada Trance' and a work with a very long title, 'Should A Seeker Not Find A Companion Who Is Better Or Equal, Let Him Resolutely Pursue A Solitary Course; There Is No Fellowship With The Fool'. That piece was originally released in digital form by Radical Matters and used sounds of reptilian, amphibian, and insectan origin. Let's start here, as this is the first piece in the box. I think that the insects make up the backbone of the piece via long-form sustaining sounds, and on top of that, there are animal sounds, roaring and screaming, sometimes rhythmic, but I am unsure to what extent Phillips uses sound effects. There are none (so I believe, at least), and it's all a matter of overlaying sounds until a musical dialogue arises. This is quite a long piece at fifty-six minutes, but it's a great excursion. Strangely, I thought that this was indeed very much a Dave Phillips piece. It's loud but dynamic, and in some of his work, Phillips uses similar sounds but then of a different origin, such as his mouth or body. Dynamics are not part of the other six, six minutes longer. Here Phillips uses just recordings of cicadas from Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and South Africa and places these together. Whereas 'Should' rocks back and forth, and sounds repeat, disappear but also return, no such thing happens here. It's piercingly high frequencies going on and on, just like they do in nature. It is almost like a harsh noise wall, but one realizes that this is all nature's (true!) forces. If you listen closely, and I did as I found this very compelling music, one notes minimalist changes or even melodic singing, especially in the second half. Here too, I can easily see this as a piece of music by Dave Phillips, but this time using only field recordings, and at that from various recordings from one animal. It is recommended to be heard by headphones, which I tried, but I must admit I thought it was too much at least the cicada piece. The other one worked great with headphones. What a blast!" [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2023 | €16.00 |
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| PHRAGMENTS | Earth shall not cover their Blood | CD | "You’ve seen it before. Certain bands or artists delivering their finest work with their first recording. Then, in futile attempts to capture some of the same magic, becoming formulaic and stale, rehashing ideas and never really achieving the same caliber of work. Others, expanding on the elements of their prior releases, and through a natural maturation process, get stronger with each release. That would certainly be the case with Phragments. With their third full length studio CD, this Slovakian duo have made remarkable strides not only in quality but in scope. Equipped with an enriched sonic palate, Earth Shall Not Cover Their Blood mixes forceful brass and dark orchestral strings with rolls of powerful tribal percussion, somber wind instrumentation, ominous atmospheres, industrial clangor, and a strong and commanding vocal presence, particularly on tracks like “Over Deadlands” and “The Kin of Cain”. Cohesive, complete, and epic, this is a release that will open some eyes to new found authority of Phragments. Yours to discover. In 6 panel digipak." [label info] | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| PHURPA | Trowo Phurnag Ceremony | CD | This voyage began in the middle of the 1990's in Moscow, when a group of artists and musicians led by Alexei Tegin and based at the legendary Fabrique of Cardinal Art commenced their studies of traditional ritual music, drifting away from the field of contemporary electroacoustic and industrial music with the intent to delve deeper into the ancient musical cultures of the ancient Egypt, Iran and Tibet. The original 2003 lineup of the project that emerged as a result was ubbed Phurpa (one of the five tutelary deities of the Father Tantra in Bon tradition), and all the members have carried on with their research in the field of Bon and Buddhist liturgies up to the present day. Before Buddhism reached Tibet, local people had practiced involved shamanic rites derived from various ancestral cults. Later on, circa the VI-IX century AD, a conflict between the local tradition, namely, the pre-Buddhist religion of Bon (which originates from Central Asia) and Tantric Buddhism (hailing from the North of India) gave birth to a unique cultural phenomenon known as Tibetan Buddhism, which combines an extensive metaphysical corpus and an advanced philosophical system with pristine ceremonial practices that reach down through many centuries. In the X-XI century AD the monastic ensemble came into being. It has got a lot in common with the Chinese court ensembles of the Tang dynasty; nevertheless, the Tibetan ceremonial ensemble has preserved its authenticity and kept a large number of primordial elements stemming from the ancient Tibeto-Burmanese music intact to this day. A typical ensemble usually includes a pair of nga drums, several rolmo cymbals and a pair of gyaling oboes, as well as telescopic dunchen horns, dunkar shells and short wandun horns. One of the unique features of the Tibetan monastic choir is a specific kind of overtone chanting, called "rgyud-skad", or the Tantric voice, which is based on the principle of the singer's transmogrification during the so-called "chanting meditation". Recorded in 2005 at Melodiya studio, mixed and mastered in 2007-2008 at Magihead studio photography by Cheslav Merk, Ulrika Merk and Anna Lukyanova sketis-music.com/catalog/skmr-060-phurpa-trowo-phurnag-ceremony | 2010 | €13.00 |
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| PILEWICZ, ANNA & RAFAL IWANSKI (X-NAVI:ET) | Aqualuna - Alchemical Transformation through Vision and Sound | CD + DVD | "AQUALUNA project refers to primordial, organic pictures and sounds connected with the element of water and the Moon. It integrates dreamlike aquatic and lunar pictures which follow in succession, parallel to music composed for the film. To intensify the reception, the Authors, among other actions, made an efficient use of the synesthesia effect. The film is kept in the poetics of a dream, it constitutes a symbolic story about transformation. From the darkness, from a bright spot of the Moon-the jellyfish, a woman is born, breathing under water. The woman is dreaming and from her dream emerge oceanic spaces full of deep-sea creatures. In the depths of the ocean or human consciousness the alchemical transformations occur, leading in the final stage to the birth of a new transformed self. The video was created with the use of the following items, materials and devices: diascop, camera, computer, colorful liquids, glass, transparent objects and some pictures discovered elsewhere. Featuring: The woman in the water - Katarzyna Marta Chrzanowska. The soundtrack was composed and recorded with the use of the following instruments and sound sources: analog synthesizer, analog filter machine, digital drummer, spring drums, rattles, cymbals, bells, stones, shells, metal objects, field recordings and electronic effects." [label info] www.zoharum.com | 2013 | €15.00 |
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| PILLOW | From Dusk to Dawn | CD | "best known as the keyboarder of italy's premier post rock combo giardini di mirò, wowing fans and sceptics alike with their formidable long players and impressively intense live performances, luca di mira finally returns as a solo artist. "from dusk to dawn" is the second album he pursued on his own. 6 years down the line, pillow's sound has changed quite drastically, yet glows with the same shocking deepness. focusing on a unifying, even more orchestral sound, di mira creates his own melancholic universe. centered around the epic "silent journey", pillow demonstrates in each and every track, how music should be approached in these troubled times. merging subtle piano fragments, overwhelming string arrangements, minimal guitar melodies and even 4/4 beats, pillow has written a soundtrack no one will ever forget." [label info] www.city-centre-offices.de | 2012 | €15.00 |
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| PIMMON | Mort aux vaches | CD | Der Australier gehört inzwischen zu den anerkanntesten experimentellen Laptop-Musikern dieser Tage.. in der MAV-Serie gibt es abstrakte Geräuschkompositionen mit warmen Untertönen, seltsam quasi-rhythmische Muster & Sphärenharmonien zu hören.. wie immer im speziellen Art-Cover.. “ From all the people with a laptop and who travel, I rate Pimmon as one of the better ones. Not falling in a pure noise mode, or a pure improvisation mode, his music is a combination of melodies, raw chunks of sound and glitchy rhythms. His recent 'Snaps Crackles Pop' (a rather self-explanatory title) for Tigerbeat didn't make it to these pages, but would rank high in my top 10 for 2003. That CD was a studio, to get the full Pimmon picture, one would also need the 'Mort Aux Vaches' CD. Recorded at roughly the same time as the Tigerbeat CD, the live recording on 'Mort Aux Vaches' CD dates from about a year ago, upon his first Europe tour. Of course, the live side is always arranged in a more free mode, small mistakes happen but these pieces bear the Pimmon trade mark allover: grainy yet warm glitch rhythms, amplified static hiss that evolves into small wormholes and crackles and pop all around. However, Pimmon never looses the idea of composition - he never leaps into pure improvisation nor does he let things get out of control, there is always the structure to control. Pimmon clearly has this capacity, both in his studio work, but also in his live work. Finally a very good example of the latter becomes available. “ [Frans de Waard] | 2003 | €14.00 |
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| Smudge another Yesterday | CD | "The Preservation label presents Smudge Another Yesterday from Sydney's Pimmon. Pimmon is the alias for electronic composer Paul Gough. In the last decade, Pimmon has forged an international reputation for creating dense, challenging and engaging electronic music. This release picks up and goes further from the point where the acclaimed Secret Sleeping Birds left off. Smudge Another Yesterday is an exploration of the song behind the noise; the secret whispers hidden in the static. Within these vast and spacious works are endless fragments shaped and distended into magnetic states of subtle movement and pulse. From beautiful, foreboding pieces sung by hidden choirs to crackling, lava-flow like ambience, the mood swings of Smudge Another Yesterday are steeped in bristling commotion and stirring intimacy. It is a startling return from an individual and distinct artist. Smudge Another Yesterday was mastered by renown Italian composer Giuseppe Ielasi. Pimmon has previously collaborated with other celebrated artists of his field -- including Fennesz, Oren Ambarchi, Kid606 and Keith Rowe -- and has recorded for various labels around the world including Tigerbeat6 and Fat Cat." [label info] www.preservation.com.au | 2009 | €15.00 |
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| PIPELINE ALPHA VS. MESSIAH COMPLEX | Darking lights of Babylon | CD-R | Split-album. The German project PIPELINE ALPHA (from Wupptertal), being fascinated with old myths, offers two droney landscape tracks combining analogue / dark cosmic synth-work, vocal / choral invocations, acoustic & electric guitar/bass, shortwave/radio-sounds, ending in obsessed noise.. MESSIAH COMPLEX creates a very long noise-orgy with interesting developments & dynamics.. "EPIC AURAL DRONE NOISE / SPLIT RELEASE 3 TRACK CD. Limited to 119 copies worldwide / Screened Cardboard DVD Box / Printed Inlaycard on Special Paper / Numbered Edition! Pipeline Alpha starts with a smooth eerie analog drone like mirror or organum called "flabbergasted" 11:21 minutes followed by "Ishtar" an wisphering voicesound with a organic bassline and ending with orgastic screaming from sinister god: "Ishtar" 20:51 than followed by a devastating brutal but differentiated noise storm from MESSIAH COMPLEX called "beta-minus" 31:37 wich ends so sophisticated with quiet boiling basses like all begun." [label info] www.amid-the-waves.com | 2009 | €10.00 |
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| PLOOG, JÜRGEN | Tapes von Unterwegs 1971-1976 | LP | "Recorded & edited by Jürgen Ploog on different flights between 1971 & 1976 on a portable tape-recorder. Final selection, montage & editing by Robert Schalinski. Like his literary fellow traveler William S. Burroughs who made tape experiments a few years earlier, the German Beat writer Jürgen Ploog (born 1935) began experimenting with tape recorders in the 1970s. Due to his career as a transcontinental pilot Ploog was constantly on the go. “My life was a series of interruptions both geographically (outwardly) and psychologically (state of mind) with exposure to different countries and the constant effects of jet lag.” This 40-minute cut-up is the result of his experiments. Passages of Ploog’s spoken text get mixed with Indian television voices, while sounds of Buddhist rituals are heard through an open hotel window. Radiograms, birds, recordings of airport and street noises, people noise and that of machinery … assembled, superimposed … scraps pulled out/torn, shifted and copied … questioned and documented … an alchemical experiment, a journey of sounds … “Cut-up as a drug that leads to a different relationship with language, just as a hallucinogen leads to an altered relation with the so-called reality. The result is a fundamental shift of meaning. ‘Shift linguals’ was the motto in a continuous process with an open end …” J.P. "This tape is a recording of many voices simultaneously under the spell of the urban Moloch. They moan, marvel, murmur and curse in a mixture of sounds that would became independent and found its own cadence. A sound that could turn drunk, melt on the tongue, mingle with the juices of the body and eventually turn into sweat and piss. The traveler lived with it as with microbes sucked up and gulped with every swallow.” “When I look back now at those years, I see that they were a ground-breaking departure for me, not towards other, newly rising ideologies but into an unspecified way of writing and perception — because reality is based on perspective and seeing, thus opening the possibilities of an enhanced imagination and a vision of life under conditions which are not determined and pre-recorded. It may be said that these were the accounts of only the first steps. That in my case this was related to traveling to far-off continents and may just have been a lucky coincidence. At the same time it is obvious that it was difficult for me to record the exoticism of travel as merely a fortunate occurrence that gave me the chance to slide into remote scenery. The whiskey on the rocks at the beach of a tropical island is after all only the Technicolor-version of the beer in the pub back home. The challenge was to navigate under limitless technical possibilities and across the open space of digital deserts that spread rapidly …” J.P.2014 Jürgen Ploog - born 1935, lives in Frankfurt and Miami. He was a pilot for Lufthansa for 33 years. With Jörg Fauser and Carl Weissner he was co-founder of the legendary little-mag Gasolin 23. A friend and literary associate of William S. Burroughs, he is considered a father figure of the German-language literary underground." [label info] www.90-prozent-wasser.de | 2015 | €18.00 |
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| PLURALS | TriTone | LP | "Tri Tone is Plurals' first studio recording as a trio following the most recent releases which feature live or session material. The last studio release was 2014's Bugenès Melissae - two tracks of calmer, more reflective music, standing aside from the bulk of the group's output which tends towards noise as the ultimate splitting-point after a period of collected density. On Tri Tone that density is an end in itself. It is slow music that maps out its space carefully in coming together. It may be the gentlest and most patient of Plurals' albums, though it required the longest and most detailed sonic wrangling to complete. Two pieces were chosen from three hours of recorded music, and were contracted and expanded again by turns until eventually the finished versions took shape. Plurals' studio improvisations typically expel a significant amount of aggression and intensity in their early stages, holding closer resemblance to live performances. With such force expunged however, the following material sees them exploring lengthy passages of audio cogitation rarely delivered live. Mastered & cut by Frederic Alstadt at Ångström Mastering, Brussels." [label info] "Silken Tofu seems to be taken by the music of Plurals; as a follow-up to a double CD 'Atlantikwall' (see Vital Weekly 1076), they now release a LP. This LP is the first studio recording of them as a trio, and the first studio recording to be released since 2014. This trio of improvisers (Daniel Mackenzie, Michael Neaves and David Hamilton-Smith) use a variety of tools (guitar, synthesizers, keyboards, vocals, tape machines, radio and reed and string instruments) and then go about to do their improvised work. For this record they recorded some three hours of music and extracted forty-eight minutes spread out over the two sidelong pieces. I can't judge if that is a lot or not. The music on both pieces is quite dense, rich with sound and also mostly not too loud. That seems to me a bit of break with what I know from them so far, which was always bit more towards the noise of lo-fi drone music. Like always the changes within the pieces is quite minimal; Plurals take their time to slow go from one point in their piece to the next. In 'Sun Lock' for instance a simple drone starts out and little by little they add more and more sound, while the original drone lingers on, and towards the end it is very much changed and no longer recognizable. It ends as quiet as it started. Hard to say how much post-production and editing took place here. Surely something, I would think, but for all we know, it is released as it was played back then. ‘Bas Fond' on the other side is more from the drone rock side of Plurals with mildly distorted guitars played long form drones. A record with two sides, obviously, showing two different sides of Plurals, not as obvious. From what I heard from them, this is the most refined work." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2018 | €16.00 |
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| POLE | Steingarten | CD | "This is Berlin-based producer Stefan Betke's sixth full-length release, and his second release on his own ~scape label. Pole presents music that could be architecture, with his elegantly spare form that reaches out into space. After minimalist experiments with elements of hip-hop and dub, Steingarten has hardly any concrete references. What has remained, though, is the minimalism so characteristic of Pole. Built around little loops, his arrangements dispose with any kind of ornamentation. A stark contrast with the album's title and cover -- which shows a picture of the famously ornate, gingerbread-style castle Schloss Neuschwanstein. But despite some funky grooves, this is no dancefloor record. And despite its simplicity, the music never comes across as meager or repellently cool. This might be due to the fact that Pole has found a perfect middle point between avant-garde and pop." [press release] "Eine Form von Sounddesign: Pole vereint Minimalismus mit groovy Beats. -------- Stefan Betke alias Pole ist seit Ende der 1990er-Jahre national sowie international als einer der führenden und stilprägenden Produzenten elektronischer Musik bekannt. Nach Minimal-Experimenten mit Dub- und Hip-Hop legt er mit „Steingarten“ ein Album vor, das kaum konkrete Referenzen aufweist. Geblieben ist der für Pole so charakteristische Minimalismus. Um kleine Loops werden Arrangements aufgebaut, die auf jegliche Ornamente verzichten. Umso stärker wirkt der Kontrast zu Titel und dem Cover der Platte, einem Foto des verschnörkelten Schlosses Neuschwanstein. Trotz einiger Funk-Grooves ist „Steingarten“ keine Dancefloor-Platte, und trotz extremer Schlichtheit wirkt die Musik an keiner Stelle karg oder abweisend. Denn Pole findet eine perfekte Zwischenform, die Pop und Avantgarde ausbalanciert. Die Beats sind groovy, aber nie aufpeitschend, und die Melodien werden fragmentarisch als harmonische Tupfer eingesetzt. „Steingarten“ ist eine Form von Sounddesign, das sich abseits von bekannten Behaglichkeiten seine eigene Welt schafft." [Indigo] | 2007 | €16.50 |
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| POLIO | Soyuz | CD-R | “ Polio was originally intended to be a studio-only project dealing with the dregs of home-recorded detritus and recycling it all inside droning digital straitjackets. However, 2002 saw Polio out in front of audiences of at least 15 people on a couple of occasions which presented new challenges and resulted in a swag of new recordings awaiting their moment on a CD plonked inside a wrapping of cheap manilla paper with a neat schematic of a spacecraft on the front. Any excuse for pictures of space vehicles... Soyuz presents the bulk of a live Polio performance at Lyttelton's appropriately off-kilter Wunderbar recorded to digital hard disc by the omnipresent David Khan, and one unlisted piece of studio deconstruction to finish the disc. Polio live is a mix of pre-processed drones, live loop & sine-wave manipulation & general knob-twiddling on the effects units. Sort of like those energy drinks you can get with extra crap thrown in to what is essentially sugar & water, Soyuz is like Gemini, but with extra minerals (?!)... ahh, hell, it's a hard thing to write blurbs with a hangover, but you get the picture hopefully...! The bottom line is if you loved Gemini, you'll definately like this disc. A further installment in the Polio saga will appear shortly on Norwegian imprint Humbug, but for starters why not sink your teeth into this beauty...” [label info] | 2003 | €8.00 |
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| POUSSEUR, HENRI | Parabolique d'Enfer | CD | "This recording will be Sub Rosa's first posthumous recording of Henri Pousseur. It is the sixth release (out of eight) in their catalog devoted to this composer's experimental and electronic works. It also marks the end of the trilogy of the Parabolic works (following the 1972 unreleased recordings and the 2001 collective performance). This time around, we have a piece built through another major Pousseur work: Leçon d'Enfer (composed in 1990-1991 around Arthur Rimbaud). This previously-unreleased version was realized by Henri Pousseur in Cologne in 1992. This release was important to Henri Pousseur, as it concludes, in a sense, the Paraboles trilogy, after 1972's 8 Etudes Paraboliques (released as a 4CD box set comprised of all the études to be used as the basis for all current and future mixes) and 4 Parabolic Mixes (2001), on which four composers -- Robert Hampson, Philip Jeck, Markus Popp, and Pousseur himself -- tackled those source tapes. This suite of works was gradually pushing composition further into the territory of destruction and abstraction. This final installment, a mix made from the 1972 Études, as it should be, integrates a major external element (something already planned in the initial design), another work by Pousseur, "Leçons d'Enfer," a complex piece of musical theater dedicated to the memory of Arthur Rimbaud and composed in 1991 for the centennial of the poet's death. This work, over 100 minutes long, was written for two actors, three singers, seven musicians (clarinet, alto saxophone, tuba, harp, piano, and two percussions), tapes (including traditional Ethiopian music and field recordings from that area), and electroacoustic devices. With this version, Henri Pousseur shows how the deep impression left by a work in constant mutation can take different guises. The Rimbaud pictured in this flux is neither the promising teenager, nor the striking genius, nor even the desperate man struggling in vain in an empty landscape; it is an appeased hybrid breathing the ebullient air of the final times." [label info] www.subrosa.net | 2011 | €13.00 |
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| PRAXINOSCOPE | same | pic-LP | “Praxinoscope is a new project which sees the duo Roberto Opalio (one-half of My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini (close collaborator of the Italian space-brothers). While in the debut album as Painting Petals On Planet Ghost (out in early September 2005 on Time-Lag Records) Ramona will focus on her Japanese vocals alongside both brothers' acoustic tunes, here she plays little Japanese percussions and wind chimes, creating a resonant texture over Roberto's alien wordless vocals and space electronics. The material comes from a whole session recorded in a mysterious location of the Western Alps, directly transferred to cd using neither overdubs nor outtakes, practice which the Opalio bros have made us addicted to. For the entire lenght of its 40 minutes, the piece will stifle you the breath because of its so pure essence and intimate mood; a mystic, suffocated chant reminding the silence of ancient rituals, the ultimate exorcism to avert the Infinite Pain. Limited edition of 500 copies only as vinyl picture disc 12" LP with psychedelic artwork!” [label info] “…..This project traverses a similar terrain as MCIAA, but is perhaps closer to Roberto's brilliant solo album, "Chants From Isolated Ghosts". Opalio's vocals star here, taking the limelight and thriving inside it. Effects drench his voice making it something truly not of this world. These lunar oceans of sound are magnificent and totally enthralling. It's as though he's a cosmonaut trapped inside a glass box, unable to travel the reaches of space. Such confinement derails your mind and Opalio sounds like a person struggling against himself. At times, hearing this is almost too much - there's simultaneous discomfort and exorcism happening and you can't quite focus intently on either. You are a passive player in this exercise, lost in the crevices Opalio and Ponzini create. I cannot discount Ponzini's contributions to this 40 minute piece, either. While it may seem minimal on the surface, her various "Japanese percussions" (mostly chromatics, cymbals, and the like) add a great deal of needed texture to counterbalance Opalio's haunted wails. It is reminiscent of the way Finnish master, Keijo, works in a lot of percussive elements to his tracks. And it has the same effect. Praxinoscope is a great new project from the always wonderful My Cat is an Alien. This is one of Opax's finest releases. Bringing to mind the vocal transcendence of the Skaters, Praxinoscope are proof that you don't need any instruments to make amazing sounds. This is wonderful, wonderful music” [Brad Rose, FOXY DIGITALIS] | 2006 | €15.00 |
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| PRIMITIVE WINGS | Morphosis | CD | Satatuhatta is honoured to present the debut album of Primitive Wings, a new project by Jaakko Vanhala. ’Morphosis’ is a highly evocative album, bringing into mind vivid flashes of something primal, perhaps from the prehistoric past. At the same time it’s very raw, but without being utterly harsh. It can be seen as a sum of the artist's previous projects Zoät-Aon, Secret Apex and Vanhala, but it still presents something new. Listening to the album, you can imagine insects digging their way through the forest floor, big dragonflies propelling amongst the ferns in the twilight, reptiles roaming in the verdant undergrowth, and prehistoric roars rising amongst the tropical trees. But it’s not a nature documentary. It feels more like an atavistic memory, an intuitive transformation taking you inside an alien consciousness. This could be felt as just undefinable chills or perhaps as a vision of an event on this planet, which happened under the same stars but billions of years ago. Something from the beginning, of growth, sentience and flesh, finding its expression in strange transformations. https://satatuhatta.bandcamp.com/album/morphosis "Another round of introductions here. Satatuhatta is a Finnish label "focusing on harsh noise and experimental sounds" and has about sixty releases, mainly on cassettes but, as we see here, also on CD. Many (or, instead, most) names are all new to me. Jaakko Vanhala is the man behind Primitive Wings, his latest project. Previously he worked as Zoät-Aon, Secret Apex and Vanhala. The cover doesn't provide us with the necessary information concerning instruments, which isn't a good thing from a reviewer's perspective. Listening to the eight pieces, running from five to seven minutes, I envisage a combination of reel-to-reel tapes, electronics and a battered synthesizer. The loops Vanhala cuts are long, short and shorter. By playing them all at once (or extensive layering), they never overlap in the same way, while at the same time, they never become very chaotic. Your ears adjust themselves to the proposed order of the sounds. At least, that's my little pet theory of this week. What he puts on his loops is very hard to say; electronic sounds are a contender for that, but also field recordings. I believe to hear some of that in 'One Star'. Somewhere below in the mix of mangled loops, some electronics lurk beneath, adding creepiness to the music. Primitive Wings operates primarily in the mid to high-frequency range and has some nasty sounds, but it is not necessarily all about an endless stream of harsh noise. Maybe there is a certain sameness in the sounds used here, which made me think that the album is, perhaps, ten minutes too long, but as always, that might be the idea of the noise plan behind such operations." [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2023 | €12.50 |
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| PROPERGOL | Tormentor | 7 | Der neue Stern am Industrial & harsh noise -Himmel heisst PROPERGOL: Intelligent gemachter, psychologisch inspirierter Power-Noise mit Struktur (aus Frankreich). “First 7" and vinyl release for this French confirmed project. "Tormentor" is dealing with usual PROPERGOL’s intimate obsessions and again music is nothing less than a reflection and an exploration of his confused and chaotic innerworld… Tracks are made of nervous, repetitive and hypnotic pulsations as well as noise injections and vocals in the typical PROPERGOL’s style made of anger and despair underlying his personal oversensitivity… With this 7", PROPERGOL takes you both to a trip to places overwhelming with imagination and to a mental journey on the sinuous and unhealthy roads of neurosis when your own imagination is becoming your most intimate enemy. Like a nice musical score on schizophrenia… Deluxe packaging on a glossy fold-out cover plus postcard. “ [label description] www.nuitetbrouillard.com | 2003 | €8.00 |
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| PROTAGONIST | Songs of Experience | CD | "in 1794, william blake published ‘songs of experience’ as an addendum to ‘songs of innocence’, to complete the picture of ‘the two contrary states of the human soul’ - the state in question here being the constriction of the human spirit, the suffocation of creativity by the force to conform. after magnus sundström aka the protagonist had released his debut ‘à rebours’ in 1998, the sky seemed the only limit for this musical entity. but, to much disappointment within the industrial scene, for the next seven years only a couple of compilation appearances would be heard from the protagonist. then, in 2005 two cds came out via cold meat industry: the aptly titled ‘interim’ ep and the album ‘songs of experience’ (which was actually not entirely a new album, but in parts consisted of reworked versions of the aforementioned compilation tracks and a couple of tracks from the previous ep). the music on ‘songs of experience’ resolved all doubts: the protagonist is a devoted artist, putting quality over quantity, and the result had been well worth waiting! as if no period of inactivity had ever discontinued the creative flow, the protagonist reassumed the path of the debut: orchestral splendour, rigid drumming, dramatic string works and an increased presence of haunting, eerie atmospheres, pushing the album towards the darker edges of the neo-classical spectrum. vocal deliveries are rather sparse and restricted to short spoken parts this time around, but feature prolific guests again: tomas petterson of ordo rosarius equlibrio lent his unmistakeable voice to the protagonist’s most wellknown track, ‘strife’, a truly bombastic marching tune. jonathan grieve of contrastate can also be heard on one track, the heart-shattering ‘sick rose’. among all the opulence, romantic leanings all over, though the whole composition takes a decidedly bleak direction. the adapted literature features not only blake, but also baudelaire (here’s the symbolist theme again) and no other than the master himself, mr. william shakespeare. all in all, music and content combine into one impressive libertine’s manifesto, proclaiming the power of free thought and the mistrust of authorities! for this well-timed re-release, raubbau gathers together not only the original album, but also the exclusive tracks from the ‘interim’ ep, thus presenting the entire bundle of cmi-released protagonist tracks. until today, the protagonist stands out unique among neo-classical artists for the sheer brilliance of composition and the authenticity of his preoccupations - he is really serious about seriousness. history has been revealed, let beauty unfold!" [label info] www.raubbau.org | 2012 | €6.00 |
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| PUNCTUAL TRIO | Grammar | CD | Lou Mallozzi: turntables, CDs, Microphones, Oscillator Fred Lonberg-Holm: Cello Carlos Zingaro: Violin Recorded by Pete Wenger at Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago, 28 May 2003. Mixed and Masterd by Lou Mallozzi and Fred Lonberg-Holm at Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago, 23 June 2004. Produced by Lonberg-Holm, Mallozzi and Zingaro. @2003 Mallozzi / Lonberg-Holm / Zingaro Lou Mallozzi (b. 1957) Lou Mallozzi is a Chicago audio artist who has been dismembering and reconstituting language, sound, and gesture on stages, sites, CD, and radio since 1986. His background is in performance, intermedia and installation art, and since 1996 an increasing amount of his attention has been focused on improvised music. Using microphones, turntables, CDs and analog mixing, he collaborates with numerous instrumentalists in improvised frameworks. These collaborators have included Carlos Zingaro, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Michael Vorfeld, Mats Gustafsson, Jaap Blonk, Sebi Tramontana, Terri Kapsalis, Michael Zerang, Guillermo Gregorio, Birgit Ulher, Hal Rammel, and many others. He has performed in this context at the Come Sunday Festival (Munich), the Logos Foundation (Ghent), Podewil (Berlin), The Empty Bottle (Chicago), Candlestick Maker (Chicago), The Renaissance Society (Chicago), Kraakgeluiden (Amsterdam), and others. He has also composed several sound poems and structured improvisational works for soloists and ensembles, including Jaap Blonk, Barbara Lüneburg, and the ensemble Intégrales. In addition to his improvised music projects, Mallozzi also produces intermedia and sound performances, radio art works, and sound installations. These have been presented at numerous venues since 1986, including the PAC/Edge Performance Festival (Chicago), the Chicago Cultural Center, Experimental Intermedia (New York), the TUBE audio art series at the Einstein Kulturzentrum (Munich), Spritzenhaus (Hamburg), Suoni/Sound 2000 (Isola d'Elba, Italy), The Subtropics Experimental Music Festival (Miami), the Fort Wayne Museum of Art (Indiana), Percorsi 98 Festival (Montegrosso d'Asti, Itlay), the Sound Canopy public art project (Chicago), Donald Young Gallery (Chicago), Gallery 400 (Chicago), the Bechtler Gallery (Charlotte), Randolph Street Gallery (Chicago), Aether Fest (Albuquerque), New American Radio, Bayerischer Rundfunk (Munich), Kunstradio/Radiokunst on ORF Vienna, Sender Freies Berlin, ABC Radio (Sydney), the Resonance FM Festival (London), and others. Among his collaborators in these realms are Sandra Binion, Mark Booth, Heinz Weber, Antonia Contro, and Maurizio Pellegrin. Mallozzi has two CDs on the Penumbra Music label: Radiophagy (three radio works from 1990 - 1996) and Whole or By the Slice (electroacoustic collaborations with Hal Rammel). A CD of improvised music with Fred Lonberg-Holm and Carlos Zingaro is forthcoming on Rossbin Records (Italy). He also appears on Guillermo Gregorio's Faktura and Cornelius Cardew's Material (both on HatArt, Switzerland). Mallozzi has received a number of grants and fellowships, including a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study Center (Italy), four Artist Fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, and grants from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and the Governor's International Arts Exchange Program. In addition to his artistic career, Mallozzi is co-founder and Executive Director of Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, and he is on the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Fred Lonberg-Holm Composer, improvisor and anti-cellist Fredrick Lonberg-Holm currently resides in Chicago. Defying categorization, his work deals only with the context of the specific musical situation in which he finds/places/builds for himself. A former composition student of Morton Feldman and Anthony Braxton, and cello student of Ardyth Alton and Orlando Cole, his ongoing projects include the groups Terminal 4, The Boxhead Ensemble, Pillow, and the Lonberg-Holm/Kessler/Zerang Trio. He is also currently a member of the Guillermo Gregorio Trio, the Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet, XMARSX, and Witches and Devils (music of A. Ayler). He also has been coordinating and directing performances of his Light Box Orchestra, a non fixed structured improvising ensemble utilizing a light based cuing system . In addition he has also performed in ensembles led by Anthony Braxton, Ken Vandermark, Anthony Coleman, Georg Graewe, Wolfgang Fuchs, and John Zorn. As an improvisor he has recorded and or performed with numerous musicians including Jaap Blonk, John Butcher, Gunter Christmann, Axel Dorner, Hamid Drake, Barry Guy, Joelle Leandre, Paul Lytton, Jeff Parker, William Parker, Mischa Mengelberg, Ikue Mori, Mats Gustafsson, Paul Lovens, Paul Rutherford, Sten Sandell, Hamid Drake, Jim O'Rourke, David Stackenaas, Willie Winant, Carlos Zingaro, and many others. He has also performed/recorded with the rock groups God-is-my-Co-Pilot, Wilco, the Flying Luttenbachers, Chris Mills, Janet Bean, Super Chunk, Bobbie Conn, Ahmed Elmotassem's Legal Fiction, L'Altra, US Maple, Freakwater, Lake of Dracula, Plastic Scorpions, Zeek Sheck, Smog and others. Concert works have been premiered by William Winant, Carrie Biolo, Joe Fonda and Bottoms Out, Duo Atypica, the Schanzer/Speach Duo, New Winds, Paul Hoskin, Kevin Norton, the E.S.P. Ensemble and others. He has performed throughout the US and Europe as both a soloist and ensemble member. His scores for dance have been performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Dance Theater Workshop as well as many other venues. Film credits include music for a Playboy Channel short and the independant feature Animals, by Michael DiGiacomo. He has recorded for the Avant, Pogus, Occa, miguel, Explain:, Locust, Meniscus, Nuscope, Curious, Random Acoustics, Skin Graft, Hat Art, Buzz, Knitting Factory Works, Drag City, Ecstatic/Yod, Nine Winds, Atavistic, Rastascan, Box Media, 8th Day, Tzadik, Truckstop and What Next? labels as well as many others. CARLOS “ZINGARO” Born 1948 in Lisbon, Portugal; violin, electronics. Carlos Zingaro undertook classical music studies at the Lisbon Music Conservatory from 1953 to 1965, and during the two years 1967/68 he studied church organ at the High School of Sacred Music. Also, during the 1960s, Zingaro was a member of the Lisbon University Chamber Orchestra. In 1967 he formed Plexus, the only Portuguese group at the time to have developed a new musical approach based on contemporary music, improvisation and rock; the group recorded a 45rpm single for RCA-Victor in 1968. From 1975 onwards Carlos Zingaro has performed with a wide variety of improvising musicians, including: Barre Phillips, Daunik Lazro, Derek Bailey, Joëlle Léandre, Jon Rose, Kent Carter, Ned Rothenberg, Peter Kowald, Roger Turner, Rüdiger Carl, Dominique Regef, Evan Parker, Günter Müller, Andres Bosshard, Jean-marc Montera, and Paul Lovens. In 1978 he was invited by Wroclaw Technical University in Poland to participate in the 1st Instrumental Theatre Meeting, and in 1979 he won a Fulbright Grant and was invited by the Creative Music Foundation in Woodstock, New York to participate in meetings, classes and performances with such composers as Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, George Lewis, Leo Smith, Tom Cora and Richard Teitelbaum (a regular collaborator). He also gave lectures on New Notation Concepts, Movement and Sound, and the inter-relationship of Improvisation and Body Attitude. As a soloist, or with other musicians and composers, Carlos Zingaro has performed at many of the most important new music and improvising festivals in Europe, Asia and America. A substantial level of Carlos Zingaro's musical activities are associated with theatre, film and dance. In 1975 he completed Stage Design studies at the Lisbon Theatre High School and later served on the board of directors of the School. From 1974 to 1980 he was musical director for the Lisbon-based theatre group Comicos, being responsible for most of the original music scores performed during the period. In 1981 Carlos Zingaro received the Portuguese Critics Award for best theatre music and in 1988 he worked with the Italian theatre director Giorgio Barberio Corsetti on his Kafka Trilogy. He has also been stage and costume designer for several other theatre productions. He has produced several film scores and worked extensively with dancers and dance companies such as the Gulbenkian Dance Company, the Opéra de Genève Dance Company, Michala Marcus, Aparte, and Olga Roriz. Carlos Zingaro was a founding member of the Lisbon-based art gallery Comicos, his work has been exhibited, and he has received several prizes for his cartoons, comics and illustrations, samples of which can be seen on a number of CD sleeves, for example, Musiques de scène. www.rossbin.com/rs019.htm "Is there a mode (maybe mood, posture, or circumstance) in which you are required to set yourself in order to appreciate (maybe absorb) freely improvised music? If you are attending a live show, the location, smells, company, and certainly the visual aspects of the show contribute to your "experience." When you are merely listening to a purchased recording, what are the rules for your listening experience? Do you meditate in a quiet room? Can you listen to it in your car? Walking with an iPod? Washing dishes? How does the experience of the improvisation mesh with your current environs? Don't ask me for answers, but consider all the stimuli that invade your senses every hour of every day. Maybe that's why the relentless beat-beat-beat of pop music is so simple... because no one's actually listening. My point is this: no two listeners can have the same response to very highly interpretable music like what the Punctual Trio produces on Grammar. The cast of players includes cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, the newest member of Vandermark 5 (plus Wilco, Terminal 4, The Boxhead Ensemble, Pillow, and the Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet, to name just a few); Lou Mallozzi, a sound artist from Chicago who lists Mats Gustafsson, Jaap Blonk, Sebi Tramontana, Michael Zerang, and Guillermo Gregorio as collaborators; and Portuguese violinist Carlos Zingaro, who has partnered with the likes of Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, George Lewis, Leo Smith, Tom Cora, and Richard Teitelbaum. Simple review: you cannot dance to this disc, but I give it a ten. The trio benefits from its choice of instrumentation. Lonberg-Holm's cello, which is seemingly at home in a range of settings from jazz standards to rock to free music, mixes well with Zingaro's violin's scraping, plucking, single notes, and complex travels. They are attuned to silence and space, as on the opener, or odd pulse and song forms, as with "Punctuation. Mallozzi doesn't drown you with samples or electronics; he places them in the mix as if he were Treg Brown, the sound editor of 1950s Warner Brothers cartoons. If you listen closely to "Punctuation, you may find yourself actually embedded inside a cartoon. But then again, your experience with these sounds will probably be nothing like mine." [All About Jazz] | 2004 | €6.00 |
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| PUPILLO, MASSIMO | Our Forgotten Ancestors | CD | Massimo Pupillo is a composer and multi-instrumentalist, mostly known for being a founding members of ZU, with whom he released 18 albums and played more than 2000 shows around the world. He has also kept a very open and multidisciplinary approach that led him to work with some of the most acclaimed figures in today's world of arts: Romeo Castellucci, Chiara Guidi (of legendary avantgarde theatre group Societas Raffaello Sanzio), american choreographer Meg Stuart, french opera star Marie-Agnes Gillot, contemporary dance group Dewey Dell, world reknown dancer Yaman Okur, etc. He has collaborated live and on record with avant-garde musicians and composers such as Alvin Curran ( founder of Musica Elettronica Viva in 1966), with world-famous piano duo of Katia & Marielle Labeque, with classical music virtuosos such as Viktoria Mullova and Giovanni Sollima. He has also recorded with Canadian soprano and orchestra conductor, Barbara Hannigan. Working with Katia Labeque he has had the huge honour of an album artwork designed by Storm Thorgerson, founder of Hipgnosis, probably one of the most important designers in music. With Katia Labeque, he has played and arranged tracks of an album of Moondog music that was released on the most important classical label ever, Deutsche Grammophon. Also with Katia Labeque he presented a special project at Paris' Philharmonie in 2016, working, between others, with Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Bryce and Aaron Dessner (The National). In the world of electric/ rock music he has collaborated with some of the most important names in the international scene, such as Mike Patton ( Faith No More), Stephen O' Malley ( Sunn O)) ,Thurston Moore, Jim O' Rourke (Sonic Youth), Guy Picciotto & Joe Lally (Fugazi), FM Einheit ( Einstürzende Neubauten) , Buzz Osbourne (Melvins) Damo Suzuki (CAN), etc. In free-improvised music he worked with Peter Brotzmann, Toshinori Kondo,Tony Buck ( The Necks) etc.. In the experimental music scene he has collaborated with Oren Ambarchi, David Tibet (Current 93), Thighpaulsandra (Coil), Christina Vantzou, Daniel O'Sullivan, Andrea Belfi, Abul Mogard,, Mick Harris (Scorn), Gordon Sharp (This Mortal Coil & Cindytalk) etc... Between ZU, solo work and collaborations, he released more than 80 albums and played more than 3000 shows all over the world. As in 2022 he just recorded a collaboration with world famous iconic actor Malcolm McDowell called "Songs Of Stone" that will be released in september on italian label Subsound Records, and is currently working on a sound installation with Roger Ballen, one of the most influential and important photographic artists of the 21st century. We know it engraved in our cells The origin To feel the primordial song We need to have A childish interest For the universe Living In a hint of islands Far and true Atlantic and remote ones A hint, that's enough To find each other Where time didn't exist When there was only space When there were mountains and seas and sky And unnamed creatures With roots like plants Who extracted new forms of language from the force To make the passage on earth more tender To find a song that could ease the burden of love Of this multiform creature that welcomed us To expand ourselves like jellyfish And make distance accessible to us Making a continuous motion Transforming this perpetual vibrating into our fusion Since the origin In a silence Made sound And then meat Swimming on seabeds of ice and fire A language that dances the dew of dawn And sings the hidden streams An origin where we find our ancestors Timeless faces Who breathe the depths of the sea and move the mystery Meet them everywhere For those with eyes to see And ears to hear Lived in the handed-down word And in the tolling of the sky, that we call hail On the journey back Your hand is shaken And your conscience accompanied In crowds so endless And inhabited By a primordial solitude Where our home will be a fire of inaccessible glaciers In the stillness of a love that expands in a restless cosmos With that hint still clinging Of distant and real islands From which the primordial song comes Recorded and mixed by Massimo at Theresa House 2021/23 Beautifully mastered by Lorenzo Stecconi at Triple Sun 2023. Sleeve design by Rutger Zuydervelt Front cover photo by Fridtjof Nansen An Inuit woman with child on her back, Gronlandshavet, Kap Seen Bille Taken during Fridtjof Nansen's expedition to Greenland, July 1888 - May 1889 https://glacialmovements.bandcamp.com/album/our-forgotten-ancestors | 2023 | €16.00 |
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| PURE | Noonbugs | CD | Minimaler Dark Ambient von diesem österreichischen Projekt, besonders gefallen die Parts mit Streichern... “ Pure's debut full length on Mego continues to explore realms of sinister sonic's and edge of the equation audio initially previewed on the highly regarded "the.end.of.vinyl" 3" CD / 12" pic disc. As a complete serve the full extent of this world is revealed to be an elaborate exploration - rich in texture, variation, mood and quality. In some ways this release can be seen as a take on the darker edge of 20th classical / avant garde as seen through a 4th generation raised on industrial/electronic mediums. Comprising of a continuous work and what seems to be minimal process, this is by no means an unfolding minimal record along lines of Alvin Lucier or Elaine Radigue. Changes are more immediately discernable (whilst avoiding noise, distortion or any other 'immediate' tactics). The result is in an unsettling journey throughout an array of balanced elements: looped violins sway amongst ringing tones, a distant police siren adds an element of isolation to washes of dark frequencies. Fragments of suspense guide the listener on a series of subtle subversion's coming together as a dynamic thematic whole. A see-saw of subversive sonic's which make for some prime late night ambience. One could say this is as close to dark ambient as Mego has come, but like all the best Mego releases Pure's is one that questions the exact nature of the genre from which it has sprung whilst incorporating certain signifying elements in an entirely new way.” [press release] | 2002 | €13.00 |
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| QUELLET, ISRAEL | Oppressum | CD | "Quellet's music is not really outsider sound art, but it shares strong similarities with it. It explores a debarred universe almost impossible to escape. A minute - albeit extreme - exploration of sound (particularly through saturation), mystical discourse and excesses. However, the composer is also pictured as a regular guy living in a Swiss town, a guy who likes to toy with the local church's organ, accompanied by his wife. Sound materials come from a number of sources: the local church's organ, rented or borrowed percussion instruments (bass drum, timbales, gong, djembe), various objects being struck (his oil tank at home struck with hammers and iron ods), pipes, faucets, telephone touch pads, power tools, sound-producing toys, voice, mouth sounds, throat sounds, and wheelbarrows." [label info] www.subrosa.net | 2007 | €10.00 |
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| R.P.M. | Circle Line | CD | "A very peculiar journey........ It's not often we would say this, but listening to this on headphones is a most unusual experience! Circle Line initially started life as a graphic score created by Phil Mouldycliff as a piece to be played by Keith Rowe in 1989. Over a period of twelve years this open form composition developed to the point where by 2002 an opportunity arose to make a recording of the work at IC Studio in Preston, using ambient recordings taken from Circle Line Tube stations made specifically for the project by Phil and Colin Potter . Keith effectively solos over the assemble tape collage of sounds from the Underground, starting and finishing with material collected at Edgeware Road. Given that a full circuit of the Line takes upwards of fifty minutes, the individual stations are grouped together to create workable sections delineated by geographical boundaries. Since making the recording the work has been performed live by Rowe, Potter and Mouldycliff on a number of occasions." https://icrdistribution.bandcamp.com/album/circle-line "R.P.M. stands for (Keith) Rowe, (Colin) Potter, (Phil) Mouldycliff, whereas the Circle Line is an integral part of London’s complex underground network. On such grounds – pun intended – Mouldycliff developed in 1989 a graphic score for Rowe’s performance; the trio recorded this version of the piece in 2002, accompanied by field recordings captured during a trip on the same route. In synthesis, what we hear is Rowe’s trademark dissection of the object previously known as the guitar mixed with structural sounds of wagons, other mechanical entities and human reverberations (voices, steps and so on) typical of an hour spent on the CL. Having often traveled with this very medium in the past, the problem was usually having my player’s musical selection smothered or otherwise ruined by the surrounding clangor-cum-hubbub. In this case we have Colin Potter who – fortunately for us – balances the whole’s overall level, skillfully processing where necessary. The advice we are given is to listen with a good pair of headphones, and should definitely be followed. Only in this way does the music reveal its clever microscopy, giving the listener’s hearing apparatus the respect it deserves. Beyond banal classifications – no, it is not a “drone album” – Circle Line represents an exercise in careful listening aided by sonorities that stimulate the innards of our discernment, although complementary to a day of ordinary commuting. Enjoying these extemporaneous inventions – that is, everything which exists between subsonic engrossment and exploitation of timbral oxidation – is a special pleasure in this particular context. I might look at commuting with earphones from a different perspective, after all." [Touching Extremes] | 2020 | €13.00 |
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| RABELAIS, AKIRA | Elongated Pentagonal Pyramid | CD | “We are really "receivers" floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency, and what we extract from this sea and transmogrify into physical reality is but one channel from many extracted out of the superhologram” “Seperateness is an illusion”. AKIRA RABELAIS, ein Anhänger der holographischen Theorie (beruft sich auf DAVID BOHM, KARL PRIBRAM und STANISLAV GROF), spiegelt mit seiner Musik das “fundamental something” hinter allen Dingen, das, was alles zusammenhält... "Rabelais has collected his own electronic compositions on Elongated Pentagonal Pyramid, a self-produced, limited edition CD, where he gingerly teases out the tissues of surface noise in a similar vein to the likes of Terre Thaemlitz, Achim Wollscheid and Mego's Rehberg & Bauer. But simply because he insists on placing individual clarity of vision at the center of the creative process, rather than be enslaved and driven by the technological toys and tools of the day, he will always remain a liberating remove from any definable 'scene'." [Rob Young, The Wire] | 1999 | €13.00 |
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| Eisoptrophobia | do-LP | Akira Rabelais’ supremely moving eisoptrophobia album issued on vinyl for the first time, 17 years after it was first released on CD. Harnessing Akira’s own smudged recollections of childhood brought to life via treated solo piano pieces by Erik Satie and Bartok, it’s a haunting mutation of sound that comes hugely recommended if you grabbed his peerless Spellewauerynsherde reissue last year, or indeed any of his releases for David Sylvian’s Samadhisound label. Followers of The Caretaker’s work or Stephan Mathieu’s classic 'Radioland' album should also dive deep into these exquisite, bittersweet memories of secret histories lost in time. First released in 2001 on CD by Ritornell, a sub-label of Mille Plateaux, ‘eisoptrophobia’ was an early iteration of Akira applying his Argeïphontes Lyre software to classical music, opening a fascinating schism between the original object and his modern, subjective perspective in the process. Made up of spellbinding, uniquely decayed renderings of solo piano pieces, it forms a poetic farewell to the 20th century and a reluctant embrace of new technological possibilities. The original piano recordings of Satie and Bartók pieces were made at Wave Equation Studios in Hollywood, California, and subsequently transformed by Argeïphontes Lyre with beautifully elusive results. The recognisable melodies here ring out in myriad new ways, sometimes fractured and indented by patinas of crackle that echo the original contours, while, at othere, smudged into mind-bending obfuscation or spectral, timbral thizz. They have the uncanny capacity to resemble exhumed artefacts, dug up after decades of decay, and riddled with potently psychedelic mycelium ready to spore on the listener’s mind. But they also capture that elusive yearning for early life; the distant crackle of AM radio playing in another room, scratched records, a piano playing, somehere. The title eisoptrophobia itself means ”fear of mirrors“, in an interview with L.A. weekly back in 2002, Rabelais explained that he picked it as a way of articulating his dread of limitation. ”I exist in a much larger space than what I am physically. But if I were to look into the mirror, I would suddenly pull back into my body.” A feeling not unlike the experience of sitting through this remarkable album before suddenly being snapped back to your surroundings. First time on vinyl, Black 2LP housed inside a deluxe, thick spine gatefold sleeve. Lacquer cut at D+M, Berlin, photography by Jacqueline Roberts, design by Michael Worthington | 2018 | €26.00 |
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| RADIGUE, ELIANE | Occam Ocean 3 | CD | Occam river II, for violon and cello Occam VIII, for cello Occam delta III, for violon, viola and cello Silvia Tarozzi, violon. Deborah Walker, cello. Julia Eckhardt, viola. Recorded in 2019 at l’Abbazia di Santa Maria Assunta, Monteveglio (Bologna) With a 32 page booklet. Occam Ocean 3 is an exceptional project, the result of collaboration between Eliane Radigue, French composer, pioneer of the exclusive use of continuous sounds, and three string instrumentalists, Julia Eckhardt, Silvia Tarozzi and Deborah Walker. Composed in Paris, the 3 pieces of this record were recorded in September 2019 at the Abbazia di Santa Maria Assunta, Monteveglio (Bologna) in Italy Éliane Radigue stopped producing electronic music and began creating collaborative works with instrumentalists in 2001. Since then, she has produced over 70 works ranging from solos and string quartets to works for orchestra. She began creating occam ocean ‒ the series that makes up most of this prolific output ‒ in 2011. The individual pieces share a creative process that relies almost solely on oral and aural transmission: musicians visit Radigue at her apartment in Paris, often returning for multiple sessions before the pieces are completed. Solo pieces are typically based on a combination of pre-prepared sonic materials from which Radigue selects sounds ‒ a process which she calls her “shopping” ‒ and a water-based image that guides the form and a ect of the piece. Ensemble pieces combine soloists from the project into many novel con gurations. Radigue often bases these ensemble pieces on new water-based images. Radigue’s work may seem created almost as if by magic ‒ from thin air, vibrations or from zealous admiration ‒ but this is music that is made possible by the hard graft and meticulous concentration of expert musicians. Each piece requires a special kind of virtuosity that entwines precise muscular skill with extraordinary memory, imagination and patience. For musicians who have played in multiple ensemble pieces in the occam ocean series, the demands grow in nitely more complex, as one must remember many subtle differences between the different pieces. This CD is the document of a special situation at a monastery in the mountains in Italy. It documents a version of these pieces that is co-created with a specific location at a speci c time. But the pieces may continue matu- ring as they continue to be played in di erent contexts. Like Radigue’s music that slips in and out of memory, we must allow these recordings to exist in the moment of listening but not as scores or xed objects. This is music that resists remembering. This is music that exists solely in the moment of its performance, that marries precision and uidity, that does not concern itself with written traces but only an indelible atmosphere of sonic transformation. This is music that is experienced both privately and collectively, that merges our own inner worlds of perception with the exterior world of space, time, bodies, instruments, soundwaves and architecture. This is music that covers its own tracks. It is a Japanese rock garden where beautiful patterns are created and then erased. This music inhabits the far reaching corners of the room, bouncing o of beams and dancing in our ears, blending and merging into an autonomous mass of ecstatically vibrating sound. | 2021 | €25.00 |
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| In Memoriam-Ostinato / Danse des Dakinis | LP | "Alga Marghen presents the last chapter from the Feedback Works documentation series, a brand-new LP including "In Memoriam-Ostinato" and "Danse des Dakinis", two previous unreleased tracks by Eliane Radigue. Among the works of fixed duration from the feedback period, "In Memoriam-Ostinato" is the link between "Jouet Electronique" (ALGA 029LP) and "Opus 17" (ALGA 045LP), and allows you to understand the evolution of her approach. "In Memoriam-Ostinato" is a game of mirroring symbols which glide into a non-measured, bent and elastic, temporality. Eliane Radigue's working method and her aesthetic direction are evident in this work from 1969: her very own unique temporal space of sonic experiences. Even though it bears the same name as the third part of "Adnos III", "Danse des Dakinis" is a peculiar work in Eliane's oeuvre. Conceived in a short time, with all kind of tapes from the composer's past work, it fluently shows a kaleidoscopic vision of Radigue's sensibility for sound. In 1998 she put together a curious self-portrait in sound. There is a feedback ostinato conceived around 1969 and which refers to "In Memoriam-Ostinato" and "Opus 17". All through "Danse des Dakinis" you plunge into the sound of a creek recorded at Mills College campus that brings you back to the field-recordings from the beginning of the 1960s, made on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. Such elements construct "Elemental1" (ALGA 029LP) as well. There are also some discreet interventions on the ARP 2500 synthesizer. It is indeed a peculiar work, which doesn't have the same features of her other compositions, especially at that time of her compositional path. There is an explanation for the composer producing this kind of sound material in 1998, and not limited to the sound waves of the ARP synthesizer. Invited to a workshop at Mills College in 1998, Eliane Radigue could not load herself down with her bulky instrument on such a trip. So, she left with just a few tapes taken from her own collection, drawn from different periods, and composed "Danse des Dakinis" with those old elements. There is tension in this composition, a certain wildness, an unpredictability of elements, those which are recognized as fundamental elements, which give structure to the universe. "Dance des Dakinis" is an intimate and wild symphony, alive and unpredictable, which is to be the next-to-last gesture of the composer before completely stopping her work with electronics." [label info] "There is no artist, working in the contemporary field of experimental sound, that is more important than the French composer Éliane Radigue. She is a shining light, who, for more than half a century, has quietly blazed trails with a body of work that is as creatively visionary as it is sublime. Back in the 2010s, Alga Marghen launched a crucial archival series, dedicated to some of Radigue’s earliest and previously unavailable works, many predating her first LP, 1983's “Songs of Milarepa”, by more than a decade. Having already delivered four LP of this material, they return with their fifth and final instalment in the series, “In Memoriam-Ostinato / Danse des Dakinis”. Perhaps the most fascinating of the group, the first work was composed in 1969 in the period between the creation of two of her earlier works comprised within Alga Marghen’s initiative, “Jouet Electronique” and “Opus 17”, while the second draws on material recorded during the 1960s and then further intervened with, “Danse des Dakinis” was conceived and created in 1998 by Radigue as a self-portrait in sound. Absolutely essential on every count, we couldn’t think of a better place for this series to end, further illuminating the remarkable beginnings of one of our greatest living composers in truly eye watering ways. Born in 1932, Éliane Radigue began her musical endeavours in Paris during the late 1950s and early '60s, working under Pierre Schaffer and Pierre Henry, before quickly outstepping her mentors. Initially working predominantly in tape, during the early 1970s she made the radical switch to modular synthesis, beginning a decades long exploration of the ARP 2500 that drew on her practice as a Buddhist and pushed the notions of musicality endlessly forward, taking the entire landscape of experimental sound with her through a series of sonic mediations that bound life and art. During the early 2000s, Radigue set aside her synth, embarking upon a hiatus from music, before taking the unexpected step of beginning to compose works with and for acoustic instrumentalists. By the the early 2010s, this new phase in her career had begun to emerge as the sprawling work, “Occam Ocean” series, arguably bringing her more acclaim and adoration than any other point in her long career. Fittingly, it was during roughly this same moment, beginning with “Jouet electronique”, that Alga Marghen embarked upon their archival series dedicated to Radigue’s earliest and previously unavailable works, offering a unprecedented and much needed sense of dimension to the breadth of her career. Followed in rapid succession by “Feedback Works”, “Vice-Versa, etc…”, and “Opus 17” - each mining the period when the composer worked predominantly with magnetic tape - it’s been nearly a decade since the last LP appeared, making the emergence of their final instalment in the series. “In Memoriam-Ostinato / Danse des Dakinis”, that much more sweet. Comprising two free standing works, the first, “In Memoriam-Ostinato”, foreshadows the pacing that would soon come to define Radigue’s unique approach to composing sound. Measured and slow, it is an immersion into an extending state of contemplation, manifested in organizations of sound; a game of mirroring symbols that bend and elongate time, inviting the ear to get lost. As Radigue recounts: “This piece was commissioned for a Happening, Mémorial. It was a sort of secular procession to the castle of Verderonne, a beautiful place. The pools bordering the edifice were lit, and everyone was dressed or draped in mauve. It terminated in one of the grand salons of the castle where I played “In Memoriam-Ostinato”.” While considerably more concise than many of the durational works through which Radigue would come to make her name, the 23 minutes that make up “In Memoriam-Ostinato” are not encompassing or lacking in depth. Where it differs is within the presence of slighter darker temperament and mood. Across the work’s length, low rumbles of textural noise form a bedrock - feeling a bit like the death knell of dying electronics - into which strange, warbling tones of feedback pulse and dance with a palpable sense of tension. Like so much Radigue’s work over the years to come, “In Memoriam-Ostinato” actively obscures a consciousness of the artist’s hand. It's so elegant and risk laden, that were it encountered by chance, without context, it might be perceived as the generative form of an abandoned radio station within an alien landscape. Rounding out the collection and not to be confused with the third part of “Adnos III”, which bears the same name, “Danse des Dakinis” is quite possibly the only work of its kind in Radigue’s remarkable body of work. Drawing on a wealth of tapes she created during the 1960s, the work was created in 1998 as a kind of self-portrait in sound; a kaleidoscopic vision of Radigue's sensibility for sound, a memoir, and a hall of mirrors prismatically reflecting the multiples sides of self. The piece, because of the many phases in her career from which it draws, is a fascinating hybrid that uses field-recordings from the beginning of the 1960s, made on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and capturing the sound of a creek recorded at Mills College campus, feedback elements from 1969, as well as later interventions on her ARP 2500 synthesizer. Standing outside her larger body of composition, while intrinsically bound to it, “Danse des Dakinis” nods toward the dakini, a female deity in Vajrayana Buddhism or a female demon in Hinduism, establishing a curious bond between wrathful female forms and the elements of nature which double, in Buddhism - a central force in Radigue’s life and work - as the absence of ego or mental obstacles, where nature itself is revealed. Here, once again, we encounter the composer in a darker meditative state, weaving the sounds of nature into those of her Arp and feedback to create a complex internal world that blurs the lines between abstraction and raw emotion, electronics and organic sounds. It’s hard to not feel a little bitter sweet about the long overdue emergence of Éliane Radigue’s “In Memoriam-Ostinato / Danse des Dakinis”. On one hand, it’s a truly incredible and deeply illuminating body of work. On the other, it signals the end of Alga Marghen’s decade long immersion into the composers crucial, previously unreleased body of feedback works from the 1960s. Still, we couldn’t think of a better way to end than here. It’s one of the most intriguing and engaging of the group. Absolutely fantastic from the first to the last." [Soundohm] | 2022 | €26.00 |
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| 11 Dec 80 | do-CD | "11 Dec 80 is a two-CD set containing Eliane Radigue's live performance of Chry-Ptus (1971), her first work for modular synthesizer, and the world premiere of parts one and three of Triptych (1978). Triptych part 2 is also performed. Upon hearing these performances for the first time in many years, Radigue declared them to be the best versions she'd ever heard. Radigue's sublime renderings of these major pieces are full of illusory stasis, slow change, and dense, slow-motion drone that has characterized her pioneering electronic work. These pieces move like a river with currents shifting beneath the surface. While you can't quite distinguish the individual components you get a clear feeling of motion and change." [label info] https://imprec.bandcamp.com/album/11-dec-1980 "Carrying on their incredible dedication to the work of Éliane Radigue, Important Records returns with “11 Dec 1980”, a staggering double CD of never before released live recordings. Capturing the composer in the midsts of sublime performances of her two seminal works, “Chry-Ptus” and “Triptych”, and in the case of the later debuting two of its sections. A rare chance to return the ear to a crucial period in Radigue's sublime and astounding career. For the better part of two decades, the American imprint, Important Records, has occupied a crucial place in the landscape of ambitious and forward-thinking contemporary sound, offering a home to an incredibly diverse range of artists. Recently, it’s been hard to ignore their growing catalog of archival works and reissues by historically seminal composers like Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, Yoshi Wada, Charlemagne Palestine, Catherine Christer Hennix, Else Marie Pade, and, most notably, Éliane Radigue, whose “11 Dec 1980” - a never before issued body of live recordings - that now joins their incredible catalog. Encountering the composer performing live during a defining moment in her career, its truly remarkable sounds are imbued with a historical importance that can’t be understated. Comprising the works “Chry-Ptus” and “Triptych” across a beautifully produced 2CD set, this is one of those albums that can’t be missed. The French composer, Éliane Radigue, is among the most remarkable creative figures working today - a visionary mind who has quietly blazed trails for more than half a century, leaving an unparalleled body of work in her wake. She has endlessly rewritten how we understand music and the materiality of sound. Quiet, radical, and rebellious, her works are infused with mesmerizing intellectual and creative optimism, culminating as sonic mediations which join life and art as a single force. Born in 1932, Radigue began her musical endeavours in Paris during the late 1950 and early '60s, working under Pierre Schaffer and Pierre Henry, before quickly outstepping the limits of her mentors. First working predominantly in tape, during the early 1970s she made the radical switch to modular synthesis. Over the next three decades, drawing on her inward passage as a practicing Buddhist, she dedicated herself to an intimate relationship with her ARP 2500, exploring it endlessly - pushing not only her own notions of musicality endlessly forward, and with it the entire landscape of experimental sound. During the early 2000s, Radigue made the unexpected shift in moving from synthesis to composing for acoustic instruments - most notably appearing as the sprawling, constantly evolving work, “Occam Ocean”. While this has closed the body of electronic works that evolved over the course of three decades, thankfully there have been a slow trickle of archival works to return us to those incredible sounds. Important’s “11 Dec 1980”, is the latest to return this seminal period in her career to our ears. Spanning two CDs, “11 Dec 1980” comprises two works performed live by Radigue on the composer Charles Amirkhanian’s Berkley, CA, based morning concert series on KPFA radio. The first piece, taking up the entire first disc, is “Chry-Ptus”, among the most important works in her output from a period of remarkable growth and transition. Made in 1971 at the studio she shared with Laurie Spiegel at New York University, on a Buchla installed by Morton Subotnick, It was the first she composed for the modular synthesizer, and thus laid the foundations for decades of work to come. In addition to representing a bridge within Radigue’s own practice, “Chry-Ptus” equally signifies a transition within the history of synthesis, incorporating textural elements which offer an image of its generative machine, as so many electronic works had done before it, while clearly moving into more etherial and constrained territories that would represent a seismic shift within the field; a pulsing body made of the Buchla’s bleating tones, giving way to an incredible dance of sub-harmonics and overtones generated by the simultaneous playback, with or without synchronisation, of the two tapes onto which they were committed. The result is overwhelming immersive, mediative, surprising and beautiful, and that doesn’t even begin to address its historical weight. The second disc of “11 Dec 1980” is “Triptych”, a work that wouldn’t relieve a proper physical release until 2009. Remarkably, this performance represented the world premier of two of the three parts (1 & 3). Like “Chry-Ptus”, “Triptych” is a major composition in Radigue’s canon. Composed and recorded in her Paris studio, it is the first in a series of masterpieces inspired by Tibetan Buddhism, the religion and practice that would guide her work over the coming decades, as well as marking her return to composition following a slowing in her musical production that resulted from spiritual explorations. Each part of the work draws its inspiration from 'the spirit of the fundamental elements,' water, air, fire, earth..” Created with a great sense of humility and contemplative simplicity, “Triptych” begins with a passage of slow rumbling, as though drawn directly from the organic matter of the natural world, before shifting into nearly an hour for delicately modulating synthesised long tones and drones. Here we encounter Radigue's sublime rendering eluding to full illusory stasis, rich with density and microscopic motion. It’s the composer at her absolute best, immersing the ear in consciousness altering sounds like no other can. Once again, Important has done some seriously remarkable work, unearthing these recordings and transporting us back to an exceptional moment in Radigue's creative evolution, not to mention electronic music at large. Issued as a double CD, and overwhelmingly beautiful, we’d struggle to recommend it enough." {Soundohm] | 2023 | €20.00 |
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| RAIONBASHI | In Teufel's Küche? | 10inch | "... The music is great, yet hard to define. Is it musique concrete? Perhaps one could say it is. There is the use of piano sounds, various objects picked up with contact microphones and perhaps some voice material. But what Raionbashi does with this material is not drown it in electronic processing, but built in various layers of unprocessed nature. Lots of layers it seems, but with various moments of silence built in. I perhaps wrongly expected some noise, but this is far from it. This is some great obscured music (as opposed to obscure music), with some intense moments. Not easy listening, but one that grows every time you play it ." [FdW / Vital Weekly] " 10" Vinyl published by Absurd (Greece) and Ignivomous (USA). Follow-up release of 2006 'Kollekte' LP on Hanson Records (USA). All Voices, Noises, Instruments, Body-Functions & Apostrophes by DL. Performed, recorded and mixed 2005-2008 at No-Go-Area, Berlin. Mastered at Clunk, and cut at D+M, Berlin, by Rashad Becker. Edtion of 500 copies. 33rpm." [label info] " "In The Devil's Kitchen." So translates the German title, the first that we've stocked from Daniel Lowenbruck, who both records as Raionbashi and runs the Tochnit-Aleph mail order service out of Berlin. He's also a long standing member of the Schimpfluch Gruppe whose provocative recordings and performances directly channel the Vienna Actionists such as Hermann Nitsch, Gunter Brus, and Rudolf Schwartzkogler. Where the Austrians were pushing their transgessive acts through art world channels, Schimpfluch has their origins in punk, industrial culture, and (at least for the case of Schimpfluch's Dave Phillips) metal taken to a Dada extreme laced with theatrical ultra-violence. So begin these deconstructed tapes and mangled silences. Lowenbruck cites that the sources to his Devil's Kitchen include 'noises, instruments, body functions, and apostrophes.' The discernible sounds are a piano being struck by a hammer fist on the lower octave of the keys, a police whistle blowing out the condenser mic on a Walkman, and some downpitched vocal howls that come across as way more demonic than those wolf growlings on Ben Frost's album By The Throat. Between these recognizable elements, Lowenbruck cuts and pastes with monochromatic noises that puncture grey curtains of leaden hiss. Compositionally, certainly hits the mark with the guttural musique concrete from the Schimpfluch Gruppe, somewhere between the machined ruptures of Dave Phillips and the unsettled ambience crafted by the impeccable G*Park; or less self-referentially stated, somewhere between the sound poetry of Henri Chopin and the corroded tape work of Joe Colley. Limited to 500 copies and highly recommended!" [Aquarius Records] www.tochnit-aleph.com | 2009 | €10.00 |
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| RAMLEH | Conquest Play / Clockwork | 12inch | 12" LP by legendary Ramleh on Entropy, with two exclusive tracks. "Conquest Play" is a terrifying guitar noise wail, while "Clockwork" is a rhythmic post-punk epic. Essential stuff. | 2016 | €13.00 |
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| It's never alright | 7inch | For many years now Fourth Dimension Records has forged a strong relationship with both Gary Mundy and Anthony Di Franco of Ramleh by virtue of support for their respective solo endeavours, Kleistwahr and JFK. After having released a large proportion of their albums under these guises it then only made sense that a Ramleh record itself for the label would be mooted. This single grew out of these discussions and follows on from 2019's critically acclaimed The Great Unlearning 2LP on Nashazphone, which itself saw Gary and Anthony not only reunited with Stuart Dennison, Martyn Watts and Philip Best, but also collaborating with Philip's wife (and Consumer Electronics partner) Sarah Froelich and delivering perhaps their most immediate and surprising work to date. Made available as a good old fashioned double-A side on 'punk rock green vinyl', both 'It's Never Alright' and 'Kerb Krawler' maintain these high level proceedings, too. If you ever wondered how Noddy Holder might sound if fed through the Ramleh mangler, then 'It's Never Alright' will help flesh out that thought with its city-destroying stomp attack colliding head on with the kinda untamed keyboard splurge the group is more generally renowned for exorcising. Before you then begin to prod at those question marks arising from the melee, 'Kerb Krawler' helps to reel you back to a psychedelic orbit nobody but Ramleh know how to navigate. Proof positive, should it be necessary, that these boys won't be donning mirror adorned top hats any time soon. Typical for Ramleh as they stand now, both songs represent just two of the many sides they're now given to exploring. Bold, serious, playful and once again illustrating exactly how easily they straddle the line of being great musicians never afraid to turn that notion on its head by rising to new challenges, this single pays testament to their current upward curve. Limited to 500. Due in November 2019. | 2019 | €8.00 |
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| RAPOON | Wanderlust | CD | Winter Light is proud to announce the release of Rapoon ‘Wanderlust' CD, a brand new studio album containing 10 all new and original tracks. Robin Storey aka Rapoon needs no introduction, having released around 60 albums alone under his avant-garde project. Robin has collaborated with many artists over the years and for this release additional vocals for the album have been supplied by the Russian folk singer Tatyana Stepchenko aka TOLOKA. As the title indicates. ‘Wanderlust’ is the endless yearning, the search for questions and for answers, the horizon ever drawing onward with the lure of what lies beyond. The pull of the mountains and the deserts and the infinitive light of the stars, shining from the distant past. We travel….. The album is released in a full colour, 6-panel digipack. Artwork and cover design by Midnight Sun Studio with original paintings from Robin Storey. The CD is comprised of 10 original tracks with a running time of 70:08. Strictly limited to 400 copies. www.winter-light.nl "During the cold and eerie autumn season, the best thing that could happen is a record which could easily transform bad weather and dark emotions into something dreamy and wonderful. Rapoon is a fine example of this dreamy atmosphere, and its new record, Wanderlust, is the biggest gift for anyone who wants to participate in this magical travel through a state of wandering. Wanderlust has been released by a small and obscure Dutch label, Winter-Light. The imprint has released some other releases including two from Seetyca and some other bands. The atmosphere and sound of Wanderlust perfectly describes the goals of Winter-Light as I see them: to spread highly somnambulant music usually in ambient or drone form, refusing anything radical or anything political, instead just focusing on someone else’s dreams or nightmares and exploring that kind of emotion in audio form. The mind of someone sleeping is rather obscure, led by unconscious, filled with many different layers, and Wanderlust is just like that too. It’s hard to simply describe this album in simple terms, but it’s crucial to say that this Rapoon effort is about a lot of things; it’s filled with many elements and every song seems like a different dream. Rapoon One big aspect behind the music of Wanderlust is rhythm. The album starts with a beat which pulses like an ocean and leads to an evolution of cascading samples. The structures behind each individual song seems to remain similar throughout the album, with seemingly only samples driving it to the end. Speaking of samples, it’s difficult to recognize their origins, and that seems to be a good element—to a fault. In that way, samples seem to be much more obscure and strange, which is definitely unique. In other songs of Wanderlust, simple synth melodies are used with an equally straightforward yet effective rhythm, creating a stronger style of that ethereal sound. Sometimes, Robin Storey‘s music even sounds sacred, especially with the addition of classic instruments. In other cases, songs on Wanderlust sound more playfully mystical—almost cinematic in scope, like vintage film scores. Gloomy synthesizer sounds create a mood of desolation. Listening though the album, you get the impression that the whole thing is alternating between elevated emotions, ethereal visions, and genuine melancholy. ‘Calling Ghosts’ is unique to the album as it begins with something similar to female Slavic chanting and works its way into a violin performance, distant samples, and some other instruments. Listening to Wanderlust, it‘s difficult to miss just how varied it really is, which is a quality that unveils itself in its fullest glory through Storey’s patented epic atmospheres, especially on ‘You Look Like Something’, whose twelve-plus minutes are filled with strange ambient artifacts. Rapoon’s Wanderlust is a dreamy landscape full of majestic vibes, strange but suitable samples, and sounds of exotic instruments. Its general atmosphere and the sounds that create it are often so foreign that they feel almost alien in nature—something that Storey is becoming exceedingly talented with at his age. It is the perfect album for this autumn as we work our way into winter, and it‘s intended to be played by a listener every evening just before sleep. The effect of it should be unforgettable." [Heathen Harvest] | 2016 | €13.00 |
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| Hotel Bravo | CD | After a longer break Rapoon returns to Zoharum with allbrand new studio recorded album. The eponymous „Hotel Bravo” is a relict of sorts, which lost its splendor with time and water that took away a part of adjacent land. This decaying building is also a symbol. A special place evoking fragile memories, scraps of images and long forgotten conversations. It’s all the movies seen during the time of adolescence. Finally, it’s all the dreams dreamt years ago by guests within its premises… The above depicts a journey to which Robert Storey invites you on a course of its eight intricately woven sound compositions. https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/hotel-bravo | 2020 | €12.00 |
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| Dust of Souls (re-issue) | CD | “Dust of Souls” was previously released by Ultra Mail Prod. Limited to 100 copies release was almost entirely sold out in pre-sale leaving many Rapoon fans empty handed and aurally dissatisfied. Trying to meet the expectations of those who weren’t lucky enough to get this album Zoharum picks up the gauntlet and decides to reissue this important piece of Rapoon’s discography. Album presents 8 tracks of trance inducing rhythms and sounds. With a use of processed acoustic instruments, electronics and ambient scapes Robin Storey takes us on a journey to the unknown lands and spaces. Near East ethnic influences are served in a form of loop based brain captivating compositions. Think of softer side of Muslimgauze but more ritual and hypnotic. As usual former member of :zoviet*france: delivers a great piece of listening, where you can fully appreciate his years of experience as musician and independent artist. This is experimental music in its best. Album comes in 6 panel digipack limited to 500 copies. https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/dust-of-souls | 2020 | €12.00 |
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| :Cinema Telephonique: | LP | We present the latest release from Rapoon. ": Cinema Telephonique :" is an audio description of an imagined film. Robin Storey was inspired to start working on the album by the acoustic phenomenon that appeared while scrolling his sound files into 1010Blackbox sampler with the play activated. Staccato little snapshots of sound evoking cinematic fragments of pictures through the random audio. Every track was played live with looped drum recordings/resampled and multi-triggered. The recordings were then refined in Pro Tools. This album contains material, composed especially for a vinyl plate according to the scheme used before the CD era, when the longplay lasted not much longer than 40 minutes, which contained the entire concept, divided into two sides and also functioning as separate fragments, consisting of several shorter pieces arranged in such an order as to build their proper drama, taking into account factors such as their length, dynamics and sound. The album is released only as LP on 180g of navy blue, transparent vinyl in a limited edition of 300 copies. https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/cinema-telephonique | 2021 | €20.00 |
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| RED FAVORITE | same | LP | "Jeremy Pisani recorded these 11 tracks between 1996 and 2003. As a resident of western Massachusetts, he shared stages with acts like Sunburned Hand of Man (=vaguely focused free folk), P.G.Six (acid folk, reviewed on next page), MV & EE Medicine Show (=avant music), Flaherty & Corsano duo (=avant music), Dredd Foole (=guitarist / s-sw, -havn’t hear him yet-) and Joshua (psych-folk) has maintained a curiously low profile. The combinations of fingerpicking guitar meanderings with additional textures and some murmering voice (like on “First”) fits well with music like early Tower Recordings, Six Organs Of Admittance, Currituck Co., etc. Jeremy described his music well as “A soundtrack for dreams, chemical endeavours, human afflictions and distant memories”. Acoustic guitar is the main instrument, often as acoustic guitar meanderings, with textures and fingerpicking improvisations, combined with some additional instruments like amplified guitar and banjo. On several tracks the guitar is combined with mellotron : on “Routine”, “Cistern”, “Wingshot”, and on the slightly loaded “Flight”. There are also touches of collages with other sounds (like with a distant phonograph on “Agrippa”). The production and mixing is well done and in a combination of songs the concept has been made optimal. I heard for instance an original use of changing the environmental echoes or tensions in the recordings on “Stormwatch”. “Pallid” has also a strangely mixed sound, which has some surreal effect, probably benifits from a less perfect recording. And “Flight” which has a somewhat dense tension is mixed as outro into the quieter acoustic fingerpicking solo. In between tracks with more tension are various very moody instrumental tracks like “Routine”, which has also flute and mellotron. A strange track is “Green Hill Beach” which starts with waves, then has guitar improvisations (amplified and acoustic), some voice whispers, and then evolves to more and more electro-acoustic and electric guitars echoes, to a point of saturation with effects, then calms down as if filtered again to amplified guitar meanderings only. In general I can say that those people who liked the experimental approaches from Six Organs of Admittance should check this artist too. But also fans of Joshua / P.G.Six might notice here a wonderful undiscovered talent. The last hidden 12th track is a beautiful solo fingerpicking instrumental closer in Middle Eastern mode. A release which definitely deserves to be heard with an official publication." [Psychedelic Folk] "Red Favorite, a cycle of compositions for guitars, electronics and voices created by Jeremy Pisani was first released as a limited edition CD on Spirit of Orr and is now offered, as it was originally conceived to appear, on an LP. He moved closer and looked through the peephole. And he saw: the world stretched out before him, a quiet and gentle space with a broad expanse of grass that practically glistened in its greenness. A sparkling brook ran through the meadow in the middle distance, and now he saw that the grass was dotted with the pale blue and soft yellow of many blooming flowers, which, half hidden in the grass, stared out at him like so many frightened eyes. On a distant hilltop stood a grove of small pink trees, covered and obscured by the astonishing pinkness of their blossoms. The world had a sense of freshness, as if it might only be minutes old -- washed clean by a careful springtime rain, dried and scrubbed by a solicitous breeze, burnished to its brightness by the rays of a gentle sun. It was an uncomplicated place, a very simple place. But what it had was quite enough; it had all it needed." [label notes] | 2008 | €15.50 |
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| REFORMED FACTION | Years of Lightning, Day of Drums | CD | "Brand new album from two former :zoviet*france: members Robin Storey (Rapoon) and Mark Spybey (Dead Voices on Air). This is the fifth album of their joint project which has been formed in 2006 and now gathers more and more attention from the audience which it really deserves. Obviously the duo is on its best creative form today and this work proves it totally. Delicate improvisational loop/collage technic which became a face of :zoviet*france: of its golden mid-80s era is brought here to a new level of sonic wizardry making a perfect balance between great operational technical skills and living breathing musical canvas. An absolute masterpiece of experimental electronic sound art which is far from both formal approach of concrete music and total lack of structure typical to pure improvisationists. Very recommended not only to :zoviet*france: / Rapoon / Dvoa fans but for much wider circles of true music lovers! This edition is limited to 450 copies and comes in a full colour digisleeve with two inserts." [label info] | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| REIDY, JULIA | In real Life | LP | Black Truffle present In Real Life, the latest in a flurry of releases from Berlin-based guitarist and composer Julia Reidy. Having drawn acclaim for solo performances on 12-string acoustic guitar that bridge microtonality, ‘American primitive’ stylings and classic minimalism, Reidy’s recent releases have utilised an increasingly broad sonic palette, fleshing out guitar-based composition with electronics, field recordings, and – most strikingly – heavily auto-tuned vocals. On In Real Life, Reidy pushes one step further, crafting an epic LP-length suite that moves from abstracted song to lush electronics and explorations in contemporary musique concrète. Beginning with a passage of eerie electronics and creaking percussive interjections, Reidy’s heavily auto-tuned voice quickly takes centre stage. Surrounded by explosions of electric guitar and synthesised arpeggios, the auto-tuned voice delivers a melancholic ode, bringing together poetic images to reflect on the instability of experience and mutability of identity in a contemporary world saturated by digital technology. This concern with the unsettled relationship between the physical and digital is reflected musically by the constantly shifts in emphasis between Reidy’s physically demanding guitar-picking and the various forms of synthesis deployed. Similarly, the dynamic imagery of cutting, shattering, and ‘racing streams’ present in Reidy’s lyrics also serves to characterise the structure of In Real Life, which ceaselessly shifts between distinct episodes. The song-based opening, long sequences of frenetic 12-string guitar shadowed and eventually overtaken by synth tones, passages of delicate chiming harmonics, electro-acoustic cut-ups – each flows seamlessly into the next, often recurring throughout the record’s duration, which lingers over interstitial moments between these episodes. Mixed and mastered by Joe Talia at Good Mixture, Tokyo. Vinyl cut at 45rpm for maximum fidelity by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin. Artwork by Suze Whaites. LP desgn by Lasse Marhaug. | 2019 | €20.50 |
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| REJECTIONS | Clone EP | MC | "The Clone EP was actually recorded in late 2011 and followed close on the heels of the Concur EP, which was released on Tiny Lights in December 2011. It is therefore a reaction to that first EP, a desire to keep moving forward artistically and a reflection of where my my head was at during the time I was mixing the tracks together. Where the Concur EP was essentially a series of remixes using samples from my brother's band I Concur to create something new while reflecting the spirit and energy of those songs, The Clone EP is very much a fresh piece of work, starting with nothing but an interest to make beat driven music and to keep revising and editing the same samples until I came up with three linked but unique tracks, hence the title of the EP. Therefore the techno rhythms of Clone 1 almost seamlessly morph into the broken beats and noise of Clone 2 which in turn dissolve into the drone soundscapes and reverb drenched percussion of Clone 3. They are cannibal and brethren, feeding off one another and mirror image at the same time. The sound of the three tracks is again very much a reflection of that period of time as well. I had recently discovered for myself just the potency of Sandwell District, in all of their sounds, images and guises. At the same time I was grinding my way through a number of long term influences such as Mika Vainio, Throbbing Gristle, Public Image Limited, Burial, Ben Frost, Autechre to name but a few, trying to do my best to endure the typically bleak British weather and the tendency for reflection and introspection which typically invades ones consciousness as we near the end of another year. Limited to 100 copies." [label info] www.altvinyl.com | 2012 | €10.00 |
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| REPTILICUS & HAFLER TRIO | Designer Time | LP | The first-ever vinyl reissue of this epic collaboration between industrial experimentalists from Iceland, Reptilicus, and The Hafler Trio. Designer Time was originally released 1994 on Staalplaat as a CD release. This new version is remastered and pressed on white vinyl. Reptilicus (Guðmundur I. Markússon and Johann Eiriksson) met industrialist extraordinaire and only constant member of The Hafler Trio, Andrew M. McKenzie, in 1991 when he was visiting Iceland with artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff. This was the beginning of a fruitful collaboration which lasted for several years. During this period, McKenzie moved to Iceland where he lived for over a decade, having a considerable influence on the Icelandic experimental and electronic scene, among them artists such as Curver and Johann Johannsson. In the beginning of 1992, Reptilicus found themselves with McKenzie in a huge freezing chamber of a derelict slaughterhouse (which was later to become the lodgings of the Iceland Academy of the Arts). They were accompanied by Indriði Einarsson of electro-performance pioneers Inferno 5. In the freezer, they recorded various sounds that were later subjected to sampling and software manipulation. The results, which combined a layering of noise, ambient and rhythm with a pinch of the unforeseen, were released on CD by Dutch label Staalplaat in the beginning of 1994 under the joint names of Reptilicus and The Hafler Trio. The title, which is a pun on “designer drugs”, refers, on the one hand, to the idea of a form of time that is designed, artificial, and man made, and, on the other, to the genres of mood, easy-listening and muzak, as is evident from the sleeve design. Reptilicus continues the band’s collaboration with Toronto-based Artoffact Records, who are no stranger to the Icelandic music scene, having released records from Kælan Mikla, Sólveig Matthildur, Legend, and other Reykjavik-based artists. Artoffact released Reptilicus’ Unison in 2018. Designer Time will be reissued on Vinyl, CD, and digital formats on June 4th, 2021. https://artoffact.com/releases/designer-time/ | 2021 | €23.00 |
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| RESGESTAE | Etat d'Urgence | CD | "RESGESTAE is the project of Nicholas P., an experimental musician living in Athens, Greece. Using samples, field-recording, etc. he creates post-industrial, cinematic soundscapes, incorporating true political, social and economic elements. "Etat d'Urgence" is no more than a social control soundtrack, an experience in our daily lives of fear. Recommended to all those who like POST-SCRIPTUM and PROPERGOL. RESGESTAE is the project of Nicholas P., an experimental sound-artist living in Athens, Greece. He started creating post-industrial music in 2005 with a dark-ambient project called [distopia] which released a couple of full-length albums, split-releases and a few EP's on various independant labels. From 2010, being infatuated with the dark-ambient and "horror" concept, Nicholas started experimenting using wave editing software, working with field-recordings and other sound samples. RESGESTAE was born. The name could be translated to "things done", or the space of time that occurs from commiting a crime to the sentencing for that crime. RESGESTAE is influenced by contemporary politics viewed from a social prism. Nowadays, everything ranging from a discovery of a virus to the theoretical definition of a new field of economic competition is a political act that affects everyone's social life. He's also influenced by the works of W.S.BURROUGHS, F.NIETZSCHE, Aldous HUXLEY, CRITICAL ART ENSEMBLE, Jacques MESRINE and various street articles. RESGESTAE's purpose is to compose contemporary power-electronics with both "cultural terrorism" and an esoteric aesthetic. For him, the "typical" power-electronics sound , mixing harsh electronics and up-front vocals has gone into hiatus. His purpose is to use extreme frequencies, samples and drones to form a deep sub-sonic landscape. This creates a cinematic experience incorporating true political, social and economic elements. That's why this first release deals with media control, the deep state, technoscience and biotechnology. "Etat d'Urgence" is no more than a social control soundtrack, an experience in our daily lives of fear." [label info] www.nuitetbrouillard.com | 2015 | €12.00 |
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| RESIDENTS | Sam's Enchanted Evening | do-CD | The Residents are an American art collective best known for their over 60 studio albums that were recorded over a period of over forty years. They also created some outstanding multimedia works, mainly three CD ROM projects and ten DVDs. Working as an anonymous collective, their identitites were kept secret until in 2017 Hardy Fox revealed himself as their primary composer. Hardy died in October 2018, but the group continue to record and perform. Sam's Enchanted Evening is a theatrical performance by Randy Rose, lead singer of The Residents. It was performed between October 2011 and March 2012 in Berkeley, California and New York City. Rose's only companion on stage was long-time Residents collaborator Joshua Raoul Brody on piano. A one-man cabaret performance consisting largely of re-interpreted renditions of popular songs from the mid-to-late 20th century, interpreted by Rose in the guise of "Sam the Stranger", it was the first Residents-related performance piece to be credited to an individual member of the group. Full tracklist: 1. Introduction 1 2. The Ballad Of Davy Crockett 3. Sam's Opening Monolog 4. Teddy Bear's Picnic 5. Monolog - Favorite Songs 6. September Song 7. Sixteen Tons 8. Monolog - The Nightgown/The South 9. Ode To Billy Joe 10. Ring Of Fire 11. Monolog - I Got Married 12. True Love Never Runs Smooth 13. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry 14. Monolog - Creosote 15. Willow Weep For Me 16. Monolog - Little Sam 17. Livin' La Vida Loco 18. Introduction 2 19. Who Do You Love 20. Moon River 21. Walk On By 22. Tracks Of My Tears 23. Monolog . Duane & Ronnie 24. Born To Be Wild 25. Monolog - Drafted 26. Chinatown By Chinatown 27. Mack The Knife 28. Monolog - Vietnam 29. Paint It Black 30. Monolog . Torture 31. The Windmills Of Your Mind 32. End Monolog 33. Happy Trails 34. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry (Rehearsal). Soloperformance von Residents-Leadsänger Randy Rose als CD im Digipack auf Klanggalerie. In San Francisco beheimatet und seit Ende der sechziger Jahre aktiv, zählen The Residents, deren Mitglieder ihre wahre Identität seit Anbeginn geheim hielten und sich dabei stets in bizarren Kostümierungen präsentierten, zu den experimentierfreudigsten Formationen der zeitgenössischen Musikszene, die ihre Veröffentlichungen zudem auf dem bandeigenen Label Ralph Records präsentierten. So erschienen von der für ihren höchst eigenwilligen Mix aus Experimental-Rock, Elektronik und Avantgarde / E-Musik bekannten Band, die 1974 mit „Meet The Residents“ ihr wegweisendes Albumdebüt vorlegte, bis dato mehr als sechzig Studioalben (mit zumeist gesamtkünstlerischem Konzept). „Sam‘s Enchanted Evening“ ist eine Performance von Randy Rose, dem Leadsänger von The Residents. Zwischen Oktober 2011 und März 2012 in Kalifornien und New York City aufgeführt, war Roses einziger Begleiter auf der Bühne dabei der langjährige Residents-Mitarbeiter Joshua Raoul Brody am Klavier. Die Ein-Mann-Kabarettaufführung bestand größtenteils aus neu interpretierten populären Liedern des 20. Jahrhunderts und wurde von Rose in der Gestalt von „Sam the Stranger“ vorgetragen. https://www.klanggalerie.com/gg449 | 2024 | €19.50 |
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| RETARDER | Enquiries | CD | "I’ve been waiting for this one to come for quite a while. The solo debut of Lloyd James, known for what he has done in NAEVUS for the last decade. Rumors about this commitment found their way to me shortly after ”Silent Life” and I thought to myself that ”gotta sound like Clapton” but no no no. As RETARDER, Lloyd sets out on a very edgy and stormy voyage, full of obstacles to overcome. It’s very experimental, most of this material could possibly destroy a NAEVUS album and sometimes, it’s even more weird than that LARK BLAMES album he did together with Marc Blackie (SLEEPING PICTURES). Not two tracks sound the same but that’s just a statement I establish and, it’s neither positive nor negative, it’s just the way it is. The intro is a long and exhausting piano improvisation with some horns hidden underneath. Could probably call it arty or something. It doesn’t sound too good, which is probably the whole idea, but it does something with you and you will feel like... Empty afterwards. The second track has a slightly proto post-punk feeling, a simple, mechanic riff and a vocal loop is the core and I must say it sounds quite cool. ”Tongue in the Wind” takes the listener on a multi-layered ambient trip, where spacey sounds are mixed with something that resembles a theremin. Track four is called ”Father Duncan” and it’s probably the least experimental one, actually, it could be a NAEVUS song with that strummed guitar and simple drum pattern. We’re also given some Lloyd-singing and pretty nice lyrics as usual when he’s the author. A nice track and a well deserved break between all the madness that went by and that awaits; ten seconds into the fifth track you’ll succumb to the feberish nightmare sounds, could probably go under the parole noise lite. ’Tis really lots of deranged and distorted sounds swirling around and around for about, what it feels like, half the day, and it’s a really scary track if you ask me. ”Superman’s Cave” is another ambient one and once again with lots of mysterious bleeps that sounds like something from my childhood, can’t tell what though, but it’s certainly has a nostalgic feeling. ”Modern Evening” is nice, maybe my favorite, and sounds very apocalyptic and atmospheric and we get some singing again, over slow and brooding electric guitar harmonies and strange effects, and then finally we have ”Chalk is Valuable, Keep it in Your Hand” that could as well be a tribute to CABARET VOLTAIRE and their mysterious ”Exhaust” with a deranged voice popping up at random going ”Chalk... Hand...”, after a while accompanied by some garage guitars and a monologue by Lloyd. The end. So, that was the album I’ve been waiting for? Did it fill my expectation? Sure did. It’s awesome to hear Lloyd in such a different context than what I’m getting used to. It feels fresh and the entire album is awfully well done. It may not be the first choice for everyone and just because you fancy NAEVUS, I can’t guarantee that this will work you you. Open up all your senses and prepare for a while. Give it a shot. And then another. Personally, I think this shows that mr. James is an artist capable of doing almost anything with success." [review by The Shadows Commence] more info : www.myspace.com/retarder www.touretterecords.com | 2009 | €6.00 |
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| REUTOFF | Gute Nacht, Berlin | CD | Zweites Album der russischen dark ambient Industrial – Koryphäen, eher ruhig–introvertiert-melancholisch wie auf den frühen Tapes, mit deutlichem WW II - Bezug. Die Musik wirkt wie ein Epitaph, das voller niemals zu überwindender Trauer die Erinnerung an die Schrecken der jüngeren Geschichte wach halten will... “....Fifth opus from the Russian trio, 'Gute Nacht, Berlin!' as the previous 'The Fourth Face' 10" and 'ReuTRauM III' 7" is also released by the Austrian label HauRuck! This is the 2nd CD in the Reutoff discography. Released just a few months after 'Unseen Rituals', 'Gute Nacht, Berlin!' is musically very close to the previous mentioned album. The ambiances are the ones we expect when listening to this band: sometimes ritual, hidden... sometimes floating, atmospheric... but always with the undescribable 'something' specific to Reutoff that sets them apart from other bands... No need to give more details, as the whole album is brilliant. Nevertheless I can't prevent myself from underlining the beauty of the second title 'die sunden der vater'. Just let yourself be carried away by the magnificent soundscapes and the drawn out melody... A very long (11 minutes) industrial ambient piece that is certainly one of the very best Reutoff titles I have ever heard! The album also features two new versions ('Libera me (edit)' and 'Allegoria No. 3') of excellent tracks present on the first tape of the band ('Das Absterben' released in 1998), re-released a few months ago on CD-R by the Italian label By Blade. For those who do not own this tape or the very limited CD-R, this an excellent opportunity to listen to two compositions based on ancient works... 'Die rote fahne' also deserves to be mentioned... Built upon a combination of small, minimalist and repetitive noises with a rather epic Russian song (extracted from or mixed with a film?), this original composition will endlessly intrigue the listeners... The CD comes in a nice full-coloured digipack and is obviously highly recommended, while waiting for the soon to be released fifth part of the ReuTRauM series...” [NathalieF., Heimdallr] | 2003 | €13.00 |
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| Deprivatio | CD | Ganze fünf Jahre nach "Gute Nacht, Berlin" endlich das neue Album der Moskauer Ambient Industrial / Elektronik Band, die es wie wenig andere verstehen eine wirklich hoffnungslose Atmosphäre zwischen Misantrophie und trister Melancholie aufzubauen... "... Reutov ist eine von Moskaus kleinen Satellitenstädten, die haupt-sächlich aus Industrieanlagen besteht. Ihr wird von den Band-mitgliedern, die alle in der Nähe leben, eine ganz besondere Atmosphäre zugeschrieben, die man beim Hören der Musik als trübe Industriemelancholie zwischen Zerfall und Science Fiction begreifen könnte; eine Stimmung, wie sie in Deutschland manche alte Häfen oder Güterbahnhöfe ausstrahlen. Ein Faible für den Klang der deutschen Sprache, das sich auch in vielen deutschen Songtiteln ausdrückt, hat aus dem 'v' am Ende der Stadt das doppelte 'f' für den Bandnamen werden lassen. Wie immer ist auch dieses REUTOFF-Album eine Antwort auf die Frage, wozu eigentlich Dark Ambient erfunden wurde. Die fantastisch-düstere Stimmung erwächst stets aus der Musik der Russen selbst, und nicht – wie bei vielen Genrekollegen – aus den großen Worten, die begleitend zur Musik gemacht werden. Aber – endlich eine Veränderung – "Deprivatio" ist nicht mehr so durchweg archaisch wie noch die ersten Arbeiten, es ist ebenfalls nicht mehr so homogen industriell wie die beiden letzten Alben "Unseen Rituals" (2002) und "Gute Nacht, Berlin!" (2003). Die neue CD ist die bislang dynamischste, abwechslungsreichste, aufregendste und futuristischste Veröffentlichung von REUTOFF. Hypnotisch ist der Beginn. Zum Dauerloop eines Kindersummens gibt eine rauchige, weibliche Sprechstimme auf Englisch Anweisungen, was zu tun ist: "Stellen Sie Sich vor, Sie sitzen in einem riesigen Theater mit schwarzen Sitzen und können nur eine einzige Sache sehen..." So düster und geheimnisvoll die ersten Sounds, so beruhigend sind die Worte. Später passt sich die Musik an und entspannt sich Richtung Downbeat, garniert mit verhuschten Männerstimmen und noisigen Geräuschen. Der Opener bereitet die futuristische Atmosphäre, die das ganze Album durchzieht. Noch häufiger im Verlauf der knapp 73 Minuten kommt sich der Hörer vor, als würde er durch einen von STANISLAW LEM entworfenen Park lebender Maschinen wandern. Auch das intelligente Songwriting – wenn man bei einem zehnminütigen Dark Ambient-Track davon überhaupt sprechen kann – offenbart sich gleich zu Beginn. Überraschungen wie eine eingeflochtene und beinahe folkige Akustikgitarre sowie versteckte und vertrackte Melodien und Rhythmen machen aus einem langen auch einen sehr abwechslungs-reichen Soundteppich. Es folgt ein eher klassisches Dark Ambient/Noise-Stück, dessen Drones in Verwandtschaft zu SAL SOLARIS gleißen und schimmern wie Sonnen im Weltall. Großes Kino, im wahrsten Sinn des Wortes, denn REUTOFF-Alben werden immer gerne mit der Stimmung von Filmmusiken oder Filmen – unter anderem "Stalker" von TARKOWSKIJ – verglichen. Und selten traf dieser Vergleich so zu wie bei "Deprivatio", auch bedingt durch die technisch hervorragende, satte Produktion. "American Whores" geht dann wieder einen gänzlich anderen Weg. Die Collage bringt zu einem Bass, der auch MASSIVE ATTACK oder MOBY alle Ehre machen würde, ganz unterschiedliche Samples zusammen. Musik der 1920er-Jahre, fast eine Minute lang solo. Dazu verdichten sich die Trainerin eines Fitnesskurses und ein Kirchenprediger mit Chor – in Kombination mit dem Namen des Songs – zu einer infernalischen Amerikakritik. Nie wirken solche Samples belanglos, sie unterstützen bei REUTOFF immer die Atmosphäre des Tracks. Auch der einzige deutsch betitelte Song, "In Die Leere Gehen", ist eines der Highlights: Hier ein strahlendes Universum mit synthetischen Engelschören, dort düstere Gewittercluster, die glauben machen, dass sich die Hölle öffnet – fehlt nur noch ein Sample von Luzifer persönlich. "Sun Of Sleepless" ist mit seinen knallenden und knirschenden Beats eine weitere Empfehlung für die Macher des nächsten Endzeit-Streifens; mit laut wehenden Fahnen geht die Welt unter. Und zum Abspann verglüht "25-th Hour" wie die letzte Moll-Hoffnung eines im futuristischen Kerker eingesperrten VANGELIS. Für so viele Höhepunkte übersieht man gerne die wenigen schwächeren Momente, etwa die Mischung aus Ethno und Dark Ambient mit piepsigen Loops menschlicher Geräusche ("Nemesis"). Alles an "Deprivatio" atmet russische "Metropolis"-Atmosphäre. Das Individuum zwischen Experiment, größenwahnsinniger Industrie, Verlassenheit und Zerfall. Damit ist die neue REUTOFF-Veröffentlichung längst nicht mehr nur ein Stimmungsbericht aus Reutov, sondern ein Abbild des neuen, modernen Russlands. Genreuntypische Experimente, die gekonnte Verknüpfung diverser Samples und Abwechslung in Tempo und Klangbild sorgen dafür, dass "Deprivatio" eines der besten und ausdrucksstärksten Dark Ambient-Alben der vergangenen Jahre ist. Es macht außerdem sehr neugierig auf die angekündigten Kollaborationen im Herbst." [Michael We. für nonpop.de] "Finally, since five years after their 2003 “Gute Nacht Berlin” on Albin Julius HauRuck!, here is the long-awaited full-length solo CD from this most well-known Russian industrial project worldwide. “Deprivatio” is a sad story of a person surrender to the enemy environment, it’s about idle struggle with time and fatigue, about constant withering of passions and imminent vitality deprivation. Being maybe the most hopeless and sad work for the band, this album is paradoxically their most rhythmic and dynamic. There are more noisy drum loops and electro sounds here than martial drum patterns and old school noise, but their unique deep and profound melodic main themes are still remain as the basement for the brilliant new tracks of despair and downfall. The ascetic b&w artwork was done by Murad Ibatullin known for the recent “Iznutri” compilation. The release comes as a jewel box with 6 panel booklet, the first 100 copies come with 33x21 two sided poster." [label info] | 2008 | €12.00 |
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| NullRauM | do-CD | "Retortae is proud to present an epic work from the most world well-known Russian industrial combo called Reutoff which has just celebrated its 15 years of existance. NullRauM is a collection of all the tracks included in ReuTRauM series initially released as seven 7” vinyls issued by seven different labels in seven different countries as well as four tracks made especially for this collection. The entire period of its creation took around 15 years – as long as the project exists – and it could be considered as the band’s most important work to date. Complex dark drone ambient structures typical to Reutoff presented here in all their historical development, from the very first 7” released in 2000 by legendary Drone Records to the most recent tracks made exclusively for this release. The result is extremely pessimistic and profound reflexion of the old world collapse and desperate anticipation of the shape of things to come. Though NullRauM material is a collection of the tracks made during such a long period of time, today it looks really homogenous and holistic, and its mosaic elements have finally found its providential shape. Extremely recommended to absolutely everyone. The release comes in laminated full colour digisleeve with 16 pages booklet." [press-release] | 2014 | €17.00 |
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| No One's Lullabies | CD | "No One's Lullabies" is the 9th album by Reutoff, one of the best-known Russian projects on the international post-industrial scene. Over the course of one hour they will be performing their "lullabies" which won't let you sleep though... The whole panopticon of borderline mental states will unfold before the eyes of our attention. Every track is a masterfully performed decadent dance of emotions and feelings. Steady industrial rhythms, an unhasting but assertive semi-drunk waltz, circus-like grotesque with wicked medieval shades, comatose jazz swinging in dark tones and epic electronic doom that could also fit well in the repertoire of their brother-project Otzepenevshiye - all imbued with remarkable spirit and slightly inflamed imagination. The material entitled "No One's Lullabies" was initially produced as a cassette mini-album by the German label Sea State in 2014 in a small edition of 80 copies in unconventional handmade packaging. The extended version with four additional compositions was put out by Reutoff on their bandcamp page as a web-release. Now we're glad to present the CD version of the album for the happy owners of CD-players and optical drives! The CD-edition contains an exclusive bonus track with a live version of one of Reutoff's rare compositions. The disc is packed in a matte 4-panel cardboard digisleeve, artwork features paintings by Fabrice Billard, the chef of Divine Comedy Records. http://zhb.radionoise.ru/ "If someone were to ask me, which post-industrial artist gives you the biggest pleasure when you listen to their music, I would never mention Reutoff. If somebody else were to ask me which project is in my opinion the most daring in its experiments or simply the most innovative in the scene, Reutoff wouldn’t be my pick either. But if you were to ask me about the musician who combines experimental with so-called “catchiness” the most effectively, well, I’d have to think about mentioning this Russian duo. They’ve been active for about 18 years, releasing a variety of materials, also in collaboration with other artists in their famous Kreuzung series: a collection of names such as Deutsch Nepal, Troum or Der Blutharsch. “No One’s Lullabies” was originally released on tape, thanks to the Sea State label from Leipzig. Zhelezobeton gives us an extended edition on CD, with five additional tracks and a cover image painted by Fabrice Billard, the owner of the Divine Comedy label. For many years Reutoff’s line of work and constructing additional sound structures has more or less been the same. They take a nicely crafted industrial background, a mid-tempo rhythm theme, often looped and encrusted with other trinkets and little diamonds, so that most of the tracks possess a slowly yet nicely building tension that leads to a culmination, abundant in sounds and atmospheres. Not all of the tracks though: Reutoff is not a project that always chooses the easy and proven ways – check this splendid dark ambient of a non-obvious feeling in “Nameless Tune With No Fate”. This is also one of Reutoff’s huge advantages. That you can’t describe their atmosphere in one or two words. You need to build the whole story in your mind, different for each track. It may be dystopian sci-fi straight from Orwell or Bradbury novels; a dark yet epic, sometimes even strangely romantic story, similar to, say, “Blade Runner”. After all, titles like “New World Disorder” or “Requiem for Android” cannot be a coincidence. On the other hand in some track you may notice a somehow optimistic… no, not a good word – a note that breathes with hope. Saying that not everything is lost, that there are still new and mysterious worlds to explore even though our planet is lost. I feel this modern sci-fi element is pretty solid in Reutoff’s works, which is even more interesting considering the fact that when it comes to technical matters a strong analogue vibe emanates over the whole of “No One’s Lullabies”. This is specific for many post-industrial artists coming from Russia, that while they’re faithful to classic samplers and synths, they’re able to achieve such a fresh effect. Reutoff, Cyclotimia, Sal Solaris, some Cisfinitum efforts. This offering is no different, and once again provides us with a certificate of the uniqueness of the Russian post-industrial scene." [Stark/Santa Sangre mag] | 2015 | €13.00 |
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| RICCI, MASSIMO | Tracey Feels Worse | CD | Elevator Bath is honored to present the first ever release of sound work from famed music writer Massimo Ricci. Known as an individualistic reviewer - or, as he puts it, a "composer using words as main instrument" - in the meantime Ricci keeps researching, dissecting and altering sounds, something he has been doing since the late 60s. "Tracey Feels Worse" consists of a single 35-minute piece based on recordings made by the composer in 1984, which, over time, were radically rearranged and reformed. Now in its final state, the piece is a wholly abstract undertaking; ominous and deliciously inscrutable. The work does not contain hidden meanings or esoteric implications, nor does it want to symbolize unprovable "truths." Ricci - an atheist lone wolf who despises the opportunistic traits of false spirituality - processed extremely simple sources to the point of near-unrecognizability, generating enigmatic spirals and indeterminate environments from what was originally born as mere parody. The specific sounds and techniques employed remain mysterious, as neither samples nor loops were utilized. But this mystery is fitting for such a haunting, ephemeral piece of music - even if the sound is robust. Indeed, there is an almost physical presence to the ever-shifting elements at play here. The soundscape is in constant motion, yet the overall impression is of a kind of uneasy calm. Perhaps the piece's structure lends itself to a feeling of anxious serenity. The sounds unnerve while the methodology soothes. The piece's palindromic construction recalls the ghosts of Victorian literature, doomed to repeat their movements in an endless cycle for all eternity. But ultimately, in Ricci’s words, "'Tracey Feels Worse' may be interpreted as a threnody for the risible irrationality of the human theories about creation and afterlife. Typically fabricated by minds anxious to satisfy the needs of the self, they’re pitifully inadequate for the egoless infinity of sound and silence.” https://elevatorbath.bandcamp.com/album/tracey-feels-worse | 2020 | €13.00 |
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| RICHTER, MAX | Disconnect (OST) | CD | "Jason Bateman and Alexander Skarsgard star is this drama centered on a group of people searching for human connections in today's wired world. Extremely well received on the festival circuit, LD Entertainment is releasing the picture in April. This album includes the entire score composed by Max Richter (Waltz With Bashir, Sarah's Key) for the film. It is an emotional and beautiful score which plays a central role in the film." [label info] www.milanrecords.com "One of the most beautiful and definitive tracks in Max Richter's ever-growing body of work is "On the Nature of Daylight" from The Blue Notebooks, the album that brought him to the attention of many critics and fans. Since that breakthrough, he's developed a niche as a composer ready and willing to revamp the classics, as he did with Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, as well as a sensitive and versatile composer of scores for films ranging from looks at the not-so-tame secret lives of domesticated animals (Die Fremde) to dystopian sci-fi (Perfect Sense). Richter's music for Disconnect is an intersection of those career paths: the score uses "Daylight" as its emotional and musical focus, surrounding it with pieces that echo and complement it. While Martin Scorsese's brain-twisting thriller Shutter Island also featured the piece prominently, here it's fundamental to the film and its exploration of how technology brings people together and (more often) pulls them apart. Cues like "The Swimmer" reprise "On the Nature of Daylight"'s beautifully somber violin melodies, while "Confrontation" pits them against pummeling electronic beats in a way that could be heavy-handed but maintains a dignified poignancy in Richter's hands. Elsewhere, the score borrows from other Blue Notebooks pieces like the lovely "Written on the Sky," or evokes them as on the mournful organ pieces "Hospital" and "The Gun." Given the film's tech fixation, most of the rest of Disconnect's music is more electronic and makes the most of Richter's minimalism, whether on brief, wash-like tracks such as "The Report" or more elaborate ones like "Zero Balance," which moves from delicate tones to more ominous ones as it progresses. Many of these tracks aren't as attention-getting as the ones that draw from Richter's classical roots, but his cues for Disconnect's action scenes are as tense as they are restrained; "Pursuit" and "Running" are just as taut, but far subtler, than a typical climactic score piece. Disconnect is of a piece with scores like Cliff Martinez's Traffic, where the music seems to just faintly tint the air with the proper mood. It may not be among Richter's richest works, but he provides what the film needs from its music with more depth and restraint than many other composers could have managed. ~ Heather Phares Audio Mixers: Michael Schubert; Max Richter." [Henry-Alex Rubin] | 2013 | €17.50 |
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| RIEK, LASSE-MARC | Helgoland | CD | "A place can inspire us in many different ways. Whether it be painting, photography, poetry or sound, all of these outputs are driven by a desire to preserve the essence or spirit of the landscape that has touched us. Lasse-Marc Riek chose the medium of sound to demonstrate his love for the natural history of Helgoland, a small German archipelago in the North Sea. Over the course of two years, Riek gathered together a series of field recordings that move from the majestic to the intimate. The delicate sweep of sand particles caught in the breeze sits alongside the harsher sounds of a passing storm battering the land with an unrelenting force. Some recordings demonstrate the overwhelming presence of seabird colonies, alive with the vocalisations of Black-legged Kittiwakes, Common Guillemots and Northern Gannets. This all-encompassing cacophony of growls, cackles and screeching calls creates an evocative and imposing sound picture, yet other recordings allow us to experience each of these species at closer quarters. We are able to listen in on the conversations of Black-legged Kittiwake and Northern Gannet families and experience the harsh cries of Arctic Terns calling to each other over the sound of crashing waves. One of the most moving recordings captures guillemot chicks taking to the water for the first time. The parent birds can be heard calling to their young, encouraging them to take that all important leap. The incessant, high-pitched calls of the chicks are occasionally accompanied by rapid fluttering and a gentle splash, signifying the successful jump of a chick onto the water. Birds are not the only inhabitants of Helgoland though, and several tracks are dedicated to the mournful wails of the Grey Seal. The calls are almost human like, especially those of the pups, and it comes as no surprise that these sorrowful sounds have links with ancient legends of mystical people found along the shoreline. The final recording in the series features the sound of a plane starting its engine and then taking to the sky, leaving behind nothing but the rhythmic breaths of a Grey Seal bull asleep among the dunes. Humans are not necessary here. Though they may inhabit the islands, the land is not really theirs. The land belongs to nature. Long may that continue." [Cheryl Tipp / Curator, Wildlife Sounds, The British Library, England] www.gruenrekorder.de | 2013 | €14.00 |
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| RIEMAN, ERIC GLICK / LESLI DALABA / STUART DEMPSTER | Lung Tree | CD | ERIC GLICK RIEMAN: Piano & Synthesizer, LESLI DALABA: Trompete, STUART DEMPSTER: Trombone, Didjeridoo, etc.. 9 Stücke fein gesponnene Instrumental- & Geräusch-Improvisationen, eher zurückhaltend und mit Gespür für Mikro-Details, manchmal fast meditativ... “This is one of those recordings that arrived unannounced in the mail. I knew Lesli Dalaba, of course, but the others were new to me. The project is Eric Glick Rieman's and I found it immediately intriguing. There seemed to be something quite subtle going on; minimal, microtonal, economical and eccentric; it plays subtly with timbre, pitch and structure and never quite does what you expect. At first blush it seemed as it would be another interesting but conventional improvising trio, but after a few minutes the organising intelligence, and the clear compositional discipline became clear. And after this, throughout the CD, it sticks to the point. This is a deep investigation of a very few simple principles. Acoustic instruments rub ambiguously up against electrified objects and electronics, but these in the main provide atmosphere and harmonic complexity, never overpowering the mingling air-columns on which the wave of this CD floats. Attachments, modifiers, objects all make an appearance, but the topic is the small, the tenuous - and the tenacious - above all, breath.” [ReR] | 2006 | €14.00 |
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| RLW | Satanic Inventions | CD | !!! Limited to 200 copies only !!! 51+ min. playtime October 2022 PRESS RELEASE Artist: rlw (Ralf Wehowsky) Title: Satanic Inventions Track Titles: 1. Early Symptoms 2. Normality, Lost # 1 3. Overworn With Watching # 1 4. Fever Glazed Thine Ears # 1 5. Fever Glazed Thine Ears # 2 6. Normality, Lost # 2 7. Fever Glazed Thine Ears # 3 8. Overworn With Watching # 2 9. Normality, Lost # 3 10. Overworn With Watching # 3 11. Overworn With Watching # 4 12. Normality, Lost # 4 13. Fever Glazed Thine Ears # 4 14. Overworn With Watching # 5 15. Out Of Joint Format: CD Cat no: BRCD 22-1021 Release Date: October 2022 Black Rose Recordings are proud to present the stunning new solo release by Ralf Wehowsky. He is currently one of the most respected electronic composers of our day. With this release his starting point is the comparison of the black plague and covid-19 as there are some astonishing similarities of how people dealt with the diseases. Denial of reality, conspiracy theories, searching for scapegoats, etc: Surely satanic inventions are the source of all calamities? Extracts from documentary recordings and a few fragments of ars nova/subtilior compositions have been transformed, extended, fragmented and re-contextualised, from which the 15 pieces of this release are built. Ralf Wehowsky was one of the founder members of the seminal German group P16.D4 and the label Selektion whose ground-breaking releases influenced many working in today’s experimental music scene. Previous releases have seen him collaborate with such well known and diverse artists such as Merzbow, Bernhard Guenter, Jim O’Rourke, Achim Wollscheid and Lionel Marchetti. His music is impossible to pigeonhole into one simple bracket. It is neither industrial or musique concrete, nor computer music nor improvisation. “RLW's work moves on the edge of musique concrete, but never looses it's touch with industrial music on the one hand and with microsound on the other. But it defies these categories and can perhaps only be classified as RLWmusic. Great work!” – [Vital 584, The Netherlands] “…truly outstanding” – [www.chaindlk.com] "There have been many documentations on differences and similarities of the pandemics, which plagued mankind over the last centuries and millennia. Comparing the black plague and covid-19 there are - besides the obvious differences (more victims in absolute numbers because of increasing overpopulation, decreasing number of victims in relative numbers because of the evolution of scientific knowledge) - astonishing similarities how people dealt with the diseases. Denial of reality, conspiracy theories, searching for scapegoats: Surely satanic inventions, spread by elites, papists, jews, communists, etc, are the source of all calamities? Human stupidity never should be underestimated. For tunately, history teaches that the misery ends someday, even if the pandemic meets with war, famine etc. Amidst similarities new powers do grow. In the late 14th century ars subtilior must be pointed out. Liberation from religious themes, breaking open rhythm, introducing bizarre chromatic passages, odd dissonances, etc. Therefore, it seemed natural to combine documentations of actual madness with songs from that past. Some short extracts from documentary recordings and a few fragments of ars nova/subtilior compositions have been transfor med, extended, fragmented and recontextualised, from which the 15 pieces of this release are built. Recorded from April 2021 to March 2022, Eggenstein, Germany" [liner notes] "Seeing such a political statement on an RLW CD is something I don't recall seeing before. It is about the pandemic and the conspiracy theories that spawned, which I (too) believe is the true disease of our times. "I can read", usually means, "I like to cherry-pick popular notions", and "science is an opinion" is usually said by someone who has no clue as to what science is. Or, as I challenged someone: "How do you prove that all swans are white" to which I got the answer ", by killing all black ones", which seemed proof that not all swans are white. RLW says that all misery end one day, and something will grow. In the 14th century, Ars subtiloir (subtler art) became a musical style. It was rhythmic and notional, more complex. The end of the plague (well..) ended in something new. RLW uses music recordings from that time and short extracts from documentary recordings. Not that you easily recognize any of this in the fifteen pieces of music. Sure, some of this finds origins in voice material, and a word here or there is recognized, but who or what remains a mystery. The abstraction level is very high, as with much of RLW's music. He applies a collage-like approach to his music. A surprising element is the use of turntable/vinyl, which I haven't heard from him in some time. RLW's music is of a different complexity than the original Ars subtiloir, so I assume (not being an expert here), that he applies his musique concrète techniques to the music. Editing, stretching, granular synthesis and whatever else there is are as strong as any other RLW record. One thought I had with hearing these voices bending and twisting; maybe they sound like shapeshifting alien reptiles? Having read most of David Icke's books (to be found in a folder on my hard drive labelled 'humour'), there must be a place here for the sounds of reptiles. Throughout, there is some excellent, imaginative music here. I would say that even without the backstory, this is still a great release; it can be enjoyed equally."[FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2022 | €13.00 |
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| RLW & DAS SYNTHETISCHE MISCHGEWEBE | Die Eisenbüglerin | do-CD | "The idea for this project was in the air since the late 1980´s. There was an intense, though short-lived, (snail) mail contact between DSM and P16.D4, RLW´s group in those days, which fell into sleep for reasons unknown today. 20 years later the contact lived up again. After getting themselves informed about the actual respective state of work, methods and techniques and sounds, the recordings for the project started. RLW cd: The basic recordings were done by rlw from early to mid 2009, sound sources are instrumental (piano, trombone) and household objects. First detailed sketches of the compositions (autumn 2009) include heavily treated versions of these recordings, cross-modulations with sounds supplied by DSM and with DSM-variations of the RLW sounds sent to Caen. Fine-tuning of the compositions took until fall 2010. DSM cd: With very few exceptions I used only the original sound recordings of RLW, discarding most of his own processing that he provided me with as I wished for treatments only what would be conceived to be already into the realm of the compositional strategies I fancied for these works. So up to which degree a processing of a sound turns it into an autonomous new one is a question without answer. In consequence resulted a collaboration starting with extremely few basic recordings. However as they had been particularly distinctive by their material character as well as the audible space of the recordings and the variation of their physical intensity as they all resulted from manual efforts they provided me with what was needed. Besides dynamical treatments and cleaning up, my sound processing is not only mostly analogue or equivalent too, but mostly even mechanic. Playing back recordings through 'no-fi equipment' and recording them again, while manipulating mechanically reproduction and recording devices is what I employ most." [label info] www.aufabwegen.com "Now here's two guys whose history goes back at least thirty years. Both from Germany and both from the world of cassettes and industrial music, but both having grown into something else, the world of academic music, musique concrete. Ralf Wehowsky was the main man behind P16.D4, but left that name behind to become RLW, while Guido Hubner always remained Das Synthetische Mischgewebe. Especially that is perhaps a bit odd. Hubner's work is more than Wehowsky's connected to the world of serious composing, yet he maintains his old 'band' name. Both of these men also know each other for a long period and there has always been talk of doing something together, so after much discussion, this double CD 'Die Eisenbuglerin' is the result of an extensive 'music by mail' collaboration. They both use conceptual angles to work from. 'Ah, DSM is always very fragmented, maybe I should work opposite', 'let's use mainly analogue, mechanical techniques to transform this material'. Also in the final execution the results are not widely apart, which is fine. It would be hard to say whose CD is who, if you didn't look at the label. Lots of microscopic detailed sounds - sometimes isolated, sometimes like mass - are the very foundation of this music. A fascinating ride, this is. Some close to fifty minutes by RLW and close to sixty by DSM. As said differences are in the details with this. Maybe DSM is at times a bit more fragmented and RLW a bit more 'full' at times. None of the sound sources mentioned on the cover (piano, trombone by RLW) can be easily traced, if at all, in these pieces. Excellent electro-acoustic music in the best tradition of both microsound and serious academia." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2012 | €17.50 |
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| ROCHE, JEAN C. | Birds of Venezuela | LP | Among many of his amazing records I came across Jean C. Roché's Birds of Venezuela, beautifully produced LPs of birdsong. I began to plan a trip to Amazonas, to record the unearthly song of potoos and Yanomami shamanism. (David Toop) The bird on the cover. The potoo, this metal-looking bird is one of the sonorous curiosities of this mad nature, the sound that he produces essentially is a death song that David Toop listen, in his 1978 expedition, but was unable to record. Amazement playing its role. The bird songs which i had recorded in the West Indies in 1969 made me inclined to find out more about those of the nearby South American continent, and convinced me, moreover, that musically speaking, they possessed an unquestionable originality in comparison with those of Africa and Europa. I therefore decided to carry out a series of orthonological trips on this continent, starting with the North: Venezuela, and so, with this in mind, i disembarked at Caracas on 27th May 1972. The unusual musical volume of this tropical country made its impact on my arrival in town, where the unbearably shrill chirping of the cicadas overwhelmed me each time I passed under a tree. At night fall, around even the meanest of ditches filled by the daily rain, myriads of toads and frogs struck up a concert, which, through its sheer intensity, muffled all other surrounding noises. When I penetrated the forest, I could hear bird species literally by the dozen and individuals by the hundred, all calling and singing together at dawn and at dusk... (Jean C. Roché) | 2018 | €15.00 |
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| RODEN, STEVE | Berlin Fields | CD-R | "Berlin Fields is a sonic journey not limited by national boundaries, city limits, or material limitation. Roden perambulates, recording as he goes with the immediacy and quirks that come from using both portable recorder (a Sony PCM-D50) and phone. Exploring intuitively, Roden brings together 19 sonic vignettes via 'finds': things discovered; and 'activation': objects performed on site. Using intuition as a guide, Roden's interactions and sonic interventions - 'play' in every sense of the word - are both learning tool and platform for his creativity. Unearthing a vocabulary spoken by quotidian things, Roden coaxes tables, radiators, sardine tins and all manner of chanced upon paraphernalia into speaking their curious and complex language. Mindful of Rolf Julius' artistic philosophy, Roden introduces performances that sit congruently within, and do not disrupt, the sites he happens upon on during his travels through the capital cities of France, Germany and Finland. The land- and cityscapes, formal architecture and informal spaces Roden explores act as host for his interventions. Instead of simply absorbing his bodily movements and thought process, such places create a consonant dialogue with his soundings, saturating their own particular sounds - indeed atmospheres - within Roden's wanderings. Roden is both player and listener in a world sounding with music, and musical with sound. His actions are delicate insertions that proliferate: actions, soundings, reactions that spread into, echo, and synergise with the world. His performances activate the specific place, space and object with microscopic precision - the knowledge of a shaman. Ripples of tone singe the edges of a bird-filled landscape bestowing it a glowing aura; rhythmic motions on cavernous metal are 'touched by hands', jam jars are caressed across tables to intone chanting, a poetry of sorts. Such soundings act as a bridge, directly connecting body (and being) to location; a marker for experience. What is evident in Berlin Fields, is that Roden respects the sonic world around him. He is playful, mischievous perhaps, but most of all he listens with the ears of the ancient, the sacred. His motivation, simply, is to work with situations and sounds that move him - that teach him something new or different - that in turn drive him on to explore new environments, situations, objects and the places they inhabit. Ultimately, Roden brings one closer to an intimate world of reverie - an aural terrain that heaves, resonates, clips, scrapes, chimes and drips a mystical, ancient language." [label info] www.3leaves-label.com | 2012 | €15.00 |
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| Oionos | BOOK + CD | Notes from Steve Roden on Oionos Oionos was created for the exhibition The Grand Promenade, in Athens, Greece. The exhibition took place in various archaeological and historical sites in central Athens, creating a situation for contemporary site specific works to be in dialogue with their historical surroundings. While it was not originally offered as a possible site, I pleaded with the curator to allow me to work with architect Dimitris Pikionis’s Church of St. Dimitris Loumbardiardis, about a 10-minute walk from the main path of the Grand Promenade. Pikionis designed the original promenade which is still visible in several areas, but much of the area’s original designs were altered during the “restoration” before the 2004 Olympics. The small path that leads to the church gives a much stronger impression of Pikionis’s vision for the entire promenade as it was; so i wanted to use my work to draw viewers/listeners into his world. When I first saw the small church it totally took my breath away, and I immediately began to think about a work that could exist in resonance with it — but not distract from it. The church itself is still in use, and I wanted to the work to be gentle and out of the way of the people who worship there. I decided to use the large tree in the front of the church for a hanging work that would a little bit of visual presence as well as sound which could blend with all of the insect noises and the overall quiet of the area. The audio was built from field recordings and small “poor” objects such as tin whistles, toy harmonicas, and the like. These “instruments” suggested by the museum of musical instruments in Athens, where the proper instruments take up most of the museum, but there is a wonderful display case in the basement with musical toys, religious objects, and other sounding devices not considered musical instruments. I felt that these simple things related to Pikionis’s ideas about architecture and craft, and his interests in indigenous culture in conjunction with intellectual and modern culture. I felt there could be a relationship. credits released January 14, 2022 Oionos was created in 2006 for the exhibition The Grand Promenade, in Athens, Greece. https://room40.bandcamp.com/album/oionos | 2022 | €23.00 |
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| ROIGK, STEFAN | De-Composed | BOOK + 2 x CD | „de—COMPOSED“ — New artist's book by Berlin-based sound artist Stefan Roigk. The catalog documents acousmatic compositions, sound installations, musical graphics and text-sound compositions of the years 2005 to 2023 on 144 pages and 2 Audio-CDs. A complex assemblage, composed of documentation photos, texts and drawings, becomes an interlocking whole in its dynamic flows and fields and animates the paper as a vibrantly structured visual composition. A piece of music for the eyes, in which the boundaries between documentation, draft and work become blurred in a surreal mesh of the concrete and fictional. Here, the reader generates their own individual temporal axis based on their speed of observation and focus on the optical elements, thus becoming a mixing board for a composition realized as a catalogue. Three text pieces give a deeper insight into Roigk's understanding of sound as material and the translation of sound events into other media. As an equivalent to the visual approach of the catalog and in order to adequately convey the sonic dimension of the artistic work, (sound) fragments of all the works covered in the catalog were transferred into a dynamic collage-like arrangement with Roigk's typical aesthetics and are included with the catalog as an independent listening experience in the form of two audio CDs. „Stefan Roigk, de—COMPOSED (Audio Extracts)“ is published in conjunction with the catalogue "Stefan Roigk, de—COMPOSED" / published 2023 by Errant Bodies Press, Berlin / ISBN 978-3-9823166-8-0 / for further information please visit : www.stefan-roigk.com / www.errantbodies.org / © 2023 Stefan Roigk + Errant Bodies Press / This Publication was supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds https://stefanroigk.bandcamp.com/album/de-composed-audio-extracts "In a plastic bag, we find the following: a softcover book, 21x26 centimetre, 144 pages, 2 A5 postcards and a double CD. All of this is by Stefan Roigk, a Berlin-based composer born in 1974. I mention that year because, much to my pleasant surprise, the first time his name popped up in Vital Weekly was in issue 109, which must have been around 1997, which started, also very funny, with "Can you believe that in today's digitalized world there are still existing people who start a cassette-label?" Over the years, I reviewed his various releases, and his language, German, is essential to him. However, unlike some of his previous works, these two CDs aren't all spoken word, which is excellent. More to enjoy if the language is a barrier. What I didn't know, or perhaps I wasn't as aware, is that Roigk is also a visual artist and that many of his music pieces come with installations, or vice versa. The book is a catalogue of these installation pieces, the oldest from around 2007. Even when these pages are stills and not the real thing (or, in the case of a DVD, a registration of the real thing), it gives an excellent overview of his work. Like his music, many installation pieces are also collages of everyday objects in a new context. Some pieces on these CDs have been released before, so one could say this is a greatest-hits package. The downside is that the order on the CD is different than in the book, so one goes back and forth, learning about the material used in these pieces. Roigk uses musique concrète techniques of superimposing elements, intricate cuts, montage and altering his sounds. Of course, over two hours of music is quite a stretch, but sitting back with the catalogue certainly works very well. I took away from it that Roigk creates a very coherent body of work in which music, visuals and text play a homogenous role." [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2023 | €28.00 |
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| ROSE, JON / CHRIS ABRAHAMS | Peggy | CD | Jon Rose and Chris Abrahams (of The Necks), after four decades of being parts of other projects, finally got around to recording as a duo. Jon uses a number of violins, including the bird - a specially made tenor hardanger fiddle with sympathetic strings; his tunings are non-standard, and create complex microtonal dissonances with the standard keyboard. Abrahams is unfazed and somehow manages to make the conversation coherent; they’re still speaking one language – probably because these are both virtuosi and they’ve been around the block a few times. So this is not easy music; the simple problems aren’t stimulating, so these negotiations begin at masterclass level. Though pitch and counterpoint are the main topics, the third extended piece pushes timbral exploration to the edge; piano and violin are typecast as ‘classical’ but here they sound more electronic and industrial. Probably not for everybody, but the real innovators seldom are. / THE NECKS-Pianist CHRIS ABRAHAMS trifft in dieser spannenden Zusammenarbeit auf JON ROSE. ´Peggy´ ist der Komponistin PEGGY GLANVILLE-HICKS gewidmet und erscheint als CD auf RECOMMENDED. Avantgarde trifft auf Contemporary Classic. JON ROSE und CHRIS ABRAHAMS kennen sich seit fast vier Jahrzehnten. In dieser Zeit haben sie in einer Reihe von Formaten zusammengearbeitet, darunter z.b. bei ´Violin Music in the Age of Shopping´. ´Peggy´ ist allerdings das erste Mal, dass sie als Duo zusammen arbeiten. Man merkt den beiden Musikern ihren reichen Erfahrungsschatz an. Mühelos spielen Piano (ABRAHAMS) und Geige (ROSE) zusammen, klingen dabei harmonisch und (gewollt) dissonant. Das Album ist PEGGY GLANVILLE-HICKS, einer angesehenen Musikkritikerin (New York Herald) und Opernkomponistin gewidmet, die ihr Haus, nach ihrem Tod, Musikern und Künstlern zur Verfügung stellte. | 2018 | €13.00 |
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| ROSENQVIST, DAG | Lexika | CD | Lexika is a soundtrack to an imagined sci-fi movie set in deep space. It started with an image of a completely silent explosion in space. From that image I created a narrative of sorts, where a story unfolded as I set out to create the music that would become Lexika. With Lexika I’ve tried to step outside of myself and look at life, the universe, and our fragile existence from another vantage point. The themes of the album – grief, sorrow, hope, perseverance – are themes I come back to repeatedly though. This time they’re just framed in a slightly bigger picture. When I close my eyes and listen, I see supermassive black holes. I see the Oort cloud, asteroids hurtling through endless black, the Andromeda galaxy, a radiant supernova, the redshift at the end of the universe. I see the endless vastness of space, I see Voyager II leaving our solar system and I see Mercury as a tiny dot in front of our sun. I see a story that unfolds forwards and backwards simultaneously through time where we – humanity – are both part of it and not. How, from the cosmic perspective, mankind’s existence is so brief that you’d miss it if you blink. And how that also makes it so precious. - Dag Rosenqvist https://dronarivm.bandcamp.com/album/shelter | 2022 | €13.00 |
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| ROSENQVIST, DAG & RUTGER ZUYDERVELT | Vintermusik | CD | "One album, seven tracks, two people. Who are they? Dag Rosenqvist is a Swedish musician releasing solo music under his own name/previously Jasper TX moniker, and Rutger Zuydervelt is prolific Dutch sound artist familiar to most as Machinefabriek, already known to Zoharum followers via ”Dubbeltjes” compilation of his rarities. And what is ”Vintermusik”? Actually, it is another rarity being reissued. The tracks from this album date back to 2006 and are one of the early tracks commited by both Dag & Rutger. They did not meet at the time of the recordings, they used the Internet to exchange files. And so 50 minutes of music was created. It is contemplative music full of shimmering guitar drones, delicate piano melodies and bits of field recordings. They sound cold, yet warm at the same time. So the time for releasing this music is just right – it is a little bit of winter music for the end of the summer. The original version ”Vintermusik” came out on a CDR limited to just 200 copies. Due to a popular demand we decided to re-release it. It has not dated in the least bit, it is as fresh as on the day of its release. As a special bonus, another rare gem was added, that is ”Feberdröm” coming from a 3” CDR. It gives you the full picture of those early ventures into duo collaboration between Dag and Rutger. ”Vintermusik” is released in a 3-panel ecopak in a strictly limited edition of 300 copies." [label info] www.zoharum.com "With some recognition (to avoid the word fame), Rutger Zuydervelt, also known as Machinefabriek, can always lean back and grab an oldie but goodie (and sold-out-ie) from the shelf and have it re-released. This is what happens here: The first six pieces were released in January 2007 on a CDR by the musicians themselves and probably didn't make it to these pages, and 'Feberdröm (Koortsdroom)' was released in December 2007 as a 3"CDR and reviewed in Vital Weekly 609. All of this now compiled on 'Vintermusik', a proper CD version of all the work by Dag Rosenqvist (sometimes also known as Jasper TX) and Rutger Zuydervelt. It's after all these years still not possible to tell who did what on these recordings, as for instruments and mixes that is. The original 3"CDR is placed at the end of this release back then I wrote: "... it's a great work. High static crackles, a mid-range bed of warm drones and a bass that rumbles somewhere below. Much along the recent works of Machinefabriek, and a sound that brought him his fame so far. Maybe there is a risk of repeating, but no doubt the fans will take that for granted. Nice one." The other five pieces follow a similar schematic, I think: lots of drone like sounds, generated by guitars and loop devices (and who knows what else from the electronics department) and all of this creating a solid hour of the finest dark ambient. Nothing new, but what did you expect from a re-issue? Fine quality, through out all of this." (FdW/Vital WEekly] | 2014 | €12.00 |
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| ROSS, LESLIE | Drop By Drop, Suddenly | do-CD | "The first CD starts with the shortest seed pieces that play primarily with the timbral and microtonal differences highlighted between tone-holes, forming a layered, pseudo-multitrack effect while playing with only one fingering, single note or multiphonic. They range from the more strictly tonal or modal pitch-centered to the thicker atonal and dissonant collection of frequencies found in some multiphonics. Pieces progress to longer complex ones by the second CD, some of which have as minimal material as the shorter ones, but make more extensive use of live multitrack recordings and frequency filters to further bring out changes in frequencies or accentuate beatings inherent in specific multiphonics. The electronics used were created explicitly for each composition using the computer-based program MAX/MSP. Save for the unconventional 15 microphones of the “prepared bassoon”, these recordings include pieces with no sound processing whatsoever, as well as pieces that do involve sound processing and multi-tracking. Importantly, however, any processing (timed entrances of microphones, overdubbing, looping, spectrum filtering, pitch shifting...) is made in real time, not post-recording. All recordings are single-take recordings where four speaker channels along with room microphones have been mixed down to stereo. Key clicks occasionally get picked up in a loop recording to return sometimes processed, sometimes not later; in circular breathing a multiphonic might drop out a moment before sounding again –what might sound like clicks or occasional drop outs on some of the recordings are not overlooked mastering faults but the result of this live processing and playing as would be experienced in performance. With a formal background in classical music and early performance practice Leslie Ross took a plunge into the free improv scene of downtown NYC in the mid 80’s and has immersed herself in experimental music ever since. Her connected, parallel, work as baroque bassoon builder also opened up into explorations of invented instruments and sound installations at the same time. She has presented solo programs, both acoustic and electro-acoustic with laptops or electronics throughout Europe and the US over the past three decades. In the mid 2000’s she returned her music focus to a detailed exploration, analysis and understanding of bassoon multiphonics, the details of which she has made freely available on her website. It is through this exploration of multiphonics and the subtle changes made when playing with resonance keys that she was brought to the multiple-mic project of this CD." [label info] https://xirecords.bandcamp.com/album/drop-by-drop-suddenly "In my desperately insufficient erudition, the sum of “bassoon” and “woman” gave “Lindsay Cooper” as the most likely result until three days ago, when – while rummaging across the piles of promos received in 2018 – I retrieved this 2-CD set by Leslie Ross. Haven’t been listening to anything alternative since. More than the trademark biography-in-pills used by the official specialists to fill half of a writeup, let me urge you to check this article to understand the kind of creative individual we’re dealing with. An instrument builder, inventor and skilled player who lives surrounded by canaries and cats, and produces valhallas of tones, microtones and illusory tones from a single source. What’s not to like? A resort for brains who don’t content themselves with shabby explanations, Drop By Drop, Suddenly comprises tracks of length varying from 5’13” to 27’37”. An attentive look at the program reveals that the pieces are ordered from shortest to longest, as if Ross wished to take the hand of the listeners to gradually immerse them into oceanic clusters to reach mental emptiness. We also noticed that the harshness deriving from certain pitch contiguities tends to decline (not always!) with the temporal extension. What Ross is telling us – perhaps without realizing – is that every apparent strain can be alleviated or, at the very least, considered under different perspectives with the acquisition of fundamental psychoacoustic data. Especially when lulled by such a concentration of upper partials, occasionally suggesting fragments of near-immobile melody (“Closed Circuit, A Pastoral”) or simply lifting us from the chair (“Water”). Amazingly, everything heard occurs in real time. Even when veritable legions of bassoons (and relative key clicks, and whatever else one can hear, including the aforementioned birds) are perceived in the stereo field. It’s all born from an expert positioning of the microphones – Ross amplifies the unthinkable, besides the “normal” – and loops, natural or less: what do we know, poor guitarists deprived of the chance of circular breathing? The aim of the composer – subjecting the audience to a feeling close to the vibrational totality experienced by the performer – is achieved in full. Equally notable is the cross of inner stability and disregard of corporeal issues generated by the superimpositions; but we’re on Phill Niblock’s label, therefore we were expecting it, in a way. And so, another case of droning wonderment. However – trust this madman – that’s just the beginning of an utterly enriching voyage. Sometimes being a canary implies receiving incredible rewards." [Touching Extremes] | 2018 | €17.50 |
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| ROSTAMI, ARIA & DANIEL BLOMQUIST | Wandering Eye | CD | "Aria Rostami and Daniel Blomquist's debut album "Wandering Eye" was recorded over the span of a year and a half. "Dome A" and "Dome B" were recorded inside of a planetarium dome to no audience and it was the second time Rostami and Blomquist played together. "Ridge A" is the latest song recorded and it was performed live in Blomquist's basement. These live tracks use source material ranging from samples from the internet, to live field recordings, to synthesizers. "Dome C" and "Dome F" were compiled by sending material back and forth over and over again and then rearranged into coherent songs. These studio recordings mostly consist of processed piano originally recorded by Rostami. "Ridge B" originated as a cover of the Persian pop song "Do Panjereh" by Googoosh that Rostami had created but was manipulated and distorted in the process of sending the material back and forth. The song titles come from a paper published by Saunders et al. titled "Where is the best site on Earth?" which highlights the best places to observe space from the Antarctic Plateau. Antarctica is the coldest, driest and calmest place on earth. The astronomical sights there yield images of the heavens that are sharper and have more clarity than any other sight on earth. It is a gateway to observe other worlds. Aria Rostami and Daniel Blomquist are from San Francisco, CA. Rostami and Blomquist's work occurs at two stages, the gathering/preparation of source material and the live performance. Primarily, Rostami and Blomquist's source material focuses on, digital information and the exchange of that information, repetition and decay, and non-involvement or surrendering aspects of creative control. Some of the piano recordings were created by answering a simple questionnaire Rostami made that uses letters, colors, numbers, major verse minor, and picking between flat, natural and sharp to create a framework for a composition. After the framework is created, Rostami creates a song on the piano, records and sends it to Blomquist who in turn manipulates it. In some cases, Rostami recorded the material using the audio recording option for the app Viber. Rostami used Viber to communicate with a friend who was visiting Iran. Since he had asked her to fill out the survey through the app, he also recorded the material through the low quality recording interface. Sometimes this material is thrown back and forth and sometimes it's processed only once or barely touched. The recording is then turned into a loop and recorded to tape. This system was developed to surrender control and allow the origin of the composition to come from somewhere else much like field recordings or sampling does (two other ways Rostami and Blomquist gather source material.).Time, entropy, and decay are central factors in Rostami and Blomquist's work. For live performances Blomquist works with samples gathered and manipulated digitally and then dubbed to analog tape, reconstituting the quality and predictability of the digital source material. By using loops, Blomquist can take a short audio clip and concentrate on processing it live and allow for improvised changes to that recording over long periods of time. Rostami adds in an extra layer of drones, fuzz, melodic ambience and crescendos with his synthesizer. Their compositions explore dynamic relations between digital and analog sound creating quiet transitions and soaring peaks." https://glacialmovements.bandcamp.com/album/wandering-eye | 2016 | €15.00 |
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| RRILL BELL | False Flag Rapture | MC | Following up on 2020's critically acclaimed "Ballad of the External Life" LP, Rrill Bell's latest outing on Elevator Bath is a complex amalgamation of acoustic source materials (metallophones, winds, strings, and brass), (cassette) tape treatments, and digital assemblages, which coalesced over a period of six years, starting from the artist's desire to build a highly personal album around a turn-of-the-century recording of his late grandmother singing an impromptu hymn in Slovak dialect at a family gathering, resurrected from memory after lying dormant for 50+ years. Working through a family legacy of religious hallucinations/visions, the album (in spite of its tongue-in-cheek title) unironically explores themes of potentially staged transcendence, ecstasy of suspicious origins, vulnerability, inspired/anxious states of mind, fractured identity, doubt, rupture, redemption by proxy, and the dilemma of being forced to adopt a perspective in a contingent universe. The music on "False Flag Rapture" is restless yet focused, shifting, evolving – like "Ballad...", never staying in one place too long – and features a wide range of aural perspectives, as well as a strong sense at times of "listening with", rather than merely "listening to". Hyper-detailed, darkly tinged ecstatic/manic passages alternate with dreamlike chamber pieces and muted celestial drifts cloaked in an uneasy haze, with the occasional disarming reveal. A labor of love begun in earnest in 2015 and completed in 2021, "False Flag Rapture" is a testament to abstract electro-acoustic music's oft under-appreciated potential to treat deeply personal themes while connecting alienated human beings. Born and raised in the US-American Rust Belt, and a resident of Germany for over two decades, Rrill Bell draws on the formative inspirations of radical scratch culture, Cagean thought, harmolodics, musique concréte, and various other strains of experimental music practice. Originally rooted in the world of improvisational performance, over the past decade his work has expanded to include various hybrid approaches to location recording, augmented reality, composition, and audio narrative. In addition to 2020's "Ballad of the External Life" LP on Elevator Bath, Rrill Bell's music has previously been released by the Klappkart, Gertrude Tapes, Weird Forest and Denovali labels, among others. Rrill Bell: chimes, vibraphone, crotales, glockenspiel, drum machines, tapes, dictaphones, tape decks, and electronics featuring contributions from Felix Fritsche: clarinets/flutes Koenraad Ecker: cello Alex Morsey: contrabass/tuba Mastered by James Plotkin Artwork/collage by Rrill Bell Photography by Katrin Koenning Layout by Colin Andrew Sheffield 42-minute lime green cassette with full-color six-panel j-card in clear Norelco case, plus full-color outer o-card featuring collage art by Rrill Bell. https://rrill-bell.bandcamp.com/album/false-flag-rapture | 2021 | €11.00 |
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| RUA, VITOR & THE METAPHYSICAL ANGELS | When Better isn't quite Good enough | do-CD | "The spirit of enquiry and experiment is still alive and kicking - in Portugal anyway. On this double CD, Vitor looks twice at the same material. On CD one we get his unique take on guitar improvisation, which is electric, songlike and mixes genres in an unusual way. Then he takes all the pieces on that CD and orchestrates them with drums, bass, piano, guitar, clarinet and trumpet, to make a duplicate CD on which the same pieces appear as quite different pieces. You can choose one or the other, or compare the takes - or try to unpick the process by listening. And the band lists some of the leading figures of the Portuguese avant-jazz, and indie rock scenes. Vítor‘s career has veered from rock (he was the founder of the hit band GNR) through minimalism, folk, punk, thrash metal, electronic and country to free improvisation (29 years with Telectu). Since 1987, he has focused more on classical contemporary composition - for soloists, chamber groups and orchestras and written five operas. Here gets back to his rock roots, bringing all that other buzzing knowledge with him." | 2018 | €17.50 |
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| S.E.T.I. | The Sphere of Density | do-CD | S.E.T.I. is one of the most important representatives of the dark ambient genre of recent years. Another incarnation of Andrew Lagowski and his most active project, with releases on labels such as Loki-Found (Power & Steel), Touch, Incoming!, VIVO, Ash International and Syntactic (Klanggalerie). 'The Sphere of Density' is his latest album, which consists of two CDs, of which the first contains completely new studio material, and the second is a record of an improvised concert that was very well received at the Wroclaw Industrial Festival. Both CDs depict various styles of the S.E.T.I. project. Although they were created around the same period of time, they are completely different in terms of sound character or construction of the tracks. The Sphere of Density is inspired by the vision of Alexander Petrovitch Kazantsev - a russian science fiction writer. "A whole cosmic laboratory of precision instruments has passed near the Moon and communicated via radio a priceless information about the nature of interplanetary space. Received information expanded cosmic conception of men with daring brains, passionate hearts, trained muscles and sensitive nerves. These men will fly in one of the lunar ships in order to see from lunar observatory, without the barrier of atmosphere, constructions rised by the inhabitants of other planets, to discover other stars, to solve the secret of secrets – the cause of the emergence of stars, of transformation of energy into matter..." https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/the-sphere-of-density | 2020 | €17.00 |
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| SABI / KIYO | 71:36 | CD | "Mille Plateaux proudly presents sister-label Force Intel, which will cover great music that is simply not experimental enough for Mille Plateaux. Force Intel will take care of the sound that is usually called IDM. Sabi (aka Taro Peter Little) and Kiyo (Kiyoshi Ono) are two long-standing producers on the Tokyo electronic scene, but hardly recognized outside Japan so far. 71:36 is split in two halves: ambient IDM, sometimes with an organic piano touch in the first five tracks by Sabi. Here, the epic "Sleepy Emerald" stands out. Orchestral, rhythmic and atmospheric, this is one of the best ambient IDM tracks in recent memory. "Om" is a beautiful, quiet piano-based track. The fifth track could be a soundtrack to a science fiction movie -- you can almost hear the image of a new sun being born. The second half has the Kiyo tracks and is strictly IDM -- rhythmic and with experimental, often glitchy sounds, but still enjoyable even to less advanced IDM listeners. Simply put: just great IDM with remixes by a line of excellent IDM producers including Julien Neto, Kettel, Richard Devine and Machine Drum." [label info] www.forceintel.com | 2011 | €13.00 |
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| SAKAMOTO, RYUICHI & DAVID TOOP | Garden of Shadows and Light | LP | "Garden of Shadows and Light is the first collaboration between Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Toop, presenting the entirety of a concert performed in London in August 2018. With their collective musical experience encompassing collaborative work with figures as diverse as Evan Parker, Akiko Yano, Arto Lindsay and Christian Fennesz, in contexts ranging from pop session work to film scores to sound installation, no one could be sure how Sakamoto and Toop would approach their first concert together as a duo. From the opening moments, in which Sakamoto's delicate inside-piano work is paired with distant scrapes and moans from Toop's prepared lap steel guitar, it became immediately clear that a subtle, at times hushed, form of free improvisation is being practiced here, one in which space, pause and silence often take on heightened importance. The album's title takes inspiration from the aesthetics of Japanese gardening, and the spatial metaphor this suggests is apt, as listeners can imagine themselves wandering through a subtly changing environment, chancing on beautiful details and admiring them before moving on. You are led through a series of discrete moments, each uniquely shaded, whether by highly amplified small percussive sounds, austere electronic tones or the mournful tones of Toop's bass recorder. The course of the music follows a non-teleological drift, in which Sakamoto and Toop seem less concerned with establishing an overarching structure than in allowing each moment the space it needs to develop and breathe. When Sakamoto eventually turns to the piano's keyboard in the performance's second half, the music becomes lushly enveloping, as his jaggedly lyrical lines float against a backdrop of prepared guitar and field recordings. The music takes a radical, unexpected turn when Sakamoto picks up an electric guitar, with both players turning up the volume for a passage of distorted roar and shuddering feedback -- bracing evidence of the unfettered, exploratory approach shared by these two uncategorisable musicians, beautifully documented here." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLvHLB0oSdg | 2021 | €29.50 |
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| SALA | En-trance | CD | Zweites Album dieses Projekts auf AUTARKEIA, dem litauischen Label. Wilder und perkussiver als „Shcut ente..“, werden hier schamanistische Tänze & Ekstasen aufgeführt, alles handgespielt und ungeordnet, Blasinstrumente, beschwörende Vocals & Geschrei.... im gleichen Geiste wie Z’EV, 23SKIDOO, alte PSYCHIC TV, aber auch VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA oder wilde MAEROR TRI oder rituelle HYBRYDS kommen einem in den Sinn... und wieder duftet die CD nach MANDELN. “En-trance” was recorded, but still wasn’t released by the magic-practising artists almost a decade ago. This album compiles two lasting live-recorded tracks. Ritual pulsing, archaic sound of wind instruments, deep-dark “ambient” and surrealistic, unexpected music bends immersing the audience to the swirl of phantasmagoric moods. There are some movies classified as of the “noir” stylistics, the main feature of which is highly forcible and strong atmosphere. If the records also have the classification of the “noir”, “En-trance” could be considered one of the most emphatic works of this style. Emotions generated by the “En-trance” music could be compared with the psychedelic atmosphere of the first albums of NWW, Hybryds. Interesting record and mystic ritual having sustained the challenge of social disregard during the years. Album's tracks listing: 1. neophile gets ex-sited 2. and now s-he starts laughing Album lasts for 40 min. 36 sec. It’s packed in a nontypical black plastic DVD case. Limited edition 500 copies. CD is covered with special lackuer which smells like an almond.“ [label info] www.autarkeia.org | 2005 | €12.00 |
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| Shcut enteRing worts | CD | Wer auf beschwörenden Okkult-Ambient-Industrial steht, ist bei SALA genau richtig. Geisterhaft tönende Loops & verfremdete Stimmenfetzen, Glöckchen- oder Triangelsounds, alles in sehr hypnotischer Bewegung irgendwo im Hallraum tauchen seltsame Geräusche auf (Akustikgitarren).... gewidmet Jhonn Balance! “Shcut enteRing worts” consists of two forceful tracks of “ritual ambient” style. They are not distinguished in the compact disk as the ritual couldn’t and shouldn’t be accelerated or perceived in separated pieces. Starting from hypnotic “mantra”, music gradually unravels to the strong and mystical “ambient”, the main feature of which being reiteration transmitted by the sound loops. These are organically supplemented by the tabors, bells, magic spells and mysterious sounds floating from the distance and generating only the strong mystic mood of the audience. Actually, concerning the impact, this music is in line with the works of world’s famous artists acting in this field – Coil, NWW, Omenya, Hybryds, Deutsch Nepal. The “Schut enteRing worts” album was recorded by the participants of SALA project when experimenting with Brion Gysin’s dream machine, which formerly inspired the well-known William S.Burroughs and had a strong psychedelic effect. Album's tracks listing: 1. His: Entering The Dream 2. The Last Words Of Hassan Sabbah Album lasts for 36 min. 26 sec. It’s packed in a nontypical black plastic DVD case. We recommend you to listen to “Schut enteRing worts” only on Hi-fi stereo. Limited edition 500 copies. CD is covered with special lackuer which smells like an almond.” [label info] www.autarkeia.org | 2004 | €12.00 |
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| SALOMAN, GABRIEL | Adhere | LP | "When legendary noise duo Yellow Swans dissolved just prior to releasing Going Places, it left in its wake two musicians with very distinct but very different voices. Pete Swanson's post-YS technoid experimentations have been well documented, but that still leaves Gabriel Saloman, who, after leaving the group, buried himself headfirst in sounds and images that were possibly even further away from his comfort zone. Adhere is Saloman's first "proper" solo album, and it finds him stripping away the blood, sweat and tears of his old band, revealing a rich seam of ominous restraint. Delicately-picked strings, piano and hocking woodblock percussion are drowned in reverb and drawn out in cold anguish giving a cracked, minimalist mirror to the work of fellow Miasmah alums Kreng or Elegi. A softly-spoken record, while Adhere pushes away Saloman's noise history, none of his well-documented intensity is discarded and lost. Instead, the blistering punk nihilism is allowed to simmer and boil over in different ways, and the occasional moments of post-Cocteau Twins shimmering bliss we could just about make out on Going Places are now given a chance to shine in all their glory. Adhere is a surprising, challenging and perfectly-paced album, and fits into its very own niche, ushering in a new generation of listeners to Saloman's distorted, hazy vision. Includes mp3 download." [label info] www.miasmah.com "After the breakup of the much-loved floor-core noise duo, Yellow Swans, Pete Swanson has carved quite a solo career for himself, but we haven't heard as much from fellow YS member Gabriel Saloman. As it turns out, Saloman has been rather busy himself over the past few years in Vancouver working on various solo projects of his own under the monikers of GMS and Sade Sade and with collaborative projects Diadem and Chambers. Most of his projects have taken on a conceptual form of social resistance like his Music for Prisons project, which employed field recordings of protests for imprisoned Tamil refugees with original music to be broadcast at extreme volume outside of prison walls as a form of political protest against authoritarian-imposed incarceration. But Adhere, his vinyl debut for the Miasmah label, is the first time we're getting a full sense of the range of Saloman's sonic vision, and it is uniquely compelling and powerful. Composed in collaboration with a contemporary dance group, Adhere reads as a modern classical composition in seven parts with intense builds and pregnant silences, centered around reverberated piano, bowed strings, ambient guitar, percussive woodblocks and martial drumming into a captivating and beautiful soundscape. Sometimes the intensity is restrained by minimal piano stabs in a big empty room, in the third part, we hear some gorgeous Robin Guthrie-ish guitar washes, still later some dramatic yet solemn percussion. The entire composition toggling back and forth between quietly pensive dynamics and voluminous crescendos that give a sonic drama to an obviously visual accompaniment. Perfect for the Miasmah label which has always had a strong focus on marrying works of experimental classical forms with dark penetrating ambience." [Aquarius Records] | 2012 | €16.00 |
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| Movement Building | do-CD | Shelter Press collect all three volumes of the compelling Movement Building works for dance by Gabriel Saloman (Yellow Swans) in a handy double CD set, providing a first opportunity to listen and immerse yourself in the noise deity’s most refined and touching body of work since going solo after Yellow Swans’ demise. Since 2014 Shelter Press has been steadily releasing a multi-volume series of documents showcasing Gabriel Saloman’s music for contemporary dance. Under the title of Movement Building, these albums have covered a wide breadth of themes and approaches, all of them coalescing around Saloman’s darkly cinematic approach to contemporary guitar music. Known for his part in the seminal electronic-noise duo Yellow Swans (alongside Pete Swanson), Saloman has taken the sweeping drones and fried electricity of his former band and embedded them within an expanding pallette of bowed strings, martial percussion and resonant piano. Shelter Press has now made good on its promise to collect all three volumes of this vinyl only series – Movement Building Vol. I (2014); Vol. II (2015); and Vol. III (2017) – as a double CD featuring two hours of music, new artwork, previously unreleased tracks, a new digital master by Helmut Erler of Berlin’s Dubplates & Mastering, and an extensive essay on dance, politics and the themes of each album written by Saloman. These collected volumes provide an absolutely necessary document for any fan of Saloman’s work, past or present. The first disc collects Movement Building Vol. I and Vol. II, the former a sprawling 36 minutes epic that had previously been separated into two discreet tracks for vinyl and is collected here as one continuous piece, moving through an extended set of drone and loping drum play before climaxing in the kind of glorious guitar chording most often associated with groups such as My Bloody Valentine, GSYBE or Mono. Movement Building Vol. II explores various combinations of drum and drone, ASMR inducing high end clatter and Saloman’s infamous take on Miles Davis’ classic My Funny Valentine. The second disc collects Movement Building Vol. III, including two tracks not available on the concurrently released vinyl version. Vol. III shares with earlier albums the emotive and disorienting bowed guitar, militant percussion and searing guitar eruptions that was so evocative of memory and trauma. Joining this pallet are other familiar Saloman sounds: shoegaze washes of distorted guitar, minimalist piano attacks, melancholy guitar melodies, and a patina of harsh noise at just the right moments. Added to this is a more contemporary approach to drums and bass, perhaps an effect of his collaborations with producer Michael Red in their dub-ambient project Chambers. Saloman’s music has never sat comfortably in any genre, sharing with a select cohort of other artists (Stephen O’Malley, Lawrence English, Grouper, Kreng, Tim Hecker, among others) an ambiguous position overlapping “modern classical”, “electronic music”, and the more outer limits of “ambient metal”. The recordings collected in Movement Building doesn’t clarify as much as it expands Saloman’s oeuvre further into an idiosyncratic musical no-man’s land that fails to be faithful to any popular musical trend – contemporary, retro or futurist. | 2017 | €17.00 |
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| SALTLAND | I thought it was us but it was all of us | LP | "Saltland is the new project led by Montreal-based cellist Rebecca Foon, best known as a founding member of contemporary chamber group Esmerine and a former member of Thee Silver Mt. Zion and Set Fire To Flames. Foon began composing solo work in 2010, featuring multi-layered cello and hushed vocals at the intersection of drone, no-wave, improv, dream-pop and minimalism. Joined by Jamie Thompson (Unicorns, Esmerine) on miniature percussion, programming and signal processing, Foon's live performances in Montreal and abroad over the past two years have seen her sound progress towards gently rhythmic and electronic territory as well. She has transfixed audiences with this new music while sharing the stage with Mary Margaret O'Hara, Julia Kent, Nat Baldwin and Sam Amidon, among others. As her largely home-recorded debut album began taking shape throughout 2011, with numerous guests contributing to various pieces, Foon adopted the Saltland moniker for this work. I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us is a beautifully restrained debut album that telescopes the directness and economy of Foon's compositional and vocal styles into lush, twilight atmospheres aglow with luminescent tendrils and flickering particles. Foon sings of childhood innocence lost, of tender utopic reveries and downcast dystopic horizons, and the search for soft, stoic strength in a darkening, devolving world. Foon’s voice is discreet but defined, drifting on buoyant currents of sound sourced from her plucked and bowed cello lines, in most cases propelled by Thompson's bespoke percussion and understated programming/processing, with touches of guitar, bass, horns, woodwinds, strings and backing vocals added by a cast of supporting players. The record unfurls like a gauzy flag in a restless breeze at dusk: a delicate, resolute sentinel set against the fading light. The album's ambience also owes much to the work of Mark Lawson, the award-winning engineer (Arcade Fire) who collaborated closely with Foon to record and mix these songs at Six Saint V, her apartment studio in Montreal. Lawson, along with friend and percussionist Thompson, helped to forge a balance between lo-fi intimacy and shimmering breadth with these recordings, remaining faithful to the all-anologue instrumentation of the source material while judiciously deploying signal processing strategies to subtly refract, saturate and expand the sonic landscape. With contributions from Laurel Sprengelmeyer and Jess Robertson (Little Scream), Mishka Stein (Patrick Watson), Colin Stetson (Bon Iver), Sarah Neufeld and Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire) among others, Saltland offers up an unassumingly immersive debut album of searching songs that blend several core influences into a distinctively naturalistic sound. Saltland stakes out an unaffected, meditative, clear-eyed and earnest space where minimalism, dream-pop, drone, shoegaze, confessional folk, chamber music, and ambient/electronic coexist and coalesce. Release date: 14 May 2013 Running time: 38:32 Packaging notes CD comes in a custom gatefold jacket printed on 100% recycled paperboard in 4-colour process. LP is pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl at Optimal (Germany) and comes in a heavyweight gatefold jacket printed in full-colour process." [label info] www.cstrecords.com | 2013 | €23.00 |
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| SANKT OTTEN | Morgen wieder lustig | CD | "Sankt Otten’s fourth album sees the duo’s sound evolving once again, while retaining the undeniable hallmarks of atmosphere, melodic dexterity and depth. Morgen Wieder Lustig employs stacks of luscious synthesizers, with knowing nods to fellow Germans Kraftwerk and Klaus Schulze, alongside Oliver Klemm’s hallmark soaring guitar drones and Stephan Otten’s unmistakable rhythms. The album presents a musical vision that is both epic and personal – a kind of internal cinema. Single ‘Lustig, lustig demain encore lustig’ is a prime example of Sankt Otten’s glorious new direction. The track acts like a magnet, irresistibly drawing the listener along with its hypnotic drums. Elsewhere the album is soaked in majestic refrains, demonstrating Sankt Otten’s control of rhythm and texture. While their early sonic experiments explored the brooding and frayed edges of ambient, post-rock and jazz, these new songs push this relationship to a new level. Morgen Wieder Lustig shifts from the head-rush ambience of ‘Das bezahlte Lob’ to the dark and twisted post-jazz of ‘Fromme Lügen’. Just when you think you have the album pegged, ‘X für U’ drags you on a melancholic, Klaus Schulze-inspired sc-fi odyssey." [label info] www.denovali.com | 2009 | €10.00 |
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| SARNO, LOUIS | Song from the Forest: The Soundtrack | CD | "This is the soundtrack album to the film “Song from the Forest”, which tells the story of Louis Sarno, an American who has lived for thirty years among the Bayaka pygmies in the Central African Republic. No outsider has had such access to this beautiful and musical culture, and this selection of the best of his recordings presents the sounds of this amazing people and their environment with a depth and richness never heard before. SONG FROM THE FOREST: THE FILM /// Premieres in Germany: Showtimes As a young man, the American Louis Sarno heard a song on the radio that gripped his imagination. He followed the mysterious sounds all the way to the Central African rainforest and found their source with the Bayaka Pygmies, a tribe of hunters and gatherers. He never left. Today, twenty-five years later, Louis Sarno has recorded over 1,500 hours of unique Bayaka music. He is a fully accepted member of Bayaka society and has a son, Samedi. Once, when Samedi was a baby, he became seriously ill and Louis feared for his life. He held his son in his arms through a frightful night and made him a promise: “If you get through this, one day I’ll show you the world I come from.” Now the time has come to fulfill his promise, and Louis travels with Samedi, age 13, from the African rainforest to another jungle, one of concrete, glass, and asphalt: New York City. Together they meet Louis’ family and old friends, including his closest friend from college, Jim Jarmusch. Carried by the contrasts between rainforest and urban America, with a fascinating soundtrack and peaceful, loving imagery, their stories are interwoven to form a touching portrait of an extraordinary man and his son. A modern epic set between rainforest and skyscrapers. FROM THE DIRECTOR In the fall of 2009, I was traveling in the Congo River Basin when by chance I heard tales of a white man who was said to have lived for decades in the rainforest with a tribe of huntergatherers called the Bayaka Pygmies, for decades. I went to look for him. A few days later, I was standing in a clearing when Bayaka came running at me from all directions, brandishing spears and screaming. Suddenly, the noise ceased, and a tall figure detached itself from the undergrowth: a white man, two heads taller than everybody else, a Bayaka baby in each of his arms. Before me stood a legend: a lost, forgotten man, reborn in the Central African jungle. A man who once ate tadpoles for a month, who married a Bayaka woman, who survived malaria, hepatitis, typhoid, leprosy, and has recorded more than 1500 hours of unique Bayaka music. Before me stood the musical Herodotus of the Central African forests, the white Bayaka—Louis Sarno. When we shook hands in this clearing, I instantly felt that something really big had happened in my life. How could I know that this was the beginning of a journey which would turn me—a writer and journalist—into a film-maker and which would take me across the globe for years to come? To me—a person without a real home, driven from place to place, a passionate hunter-gatherer of stories who has spent the past twenty years traveling to the most remote corners of the Earth—Louis Sarno is the most fascinating person I have ever met. He took a radical leap, accomplishing what I often imagine myself doing when I am on the road: leaving it all behind, starting over, becoming someone else. More than everything else I am impressed by his life’s work: the fantastic recordings of Bayaka music that we are proud to present in this soundtrack from Song From the Forest. (Michael Obert) FROM THE CURATOR Beautifully mapping the entire range of music-making of a single community of hunter-gatherers across more than a generation, the Louis Sarno collection of Bayaka music and soundscapes is extraordinary, unprecedented, and unrepeatable. No field recordist has ever matched the depth and sensitivity of Sarno’s commitment to presenting a record of what it sounds like to live with an indigenous community. Sarno has developed a uniquely sensitive recording approach, refined through an acute listening that is only possible through permanent immersion in a culture. Nearly all of the recordings on this soundtrack have been drawn from the Louis Sarno collection of Bayaka music at the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford. Louis continues to donate his exceptional recordings to the Museum with the long-term intention that they will benefit the community whose musical life they so beautifully present. (Noel Lobley, Ethnomusicologist, Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford University) FROM THE MUSIC SUPERVISOR Through Louis Sarno’s recordings, Bayaka music has become famous around the world. I first spoke to Louis about his endeavours in the mid-nineties when I was putting together “The Book of Music and Nature”, which included some of his work. When I heard he was still down there, twenty years later, and that a film wasnbeing made about his life, I knew I wanted to help. Central to Bayaka music is a sonic integration with the rhythms and melodies of the forest itself. We have tried to include selections from the vast archive that highlight the ways the human sounds fit into the natural sounds, as an inspiration for how human life as a whole might better be part of our surrounding environment, our true home. (David Rothenberg) TRACK NOTES BY LOUIS SARNO 1. Yeyi-greeting / 4:30 Yeyi just means ‘yodel,’ and this is one of my favorite forms of Bayaka music. They used to go on all night, slowly moving through the village, and at dawn they’d be going on one last time, throwing leaves on the roof of each house. The new generation doesn’t do it the way it used to be done. This is the most recognizable sound in Bayaka music, pure vocal music, very beautiful songs. When they sing you can hear the forest all around them. 2. Women Sing in the Forest / 4:55 This is recorded in a bimba forest, where there is not much undergrowth, so you hear the singing echoing as if you were inside a natural cathedral. The Bayaka have this way of wandering into the forest, taking music from different forms, and improvising together as they collect water or gather mushrooms. I love the sound of women’s voices in the distance in the forest. The forest without that sound is incomplete. These are the most lovely voices on Earth. 3. Tree Drumming / 3:08 There is a certain kind of tree, the gooma that has big buttress roots. You hit it and it really resonates. Whenever the Bayaka come across a tree like this on the trail they hit it and play a little music. It’s kind of irresistible. Then they move on. 4. Bobé Spirits Calling / 5:53 I remember that camp, it was a beautiful one. The first evening, as the sun was setting, I saw this fire in the distance between the bimba trees. But it turned out to be the sun, at ground level in the forest, and you could barely see it through the trees at the horizon. The Bobé were really wild, spinning around and dancing wildly. That was the time when they buried Samedi’s grandmother. I had just came back from America, and I walked fifty kilometers in one day, and I heard she had died. The next day I set up to find this camp. We didn’t know where to go exactly, and it took us three days to find it. I was so moved by the place. The ceremony went on for two or three nights. This is a typical esimé, when the women move on from the usual melodic singing into something polyrhythmic. The Bobé are not human, they are animal spirits, and they use sounds that are beyond language. The Boyobi ceremony is not just music, it’s theater, dance, and myth, all blended together. Sometimes the Bobé spirits are naked in the moonlight, smeared with bioluminescent fungus. No crew has yet been able to film this! 5. Bayaka Night Insects / 4:52 Insects, yes, but also a few birds. That’s a type of cuckoo. I call it the “ngon go go” bird. There are two cuckoos and the rest is insects, with maybe a few tree frogs. Sometimes you get these moments in the forest where everything seems to come together like that. That’s why I spent so much time in the forest, because most of the time nothing much seems to be happening. But once in a while you get these beautiful moments, which you can only get by spending a lot of time out there. Years. 6. Louis Sarno Speaks / 2:32 Ewunji was an incredible guy, Samedi’s great-grandfather. He was known to go very deep into the forest, way into what’s now the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in Congo, and we just wandered around with spears, no hunting nets. You couldn’t survive like that now. The small animals have been decimated by poachers. Taking care of this should be the responsibility of the World Wildlife Fund, but they prefer to concentrate on big charismatic animals like elephants and gorillas, instead of the animals that the Bayaka depend on, small forest antelopes and monkeys. The Bayaka are no longer allowed to go into the park, but the poachers still go in there with shotguns. 7. The Flutes We Hear No More / 5:12 That was the only time I ever heard two flute players playing at the same time. Momboli and Gongé playing mbyo duets on Dec. 22 nd 1992. You are supposed to hear this music in your dreams, that’s why they usually play it alone at night, so it can get into your dreams. They play more or less in unison even though the Bayaka love vocal polyphony. This is a music you no longer hear anymore, since the last flute player died a few years ago. He gave me his flute and I had it in my house and could get a bit of a sound out of it. But when the Séléka raided my house last year during the insurgency, they destroyed everything, and they smashed the flute. This is a sound we will never hear again. 8. Net Hunt / 3:00 Well, that’s not actually a net hunt. That’s actually gida-gida, it’s a gorilla hunting game, they imitate chimpanzee noises. That’s from 1987, the very first time I went out into the forest. Just the men and boys are singing here. They make these fake spears and pretend to kill. 9. Earth Bow / 2:09 To make an earth bow the Bayaka take a sapling and bend it over, then attach a piece of twine to one end of the sapling, tie the other end to a piece of bark and hold it over a hole that they dig in the ground. This was Boungingi, and those are the same guys who were playing the tree drum. Just takes them a minute or so to make this instrument. Usually one person plays it, but there is always some extra percussion in the background. 10. Geedal / 2:28 That’s Balonyona, one of the greatest masters of the bow harp, the geedal. I recorded many hours of his playing, he really was the best player of this instrument. In 1991 he even went to Paris to play. It has six strings, you find it all over Africa. But the Bayaka way of playing is a bit different. They use fewer notes, and more rhythms. They play along with the pulses of the forest. It fits right in. 11. Flute in Forest / 5:16 That is a beautiful melody, the flute sounds so beautiful in the forest in the distance. That sound brings back so many memories of so many good times. Momboli played that melody a lot, and I recorded it often in the distance. You hear the night ambience swelling with insects, frogs, cuckoos, and the distant flute. So many good times… This music is really part of the whole forest world. 12. Water Drumming / 2:55 When the women bathe, they are always playing water drum. And sometimes they get these percussive melodies, this is a music for girls, and they are much better at it than the boys. Women will do it, too, and sometimes I’ve been far away when you can only hear the deepest sounds, and I think it’s the drum, and when I get closer, I realize it is women playing in the water. It is one of the few instruments Bayaka women are allowed to play. 13. Lingboku Celebration / 5:36 Ah, the Lingboku – women’s music. That is the one spirit they still have. They claim all the others have been stolen from them by the men. A lot of the lyrics make fun of male sexuality, it’s really an expression of female power. The men don’t like women to do it. But they don’t stop them. The men are not supposed to be present when they sing it. “The penis has no endurance and dies right away, but the pussy is always ready to keep going.” You ought to mark this song “explicit” on the CD. The dancing is quite explicit, too, the women look like they’re humping each other and if they catch men looking at this they’ll chase them away. 14. Moukouté’s Lament / 1:52 Ah, that’s little Moukouté. He appears in the film. At the time you recorded him for the film, he really wasn’t all that good at the geedal. But since then, he’s gotten a lot better. 15. Yeyi-Farewell / 5:32 What can you say? It’s beautiful. Yeyi. It’s the most pure Bayaka music. I never get tired of hearing these songs. They bring back so much musical wealth of these people. I don’t make recordings anymore. In some ways it’s easier to make recordings with today’s new technology, but I don’t love it the way I love those old cassette recorders. How do you write numbers on those tiny SD cards! They’re always getting lost. Many of the people I used to record are no longer alive. The new generation is just not the same." [label info] www.gruenrekorder.de "One of the various releases this week that is supposed to be a soundtrack. Here no film either, but just the recordings made by Louis Sarno, made in Central Africa with Bayaka Pygmies, a tribe of hunters and collectors. Sarno is not a visitor, but he lives there as a member and married, has a son and recorded 1500 hours of music and sounds. That's what the documentary by Michael Obst is about, about this rather unique field recordist. Sarno, who guides us through music from Bayaka and the place they live in, documents each of the fifteen pieces here in word. Flutes, tree drumming, singing, games, celebrations and such like are what we hear on this disc. Sometimes recorded from a distance, with the rainforest adding a whole additional layer of sound, which works very well. The 'Tree Drumming' reminded me of earlier Etant Donnes. I very much enjoy a release like this. Not because I know a lot about the subject of tribes or Non-Western music, and I am the first to admit I can't say anything worthwhile about this, other than: I think this is a fascinating trip. Maybe it's because I was on holiday just now, and perhaps I would like to evoke the memory of holiday a bit longer? (I doubt whether Central Africa will ever be a point of holiday for me however). Just for now I can really enjoy all of this a lot. Strangely fascinating music. A sound documentary as well as something that you can enjoy from a purely musical point of view. Very nice variation in the world of field recording." [FdW/Vital Weekly #946] | 2014 | €14.00 |
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| SASAJIMA, HIROKI | Bells | CD-R | "Bells is an Evening Record. The deep of its sound travel us toward a landscape and a situation directly. It is a record that supposes an experience on listening, a compromise with hearing. Images float, changing in a record with a beautiful narrative. The trip, the steps and tension appears clearly in this process that means to listen to this record. It is an unique track of long haul. It is not a fleeting record. It is a record-experience. I have the chance to make listen to Bells to my pupils of twelve years old, as an exercise of writing. And this is one of the very beautiful results: “It presents a picture of me walking with Hiroki headwind in a field close to nothing. Like night, also appears to be near a route by traffic noise. In a moment it looks like rain and another seems to pass a train. The noise is constant. The combination of constant andsound recordings is perfect. I think Hiroki Sasajima walks through puddles. It was a very good piece of work why is good at drawing on white paper. Evening Bell is the perfect title.Hiroki I imagine abandoning any idea where he is recording all the sounds you hear. This is very good to use your imagination. With this work Art you can imagine many things.” " [Bernardo Durand] www.ahoraeterno.com.ar | 2011 | €12.00 |
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| SAVAGE REPUBLIC | 1938 | CD | Eine DER Überraschungen des Jahres 2007 war das neue Album der "Art-Punk" Band aus L.A.! "Eigentlich könnte die kalifornische Band Savage Republic heutzutage auch eine große Legende in Sachen Art-Punk und experimenteller Indie-Musik sein, so wie Sonic Youth, Minuteman oder die Einstürzenden Neubauten. Warum man diese Band normalerweise nicht in einem Satz mit diesen Genre-Größen nennt, ist wohl eine ungerechte Laune der Musik-Geschichte, standen Savage Republic doch in den 80er Jahren eben mit diesen Bands zusammen auf einer Bühne. Savage Republic sind deshalb auch so etwas wie Art-Punk-Pioniere, die auch nicht vor den schrägsten musikalischen Einflüssen zurückschreckten. Da wurde der frühe West-Coast Hardcore-Punk genau so angesehen wie 60’s Psychedelic oder Ethno-Folk. Dick Dale gehörte genau so zu den Vorbildern wie Ennio Morricone oder Mikis Theodorakis. Vielleicht war es diese Verschrobenheit und Kreativität, weshalb der Band aus Los Angeles ein größeres Publikum verwehrt blieb. Nun nach 18 Jahren Pause gibt es endlich mit „1938“ ein neues Savage Republic Album. Und zu welchem Label würde dieses Album besser passen, als zum Neurosis-Label Neurot Recordings? Eben. Trotz seiner enormen Spielzeit von ca. 70 Minuten treten beim Hören von „1938“ an keiner Stelle Ermüdungserscheinungen oder Langeweile auf. Da finden sich auf dem fast instrumental eingespielten Album Industrial-Sounds, mittelalterliche Klänge, Folk-Elemente, Psychedelic, Kraut-Rock, Impro-Musik oder auch mal jazziges. Ein besonderer Fokus wird dabei auf die Percussion- und Schlagzeugarbeit gelegt, sodass Savage Republic trotz seiner Ausgefallenheit ein sehr rhythmisches Album ist. Freunde von Bands wie Pere Ubu, Can oder den Butthole Surfers könnten bei „1938“ ihre helle Freude haben. Die Betonung liegt dabei auf „könnte“, denn Savage Republic sind einfach zu Eigenständig und als Solitär im Musikgeschäft anzusehen, dass man diese Band nur mit Vorsicht in gewisse Schubladen stecken sollte." [Independentkicks.de] "Los Angeles art-punk pioneers Savage Republic have come roaring out of obscurity with 1938, their first full-length album of new material in 18 years-- hot on the heels of this spring's powerful Siam EP-- both on Neurot Records. Throughout the '80s Savage Republic was a deep-underground phenomenon, playing highly unorthodox shows in remote desert locations, abandoned factories, skid-row parking lots, and grimy bars across the US and Europe with such luminaries as Einstuerzende Neubaten, Minutemen, Sonic Youth, and Live Skull as well as hardcore-punk slugfests with the likes of Bad Religion, Angry Samoans, and Final Conflict. Known for their oddly tuned guitars, tribal beats, shouted vocals, metal percussion (typically 55-gallon oil drums and items gleaned from dumpsters and junkyards), and Morricone-meets-Dick Dale melodies, their performances were at times ritualistic and occassionally involved fire and explosives. In their current incarnation, Savage Republic core members Thom Fuhmann, Ethan Port and Greg Grunke are joined by UK punk-rock veteran Val Haller, whose resume includes stints with Wayne County, Flying Lizards, Lords of The New Church, and X-Ray Spex, and noted drummer and percussionist Alan Waddington, known for his tenure with The Unforgiven as well as live and studio work with everyone from Willie Nelson to Gwen Stefani. The album also features contributions by guest artists including multi-instrumentalist Tara T. Tavi, classical violinist Julia Zuker, and drummer Bryan Taylor. While staying true to their roots, Savage Republic have updated and expanded their singular Mediterranean-surf-soundtrack-folk-noise blend into a musical hybrid both contemporary and timeless. Trademark scrap-metal percussion and layers of guitar drone are now joined by spooky ambient textures evoking sonic landscapes exotic, dreamy and sinister. An undercurrent of dread is never too far away. In keeping with their tradition of graphic excellence, the album is packaged in a tri-fold cover designed by and featuring the photography of Ramona Clarke-Fuhrmann. " [press release] www.neurotrecordings.com www.mobilization.com | 2007 | €13.00 |
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| SCHAEFER, JANEK | Unfolding Luxury beyond the City of Dreams | LP | "Dekorder presents two new vinyl editions composed and designed by UK sound artist Janek Schaefer, who is known around the world for his wide variety of engaging and unpredictable works for installation, concert and composition. Following his highly acclaimed ‘Lay-by Lullaby’ album on 12k [which Pitchfork listed in the ‘Top 10 under-the-radar releases for 2014’], Janek has created and collated a collection of tracks that showcase both his more ambient works [077], and his highly charged sonorities [078]. A beautiful pair of LP’s that ideally should be experienced together for your home listening pleasure. The tracks were mastered by Stephan Mathieu and cut by Lupo at Calyx Mastering. A1 White Lights of Divine Darkness By chance I composed this for my brother-in-law the day he passed away. In recent years he had seen the white lights of heavens gate, but returned, and became fascinated by what he called God’s divine darkness in this lifetime. A2 Unfolding Honey 6:06 A track from my exhibition soundtrack 'Future Beauty, 30 years of Japanese fashion' held at The Barbican Gallery, London. The exhibition featured some amazing folded garments by Issey Miyake, that inspired the unfurling fabric feeling of the composition. A3 Luxury 3:00 An orchestral drone piece featuring an old French lady singing to her cats with an extra celestial chorus. A4 Skyline Ascending 3:28 A Carpenters LP piano loop is layered again and again over a high sky recording, which was recorded using a helium balloon floating in the clouds over the city, with raindrops. B1 Coda (for Sir John Dankworth) 5:00 In my early teens, I used to attend week long music camps, in tents, within the grounds of Sir John Dankworth's home with Cleo Laine. I used to know them, and composed this piece with one of their vinyl's on the day I heard he died. The installation premiered at the Sydney Cooper Gallery in Canterbury, broadcasting a 3 channel version to six 50's radios. B2 The City of Dreams 8:28 Theme tune for the opening of “The Mill: City of Dreams” a site specific theatre production in a deserted mill in Bradford. Piano motif recorded live with my twin-arm turntable, additional overlays recorded with Mark Robinson on his old family piano. B3 Beyond 6:30 The Carpenter’s return, sliding piano loops through recordings made in Grand Central Station at closing time when the vast hall was deserted, and the full majesty of the acoustic space could be appreciated. Stilettos pass by forming polyrhythm's, as the last train announces it’s departure... credits released 19 November 2014 Biography Janek Schaefer has exhibited, lectured, and performed widely throughout Europe [Sonar, Tate Modern, ICA, Strasbourg Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art], USA/Canada, [Walker Art Center, Mutek, Princeton, XI], Japan, and Australia [Sydney Opera House 2003]. His foundsound concerts and installations explore the spatial, social and celestial qualities that sound can communicate, through the twisting of old and new technology. The context of each idea is central to its development and resolution, often exploring themes of appropriation, accident, & alteration. Janek studied Architecture at the Royal College of Art where he worked with Brian Eno, creating “Recorded Delivery” in 1995, and discovered how important sound is in perceiving space, and place. In 2008 he won the British Composer of the Year Award in Sonic Art, and a Paul Hamlyn Award. The Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool exhibited a Retrospective of his career to date in 2009. He is represented by the Agency gallery, London, and is a Visiting Professor at Oxford Brookes Sonic Art Research Unit. He lives and works in Walton-on-Thames." [label info] www.dekorder.com "The other LP has seven pieces, shorter pieces of course and it's a pity that there are no clarifications printed on the cover. They are in the press text, so we know why there were created, so we know, for instance that 'Luxury' is 'an orchestral drone piece featuring an old French lady singing to her cats with an extra celestial chorus', or that 'Skyline Ascending' is 'a Carpenters LP piano loop is layered again and again over a high sky recording, which was recorded using a helium balloon floating in the clouds over the city, with raindrops'. Shorter these pieces may seem, they essentially are not unlike his longer pieces: multi-layered sound events that create a beautiful dense, atmospheric field of sound. Careful crackles, computer processed sustaining loops (from instruments, vinyl, field recordings, nothing is sacred in the hands of Schaefer), and carefully placed field recordings in their raw state. There is obviously no reason to pick one over the other, but I think I prefer the second LP to the first, great as that one is. The second LP had more variation and the compositions were better worked out, unlike the more endless stream of sounds approach of the first. The differences are small I know, and it's probably best if you get both at the same time. This is Janek Schaefer at what he does, and what he does best. No surprises here, pleasant or otherwise." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2014 | €14.00 |
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| SCHÄFER, MAGNUS | Contact Microphone Recordings | CD-R | To some MAGNUS SCHAEFER might be known through his nice mCDR „Im Sommer“ from 2002, here’s now the follower, a 30 minute CDR with more field recordings, guaranteed non-digital. Comes with totally handmade cardboard cover & inlay w. drawing. „Auf "contact microphone recordings" verdichten sich vertraute und doch nicht zu identifizierende Geräuschphänomene zu mikroskopisch-organischen lo-fi dronefeldern. Sechs Tracks, Spielzeit ca. 30 Minuten. "Contact microphone recordings" presents a microscopic, organic world of familiar, yet alien sounds and noises, forming ever changing "non-digital" lo-fi drone-fields. Six tracks, playtime about 30 minutes.” [Magnus Schäfer] | 2003 | €7.50 |
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| SCHICKERT, GÜNTER & PETER UNSICKER | Mauerharfe | LP + CD | Günter Schickert, krautrock maestro of echo-driven psychedelia, returns on Marmo one year and half after the release of the Labyrinth LP. Mauerharfe consists of old and special material, which has officially never seen the light before. It is due for release on the eve of the 30th anniversary of Berlin Wall fall, in 12” LP with CD, CD and digital formats. The physical versions contain exclusive pictures, linear notes, a prose poem by Peter Unsicker and some draft writings by the artists with reflections on the project. Berlin, August 1990, first post-wall Summer. Two friends, the locals Günter Schickert and gallerist Peter Unsicker perform a spectacular yet symbolically intimate interpretation of those epochal changing days by building a sound installation with a damaged piece of the Berlin Wall. They persuade the patrol “Feliks Dzierzynski” of the Western German army to transport and relocate a the piece outside Peter`s Wall Street Gallery on the Zimmer Strasse, in the borough of Mitte, where only a few months back the intact structure actually passed through. Once the wall was positioned, they bend down the bars of the iron structure that crop out the concrete, bind piano chords to them, stretch the strings down to the bottom base of the construct and connect guitar amplifiers to the set up. The Berlin Wall is ready to be played as a harp. Günter Schickert`s Mauerharfe are executed between August and October 1990, resulting into three long field recordings. Side A features a 19` long piece. The tape-induced background noise lays down a carpet of haunting atmospheres and introduces the experiment. Günter starts to test the chords by pulling out, with his fingers, dry and acid timbers. The warm up evolves by investigating wider sinusoidal waves and dilated metallic riffs. The track takes the form of a more conventional music narration, as the artist bangs the harp with a sort of rudimental violin bow creating marching percussive patterns. Layers of psychedelic ambience take over the scene before mixing up with roaring industrial spasms. Lunar sceneries seem to emerge, paving the way to sudden strings feedbacks, crackling distorted clicks and menacing reverbs. Flipping side, a similarly long take opens up with ferocious urge, like being catapulted into a warfare between iron and cement, sounding like a real military operation. As the strings get hit and pulled, the metal seems to crash into thousands of pieces, dissolving into merciless distortions. Yet it is intriguing to notice how these dynamics of madness occasionally generate wavy and gentle sub-harmonics. This piece adds up intensity in comparison to the previous one, containing enhanced abrasive and distorted frequencies. The final part is marked by monstrous echoing rhythms, before drifting back to a chaotic rumble of fire, metal and concrete. The third piece, Mauerharfe 3, is a 30 minutes long performance dated August the 13th 1990. As Schickert recalls, 29 years before exactly on that same date, the construction of the Berlin wall was accomplished. This take appears exclusively on CD, with copies included inside the vinyl package and as a separate CD format release. The recording is cleaner than the previous two, giving more width and definition to the sounds. As opposed to Mauerharfe 1 and 2, where the wall of sound is overwhelming, in this 3rd take human presences can be heard : fragments of women voices, a baby crying, the siren of a police car. The compositional approach is more sober, the tones of the harp warmer, closer to an actual one, its notes more gentle, discrete and meditative, sometimes resulting into deep, gong-like percussive timbers. As Günter Schickert claims, the idea behind the project was the one of representing, in a personal musical way, the feelings and sensations that he – as well as many others experiencing the division and eventually the removal of the Wall - felt through the decades around the presence of this monstrous separator. The wall becomes an instrument, seen both as an object and executor of the experiment, while the human and artistic presence almost vanishes. The atonal and harsh sounds embody the ugliness of an inhuman separation, the terrible echoes of prisons and the lament of its prisoners. The pulling of the strings suggests the repression of a regime, while releasing these it indicates a dash of freedom. You can get lost into the intensity of the Mauerharfe, find always new sensations and a countless amount of details. If you approach the listening with adventurous spirit and a good dose of curiosity, it can really throw you back into the past, a past of segregation, austerity and suppression, yet of an urging desire of liberation. https://marmomusic.bandcamp.com/album/g-nter-schickert-peter-unsicker-mauerharfe | 2019 | €22.50 |
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| SCHNÜFFLER | Rauschbereich | Resipiscent RSPT031 | "Drawing current and breath through metal... it’s hard to picture just how either is possible, but Schnüffler plumbs the backwaters of both aural miracles in an engrossing, if pageless, storybook entitled "Rauschbereich." The name of Gino Robair and Liz Allbee's hyper-attuned duo, Schnüffler, is a colloquialism meaning someone who huffs substances. "Huffing" is equal parts curiosity and consuming obsession, and as any huffer knows substance has a way of vanishing. So hork up yours before this handbuilt edition of just 56 copies, end-pages beautifully illustrated by Allbee herself, is gone for good." [label info] www.resipiscent.com | 2009 | €12.00 |
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| SCOTT, SIMON (SIMON SCOTT) | Insomni | CD | "Couldn't sleep arose to forage for sound. The hum of the fridge encouraged further investigation of hidden, domestic sounds; the fish tank, dvd player, a broken laptop Dawn and morning light allowed more sound and the guitar, in its case, beckoned From darkness to light Guitars: Guild 12 string D-125 & Vintage Guild 6 string GF-25. Mics: Induction coil pick up & Hydrophones. Buddha Machine pre-recorded and mixed, then re-recorded at Holme Fen Posts using mobile speakers. Recording device: Edirol r-09. Radio: static between stations. Software: Max MSP (self-programmed), Supercollider & Logic Pro. Simon Scott (b. 1971) is a British multi-instrumentalist who is currently based in Cambridge, UK. Insomni is his fourth album and his debut for Ash International and is published by Touch. His music is a fusion of digital signal manipulation combined with an aesthetic of compositional collaboration with environmental sounds and organic acoustic textures. He is inspired by his interests in sound ecology, music technology, the natural world, illustration, photography, composition and sonic art. Below Sea Level, originally presented live in quadraphonic sound, was released on Touchline in March 2015, after 12k originally released the album in 2012 as an 80-page journal and seven track CD. It explores the aesthetics of active listening, sound ecology and the subjective distinction of compositional materials and sound timbres. Critically applauded for creating juxtapositions of analogue and digital timbres, the man-made and natural world sounds, captured in his local sunken landscape of The Fens in East Anglia, create a fusion of digital signal manipulation combined with organic acoustic textures. Since the late 1990's Scott's solo work has been featured in a variety of international films, sonic art exhibitions, dance productions, television productions and digital multi-media projects. He has toured worldwide since 1988 and he is the drummer for UK band Slowdive, who worked with Brian Eno on 1993 'Souvlaki' album. His track 'Für Betty' was included on the German label Kompakt's 'Pop Ambient' (2014) compilation series and his solo music has also been previously released on recording labels 12k, Morr Music, Miasmah, Sonic Pieces and Ghostly International. Scott is also a freelance composer and sound recordist for film and television and recently appeared on the BBC program 'Springwatch Unsprung' recording aquatic wildlife and discussing his work with presenter Chris Packham. He has taught Music Technology and sound recording in Cambridgeshire and lectured at Cambridge University. In 2008 he established the KESH recording label, releasing global artists audio and visual projects and he has also collaborated on various projects with Taylor Deupree, Nils Frahm, Machinefabriek, The Sight Below, Isan and James Blackshaw." [label info] "There are people who know Simon Scott as member of the renown shoegazer band, Slowdive. I have, unfortunately, never got into their music during their reign (even now I can see Rafael Anton Irisarri glaring down at me for this comment). I have, however, come upon Simon Scott's music back in 2009, where, for the first time since his playing drums for Slowdive, he has ventured out to release a solo album. Since then, Scott's music appeared on many of my favorite labels, such as Miasmah, Low Point, Slaapwel, and even 12k. Scott also runs and releases on his very own imprint, Kesh Recordings. His latest full length, Insomni, lands courtesy of Ash International, a long running outlet for Mike Harding, who is already busy with curating releases for Touch. Insomni opens up with a slowly rising guitar strum slash drone slash noise, perfect as a soundtrack for my early morning walk, as I step out towards a lethargic and barely visible sun. The volume ascents with the climbing star, and soon envelopes every cell of my body. Gentle ambient soundscapes are intermixed with growling distortion, and it is this cocktail of dynamically opposing sonic vibrations that awakens my neurons, and a smile creeps in. The thunder eventually dissolves into a field recording of chirping birds, and Scott's guitar chords tell their story. Those awakened in the midst of night will recognize this texture of insomnia, mixed with fleeting thoughts within an empty chalice of a mind, and distant sounds of the universe unfolding on its own... all on its own... Couldn't sleep... arose to forage for sound. The hum of the fridge encouraged further investigation of hidden, domestic sounds; the fish tank, dvd player, a broken laptop... Dawn and morning light allowed more sound and the guitar, in its case, beckoned... From darkness to light… -Scott Insomni pursues its tale through a set of repetitious passages, shimmering light and lo-fi fabric. These are accented with environmental sounds (including the pickup of a cellular electromagnetic interference), wrapping this reverse lullaby into an organic aural pillow of music to wake up to. My favorite moment on the album enters with Scott playing his acoustic guitar (the press release credits a Guild 12-string D-125 and Vintage Guild six-string GF-25) - this is where Scott's talent as a multi-instrumentalist truly shines - it feels like Simon Scott is all this music, all these sounds, all this one. This is a beautiful record to add to your collection, and if you buy directly from the label you will receive two bonus tracks not available anywhere else. Highly recommended for fans of Rafael Anton Irisarri, William Basinski, Lawrence English and Christian Fennesz." [headphone commute] | 2015 | €15.00 |
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| SEAWORTHY + MATT RÖSNER | Two Lakes | CD | "In April 2010, 12k recording artist Seaworthy (the recording project of Cameron Webb) and Matt Rösner traveled to the south coast of New South Wales to undertake a detailed field recording study of two coastal lake ecosystems at the Lakes Meroo and Termeil. The aim of the project was to explore the sounds of a fragile coastal Australian environment and to build from those sounds unique musical pieces that provide a place for listener contemplation and reflection. Field recordings were taken from the lakes and surrounding beaches, forests and streams at different times of the day. Various equipment including a hydrophone, a shotgun and stereo microphones were used to capture the natural sounds of each lake. During breaks in field recording, the artists set up recording equipment in a nearby lakeside cabin. Using acoustic and electric guitars, a ukulele, and electronics, a series of improvised performances were documented. On the last day of the trip, with the experience of the recording process still fresh in mind, rough arrangements were created from the field recordings and improvised sets. Matt Rösner then took these arrangements back to his studio in Myalup -- a small coastal town on the opposite side of the Australian continent -- to mix and finalize the production. Both Rösner and Webb have been active in the Australian experimental music scene for over ten years, with a plethora of releases on local and international labels sharing a similar vision of molding found sounds and field recordings with traditional instrumentation and electronics. Aside from shared musical interest, both artists grew up in close connection with the Australian coastline, albeit on opposite sides of the continent. This connection with their landscape as a remote and diverse place is evident in the pieces created by the artists during their collaboration on the South Coast. Two Lakes marks the third full-length appearance for Seaworthy on 12k following 2006's Map In Hand and 2009's 1897 and blends his signature guitar style with the beautifully arranged field recordings and electronics of Matt Rösner. Two Lakes is a strikingly stark and lonely album undeniably influenced by the remote recording cabin and delicate Australian ecosystem. The blend of instrumentation comes off more like a natural, live duet between artist and nature than a modern-day layered recording. Webb's finger-picked acoustic guitar and ukelele play off of the sounds of wind, reeds and insects in perfect harmony, supported by soft beds of eBowed drones and careful electronic tones. Despite their human presence, Rösner and Webb manage to create music that resonates on another level, as if composed by the lakes themselves." [label info] www.12k.com | 2010 | €14.00 |
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| SEKTOR 304 | Soul Cleansing | CD | "In three decades, Industrial music, due to its tangible form, has given birth to numerous interpretations and splintered factions. What’s indisputable, is that most of what is actually defined as “industrial” has ultimately become more about entertainment than confrontation and far removed from the original intent. This is the context in which Sektor 304 has appeared. Equipped with a frightening and impressive array of primitive instrumentation pulled from junkyards and scrap metal heaps, this Portuguese outfit has delivered an astounding formal debut ¬ a heady mixture of truly old school industrial in the vein of Einsturzende Neubauten, Test Dept , and S.P.K, and the grinding, bass heavy dirge of vintage Swans and Godflesh. These are anthems to the past, but geared towards an apocalyptic and bleak future… a form of counter-culture using what is most evident in modern western society: the debris, the abandoned objects, the waste, the noise, and the interference. With a solid foundation of rusty, oil drenched percussion, Sektor 304 adds layer upon layer of squalling industrial clangor, hammering metallic noise, grimy atmospheres, heaving masses of haunted factory drones, and threatening tribal batter, with a strong and commanding vocal presence. The sound here is almost physical in nature - provocative, persistent, and demanding. An organic impulse filled with shamanic drifts in which the noise barrage allies itself with metallic rhythmics and the use of concrete elements in the compositions. Junk, plastics, amplified objects. A change of scale. A manipulation of non-musical sounds in search of visual inductions trying to bring forward the sequences of Tsukamoto or situations invoked by J.G. Ballard. The conflict between man and machine as a metaphor of the struggle of man against himself. A mix and weight of three decades of sonic subversion. It can be said that to find the future of music, one must look to the past, drawing influence from prior achievements, yet forging a new identity, and sculpting something completely unique and distinct. With Sektor 304, the future is now, and it’s not entertaining. In 6 panel digipak, mastered by Steel Hook Audio." [Malignant Records] "Epic crushing metallic industrial heaviness, the kind of thing we thought they just didn't make anymore, but this is total Swans / Godflesh / Cop Shoot Cop worship, pounding metallic percussion, soundscapes of whirring drills, blown out low slung bass, howled distorted vox, the whole thing so repetitive and mantric, thick slabs of distorted rumble wrapped around tons of damaged electronics, bleating horns buried beneath reverb drenched beats, some songs are full on walls of twisted electronic crunch, others are brooding, droning skeletal sprawls, laid over deep blurred basslines, and tribal rhythms, some are dense whorls of deeeeeep sinister black ambience, all darkly drifting layers, and distant bits of clang and shimmer. For a few moments here and there, the sound gets downright poppy, like some sort of washed out post industrial deathrock, but even then, it's shot through with a seriously menacing sonic undercurrent that seeps into every beat, and every note. Filthy, crusty, heavy, haunting, crushing and brutal, the perfect mix of old school industrial pound, and more modern bleak blackness. Fucking fierce and frightening, grim and punishing, and we're digging it like crazy." [Aquarius Records] | 2009 | €13.00 |
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| Subliminal Actions | CD | "The follow-up to the highly acclaimed Soul Cleansing CD finds Portugal's Sektor 304 expanding on all aspects of their debut, once again channeling the essence of the old school guardians (Test Dept, SPK, Crash Worship), while simultaneously exploring new, uncharted territory. Comparatively speaking, Subliminal Actions is a more complete and focused album, with an even better flow than Soul Cleansing and more attention paid to detail, unleashing a cacophonic whirlwind of buzz saw grind, loops, power tools, and scraping, junk metal debris, clashing head on with exertive tribal percussion, clanging oil barrel rhythms, and industrial clamor resonating over a sprawling, post apocalyptic wasteland. Some tracks, such as the opener, "A Carving on Metallic Flesh", heap on the scorching noise, while others, such as the resounding, rhythmic driven "By The Throat", "A Vessel of Guilt", or "Vultures" are delivered with factory-line precision, laced with grimy layers of bass-heavy dirge, bleak, reverbed squall, and distortion filled, atmospheric drone. Among the many highlights, is the albums closer, "A Prismatic Sun", a 10 + minute epic excursion into a nightmarish world, populated by whispered vocals and uneasy drift that slowly rises and grows in intensity, climaxing into a blissfully dark and sweaty orgy of low slung bass, ominous, ceremonial drumming, and suffocating darkness. Subliminal Action not only compliments Soul Cleansing, but takes the Sektor 304 sound to new heights, delivering yet striking record sure to solidify their standing as one of premier, truly industrial acts in operation today. 10 tracks, 63 min., in 6 panel digipak, mastered by James Plotkin." [label info] www.malignantrecords.com http://soundcloud.com/malignantrecords/sets/subliminal-actions-by-sektor | 2011 | €12.00 |
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| SERRIES, DIRK | Microphonics XXI-XXV | do-10inch & CD | "with the conclusion of other remaining projects and collaborations, there’s no focus other than dirk serries’ ongoing exploration of minimalism. four years in the making and undoubtly fuelled by his 2009 debut and previous mainstays vidnaObmana and fear falls burning, this second microphonics studio album is a heartbreaking symphony of echoing themes, wailing overtones and beautiful desolation. microphonics xxi-xxv, subtitled ‘mounting among the waves, there’s a light in vein. the burden of hope across thousands of rivers’ does hint towards an emotional statement, one that boldly goes beyond what previously achieved. microphonics xxi-xxv will be out on march 16, as a limited edition double 10inch in a numbered gatefold sleeve (150 copies on white vinyl, 300 copies on black vinyl), complete with a cd copy of the album, and a cd in a deluxe mini album gatefold sleeve." [label info] www.tonefloat.com "At the end of 2008 microphonics I - V saw the daylight. Time has come for Dirk Serries to play music under his own name and say good-bye to his alter-egos vidnaObmana and Fear Falls Burning. The design of that album was minimalist in structure. Quiet guitar patterns built up and flowed away and a calm, meditative ambient atmosphere with adventurous harmony was created. Five live albums and a 10 " were released at Tonefloat. Meanwhile appeared the last album of Fear Falls Burning, what can be called a stunning album, which led to an acoustic aftershock of an era ended. For more than four years later arrived the second studio album by the musical project microphonics, microphonics XXI - XXV with the subtitles Mounting among the waves, There's a light in vein, The burden of hope and Across thousands of rivers, which are the titles of the four tracks on the album. Elements of Fear Falls Burning, vidnaObmana and of course microphonics can be found in the compositions. The sound of the guitar is dirtier, unpolished, seeking feedback and underneath the many layers of repeating sounds in which Serries is a master. The discrepancy between the heavy bass lines, distorted guitars, layered chords and delicate strumming seek each other, collide and blend together. Cheerfulness is hard to find in this album. It is true quest in which somewhere hope flickers. In this way the album ends with open chords and a rolling drone. The album is a pleasant surprise twist in the microphonics project, in which the ambient atmosphere reigned supreme. The double 10?is coming out with a book of city photography of Martina Verhoeven, the partner Dirk Serries. She plays bass in 3 Seconds or Air (a side project of Dirk Serries) and is responsible for the cover photography of Serries. The photography of the book, I haven?t view it yet, but given the pictures I've seen her before, it will be aesthetically pleasing and appropriate to the album. Often there is a desolate atmosphere in carefully composed black and white photos. Tonefloat knows to release another wonderful compilation of image and sound, which is a delight for the eyes and ears."(JKH/Vital Weekly] | 2013 | €27.50 |
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| SHALABI EFFECT | Unfortunately | CD | "This fourth and latest offering was recorded over 3 evenings during the band's recent residency at the Montreal Interculture Institute. It truly represents the band's appetite for experimentation & their desire to keep things interesting for their fans. At times epic and challenging, perhaps like a secret collaboration between Fly Pan Am & Acid Mothers Temple." [label info] www.alien8recordings.com | 2005 | €13.00 |
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| SHEFFIELD, COLIN ANDREW | Signatures | CD | Mit einer etwas andere Art von "Plunderphonics" sticht C.A. SHEFFIELD auf "Signatures" hervor; seine vier Stücke sind feinst gesponnene Drones, die aus Extrakten von alten Grammophon-Platten gewonnen wurden. Auf diesen befanden sich, dem Labelkonzept von INVISIBLE BIRDS gemäss, Vogelgesänge und weitere Natursounds (was man den stark transformierten Drones allenfalls noch als subtile organische Aura anmerkt). Sehr sanft und kontemplativ auf den Punkt gedroned, beim letzten Stück epische Ausmaße annehmend... "these pieces were composed without the use of a computer, only a turntable, old sampler and a portable 64-track digital workstation. each track is a distillation of commercially available recordings with the essential qualities remaining, only very brief sections are selected and the raw components then contracted into gradually shifting and unfolding atmospheres, offering subtle nuances and quiet restraint. fragments from these tracks include sounds from birds or water, some being partially obscured while others are veiled references to those elements. in "broken light," the low rumbling that appears at the beginning and for the first few minutes is the sound of birds' wings flapping upon takeoff)." [label info] "this is the second release by a new label called invisible birds. their first release was m. swizynski's 'films 2007' we reviewed in vital weekly 625, although it didn't mention this as a label. the label focuses itself on releasing 'limited edition cds and dvds evocative of birds and the landscapes they inhabit', which i think is a very nice selection method for incoming demo's. colin andrew sheffield might better known from the releases on his own label, elevator bath, for which he released cdrs and a cd. his 'signatures' cd has its official release december 10th 2008, the 100th birthday of olivier messiaen, another lover of birds and music (probably in that order). sheffield uses a turntable, old sampler and a 'portable 64-track digital workstation' and no computer on these recordings. on the turntable lies records of nature sounds, birds and water, of which sheffield carefully selects fragments to sample and layer on his ancient workstation. if you staple enough sounds on top of eachother, then have them slightly out of sync, one can create beautiful drone music, and that's exactly what sheffield does here. the first three tracks are nice, but it will turn out they are exercises for what is to come: 'breath of day', the fourth and final epic of this, with gramophone hiss and organ like sounds, being stretched out over the course of the twenty-seven minutes this lasts. a true beauty, in all its simplicity. sometimes the simplest things is enough to get things done. the previous tracks, which lay out what sheffield wants, eventually, are great too, but aren't of the same beauty as the last one. if it would have been just the first three i would have been equally enthusiastic about this, now i'm probably ecstatic. great cd." [FdW/Vital Weekly] www.invisiblebirds.org | 2009 | €13.00 |
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| Serenade | LP | The twelve jagged audio collages found on Colin Andrew Sheffield's "Serenade" shift from blurry abstractions to choppy sound art to mournful plundered passages, always with the singular stylistic approach the composer has developed over the last 25+ years of activity. As the follow-up to his previous full-length release, the critically acclaimed "Images" (2023), "Serenade" picks up where that album left off, although with an expanded sonic palette of funk, soul, jazz, and library records as his primary sources. Of course, the finished work bears little resemblance to the original components as Sheffield opts to draw out the mystery and minutiae from his building blocks rather than simply rearrange the chosen snippets. In these dense new compositions, hidden details come into relief as loops develop and morph while elusive melodies emerge from the mist before vanishing into thin air. From the beginning stages in which samples were gathered, until the final product was at last completed, Sheffield spent around eighteen months stitching together the tracks for "Serenade". Rather than sounding labored or stale, however, much of the record has a kind of ramshackle quality about it, with a DIY aesthetic at its heart. The characteristic looseness of these pieces could be attributed to Sheffield's use of vintage sampling hardware, but the presence of imperfect loops and rough textures was both a conscious decision and an inevitable part of his distinctive creative process. Ultimately "Serenade" is a collection of miniatures exploring Sheffield's interest in bending found sounds to his will, in creating a certain ambiance of open-ended intrigue, and thereby describing a hazy landscape — one perhaps flecked with distant clouds and obscure lights in the sky: a paean for the inexplicable. Recorded at home in Austin, July 2023 - December 2024 All sounds derived from various commercially available sources Mastered by Stephan Mathieu Lacquer cut by Andreas Lubich Photography by Adam Pacione Layout by Colin Sheffield https://colinandrewsheffield.bandcamp.com/album/serenade "Strings swell up from the bottom of a dark pool of water, drones vibrate like the hull of a doomed cargo plane, the ghosts of ghosts walk in circles across sheet-metal… he conjures these scenes and more like them here." — Matt Korvette, Yellow Green Red | 2025 | €22.50 |
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| SHEFFIELD, COLIN ANDREW / JAMES ECK RIPPIE | Essential Anomalies | do-LP | Colin Andrew Sheffield (sampler) and James Eck Rippie (turntables) began playing music together in Dallas, Texas in 2000 and released their debut LP, "Variations," a year later. They separated soon afterwards, relocating to cities 2,600 miles apart; and though they continued with solo work, they remained inactive as a duo until recently. During this hiatus, Sheffield stayed busy dealing antiquarian books and running his Elevator Bath label; Rippie became an accomplished sound mixer for major motion pictures and television shows. And yet the collaboration between these two friends of a quarter century has always held a special significance (as Francois Couture of AllMusic stated: "The level of understanding between [these two artists] ... commands respect"). So, in 2015, when the two found themselves both living in Austin, a reactivation of their improvising duo was a happy inevitability. "Essential Anatomies" is the fruit of the pair's renewed efforts. Comprising four pieces originally issued on limited edition cassettes and now widely available for the first time, the double LP is an experiment in audio collage and instant narrative composition. The main tools are sounds from the past: commercially available recordings manipulated and sculpted into a medium with inherent potential. Unlike their plunderphonic ancestors and contemporaries, however, Sheffield and Rippie place a heavy emphasis on atmosphere and a kind of musicality. Their work is surprising and challenging, but it is infused with their keen sense of structure and listenability. Elements of sound art, drone, glitch, and noise emerge from their altered samples. These sounds have been stripped of any extraneous cumbrances, leaving just the crucial components. The parts that remain, the essential anatomies, form the basis for an ongoing abstract dialogue between two artists with a remarkably developed affinity. The results capture dual streams of consciousness, coursing with a description of nonrepresentational beauty. "[B]est described as abstract plunderphonics. Sheffield and Rippie use samplers and turntables to sculpt the past into new forms that defy instant categorization; suffice it to say that the old has never sounded so new." - Richard Allen, A Closer Listen "Essential Anatomies" has been released by Elevator Bath as a limited edition double LP, copies of which are also available here: www.elevatorbath.com Mastered for vinyl by James Plotkin Cover art by Eugenia Loli credits released July 7, 2017 Colin Andrew Sheffield (b. 1976, El Paso TX) is the founder of the Elevator Bath recording label. He has released a number of solo recordings on labels such as Invisible Birds, Mystery Sea, Quiet World, and 23five. James Eck Rippie (b. 1977) is a visual/sound artist originally from outside Nashville TN. His recorded work has been as a turntablist, but he has also worked extensively with other instruments and mediums. He has released his work with the Crónica Electronica and Sirr labels, among others, and has collaborated with sound artists Simon Whetham, Paulo Raposo, and eRikm. Sheffield and Rippie will tour the US this summer. elevatorbath.bandcamp.com/album/essential- anatomies-3 "Compiling recent small-run cassette works into a luxurious double record set, Essential Anatomies represents a reunion for the duo of Colin Andrew Sheffield and James Eck Rippie. Collaborators since 2000 and friends for even longer, the four lengthy recordings here capture their Texas reunion in 2015, and with its undeniable sense of complexity and cohesion, makes it clear that they have not missed a step from their time apart. On paper, what Sheffield and Rippie do is well-trod ground: processing and recontexualization of samples and other forms of pre-recorded music. But rather than being another pair of John Oswald wannabes, they do so with distinct expertise and precision. To use a slightly abstract metaphor, they are much closer to Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad production, taking bits here and there and using them as elements in a much different whole, than they are Puff Daddy’s wholesale plagiarism and lack of innovation. The first of the four lengthy pieces (each around 22 to 23 minutes long) is an instant launch into the gloom that is Essential Anatomies. Chilling, piano like scrapes cut through a blackened, churning abyss of sound. Some shrill, sharp bits pierce through the darkness here and there, but the piece largely stays pleasant, even though it is rather bleak and covered in a nicely noisy sheen of fuzz. Tortured, almost melodic tones occasionally shine through a wall of ghostly drifts and heavy rumbles, at times heading toward a bit of harsh crunch, but stays in check. The melodies appear here and there again, acting as a slightly less oppressive counterpoint to the sound of decay that surrounds it. Finally, the duo end the piece on a lighter note, like sun shining through menacing gray skies. What is abundantly clear right from this start is that Sheffield and Rippie are not only extremely proficient at creating moods and space with their samplers and turntables (respectively), but also a creating dynamic compositions that are quite expansive and varied, changing often but returning to reoccurring motifs that results in a more composed, rather than improvised sound. The second piece allows a bit more of their source material to shine through, mostly in the form of piano notes and what sounds like frozen reverberations of chimes far in the distance. There is the same sense of space, but erratic loops and mangled notes result in a composition that builds in tension, eventually transitioning into haunting church organ like walls that dominate the latter half of the piece. Comparably, the second record comes across a bit less melodic and a bit more textural in the composition and structure. Part three begins with an almost percussive, crunching machinery like opening that is eventually melded with a batch of wet, almost organic like noises and radio static. Bits of recognizable music still sneak through here and there, but it is less the focus. Instead, metallic sweeps and unnatural field recording like sounds fill out the mix, though it ends on a slightly more ambient note. The final composition first is free and spacious, with some crackling tactile like elements at first, but soon it takes on a decaying sound. More organ and mangled string fanfares give a more conventional signpost here and there, but by the end the duo has already transitioned the sound to one of tension and fright, slowly evolving into an uncomfortable silence to end the record. While I do not believe I could ever manage to place the source of the sounds Colin Andrew Sheffield and James Eck Rippie utilized in making Essential Anatomies, never does it feel like the two overly processed or from their source. Meaning that, there is some of the original character left from the source material, however subtle it may be. Instead these audio building blocks are obscured but tastefully utilized to construct these atmosphere heavy works. Rippie’s day job is a sound mixer for films and television shows, which surely aided the two in creating the cinematic mood that these two records conjure up. It is that combination of sonic nuance and compositional strength and diversity that make Essential Anatomies so good." [Creaig Dunton/Brainwashed] | 2017 | €25.00 |
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| Exploded View | mCD (Minimax) | "Ah, a minimax CD! I haven't seen one of those in quite some time. And if you are wondering what it is, a minimax CD is a CD with a small portion of music, usually, twenty-three minutes (but I know of instances were they are thirty) and the rest of the disc is transparent, which give a great effect for design. Elevator Bath goes to town with a fine digipack around it. It begs, of course, the question: why not a proper full-length release? We aren't told but for some reason, Colin Andrew Sheffield and James Eck Rippie found their piece of enough interest to stand by itself. These two musicians have been going for some time and in recent years have been working together quite a bit, culminating in releases together. They use turntables, samples and processing. Earlier this week, in a private conversation with a friend of mine I was complaining about turntablism, which is something that I don't care too much about. Mainly because of its rotating aspect, making a lot of sounds the same; even if you decide to play sandpaper. In the case of Sheffield and Rippie, that aspect is luckily not there. I would believe they pick up the sounds from the turntable and give it the good twice over in the sampler and whatever else they use for processing (be it analogue or digital) and the results are used in a nineteen-minute montage/collage of modern musique concrete. It has that great vibrant feeling of things buzzing, sparkling and flying about, sometimes staying in a place for a short time, sometimes a bit longer, but new elements are carried in, bashed on their heads and before you know melted down in the microwave into a nasty drone. There is quite a bit of dynamics in there, obviously, I would say as these men know their trade quite well, and that begs the question again: why not a bit more? Please?" [FdW/Vital Weekly] https://sheffieldrippie.bandcamp.com/album/exploded-view | 2019 | €7.50 |
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| SHIFTS | Vertonen 16 | CD-R | “In a edition of 100 copies EE Tapes offers a new CDR by Shifts, a side-soloproject of Frans de Waard. He started this project in 1995 and defines it as an "ongoing exploration in the world of guitars". 'Vertonen 16' being his 16th step in this research I suppose, results in one lengthy ambient piece lasting some 33 minutes. In order to describe the experience of listening to this music I would like to make the following comparison. Imagine yourself looking at a very abstract painiting. A painting even more abstract then the painting (by Frans de Waard) that is on the cover of this release. Imagine a square painted smoothly in just one colour. After concentrating at it for some time, it is as if 'things' start to move and to flow in the painting. Of course you know you are imagining it, but on the other hand, it looks as if things really start to move. Listening to the new Shifts CDR is a similar experience. We hear just 'one' sound moving slowly ahead with no shifts at all for about half an hour. Because there are no shifts, it's not correct to say that the piece 'moves'. In a way development, progress and even duration are no fitting concepts here. It's a very static and 'timeless' music. But by listening closely to the piece it starts to reveal many little changes at a microscopic level and within a very limited range. You start to ask yourself whether these changes are real or effected in the mind like the moving of the colours. So you end up in an ambigious soundworld and that's an interesting experience. Also an enjoyable one, because de Waard created some nice rich sounds that didn't bore me at all. So whether imagined or real, in the end this is not relevant. Because one way or the other: it really Shifts!” [Vital Weekly] | 2004 | €9.00 |
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| SHOEMAKER, MATT | Isolated Agent Stranding Behaviour | pic-LP | "Elevator Bath's ongoing series of picture disc LPs (each record being adorned with full-color artwork by the recording artist) continues with Matt Shoemaker's debut appearance on vinyl: An enigmatic pairing of new recordings with appropriately cryptic artwork. Much of Shoemaker's recorded output prominently features the use of field recordings (see his Tropical Amnesia One CD), but in this case he has eschewed such grounded measures and has instead sculpted a two-part puzzle which seemingly exists on some other plane(t). Layer upon evolving layer of sonic phenomena is still the methodological trademark, but the content is almost entirely electronic, lending a great deal of vivid color to a description of blackest space. The two works presented here are powerfully mysterious, unsettling examples of Matt Shoemaker's prowess as a composer of details, of moods and tenses. The improbably relevant artwork for this picture disc consists of two collages utilizing Shoemaker's own hand-dyed paper. The images, as well as their meanings, are essentially abstract and yet remarkably familiar. On the A side, the Isolated Agent scuttles in a circular motion, forever locked in an endless search for the unknown element. The B side depicts the constant retreat, the Stranding Behavior inevitably resulting in/from confusion. "You realize what you are implying? That we owe our human condition here to the intervention of insects." Matt Shoemaker's music has been released by such labels as Trente Oiseaux, The Helen Scarsdale Agency, and Ferns Recordings. He resides in Seattle. This picture disc LP has been released in an edition of 233 copies. Total running time: 30 minutes" [label info] www.elevatorbath.com "The other record is by Matt Shoemaker, who seems to be always present, with his regular releases on labels as Ferns and The Helen Scarsdale Agency. His work recently shifted a bit more towards that of working with field recordings, but on this LP it all seems to be electronic again. I have no idea wether these are the result computers working overtime or meters and meters of cable connecting one synthesizer to another, and once connected start playing themselves, almost, as it were. Shoemaker layers the results of whatever process he applies on a multitude of tracks and does some highly creative mixing with those sounds. Highy atmospheric (obviously! I'd say) of course, but Shoemaker's work is also a bit more experimental than the usual drone minds (UK, USA, otherwise). Shoemaker knows how to put in a strange angle in his work, that makes it just a bit different than the ordinary drone record. Partly based in the seventies cosmic tradition, partly drone and partly serious avant-garde, but with a long, stretched time signature. Great record." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2010 | €17.50 |
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| SIAMGDA | Re-Born | CD | https://ant-zen.bandcamp.com/album/re-born 'birth is not a beginning; death is not an end.' - chuang tzu buddhists, hindus, jains and taoists all believe in an endless circle of life and death. according to their karma (past and present actions), all beings are reborn into a better or worse next life. only an 'awakened one', a buddha, who sees transcendental truth as it is, can break free from this vicious circle of existence and enter nirvana, becoming conscious of and melting into our real essence. the aspects of this rebirth became the principal topic of siamgda's seventh release. 're-born' is probably siamgda's most beat-oriented album so far which will surprise newcomers as well as veterans of marc fischer's work. It’s filled with fresh ideas and unexpected side-trips into new musical directions. predominant technoid rhythm pulses and percussive loops blended with distinctive ethnic sound textures, electronic sequencer lines and haunting vocals result in gripping tracks of power and beauty. never before in siamgda's sonic evolution have trance and circumspection been so perfectly combined - this is advanced rhythmic industrial noise par excellence for mind and body. more releases of siamgda: mailorder.ant-zen.com/products/band/id/1244 bandcamp... mehr Mitwirkende veröffentlicht am 5. September 2016 written and produced by marc fischer. recorded between 2015 & 2016 in india & nepal. mastered by eric van wonterghem at prodam, berlin. photography by marc fischer. layout by stefan alt. | 2016 | €8.50 |
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| SILK SAW | Imaginary Landscapes | CD | "After 9 years of silence, here’s the 11th album from the unclassifiable Brussels-based duo. With their usual tamping drums (just mention the two parts of “The Decision to Exist” or “Same Area”, led by a ferocious 808), a regular bass guitar hammering, some bare minimum poor voices, threatened violins, skinbound flute and oboe here and there, a distorted furious piano everywhere and finally some tiny cautious optimism (the extra-human guitar in “Enough Slaps”), the whole is carefully assembled in order to obtain an accurate picture of life on Earth. “Pain” and “Pleasure” are different aspects of the same mental construction." [label info] www.kotaerecords.com | 2015 | €13.00 |
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| Parallel Landscapes | LP | "Limited edition of 300 copies with unique artwork made by Russian street artist (Grisha), which were carefully adapted to sleeve design by Mikhail Myasoedov. The vinyl LP contains 4 selected tracks from the full 8-track album. After 9 years of silence, here’s the 11th album from the unclassifiable Brussels-based duo. With their usual tamping drums (just mention the two parts of “The Decision to Exist” or “Same Area”, led by a ferocious 808), a regular bass guitar hammering, some bare minimum poor voices, threatened violins, skinbound flute and oboe here and there, a distorted furious piano everywhere and finally some tiny cautious optimism (the extra-human guitar in “Enough Slaps”), the whole is carefully assembled in order to obtain an accurate picture of life on Earth. “Pain” and “Pleasure” are different aspects of the same mental construction." [label info] www.kotaerecords.com | 2015 | €18.00 |
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| SILVER MOUNT ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA & TRA-LA-LA-BAND | Born into Trouble as the Sparks fly upward | CD | The second Silver Mt Zion album featured an expanded band, with a similarly expanded band name. The addition of cello, second violin and second guitar allowed SMZ to develop richer, denser arrangements while preserving live ensemble playing. The opening instrumental pieces picked up where the debut left off, with found-sound loops and treatments introducing repeated melodic themes that move slowly through various counter-melodies — the greater breadth of instrumentation brought extra subtlety, complexity and harmonic range to bear on these neo-classical dirges. Guitars and vocals moved to the fore on the album’s centerpiece tracks. “Take These Hands And Throw Them In The River” is an astounding juxtaposition of rhythmic thrust and ricocheting vocals, driven by a battered lyrical paranoia that conjures equal parts fear and rage. The calm after this storming piece comes by way of another vocal tune, this time fragile and near-whispered, with dual lines that alternately mask and reinforce each other. A piano and cello interlude prefaces the last side of the record, which features two guitar-driven songs, the first a blazing rock piece that builds to an exuberant distorted climax, the second as close to a pop masterpiece as this band is likely to craft, highlighted by a lovely arpeggio guitar riff and the defiant refrain “musicians are cowards”. While remaining anchored in an underlying sadness and mourning over this failed world, this album reveals an angrier, more urgent face as this unique ensemble charted ever-widening sonic and emotional terrain. PERSONNEL Beckie: cello Efrim: guitar, piano, tapes, effects, voice Ian: guitar, organ Jessica: violin, voice Sophie: violin, voice Thierry: contrabass, voice GUESTS Jonah Fortune: trumpet, trombone on TRACK 7 Eric Craven: drums Mischa and Sasha: voices Recorded at thee mighty Hotel2Tango in Montreal by Howard Bilerman. Mastered by Harris Newman. theesilvermtzion.bandcamp.com/album/born-into-trouble-as-the-sparks-fly-upward | 2001 | €10.00 |
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| SILVERMAN | Blank for your own Message | CD | "Available late Feb. 2008. First ed. of 500 copies in a full color book bound case. Silverman should be given a degree in bio-melodics. This most recent body of collaged constructions pulsates with aspects of a living system. Slurred drones rush sonic corpuscles through electronic capillaries, imparting breath to each track. An obscured, parenthetical heart beat occasionally comes through as an unexpectedly metallic panging in the background, mostly drowned out by the fluid dynamics of localized subsystems playing out their various vital functions. Perhaps each one of us DOES sound a little like a Javanese gamelan orchestra inside if you hit the right spot. Cutting to find out is not advocated. Silverman’s fantastic voyage sounds like a spiritual dissertation on degrees of scale. The musical camera obscura sometimes finds purchase on an atomic level, aurally zooming into the humming orbits of individual atoms and even creeping up on the sounds of the electrons, protons and neutrons themselves. With this beautifully ambient series of orchestral maneuvers in the dark, Silverman may have found a tonal replacement for Gray’s Anatomy." [label info] "The Silverman aka Phil Knight is one of my favorite musicians in the experimental ambient/drone scene. Over the past decennium he has been responsible for some of the most beautiful ambient/meditative music I've ever heard. His previous LP/CD for BLRR Nature Of Illusion is one of the best albums in this genre I have heard in many-a-year. The Silverman's solo albums have always been slightly overshadowed by his work for the Legendary Pink Dots. This is a shame, as his solo work deserves a place of its own. Perhaps this new CD Blank For Your Own Message will do the trick. Starting off life as a "zen-opera" in seven parts, the music here is more varied than Nature Of Illusion. BLRR drops the term "bio-melodics". For once I have to agree. This actually fits the music and the world of The Silverman. Although the music has seven parts, the 43 minutes that make up this album are programmed into one track. It is hard to tell the origin of some of the sounds; there are traffic tapes and acoustic sounds (percussion, cow bells) of a more ethnical nature, all mixed up with synthetic sounds. These combined make up a very strong album. Packed in one of those typical BLRR deluxe hard-carton sleeves, this is a great addition to the already great discography of The Silverman." [FK / Vital Weekly] www.blrrecords.com | 2008 | €15.00 |
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| SION ORGON | Dust | LP | Limited edition 12' Vinyl. Sion Orgon's 5th album featuring Thighpaulsandra, Richard Johnson, Claudio Gian and many other guests. or a number of years now, Sion Orgon has been crafting music that fuses abstract electronic mulch with the kind of bright melodies one would expect from a shiny pop group. Using avant-garde sensibilities and a vision partly shaped by his affiliation with both Thighpaulsandra and Coil, the Welsh producer/musician has never been afraid to push these into areas most artists of a similar disposition would never be bold enough to touch. At once catchy, psychedelic, filmic and disturbed, Sion Orgon's work has a very distinctive feel to it that only arrives from a craftsman firmly locked on to his own path. 'Dust' is the very latest collection of work, comprising six new tracks featuring Thighpaulsandra (Coil, Spiritualised, Julian Cope) on half of them and a number of other guests, including Claudio Gian, Lara Ward and Richard Johnson (Splintered, Theme). Somewhere amongst the many convoluted folds of often weird 'n' wonderful sounds are texts spoken by a number of random Finnish and Latvian people, further enhancing the multi-dimensional stealth attack of any one of the songs presented here. Like, again, his regular collaborator Thighpaulsandra's work, Sion's is enmeshed in rich layers and tangents so disparate they'd never make sense in anybody else's hands, and despite the countless such claims put forward by those essentially creating music permanently stuck in first gear this truly is aimed at those who demand far more from their listening experience. Limited to 300. https://sionorgon.bandcamp.com/album/dust "Welsh man Sion Orgon was always somewhere on the wider boarder of my radar due his regular involvement with Thighpaulsandra and also occasionality with Peter Christopherson of Coil. Supporting his artist career as Sound Designer, Studio Technician and Music Producer for Film, Theatre and Animation this is actually his 5th solo album. "Dust" was first published as limited Vinyl LP (300 copies only) via Lumberton Trading Co. last Autumn and is now also available as CD with identical tracklisting. Honestly I didn't expect him to be such an stylistic versatile musician - within these 6 tracks he moves seamlessly from noisy indie rock, abstract ambient to and back, with a grand finale of heartfelt and moving psychedelic rock. Starting with "Spat Out Of Dust", co-written and featuring Richard Johnson of Splintered he immediately catches your attention with a relentless beat and guitar pushing forward the cynic vocals until it fades organically into an open structure. After this track which reminds me positively of current Ministry "Ornament Centipode" is a dramatic soundtrack-ish piece, musique concrete with an experimental and psychedelic edge. Besides it's also one of the three tracks featuring Thighpaulsandra on modular synthesizers. Followed by "Head Bomb" the setted mood continues at first but steadily gains intensity until a psychotic rage can be imagined which is lived out to the fullest. Supported only by Claudio Gian on Bass and Chey Davis on Percussion & field recordings Sion Orgon leaves no nerves untouched here. 'Who Do You Think You Are?' (co-written by Thighpaulsandra) gets back into indie-rock post punk mood with dramatic interferences, a switch suddenly into melodic progressive metal excursions and backwards into field recordings filled post punk deserts. "Disintegration" is the straightest alternative rock song imaginable here, paired with a hip-hop beat and surprising merciless vocals. This one leaves me puzzled, an outburst of energy to be resolved only through the final epic "The Mouth That Has No Face" which is an astonishing homage to early psychedelic rock, light-hearted, playful and even with a catchy melodic refrain before it slowly fades into field recordings which leave you at peace with the world. While this release basically lasts only 6 tracks in barely 40 Minutes it really kicks ass, ashes and dust at once." [CHAIN D.L.K.] | 2021 | €20.00 |
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| SKULLFLOWER | Kino IV: Black Sun Rising | CD | "Rounds up the first three 7" releases on Shock, Majora and Forced Exposure, the bonus track from The Portable Altamont (1991) compilation, plus six previously-unreleased tracks, including three from the Xaman sessions. A disc of total rock! Finally available, after almost two years of driving Dirter & Shock to the brink of insanity -- a massive 4CD retrospective of Skullflower's early works from 1986-1990, featuring all the material previously released on Broken Flag, Shock, Majora and Forced Exposure, plus around two hours of previously-unheard music -- 14 tracks spread across the series. And this is not "out-take" dross used to fill up CDs, this is essential early Skullflower providing further insight into their uniquely twisted musical world. All material has been digitally mastered by Richard Whittaker at FX, and each CD comes in a deluxe gatefold card cover and inner sleeve with newly-unearthed artwork by Matthew. Booklets feature extensive notes and previously-unseen flyers, posters and photos." [label info] www.dirter.co.uk "This long in the works reissue campaign has had aQ staff and aQ customer Skullflower nerds freaking the fuck out. Four, count, em FOUR reissued rarities! On the last list, we reviewed reissues of both Skullflower's very first 12"ep Birthdeath, and their first proper full length Form Destroyer, both absolute psychedelic noise rock crushers. But that was only the beginning. Since most Skullflower fans were already super familiar with those records anyway, it was more a chance to revisit, as well as preach the gospel of early Skullflower to the uninitiated. But it's the other two reissues that might be the most thrilling. Elsewhere on this week's list, you'll find a review of Xaman, Skullflower's 1990 second album, one that due to a manufacturing defect found most copies eventually rendered unplayable, and thus essentially unheard for decades. And then there's this one, a singles comp, hopefully the first of many, gathering up three different singles, originally released on Majora, Forced Exposure and Shock, and the crazy thing is, even the Skullflower freeks here, had only ever actually heard ONE of em! So that alone made this totally essential. But in addition to those singles, there are also SIX previously unreleased tracks, as well as Skullflower's three contributions to The Portable Altamont compilation (which also featured such noisy luminaries as Coil, Current 93, Nurse With Wound, and Drunks With Guns), all of which add up to some of the filthiest, noisiest, most pummeling, tranced out, knuckle dragging, psychedelic krautrock-style dirgery you've every heard. Cuz really, for all the skree and crunch, all the noisy churn and caveman pummel, most early Skullflower jams are stretched out hypnorock sprawls, albeit constructed from crumbling superdistorted bass, wild tangles of angular melody and shards of noise guitar skree, and some surprisingly motorik drum bashing... The only one of the three reissues that's sort of new, begins with the weird choice of starting not with any of the previously released 7" tracks, but instead, a double shot of unreleased rarities, the opener "Night Tripper" as good as anything SF was doing at the time, squalls of feedback, thick, blown out riffage, damaged drumming, yowled, buried in the mix vox, super murky and hypnotic, which leads right into "Kasso's Blues", which is loping and lumbering, a sort of detuned atonal main riff, and some garbled vox wrapped around tribal beats make it sound like some super obscure, super wasted Butthole Surfers jam. The aforementioned single, the only one we HAD heard, is the "Rift / Avalanche" single on Majora, and it's some of our favorite Skullflower, smoldering, brooding, dirgey, but sorta dreamy, a locked minimal rhythm, buried vocals, and then long arced tones, super mesmerizing and so epic, the 'flipside' though is a wild nois drenched heavy psych freakout that looks forward to groups like Rusted Shut. The Forced Exposure single delivers one part noisy Dead C style plod rock freakout, and one part billowing psychedelic space out, while the Shock single is super swaggery and dirgey, the recording muted and murky, total cave like rehearsal style sound, but it suits them, the second half getting downright rocking. After that, there's the awesomely titled "Bo Diddley's Shitpump" , which might be the most bloozy of the bunch, as is hinted at by the title, but it's more like Pussy Galore style blues, tangled up with some Swans and some Hawkwind, and with a hint of mutated AmRep style bash and howl. "Against Everything (A Guide To Canine Foreskin Retraction)" sounds like a Crash Worship record on Shock, wild dense tribal drumming, wreathed in a cloud of flanged shimmer, wah wah splatter and spidery tendrils of tangled guitar melody, and girded by some strange industrial whirring buried in the mix. "March Of The Lemmings" is all garage blooz swagger, with echo drenched vocals and a thick chugging main riff, even some bleating horns, everything dubbed to high heaven, and then wrapped in a spider web of noise guitar skree, and finally closer "The Punk Rock Song" is about as punky OR poppy as SF get, but they manage to fuck it all up and douse it in just enough noise to keep it interesting... Holy shit, so much amazing, twisted, noisy sonic genius. As far as we're concerned all four of these Skullflower reissues should have /could have been Records Of The Week, but forced to pick one, t had to be Black Sun Rising. But seriously, who are we fooling, you NEED all four!!! Nice packaging too, mini gatefolds, printed inner sleeves, and a booklet with reproductions of the original 7" covers." [Aquarius Records] | 2013 | €15.00 |
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| SKY BURIAL | Chapel Image | CD | Sky Burial’s fourteenth full-length recording marks a return to ‘epic’ length compositions fea-turing a single track spanning the length of the release. Firmly rooted in the kosmische ethos, ‘Chapel Image’ is a constantly shifting journey through the nebulous depths of drone and dark ambience with full-immersion being just held at bay by the uneasy dichotomy of low and high frequencies and punctuation of rhythmic and industrial elements. Comes in digipack limited to 300 copies. Note from the mastering studio: “Based in drone, Chapel Image encompasses the listener in abroad stereo field, engulfing you in so-und while elements play back and forth in the stereo mix. You can mention haunting or ethereal but this doesn't serve to define the full range or feel of the entire 45 minute piece. The mood changes throughout shifting from beautiful bell tones and diving into industrial dirges. It's not a recording that sits still for any time. It does repeat some themes eventually revisiting to the bell tones and reverb soaked synth tones or occasional rhythm, but the variation is paced and it paves the way for the liste-ner moving them along with the track.” –Chris Goudreau, Ninth Circle Studios Sky Burial is Michael Page, a visual and sound artist living on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. After several years recording and touring in the power electronics/industrial/noise genre as Fire in the Head, Michael formed Sky Burial in 2006 as an outlet to explore the ambient side of industrial music, often citing esoteric, literary, esoteric, metaphysical and mythological subject matter as a muse. Much like the Tibetan ritual from which the project takes its name, Michael chose to work under the Sky Burial moniker as an act of freeing himself from artistic confines, providing an unfettered route for sonic expression and experimentation. Although initially inspired by early industrial music projects and electronic/ambient/kosmische acts of the 70's & 80's, the music of Sky Burial continues to evolve and blur genre boundaries. Michael has released over 50 recordings since 2004 under various monikers and has collaborated on his releases with Mark Spybey (Download/Dead Voice on Air/Zoviet France), Nik Turner (Hawkwind), Jarboe (ex-Swans), Anni Hogan (ex-Marc Almond), Troum, Danny Hyde (Coil), Nigel Ayers (Nocturnal Emissions), Bridget Wishart (Hawkwind), Johann Eiriksson (Reptilicus, Gjöll), Nick Blinko (Rudimentary Peni), Gee Vaucher (Crass) as well as production assistance from James Plotkin (Khanate) and Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu). www.wrotycz.com | 2017 | €12.00 |
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| SMALL CRUEL PARTY |
(before the dream...)
(SOLD OUT) |
7inch | released February 1995 "This obscure project from Seattle may be known to some through several strangely and wonderfully packaged vinyl and tape releases (and one CD), as well as through installations and sound works presented in many galleries and other locations. On this nameless E.P. we find two tracks, 'Before the Dream' and 'Of the still Earth' in the typically unique SMALL CRUEL PARTY-style, here working with water-sounds as well as unidentifiable sources, thus creating a very particular language of noise, a special dimension that be must entered 'soul to soul', a very personal communication. What is expressed by this kind of music you can find in your own treasury! SMALL CRUEL PARTY delivers the KEY (sic!) to open it! The E.P. is accompanied by a full discography. SMALL CRUEL PARTY also played a rather short but fantastic gig at the first Drone-Extrakt Festival, at Tara (Emden), in October 1993. We'll never forget it. 'SMALL CRUEL PARTY teaches you to listen to a different language.' "[label info] " SMALL CRUEL PARTY BANNTEN DEN SOUND DER KERAMIKWANNE. IN IHR SITZT MAN, INMITTEN VON WILD ÜBER DEN MENSCHEN NOCH UNBEKANNTEN DICHTERN DISKUTIERENDEN, KLEINEN SCHWARZ GEPANZERTEN TIEREN. SICH STETIG DEM HAHNE ENTREISSENDE WASSERTROPFEN MISCHEN SICH MIT IHREM KLANG UNTER DIE KNISTERNDEN STIMMEN. INMITTEN DIESER GROTTENGERÄUSCHE LIEGT DER HÖRER UND BEGINNT ZU BEGREIFEN, INDES DIE SCHEINBAR ENDLOSE OFFENBARUNG SCHLIESSLICH DURCH DIE BEGRENZTE AUFNAHMEKAPAZITÄT DER SINGLE AUSBLEIBT UND ERKENNTNIS IM BRODELNDEN SOG DES ABFLUSSES MIT HINABRAUSCHT." (Peter Schlewinski, Vertigo) " WICHTIG FÜR DAS VERSTÄNDNIS DER MUSIK VON SMALL CRUEL PARTY (ICH BIN MIR SICHER, ER WÜRDE ES NICHT MUSIK NENNEN) IST EINERSEITS DIE KONZEPTIONELLE ARBEIT MIT KLÄNGEN UND UMWELTGERÄUSCHEN, ANDERERSEITS DER SCHEINBAR MEDITATIVE CHARAKTER SEINER AUFNAHMEN. SCHEINBAR DESHALB, WEIL GERADE BEI SEINEN BESSEREN STÜCKEN MEDITATIV TATSÄCHLICH NUR EINE UMSCHREIBUNG IST: SIE REIZEN DIE SINNE ZU EINEM GENAUEN HINHÖREN, SIE SIND STIMULANZEN DER SINNE, DIE SICH VORNEHM ZU PHANTASTISCHEN KLANGLANDSCHAFTEN ENTWICKELN. DER HERRSCHENDE MINIMALISMUS DER MITTEL IN DEN ARBEITEN VON SMALL CRUEL PARTY ERLEICHTERT ES, DAS ANLIEGEN HINTER DER MUSIK ZU DEUTEN. " (Thomas Beck, Odradek) | 1995 | ||
| SMITH, RANDALL | Sondes | CD | “Sondes (Multiple Soundings) by Randall Smith brings us four years in the life of this versatile composer, condensed into an earjam of seventy-five minutes. Known for his delicately conceived musique concrete collages, typically working with thousands of found sounds, here Smith adds acoustic instruments to the mix, in order to more faithfully reflect the complexity of all he encounters. Filled with sorrow, celebration and dance, Smith plunges into worlds we’re unable to see, in order to bring back, like some explorer of centuries past, some idea of what they might sound like. Whether the sounds of continents taking shape, or the internal chemistries of mother and child, each turn is unexpected, graceful, filled with discovery and invention. If no one has heard music like this before, and no one has, it’s only because each personality fills with the tumult of the world in an entirely new way, like a signature, or fingerprint. Sondes is an invitationto uncover the hidden worlds beneath this one, to cleanse the ears until everything appears as it really is: infinite.” [Mike Hoolboom] www.empreintesdigitales.com | 1999 | €12.00 |
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| SMITH, STEVEN R. | Owl | CD | "This is the first brand new solo album from Steven R. Smith since last year's epic "The Anchorite." Few artists can boast the impressive discography Smith does, full of far more hits than misses. And with "Owl," he shows that he's still got new tricks up his sleeve. On here, you'll find some of the things you expect with a new Steven R. Smith record: sprase, angular walls of his trademark guitar playing with embellishments from an array of acoustic instrumention. But there's a new twist here: vocals. Yep, vocals. Smith unleashes his voice on "Owl" and does so in such an impressive fashion that it leaves me asking what took so long?" [label info] www.digitalisindustries.com | 2007 | €12.00 |
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| SNAKEFINGER | Chewing hides the Sound | do-CD | https://klanggalerie.bandcamp.com/album/chewing-hides-the-sound-deluxe Klanggalerie präsentiert: das remasterte Snakefinger-Solodebüt von 1979 (Ralph Records) plus drei Single-Bonustracks, sowie elf bisher unveröffentlichte Versionen der Albumsongs auf der zweiten CD! Der Londoner Musiker Philip Charles Lithman traf in den frühen Siebzigern in San Francisco auf die Residents, die ihm auch seinen Künstlernamen verpassten. Zunächst kehrte Lithman nach England zurück, um mit der Pubrock-Band Chilli Willi And The Red Hot Peppers zwei Alben zu veröffentlichen. Daraufhin wieder in den USA, arbeitete er als Solomusiker und veröffentlichte 1979 „Chewing Hides The Sound“, nicht nur zusammen mit den Residents geschrieben, sondern auch auf deren Label Ralph veröffentlicht. Das Album enthält Klassiker wie „What Wilbur?“, „Picnic In The Jungle“ und natürlich das Kraftwerk-Cover „The Model“. Die oft surreale Stimmung und Lithmans Slideguitar-Stil prägen die Musik. Auf der ersten CD sind neben den zwölf Albumsongs drei exklusive, nur auf dazugehörigen Singles zu findende Bonussongs. Auf CD 2 sind elf bisher unveröffentlichte Versionen zusammengefasst, alternative Mixe bzw. Remixe, die erst kürzlich in den Residents-Archiven auftauchten und 1987 im Zuge der Veröffentlichung von „Snakey Wake“ im Gedenken an den zuvor verstobenen Lithman entstanden. Snakefinger surely needs not much of an introduction. Born Philip Charles Lithman in London, he moved to San Francisco in 1971. His roots lie in the British blues scene, but he soon became friends with The Residents who also gave him the name Snakefinger based on a photograph of Lithman performing, in which his finger looks like a snake about to attack his violin. In 1972 Lithman returned to England and formed the pub rock band Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers. After the lack of success of the second album, he returned to the states and work on his first solo album began. "Chewing Hides The Sound" came out in 1979 on Ralph Records. It includes classics such as his Kraftwerk cover "The Model", "What Wilbur?" and "Picnic In The Jungle". The songs on the album were co-written with The Residents. The music showcased Lithman's distinctive slide guitar playing and often surreal imagery. At the same time, a string of singles was released. All tracks that were exclusive to these releases are added as bonus tracks here. Very recently, a so far unknown remix of the whole album was discovered in the Residents' archive. It was made in 1987 in preparation for the Snakey Wake by The Residents and has never been published in any form. Klanggalerie are now proud to present you this lost gem for the first time ever on this double CD. Full Tracklist: Disc 1: 1. The Model 2. Kill The Great Raven 3. Jesus Was A Leprechaun 4. Here Comes The Bums 5. The Vivian Girls 6. Magic And Ecstasy 7. Who Is The Culprit And Who Is The Victim? 8. What Wilbur? 9. Picnic In The Jungle 10. Friendly Warning 11. I Love Mary 12. The Vultures Of Bombay 13. The Spot 14. Smelly Tongues 15. Talkin' In The Town Disc 2: 1. What Wilbur (Alternate Version) 2. The Vivian Girls (Alternate Version) 3. Kill The Great Raven (Alternate Version) 4. Interlude (Neon Lights) 5. Here Come The Bums (Alternate Version) 6. Magic And Ecstasy (Alternate Version) 7. Friendly Warning (Alternate Version) 8. Talkin' In The Town (Alternate Version) 9. Who Is The Culprit And Who Is The Victim (Alternate Version) 10. I Love Mary (Alternate Version) 11. The Vultures of Bombay (Alternate Version) www.klanggalerie.com/gg220 | 2024 | €20.00 |
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| SOLTAU, THORSTEN |
Gewächse im Zwielicht
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CD | full press release: This Friesian multi media artist with two works on one CD: his compositions combine drone-ambient and electroacoustic elements and passages in a wonderful way (sometimes spheric, sometime bizarre, sometimes melancholic) = various instrumental, vocal and electronic sources are building a hypnotic and poetic web, very complex and with many unexpected twists and surprises in the mix... this album is like a little wonder! The CD combines two complete works by the artist: "Gewächse im Zwielicht", consisting of 4 pieces (2019-2021), dedicated to the hidden phenomena becoming recognizable only after closer examination, and "An End. An One Another" (2021-2022), an installation work for the art gallery 'De Groen' in Arnhem, Netherlands, for this he worked with a choir. Five long pieces with a total time of over 62 minutes, revealing many details with repeated listening... as the author notes: "My goal is the creation of rich sounds with layers only reachable by multiple listening. Each work exposes itself over time with each consciously made playback / perception: Repetition becomes a reward for the listener." listen to a track: https://soundcloud.com/drone-records/thorsten-soltau-das-begehren ########################### THORSTEN SOLTAU: Self-taught artist since 2006. Working under his given name as well as Femurl [ˈfiːmjuːl]. Strong interest in sonic disintegration, conceptualism and dualism (philosophy / gender). Thorsten Soltau is a citizen of KonungaRikena Elgaland-Vargaland. He resides in Friesland, Lower Saxony. MUSIC.ART.MORPHOSIS. A reflection. I call myself a listening person – I am constantly listening to and into environments. This has lead to a refined sense able to picking up things that may slip the attention of others. My ears are trained to scan the places I visit – crowded metropoles, remote spots in nature or even familiar surroundings of office or home. My way of listening can be divided in two modes: the perception of sound on an unconscious level or the deliberate focus on sonics. Becoming a sort of scanning antenna had a profound effect how I compose. The experience of my listening is reflected in my sound works. As an example several compositions feature barely noticeable overdubs. They can only be heard with specific settings of loudness and spatial room (and are therefore easy to recognize with headphones) or equalizer settings. Another example is the creation of dense clusters of sound resembling information streams or (over-)crowded places. My goal is the creation of rich sounds with layers only reachable by multiple listening. Each work exposes itself over time with each consciously made playback / perception: Repetition becomes a reward for the listener. On sounds. My compositions are either electronic or electroacoustic. A commonly used sound is the human voice or excerpts of complex synthesis. As a composer I choose my source material wisely. The starting elements have to inhabit the desired mood and intensity later formulated into full compositions. Nevertheless I am open for developments by surprise or error during sound design. One important factor is randomness. Sounds or sound manipulating factors are mapped to random forces which allows for unexpected results. Some of my composing techniques are deliberately executed against their primary intention as well. This allows for an ever-morphing character of my works until the final touch is added. On sonic morphosis. My compositional ethic has strong ties to morphosis. To reflect different degrees of sonic shifting / transformation / transitions I apply several techniques and methods. As explained above the use of complex treatments and randomness allows for a sound that constantly shapes into an liquid and organic sculpture. The sonics I create are further exposed to imperfections and errors – like body and mind aging or perishing over time. Errors are integral and welcome. Most of them occur as a glitch in the analogue or digital domain during sessions or setup changes. They give a further layer to the music resembling small failures made by the composer – adding a human touch despite their virtual origin. On concepts. My solo work has always been underlined by concepts. My canon includes albums with apparent or less apparent concepts. Often works can be seen as cornerstones of things I research at that time of their genesis. Several compositions reflect situations from personal life. Thus all works can be seen as intimate and highly personal sonic artifacts. Conception can be seen as the base of each work without outweighing the listeners experience. Each of my pieces can be explicitly heard as a sole composition as well. https://thorstensoltau.de | 2022 | €13.00 |
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| SONOLOGYST | Interdimensional | CD | The new Sonologyst album, Interdimensional, explores the paraphysical dimension of cosmic music. It completes the dilation process of his sound, which began with the albums Silencers (CSR 253CD, 2018) and Ancient Death Cults And Beliefs (CSR 270CD, 2020), forming an ideal trilogy inspired by what is beyond the boundaries of science. Interdimensional is inspired by the scientist Michio Kaku who theorized what could be the remote future of the human species, beyond matter, the stars, and known dimensions. A future that could lead you to the victory over the end of everything, beyond the foreseen and inevitable death of the universe known to us. Also, a cosmic record in terms of sound, Interdimensional is pervaded by a sense of stasis reminiscent of Thomas Köner's isolationist electronics, but still characterized by the use of electrified instruments, analog synthesizers, and recordings of resonant metal objects. Unlike the previous records, however, the typical dark experimental/post-industrial sound of Sonologyst is filtered through hazy warping reverberations, and infinite delays, which musically depict the intergalactic journey of a civilization in search of a possible future beyond death. https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/interdimensional-csr305cd | 2022 | €13.00 |
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| SPHERULEUS | Voyage | CD | "Voyage' is the latest album from Lincolnshire based sound designer Harry Towell. Released under his Spheruleus guise, this album utimately provides a soundtrack to a doomed sea-voyage. Through eight different movements, 'Voyage' chronicles everything from the immense pride felt as the ship sets sail to depicting the horror and heartache of its sinking. The album then closes with detailed passages that portray the decomposition of the ship as it begins to rot deep under sea. This album is well researched with Harry having explored his chosen subject thoroughly. For the two years in which the album has been in the making, the young sound designer studied the history of great sea disasters and also took inspiration from soundtracks such as Gavin Bryars’ ‘The Sinking Of The Titanic’ and Gareth Hardwick's 'Of The Sea And Shore'. Although the Titantic's infamous fate was naturally a strong influence on the project, 'Voyage', does not refer to any particular sinking ship. Instead, its purpose is to sonically depict the various emotional aspects that lie within a failed sea voyage, as felt by all those who are affected by it. Once the concept for 'Voyage' had been born, Harry revisited one of his old demos from early 2010 and decided to make this the spine of the album. He then used his instrument collection including; guitar, violin, trumpet, bugle, zither and keyboard to add several layers to the demo. In doing so Harry has been able to develop his chosen theme and create the character required to turn this forgotten treasure into the album it is today. As a poignant exaggeration of the events that unfold through the track 'She Sinks', there is a contribution from Russian pianist Alex Tiuniaev that opens and closes this dramatic track. He also performs on the track 'Clouds Swarm', as it heads into a crescendo. Aside from his solo production work, Harry also records with brother Stuart under the name Paper Relics and runs the Audio Gourmet netlabel, which specialises in 15 minute EPs designed for shorter 'tea-break' listening. His work as Spheruleus has seen him release through netlabels such as Test Tube, Resting Bell, Earth Mantra, Audio Gourmet and in March 2010, his first physical album 'Frozen Quarters' was released on CD format by the Under The Spire imprint." [label info] www.hibernate-recs.co.uk | 2011 | €12.00 |
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| The late Surge of Gold | CD-R | "The Late Surge of Gold is the work of British sound designer Harry Towell, under his Spheruleus moniker. Previous releases have graced labels such as Hibernate, Home Normal and Time Released Sound and collaborations that have seen him work with the likes of Pleq and Ekca Liena. Harry also runs the Audio Gourmet netlabel and its new sister label Tessellate Recordings, which specialises in limited edition CDr releases. The Late Surge of Gold was composed specifically for Analogpath, recorded during last year’s Indian Summer in the UK, a phenomenon in which the sun shines deep into autumn. This is an album which documents warm and hazy summer, the bright sunshine that extends through autumn before eventually descending into the cold of winter. The sounds are a typical example of Spheruleus’ work, pooling together fragile acoustic recordings from the artist’s instrument collection. They are joined by field recordings, static and subtle drones which amount to a lo-fi pastoral tale, unfolding the full spectrum of seasonal colours from the warmth of yellow and orange, fading slowly to grey and darkness. Artwork by Johan Söderberg, except from the image which features a building. This was taken by Harry Towell on holiday in the Peak District at the height of the Indian Summer." [label info] http://analogpath.com/main/ | 2012 | €10.00 |
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| SRH | Telomer[e] | LP | listen: https://klanggold.bandcamp.com/album/telomer-e Sascha Rosemarie Höfer — telomer[e] Höfer uses different sound sources and recording processes. One of his focus points is the collection of sounds and noises, which he predominantly records analogue and very rudimentary on tape, various voice recorders and microphones he holds dear. Höfer is collecting sounds indoors or in the field. Usually en passant. “I like to listen if something interesting catches my ear, but not obsessively. I collect sounds, when I feel like it, not because a certain sound may be extraordinarily exquisite, making me want to trace it. I would regard that as a disruption of the moment, something I generally want to avoid.” says Höfer. Sascha Rosemarie Höfer’s album telomere[e] breaks with his works of previous years. It took longer to complete, is devoid of conceptual and artistically developed ideas. Rather, it presents the process of metamorphosis: dieback, segmentation, recombination, exploration, ageing and rejuvenation, thus mimicking the language of biology. telomer[e] took three years to complete, a time during which the different pieces underwent various ecdyses, during which ideas developed and unravelled, explored different stylistic directions and once again dissolved, until first fusions emerged. Fusions Höfer picked up to shape the musical segments into something larger than themselves, finally developing pieces for piano he later merged with the different sounds. The result: telomer[e] as presented on this album. “It is important for me to create a musical representation of the space where I am recording the music. Not least because it carries a central momentum, which I consider as a fundamental element that may not be excluded. The result often sounds rough and lo-fi-esque.” says Höfer. telomer[e] is captivating due to its contrasts, it is playful, harmonic and atonal, creating a glamorous homogeneity, despite — or because of — these musically antagonistic efforts. Höfer brings the sounds to life, he nudges them into a conversation until they are fusing, but without losing their immediacy. If you are expecting it to be easy on your ears, you’re out of luck. Written and produced by srh. Recorded, arranged and mixed by srh. Instruments: piano, modulated guitars, drones, fieldrecordings, dictaphones, glockenspiel, analogue synths, digital and analogue processing. Trumpet on “TTACCC” arranged by srh, played by Marco Stubbemann; voicesample on “TAAACC” and clattering on various tracks by Mathilde Schoenmakers. Cover photography by Melanie Schoenmakers; design: Andreas Usenbenz; mastered by Fabian Tormin [plätlin mastering]. translated by www.tommibrem.de | 2018 | €15.00 |
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| ST. PIERRE, MELISSA | Specimens | CD | Sehr ungewöhnlicher Release aus dem COLLECTIONS OF COLONIES OF BEES-Umfeld mit mechanisch-rhythmischen Aufnahmen eines "präparierten Klaviers" wie es durch JOHN CAGE berühmt wurde, sehr wuchtig und seltsam, als spiele man "Rock" auf Gamelan-Instrumenten... "MELISSA ST. PIERRE tosses classicism and post-classicism overboard, utilizing the prepared piano -- John Cage's notorious instrument of choice -- and electronic enhancement to sail resolutely in the direction of rock & roll. Peppering the strings, hammers, and dampers with a variety of objects, she transforms the piano's typical timbre: sparkling gamelans chatter; harrowing voodoo drums call out in the night. "Specimens", St Pierre's debut, features production and performances by COLLECTIONS OF COLONIES OF BEES; together they rival famed electric harpist ZEENA PARKINS as conservatory arsonists with a decidedly Hendrixian flair." [label info] www.tableoftheelements.com | 2008 | €11.00 |
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| STELZER, HOWARD | How To | CD | New material from the master cassette manipulator Howard Stelzer. "How To" is 46 minutes of collage ranging from drones to harsh noise. Not to be missed for any fan of Stelzers work. Mastered by James Plotkin and art by Lasse Marhaug. If your not familiar with Mr. Stelzer here is what TinyMixTapes.com has to say about him. "Don’t let the disappearance of his label Intransitive Recordings fool you; Howard Stelzer has kept himself as busy as ever. The New York-born tape manipulator may no longer have an outlet of his own, but even before closing Intransitive Recordings down back in 2012, he had been releasing albums pretty much everywhere. He has recently announced a new album on Phage Tapes, How To, which follows the still-fresh Narrow Escape and At Ease, a collaboration with Joe Bastardo. Active since the mid-90s, Stelzer has made cassette tapes his trademark platform to craft complex collages of noise, found sounds, and synthetic textures. Yet he is best known as an all-around devotee of tape as a medium, collecting hundreds of cassettes, writing about sound art and tape culture, and curating an amazingly ambitious catalog of experimental music for Intransitive Recordings. Based in Boston and active for over a decade, the label released music by Jason Lescalleet, Nerve Net Noise, Jason Talbot, C. Spencer Yeh, and Brume, among many others. Nevertheless, it would be unforgivable to overlook 1998’s Bond Inlets, Stelzer’s crowning achievement; an album where he was able to pick the inherent limitations of consumer-grade tapes apart, laying out a foreboding work of rare emotional power." https://phagetapes.miiduu.com/howard-stelzer-quothow-toquot-cd | 2015 | €10.00 |
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| STELZER, HOWARD / BRENDAN MURRAY | Commit | LP | the third production from the stelzer/murray project hits a sweet spot of slippery, industrial occultation that harkens back to an almost forgotten period of music from the late \'80s and early \'90s. think cranioclast, arcane device, phauss, small cruel party, organum, and pretty much everything from the quiet artworks label. exquisitely composed and overtly nocturnal without ever falling into the tropes of dark ambient and with plenty of gestures, signals, and threats that allude to any number of allegorically inclined processes (i.e. tape manipulation, time-delay accumulation, electro-acoustic minimalism, etc.). the howard stelzer half of this project has penned the following to provide context about commit: \"i’d like to tell you about commit, the third album by stelzer/murray. really, i would. but i don’t think what i have to say would be terribly illuminating. in fact, i’d love it if someone could tell me about what the heck it is we do. what i mean is this: over the past several years, brendan murray and i have had plenty of conversations about our music and have come to the conclusion that we don’t know much about it. we don’t even recall making a lot of it. we’ve listened back to our first album, connector (which was released by helen scarsdale in 2017), and it struck us as very good and also almost entirely unfamiliar. same with the next album, commuter (published by humanhood in 2019). we cannot deny that stelzer/murray wrote, recorded and produced both albums… we have vague recollections of sculpting the component pieces into their final forms… but the writing/recording process remains utterly enfogged. how can that be? perhaps both brendan and i compose our music while we are asleep. maybe the band exists only when both members are in some psychogenic fugue state. some months later, we become aware that stelzer/murray music has been made… by us? apparently so! we’ve remarked to each other that when we listen back to our albums, it seems as if the music is both ours and not ours at the same time… as if we (maybe) weren’t involved in making it. i assume that we were, but cannot explain how or why any of the stuff exists. i’m okay with that. during an interview several years ago, brendan and i were asked to describe the stelzer/murray compositional process. to our shock and delight, we realized that we couldn’t quite say what it was. we weren’t being intentionally evasive; we just didn’t know. turns out, it never occurred to us to talk about our music while we were making it. isn’t that wonderful? or is dissociation of this magnitude just unnerving? can it be both? this new album exists under a similar subconsciously-imposed shroud. i\'m not privy to much more inside information about commit than anybody else is. was there a mood we were aiming for? a conceptual through-line across these songs? maybe! it\'s certainly possible! if you notice anything, please send a note with a self-addressed stamped envelope to us (c/o helen scarsdale) and we’ll respond if we think you’re on the right track. whatever your guess, we’ll assume that you’re correct since you know just as much about stelzer/murray as we do. there’s one other possibility: stelzer/murray music turns out the way it does because its creators work in ways that are both deeply intense, intuitive and intimate. we don’t discuss an album’s architecture because as soon as the initial sounds appear, we both somehow know where they’re headed. we don’t need to articulate conceptual approach or thematic connection because those things are already baked into our interactions over the past 24 years. i don’t mean to imply that commit is without structure or cohesion or attention to detail... only that those qualities are apparent to us at the same moment that they’re apparent to everybody else. we\'re comfortable working this way. now, look: this is supposed to be a press release, so i\'d better get to the elements that such a document requires. typically, such a thing would contain some eloquent verbiage to inspire interest in the product. i’ve spoken to the creators of this lp to glean inside information and was offered a sheepish shrug in return. and besides, even if i had the ability to spill some language that sets this music into some clever conceptual frame that might get you to pull out your wallet, i wouldn’t want to. some loaded adjectives could have the effect of coloring your perception beforehand. once you put the record on, any suggestions of imagery or atmosphere would only lead to preconceptions that would either be affirmed (yes, this album sounds exactly like i thought it would! hooray for me!) or refuted (i expected one thing and got something slightly different and so now i am disappointed). sorry, but i don’t see the point. here’s what i can say for sure: commit is, in both my and the band\'s estimation, a great record and stelzer/murray is a really good band. i can refer to them in the third person because i genuinely have no recollection of my supposed role in the creation of any of their records. you may point out that the sequence of seven letters to the left of the slash resembles my own last name. i’ll chalk that up to coincidence. stelzer/murray may as well be people i’ve never met. once commit comes out, i\'m a fan like anyone else. i’ll just sit back and enjoy the damn thing. playing it at a high volume seems like a good idea.\" h. stelzer somewhere in massachusetts winter 2022 https://helenscarsdale.bandcamp.com/album/commit | 2022 | €23.50 |
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| STOA | Silmand | CD | Seelenmonat. Viertes Album der Neo-Klassik / Sakral-Ambient / Mittelalter-Folk Pop-Band und Mitbegründer des "Heavenly Voices"-Genres, hier mit Verstärkung von Mitgliedern von LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH und CLAN OF XYMOX. 13 Stücke voller dunkel-romantischer Momente, musikalisch hochwertig arrangiert & von erhabener & fragiler Schönheit, zudem scheinen die meisten Instrumente original eingespielt zu werden. Melancholische Streicher sind omnipräsent, emotionaler geht es kaum ! "The first new sign from STOA in 7 years! Fans will be happy that the STOA mastermind stays true to himself with his fourth album. Besides the usual melancholy, unusual pop rhythms found their way on the various albums, but the typical STOA sound is still distinct. The vocal lines harbour some surprises as well. For once theres the angelic voice of singer Mandy Bernhardts, known from the live performances of the band; on the other hand, the voices of three guest singers sound on Silmand. The first voice belongs to the Australian multi-instrumentalist Louisa John Krol. The Dutchman Peter Nooten (Ex-Clan of Xymox) could be engaged for Silmand as well as the Leipzig-based Ralf Jehnert (Love is Colder than Death)." [label info] "For lovers of melancholic music, it probably doesn't get much better than Silmand." [Heathen Harvest] www.darkdimensions.de | 2008 | €15.00 |
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| STROM NOIR | Glaciology | CD | "Strom Noir, which is a moniker for Emil Maťko, amazed everyone with his last year's album "Urban Blues", which saw Emil exploring urban spaces with the use of ephemeral guitar melodies. On his new album on Zoharum Emil, goes to entirely different places: filled with white glaciers and snow-capped mountains. The subtitle of Strom Noir latest album is "Four Songs about Snow and Ice." Emil Maťko skillfully converted the arctic landscapes into sonic structures. Four compositions filled with static guitar drones resemble a snowy picture. They unravel very slowly and subtly into one another. They require focusing on them. A 20-minute bonus track which is the full version of ”Niekedy Sa Vracaju” originally released on "Tanec Rusaliek" cassette in the shortened version, has a similar sense. The CD is housed in an ecopak sleeve and is strictly limited to 300 copies. The cover is based on photos by Martin Matula. ”Glaciology” was mastered by Michal Iliaš. The whole production process was overseen by Michał Porwet." [label info] www.zoharum.com | 2015 | €13.00 |
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| Mountains become Machines | CD | "Having previously featured on our recent DCD compilation "...that first season", Strom Noir returns to our label with his first full length album release on Winter-Light - 'Mountains Become Machines'. Emil Maťko, the man behind Strom Noir, hails from Bratislava, Slovakia. Since 2008, Emil has released around 15 albums to date on a variety of different formats, as well as a number of singles and also contributed to several compilation albums. His music can possibly be best described as guitar and loop based ambient, with a melancholic feel to it. Strom Noir builds up intricate layers of sound using mostly only electric and acoustic guitars, effected through pedals. The artist himself describes the thoughts and processes behind the recording of ‘Mountains Become Machines‘..... ‘The beginning of the recording process is dated back to the second half of 2013, that time with the intention to come up with the full-length release consisting of more “stand-alone” tracks built significantly on acoustic guitar, in most cases, heavily transmuted. As I used to set the recorder always in a way that it recorded associated sounds from the recording room as well, recordings are more complex and have some accidental/random aspects; on the other hand, the overall feeling is a little bit lo-fi. That’s the process how the tracks, I would label as the core of the album, were basically recorded – the beginning of spring, mountains become machines, sám na vrchole hory (alone on the mountain top), where late the birds sang and čistota (purity). Back then, I was thinking to interconnect these tracks with short guitar drones, some kinds of interludes, however, as you can hear, they (all corals are yours, hollow and black water rising) became regular tracks over time. So as the result, mountains become machines has a little bit of everything. The more stand-alone tracks are backed by the abstract ones, pictures full of sunshine are followed by dark images and calm parts are accompanied with distorted pieces.’ " www.winter-light.nl | 2018 | €13.00 |
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| STROM.EC | Divine Legions Beyond Psyche | CD | "With their fifth full length CD, Finlands Strom.ec continue to further explore the far regions of power electronics, challenging the confines and stretching the boundary of the genre, sculpting new and innovative creations that are uniquely their own. Having been under construction for over seven years, Divine Legions shows Strom.ec with a majestic control of their craft, offering 8 tracks (including one 21 minute epic to close the CD out!) of powerful and explosive industrial music, full of volatile frequencies, brain bending, enigmatic atmospheres, hallucinatory noise, and the trademark vocal assault that few acts can rival. Presented in a luxurious 8-panel DVDigipak, designed by Jerome Nougaillon, Divine Legions Beyond Psyche represents Strom.ec at their finest, most creative form, having reached a pinnacle in an already illustrious." [label info] www.malignantrecords.com | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| SUDDEN INFANT | Lunatic Asylum | CD | Joke Lanz and Sudden Infant once again return in their razor-sharp trio setting whereby the absurdist nature that Joke's work is already cut with is reconfigured in a gnarled and beefy punk-fucked contorted rock setting. Short bursts of angular flex are heavily propelled by depth-charge rhythms, wry lyrical musings on modern living, and sensibilities hatched from years of experience in the worlds of sound art, abstract music, industrialised junk-noise and related areas have manifested in the perfect follow up to 2018's Buddhist Nihilism album on Harbinger Sound. Aided by Christian Weber on bass and Alexandre Babel on drums, Joke lays on a battery of electronics, loops, field recordings and samples to complement mostly semi-spoken vocals that appear like they've been swept from the overflowing gutters of a shopping centre into a huge ball of malaise that can only be laughed at as world leaders look on perplexed. Exactly as the title suggests, 'Lunatic Asylum' depicts a world in absolute disarray as the seams binding it together slowly fall apart to reveal jesters whose best attempts to glue everything back in place are built on bigger lies more transparent than ever. Meanwhile, citizens of the developed world turn on each other for the stupidest of reasons or grow fatter with their descent into an ignorance nourished by half-baked cultural nuggets pre-packaged and sold as great and awe-inspiring work. And everything has to be recorded, photographed and shared as brain cells are decimated by false ideals, propaganda, exaggerated lifestyles and a huge tub of popcorn swimming in indiscernible yellow gloop. Such are the snapshots that resonate as Lunatic Asylum takes some well-aimed swipes at the human condition of the 21st Century. Featuring a fantastic guest appearance by Franz Treichler (The Young Gods) on ' Il y a des Enfants', each of the 14 songs that constitute Lunatic Asylum are bold, heavy, playful and rife with surprising twists and turns Joke's mostly English splatter-poetry helps guide into a space that's about as accessible as the outer reaches of rock can get. In a perfect world, this is the stuff even daytime airwaves should be pregnant with but, since the world is presently tripping over its own feet more so than ever, we will have to suffice with wherever this can nudge with the help of Fourth Dimension Records. One day, hopefully, more will catch up. Please note that a vinyl version of Lunatic Asylum will appear later, but due to continuing heavy delays at the pressing plants this won't be available to pre-order till June. In the meantime, the CD features two bonus tracks. https://suddeninfant.bandcamp.com/album/lunatic-asylum | 2022 | €14.00 |
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| SULIDAE, PHILIP | Ramshead | CD | The basis of these pieces were field recordings made in the Kosciuszko National Park during summer. This national park covers alpine and sub-alpine areas, and as such provides an unusual environment within the typical low lying bushland and desert of greater Australia. It covers the highest peaks on the continent, and as such is a diverse environment that covers everything from heavily wooded valleys and riverways, through to rugged grasslands high above the treeline. There is a similar variation in animal and bird life, whilst the weather is inclement all year round with everything from blazing sun to snow in one day. However I had no interest in trying to document this environment in a literal sense, rather the approach was purely subjective and perceptual. It is an attempt in mapping and constructing a response, but perhaps also an attempt to build the density and extremities of this environment with a sonic equivalent. I used a light recording rig, preferring to work quickly and informally with a mind to building up a large palette of sounds that would later form the raw ingredients of these sound pieces. I used quite pronounced editing and manipulation to slowly shape them into something with it’s own physicality and mass. Something that hopefully embodies and epitomises these antediluvian and monolithic mountains. (Philip Sulidae, 20 December 2017) | 2018 | €14.00 |
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| SUNDSTRÖM, ISAK | Five Dramas | LP | The histrionic Swedish artist Isak Sundström (Rocks & Waves Song Circle) embraces the fascinating sound world of the "spoken word", infusing new expressive perspectives to this genre with original sensitivity. These five vocal dramas are based on the subtitles of some films by Douglas Kirk, texts that describe the sound effects and events that occur outside the screen. But the result is rather that of a new dissolved narrative, of another space that explores the boundaries of emotional imagination. In this way, the poetic interest seems to fall on the totality of human existence, in an open dialectic between earthly and supernatural, profane and religious, nature and divinity, heaven and hell, light and darkness. The atmospheric frame is supported by an electronic carpet, drops of piano fall soft and slow, while the modulations of the voice are enriched and intensified by a colorful orchestra of percussion and wind instruments. The narrator's voice of Vincent Williams has something of the typical "black" vocal emphasis of American spiritual jazz, but which alternate with moments of pathos and ecstatic transcendence typically Nordic and European. | 2018 | €19.50 |
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| SUNN O))) | Kannon | CD | "Kannon is an album which was composed in the aftershadow of SUNN O)))’s most recent successes in immersive collaboration (the group worked with Scott Walker on Soused, Ulver on Terrestrials in 2013 and 2014) and also from the broad and influential wake of their epitimous Monolith’s & Dimensions . Kannon emerged both independently as a conceptual entity and with roots in the legacies of those projects, yet was fully realised years later, in 2015. The album is 36 minutes in length and consists of three pieces of a triadic whole : Kannon 1, 2 and 3. The album celebrates many SUNN O))) traditions ; Kannon was recorded and mixed with SUNN O)))’s close colleague and coproducer Randall Dunn in Seattle, in Studio Litho, Aleph and Avast!; and the LP includes performances by long term allies and collaborators Attila Csihar, Oren Ambarchi, Rex Ritter, Steve Moore and others. And at the core the composition centers around the dynamic and intense guitar and bass interplay of SUNN O)))’s founders : Stephen O’Malley & Greg Anderson. It’s possibly the most figurative album SUNN O))) has created, which is unusual as they usually dwell in layers of abstraction and subjectivity. On the other hand the album is the most outright “metal” in years, drawing personal associations and memories of cherished albums like Panzerfaust and Twilight of the Gods again to the forefront of consciousness. At the third time it is very close to the cyclical character of mantra which the band has evolved into as a living creature, the enormity of intense sensate detail and manifestation of the live in concert face of SUNN O))), the organism that has flourished, metamorphosed and transcended tremendously over the past ten years. The literal representation of Kannon is as an aspect of Buddha: specifically “goddess of mercy” or “Perceiving the Sounds (or Cries) of the World”. She is also sometimes commonly known as the Guanyin Bodhisattva (Chinese: 觀音菩薩) amongst a plurality of other forms. There is a rich lineage behind this idea tracing back through many asian belief systems, with as many names and cultural personifications of the idea. SUNN O))) commissioned critical theorist Aliza Shvartz to write a text / liner notes around these ideas and topics. She also explores the relations and perceptions to their approach to these ideas via the metonym of music and SUNN O)))’s place/approach within the framework of music and metal overall. SUNN O))) also commissioned Swiss designer/artist Angela LaFont Bollinger to create the cover artwork, an abstracted sculpture of vision of Kannon, and the French photographer Estelle Hanania to capture portraits of the core trio (Csihar, Anderson, O’Malley) in the impressive and obscurant Emanuel Vingeland mausoleum in Oslo. The LP is packaged in immaculate tip on gatefold sleeve by our long time comrades Stoughton Printing, and pressed at Cascade in Portland, Oregon. CD, download and coloured vinyl versions are also available. – Stephen O’Malley & Greg Anderson / SUNN O))), 11 September 2015" [label info] credits: Released December 4th 2015 Attila Csihar - Vocals Stephen O’Malley - Guitar Greg Anderson - Guitar, Bass Guitar Oren Ambarchi - Guitar, Oscillator (K1,K2) Randall Dunn - Korg MS 20 (K1, K2) Rex Ritter - Moog (K2) Brad Mowen - Concert Bass Drum (K2) Steve Moore - Juno 106 (K2) Conch trio : Dempster, Priester, Moore Recorded at studio Litho, Avast! and Aleph, Seattle by Randall Dunn Mixed at Avast! by Randall Dunn Assistant recording engineer (Litho) : Mell Dettmer Mastered by Jason Ward at CMS Kannon 1, 2, 3 written & arranged by SUNN O))) Lyrics by Attila Csihar Produced by SUNN O))) with Randall Dunn SUNN O))) art direction : Stephen O’Malley Cover and typographic design by Allison Lafont Bollinger Text by Aliza Shvarts Band portraits by Estelle Hanania / Detail from mural Vita at the Emanuel Vigeland Mausoleum, Oslo © Emanuel Vigeland Museum / ARS 2015 www.southernlord.com "Those grimrobed ambient metal overlords O'Malley & Anderson (here with guests including Oren Ambarchi and vokillist Attila Csihar) add a new opus to their extensive discography of doom/drone masterwerks! The three part Kannon, which may have germinated from the track "Cannon" found on their live Domkirke double lp from 2008, is art to play loud. All deep drones, deep voices, doubtless deep thoughts (check out the liner notes by critical theorist Aliza Shvartz). And here are OUR notes: Abyssic atmospheres of vast grinding drones. Layered, liturgic cavernous ritual. Gorgeously sculpted feedback flowmotion. Along with moments that remind us of the wide open Western spaces twang of more recent Earth (or Barn Owl) as well." [Aquarius Rec.] | 2015 | €13.00 |
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| Life Metal (Pinwheel green and purple vinyl) | do-LP | SUNN O))) are pleased to present Life Metal, their first new studio album in four years, due for release on Southern Lord in April 2019. The album will be supported by their first European tour since 2016, including their first ever French tour - dates and details below. At the very beginning of 2018 SUNN O))) co-founders Stephen O'Malley & Greg Anderson set out on a path toward a new album production. They were both determined to create new music and a new method of working in the studio, without forgetting the long and proud history of production and studio accomplishments forged during their first two decades of existence (and the members' own musical experiences out of the band's). One long term goal was completely clear: to record Sunn O))) with Steve Albini in his Electrical Audio studio. Steve took the call, said "Sure, this will be fun. I have no idea what is going to happen." Greg and Stephen gathered twice that spring for writing, conceptualising and riff woodshedding in the very building where the band was formed: Downtown Rehearsal in Los Angeles. Sonic cosmoses, flashes of abstract colour (synthetic and objective) and themes emerged from the mastered depths of saturation and circuits between the two players and their mountains of gear. Themes developed in terms of brightness and energy, while visionary cues pointed toward subconscious areas of practice and the pair realised they were exploring other zones of consciousness via sound/time and sound/energy manipulation. In early summer a pre-production session with full backline, as a trio with T.O.S. on Moog, was recorded at Dave Grohl’s 606 studios, Northridge, California. In July 2018 SUNN O))) spent just over two weeks in Chicago at Electrical Audio (Studio A) with Steve Albini at the helm. The results are astounding: there is breadth and luminosity of colour, it sounds vast. The sessions were impeccably recorded, authentically represented and completely accurate. The spectrum cracked the firmament open in clarity. An all analogue technique was used, they recorded and mixed on tape, providing a creative gateway for SUNN O))) to evolve their production methods into stronger, confident, performance based and a more logical executive process. The album was mastered and lacquers cut from tape in October by SUNN O))) ally Matt Colton at Alchemy in London. The LP version is a AAA album, recorded and mixed on tape via a completely analogue production, from the input of the band's amplifiers and the air coming off the speakers in front of the microphones to needle touching the pressed vinyl on your turntable. Continuing one of the main currents of the SUNN O))) concept, depth of exploration within collaboration, brought forth Hildur Guðnadóttir to the Sunn O))) constellation. Hildur is a sometime live collaborator of Sunn O))) and a renowned film music composer, former member of the bands Múm, Pan Sonic and Angel. She was a long time collaborator with the composer Jóhann Jóhannsson (RIP). Hildur lent her incredible attitude, as well as her voice, breath and electric cello, and the enigmatic haldorophone to the proceedings, culminating in the epic composition/concerto "Novæ". The cosmos clearly expands. Tim Midyett, a close friend of Greg and Stephen since the Seattle days of the early 90s (and member of Silkworm, Bottomless Pit and Mint Mile), joined in a foundational role tying earth to sound with wicked performances on aluminium neck bass and baritone guitars: instruments he helped pioneer playing back in the 90s (alongside Steve and Shellac of course). Dark matter is reality. Prolific new music composer Anthony Pateras arranged and recorded an incredible contribution of pipe organ for a piece titled "Troubled Air" (titled after an essay by author Aliza Shvarts, who also penned the liner notes for Sunn O)))’s Kannon) at Schlosskappelle, Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart. String theory of space. The resulting album is titled Life Metal. It is fully realised and completely real. The record was produced by the core of Stephen & Greg & arranged by the greater constellation Sunn O))). Paintings by visual artist Samantha Keely Smith graciously adorn the sleeve and provide a perfect suitable mask to the proceedings. They collide ideas of 19th century romanticism & late 20th abstract expressionism (mysticism) with Sunn O)))’s approach to metal (via reference points of Arbo, Turner, Delville, Richter, Turrel, Wou-Ki). Photographer Ronald Dick shot them in baths of light colour representing depth of sound pressure in the work. SUNN O))) Life Metal (sunn300, Southern Lord) 1. Between Sleipnir's Breaths 2. Troubled Air 3. Aurora 4. Novae There is a second more meditative LP titled Pyroclasts, also recorded by Steve Albini in parallel, and which will be revealed in the autumn 2019 (more later) with all music performed by Stephen, Greg, T.O.S., Tim Midyett, and Hildur Guðnadóttir. | 2022 | €35.00 |
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| Eternity's Pillar (Opaque Purple) | 12inch | SP1713 Eternity’s Pillars b/w Raise the Chalice & Reverential is sunn O)))’s premier work on the maxi 12” medium for Sub Pop. It consists of three brand new tracks created and performed by the iconic duo of Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson and co-produced by sunn O))) and Brad Wood. Brad Wood recorded the material at Bear Creek Studios in Woodinville and Sea Grass in Los Angeles in 2025. The tracks on this maxi 12” are the first official sunn O))) studio recordings to feature only the original core duo on heavily saturated electric guitars and synthesis. sunn O))) gave extreme focus and care to each step and aspect of the recording, each tone and level of saturation, each gain stage and speaker, each arrangement and harmonic. The Pacific Northwest forest is our guide. “Eternity’s Pillars” is named for the mid-1980s television program created and hosted by jazz visionary and spiritual guru Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, focusing on her incessant belief in music’s capacity to attain spiritual transcendence. “Raise the Chalice” is named for a rallying cry often uttered by Northwest legend Ron Guardipee throughout the mid-1990s. “Reverential” equally pays respect and sends loud praise to those who came before us with the heaviest burdens, expressions with music and art being the materials of an antiphon. The front cover of the maxi 12” depicts the duo in the woods northeast of Seattle, through the lens of Charles Peterson. sunn.bandcamp.com/album/eternitys-pillars-b-w-raise-the-chalice-reverential | 2025 | €30.00 |
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| SUNN O))) & ULVER | Terrestrials | CD | "Oslo, Norway, August 10th, 2008. Following their 200th gig, playing before 2000 people at the Oya festival, SUNN O))) teamed up with Norwegian legends ULVER at their Oslo studio, Crystal Canyon. They recorded three "live in improvisation" pieces, starting that evening and ending at dawn, as Northern sunlight seeped in through the windows. 'We were sitting in the console room, early in the morning, listening to the takes. Someone said, ah, sunrise over Crystal Canyon,' as if the night had been a dark one. We all laughed and Greg proposed it as a title. In that setting it sounded perfect. The boys had mentioned wanting the music to orient towards the light, like some lost pilgrim stretching before the sun. We kept that mental picture for the processing.' - Kristoffer Rygg That take became the album's opening piece, "Let there be light," which builds up from silence and darkness and proceeds - ceremoniously, coruscating - O'Malley and O'Sullivan creating the backdrop for Rygg's Basso Profondo chants. The music unfolds over eight minutes before reaching a crescendo of bass and brass, introducing both Anderson and ULVER as we know them. The Sunn has risen. "Western horn" accelerates on a single and austere note of sustained bass and low end, evolving gradually into a haunted soundscape. Crying violins, clusters of Fender Rhodes, guitar pickups, and metal plate drones are gradually layered beneath Anderson's augmented bass feedback. "Eternal return" introduces Rygg singing a lyric evoking ancient Greece, Egypt and the Biblical lands. The song is palindromic, echoing the lyric, beginning and ending with the same bass line and musical pattern, though the guitars are ultimately reversed as the song implodes upon itself. "Terrestrials" is three movements which are fluid like the flow of magma beneath the Earth's crust, sonically uninhibited, unpredictably cosmic, haunting and stirring yet simultaneously ceremonious and beautiful." [label info] www.southernlord.com "Naheliegendes wird vermieden, statt dessen eine zähfließende Düsternis mit fast fragiler Aura: das Sunn o))) & Ulver Kollaborationsalbum “Terrestrials” schickt die Hörer (nicht nur) mit dem Opener “Let There Be Light” und seinen verlangsamten Mariachi-Trompeten fast ein bisschen in die Irre, lässt dieselben zumindest lange im Unklaren, welche Richtung das Stück wirklich einschlagen will… Als “ewiges” Intro hinter verwaschenen Staubwolken der Wüste? Ein Akustik-Drone? Erst das letzte Viertel, wenn “Let There Be Light” schon fast zu ersterben scheint, bringt die Auflösung: wenn sich typisch Sunn o))) artige Harmoniebögen zu manifestieren beginnen und die weiterhin präsenten Bläser mit einem deutlichen Maß an Schwerkraft versehen. Das dann folgende, düstere (und düsterere) “Western Horn”, im Kern eine windende Schichtung von sich reibenden, spröden Gitarren, dabei nach außen so etwas wie die musikalische Umsetzung eines langsam aufkommenden (oder abflauenden) Sandsturms, versenkt die Hörer nach “Let There Be Light” wie unvermittelt in eine ebenso unwirkliche wie unwirtliche, auch ohne ebensolche Soundästhetik zerrende, schwarze Welt. Die, ganz nebenbei, ein weiteres Mal beweist, dass “Heavy” eben auch ganz anders gehen kann.Und dann die größte Überraschung: “Eternal Return”, in den allerersten Tönen noch wie eine direkte Fortsetzung von “Western Horn” klingend, durch die hier stärkere Präsenz eines E-Pianos und ganz besonders die Art der Harmonien aber letztlich in eine ganz andere Richtung weisend: wie eine Art geisterhafter Widerhall, eine eigene Interpretation der Stimmung von oder eben gleich eine Kollaboration mit Bohren & Der Club Of Gore… zumindest rund 6 Minuten lang, bevor das Stück einen völligen Twist macht, Gesang über tragenden Synthstreichern, als Break. Und zurück fällt in die Düsternis des Beginns. In der musikalischen Schattierung so vielfältig wie “Monoliths And Dimensions”, möglicherweise. Und eine Elegie in schwarzer Akustik, sicherlich. Insgesamt betrachtet." [N, Blackmag] | 2014 | €13.00 |
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| SUPERSILENT | 7 | DVD | „Um direkt allen Mißverständnissen vorzubeugen: Auf „7" der neuen DVD von SUPERSILENT gibt es keine Extras oder irreführende graphische Menüs. Keine staatlichen Warnungen, keine Einführungen mit Ufos. Kein Schnickschnack. Denn Label, Künstler und Regisseur hatten den Anspruch, das „7" wie eine Audio CD laufen sollte, nur mit Bild. Einlegen und ein komplettes SUPERSILENT Konzert genießen, genau so lange (109 Min.) und in der gleichen Reihenfolge wie dargeboten. Man kann sogar zwischen den Tracks hin und her skippen. Keine Overdubs (auch wenn sich irgendwie einige psychedelische Momente auf die DVD geschlichen haben:-)), statt dessen hat DEATHPROD einen hervorragenden Stereo Mix abgeliefert, bei dem man sogar zwischen Dolby Digital und dem leicht besseren DTS wählen kann. Und dank DVD-9 ist die Bildqualität sowieso überlegen.“ "The Norwegian death-jazz improvising unit return for the seventh of their Supersilent series, this time in the form of a DVD release of a highly-anticipated live performance in Oslo on August 16, 2004. Members Arve Henriksen (trumpet, electronics), Helge Sten (audio virus), Ståle Storløkken (keyboards) and Jarle Vespestad (drums) form a band that refuse categorization, with experiments in such disparate elements as ambient, jazz, electronica, rock, techno, noise and musique concréte. Critics have compared them to the Miles Davis band of the early '70s, and groups like Stockhausen, Einstürzende Neubauten and Can. Supersilent hadn't played the capital for quite some time and the line went around the block. With the uncertain knowledge that all Supersilent concerts are totally improvised, it didn't take long to hear that they were in excellent form and interplay, all captured by three cameras to black and white 16 mm film and recorded by Kai Andersen from Athletic Sound. Filmed by Norwegian multimedia artist Kim Hiorthøy, the black and white footage lends a filmic quality very rarely seen in concert DVDs. Constructed like an audio CD with visuals, there are no extras, no menus, no FBI warnings or meaningless graphics -- what you get is a pure, complete Supersilent concert from start to finish, 109 minutes. What you see and hear is how it was, no overdubs have been applied to the recording, but a couple of psychedelic hiccups have found their way to the film. The 6 "tracks" are divided so you can skip back and forth as on a CD. By using the audio button on the player's remote control you can chose between Dolby Digital and the slightly superior DTS sound alternatives, if your DVD player is ready for DTS. The sound is mixed by Deathprod in good old stereo. Please also note that this is a DVD-9 production, giving superior picture quality due to the disc having dual layers and more available space. What you hear and see is a multifarious, totally improvised, completely unique live performance from a group who define the best in bombastic Nordic sound. Running time: 109 minutes." [label info] | 2005 | €16.00 |
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| 6 | CD | "Supersilent have been a solid cornerstone in Rune Grammofon since the very beginning and are seen by many as representing the very essence of the label. From the monumental hardcore blizzard storms of 1-3 to the elegant electrojazz of 4 and the almost quiet soundscapes of 5, this new album is where the sum of all things Supersilent comes together in a shape of almost epic proportions. Like 1-3 and Scorch Trio, it was recorded at Athletic Sound in Halden, Norway. More than ever it appears clear that their music lives in a no man's land between the genres, somewhere between rock, electronica, jazz and modern composition. As with all their recordings and live performances, everything here is improvised. That most of the music on 6 appears to be written or at least arranged is testament to the high, almost telepathic level they work at . Needless to say, there are no overdubs. Often being labelled jazz because of the improvising aspect of the music and the fact that three of the members come from a jazz background, with 6 they are just as likely to attract followers of bands such as Goodspeed You! Black Emperor, Sigur Rós, King Crimson, (late) Talk Talk or Popol Vuh." [label info] www.runegrammofon.com | 2003 | €15.50 |
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| 11 | CD | "This is the eleventh release in the Supersilent series. These recordings are taken from the very fruitful sessions that resulted in Supersilent 8 (RCD 2067CD), but are no mere leftovers. Indeed, Supersilent 8 was originally scheduled as a triple release, but producer Deathprod (Helge Sten) finally decided to split it. This is also the first vinyl-only release from the band. Supersilent 8 was recorded during a 5-day studio session at Athletic Sound in Halden, Norway, the all-analog facility where other Rune Grammofon albums like Supersilent 1-3 (RCD 2001CD), Scorch Trio (RCD 2025CD), Luggumt (RCD2040CD/RLP 3040LP) and Raus Aus Stavanger (RCD 2049CD) were recorded. From the monumental hardcore blizzard storm of 1-3 to the elegant electro-jazz of 4 and from the quiet soundscapes of 5 to the epic 6, Supersilent yet again re-invented themselves with 8, an album that to a certain degree explored more abstract and mysterious pathways beyond categories and comparisons. In fact, these sessions turned out to be so fruitful, that producer Deathprod finished 5 hours of music and at one point considered making it another triple CD. In the end, 68 minutes ended up on Supersilent 8, but it was always understood that more of the excellent music that didn't make it to the final cut would appear in one way or another at a later time, and indeed, here it is as a vinyl-only release. This was also Jarle Vespestad's final studio session. This 180 gram audiophile vinyl edition was carefully mastered by Bob Katz and cut by Paul Gold at Salt Mastering. Members include: Helge Sten (audio virus, electric guitar), Ståle Storløkken (synthesizers, keyboards), Arve Henriksen (trumpet, voice, electronics), and Jarle Vespestad (drums)." [label info] www.runegrammofon.com | 2014 | €15.50 |
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| SUZUKI, AKIO & LAWRENCE ENGLISH | Boombana Echoes | maxi-CD / art-print | "I had the pleasure to meet and record with Akio Suzuki late in 2005. Having discovered his work a good few years before that, I had always been impressed with his clear passion for the expressive nature of sound - not merely as a vibrational art form, but also for its mystic, perhaps even spiritual qualities. His many experiments with sound, space and environment were a great inspiration for me and still to this day fill me with a great sense of wonder (no doubt a result of Suzuki's magician like quality, after all he is a shaman). These recordings are edits from a series of both site specific and situation specific encounters we developed together during a short performance based residency in Brisbane. The first recordings we made together were site specific, and the title of this edition reflects the location in which we began working on the project together. Boombana is an area of forest that shifts from open eucalypt woodland to sub-tropic rainforest within a matter of 500 metres. It's located on route to Mt Nebo and not far from there, the view stretches all the way to Moreton Bay. I recorded Suzuki-san during high summer, the forest sizzling with an eerie electronic fizz of cicadas and leaf hoppers, occasionally interrupted by screeching Sulphur Crested Cockatoos. It was these recordings that form the inspiration for the duet published here. Returning to Brisbane, Suzuki and I recorded a series of pieces late one evening. Suzuki played his remarkable Analapos and I used a some hand percussion and a range of small electronic devices that in many ways reflected on the initial sessions we recorded in Boombana - the cicadas replaced by tone generators and filters. The titles of each work also directly link back to Boombana, its distinctive flora and fauna. Coming back to these recordings more than half a decade after they were created, I'm still captivated by Suzuki's remarkable use of his unique instrument the Analapos and I'm inspired to this day by his mastery of sound as an art form. I dearly hope you enjoy these pieces.' Lawrence English. 2 color letterpress die cut sleeve. 3 letterpress printed inserts of drawings by akio suzuki. designed and printed by ben owen. akio suzuki - analapos. lawrence english - field recordings, drum, electronics. recorded live at 121, December 2005." [label info] www.windsmeasurerecordings.net | 2012 | €20.00 |
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| SWIEZYNSKI, MATTHEW | The one who modifies Time and Light | CD | CD with handmade packaging in an edition of 200. Sleeves feature a black monochrome craquelure abstraction, a number of these are available in a box with specially made art-work and a bonus CDr (edition of 11). First in a series focusing on sound and music in cinema, dwelling on field recordings, follies and harmony initially used to augment picture, now isolated and modified as a lover's response to the experience of film. The recordings are highly memory-annihilated edits of a mediation on the work of Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy, created initially for Patrick Mcginley's Framework Radio. A further reworking of this music began in the logic editing system, where a slow-duplication was instituted in order to create a more stereo-rich listening experience. Soon discovered was a plethora of glitching errors. These glitching dreams were then augmented and purified in the tradition of John Cage. In addition to these "chance procedures", a touch of immobility, abstractions and layerings was added underneath to release the music further from its maker. After all this nonsense, the mix was found to be a pleasantly disorienting experience. This work is dedicated to my love Chi and our puppy Leviathan. Leviathan gave me these words of inspiration which one can find in Paradise Lost Massacré : "Infinite Vale. Through the vast and scornful deep, tossing fiery waves of dire hope, what sea-beast Leviathan that piloted the ocean storm, and burned lakes contrary to his own dark designs, he doth obscure mercy and continues on his dusky air. Praise Leviathan: the one who modifies Time and Light to drive us hence." credits released April 23, 2018 Artwork and design by Mount Analogue Sleeve image by M. Świeżyński Mastering by Stephan Mathieu https://ingentingkollektiva.bandcamp.com/album/the-one-who-modifies-time-and-light | 2018 | €13.00 |
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| SYNCHRE | Requiem | CD | All instruments and compositions _ Luca Canciello & Lorenzo Brusci Vocals _ Movement 2, The Zimbabwebird; Movement 1 and 3, Sosta Palmizi Text, Movement 2 (by Zimbabwebird, in Zulu and Shona, 2015): "Thuma mina, mweya mutsvene. Unditumeo" [Send me, pure spirit. And then send me.] Lorenzo Brusci, 1966, co-founder of MUSSTDESIGN.com, managing partner at the music robot start up MUSICFIT (musicfit.ch). He launched over the last 20 years prestigious adventures in the audio and sound space design field as the sound and interactive design studio GIARDINO SONORO (giardinosonoro.com) and the architectural speakers manufacturer ARCHITETTURA SONORA. He has been composing music for various ensembles, theatre, television and radio since the early ’90s (He founded TIMET.org in 1993). Lives between Berlin, Tuscany and Krakow. www.lorenzobrusci.com www.soundcloud.com/lorenzo-brusci Luca Canciello, Italian born, Berlin based. Multi-instrumentalist, composer, sound designer, he performs experimenting with live electronics, instruments and sounds. www.soundcloud.com/climnoizer His musical journey and inspiration have brought him into various fields and art disciplines, working solo or collaborating with other artists and bands. His interest for other art forms, in particular dancing, leads him composing musical pieces for theatre, dance companies, experimenting the various natures of rhythm in music . On sound design, he’s been involved on projects linked to international cultural heritage and architectural media mapping. The mechanism of individual and collective memory and its rituals, are the central inspiration of our Requiem. It’s not a formal Mass; our intention was to harvest and express the community’s need of sharing and binding its ties while facing the experience of death. A deep sense of community - religo in latin, binding in english - inspired our structural research. Requiem becomes then the concerting moment that asks for “holding back”, a desperate request of time suspension, the ultimate demand for re-living, re-experiencing, re-loading, re-gaining, now, in this very ritual and public moment what will be lost forever. Through a free attitude in music composition and expression - our syncretism - we designed a process of electroacoustic layering, consolidating in 3 compositional areas the process and destiny of organic life. - Living Elegy - the enchantment for life and its many endangering gates: the movement is subdivided in (living) Articulation, (ritual)Transition and (pathological) Abandon; - Nostalgia - the seeking for the integral time suspension and life preservation; - Transfiguration - where we depict the organic reaction to danger and biological faith, subdivided in (furious and ultrabiological) detachment, (regenerating) intimate power, (coding the) extended mind, (persuing a new form of) immanency. https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/requiem "Lorenzo Brusci (Timet, Climnoizer, Giardino Sonoro) & Luca Canciello gestalten als SYNCHRE mit ihrem Requiem (ACU 1009, CD) aus Drones, Breakbeats und dunkel grollenden Blechbläsern (oder Orgelpfeifen) einen Dreisatz aus 'Living Energy', 'Nostalgia' und 'Transfiguration'. Als einen Übergangsritus, mit einer zart flehenden Gesangseinlage von Tozim Madzima aka Zimbabwe Bird, zu plonkenden Lauten aus dem Innenklavier. Danach wieder rauschend sich wälzende, zittrig verzerrte und knarrende Synthie- und Gitarrensounds, mit Vogelgezwitscher durchsetzt und erst zeitlupig gedehnten, dann wieder zuckenden Beats. Und zuletzt auch wieder der dunklen Bläserpracht, zu der sich diese grandiose Musik der brausenden Verwandlung entgegen stürzt. Wer braucht noch eine Leitkultur, nach so einem Durchgang ins weiße Licht?" [Bad Alchemy] | 2016 | €10.00 |
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| SYNDROME | Now and Forever | LP | "Mathieu Vandekerckhove, mostly known for his work with Amenra. For years the self-taught musician learned and studied his craft of songwriting and sound scaping, mainly as a means to self exploration, meditation and attempts at channelling negative into positive energy, this while staying below the surface at all times. Now 2012 marks a turning point for Mathieu Vandekerckhove and Syndrome as he steps forward, with the epic 28 minute long “Now And Forever”. Dedicated to his son Wolf, this track offers words of guidance and will grant you a look into the heart and soul of the artist. Close your eyes and hear the beating heart of pure artistic freedom. First 75 orders will get an extra booklet with photography by Mathieu Vandekerkhove." hypertensionrecords.com "Gent in Ostflandern, Heimat AMENRAs und somit auch die von Mathieu Vandekerckhove. Der AMENRA-Gitarrist ist ebenso wie seine Kollegen ein Vielbeschäftigter. Die belgische Ausnahmekapelle und ihr ganzheitlicher Ansatz wussten im letzten Jahr gemeinsam mit NEUROSIS live dergestalt zu überzeugen, dass der amerikanische “Headliner“ an jedem Abend Vollgas geben musste, wollte die Band nicht von Vandekerckhove und den Seinen in den Schatten gestellt werden. Wer NEUROSIS kennt, weiß, dass sie diese Form der Herausforderung suchen und lieben. Dass Eindruck zum Ausdruck wird, ist ein Wesenszug kreativen Wirkens. Die Belgier indes verzahnen künstlerischen Ausdruck und das eigene Leben eng. Nicht umsonst wird bei keiner Veröffentlichung auch nur ein Aspekt dem Zufall überlassen. Gleiches gilt für alle Projekte der in Gent Beheimateten – gleiches gilt somit auch für SYNDROME. Es geht die Geschichte, dass Vandekerckhoves Projekt einem Zuhause Experimentieren entsprungen sei, vor ca. sieben Jahren. Mit “Now And Forever“ liegt die mittlerweile dritte Veröffentlichung vor, ein Track mit einer Spielzeit von 28 Minuten. Das Stück bildet den Wandel ab, der sich in SYNDROME eingeschrieben hat und setzt sich aus Ambient, Drone, Doom und ja – Folkelementen zusammen. Unterstützung erfährt der Belgier von Bandkollegen Colin H. van Eeckhout und Josh Graham. Letzterer sollte als NEUROSIS-Mitglied und A STORM OF LIGHT-Kopf keiner weiteren Vorstellung bedürfen. “Now And Forever“ startet mit einer eindringlichen Akkordfolge, die sanft von einem Drum durchklopft wird. Der vormals erwähnte Wandel drückt sich immer wieder in einer hohen Verdichtung der einzelnen Sounds aus, schnappt Versätze beinahe beiläufig und schichtet diese sorgsam auf, bereitet so auf das Hervorbrechende und Anstürmende vor, besänftigt diese und überführt sie kurz darauf wieder in mindestens zweimalige, versetzte Wiederholungen desselben Motivs. Die Intervalle des Motivs ändern sich stetig und befördern so den rauschhaften Charakter. Ab Minute neun gesellen sich Vandekerckhoves Brummvocal hinzu, um schließlich durch Colins helle Gesangsparts abgelöst zu werden. Immer bleibt die Gitarre leitend und gleicht dabei aber auch einem Katalysator. Sie senkt nicht nur die Aktivierungsenergie, sie überführt auch Dunkles in Klingendes, Tönendes. Reaktant dabei ist das Niederringende des Alltags, dass in das Ergebnis namens “Now And Forever“ expediert wird. Im Vergleich zu AMENRAs Wirkweise des “Hervorbrechens“ steht bei SYNDROME eher das Aufbrechen im Vordergrund. Wo dort die Ausdehnung, das Treiben und das Herauskommen definiert werden, geht es hier eher um ein Öffnen, ein Aufschließen und Durchstoßen. Das Ein- und Aufweichen von Strukturen geschieht entlang des beschriebenen Wandels. Dabei findet der Hörer AMENRAs die anderen Projekte der Mitglieder in die Wertvorstellungen der Hauptband gut verfugt. Nicht umsonst haben die Belgier mit der CHURCH OF RA eine Form der Herangehensweise gewählt, die in Glaubenssystemen wurzelt. Ernsthaftigkeit ist dabei das Credo, fernab von Dogmen und Hierarchien der Entstehungsgrundlage, sondern vielmehr Basis für eine bedingungslose Hingabe, die Ergebnisse erschließt wie das vorliegende. Dort, wo eine Deckungsgleichheit von Handlungen erzeugt wird, entsteht eine Überzeugungsgemeinschaft, eine, die gemeinsam einen Pfad beschreitet, der an den wenig begangenen Weg Robert Frosts erinnert. Das, was dabei betreten wird, ist gesäumt von einem Streben nach Ganzheitlichkeit in Bild und Ton. Das dort im Verborgenen Schlummernde wird Stück um Stück freigelegt, hoch ist der Aufwand für dieses Abringen, jetzt und für immer." [S.L./Black Magazine] "Nearly a decade ago, Syndrome came into the world through the Belgian mind of one Mathieu Vandekerckhove due to his need for a meditative vehicle through which he could release the negative energy in his life and transform it into something more constructive. This vehicle obviously existed in obscurity, laying dormant in silence for many years before taking on the attributes of droning post-rock and finding a home in 2011 with Belgian label ConSouling Sounds where Vandekerckhove has spent his entire career under this moniker to this point. Life was officially given to Syndrome when “Floating Veins” was released last June, finding availability in both a 12″ and a CD limited to 500 copies, of which the first 100 came with a bonus DVD-R of material. Other than that and “Now and Forever” here, the only other existing official Syndrome release is a three-way split with Monotonos and Sequences entitled “Fall of Man”. Outside of Syndrome, Vandekerckhove is otherwise known for his work as guitarist for sludge doom bands Kingdom and, more importantly, Amenra whom found a decisive home in Neurot Recordings a year ago. Unfortunately it seems that, despite a promised release of the new studio album “Mass V” a few months after signing, nothing has yet been unleashed. This slow pace on Neurot may be what has freed Vandekerckhove to pursue his solo project in such depth, and that depth has found him constructing a one-track, 28 minute opus in dedication to his son, Wolf, for this release. What few words are present here exist as a guiding light for his son towards finding himself, finding strength, helping others, and knowing no matter how distant the expanse, be it physical or ethereal, his father is there in spirit. It’s an intimate portrait of the proverbial handing of the torch in blood, primal if not tribal in spirit. A tribal nature is in fact how this album opens, with a subtle light percussive notion — the only place on the entire album where you’ll find any hint of bombast behind the epic, weaving feedback drones that shimmer harmoniously before washing away in tides of a deeper, less tenuous drone that is textured lightly by gentle noise and guitar tones. These moments will eventually give way to the heart of the track that contains the lyrical content and the most desolate production within the release to give space for the vocals to express their stern, yet inert fragility. The deep performance here, both literally and emotionally, immediately reminds of efforts from several artists including Steve von Till and later Ulver, and whose building ethereal guitar nature is uncannily reminiscent of the gut-wrenching dreamy style that Love Spirals Downwards once achieved. Other than the obvious emotions associated with succeeding at bringing a child into this world, there has to be something incredibly special on an entirely different, subconscious level about implementing those emotions into a dedication through music. It was a decade ago, this year, that Green Carnation released their acclaimed “Light of Day, Day of Darkness” album which was inspired by, at least in part, by the birth of Tchort’s son and the death of his daughter. Obviously there is a greater sense of melancholy in that record, but there is a very distinct yet undefinable emotion that accompanied that album — an emotion that is also present in full force here. It certainly isn’t melancholy, but it is reserved all the same — focused and incontrovertibly sincere. That said, it’s difficult to place the particular portion of the painting by Matthieu Ronsse, “Bateau”, that as used as the album cover, in regards to it’s significance to the subject matter at hand. It certainly fits in with the ethereal music of “Now and Forever”, and there are certainly ties in sound to the sea, but it is certainly cryptic at best in relation. The figure pictured has a ship’s flags linked to the inside corners of the eyes, almost representing tears, while the sail itself covers the mouth. The ship itself is on fire. There are many obvious lines of thought, but they seem to contradict one another once their paths cross. Perhaps this is an explanation best saved for another article at another time. Regardless of the cryptic artwork though, it’s hard to imagine an album of this style achieving a level of perfection that rises above this. There’s simply such an incredible amount of intensity, love, and musical prowess at work in “Now and Forever” to find any kind of negative attributes within." [Sage/Heathen Harvest] | 2013 | €20.50 |
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| SZCZEPANIK, NICHOLAS | The Chiasmus | CD | "Nicholas' debut CD is much more than an impeccably constructed piece of abstract drone music: The Chiasmus undulates between waves of quiet melancholy and overwhelming beauty, with small slices of pointillistic noise. an album where the emotional response is always the central focus rather then pure aesthetic concerns, the nuances of The Chiasmus are only revealed upon multiple listens; by then, the listener is completely tuned into the world it presents. packaged in a jewel with a 16 pages booklet of art by Avery McArthy." [label info] "... We mostly know him as the owner of Sentient Recognition Archive label, who produce some professionally packed CDRs of the moody, textured drone music around. I think this is the first time I hear his music. Its hardly a surprise that he creates such music himself. Drone music with a big D. Szczepanik seems to be drawing inspiration from all over the place. Through calm and atmospheres, he isn't too shy about breaking away from that and offer a louder end of his excursions. Things buzz and drone and sometimes bite your ear. Think a louder Organum meeting the softest Machinefabriek. The softer moments are the best, I think, but the louder bits (a minority here) provide a great counter point. Maybe a bit long, but very nice." [FdW / Vital Weekly] "A split release between bad ass French microlabel Basses Frequencies, and Szczepanik's own Sentient Recognition Archive label, The Chiasmus is Szczepanik's latest collection of dronology, and the first proper cd we've had (quite possible his first proper cd release entirely). We've long been fans, being the dronelords and ladies we are around these parts, and past Szczepanik joints have demonstrated a mastery of the drone, creating surprisingly lush and lustrous expanses of low end minimalism. On The Chiasmus, Szczepanik continues to move ever deeper, ever darker, five long tracks, each a different variation of drone, drifting from minimal black shift, to near Pop Ambient bliss. Record opener is cavernous, epic, Teutonic and slow shifting, peppered at the beginning with bits of glitch and hiss, the song soon settles into an uneasy sprawl, ominous and dangerously grim, but still somehow warm and expansive and enveloping. The second track shifts gears completely, unfurling a gauzy bit of chordal shimmer, all warm and sun dappled and delicate and gauzy, gentle tranquil melodies played out over minutes instead of seconds, a little Eno for sure, as the song drifts and flutters and hovers dreamily in midair. The final three tracks hover somewhere in between, deep moaning post industrial whirs laid over dense metallic buzz, the two layers slowly seeping into one another like some blackened sonic spill, deep bell like tones ring out, their tones frozen in time and stretched out into softly undulating sheets of sound, slightly reflective and iridescent and kaleidoscopic, glimmering and glistening underneath some alien black sun, and finally, a loooooooong stretch of grinding muted buzz, spreading out in slow motion, it's black shimmer infused with streaks of melody, as if some strange black seas was slowly growing warmer and coming to life before our ears. Fantastic, gorgeous stuff. Essential listening for the drone obsessed..." [Aquarius Records review] www.bassesfrequences.org | 2009 | €12.00 |
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| SZCZEPANIK, NICHOLAS & JUAN JOSE CALARCO | Lack Affix | CD | "Lack affix isn’t so much about one particular location as it is an homage to the memories of the places we can’t vividly remember. This is about the imagery conjured when certain senses are triggered. It’s about our mind’s recreations of memories past; at once familiar, but also different in some inexplicable way. (Nicholas Szczepanik) Washington DC - Since a couple of years I’ve been living in different areas very far from the centre of the city and for Lack Affix I tried to capture this particular feeling I used to get during the nights by the time I lived at the most overcrowded districts; those extremely distant-blurred sounds of night activities as trucks delivering boxes, police helicopters, construction sites working on full hours, gas stations filled with taxis coming and going but mostly that undefinable, abyssal texture of a huge city at very late hours. As Nicholas was sending me his re-works on my raw stuff and his own recordings for me to work on, we went more into this direction. So, I focused even more on recordings from the same streets and specially from terraces and inside subway entrances to reconstruct the sounds as I used to hear them those times ago; hopefully, even to recover some peaceful sensation I’ve never felt again so far, no idea if related with the dulling sound of those crowded districts or not. (Juan José Calarco) Buenos Aires, Argentina" [label / website info] www.unfathomless.net "The third release in the Unfathomless series is a duo release of two artists bringing sounds to the table from their own places. Nicolas Szczepanik from Washington and one Juan Jose Calarco from Buenos Aires. They traded these sounds and then started to work on processing these. This resulted in the three pieces on this CD. Its hard to recognize the busy urban life in these pieces. Just as much as you would guess, this could also be the sounds from a small village. Unless of course they stuck out their microphones in the middle of the night, picking up the remains of the day and the birds of the night. Occasionally they work towards a crescendo, but even then its not easy to spot the city. Not that I care about this, I must say. They come up with music that has a lot to imagine about. Great field recordings, and great processing of the sounds. They do an excellent job, mixing all of this together, with great clarity and lots of detail. The sound bounces all over the dynamic spectrum. If you like say Francisco Lopez, then you're bound to like this too. Highly refined soundscapes." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2010 | €14.00 |
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| SZMT | Parvenu | CD | Parvenu is a work about authoritarian structures and developments. The narrative is abstract, all sounds are concrete. Every single sound on this recording is based on recordings from three bee hives. Track List: Sometimes She Had Melancholic Memories of Her Larval Stage – 11:48 His Primary Role Was to Mate with the Fertile Queen – 9:04 The General Skepticism of the Constitutional Monarchy Was Justified as New Forms of Authority Surfaced – 15:11 The Surviving Virgin Queen Hid in the Shadows of Her Former Kingdom – 11:37 www.gruenrekorder.de "Behind szmt (no capitals needed) is Tobias Schmitt, better know, I think, as Suspicion Breeds Confidence, but also an improviser and organiser of concerts. As szmt he “contextualizes seemingly contradictory material and techniques. All input is equal and will be formed into a coherent but nevertheless open to misinterpretation result by means of improvisation and composition” and for ‘Parvenu’ we read that it is a “work about authoritarian structures and developments. The narrative is abstract, all sounds are concrete. Every single sound on this recording is based on recordings from three bee hives”, in which context I guess the whole authoritarian structures becomes funny. When I played this yesterday for the first time I didn’t look any of this up, nor could I really decipher the font on the cover and decided to give it another try, another day, which turned out to be today. Now that I know I am hearing the processed sound of bees, it sounds like something very obvious, but I guess that’s always the case. I assume that Schmitt is armed with a laptop and sound processing tools that lie within those machines to compose the four pieces on this CD. It is shimmering, quiet, sometimes loud, sometimes very processed, beyond recognition and then sometimes it seems to be fairly close to what is really a recording of a bee. Most of the times it sounds like the work of microsound, that active music force from a decade ago, but in the case of szmt that is perhaps 2/3 of the story. In “The General Skepticism of the Constitutional Monarchy Was Justified as New Forms of Authority Surfaced” (all four titles are that weird, indeed), Schmitt let’s his bees do a dance, and while not really techno music, or perhaps something we could or should dance too, there is surely some kind of groove to be detected. Schmitt’s work reminded me of Roel Meelkop, Marc Behrens and that posse, but he added his own twist by allowing a more loop based structure, working his processing around those, calling for minimalist developments within each piece. It’s these perhaps not so big differences that actually made it stand out from the microsound as it was before and made it into something he can call his." [FDW/Vital Weekly] "Gruenrekorder recordings are often filled with surprises, and szmt’s Parvenu is no exception: the brainchild of Tobias Schmitt, the forty-eight-minute release was created entirely using sounds derived from three bee hives. Given the szmt description provided, Schmitt, who also issues material under the Suspicion Breeds Confidence alias (e.g., The Fauna and Flora of the Vatican City) and has contributed to a number of releases on the label over the years, would appear to be somewhat of a provocateur. szmt, we’re told, “contextualizes seemingly contradictory material and techniques” such that all input is “formed into a coherent but nevertheless open-to-misinterpretation result by means of improvisation and composition.” In the case of Parvenu, four long-form explorations are presented, each carrying with it a wordy title, the lengthiest “The General Skepticism of the Constitutional Monarchy Was Justified as New Forms of Authority Surfaced.” The material’s predictably abstract and amenable to interpretation, the listener free to conjure any number of possible interpretations in response. Occasional moments of insect swarm and buzzing do surface, but for the most part Schmitt’s treated the original recordings like so much raw material ready to be liberally shaped and transformed. As the recording plays, it’s impossible to predict what direction it’ll take; at one juncture, a writhing, industrial-inflected rhythm pattern begins to assert itself before a swathe of smears abruptly takes its place. Elsewhere, amplified chirping, grinding, and warbling noises suggest a microphone moving in closely on the hive and its inhabitants, with rutting sounds of indeterminate origin implying activity of some (re)productive kind occurring within. Tinged with sci-fi bleeps, a few ambient-like episodes arise that one would perhaps misidentify as synth-generated were one unaware of the production methodology involved, and strange though it might sound, that aforementioned track, especially when it features clattering beat elements, threads sequences into its fifteen-minute frame that aren’t unlike what one might encounter in an early Autechre experiment. A number of possible descriptions come to mind, but experimental soundsculpting might be the best and simplest fit for what’s going on here. Such experimentation is business as usual at Gruenrekorder central, of course, as long-time followers of the label already know. As strange to outsiders as Parvenu will be, to Gruenrekorder fans such weirdness is nothing more than standard operating procedure." [Texture] | 2017 | €13.00 |
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| TAKAHASHI, YUJI | Meikai No Heso | CD | Yuji Takahashi “Meikai no Heso” CD Edition OMEGA POINT Archive Series OPA-026 A collection of small pieces of tape music by renowned composers, that haven’t been talked about very much. All of them are premiere release on disc. tr.1 Yuji Takahashi (1938 -), Meikai no Heso (The Umbilicus of Limbo, 1963) (sound file) It is also known as Window to Antonin Artaud, or The Umbilicus of Limbo. it was performed in a version of tape and instruments - poetry reading of the French poet Antonin Artaud, which was modified on the tape, and bass instruments as well as percussion instruments. This is a live recording of Musicians Group: New Direction at Sogetsu Art Center, conducted by Toshi Ichiyanagi. At the beginning of the concert, Kuniharu Akiyama gave his commentary about the piece. tr.2 Kuniharu Akiyama (1929 - 1996), Jo-un Keiji sho (1987) (sound file) It is a segment of a body of work Sound Gift, that was commissioned by WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk) for a show to celebrate John Cage’s 75th birthday. A short text, “Kumo Kumo-wo Joshi Keiji-suru (Kumo=Clouds, Keiji=Cage)”, which was a poetry reading by Akiyama, was looped in the tape, which then overlapped with Haiku about clouds (including English and German), words related to Zen ( in which Cage immersed himself), and sounds. By the way, an English version of Haiku was read by Ayuo Takahashi. tr.3 Yoriaki Matsudaira (1931 -), Constellation (1984) (sound file) This is a work by using UPIC device developed by Iannis Xenakis (which can translate graphical images into sound). Here is Matsudaira’s commentary. “I decided to draw the constellation which we can see in Japan, and chose to fade in colours depending on the brightness of each star. Each of us was supposed to indicate the tone by images, and I remember that I decided to divide the sky into four sections to change the tone little by little. tr.4 Yoshio Hachimura (1938 - 1985), Catch in the air (1973) (sound file) It was produced in 1973 at NHK Studio of Electronic Music. Some Japanese traditional instruments, piccolo, tuba, violin, piano as well as electronic sounds were edited on the tape. Its sharp materialistic sound is characteristic of this composer. tr.5 Toshi Ichiyanagi (1933 -), Music for Film Shikisokuzekuu (1974) (sound file) The visual of Shikisokuzekuu is described as follows; A letter of Heart Sūtra is projected one by one on the screen rapidly. From the middle of the film, religious paintings appeared with subliminal effect, and flickering vivid colours were added. That gave the audience a dizzy sensation.” The music is mixed barbaric rhythm, electronic sound and Japanese traditional instrument. omega-point.shop-pro.jp/?pid=159022056 | 2021 | €21.50 |
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| TALVIHORROS | Descent into Delta | CD | "A year passes by and finally Talvihorros is back with his latest album Descent Into Delta to be released on both vinyl and CD. The man behind this one man guitar driven excursion is London based Ben Chatwin who in addition to hibernate has had material released through Benbecula, My Dance The Skull and our sister label Rural Colours. Despite only recently forming the Talvihorros project in 2008, Chatwin has been experimenting with sound ever since he first picked up a guitar as a teenager. His live performances have seen him share a stage with the likes of Tim Hecker, Stephan Mathieu and Ian Hawgood to name just a few. Chatwin has to this point juggled live performances and studio work as two separate entities with studio material being culled from sounds derived from as many different instruments as possible and live performances being restricted to just guitar and pedals. Descent Into Delta marks the blurring of the lines which separate these two disciplines. It was live performance that ignited the production of this record, which began life as a series of live improvisations, these were then selected and edited over a long period of time. During the mixing process the concept to Descent Into Delta was born and it slowly developed through many hours of editing and arrangement. Chatwin became interested in different states of mind, realising it actually produces frequencies or waves - much like sound, itself. When the mind is alert, awake or anxious, these waves are Gamma, at the other extreme, during deep sleep, Delta waves are produced. It was in turn Chatwin's intention that the sounds of Descent Into Delta would loosely depict a journey from Gamma through to Delta, as a kind of experiment to see whether the listener could be subconsciously encouraged to trace this path through sound. Towards the last few moments of the album on the last track 'Delta', Chatwin was joined by viola player Anais Lalange who added a subtle but effective impact to the closing stages of this record. The addition of this instrument brings a whole new dimension and texture to the guitar explorations of Talvihorros." [label info] www.hibernate-recs.co.uk "Back in Vital Weekly 731 I reviewed the first CD by Talvihorros, also known as Ben Chatwin, a man with a guitar and effect pedals. He has had a couple of other releases, which I didn't hear. Up until this album there was a separation between live concerts and studio work. In his studio he would be using whatever sounds he could produce from whatever instrument, but live he was restricted to guitar plus effects. For this new studio album he took many hours of live playing into the studio and then started to edit and arrange this. Of his previous release on Hibernate I thought it was all quite ambient, but on this new one, things are less strictly defined. The guitar is overall a dominant factor for this, and its played at times in a more improvised way, feeding through bundles of sound effects. That results at times in menacing walls of sound such as in 'Beta', in which it reaches for the ambient doom of Nadja. Darkness is anyway something that lingers in all five pieces here, even in its more introspective and quiet moments, such as the very beautiful 'Delta', which has a nice viola to it. One could say that with this album Talvihorros found more a voice of his own than on the previous. Blending ambient with the improvised textures of ambient doom/metal into five fine tapestries of sound is very nice, though not unheard before, but a fine move indeed." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2011 | €12.00 |
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| TAM QUAM TABULA RASA |
Cotidie Morimur
(SOLD OUT) |
7inch | A legendary and very original italian post industrial group from the cassette-underground culture of the late 80’s/ early 90’s, who had their one and only vinyl release on Drone in 1995. They were at the forefront of what one could call “archaic drone-noise”... TQTR are active again these days so we decided to put this early Drone EP back into existence.. “WHILE STILL RELATIVELY UNKNOWN, THIS ITALIAN GROUP HAS BEEN ACTIVE SINCE 1988 AND MANAGED TO RELEASE SOME OUTSTANDING UNIQUE SOUNDING TAPES IN THE INTERNATIONAL/ EXPERIMENTAL TAPE-SCENE. DRONE RECORDS IS PROUD TO PRESENT THE VERY FIRST VINYL RELEASE OF T.Q.T.R., A 7" EP FEATURING THE TRACKS 'DYSKRASIA' AND 'ATAXIA'. THEIR MYSTERIOUS AND MONOTONIC MUSIC CAN IN OUR OPINION BE TRULY CLASSIFIED AS REAL ARCHAIC MUSIC, EVOKING EMOTIONS OF AN ANCIENT AND FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTER. FOCUSING DEEP INTO THE GROUND OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, THEIR MUSIC IS A KIND OF ARCHETYPICAL EXPRESSION THAT IS TIMELESS AND AESTHETIC. PERHAPS TO UNDERSCORE THE QUALITY OF THEIR MUSIC AS ITS OWN SECRET LANGUAGE, THE BAND INSISTS ON USING LATINS FOR THEIR TITLES. THIS EP SHOWS THE GROUP WORKING ON A MORE RHYTHMIC MODE, WITH URGENT DRONES AND STRANGE HARMONIES CREATING AND ATMOSPHERE OF NATURAL MYSTICISM – MIRRORING THE NEVER UNDERSTOOD FORCES WITHIN ONESELF. Cotidie morimur. Cotidie demitur aliqua pars vitae.” [from the original press release 1995] 300 COPIES ON BLUE–YELLOW VINYL. FULL COLOUR PRINTED COVERS "Auf 45rpm gerade siechender Spielmannszugabstraktion, auf 33rpm eine Mischung aus ovalesker Lockedgroovemontage und geradezu schläfrig-suggestiver Langsamkeit inmitten der parallel ablaufenden Klangereignisse. Charmant ist das sanft industrielle Outfit der Titel, besonders die geradezu mantrische B-Seite mit dem elegischen Namen »Ataxía« spiegelt einen geradezu einfühlsam ablaufenden Klangprozess wieder, in dessen Cage’scher Maschinenwiederholung so etwas wie ein chakrisches Bewusstsein für Klänge widerhallt. Die A-Seite hingegen pervertiert Organums Chaoskompositionen via sanfter Repetition und nahtloser Aneinanderreihung industrieller Klänge sowie abgenudelter Softjazzplatten im ausgewaschenen Hintergrund. Nicht gerade was für den Weihrauchgarten, aber definitiv etwas zum Staunen." [Thorsten Soltau / AEMAG] | 2003 | €6.00 | |
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Cotidie Morimur
(SOLD OUT) |
7inch | released March 1995 lim./numbered first edition of 250 copies. Individually symboled P.E. sleeves & printed covers; dark blue vinyl “WHILE STILL RELATIVELY UNKNOWN, THIS ITALIAN GROUP HAS BEEN ACTIVE SINCE 1988 AND MANAGED TO RELEASE SOME OUTSTANDING UNIQUE SOUNDING TAPES IN THE INTERNATIONAL/ EXPERIMENTAL TAPE-SCENE. DRONE RECORDS IS PROUD TO PRESENT THE VERY FIRST VINYL RELEASE OF T.Q.T.R., A 7" EP FEATURING THE TRACKS 'DYSKRASIA' AND 'ATAXIA'. THEIR MYSTERIOUS AND MONOTONIC MUSIC CAN IN OUR OPINION BE TRULY CLASSIFIED AS REAL ARCHAIC MUSIC, EVOKING EMOTIONS OF AN ANCIENT AND FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTER. FOCUSING DEEP INTO THE GROUND OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, THEIR MUSIC IS A KIND OF ARCHETYPICAL EXPRESSION THAT IS TIMELESS AND AESTHETIC. PERHAPS TO UNDERSCORE THE QUALITY OF THEIR MUSIC AS ITS OWN SECRET LANGUAGE, THE BAND INSISTS ON USING LATINS FOR THEIR TITLES. THIS EP SHOWS THE GROUP WORKING ON A MORE RHYTHMIC MODE, WITH URGENT DRONES AND STRANGE HARMONIES CREATING AND ATMOSPHERE OF NATURAL MYSTICISM – MIRRORING THE NEVER UNDERSTOOD FORCES WITHIN ONESELF. Cotidie morimur. Cotidie demitur aliqua pars vitae.” [label info] | 1995 | €6.00 | ||
| TAMING THE OUTBACK | 1986-1989 | CD | "TAMING THE OUTBACK... OK ... you probably haven’t heard of this 1980’s UK band before – but they really are worth it ... Taming The Outback were a three-piece from Southend-on-Sea (Essex, UK) who were active from 1986 to 1989 (hence the title of this retrospective compilation). While they spent most of their time playing outside of the town itself and bemoaning the R&B traditions of the area, they were very much a Southend band. The three members of the original line-up formed after crisscrossing each other’s musical paths in South East Essex in the early 1980s. Melbourne-born drummer Daryl Amos and bass player Jason Sherwin first played together in local band A Wreath For Brezhnev, later meeting-up with guitarist/singer Tony Sampson (who played with Playground) to form Taming The Outback – band characterized by an aggressive, driven rhythm section, strong self-penned songs with a rich, echo-saturated guitar. Playing live became a primary focus for the band but the endless gigging, drinking and the failure to release the aforementioned second single and the LP (already recorded) probably marked the beginning of the end of the band. Taming The Outback itself played their last gigs in 1989 with the aggression being turned inwards between personnel and instruments. This limited edition retrospective CD collects the unreleased LP, their 7” single and the cassette EP, along with demos and some rare live recordings – all carefully and professionally remastered by Sting Davies at Big Noise, one of the UK’s top audio restoration engineers. Their music has never sounded better. The deluxe packaging pays homage to those lovely old vinyl gatefold sleeves and has an information-packed 24-page full colour booklet and inner sleeve (initial copies also come with a 2-sided mini-poster with more press cuttings and a sticker). Check out our web page for videos, more images and (aging and fading) press cuttings." [label info] www.chronoglide.com/equation.html "Every now and again I find a band or artist that I just am absolutely in love with, only to find upon further research, that they have fallen to obscurity and little to no more material exists to be had. That is very much the case with Taming the Outback. Being a big fan of the post-punk movement as a whole, I was certainly excited to give this disc a spin, but I had no idea what was in store. A 'definitive' collection, culled from the entirety of their 3 year lifespan, '1986-1989' may just be one of the most quintessential post-punk records I've experienced. From the opening notes of 'Fire & Smoke' to the moving, dramatic leads of 'Mistrust' to the final notes of 'American Dream' this cd is a near flawless listen. So many classic influences are channeled throughout this disc, while not a single one of them can quite be used for comparison. The Outback were able to draw from these influences and really put their own stamp on it all. From bass sounds very reminiscent of the Cure's 'Disintegration' album, coupled with certain melodies containing the ghosts of Joy Division's early work to the angst of Killing Joke and hint of the western vibe of Fields of the Nephilim (with whom The Outback shared the stage for a tour) to the tension building vocals of Echo and the Bunnymen and Mission UK'¦ The list just goes on and on, yet I can't stress enough, that at no point does it sound like any of these bands have been recycled in any way. Taming the Outback had something so magical that this world just couldn't accept it, and after just three short years, tensions grew to a head, and the magic was no more. Lucky for us the trio, after 2 decades, decided to release this retrospective of singles originally slated for an abandoned LP, demos, and live tracks. While the quality of some of the live tracks isn't 100% pristine, some of the almost inaudible tape noise, really at its worst just adds a warm, nostalgic feel the latter half of the album. Even the packaging is impressive. A thick, heavy, double gatefold style cardboard sleeve is adorned with the band's infamous crucifixion publicity shot, and comes with a poster, and full 24 page booklet containing lyrics, interviews and reprints of more than a few press clippings about the band; and a second edition limited to just 75 copies (which at last inspection were still available) comes with the same, as well as 4 badges, a mini reprint of 'Alive and Kicking' fanzine from 1987 featuring the band, and an original copy of their only 7' in a picture sleeve. Once again, just a phenomenal record in every way; go out of your way if you must, just make sure you get this one under your belt before you die." [Barton Graham / Chain DLK] | 2011 | €13.00 |
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| TANKRED, KENT | There is Nothing to Attain | do-CD | Kent Tankred (b.1947) is one of the true hidden masters of Swedish electro-acoustic and experimental music. Tankred studied at Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm in the early 70s and he has released a sparse catalogue of fine works, mainly for his and Leif Elggren’s Firework Edition Records as well as Ash International. In 1995 he put out the extremely strong album ”Ordinary Things” on Fylkingen Records. ”THERE IS NOTHING TO ATTAIN” is his first albums since the 2010 CDr with the same title. - iDEAL. * Music is not like people. Nonetheless most music tries to pretend it is human, imitating their movements, feelings, attributes, even opinions. Kent’s music doesn’t pretend to be anything. One quickly forgets there could be a human behind it, even though it may have arisen from some profound game, a concentration on some discovery, combination, principle. The music is naked, or rather unclothed, inhuman, at the first encounter reminding you of everything you would prefer to avoid: leaf-blowers, neighbours drilling the wall, machinery grinding, a screwdriver stripping the thread with a careless move, electric warning signals, all on top of each other. A recent radio programme was discussing whether the phrase “human error” should be replaced by the less recriminatory “human contribution”. Meanwhile a submarine has sunk into an ocean chasm and the 53 aboard who might still be alive will run out of oxygen before they can be reached. A struggle between man and machine. But here there is no struggle, the machine is likened to any other natural phenomenon. It just is, does what it does, or doesn’t, in its own time which is neither fast nor slow since it doesn’t have to be compared with anything, has no purpose, no significance, is neither good nor evil. A god like Einstein’s, indistinguishable from nature in its entirety. A galaxy does not rotate in order to be beautiful or strong. A fan does not make something flap about randomly in order to trace a certain pattern. In the starkly dystopic early science-fiction film On the Beach (1959) a Morse signal is detected from a region where all life should have been eradicated by the atomic winter. An expedition is sent to resolve the mystery. In a completely lifeless industrial zone they find that someone, before the radiation wiped them out, had hung a coke bottle on a string from a roller blind balanced so that the random flapping of the blind caused the bottle to press the telegraph key, producing a haphazard stream of code which inevitably from time to time formed meaningful words and phrases. I am hard put to explain what it is than can suddenly make the music so entertaining, so jocular in the midst of this objective, mundane mangling. Yet one does get reminded at some point that someone is behind all this, has discovered or molded, has chosen this; perhaps not a joke but pure serendipity. Just as things originate so must they vanish, by one decision or another – a handbrake, a puncture, a flying catch. The process “concludes”, or purports to, as when someone suddenly wakes you from a dream which you forget immediately but retain the echo of a feeling. Or you are surprised by your parents opening the door when you’re in the middle of a game where you can’t remember whether what you’re doing is supposed to be secret or not. And so the cauldron or the ventilation pipes spill out a bus garage, a swarm of drones, or those flying bicycles Leonardo had a mind to make. Johannes Bergmark. https://idealrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/there-is-nothing-to-attain | 2021 | €17.50 |
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| TAPE LOOP ORCHESTRA | Interiors Two | LP + CD + BOOK | New impressionistic, metaphysical investigations from Andrew Hargreaves’ Tape Loop Orchestra. Taking his cues from found photos and a hopeless romantic sensibility, Tape Loop Orchestra’s entropic drift carries him thru rooms 7-13 of his ‘Interiors’ trilogy, taking all the time he needs to ponder the questions: “Are there invisible entities left adrift when a room is unoccupied, sounds forever reverberating beyond the life of the body? Is there a way for us to access this library written in the air?”Across the LP he typically divines a moire of ephemeral emotive nudges swept up in ferric swells, while the bonus CD supplies an intimate audience with TLO recorded live at Manchester’s Partisan venue on a chilly sunday evening in winter 2018. In a transition from fading daylight to darkness, the music on the LP inhabits richly melancholy headspace. Initially clear, plangent keys and choral sighs almost subliminally begin to fray at the edges as their signals become reiterated in outwardly spiralling feedback loops. Across the front the sound connotes a late summer light ebbing away into dusk, gradually allowing the ear’s eye to adjust to the low luminosity of the B-side, where a chill of night seeps into the near-static scenes, fringed by the meridian sound of distant cars or the shiver of spirits accreted in soft furnishings and peeling wallpaper, eventually slowing down to a stark solo piano pulse and even Carpenter-style atmospheric noir. Leading on beautifully from the LP’s solemn ending is TLO’s live set recorded for an event organised by Tom Houghton at Partisan, a listed building in a historic quarter of Manchester city centre. We were lucky enough to be lulled to a soporific state by said set, and we can assure listeners it’s lost none of its enchanted appeal on the CD. | 2019 | €34.00 |
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| TARAB | Take all the Ships from the Harbour, and sail them straight to Hell | CD | In der mächtig wachsenden Field Recording-Szene hat sich der Australier TARAB durch seinen besonderen Stil inzwischen einen Namen gemacht... Seine Aufnahmen schwanken zwischen den Polen des "ganz nahen" und Detaillierten und dem "entfernten, verhallten, undeutlichen, verrauschten", wobei er v.a. rauhe, knirschend-knarzige, metallisch-quietschende "Granular-Sounds" bevorzugt. Gewohnte musikalische Parameter spielen hier keine Rolle mehr, die editierten Soundschnipsel ergeben "nicht-harmonische" aber doch Emotionen und Intellekt herausfordernde dynamische Strukturen... das ist atmosphärische, experimentelle Musique Concrete mit Drone-Elementen. TIP !! "The title to this album from Tarab (nee Eamon Sprod) is striking enough in its allusions of damnation, with a watery grave a potential outcome from human activity impacting the earth. So, it may be stating the obvious that the corroded locations where mankind has scarred the surface of the earth feature prominently in the work of this Melbourne based sound artist. The residual elements of these sites become the agents for metaphor and allegory in Tarab's work, documented through field recording and sympathetic actions with found objects from those sites. One such location that features prominently in Take All of the Ships... is Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. Once the home of an immigration station at the turn of the 20th Century and later a Nike Missile site for the US military, Angel Island now rests in the hands of the US National Park Service, which has left some of the buildings to succumb to the forces of decay. From the sounds culled from this site and others closer to his antepodean home, Tarab diligently overlays and stiches together a highly tactile composition with very little digital treatments to speak of.Take All of the Ships... opens with an ominous rumble whose frequencies appear to emerge from the center of the Earth and liquefying the surface upon impact. As these tones ebb and flow, Tarab unveils as revolving series of exaggerated details from a hyperbolic gash of two heavy pieces of metal grinding against themselves to a toxic chorale of nighttime insects to sand, wind, and surf detourned into sedimentary white noise. Tarab's compositional sensibility shifts throughout the album, at first sparsely situating these sounds into shadowy vignettes. Gradually, Tarab coalesces this sublime opus into an arcing crescendo which exhibits sustained harmonics rarely heard in the best of the contemporary dronemusik technicians much less from the realm of sound ecology." [label description] "Like much work in the hybrid, Take all the ships..., a 55 minute suite of environmental sound, is drawn from a few specific places (in this case, Angel Island, a deserted military base turned national park), but is not really meant to be about that place. Instead, it is a layered series of sonic events that act as metaphors. The dominant mood here is bleak and overcast, and certain motifs recur: wind howling and whistling through pipes, ice cracking and tinkling, shortwave radio transmissions, the complaint of metal being scrapped and twisted, booming reverb that seemingly has no source. The sounds become signifiers of desolation, solitude, a creeping sense of life that has no human presence. This metaphorical approach moves the result into fictive, often surreal territory, but, like G*Park, Sprod’s recording method is austere but meticulous. This means that his sounds retain plenty of natural reverb and keep their stochastic character. They hold the interest even when the inevitable lulls in activity set in, those moments when the piece feels more episodic than fully developed. But in their precision and ability to evoke tactile images, Sprod’s sounds are powerful ones, reminiscent of what Tod Dockstader has said about the sounds he preferred: "“I like to have edges. Sound to me is always very physical. I can feel, not just hear it. It has personality. It has weight, proportion. It’s like I can pick it up and hold it." The sounds are masked, but not abstracted. They are the kind of lies you want to believe." [Matthew Wuethrich, Dusted Mag] www.23five.org | 2009 | €14.00 |
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| TARKATAK | Mormor | CD | "Tarkataks MORMOR schafft es mit einer bezaubernden Leichtigkeit, unser Hören in Bewegung zu versetzen. Wir finden uns am Ende der Nacht auf einem Floß, in einem Gewässer aus Klang, soweit das Hören reicht. Akustische Räume öffnen sich, und bieten behutsam bearbeiteten Klängen zuvorkommend ihren Platz an. Melodien singen von ihrem eigenen Entstehen und Vergehen. Statischer Dunst verhüllt die nahe Dämmerung, bis in der Ferne mechanische Oszillationen von einem Ufer und frühen Vögeln künden. Klippen unter der Oberfläche erzeugen schimmernde Interferenzen. Der Ort ist erfüllt von einem fernen Echo letzter Hausmusik, und verstörte Endlosschleifen erzählen in fremden Sprachen von einer unmöglichen Insel, auf der Menschen und Maschinen einen gemeinsamen Rhythmus finden. Versöhnt besteigen wir wieder unser Floß - und lassen uns von MORMOR auf erhabenen Wellen zum fliehenden Horizont tragen." [label info] "...Tarkatak's music is still highly atmospheric, but much more sparse these days. Each of the four long pieces is built around just a few loops, which Tarkatak plays around with, changing the color of them, getting them out of sync and back in sync again, and such like, and creates a wonderful textured sound. There are times when 'Mormor' reminded me of Taylor Deupree, but then a bit more dark, but it has the same relaxed feeling to it. But there is also the featuring of rhythm, which is also an entirely aspect, certainly when it comes down to stripped down techno rhythms. Quite a break with the past, I think and quite a step forward. Including is a film for one of the tracks, which depicts the sea and the sand, along with a lonely man - the sort of film you'd expect with this lonesome music. Great CD, and hopefully bringing him some more recognition" [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2007 | €10.00 |
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| TAUMEL |
In Pieces - Volume One
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10inch | "in pieces - volume one" - taumel trifft das ensemble adapter - - - im winter 2016 haben sich 'taumel' und das 'ensemble adapter' zu mehreren improvisativen sessions getroffen um einen musikabend zu entwickeln, bei dem die gegensätze und grenzen zwischen komposition und improvisation, freiheit und festlegung, chaos und struktur verschwimmen oder kollidieren. im mittelpunkt der sessions stand die entwicklung einer spezifischen, klang-gestischen musiksprache. jeder musker hat gewissermaßen auf seinem instrument einen charakter und seine jeweils eigene spezifische klang-gestik entwickelt. diese sessions haben wir mitgeschnitten und für "in pieces" als grundlage genommen. "in pieces" besteht aus den remixes dieser sessions, sowie zusätzlich von taumel produziertem studiomaterial. "in pieces" kann als sureales klanggedicht verstanden werden, als eine abstrakte klang-geschichte, die durch die verschiedensten zustände wandert - von größtem glück bis hin zu raserei und wahnsinn. in den 2 mutierenden klangfeldern kreist die assoziative geschichte um das thema der sprachlichen unveräußerbarkeit und damit auch um das thema 'chaos und ordnung'. diese doppelbödigkeit, der versuch zur schönheit und dessen umkippen in zerstörung und versagen. schreibversuche, sprechversuche, gestammel, gestotter, geschrei, einengung, wegdriften, gesumme... in der mutation der zustände treffen heterogene klangereignisse aufeinander oder werden vermengt zu einer neuartigen masse zwischen lied, sprechen, melodie, harmonie, geräusch, beats, riffs, wort, elektronik und verfremdung. die aktion des instrumentalisten (das instrumentenspiel) steht auf der gleichen ebene wie jede andere klangerzeugende handlung oder stimmliche veräußerung sowie jede elektronische klangerzeugung und ist immer gestisch gedacht, performativ, als handlung, als akustischer tanz. "volume one" ist der erste teil eines als zweiteiler geplanten musikalischen zusammenhangs ("in pieces - volume two). in zwei klangteilen (seite a, seite b) ist "in pieces - volume one" kein liederzyklus wie unsere anderen serien, z.B. TRAUM, sondern eher ein musikalischer 2-akter, später insgesamt 4-akter. hier teilt sich die gesamtform der musik-serie nicht auf in alben und songs, sondern in alben und deren a+b seiten, wie akt 1, 2, 3 und 4. vielleicht kann man daher "in pieces" auch als akustisches theater hören, oder als hörspiel ohne worte, oder als soundtrack ohne film, oder als film ohne bild, oder eben einfach als eine ordnung sich verändernder klangereignisse. "off the record" in "off the record" trifft taumel auf andere musiker und entwickelt alben in kolaboration. hier können verschiedenste formen der musikalischen interaktion ausprobiert werden. in diesem fall von "in pieces" bestand die zusammenarbeit mit dem "ensemble adapter" in den besagten sessions, die das grundgerüst und skelet für das gesamte album bilden. - - - INFORMATION: "in pieces - volume one" by taumel and ensemble adapter label: dronerecords https://www.dronerecords.de taumel: jakob diehl / sven pollkötter https://www.taumel.net publisher: https://www.la-chunga.com/en/ ensemble adapter: Kristjana Helgadóttir / Ingólfur Vilhjálmsson / Gunnhildur Einarsdóttir / Matthias Engler http://ensemble-adapter.de instruments: voice, drums, percussions, guitars, tipewriter, flutes, harp, clarinets, prepared piano, keyboards, synthesizer, loops and samplings, electronics, fxs on instruments. - - - - - - "in pieces - volume one" - taumel meets ensemble adapter in winter 2016, 'taumel' and the 'ensemble adapter' met for several improvisational sessions to develop an evening of music in which the contrasts and boundaries between composition and improvisation, freedom and determination, chaos and structure were to blur or collide. the sessions focused on the development of a specific, sound-gestural musical language. in a way, each musician developed kind of a character on his instrument and its own specific sound-gesture. we recorded these sessions and used them as a basis for "in pieces. "in pieces" consists of the remixes of these sessions, as well as additional studio material produced by taumel. "in pieces" can be understood as a sureal sound poem, an abstract sound story that wanders through the most different states - from greatest happiness to frenzy and madness. in the 2 mutating sound fields, the associative story revolves around the theme of linguistic inalienability and thus also around the theme of 'chaos and order'. this ambiguity, the attempt at beauty and its overturning into destruction and failure. attempts at writing, attempts at speaking, stammering, stuttering, screaming, constriction, drifting away, humming... in the mutation of states, heterogeneous sound events meet or are mixed to a new kind of soundmash between song, voices, melody, harmony, instruments, noise, beats, riffs, words, electronics and alienation. the action of the instrumentalists (the instrument playing) is on the same level as any other sound producing action or vocal expression as well as any electronic sound production and is always meant gesturally, performatively, as action, as acoustic dance. "volume one" is the first part of a musical context planned as a two-part work ("in pieces - volume two). in two sound parts (side a, side b) "in pieces - volume one" is not a song cycle like our other series, e.g. TRAUM, but rather a musical 2-act, later altogether 4-act. here the overall form of the musical series is not divided into albums and songs, but into albums and their a+b sides, like act 1, 2, 3 and 4. perhaps, therefore, "in pieces" can also be heard as an acoustic theater, or as a radio play without words, or as a soundtrack without a film, or as a film without a picture, or simply as an order of changing sound events. "off the record" in "off the record" taumel meets other musicians and develops albums in collaboration. here different forms of musical interaction can be tried out. in this case of "in pieces" the collaboration with the "ensemble adapter" consisted in these sessions, which form the basic framework and skeleton for the whole album. https://soundcloud.com/drone-records/taumel-in-pieces-vol-one "For various reasons, this is an oddball release for the Drone Records' subdivision of Substantia Innominata. Firstly, because one of the musicians is a relatively well-known actor, who played a role in the excellent German TV series 'Dark', a must-see if you like that sort of thing with time travel. He's also a composer for various films. With Sven Pollkötter, he is the duo of Taumel. I am sure Diehl's participation will raise a few unusual eyebrows in the direction of this record. More importantly, the music is not what we know from this series, a subdivision of Drone Records, which, by and large, deal with the more droney end of the musical spectrum, music for the subconsciousness. Taumel teams up with Ensemble Adapter, a four-piece group of percussion, clarinets, flute and harp, along with a ton of effects, tapes, and voices. The six of them recorded a couple of improvisations, which served as the basis of further mixing, remixing and processing by Taumel (who play keyboards, voices, guitars, typewriter, tapes, percussion, sampler, and such like). On this record, there are eight pieces, which in itself is also a thing you don't see a lot with releases on this imprint. The result is still much rooted in improvised music than you would think or even jazz, but with that streak of darkness, that is more common here. A most remarkable record, I'd say, and one that took some time here before it sank in. The resulting pieces of music are just that, pieces of music, rather than soundscaping or long-form pieces. There is excellent clarity here regarding the instruments, which are all pretty well defined within the result. However, the four pieces per side can be seen as one long story, moving from place to place, albeit a more abstract one, of course, but maybe I am distracted by the fact that there is an actor at work here. Also, it has an excellent film character. I can easily imagine visuals to go along with this, and it comes close to the world of soundtracks. Perfect record, but not one that quickly reveals its secrets." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2021 | €16.00 |
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| TAZARTES, GHEDALIA | La Bar Mitzvah du Chien | LP | "Another shamanic journey in Tazartès's universe. He sings and plays all the instruments and samples, recorded in the very same room as all his other solo records since 1974. Performed, produced, and recorded by Ghédalia Tazartès for Bisou in 2012. Tazartès's son, Lalo, can be heard on "Don't Cry for Me, Mamma." The front cover is a picture of Quentin Rollet, shot by Yannick Ressigeac. The back features a drawing by Lalo Tazartès. Mastered by F/Lor." [label info] | 2015 | €18.00 |
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| 5 Rimbaud 1 Verlaine | 10inch | "Vinyl reissue of this great tribute to the poetry of Rimbaud and Verlaine made by our favorite French sorcerer, who exceptionally abandones his typical imaginary language to reinterpret six small poems in his own way, jumping from one musical genre to the other and happily letting them crunch together in a childish, enthusiastic play. Recorded in Paris in his flatelier around the same time he recorded the wonderful Hystérie Off Music and previously available in an almost unnoticed mini CD edition published by the French label Jardin au Fou, it's now available in a remastered vinyl version - with an excellent 45 rpm cut made by SST in Frankfurt. Pressing info: 350 copies on black." | 2016 | €16.50 |
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| TEGH | Unusual Path | LP | “Unusual Path” is a nearly 20minutes long track, that builds up slowly, layer by layer, sound by sound. It´s electronic music with a very warm analogue feeling, that constitutes the sound of Tegh. Pliable noises and piercing drones create an epic soundstory, complemented by field recordings. Tegh focusses on just one track, to tell a story about an “Unusual Path” and the listener is invited to create her/his own story. PHYSICAL RELEASE: www.midirarecords.com/product/md-045teghunusual-path/ credits released May 31, 2019 Remixes by Siavash Amini (Iran) and Zenjungle (Greece). Amini and Entezami are also a part of the Iranian experimental music scene “SET”, that gives artists a chance to present their music in Tehran. The remixes create a very own aura: Amini stripped down the track to a minimal ambient track with a twist and Zenjungle transformed the track into a dark jazz drone. “Unusual Path” got mastered for vinyl by Antonio Gallucci (Architeuthis Rex). https://midirarecords.bandcamp.com/album/unusual-path | 2019 | €23.00 |
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| TEMPLE MUSIC | Incompleteness | CD | "INCOMPLETENESS" is the all new album from the visionary duo of TEMPLE MUSIC, beautifully presented in typical Faria fashion with 4 full colour inserts in an immaculate art housing... In 1931, the Czech-born mathematician Kurt Gödel demonstrated that within any given branch of mathematics, there would always be some propositions that couldn't be proven either true or false using the rules and axioms of that mathematical branch itself... the implication is that all logical system of any complexity are, by definition, incomplete; each of them contains, at any given time, more true statements than it can possibly prove according to its own defining set of rules. This implies that you'll never entirely understand yourself, since your mind, like any other closed system, can only be sure of what it knows about itself by relying on what it knows about itself. TEMPLE MUSIC'S Alan Trench and Stephen Robinson have used both the implications of Gödel's theorem and the doctrine of anamorphosis to compose and fashion an album of 4 interconnected and complementary tracks that somehow look both forward and back; that juxtapose the old and the new into an organic whole of both sacred and temporal instruments - Indian harmonium and shruti box, plucked and hammered dulcimers, bodhrans, mosenos, various flageolets, synthesisers and keyboards, guitars, bass, Tibetan bells and singing bowls - 4 drifting shards of ethereal and sometimes frightening beauty, rose petals on the snow that are finally revealed to be tiny, perfect drops of crystalline blood... Tracy Jeffery of Orchis, Cunnan and SQE contributes to 2 tracks: vocals to Elemental and harp to Anamorphosis Track listing: "The Transmission of Enochian Via The Seer Edward Kelley" (11.44) "Anamorphosis" (19.47) "In Completeness" (11.30) "Elemental" (9.08) TEMPLE MUSIC believes that each piece of music should reflect the place, time and circumstance of its creation; that each composition should, in effect, be a Genius Loci of a moment; of a thought: a manifestation of the True Will. To this end, we employ a number of techniques, some more abstruse than others; alchymical as well as musical. The project took it's first steps back in 1995 as an offshoot of the English dark folk band ORCHIS and their interest in ancient Greek modal music, drone, magical trance states and krautrock. Orchis made several recordings for a planned ritual music side project, only one of which ever saw the light of day; 'Anadiomene' on 'Mandragora' (1999). There was then silence until 2004, when the first Temple Music recordings began to be released via the Polish experimental label Shining Day. Initially it was essentially a solo project by Alan Trench (ex World Serpent), but before long Trench joined forces with Stephen Robinson (ex The Beloved), initially for further recording but eventually to undertake live semi-improvised performances. The live Temple Music experience proved to be a phenomenon, veering between shifting walls of noise and moments of arctic intensity, sometimes unsettling but always demanding attention, rhythm and chaos combined.... Temple Music employ both acoustic and electronic instrumentation, from vintage synths and samplers to a vast array of plucked, bowed, blown , hammered and invented sound makers in order to accomplish their dense, introspective and numinous music." [full label info] www.shiningday.pl | 2009 | €13.00 |
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| TENHORNEDBEAST | The Sacred Truth | CD | "From the ashes of Dark Ambient legends Endvra the TenHornedBeast is rising. Cryptic, menacing atmospheres erupt from droning chasms of feedback. On an altar of horn and fire "The Sacred Truth" is revealed. An ultra doom / drone epic! Presented in a matt-laminate, spot-varnished digipak. TenHornedBeast is Christopher Walton." [label info] "With a past in the British dark ambient-project Endura in joint venture with Stephen Pennick, Christopher Walton knows exactly how to create atmospheres of the disturbingly black kind. His solo-project "Tenhornedbeast" is like a trip back to the early days of death industrial. The expression on the five intersections of the album is repetitive and slowly moving, though the approach to dark minimalism varies on the overall album. With drones based on orchestration of the dark kind the associations from beginning of the album stylishly turns towards the Cold Meat Industry-scene, more precisely towards the lesser harsh moments of Brighter Death Now around the "Necrose Evangelicum"-period. From fourth intersection titled "In the teeth of the wolf", the drones becomes more guitar-based in the gloomy drone-rock style characterizing the expression of Sunn O))), with a dark ambient-based touch reminding of Lustmord and early british industrial/metal-ambient-project Saw Throat (aka SoreThoat ). The true power of this album is Christopher Walton ability to create cinematic atmospheres of trance-like hypnotism with this great mixture of acoustic and synthetic. Impressive album." [NM / Vital Weekly] www.coldspring.co.uk | 2007 | €13.00 |
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| TENHORNEDBEAST / MARZURAAN | split | CD | Zwei lange Stücke auf dieser Split der Bands aus UK. Unfassbar weiten & mächtigen, fast halbstündigen DOOM-DRONE produzieren TENHORNEDBEAST, die früher als ENDVRA aktiv waren. MARZURAAN ist die zweite Inkarnation von RYN, und sie rocken hier weniger metallisch-krachig, sondern in wunderbarer ultra-minimaler JESU-Manier... Spezielles ausgestanztes Cover. "Aurora Borealis is proud to present this split CD by two of the lesser known greats from the Northeast of England. TENHORNEDBEAST is the dark vision of Christopher Walton, part of the much feted ENDVRA, masters of 90s dark and occult ambient. 'Law of the needle', clocking in at over 28 minutes, is an oppressive opus of doomed drone, both monolithic and multifaceted. Pure power. "elongated, sinister drone, ...distant, echoing string resonance from bowed guitars and cold, steely walls of distortion" think the good folks at Boomkat, as well they may. MARZURAAN contribute 'Into countless battles', 13 minutes of narcotic guitar haze. I think this is my favourite of anything they have done to date. So good, you never want it to end. The gruff metal grunts of the 'Solid Wood' LP have been replaced by a subdued, almost crushed vocal, totally stands out. "acres of textured guitar, low end pressure and brooding drums" say Boomnkat. Can't wait to hear more from MARZURAAN - this is epic, like a bassier, looser, Mogadon dosed JESU with a man past caring roped in to give his thoughts on where its all gone wrong. Pete from MARZURAAN did the artwork and layout. Printed on heavy textured card and with 2 diecut runes. Comes in a pvc bag." [label info] " Every once in a while, someone will release a record, and we can't help but feel like it was made specifically for us. And for you. Some records just perfectly speak to the aQ aesthetic, as undefinable as that seems to be. This is another one of those cases. Someone thought it would be a perfect combination to match up UK one man ambient drone outfit Tenhornedbeast, with UK slow motion doomlords Marzuraan. And it is perfect. And a fantastic idea, but just because something is a great idea, doesn't always mean someone thinks of it. And we're not saying we had been thinking someone should get these two bands together specifically, we're just glad they did, and we sort of wish we HAD thought of it. But that's neither here nor there. The important thing is that it happened, and now we can all luxuriate in the deep dark heaviness both of these bands explore. And while the bands are indeed different, their aesthetics are not all that far removed. The both exist in some blackened nether region, haunting sonic realms, where heaviness can be expressed in both utter darkness and extreme force, sometimes both, and once in awhile neither. Tenhornedbeast offer up a nearly 30 minute long sonic ritual, beginning as a bit of swirling black minimalism, but slowly building to a truly intense wall of doomdrone, the sound thick and textured, a churning cauldron of low end buzz and downtuned disembodied riffs, all brought to a boil and poured out in a viscous black torrent, left to flow like some subterranean river. But these deep drones are laced with melodies, and keening high end shards, allowed to shine forth occasionally, but often swallowed up before they can fill those caves with their unnatural light. The track continually changes shape, sound and timbre, various shades of grey and black, lightening and darkening as the landscape changes, a haunting journey through some lost world, where sound replaces sight, allowing us to navigate ever deeper. Marzuraan counter with what must be one of their prettiest tracks ever. It's still sludgey and doomy, but the notes ring out, the melodies almost soar, the sound fuzzy and glimmering, almost like these guys have caught the shoegaze bug as well. Washed out and blissy, super melodic and melancholy, but the coolest part is that the track seems to warble and waver, almost like someone is manually adjusting the tape speed, so the notes sound drunken and drugged, the track lurches and weaves drunkenly, only adding to the haunting and off kilter beauty. Part way through, the riffs get a little more riffy, and then the vocals come in, a moaning distant croon, and we're most definitely in serious Jesu territory, but that weird speed shifting hitch, keeps it from sounding too pretty, or two blissy. But if these guys keep heading in this direction, they could definitely give Jesu, and Nadja and other metallic shoegazers a run for their money. The packaging is super swank, a three panel gatefold, each of the front panels diecut with each band's symbol, printed inside and out, housed in a thick plastic sleeve with a sticker affixed to the front." [Aquarius Records review] www.aurora-b.com | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| TERRA SANCTA | Sunken / Buried / Forgotten | maxi-CD | "A brand new CDEP from Terra Sancta, originally planned as part of the next full length release, but the tracks here are significantly different from the newer material being recorded as to warrant a separate release. Sunken|Buried|Forgotten should be seen as a sort of bridge between Terra Sancta's past and future recordings, the three tracks here (total time roughly 23 minutes) representing the heavy droning sound found on particular parts of Disintegration; swaths of roughly textured, post-industrial drift, propelled forth with a massive back weight into a crescendo of epic turbulence, leaving a wake of swirling cosmic debris in its path. Once again, Terra Sancta shows an innate ability to push the limits of what is traditionally considered dark ambient. 4 panel digipak, lmtd 500." [label info] www.malignantrecords.com | 2011 | €8.00 |
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| TERUGGI, DANIEL | Sphaera | LP | "Between 1984 and 1989, my acousmatic work was focused on processing and merging the four fundamental substances. Each 'element' gradually became articulated with the others, thus crystallizing my subjective perception of their materiality. Over the years, helped by the enthusiasm of a Greek friend who propelled me into the Socratic universe, what started out as an exploratory path has become a circular, spherical unity, in which each occurrence simultaneously belongs to one of the four substances as well as the whole. These four sections, of uneven durations, embody the different resonances of each 'element' upon my imagination. The movements are ordered compositionally and range from the intangibility of the air to the extreme density of the earth. In 'Eterea', the dual nature of air, a space for the dissemination of sounds and an environment for mobile masses, shaped the work and the development of its forms. Whether it be the vast expanse of particles as organized movement or the displacement of sources in our three-dimensional perception, ethereal air fills the space and drives the immaterial motions and gestures. 'Aquatica' locates the materiality of water in relation to its amazing extremes: from the drop to the ocean, an extensive journey unfolds through the various phases of the reinvented liquid. Still waters, deadly waters, raging waters follow one another, leading to the aerial fusion of a primordial equilibrium eventually retrieved. Then comes 'Focolaria' and the unsteady fires, the elusive and wild will-o'-the-wisps that open and adorn the gates leading to the depths of the earth. The land of 'Terra' is devoid of atmosphere, a land of matters before the advent of life. The sounds of the original matter merge and evolve into purer forms. The motions trigger progressions towards new equilibriums of forces, the ultimate fusion, the very last attempt, needed for the emergence of life. The sphere is now complete, the world ready for creation..." --Daniel Teruggi "While the theme of the four elements has been a constant source of inspiration in the arts, its setting to music using electroacoustic techniques seems highly auspicious, since the notion of matter and its transformation is consubstantial with the concrete approach. In Sphæra, Daniel Teruggi precisely addresses this question, transcending matter with the help of novel digital audio techniques so as to draw out forms, trajectories, layers, and musical objects, all of which result from the merging or sublimation of primordial sounds. Indeed, this is where Daniel Teruggi's music and compositional approach stand out: by engaging sounds, with strength, will and inspiration, in a close encounter with energies, whether tectonic or electrical. Such collisions, such metamorphoses, are then appeased in the whole space of the composition, a fascinating landscape, the final destination of all transmutations." --François Bonnet, Paris, 2021 Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnittstelle, Berlin, July 2021. Translations: Valérie Vivancos. Layout: Stephen O'Malley. https://danielteruggi.bandcamp.com/album/sph-ra | 2023 | €20.00 |
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| TERVAHÄÄT | same | CD | "The fifth release from Finnish underground label Anima Arctica is this self-titled debut work by Tervahäät, a duo consisting of Antero Väätäjä and Ilmari Akkanen. This shortish but interesting album builds bridges between raw post-industrial ritual tracks and frosty Finnish folklore. From the start of the album on, we are presented with the successful instrumental base of this project that returns in most of the tracks: banjo and bass melodies overlaying rumbling industrial soundscapes, varied organic percussion and some seething electric guitar work. Longer tracks like “Otava” forge these elements into extended ritual journeys, accompanied by pathos-filled vocals in Finnish. The accompanying sheet of English text (a translation of the lyrics?) speaks of animals, spirits, and mystic poetry. In general, the music of this album is not easy to get into; while there are accessible tracks like the Nordic neofolk of the instrumental “Joulukuu”, the greater part of the album is rather esoteric and demands a receptive mood, one that resonates with the cold and oppressive visual imagery. It is perhaps typically Finnish in the sense that it doesn’t open up at the first listen. However, despite this closedness and lack of very direct compositions that immediately grab you by the throat, Tervahäät manages to deliver an album that has a compelling mysticism about it, as well as an original sound that blends organic, industrial, and folkloric elements. The foundations for an interesting musical oeuvre have been laid here, and lovers of experimental post-industrial music should definitely check this album out. It will be especially appealing if you have an ear for Finnish underground music of the past decade." [O.S. / Evening of Light] www.animaarctica.fi | 2009 | €10.00 |
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| Taival | CD | "Taival continues on the paths and narrow roads through Finnish forests to further explore the rustic and mystical sounds and visions of Tervahäät. Seven tracks of ritualistic folk & neofolk are inspired by rural surroundings, spiritual unity, and a sincere interest in the native land and its entities — trees, animals, and the spirit of the ancestors. The fourth album of Tervahäät brings also some surprisingly warm winds from the icy north-west, but the warmth also carries a slight smell of decaying bones and suspicioulsy friendly whispers from old ghosts." [label info] www.animaarctica.fi "I have spoken to many people about their taste in music. Several of them can pinpoint a defining moment that triggered their now eclectic taste, which has led them along the path of musical freedom. I, personally, keep very limited and musically specific company, but for me it’s a very simple and nostalgic memory. Have you ever had one of those evenings where you find yourself looking at film after film on YouTube? You go from band-to-band and genre-to-genre, and you stumble across some amazing, bizarre, and down-right amateur videos. That particular nostalgic night, I stumbled across a man playing a Finnish instrument called the ‘kantele’. I was amazed at how simple the instrument looked and yet how sweet the tone is. The first one I heard was a five-string, and the YouTube trail quickly brought me to a ten-string. Before I knew it, I had placed an order for a five-string kantele to be made in the United States. This epiphany of sorts found me entrenched in the culture of Finland, whilst playing its national instrument. This immersion in Finnish culture—now six years on—has not deteriorated; if anything, it has intensified. From the stories of the Kalevala, Vainamoinen, and the mythical Kantele he constructed from a pike’s jaw-bone, to the vast landscapes full of lakes, forests, and elks, and the pre-Lutheran religious customs and practices that were once the Pagan folklore of the land… It’s quite possibly the polar-opposite, natural elements of my homeland that fuels my fascination. Tervahäät When my editor told me to ‘light a fire’ underneath the Tervahäät review, I detected a Finnish scent on the name. Further examination of the cover and notes brought about the jubilation and motivation required to get that ‘fire’ going. Many no doubt know that Finland is renowned for great music. Being a folk metal junkie, there isn’t much that comes out of Finland that I don’t like or haven’t seen live, even here in Australia. Having predominantly covered folk and neofolk to date with the Heathen Harvest Periodical, it was a much-anticipated listen. The polar opposite landscapes of which I previously spoke are significant. We have huge deserts, dried-up lakes, and a bevy of poisonous reptiles to keep your trekking interesting. I played Taival in my car on a four-hour drive across the plains of South Australia. My research on the band’s name, Tervahäät, loosely translates to ‘Tar Wedding’. Quite auspicious given that my initial listen is being done on the open road! The album’s name, Taival, loosely translates to ‘Journey on foot’. As we say in Australia, ‘bugger that’—there are too many snakes out at this time of year. The opening song, ‘Kärrinpyörä’, begins with guitar strumming reminiscent to the intro of a Western film scene. The harsh and drawn-out vocals accompany a simple melody being looped in the background. Harsh vocals are usually associated with heavier music but there is elocution with these, which really hold your interest. The surroundings in the early stage of my journey are arid and harsh. Dry farms and wrecked cars are a common sight. The previous suggestion of Western theme has much more credence (to my present situation). The chorus keeps returning and after a while I find myself singing and humming it in a familiar way. ‘Kevätkirot’ begins with a more melodic approach that fins the vocals taking a 180-degree turn wherein Riimu showcases his vocal ability. His voice wouldn’t sound out-of-place belting out Russia’s national anthem or one of Ivan Rebroff’s classics. These haunting tones are hypnotizing. They captivate me to the extent that I needed to know more about the lyrics. Not verbatim, but in Riimu’s words, the song reflects a particular mood: A time in early depression, or that bleakest time in spring and utter loneliness. The outro of the track has a dreamy presence and plays a haunting sound whose origins would point to a wind instrument. The album isn’t short of effects, and as ‘Tuomiolaulu’ begins, the presence of reverb gives the song an enchanting sound. Again the song is driven by powerful vocals; the music passages are superfluous to them but accompany the style. Have I mentioned that the album has an occasional Western theme? The use of Banjo on ‘Koulutie’ reaffirms this theory. The previous description of Finland’s landscape casts a rural description which gives credence to my suggested theme. It then dawns on me that this album draws inspiration from the transition of seasons—the personal reflections and mood changes that occur within all beings and in the case of this album, the artists. The song ‘Taival’—also the album’s namesake—ends the seven-track recording. A synthesizer and eclectic but simple percussive beat accompanies the consistently haunting vocals. I listened to this one a few times over. With each listen I hear a new overtone in the background. Like the recording was being infiltrated by ghosts or spirits from the ancient land or another world. One in particular sounds like a Tuvan throat singer. It adds a mystique that’s hard to quantify in words. It still sends a quiver of eeriness over my body with each listen. Musically simple, vocally diverse, and lyrically reflective are appropriate word associations for Taival. It’s been a while since I have heard anything like this, and I want to explore this style a lot more. I have myself in recent times been meditating to this record; the music works with me like a spiritual guide to the Suomi landscape that I’m yet to visit. Its place as driving music wasn’t limited to that one encounter. The CD hasn’t left my stacker. The artists are clearly emotionally entrenched in their music. It comes across as from the heart; it comes across with honesty, and it works." [Malachy O'Brien / Heathen Harvest] | 2014 | €13.00 |
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| TESTCARD | # 12 : LINKE MYTHEN | BOOK | Inhaltsverzeichnis Martin Büsser: Vom Verfassungsfeind zum deutschen Aushängeschild. Ton Steine Scherben. Frank Schuster: You can count me out. Mit Rockmusikern ist keine Revolution zu machen. Tobias Lindemann: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Black Power, Black Panthers, Black Pop. Sebastian Schäfer: Popmusik in der DDR. Eine Chronik. Linke Verlage in Deutschland. Eine Gesprächsrunde. Christian Hißnauer: Nach der Gewalt: Linker Mythos RAF – linker Mythos BRD. Terrorismus im deutschen Film Miriam Spies / Johannes Ullmaier: Jeden Tag woanders ... Interview mit Gerd Conradt. Enno Stahl: Literatur und Terror. RAF-Rezeption in Romanen der letzten 25 Jahre. Dagmar Brunow / Luka Skywalker: Zur Mythenbildung nicht geeignet. Im Gespräch mit Irmgard Möller. Andreas Kragler / Tine Plesch: Do You Dig It? Ein Interview mit Michaela Melián und Thomas Meinecke. Jochen Bonz: Die Funktion des Signifikanten. Über eine Ausstellung von Michaela Melián. Annibale Picicci: Industrial zwischen Tradition, Konfrontation und Affirmation linker und rechter Mythologie. Jens Petz Kastner: No Woman, No Cry. Der Mythos von Reggae als schwarzer Kultur der Befreiung. Olaf Karnik: Dem Gone, Dub & Delay. Wie spricht Reggae in Deutschland? Julian Weber: Das große 80er Revival. Ein Zeitalter wird besichtigt. Andreas Rauscher: Never Mind The Situationists – The Filth And The Fury. The Sex Pistols und The Clash im Film. Oliver Uschmann: Bad Religion und die Dialektik der Aufklärung. Tobias Stalling: Nach Punk in die Disco. Von der Pop Group zu Radio 4. Martin Büsser: Bildet Netzwerke! Antifolk – zurück zum Do-It-Yourself. Christina Nemec: Und sie tanzen immer noch. »Wir gehen bis Ihr geht« – Versprechen eingelöst – doch was jetzt? Hans Plesch: Hanns Eisler. Zerstrümmerung und Anverwandlung. Nicolai Dierks: Jenseits von Autonomieästhetik oder Politisierung der Kunst? Essay zur kompositorischen (Post-) Avantgarde der 60er und 70er Jahre. Joachim Ody: Linke Perspektiven in der Avantgarde der 60er und 70er Jahre. Felix Klopotek: »Every Noise Has A Note.« Neue Musik und Linksradikalismus. Roger Behrens: »Komm mit ins Abenteuerland ...«. Pop als Mythos. Johannes Ullmaier: Zur potentiellen Differenzierung von ›linkem Mythos‹ und ›Mythos der Linken‹. Andreas Kragler: Das Problem der Linken mit der Ästhetik oder Der ewige Streit um Form & Inhalt. Fabian Kettner: Ein erledigter Fall. Zum Tode von Eckhard Henscheid. Franziska Meifert: Aktion. Re-Aktion. Konzeptuelle Mythen am und im Wiener Aktionismus. Tine Plesch: Freies Radio als linker Mythos? Interview mit Andreas Stuhlmann. Jan Deck: Der »Mythos Globalisierung« und die Linke. Marcus Stiglegger: Abschied vom »Mythos Amerika«. Die filmischen Elegien des »letzten Linken« in Hollywood. Johannes Ullmaier: Der Linksomat Rezensionen (Tonträger/Bücher) www.ventil-verlag.de | 2003 | €14.50 |
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| #23: TRANSZENDENZ - Ausweg, Fluchtweg, Holzweg? | BOOK | In der avancierten Popkritik genießt Transzendenz keinen guten Ruf. Im frühen Punk wurde ein explizites Transzendenzverbot ausgerufen; das bewegungslinke Lager denunzierte das »Ausklinken« als konterrevolutionär oder verklärte es im Reggae zum »antiimperialistischen Befreiungskampf«. Als der moderne Pop in den 1950ern entstand, war er das Immanenteste überhaupt geschaffen für das reine Diesseits. Das Jenseits, die Transzendenz, tauchte lediglich ironisch gebrochen, als Diskurs zweiter Ordnung auf. Erst ab den 1960ern lassen sich explizite Transzendenz-Momente im Popkosmos finden. Und gleichzeitig wurde Kritik laut: Was ins Jenseits ausgreift, ist entweder kein Pop oder schlechter Pop. Doch Pop störte sich nicht daran, brachte das Transzendente als Leerstelle zum Schwingen und füllte diese mit Schlagworten aus dem Fundus von Esoterik, Raumfahrt und Psychedelic. Kurz darauf wurde das Transzendente offensichtlich gemacht. Christlicher Rock und der islamisierte Cat Stevens wollten den Pop missionieren, Heavy Metal verklärte ein negatives Christentum. Und im Krautrock, im Jazz und in der experimentellen Musik diente ein Spiritualitätsgestus stets der Abgrenzung zu den Niederungen der Popkultur. In den 1990ern wurde die Transzendenz dann rehabilitiert, zumindest solange sie nicht mit säkular-moralischen Normen in Konflikt geriet. Dem Jenseits brachte man dieselbe diffuse Toleranz entgegen, wie den meisten anderen Pop-Phänomenen auch. Heute bedienen Neo-Drone und Neo-Psych ein bestimmtes Marktsegment unter vielen gleichwertigen. Und damit macht sich Sprachlosigkeit breit. Wie reden wir über spiritistischen Neo-Folk oder Hauntology, wenn die politisch inspirierten Kategorien der Vergangenheit ebenso wenig greifen wollen wie diejenigen der Weltflucht? Und was genau ist das Transzendente an der gegenwärtigen Entgrenzung der Stile? Inhaltsverzeichnis Johannes Ullmaier: Worüber man nicht reden kann, darüber. Transzendenz und ihre Rolle in Musik und Popkultur Roger Behrens: Der Geist der Utopie Thomas Hübener: Notizen zur Transzendenz im Säkularpop Martin Niederauer: »If you find earth boring …«. Spiritualität und Religiosität im Jazz und die Interpretationen des Unbestimmten Holger Adam: Spirituelle Neuorientierung jenseits von Krautrock und Neuer Musik. Peter Michael Hamels Musik der 1970er-Jahre Volker Zander: Moondogs Oberton-Kontinuum Wolfgang Brauneis: »Ich lebe in meinem eigenen Königreich«. Zu Michael Buthes Kunst der 1970er-Jahre Tim Stüttgen: Sun Ra: Kosmischer Noise. Eine quare Lesart von Sun Ras musika-lischer und performativer Praxis im Schatten der Sklaverei-Geschichte ?Move On Up. Die große Transzendenz-Diskografie Frank Apunkt Schneider / Didi Neidhart: Discotranszendenz & Distant Thunder … Transpirationen am Tag danach Franziska Meifert: Turn on, tune in, drop out! LSD, Musik, Transzendenz Alexander Nym: Vom Pilzkult zur Popkultur. Entheogene im Dienst des kulturellen Wandels Michael Horowitz: Tickets zur Transzendenz Sascha Hommer / Martina Lenzin: Parolen aus der Stadt. Abenteuer eines Wolfes. Episode zwei Christian Werthschulte: »Wir leben in einer Nicht-Zeit«. Ein Gespräch mit Mark Fisher über die Geister der Zukunft David Schwertgen: Was soll denn eigentlich verschwunden sein? Vaporwave und die Leere hinter der Oberfläche Raphael Smarzoch: Schwellenakustik. Liminale Klanglandschaften in und jenseits von Pascal Laugiers Martyrs Flora Könemann: Text, Ton, Stimme, Frequenz. Transzendenz? Das (un-)stimmige der (eigenen) Stimme Hendrik Otremba: Tobias Gruben und die Wahrheit. Zur Erinnerung an einen fast Vergessenen Wolfgang Buechs / Jonas Engelmann / Jens Meisenheimer: Jurpolp From an Unknown Planet. Sun Ra antwortet Marius Henderson: Soft Berry Metal. Eine »häretische« Annäherung an Black Metal Theory Gerald Fiebig: (Verheißungs-?)Volle Dröhnung. Dronemusik und spätmoderne Zeiterfahrung Peter Scheiffele: Vodou. Eine politisch-religiöse Praxis zwischen Revolution und Überlebenskampf Sandro Holzheimer: Yeah Science!? Die Transzendenz des neuen Atheismus Jasper Nicolaisen: Wir sind hier nicht in Wittenberg, Martin … 95 Thesen zur Möglichkeit einer emanzipatorischen Religion Rezensionen Tonträger A. K. KLOSOWSKI & PYROLATOR: Home-Taping Is Killing Music AARON DILLOWAY: Siena AARON MOORE & THIERRY MUELLER: Today Is Yesterday’s Tomorrow ALAHUTA: First Connexion ANDREAS DORAU: Ärger mit der Unsterblichkeit / Demokratie ANDY STOTT: Luxury Probelms ANIKA: EP ANNE-JAMES CHATON / ANDY MOOR: Transfer ASHLEY PAUL: Line The Clouds ASH WEDNESDAY: Love And Other Numbers BEAK>: Beak>> / Beak>> Bonustracks / 0898/Welcome To The Machine BORIS HEGENBART & 19 ARTISTS: Instrumentarium BRENDA RAY: D’Ya Hear Me: Naffi Years 1979–83 BROADCAST: Berberian Sound Studio BRR: s/t Buch BUDHADITYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Eye Contact With The City BUKE AND GASE: General Dome CANDELILLA: Heart Mutter CHAD VANGAALEN & XIU XIU: The Green Corridor II CHARLATAN: Isolatarium CHARLATAN MEETS THE NORTH SEA: Emerald Eyes CHICALOYOH: Thébaïde Des Pierres Bleues / In My Garden Shed/Vol. 2 / Les Fantômes Sortent Des Racines CHRISTINE SUN KIM / WOLFGANG MÜLLER: Panning Fanning CHUZPE: 1000 Takte Tanz CLASSLESS KULLA & ISTARI LASTERFAHRER: Auf & Zustände COLIN STETSON: New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light CONRAD SCHNITZLER: rot / blau / Consequenz / CON 3 CROCODILES: Endless Flowers DAGOBERT: Dagobert DAVID FENECH: Grand Huit DAVID ROTHENBERG: Bug Music DEMDIKE STARE: Testpressing #1 und #2 DER PLAN:: Die letzte Rache DER PLAN: Geri Reig / Normalette Surprise / Die Letzte Rache / JaPlan DIE NERVEN: Fluidum DIE TÖDLICHE DORIS: Losspielen DIVERSE: Noise of Cologne 2 DOLDRUMS: Lesser Evil DRACULA LEWIS: Permafrost EP DROPOUT PATROL: s/t EKKEHARD EHLERS: Adikia EMIL RICHARDS: Stones – Journey to Bliss ENSEMBLE PEARL: S/T FIELD ROTATION: Fatalist: The Repetition Of History FREIBURG: Aufbruch GEOFF BARROW/BEN SALISBURY: Drokk: Music Inspired By Mega-City One GHOST TIME: Ghost Time GIANNI GUIBLENA ROSACROCE: La Piramide Di Sangue / La Mia Africa GRAFZAHL: Der Rückzug ins Private GRAVETEMPLE: Ambient/Ruin GROUPER: Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill / The Man Who Died In His Boat HAFTBEFEHL: Blockplatin HANS W. KOCH / THOMAS LEHN / BEN PATTERSON / JOSEF CSERES: Requiem For A Baby Grand. Final Piano Music For 8 Hands And Tools HECKER: Chimerization (english) / Chimerization (farsi) / Chimerization (deutsch) HOTEL MORPHILA ORCHESTER: Schwarze Energie IANNIS XENAKIS: GRM Works 1957–1962 IGOR WAKHÉVITCH: Logos / Hathor / Docteur Faust / Nagual / Les Fous d’Or / Let’s Start ILLUSION OF SAFETY: Sweet Dreams JACK DICE: Block Motel JENNIFER VEILLEROBE: Luftlöcher JESSIKA KENNEY & EYVIND KANG: The Face Of The Earth JE SUIS LE PETIT CHEVALIER: An Age Of Wonder JOHN FAHEY: Voice Of The Turtle / Transcendental Waterfall: Guitar Excursions 1962–1967 JOHN ZORN / MOONCHILD TRIO: Templars – In Sarcred Blood JUKEBOX MAMBO: Rumba And Afro-Latin Accendet Rhythm & Blues 1949–1960 JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE: The 20/20 Experience KETTCAR: Zwischen den Runden KIASMOS: Throwna EP KIKO C. ESSEIVA: Drôles d’oiseaux KLUSTER: Klusterstraße 69–72 KOFELGSCHROA: Kofelgschroa KOMMANDO SONNE-NMILCH: You Pay I Fuck KUUPUU: Sous Juju / Sisar LAURIE SPIEGEL: The Expanding Universe LORD HURON: Lonesome Dreams LORD TANG: Lord Tang LUBOMYR MELNYK: Corollaries LUNAR ABYSS DEUS ORGANUM: Atanimonni Aitnatsbus MARCUS WIEBUSCH: Hinfort ! Feindliche Macht MARK LORENZ KYSELA: Eins+ MATS GUSTAFSSON / PAAL NILSSEN: Love / I Love It When You Snore MATT CARLSON: All Moments MICHAEL PRICE: A Stillness MILES: Faint Harted MODERN PETS: Excessive/Organic Kidneys MOON DUO: Circles MUTTER: 25 MV&EE: Fuzzweed / Zebulon Residency NATHAN BOWLES: A Bottle, A Buckeye NEIL ARDLEY: A Symphony of Amaranths NILS FRAHM: Screws NILS WOGRAM / SIMON NABATOV: Moodes And Modes NORBERT MÖSLANG: Indoor_Outdoor / The Sound of Insects ONEIROGEN: Kiasma ORBIT THE EARTH: Aphelion OTIS G. JOHNSON: Everything – God Is Love 78 P16.D4: Passagen (6CD+) PALAIS SCHAUMBURG: Palais Schaumburg PELT: Effigy PETER BRODERICK: These Walls Of Mine PETRELS: Onkalo PRSZR: Equilibrium PTTRNS: Body Pressure PYROLATOR: Inland / Ausland / Pyrolator’s Wunderland / Pyrolator’s Traumland / Neuland RACHUT/LANDSCHIER: Blinder Mond RAINER VEIL: Struck RED MATH: Obsolete Systems ROBBIE BASHO: Seal Of The Blue Lotus RUTH FEAT. MUSHY: Far From Paradise SAFFRONKEIRA: Tourette SCHORSCH KAMERUN: Der Mensch lässt nach SELVHENTER: Fricka B. Fricka / s/t SLEAFORD MODS: Austerity Dogs SPRINGINTGUT: Where We Need No Map STEPHEN MALKMUS AND FRIENDS: Can’s Ege Bamyasi SUN PAPA & THE FAN CLUB ORCHESTRA: An Insane Portrait SUUM CUIQUE: Ascetic Ideals SUZANNE CIANI: Seven Waves / Lixiviation Ciani/Musica Inc. 1969–1985 / Voices of Packaged Souls SWEET VALLEY: Stay Calm / Eternal Champ / Jenova THE BLACK TWIG PICKERS: Rough Carpenters THE COSMIC JOKERS: The Cosmic Jokers THE EX & BRASS UNBOUND: Enormous Door THE NORTH SEA: Grandeur & Weakness THE PETER BRÖTZMANN CHICAGO TENTET: Concert For Fukushima, Wels 2011 THE SCHWARZENBACH: Farnschiffe THE SOUND OF GERI REIG. Düsseldorf – San José 1979. The Original Tapes UN-KOMMUNITI: Black Dwarf Wreckordings 83–85 URBAN HOMES: Centres V. A.: Personal Space – Electronic Soul 1974–1984 VARIOUS: Drone-Mind // Mind-Drone Vol. 2 VARIOUS ARTISTS: Your Victorian Breasts VATICAN SHADOW: Ornamented Walls VIRGIL MOOREFIELD: No Business As Usual / Five Ideas About the Relation of Sight and Sound VLADISLAV DELAY: Kuopio / Espoo WEISSER WESTEN: Weisser Westen WILLIAM SHELLER: Lux Aeterna WOLD: Freemasonry WOLF EYES: No Answer: Lower Floors XUL ZOLAR: Eternal Love/Goa Bay / Hex YOSHI WADA: Earth Horns With Electronic Drone / Singing In Unison / Off The Wall / The Appointed Cloud / Lament For The Rise And Fall Of The Elephantine Crocodile ZS: Score / Grain Rezensionen Papier DIDI NEIDHARDT / HANS PLATZGUMER: Musik ist Müll HEINRICH DEISL: Im Puls der Nacht. Sub- und Populärkultur in Wien 1955–1976 KARL MEYERBEER / PASCAL SPÄTH: Topf & Söhne – Besetzung auf einem Täterort CHRISTOPH WAGNER: Der Klang der Revolte TIMME ROSENKRANTZ / FRADLEY HAMILTON GARNER: Harlem Jazz Adventures. A European Baron’s Memoir, 1934–1969 DEREK ANSELL: Sugar Free Saxophone. The Life and Music of Jackie McLean MARKUS HEIDINGSFELDER: System Pop PAULA-IRENE VILLA / JULIA JÄCKEL / ZARA S. PFEIFFER U. A. (HG.): Banale Kämpfe? Perspektiven auf Populärkultur und Geschlecht JAMES KENNAWAY: Bad Vibrations. The History of the Idea of Music as a Cause of Disease JENNIFER SHRYANE: Blixa Bargeld and Einstürzende Neubauten: German Experimental Music ›Evading do-re-mi‹ NIKOLAOS KOTSOPOULOS (Hg.): Krautrock. Cosmic Rock and its Legacy HUNTER HUNT-HENDRIX / NICK RICHARDSON / BRANDON STOSUY: Black Metal. Beyond the Darkness THERESA BEYER / THOMAS BURKHALTER (HG.): Out of the Absurdity of Life. Globale Musik CORNELIUS VON JACKHELLN (Hg.): GewaltKunstWerk STAN HAWKINS (Hg.): Pop Music And Easy Listening ANTONIO GRAMSCI: Literatur und Kultur DIETMAR DATH / BARBARA KIRCHNER: Der Implex. Sozialer Fortschritt: Geschichte und Idee SONJA EISMANN (Hg.): Absolute Fashion DIRK BRAUNSTEIN / SEBASTIAN DITTMANN / ISABELLE KLASEN (HG.): Alles Falsch. Auf verlorenem Posten gegen die Kulturindustrie URSULA MARKUS / TANJA POLLI: Das Geschlecht der Seele. Transmenschen erzählen ALEXANDER KARSCHNIA/MICHAEL WEHREN (Hg.): Kommando Johann Fatzer (Ringlokschuppen. Mülheimer Fatzerbücher 1) CORNELIA VISMANN: Das Schöne am Recht NIKLAS LUHMANN: Macht im System WERNER FULD: Das Buch der verbotenen Bücher DAVE MONROE (Hg.): Philosophie für Verdorbene – Essays über Pornografie SVEN LEWANDOWSKI: Die Pornographie der Gesellschaft CHRISTIAN KESSLER: Die läufige Leinwand – Der amerikanische Hardcorefilm 1970–1985 STEFAN SCHELER: Cumshots – Höhepunkte der deutschen Pornofilme 1 + 2 STEFANIE VOIGT / MARKUS KÖHLERSCHMIDT: Die philosophische Wollust – Sinnliches von Sokrates bis Sloterdijk MYRON HURNA: Späte Gegenwart. Zur Historisierung des Holocaust ALEXANDER KLUGE: »Wer ein Wort des Trostes spricht, ist ein Verräter«. 48 Geschichten für Fritz Bauer ANNIKA SCHEFFEL: Bevor alles verschwindet SARAH DIEHL: Eskimo Limon 9 VLADIMIR JABOTINSKY: Die Fünf SARA STRIDSBERG: Darling River: Doloresvariationen JOSEF WINKLER: Wortschatz der Nacht / Mutter und der Bleistift BRIAN WOOD / MARK BROOKS / ROLAND BOSCHI: 100% Marvel 64: Wolverine und die X-Men. Alpha & Omega WENZEL STORCH: Arno & Alice ANKE FEUCHTENBERGER: Die Spaziergängerin SOPHIA MARTINECK: Hühner, Porno, Schlägerei MARC-ANTOINE MATHIEU: 3 Sekunden TONTO (Hg.): Noise SASCHA HOMMER (Hg.): Orang # 10: Heavy Metal HENNING WAGENBRETH / R. L. STEVENSON: Der Pirat und der Apotheker ATAK / MARK TWAIN: Der geheimnisvolle Fremde CHRIS WARE: Jimmy Corrigan. Der klügste Junge der Welt THOMAS VON STEINAECKER / H. J. BALMES u. a. (Hg.): Neue Rundschau: Comic – Form und Inhalt KERI SMITH: Mach Mist! MEL GOODING / JULIAN ROTHENSTEIN (Hg.): Psychospiele – Persönlichkeitstests, Spiele und Fragebögen JÖRG VÖLLNAGEL: Alchemie – Die königliche Kunst HARTMUT KRAFT (Hg.): Ecce BLALLA! Abstürze und Höhenflüge PAULE HAMMER: Welt-Enzyklopädie DIETMAR DATH / HEIKE AUMÜLLER: Verbotene Verbesserungen CHRISTIANE ZU SALM (Hg.): Manifesto Collage GISELA VETTER-LIEBENOW (Hg.): Karikatur & Zeichenkunst TOBIAS G. NATTER / ELISABETH LEOPOLD / LEOPOLD MUSEUM (Hg.): Nackte Männer – Eine Entdeckungsreise LENTOS KUNSTMUSEUM LINZ / LUDWIG MUSEUM (Hg.): Der nackte Mann DOX PRAGUE (Hg.): Amor Psyche Aktion – Wien. Das Feminine im Wiener Aktionismus MUSEUM MODERNER KUNST STIFTUNG LUDWIG WIEN (Hg.): Wiener Aktionismus – Kunst und Aufbruch im Wien der 1960er-Jahre HANS-PETER WIPPLINGER (Hg.): Padhi Frieberger – Glanz und Elend der Moderne HANNAH PILARCZYK (Hg.): Ich hatte die Zeit meines Lebens. Über den Film Dirty Dancing und seine Bedeutung KONRAD KLEJSA/SCHAMMA SCHAHADAT/MARGARETE WACH (HG.): Der polnische Film. Von seinen Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart CHRISTIAN SCHIFFER (Hg.): WASD – Texte über Games. Vol. 2 »Select System – Games und Politik« GEORG SEESSLEN: Träumen Androiden von elektronischen Orgasmen? / Garten der Lüste / Future Sex in Queertopia (Sex-Fantasien in der Hightech-Welt I–III) WOLFGANG MÜLLER / AN PANHUYSEN (Hg.): Gebärde, Zeichen, Kunst WOLFGANG MÜLLER: Subkultur Westberlin 1979–1989. Freizeit [Verlagsinfo] www.ventil-verlag.de/katalog/testcard | 2013 | €15.00 |
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| #24: BUG REPORT. Digital war besser | BOOK | " »Wie würden Sie das Internet beschreiben?« »Als die Hölle in bunt, mit Nullen und Einsen. Eine binäre bunte Hölle.« – Bernd das Brot Bei kaum einem Medium fallen Theorie und Praxis so wenig in eins wie bei Computern und dem Internet. Wir lesen Blogs, auf denen in einer Breite und Tiefe über nischenhafte Popmusik gesprochen wird, wie es im »goldenen Zeitalter« des Pop-Journalismus niemals möglich gewesen wäre. Wir halten unsere Plattensammlungen mit Datenbanken, die von ihren NutzerInnen gefüllt werden, auf dem neuesten Stand. Gleichzeitig steht uns ein Großteil der Musikgeschichte mit ein paar Suchanfragen zur Verfügung – womöglich illegal, auf jeden Fall aber kostengünstig. Auch die testcard-Redaktion selbst, die sich zwischen drei Großstädten und einer bayerischen Universitätsstadt aufteilt, wäre ohne das Netz kaum koordinierbar. Trotzdem hört man gerade in sub- und gegenkulturellen Kreisen Klagen, die weit über die Kritik an der Datensammlung durch Regierungen, Geheimdienste und Medienkonzerne oder mickrigen Spotify-Einnahmen hinausgehen. Von »digitaler Erschöpfung« ist da die Rede oder von »kommunikativem Kapitalismus«, von einer Verschränkung von Liberalismus und Kybernetik, der Herrschaft der Algorithmen oder vom »fucking Internet«. Zeit für eine Bestandsaufnahme jenseits von kalifornischer Ideologie und »Disruption«, aber ausdrücklich nicht auf der Seite derjenigen, die mit aller Macht ihren Einfluss von den alten Medien in die neuen herüberretten wollen. Vielleicht sprechen wir letztlich über ein altes Problem: Was ist die Basis, was der Überbau, wie verhalten sie sich zueinander? Das Sprechen über Digitalisierung und das Netz fällt uns vielleicht deshalb schwer, weil die Form von Technologie nicht ohne ihren polit-ökonomischen und sozialen Rahmen zu denken ist. Oder sind ein anderes Computing und ein anderes Netz möglich? Aus dem Inhalt: Sounds der Digitalisierung >> Verschaltete Welt >> Kleine Genealogie des Computers >> Digitales ABC >> Zustand und Zukunft des Webcomics >> Digitale vs. analoge »Gegenwart« >> Nathan Jurgensons Webtheorien >> Mensch-Maschinen und Roboter >> Erzählen in der Digitalisierung >> Altern der digitalen Ästhetik >> Retrospieleboom >> Ungegenstand der Musikinformatik >> Let’s Player >> Indie-Computerspiele >> Ästhetik des Post-Digitalen >> ... Inhaltsverzeichnis Christian Werthschulte: (right now, please). Warum die digitale Gegenwart irgendwie auch nicht besser als die analoge geworden ist Roger Behrens: Digital ABC Roger Behrens: Digitale Frist. Computer. Pop. (Beta-Version) eve massacre: Network of blood. Von »Augmented Reality« bis zum »Liquid Self«: Nathan Jurgensons Webtheorien Waltraud Blischke: Bugs, Big Data und die UnverNETZbaren. Ein Gespräch mit Peter Bittner, Stefan Hügel und Julia Stoll vom FIfF Marco Schröder: Eine Maschine für alle Maschinen. Kleine Genealogie des Computers mit Implikationen für seine Anwendung in Philosophie und Musik Raphael Smarzoch: Rumorende Algorithmen. Die Sounds der Digitalisierung Flora Könemann & Chris W. Wilpert: Part of your distortion. Effekte im Zeitalter ihrer Re-Auratisierung Julian Rohrhuber: Dienst nach Vorschrift. Über den Ungegenstand der Musikinformatik Waltraud Blischke: t-cardcomp. Die Musikliste zur ungeregelten Geschmacksynthese Jonas Engelmann: In Love With the Modern World. Ein virtueller Roundtable über Zustand und Zukunft des Webcomics hierzulande Carl Wiemer: Das schnelle Altern der digitalen Ästhetik. Samuel Beckett und der Zenit ?ästhetischer Modernität David Schwertgen: Der Autor im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit Johannes Ullmaier: Human Trouble. Transhumane Anthropologie im Turing-Test Hommer / Lenzin: Parolen aus der Stadt. Abenteuer eines Wolfes. Episode 3 Bettina Wilpert: Guided by Voices. Erzählen in der Digitalisierung Waltraud Blischke: »Wenn man damit Geld verdienen kann, muss das ja salonfähig sein.« Ein Gespräch mit dem Let’s Player SgtRumpel Philipp Eichhorn: Technology in our hands. DIY als Totengräber des Fortschritts anhand des Retrospielebooms Fiona Sara Schmidt: Die Geschichte muss das Medium notwendig machen. Die Spieledesignerin Lea Schönfelder über Autorenspiele, Zensur und perfekte Posen Benedikt Frank / Thomas Schröder: Wo andere Urlaub machen. Arbeit im Spiel, Spiele als Arbeit Rezensionen Tonträger: 20.SV: The Great Sonic Wave ADDISON GROOVE: Turn Up The Silence ALOA: s/t ALTE SAU: s/t ALVARIUS B: Chin Spirits AMANDA FEERY: Spells From The Ice Age AME ZEK: Rostfrei AMON DÜÜL II: Düülirium ANDROMERDA MEGA EXPRESS ORCHESTRA: Live on Planet Earth ASTRAL SOCIAL CLUB: Medow Mechanicals BANANA PILL: Weave BANKS: GODDESS BART DE PAEPE: Rhode BEYONCÉ KNOWLES: s/t BILL ORCUTT: Daddy’s Got A Spice Rack BILL ORCUTT: Fantomas ? Le Faux Magistrat BIRD PEOPLE: King Of the Grove / Nightshades BOHREN UND DER CLUB OF GORE: Piano Nights BRIDGET HAYDEN: Just Ideas/The Night’s Veins BUCK GOOTER: Molescules BULBUL: Hirn Fein Hacken CATHY LANE: The Hebrides Suite CHRIS PETIT: The Museum of Loneliness CHRISTINA KUBISCH UND ECKEHARD GÜTER: Mosaïque Mosaic CICADA DREAM BAND: Bug Music CRASH COURSE IN SCIENCE: Signals from the Pier Thirteen DANIEL BACHMANN: Orange Co. Serenade DANIEL BLINKHORN:Terra Subfónica DAS WEISSE PFERD: Inland Empire DATASHOCK: Keine Oase in Sicht DEUTSCHE TRINKERJUGEND: Scheissegal DIE HEITERKEIT: Monterey DIE PARTEI La Freiheit des Geistes DIVIL A’ BIT: In Deference To The Squeamish DJ RASHAD: Rollin’ EP / Double Cup / We On 1 DJ SARDENA: The Voice: Studio Sardena DJ SLUGO: King Of Ghetto House DSR LINES: Spoel EEK: Live At The Cairo High Cinema Institute EIKO ISHIBASHI: Imitation Of Live EMBRYO: Message From Era Ora FENNESZ: Bécs FENSTER: The Pink Caves FILIPE FELIZARDO: Volume II ? Sede e Morte ? Guitar Variations For The Thirsty And The Dead FKA TWIGS: LP1 GONZÁLEZ & STEENKISTE: Dimly Lit GÜNTER SCHLIENZ: Contemplation HAILU MERGIA: Shemonmuanaye HALSABSCHNEIDER: Havelmusik 1982?1984 HEIN SCHOERS: The Sounding Museum: Box Of Treasures HELEN: Witch/Zanzibar HELLVETE: Ode HONIGRITTER: Kellergeister in unserem Haus IF, BWANA: Live at the Logos Tetrahedon INEZ LIGHTFOOT: Sleep By Day / Fly By Night ISLAJA: S U U JA, PANIK: Libertatia JAMMIN GERALD: Factory Funk JASON LESCALLEET: Much To My Demise JEFF & JANE HUDSON: Flesh JIM O’ ROURKE / PAAL NILSSEN-LOVE / LASSE MARHAUG: The Love Robots JIM O’ ROURKE: Old News / No.?9 / No.?5 / No.?7 / No.?6 / No.?8 / FIRE! WITH JIM JOSHUA BURKETT: Xavier’s Birds JUMPING BACK SLASH: Namhlanje EP KELIS: Food KEMIALLISET YSTÄVÄT: Alas Rattoisaa Virtaa KILLERLADY: s/t KK NULL + THE NOISER: s/t KLINISCH SAUBER: Kommerz Krieg Mond! KREIDLER: ABC KREISKY: Blick auf die Alpen KRISSI B: The Duke LANA DEL REY: Ultraviolence LASSE-MARC RIEKS: Helgoland LAU NAU: Valohiukkanen LEAST CARPET: Back Alley LIEVEN MARTENS MOANA: Os Canais LILY ALLEN: Sheezus LIMPE FUCHS / VIZ MICHAEL KREMITZ: Kugel Haus Musik LOS MICROWAVES: Life After Breakfast LOUIS SARNO: Song From The Forest LOVE A / KOETER: Split LUKE FOWLER: Fowl Tapes II MAMMANE SANI: La Musique Électronique Du Niger / Mammane Sani And The Workstation / Taaritt MANY ARMS: Suspended Definiton MARCELLUS PITTMAN: Do You Like Music EP / 1044 Coplin MARION, FRANZISKA UND ARNULF MEIFERT: Incredible Familiar Music / Absolute Relative Music MARK PRITCHARD: You Don’t Know Me MARY OCHER: Eden MERZOURGA: 52°46’ North 13°29’ East. Music For Waxcylinders METABOLISMUS: Sus MOUSE ON MARS: Spezmodia EP MURENA MURENA: Ghoaster Coaster MUTTER: Text und Musik MY BLOODY VALENTINE: mbv NOXAGT: Brutage / Collection 1 O’ ROURKE / Steamroom OLIMPIA SPLENDID: Nuttu Nurin ORACLES: Stanford Torus EP OREN AMBARCHI, KEIJI HAINO & JIM O’ ROURKE: Imikuzushi / Now While It’s Still Warm Let Us Pour In All The Mystery ORPHAN FAIRYTALE: My Favourite Fairytale PANABRITE: Wasteland Cycle PARRIS MITCHELL: Project EP PART WILD HORSES MANE ON BOTH SIDES: Aulos’ Second Reed PASCAL NICHOLS: Nihilist Chakai House PATRICK COWLEY: School Daze PETER MICHAEL HAMEL / THOMAS GUNDERMANN: Coincidence PETER MICHAEL HAMEL:Voice Of Silence PHARRELL WILLIAMS: G I R L RAMBLING BOYS: True To Blue RASHAD BECKER: Traditionel Music of National Species Vol. 1 RAUM: Event Of Your Leaving RAZEN: Reed Bombus LFO RODOLPHE ALEXIS: Morne Diablotins RP BOO: Legacy RUARI O’ BAOIGHILL: The Faceless One RYLEY WALKER: All Kinds Of You SCHREIN: Einszweinschrein SIR RICHARD BISHOP: Solo Acoustic Vol. 8 STAER: Daughters STEVE GUNN / MIKE COOPER: Cantons de Lisboa / Way Out Weather STOSSTRUPP REVIVAL DUETT: s/t SUN RA: Mix-Tape SUNROOF!: Rock Power SWANS: To Be Kind TENSES: Howard THE SPACE LADY: The Space Lady’s Greatest Hits / »Major Tom«/»Radar Love« / Recorded Live in San Francisco / Songs in the Key of Z. Vol. 2 THE YOUNG MOTHERS: A Mothers Work Is Never Done THEO PARRISH: Footwork / American Intelligence / Theo Parrish’s Black Signature TOM WU: s/t TRAXMAN: Da Mind Of Traxman / Da Mind Of Traxman 2 / Westside Boogie Traxy Vol. 3 TREK WITH QUINTRONIC: Landing Plus VALERIO TRICOLI: Miseri Lares VAPOUR THEORIES: Split-LP VENN RAIN: Crepuscular Raze VARIOUS ARTISTS: Keine Bewegung! VARIOUS ARTISTS: Pulsating Strings: A Collection of Psychedelic Asian Guitar Music VARIOUS ARTISTS: 10 Year Anniversary Hybrid Vinyl Series VARIOUS ARTISTS: Cassette Van Antwerpen VARIOUS ARTISTS: La Psicotropia VILLAGE OF SPACES: Gathering WESTBAM: Götterstrasse WILLIAM ONYEABOR: Who Is William Onyeabor? WILLIAM TYLER: Impossible Truth WOOG RIOTS: From Lo-Fi to Disco ZEA: The Swimming City Rezensionen Papier: ALBERTINE SARRAZIN: Astragalus ASTRID KUSSER: Körper in Schieflage. Tanzen im Strudel des Black Atlantic um 1900 BENJAMIN STEIN: Das Alphabet des Rabbi Löw BLACK HAWK HANCOCK: American Allegory. Lindy Hop And The Racial Imagination BRECHT EVENS: Die Amateure CHRISTIANE BAREITHER, KASPAR MAASE, MIRJAM NAST (HG.): Unterhaltung und Vergnügung. Beiträge der Europäischen Ethnologie zur Populärkulturforschung CHRISTOPHE BLAIN: Gus: 1. Nathalie / 2. Schöner Bandit / 3. Ernest CLAUDIA BOSSE (Hg.): Cheap Method Edition #1. Struggling Bodies In Capitalist Societies (Democracies) DANIEL CLOWES: Der Todesstrahl DAVID BUCKLEY: Kraftwerk. Die unautorisierte Biographie DAVID PRUDHOMME: Einmal durch den Louvre DAVID SIMONELLI: Working Class Heroes. Rock Music and British Society in the 1960s and 1970s DENNIS EICK: Digitales Erzählen. Die Dramaturgie der Neuen Medien DIEDRICH DIEDERICHSEN: Über Pop-Musik DIETER MERSCH: Ordo ab chao ? Order from Noise DIETMAR DATH / OLIVER SCHEIBLER: Mensch wie Gras wie DIETMAR DATH: Feldeváye ? Roman der letzten Künste DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Present Shock EKKEHARD KNÖRER: Battlestar Galactica ENNO STAHL: Diskurspogo. Über Literatur und Gesellschaft ERIKA SCHMIED: Peter Kurzeck ? Der radikale Biograph ERWIN IN HET PANHUIS: Hinter den schwulen Lachern. Homosexualität bei den Simpsons FANNY BRITT / ISABELLE ARSENAULT: Jane, der Fuchs und ich FLORIAN CRAMER: Exe.cut(up)able statements. Poetische Kalküle und Phantasmen des selbstausführenden Texts GUNNAR HINDRICHS: Die Autonomie des Klangs HANS BLUMENBERG: Präfiguration. Arbeit am politischen Mythos HANS-CHRISTIAN DANY: Morgen werde ich Idiot. Kybernetik und Kontrollgesellschaft HEIKO KOCH: Casa Pound Italia. Mussolinis Erben IAN F. SVENONIUS: 22 Strategien für die erfolgreiche Gründung einer Rockband JAN SÜSELBECK (HG.): Familiengefühle. Generationengeschichte und NS-Erinnerung in den Medien JOE SACCOS: Der Erste Weltkrieg ? Die Schlacht an der Somme JONAS ENGELMANN: Gerahmter Diskurs ? Gesellschaftsbilder im Independent-Comic JÜRGEN SCHMICH: Plattensüchtig. Expeditionen in eine andere Welt. 7 Schallplattensammler im Interview JÜRGEN ZIMMERER: Kein Platz an der Sonne. Erinnerungsorte der deutschen Kolonialgeschichte KATIA FOUQUET: Jonas oder der Künstler bei der Arbeit KITTY KRAUS: Lidschlag LINDER STERLING: Frau/Objekt LUCIUS BURCKHARDT: Der kleinstmögliche Eingriff MAGNUS KLAUE: Verschenkte Gelegenheiten. Polemiken, Glossen, Essays MAISHA EGGERS / GRADA KILOMBA / PEGGY PIESCHE / SUSAN ARNDT: Mythen, Masken und Subjekte. Kritische Weißseinsforschung in Deutschland MANUEL MENRATH: Afrika im Blick. Afrikabilder im deutschsprachigen Europa 1870?1970 MARIA JANION: Die Polen und ihre Vampire. Studien zur Kritik kultureller Phantasmen MARK BUTLER: Das Spiel mit sich. (Kink, Drugs & Hip-Hop). Populäre Techniken des Selbst zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts MARTIN NIEDERAUER: Die Widerständigkeiten des Jazz. Sozialgeschichte und Improvisation unter den Imperativen der Kulturindustrie MERCEDES BUNZ: Die stille Revolution. Wie Algorithmen Wissen, Arbeit, Öffentlichkeit und Politik verändern, ohne dabei viel Lärm zu machen MICHAEL PETRY (HG.): Nature Morte ? Stillleben in der zeitgenössischen Kunst MICHAEL PHILIPP / BUCERIUS KUNSTFORUM (HG.): Dionysos. Rausch und Ekstase OSWALD WIENER: die verbesserung von mitteleuropa OUMAR DIALLO / JOACHIM ZELLER: Black Berlin. Die deutsche Metropole und ihre afrikanische Diaspora in Geschichte und Gegenwart PETER KURZECK: Bis er kommt / Angehalten die Zeit SPRING: The ABC of Tragedy / Wunder STEFFEN SCHOLL: Musik ? Raum ? Technik. Zur Entwicklung und Anwendung der graphischen Programmierumgebung »Max« STEPHAN PACKARD (Hg.): Comics & Politik STUART HALL: Ausgewählte Schriften SUSAN ARNDT / ANTJE HORNSCHEIDT: Afrika und die deutsche Sprache. Ein kritisches Nachschlagewerk SUSAN ARNDT / NADJA OFUATEY-ALAZARD: Wie Rassismus aus Wörtern spricht. (K)erben des Kolonialismus im Wissensarchiv deutsche Sprache THOMAS MEINECKE: Analog. Kolumnen TOBIAS GOLL / DANIEL KEIL / THOMAS TELIOS (HG.): Critical Matter. Diskussionen eines neuen Materialismus VARIOUS ARTISTS: In 50 Comics um die Welt / Comics zur Lage der Welt VOLKAN ÇIDAM: Die Phänomenologie des Widergeistes. Eine anerkennungstheoretische Deutung von Marx’ normativer Kritik am Kapitalismus im Kapital VOLKO KAMENSKY / JULIAN ROHRUBER (HG.): Ton. Texte zur Akustik im Dokumentarfilm WENZEL STORCH: Die Filme WERNER SCHWAB: Fäkaliendramen WOLFGANG HERRNDORF: Arbeit und Struktur" [Verlags / website info] www.ventil-verlag.de/katalog/testcard | 2014 | €15.00 |
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| THE BEAUTIFUL SCHIZOPHONIC | Musicamorosa | CD | "Im Schatten blühen junge Mädchen pink? Jorge Mantas jedenfalls ließ sich durch Proust inspirieren, untermischt mit von Tristesse und Abschied geprägten Liebesgeschichten von Poe bis Wong Kar-Wai, Mädchenbildern von Waterhouse und Rosetti bis Rohmer und Deville, aber auch den Erotika-Ikonen der Fotografen Guido Argentini und Roy Stuart. Mein erster Eindruck - Bilitis - war also gar nicht so abwegig. Ein Computermönch träumt von Sensuality & Sadness und schon treibt Sublimation delikate Blüten. Gefühlskitsch bekommt im Halbschatten einer künstlerischen Sensibilität gleich etwas Sublimes. Musik als Geliebte, umsponnen von einer Delectatio morosa, der Lust an sündigen Vorstellungen? Fast alle Titel stammen aus Prousts Die Gefangene. Colleen spielt dazu La Lectrice und alles wird gleich ‚Pariserisch‘. Nicht Lukas, der Hl. Antonius ist der Schutzpatron der Künstler. Das ist nicht halb so sarkastisch, wie Dionysius als Nothelfer gegen Kopfschmerzen. Ich schwanke, während Mantas mollige Drones mich umschweifen und verführerisch ihre Gestalt wechseln, zwischen Kopfzerbrechen und Gedankenverbrechen - wie denn auch anders, wenn eine Musik gleichzeitig so schön, fatal und schizophon daher kommt. Ach wie so schwelgerisch öffnet der Laptop seine Speicher, auf deren Grund man auf Wagners Liebestod und Debussy stoßen würde. Was gerade noch knirschte wie Sand oder schäumte wie die Brandung um Aphrodites Knöchel, ist nun blinkende Gitarre, dann wieder eingedampftes orchestrales Rauschen. Als Encore folgt ein ausführlicher Remix durch @c, schnüffelnd wie eine Maus, die rosige Nackedeis wittert." [Bad Alchemy] "Marcel Proust has been one of the main sources of inspiration to me in the last years. His ideas devoted to the affections of the human heart, his approach deeply rooted on the long literary French tradition in which love can only be lived in sadness, is something that goes much beyond pure aesthetic. So it came only natural that somehow I would try to convey this literary and philosophic interest with the sound aesthetic I pursue. The image of a sleepless solitary writer confined to a Parisian soundproof room, has everything to do with the experience of a modern laptop composer, alone in the dark of a room, in a sort of headphone ecstasy with his acoustic fragments of reality. Both experience loneliness. Both are melancholic dreamers creating from an imaginary memory of the world. Whether this music is truly related with some of the delicate emotions depicted in A la recherche du temps perdu or not, it's up to the listener to decide. Could this be a possible sound equivalent to the literary images of affection written by Proust in the early 20th century? Is the sound atmosphere of each piece loaded with some kind of sensual aura? Would ever be possible to express a sadness full of joy in the same moment of music? Probably we'll never know. But perhaps we think about it next time we'll listen to musicamorosa." [Jorge Mantas] www.cronicaelectronica.org | 2007 | €15.00 |
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| THE LORD | Forest Nocturne | LP | The debut solo album from sunn O))) axe-man Greg Anderson as The Lord. 8 song collection of dark heavy cinematic-inspired darkness. Limited edition vinyl release. Forest Nocturne sees Anderson taking cues from legendary film composers: John Carpenter and Bernard Hermann, in order to create cinematic landscapes which are heavy with tension, and offset by the injection of lethal doses of early 90s Scandinavian Death Metal - with Attila Csihar (of notorious Norwegian black metal band Mayhem) lending his putrid vocals to final track ‘Triumph of the Oak’. For Forest Nocturne, Anderson worked with renowned producer Brad Wood. Dan Seagrave's epic and fantastical style is instantly recognizable on the album's stunning artwork, something which seems to depict an ancient and unknowable force in the woodlands. Forest Nocturne is described by Anderson as “the music of the night”, but inspired by imagery conjured on daytime hikes, and majestic and beautiful trees, which he sees as survivors - and perhaps the last known connection that we have to an ancient world, and acting as a connector between past, present and future of the human race and of our time on this planet. https://thelordsl.bandcamp.com/album/forest-nocturne | 2022 | €20.00 |
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| THE TRIPLE TREE | Ghosts | CD | "Tony Wakeford kann's nicht lassen! Als ob der umtriebige Mr. "Sol Invictus" nicht schon mit zahlreichen Nebenprojekten (u.a. Grey Force Wakeford, Trio Noir, L'Orchestre Noir, Hawthorn) ausgelastet wäre, hebt er nun gemeinsam mit Andrew King sowie ausgewählten "Familienmitgliedern", u.a. Renee Rosen, Guy Harries, John Murphy (u.a. Knifeladder, SPK, Death in June, Shining Vril) oder Kris Force (Amber Asylum), ein weiteres namens The Triple Tree aus der Taufe, dessen Debut "Ghosts" niemand geringerem als dem britischen Ghoststory-Autor M.R. James (1862-1936) gewidmet ist. Bereits das James-Zitat "Depend upon it! Some of these things are so, but we do not know the rules!" auf der Rückseite des Booklets deutet die Marschrichtung an: Festgelegte Regeln kennt man hier nicht, und schon gar nicht die des Neofolk. Folglich sollte man sich der Scheibe exakt unter diesem Gesichtspunkt nähern, denn "Ghosts" ist abgedreht, "Ghosts" ist schaurig und "Ghosts" verlangt dem Rezipienten zeitweise einiges an Toleranz ab. Sägende Geigenläufe, diffuse Feldaufnahmen, schräge Flöten-/Pfeiftöne, dumpfe Percussions sowie viele weitere Soundelemente, oft subtil disharmonisch zusammengefügt, erzeugen eine Atmosphäre, welche den Hörer direkt in James' gespenstische Szenarien zu führen vermag, in staubige Bibliotheken, schmutzige Hinterhöfe oder düstere Gemäuer des viktorianischen England. Die Stimmen von "Dr. Wakeford" und "The Rev. King" tun dazu ihr übriges. Während "The Mezzotint" oder "Lost Hearts" in schlichtem Erzählstil dargeboten werden, kommt "The Stalls" als altertümlicher Kanon daher und "Black Crusade" scheint von beiden direkt in einer Kaschemme der Londoner Docks eingesungen worden zu sein. Doch "Ghosts" ist auch berückend schön. Neben dem durch gezupfte Gitarre und markante Männerstimmen fast erhaben wirkenden "Three Crowns" sind es hauptsächlich jene Titel, in denen die beteiligten Damen Autumn Grieve, Kris Force oder Mercy Liao gesanglich zum Zuge kommen. Dabei kristallisiert sich vor allem das perlende Duett "The Malice of Inanimate Objects" als Höhepunkt heraus. Aber selbst dieses ist von einer unheilsschwangeren Aura umgeben, da die Lieder ständig durch schrille Versatzstücke gebrochen werden, die sich entweder als Intros/Outros oder komplette Tracks einschleichen. Genau das richtige, um die Gruselstimmung immer wieder zu entfachen. Trotz alledem kommt jedoch eine typische Eigenschaft der Inselbewohner nicht zu kurz, der Humor. Im Booklet präsentieren sich die beiden Protagonisten nämlich launig, wie direkt aus einem der schauerlichen Romane entsprungen. Schrullige Fotos für ein ebenso schrulliges und gerade deshalb fesselndes Album. M.R. James wäre sicher stolz gewesen!" [Medienkonverter] "The Triple Tree consists of Tony Wakeford (Sol Invictus) and Andrew King aided and abetted by M, Autumn Grieve, Kris Force (Amber Asylum), Guy Harries, Renee Rosen and John Murphy (Death In June, SPK, KnifeLadder), and is an extended homage to the supernatural fiction of M. R. James (with a certain nod to his notable studies in the New Testament Apocrypha) the greatest ghost story writer in the English language, and the finest medievalist of his generation. Join Dr Wakeford and the Rev. King as they search for the Three Crowns, attempt to Cast the Runes, purchase The Mezzotint, follow Mr Abney’s "remarkable enlightenment" in Lost Hearts, and join Count Magnus on the "Black Crusade"! Winter evenings will never be the same again... Digipak with booklet." [label info] ".. Anthony Wakeford and Andrew King is best known as part of the project Sol Invictus, that for more than two decades has combined neo-folk and neoclassical influences with electronic experimentation. The comprehensive experiences in that particular field beautifully flourish on this tribute to haunted tales of medieval times under the project flag "Triple Tree". The atmosphere is perfectly accomplished with some beautiful male and female vocal integrated in medieval folk-expressions that stylishly turns associations towards Dead Can Dance. As a contrast to the organic sounds, the electronic part of the album first of all operates in ambient-oriented soundscapes to create haunting atmospheres of ghouls. "Ghosts" is a strong sonic depiction of early ghost stories from M.R. James, inspiring the listener to dive into the dark forces of the medieval author!" [NM, Vital Weekly] www.coldspring.co.uk | 2008 | €8.00 |
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| THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA | Fuck off get free we pour Light on everything | LP | "THEE SILVER MT. ZION haben über sieben Alben seit 1999 hinweg einen stacheldrahtbewehrten Bogen der Protest Music gespannt. Erst kürzlich haben sich THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA auf nur fünf Musiker zurückgestutzt. Menucks massive E-Gitarre fungiert hier als Rückgrat, um das zwei Geigen, ein Bass (dieser Tage öfter elektrisch als akustisch) und das Schlagzeug rotieren. "Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything" ist das erste definitive Dokument des neuen Sounds und Stils der Band als Quintett. Das Kernstück des Album, ,Austerity Blues" mit seiner Abschlusszeile "Lord let my son live long enough to see that mountain torn down" gesungen in verschiedenen Spielarten über die zweite Hälfte des 14-minütigen Epos, personifiziert den unerschrockenen Blick Menucks auf eine Welt voller Erbärmlichkeit, Gier und Ungerechtigkeit, betrachtet durch die Linse von Elternschaft, Sterblichkeit, Durchhaltevermögen und Trotz. Dies ist keine fröhliche Musik, aber sie kann auch nicht einfach so als apokalyptisch und weltmüde abgestempelt werden. ,Fuck Off Get Free" wütet voller Zorn und Hoffnung und ist zugleich absolut leidenschaftlich und bewusst unromantisch. THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA zeigen einmal mehr, das es so viel gibt, gegen das sich kämpfen lässt. Im Unterschied zu anderen Bands haben THEE SILVER MT. ZION die passenden Kampfsongs im Gepäck. // Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra (SMZ) has traced a barbed-wire arc of genre-defying protest music since its inception in 1999. Formed by Efrim Menuck, with Thierry Amar and Sophie Trudeau, the initial iteration of the band was a predominantly instrumental trio that forged a more intimate and ragged chamber-punk than Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the other group in which all three founding SMZ members also played (and continue to play). Through seven albums from 2000-2010, SMZ expanded its line-up and shifted towards an increasing use of lead and group vocals, with Menuck penning politically-charged lyrics to anchor long-form multi-movement compositions that juxtaposed electrified guitars against a 4-piece string section of violins, cello and contrabass. Most recently, SMZ has pared back to five players, with Menuck's massive spectrum-spanning electric guitar sound emerging as the spine around which two violins, bass (now more often electric than acoustic) and drums are deployed. SMZ have managed a handful of short tours in the past couple of years (in the gaps between GYBE commitments) and as anyone who has seen the band in its recent incarnation can attest, their current sound is more honed, laser-guided and bone-rattling than ever, melding hardcore, blues, garage and dark metal influences that have nothing to do with anything so quaint as “post-rock” (a tag the group has always and rightly rejected). Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything is the first definitive document of the band's newfound sound and style as a quintet. It’s also their first single LP-length work since the band’s debut record as a trio almost 15 years ago, and features road-tested pummeling rock-outs “Fuck Off Get Free (For The Island Of Montréal)”, “Take Away These Early Grave Blues” and “What We Loved Was Not Enough” alongside the previously unheard lullabyes/minuets “Little Ones Run” and “Rains Thru The Roof At Thee Grande Ballroom (For Capital Steez)” and the album centerpiece “Austerity Blues” with its closing lyric “Lord let my son live long enough to see that mountain torn down” sung in varying incarnations throughout the second half of this 14-minute epic. This lyric in many ways encapsulates Menuck's unflinching take on a world replete with shabbiness, greed and injustice, seen through the lens of parenthood, mortality, endurance and defiance. There are few other musicians who deliver social critique with the courage and honesty of lines like “All our cities gonna burn / All our bridges gonna snap / All our pennies gonna rot / Lightning roll across our tracks / All our children gonna die”. Feel-good music this is not; but neither can it reductively be tagged apocalyptic or world-weary. Fuck Off Get Free rages with scorn and with hope, utterly passionate but pointedly unromantic. Thee Silver Mt. Zion once again demonstrates, like few other bands working today, that there is much to fight for and against, and plenty more fight songs to sing." [label info] www.cstrecords.com | 2014 | €21.00 |
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| Fuck off get free we pour Light on everything | CD | "THEE SILVER MT. ZION haben über sieben Alben seit 1999 hinweg einen stacheldrahtbewehrten Bogen der Protest Music gespannt. Erst kürzlich haben sich THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA auf nur fünf Musiker zurückgestutzt. Menucks massive E-Gitarre fungiert hier als Rückgrat, um das zwei Geigen, ein Bass (dieser Tage öfter elektrisch als akustisch) und das Schlagzeug rotieren. "Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything" ist das erste definitive Dokument des neuen Sounds und Stils der Band als Quintett. Das Kernstück des Album, ,Austerity Blues" mit seiner Abschlusszeile "Lord let my son live long enough to see that mountain torn down" gesungen in verschiedenen Spielarten über die zweite Hälfte des 14-minütigen Epos, personifiziert den unerschrockenen Blick Menucks auf eine Welt voller Erbärmlichkeit, Gier und Ungerechtigkeit, betrachtet durch die Linse von Elternschaft, Sterblichkeit, Durchhaltevermögen und Trotz. Dies ist keine fröhliche Musik, aber sie kann auch nicht einfach so als apokalyptisch und weltmüde abgestempelt werden. ,Fuck Off Get Free" wütet voller Zorn und Hoffnung und ist zugleich absolut leidenschaftlich und bewusst unromantisch. THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA zeigen einmal mehr, das es so viel gibt, gegen das sich kämpfen lässt. Im Unterschied zu anderen Bands haben THEE SILVER MT. ZION die passenden Kampfsongs im Gepäck.// Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra (SMZ) has traced a barbed-wire arc of genre-defying protest music since its inception in 1999. Formed by Efrim Menuck, with Thierry Amar and Sophie Trudeau, the initial iteration of the band was a predominantly instrumental trio that forged a more intimate and ragged chamber-punk than Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the other group in which all three founding SMZ members also played (and continue to play). Through seven albums from 2000-2010, SMZ expanded its line-up and shifted towards an increasing use of lead and group vocals, with Menuck penning politically-charged lyrics to anchor long-form multi-movement compositions that juxtaposed electrified guitars against a 4-piece string section of violins, cello and contrabass. Most recently, SMZ has pared back to five players, with Menuck's massive spectrum-spanning electric guitar sound emerging as the spine around which two violins, bass (now more often electric than acoustic) and drums are deployed. SMZ have managed a handful of short tours in the past couple of years (in the gaps between GYBE commitments) and as anyone who has seen the band in its recent incarnation can attest, their current sound is more honed, laser-guided and bone-rattling than ever, melding hardcore, blues, garage and dark metal influences that have nothing to do with anything so quaint as “post-rock” (a tag the group has always and rightly rejected). Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything is the first definitive document of the band's newfound sound and style as a quintet. It’s also their first single LP-length work since the band’s debut record as a trio almost 15 years ago, and features road-tested pummeling rock-outs “Fuck Off Get Free (For The Island Of Montréal)”, “Take Away These Early Grave Blues” and “What We Loved Was Not Enough” alongside the previously unheard lullabyes/minuets “Little Ones Run” and “Rains Thru The Roof At Thee Grande Ballroom (For Capital Steez)” and the album centerpiece “Austerity Blues” with its closing lyric “Lord let my son live long enough to see that mountain torn down” sung in varying incarnations throughout the second half of this 14-minute epic. This lyric in many ways encapsulates Menuck's unflinching take on a world replete with shabbiness, greed and injustice, seen through the lens of parenthood, mortality, endurance and defiance. There are few other musicians who deliver social critique with the courage and honesty of lines like “All our cities gonna burn / All our bridges gonna snap / All our pennies gonna rot / Lightning roll across our tracks / All our children gonna die”. Feel-good music this is not; but neither can it reductively be tagged apocalyptic or world-weary. Fuck Off Get Free rages with scorn and with hope, utterly passionate but pointedly unromantic. Thee Silver Mt. Zion once again demonstrates, like few other bands working today, that there is much to fight for and against, and plenty more fight songs to sing." [label info] www.cstrecords.com | 2014 | €14.50 |
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| THEME & JEAN-HERVE PERON & ZSOLT SORES | Poison is (not) the Word | mLP | "In early September 2011, Theme, the Poland/UK-based group centred around Lumberton Trading Company’s very own Richard Johnson (ex-Splintered, Husk, etc.) and Stuart Carter (ex-Splintered, The Fields Of Hay, ex-Heroin, etc.), went into a Budapest studio with their good friends Zsolt Sörés and Jean-herve Peron (a.ka. Art-Errorist of influential German group, Faust) for two days. Although some basic ideas had been worked on and discussed prior to this meeting, the main objective was to record a side-long piece of music that used one of these ideas as a starting point to what would otherwise essentially amount to a collaborative improvisation with Zsolt, plus further collaborative pieces for the other side of the record both involving also Jean-herve Peron and being completely of the moment. The main piece, entitled ‘Poison Is (Not) The Word’, pays witness to Theme branching into territory probably closer to their work as Splintered (i.e., their Moraine LP from 1996, which featured Jim O’Rourke source material on one side). Stretching over 24 minutes in length, it remains anchored to Theme’s tendency for psychedelic drones and textures whilst Zsolt applies improvised electronics and viola to them and words are either chanted or spat out. A saxophone, added by Zsolt Varga, then completes the sprawling ‘brink-of-chaos’ feel perfectly. On the other side are two pieces also spanning over 20 minutes between them. The first, ‘Baszd meg az apád!’ (which translates as ‘Fuck Your Father’ from Hungarian), begins misleadingly as a mass of atmospheric swirls, cavaquinho plucking, textures, psalterion, and sax until Jean-herve cuts in with some shouted vocals as effective as they are brief. The second, ‘Puszta Psycho’, is built around a tempered refrain of cavaquinho string picking led by Jean-herve then welded to subtle touches of hissing electronics, psalterion, space clatter, sax blasts (courtesy of Varga), subtle textural plumes, indiscernible knocking and scrunching sounds, Jean-herve’s vocals and buried chanting by Richard Johnson. This MLP represents the first of two vinyl releases that document the time these artists all recorded and played live together over a period of 10 days. The second release will be a limited edition 7” on LTCo sister label, Fourth Dimension. It is hoped another tour by Theme, Jhp-Art Errorist and Zsolt will take place in October or November 2012." [label info] www.lumberton-trading.com | 2012 | €15.00 |
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| THEOLOGIAN | A Means by which to break the Surface of the Real | LP | "We at Redscroll Records are very excited for our first release under the Nothing Under The Sun imprint. It is very fitting that it is with THEOLOGIAN, a long-time compatriot and embodiment of the direction we intend to take with Nothing Under The Sun, distorting the known into the unfamiliar. A Means By Which To Break The Surface Of The Real features DAVID CASTILLO of PRIMITIVE WEAPONS / WHITE WIDOWS PACT, DANIEL SUFFERING of WHORID, as well as contributions from MATT SLAGLE and engineer KEVIN D. REILLY JR., who has periodically worked with Lee M. Bartow since the earliest incarnations of Navicon Torture Technologies (back in the mid-late ‘90s). Tortured screams reach out over the tumbling industrial workings below. Low register whispered meanderings slowly rise to meet those screams. Machines’ rhythmic drones fold in on the voices. Sirens invite and warn. Sink into the synthetic abyss." [label info] redscrollrecords.com "Another nod to Hellraiser is found in the title to this vinyl only release from the larger than life project Theologian. Lee M. Bartow, the author and creator of Theologian's death-synth epics, has stated that Clive Barker's horror stories are fundamental to his work, even referencing the Hellraiser books as his bible in various interviews. In this quote, we are introduced to the puzzle box that when solved opens a portal into another plane of existence, with any number of demonic characters to be found on the other side, Pinhead included. The roar of big machines endlessly churning, boiling, and grinding with an infernal purpose is heard throughout this album, with the side long B-side "Truthseeker's Pick" emerging as some sort of hellish field recording of sulfuric vents, locomotive clatter, and metal-on-metal clank with nothing but misery and pain to be experienced in such a realm. The album's introductory track "God Comes As A Wall" finds Theologian screaming into the void of a collapsed black hole, crushing rock, building, planets into a singular thrum of cataclysmic white noise. "The Sun Failed To Rise Today" is a continuation of the plodding industrial dirges that Theologian crafted on the mighty Some Things Have To Be Endured, spiralling with spectral noise, megalithic rhythms, and soaring mechanized screams. The shortest number makes for one of the more intriguing pieces in "Surface Of The Real" with its subaquatic techno pulsations bracing the clarion melodies for guitar and / or voice. Limited to 500 copies." [Aquarius Rec.] | 2015 | €18.50 |
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| THIGHPAULSANDRA | Acid & Ecstasy | do-LP | Thighpaulsandra is a veteran of many music worlds, and displays it on his kaleidoscopic multi movement tracks. With his first album in six years, Acid & Ecstasy, he whizzes through a particularly electrifying set of stylistic left turns. ‘Princess Margaret’s Mellotron’ starts off with guttural spiritual ambience before swerving into a twisted rock ‘n’ roll breakdown. A tripped out, irreverent take on the 2020s Britpop re-revival powered ultimately by a vast array of electronics and Coily industrialism, the track somehow expertly blends trickling gamelan polyrhythms, marching band brass, and murky ambience into a genre defying art rock mixture. Acid & Ecstasy" ist das neunte Soloalbum des musikalischen Provokateurs Thighpaulsandra (u.a. ex-COIL/SPIRITUALIZED/JULIAN COPE) und seine erste Veröffentlichung seit dem 2019 erschienenen Album Practical Electronics. Willkommen zu einem weiteren tiefen Tauchgang in Thighpaulsandras anzüglicher Klangwelt, welche sich keinem Genre zuordenen lässt. Ein Doppelalbum, das eine Vielzahl von immersiven Soundscapes, rauen Rockmomenten und lyrisch geschärften Balladen enthält, die wir alle von diesem unruhigen Troubadour erwarten, plus eine Menge fleischiger Überraschungen. Sieben gewichtige Tracks, die dich auf die beste Art und Weise verwirren und dich durch einen eklektischen Zirkus von unverfälschter Genialität chauffieren. Verdränge den Unglauben und kreuzigen die Neugier, du wirst nicht enttäuscht. Erhältlich auf Doppel-LP und Einzel-CD. ##################### no bandcamp, sorry ###################### "If like me you loved Thighpaulsandra‘s debut or the panoramic nature of his Golden Communion album, I’m glad to report the big-band sound is back with a vengeance on this new offering. As sprawling as it is provocative, this beast is an accomplished double helping that happily mingles menace with glitzy pop-tastics skewered in plenty of Stockhausen detours and atonal splurges. A largely song-based soiree, dashes of black humour and grandiose synth work abound, each track never starting where it finishes, its malleable betweens mood-swinging like a tree-skipping gibbon, grinning with mischievous intent. The orator’s words shine, scenic playthings perversely weaselled, poking fun at the righteous. The music, just as anarchic, obsessively delighting in blushes of prog-like excess, scooping up funky spandex grooves or taut totem riffs beset with a warble of classical delicacies, suddenly slamming you unexpectedly into a host of bent-up and crumpled trauma. Bold and marauding, it’s an entertaining ride that draws you into its theatrics askew, starfishes you back from the wreckage on a refreshed stream of consciousness piggybacking on a grinding bassline and creamy wizardry – psychedelically triggered melodics and adrenalined rushes that push intriguing holes through the fabric of its own reality. The jazzabelled tribal mantra of “The Curtain” erased into an ECM coma to comb-over a lush Spanish guitar and flourished balladry. A Julian Cope-like cadence chasing slippery abstracts and trickling diodes. The songwriting free-flow doesn’t disappoint, pillows with possibility, offset in ovalling obliques and star-clustered satellites, leaping headlong into some weirded-out Cardiacs-like operatics. In anybody else’s hands this might fall foul, flounder messily; but Thighpaulsandra’s trip marvels with the improbable, alchemises the errant with seamless ease. The debauched hilarity of “Princess Margaret’s Mellotron” (bringing to mind Double Vulgar‘s ode to her royal highness) meal-worms the ridiculous, all raspberried and choral-tapered, “Sliding down the corridors of powerrrrr” skilfully subverting with toe-tapping tautness and genre-bending fluidity. That multifaceted voice plucking charismatic to later turn despotic on “Cattle Truck”, the music souring to blunted blows disembarking into some head-nodding wrongness and a zero-gravity suspense outage of rumble-roasted layers. I can’t begin to imagine the amount of work involved creating something this complex and widescreen, but my ears are enjoying every twist and turn. As the album ends on the sticky avant-garden of “The Brown Hare Remains”, I’m reminded again of Thighpaulsandra’s genius in conjuring a rarefied atmosphere. An oddly shimmering creature of a track, stabbed in reverbed-glowing rhythmics and gong-like metallics to skitter on an aftersun of chilled poetics slivering between French and English on this dusky purple pulse. A lilting ambience that tessellates like a slo-mo of broken petals wistfully lost to the gathering silence. Acid And Ecstasy is another extravagant triumph that I’m going to be listening to for years to come. [Michael Rodham-Heaps/FREQ] | 2025 | €35.00 |
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| Acid & Ecstasy | CD | Welcome to another deep dive into Thighpaulsandra’s salacious sound-world. A double album opus, Acid and Ecstasy synaptically sabres a host of immersive soundscaping, raucous rock moments and lyrically sharpened balladry we’ve all come to expect from this troubled troubadour plus plenty of fleshy surprise. Seven weighty tracks that potently tangle you up in the best of ways and chauffeur you around an eclectic circus of unadulterated genius. Displace dis-belief and crucify your curiosity - you will not be disappointed… Thighpaulsandra is a veteran of many music worlds, and displays it on his kaleidoscopic multi movement tracks. With his first album in six years, Acid & Ecstasy, he whizzes through a particularly electrifying set of stylistic left turns. ‘Princess Margaret’s Mellotron’ starts off with guttural spiritual ambience before swerving into a twisted rock ‘n’ roll breakdown. A tripped out, irreverent take on the 2020s Britpop re-revival powered ultimately by a vast array of electronics and Coily industrialism, the track somehow expertly blends trickling gamelan polyrhythms, marching band brass, and murky ambience into a genre defying art rock mixture. | 2025 | €15.00 |
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| THIRTEEN HURTS | UVB-76 | CD-R | Thirteen Hurts is a recording artist named Richard Adams who has performed at Denver Noise Fest a few times, as well as Norcal Noise Fest, and in one instance, he drove over 2,000 miles to play St. Petersburg Noise Fest. At that time, he lived in a solar powered home in rural Colorado, 6 hours from any form of civilization. I imagined him in some sort of geodesic dome listening to numbers stations and Coast To Coast AM with only the cold, dead air of winter, and hitherto useless power lines in the distance to accompany it. Thirteen Hurts live was also quite a surprise. Whenever I see about 30 pedals sitting on a table, I always assume that there's going to be a great deal of muddy, buzzing garbage to endure, but not in this case. Each time I saw this phenomena, there was such a level of control and focus, also accompanied by a casual, playful demeanor, that it looked like that of a practiced, serious scientist, or maybe a "rocket surgeon" would be a better term. The assurance that this person could fix a car or save a life while laughing, chatting, and gesticulating, came to mind. The man was like a ninja with his pedals, building little ditties and then destroying them with epic blasts of clearly articulated, yet cataclysmic, disastrous noise. It's only appropriate then, that NO PART OF IT is releasing UVB-76, an album inspired by a Russian shortwave radio signal whose origin has never been found, and whose communications have been poured over and analyzed for decades. Naturally, much (actually about half, I'm told) of the source material is from radios, and certainly there will be some segments of this release that the kids will call "brutal!" and "sick!", but the depth and range of this release, like the two Thirteen Hurts CDs before them, is unprecedented. The attention to detail is without comparison. Each track is amounts to prime numbers. At times, layers of heavily panned electric rhythms dance in and out of sync while what sounds like dying drip-drop synth burble cascades in and out of the picture. At other times, it sounds like the sci-fi soundtrack to an animal stalking its prey, despite ominous, disruptive climate patterns. Brooding, creeping static pulses punctuate swarms of oscillating ghost hiss. Musique Concret glossolalia meets high-speed cut-up squealing robot ganglia. With what seems like a minimal approach, "UVB-76" runs the gamut. Each track is rich and unique, and any two tracks would compliment eachother as sides on a stellar 7 inch. 66 minutes in duration, and not a moment is wasted. https://nopartofit.bandcamp.com/album/uvb-76 | 2016 | €8.00 |
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| THIS MORTAL COIL | Blood | CD | Third and last album from the 4AD-supergroup. "This group was essentially the creation of Ivo Watts-Russell, the co-owner of 4AD Records, a highly successful Wandsworth, London-based independent label. This Mortal Coil was actually a collaboration of musicians recording in various permutations, overseen and directed by Watts-Russell. The first single, an epic cover version of Tim Buckley 's 'Song To The Siren', was originally intended as a b-side. However, bolstered by the considerable talents of Robin Guthrie and Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins), it saw its own release and became a near-permanent fixture in the independent charts as a result. The album that followed set the pattern for the occasional outings to come.(...) Featuring a selection of artists from the 4AD roster plus various outsiders, the albums included several cover versions of works by Watts-Russell's favourite songwriters (Buckley, Alex Chilton, Roy Harper, Gene Clark and Syd Barrett )." [unknown source] | 1991 | €15.50 |
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| THISQUIETARMY / DIRK SERRIES / TOM MALMENDIER | Hell | CD | This record evolved as a concatenation of two happenings. Thisquietarmy presented his album “Democracy of Dust” on stage at the Moving Noises Evening 2017, supported by Tom Malmendier, who joined in for some live drum parts for older tracks of thisquietarmy. Dirk Serries played one of his last ambient sets before releasing “Epitaph” at the same evening. So things came together very quick and the idea was born to end up the evening as a trio. Hell features a long improvisational track, in which you can hear typical Serries and thisquietarmy sounds accompanied by some diversified percussion sounds by Malmendier. The set starts very quiet and cautious and ends up in climax of experimental guitars and absolute amazing freejazz drumming. Recorded at Christuskirche Bochum. Mixed by Dirk Serries. Mastered by Eric Quach. “Hell” comes as a 6panel digisleeve with matt finish. Limited to 200 copies. https://thisquietarmy.bandcamp.com/album/h-e-l-l | 2019 | €15.00 |
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| THISQUIETARMY + YELLOW6 | Death | LP | " “DEATH” presents a lonely journey of great intensity across the desert, facing inner and external elements, fatally leading to an escape for salvation. The journey is split into three tracks: “Sand” discovers the tough, arid and suffocating desert, as attractive as it is frightening, it surrounds you completely without compromise and there is no turning back. “Furnace” describes the beginning of the blistering heat and the dusty pilgrimage; the rocky landscape is mirrored by a great loneliness in which is revealed our inner demons, ready to engage a battle without mercy against your own soul. “Salt” depicts the comatose state of being at the tail end of the journey, disoriented and dehydrated, lost within psychedelic hallucinations, physically fighting death with little of what is left of your mind. Mastered by Fear Falls Burning. 180g vinyl with free download coupon (no CD, unfortunately) 80 black / 320 gold." [label info] www.bassesfrequences.org | 2010 | €14.00 |
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| THISQUIETARMY X N | Zerfall / Zerfallen | LP + CD | Thisquietarmy and N met during live shows and festivals on and off for years. As both are always interested in doing collaborations it was just a matter of time, when both would team up for a guitar drone convention. All started with an improvisational live set in Cologne, followed by a studio session in Duisburg, back in 2019. “Zerfall | Zerfallen” features all the tracks of those two sessions, except one track, that is featured on “Zerstoeren”, the sister release (MD 098). “Zerfall” (LP) features two epic tracks and it is obvious after the first seconds, that the studio session was a loud unfaltering monster. We can say that for sure, because this is one of the rare occasions, we had the chance to join the recording session. Imagine an old industrial building with a big studio room on the upper floor, where two guitarists are sitting in front of an amp wall, playing so loud that no earplug can save you. The first track “Zerfall Alpha” flows with loud noise soundwalls by N and the looming sounds of thisquietarmy, evolving into soundscapes that feel like both guitars are melting into one unbending soundwall, going loud and sometimes quiet even to get subsequently louder. “Zerfall Beta” is the evil twin of the A side track and unfolds a massive drone doom wave. “Zerfallen” (CD) features the other three tracks of the session, in the same mood like “Zerfall” but with an individual sonic evolving. All rounded up by the live session from Cologne “Zerstaeuber“, which is also featured on “Zerfallen”. Here you can discover, how the musicians approached very tentative, how their sounds work together for the very first time. All in all, you get 2 hours of massive drone doom ambient noise guitar fulmination. Listen loud for maximum aftermath. “Zerfall | Zerfallen” comes in an edition of 222 copies on LP+CD. Black vinyl with printed labels, housed in reverse board printed sleeve on 300g cardboard. The CD is housed in a reverse board printed cardboard wallet. If you want to read more about the recording session, here is an intrview Eric and Hellmut did for Fifteen Questions: 15questions.net/interview/thisquietarmy-and-n-share-their-creative-process/page-1/ Zerfall (LP) A Zerfall Alpha 22:27 B Zerfall Beta 23:20 Zerfallen (CD) 01 Zerfallen Eins 11:21 02 Zerfallen Zwei 12:52 03 Zerfallen Drei 31:27 04 Zerstaeuber 17:24 Technical: LP + CD / Limited to 222 copies LP comes on black vinyl / printed labels / reverseboard printed sleeve CD comes in reverseboard printed sleeve thisquietarmy (amps+guitars) N (amps+guitars) recorded by Tobias Stieler, June 2019 mixed+mastered by Eric Quach, March 2021 photography by Roxane De Koninck www.midirarecords.com/release/md-097-thisquietarmy-x-n-zerfall-zerfallen | 2022 | €27.50 |
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| THUJA | Pine Cone Temples | do-CD | Episches neues Werk dieses 4-köpfigen kreativen Geräusch-Improvisations-Kollektivs, deren Klangquellen keine Begrenzungen zu kennen scheinen. Neben gewöhnlichen Instrumenten werden field recordings aber auch konkretes Material eingesetzt. Die Improvisationen klingen so sensibel & fein verwoben als seien sie „gewollt“ komponiert. Jedes neue Stück offenbart überraschende Sounds, und doch wirkt das Werk wie aus einem Guss. Entspannter „Abstrakt-Geräuschambient“, der niemals langweilig wird. Bei THUJA wirkt LOREN CHASSE von ID BATTERY mit, die auch eine Single auf Drone hatten – nicht nur deswegen sei dieses Werk hiermit in höchstem Maße empfohlen ! “By incorporating real-time recordings of natural sounds from their particular surroundings, the four members of Thuja play off each other and the space they inhabit with impeccable instinct, succeeding in creating eerie yet strikingly melodic compositions. The end result is a total immersion of the senses, for both the player and the listener. Across the grand expanse of Pine Cone Temple's two discs, implements such as piano, guitars, percussion, and well-placed contact mics are blended like pigments to conjure the subtlest of sonics, pulling every lost drop of their immediate universe into floating and buzzing cinematics. Minimalist hues are brush-stroked into being and slowly unfurl into the atmosphere. Improvised clouds of sound softly erupt to form compositions of such immense and precise detail, it would seem the music was written out rather than spontaneously developed. Such is the magic of Thuja and their uncanny ability to sculpt microscopic psychedelia from their immediate environment and collective consciousness.” [label info] “....and all of them loosely based in one way or another on nature, or natural sounds, or the way music and found sounds interact with the spaces they are performed in. There are instruments like guitars, drums, bass, but more often than not, you'll find sticks and stones, found objects, junk, all sorts of industrial and natural detritus, recorded, re-broadcast, and recorded again. Utilizing natural reverb, the sounds of certain spaces, ambient sounds as well as making the act of making music, music in itself. Wow. So what does Pine Cone Temples sound like? It's wide open and expansive. Ambient perhaps, but there's too much going on for it to be strictly ambient. It's more a sort of abstract soundscape, the sort of soundscape the requires close listening, active listening, in order to understand, and feel the sounds, not just hear them. The rustle of leaves, crickets maybe, running water, or are those sounds manufactured by the band in an attempt to pay homage to the music of nature? Does it matter. Maybe its both, the sound of running water accompanied by Thuja emulating the sound of running water. Clicks and creaks, and little bits of clatter, a simple melody played on a recorder, warm organ warble, whipsering wind, toy xylophone notes released and left to drift in the slowly shifting breeze, distant bird calls, reverbed piano, dark cavernous rumbles, shimmering single notes stretched perilously across a sound field dotted with the echo of dripping water and the buzz of vibrating guitar strings. This isn't so much music as it is simply sound, sound that has been lovingly shaped and guided, observed and interacted with, recorded in its element. As if Thuja were just recordists, who use their own sounds to lure the sounds of nature to come just a little closer, in order to capture them raw and natural, and incorporate them into the sun dappled cloak of their jewelled nature-folk. The sounds of music can be smooth and soothing, or raw and primitive, as can the music of sound, and thus Thuja, whose music of sound is pure, and organic, lush and lustrous, and breathtakingly beautiful.” [Aquarius Records] www.strange-attractors.com | 2005 | €15.00 |
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| same | LP | "A brand new vinyl only full length from aQ beloved ambient improvised free rock explorers Thuja. The core group is all present, Loren Chasse, Glenn Donaldson, Steven R. Smith and Rob Reger, joined for these sessions by Thuja satellite members: Greg Bianchini, Keith Evans, Bryan DeRoo and former aQ mailorder mistress Christine Boepple. Collected from various live performances, these tracks find Thuja setting up in various venues around the Bay Area, and transforming each location, at least briefly, into a forest glade, or a darkened wood, or a fog shrouded seashore, using traditional instruments as well as sticks and stones and other found objects to conjure up ghostlike soundscapes , each track, every performance, a slow burning sprawl of humid and humming minimalism. Almost the entirety of the A side is taken up by an epic stretch of alchemical minimalism, a muted series of washed out melodies, of gentle scrapes and distant shimmers, various notes and chords expressed in long streaks, the guitar lines unfurling lazily, the band eventually coalesce into a glistening high end crescendo, suddenly reminding us of Sunroof! with their upper register ur-drone skree, but here that skree is more muted and muddied, a mournful keening, before the band elves back into a more minimal moonlit crawl. Disembodied slowed down riffs are draped over whispered whirs, while the band lurk in the shadows, letting tiny bits of light spill out, creating barely there sonic patterns, and dusty dreamlike song skeletons. The B side is even more understated, each track a brief soundscape, exploring dark dusty corners, shuffling through a blanket of dead leaves, the band barely there at all. Almost like they set up their instruments and just stood there, letting the wind and the wildlife create the sounds. When the music does materialize, and take more solid form, the guitars weave themselves into delicate little tangles, drifting over deep resonant swells, all around sounds betray the environment, but become inexorable parts of the organic sound being created, snippets of conversation, voices, footsteps, alongside subtle bits of percussive thump, warbly distant melodies, a deep dark ambience, a gorgeously subtle sound that manages to be quietly propulsive even as it seems to hover motionless. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!" [Aquarius Records review] label-website: www.importantrecords.com | 2008 | €15.50 |
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| Hills | LP | Thuja's 2002 album, Hills, emerged out of a particularly productive phase for the loose assemblage of musicians known as the Jewelled Antler Collective. Glenn Donaldson and Loren Chasse, who had recently formed Thuja alongside Steven R. Smith and Rob Reger, were dialling down the volume, moving away from the instrumental rock interludes of previous groups like Mirza, and exploring more rugged terrain - laminal improvisation, wistful wide-eyed folk songs, field recordings and home-recorded electro-acoustics. By 2002, Jewelled Antler had developed a certain notoriety for unstintingly releasing excellent, small-run CD-R releases,. Thuja's albums had been picked up by Craig Stewart's visionary Emperor Jones imprint, but Hills was released on a small-scale American CD-R label, Last Visible Dog, run by Chris Moon. One of four albums (and two more mini-CDs) Thuja released that year, it's a startling document, a collective of eviscerated dream tones and cavernous psychoacoustics. The unforced, luxuriant development of Thuja's music - a misty fold of keyboard drones, tinkling piano, clusters of percussives, shuttling and scrabbling strings and other things - often asks for metaphor from the natural world. But this is also distinctly city-based music, as Donaldson described it: "insular warehouse music from a still affordable city, before the internet dominated everything. No intention of getting noticed or 'streamed', just making sounds for the sake of it. A rejection of rock things: clubs, structure, volume." The music on Hills and other, loosely contemporaneous releases often played on broken instruments and non-instruments, with small, sensual details captured by contact mics, was "all improvised," Donaldson recalls, "but no 'jamming' or soloing [was] allowed, just a slow evolution towards a mood." In that respect, Thuja can lay claim to a heritage of all-in-one, group-mind improvisation that arcs back to AMM and Musica Elettronica Viva, but also connects with other, less immediately recognisable precursors - there are shades here of groups like Biota, or composer Sofia Gubaidulina's improvisatory outfit Astreja. There's a relaxed yet questing folksiness too. https://rosehobart.bandcamp.com/album/hills | 2019 | €20.50 |
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| TIBETAN RED / THE OVAL LANGUAGE / DAS SYNTHETISCHE MISCHGEWEBE | The Breath of the Hydra | CD | A three way collaboration between the Germany based THE OVAL LANGUAGE, the Catalan TIBETAN RED and DAS SYNTHETISCHE MISCHGEWEBE living in Rennes, France. In an on and off exchange since end of 2016, a continuous exchange of audio material, ideas and suggestions. Salvador Francesch and Guido Hübner meet again after long years at the occasion of a concert of the latter one at the LEM festival in Barcelona. Since then working together became evident as was the choice of including Klaus-Peter John with whom several collaborations had already seen the light of day through the years, most notably the homage to the late Carlfriedrich Claus ‘sprechzimmern’ with RLW as well as a 2x CD collection of collaborations on the notorious Monochrome Vison label in Moscow. The association of their different sound worlds and even more specifically their extremely particular fashions of creating them was meant to merge and melt in a whole able to blur clear distinctions with only an occasional sneaking out of a head and a hissing tongue amongst many that takes the scent and direction respectively in the brooding heat that forges shape and carves direction. TIBETAN RED Salvador Francesch is a catalan-canadian painter, sculptor and sound explorer who lives in La Garrotxa, Girona. He has released 5 CDs in his Tibetan Red project. His work pursues experimentation with sounds that seek to convey some aspects of his interest in Eastern rituals and ceremonial art. THE OVAL LANGUAGE Klaus-Peter John is from Leipzig, the project started as a trio in the early 80’s working to turn into his solo project with sound, noise works in open spaces, photography, installations and land-art informed projects in which mainly the voice is put center stage. DAS SYNTHETISCHE MISCHGEWEBE started in the early 80’s in Berlin with cassette production and performative concerts, exhibitions and installations to which a D.I.Y. approach of a lot of customized equipment became inherent accompanying an interest in several areas of science and technology. Moved to Barcelona then France, producing many recordings and performance works. https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/the-breath-of-the-hydra "The Breath of the Hydra (ACU 1029), da weißt man ja, es sind drei Köpfe. So auch hier: TIBETAN RED + THE OVAL LANGUAGE + DAS SYNTHETISCHE MISCHGEWEBE. Ersterer, Salvador Francesch in La Garrotxa in den katalonischen Pyrenäen, hat dem mit Todo entretenimiento es una anticipación del infierno auch das Motto vorangestellt. Der Dichter José Bergamin soll das gesagt haben, als Vorstand der Alianza de Intelectuales Antifascistas der kulturelle Kopf der Spanischen Republik, der Picasso den Auftrag zu "Guernica" gegeben hat. Francesch teilt mit Bergamins Rechtfertigung des 'Roten Terrors' allemal die Vorliebe für Rot und offenbar auch die Vorfreude auf die Hölle. Blödsinn, natürlich die Abneigung gegen Amusement. Er ist mit seinem Debut 1985 auf Freedom in a Vacuum nicht ganz so lange dabei wie Guido Hübner, der ab 1981 sich der Cassette- & Soundculture einschrieb. Bei "Sprechzimmern" (2015), einer Hommage an den konkreten Lautpoeten Carlfriedrich Claus, und zehn Jahre zuvor bei 'Papillon Schizophone' war er dabei auch schon mit Peter John zusammengekommen. Der Leipziger, der in den 80ern als Sänger bei Neu Rot (!) anfing, hat sich nach "Hibernation" & "Waldkonzerte" auf Edition Telemark zuletzt mit "Hexen Hexer" gegen Denunziation und Hexenjagden positioniert, auch wenn heute dabei, anders als im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg und beim Hydraschlachten, seltener Blut fließt. Ich kann mir eine 'Melancholie des Widerstands', wie sie Hübner von László Krasznahorkai aufgegriffen hat, als das Verbindende zwischen den dreien vorstellen bei ihrem alchemistischen Procedere mit brodeligem Köcheln und Sieden, das einher geht mit kratzigen und schleifenden Impulsen und hohleren, quasi perkussiven Anmutungen, die das überwölben. Dazu vexieren zirpige, halbwegs natürliche Klänge mit einem leisen, hauchzarten 'Schreiben' mit metallischem Griffel, über das motorische, zischende, sirrend oszillierende Attacken hinweggehen und einen industrialen Dominator installieren, der impulsiv oder gedämpft rumort und infernalische Stimmen nur ahnen lässt. Der Griffel schreibt weiter in einer opaken Nichtstille und hat dabei etwas von einem Keuchen oder Röcheln an sich. Martialische Wellen mischen das auf, und zischende Ventile machen das zu einem Tauchgang in die Schinderwerkstätten der Schlotbarone. Trappeliges Toben, abgerissene Kürzel und tatsächlich der Kehle entrissene Laute verunklaren dabei die Differenz von Mensch-Maschine, Organisch-Anorganisch, Außen-Innen, Hart-Weich, Makro-Mikro. Immer wieder leise als bruitistische Audiographie aus winzigen, halb wie gehauchten Krakeln vor einer nun dröhnend bebenden Klangwand. Wenn nur das Schreien nicht wäre, das infernalische, kaum zu hören, aber doch nicht zu leugnen. Ganz in der Nähe - Folterkeller, Höllen. Die satanischen Mühlen mahlen als zerrende Tonbandspuren, weiß der Teufel, was sich hinter verschlossenen Türen alles abspielt. Scharrt da wer an Metall? Was sind das für unheimliche Heimlichkeiten?" [Bad Alchemy] "German Attenuation Circuit label run by Sascha aka EMERGE, has released a new album in which three sound artists of electronic experimental music collaborate: German artist The Oval Language, Catalan Tibetan Red and Das Synthetische Mischgewebe who lives in Rennes, France. "The Breath of the Hydra" is the result of exchanging audio files since the end of 2016. Salvador Francesch is a Catalan-Canadian painter, sculptor and sound explorer who lives in La Garrotxa, Girona. He has published five CD's with his Tibetan Red project. Klaus-Peter John aka The Oval Language is from Leipzig and works in noise, open space, photography, installations and informed land-art projects where the voice takes center stage. Guido Hübner aka Das Synthetische Mischgewebe started in the early 80's in Berlin with the production of cassettes and performance concerts, exhibitions and installations. This album consists of a single track of almost 52 minutes long which unfurls two faces. One, the sound is almost imperceptible and silence plays a relevant role. In the other, drones and noises are the background of a proposal with a strong organic character and consequently, gasping and buried voices are barely heard and spit out an indecipherable language. The clicks near the middle of the track look like whips that are followed by screams which are in the distance. All this takes place in a dark ambience that well represents the history of the Hydra." [Guillermo Escudero/LOOP] https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/the-breath-of-the-hydra, http://www.attenuationcircuit.de/ | 2021 | €12.00 |
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| TIETCHENS, ASMUS | Geboren um zu dienen | CD | “8th part in the ongoing re-release series of all early Tietchens albums between 1980—1991. Described by Tietchens himself as his «Industrial» album, «Geboren, um zu Dienen» was originally released on the spanish ESPLENDOR GEOMETRICO label in 1986. The CD version incl. three unreleased bonus tracks from the same period and comes with a full colour fold-out booklet incl. liner notes by Tietchens himself.” [label info] „If I'd ever recorded an «Industrial» solo album, it must be «GEBOREN, UM ZU DIENEN». Although I obviously wasn't one of the inventors of «Industrial Music», I clearly felt an affinity to it. So I tried to learn my lessons well adding my own musical aspects to the general apocalyptic noises of this genre. My main concern was to dive deep into the canonical topics of fear, hysteria, claustrophobia, machine and threat. The end was imminent as hundreds of Pershings and SS20 all pointed in the direction of the march up area called West Germany, the seals of the read buttons were already broken. Even the conventional alternative — a tank war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact — sounded like utter apocalypse. Would we really have welcomed our brothers from the east with open arms? This particular background has to be seen as the main influence on GEBOREN, UM ZU DIENEN. I believe that many of my colleagues also recording «Industrial» albums felt the same at that time. IF there would have been a «Bang» it — without doubt — would have been global. Fear, emptiness and the futility of the aesthetical, were not alien to me, but until then I moved inside a carefully tested zone which was defined by a spectrum of experimental forms. GEBOREN, UM ZU DIENEN was an experiment in itself which first fruits I set free immediately. As if I'd to work under a deadline I recorded the tracks hastily, not wasting much thoughts about dynamics, duration, precision and construction. In the same way I resolutely did rough mixes of the seperate tracks of the pieces: what sounded dirty stayed dirty. Essentially the raw and the unsculptured were a part of the dogma of «Industrial». The original nine tracks plus five more (three which appear as Bonustracks on this CD) all developed in a very short period of time. The album was released on the spanish «Esplendor Geometrico» label, run by Andres Noarbe, in the same year. Originally a tape only label EG released a series of radical albums during the mid 80's, also albums by the «Industrial» group of the same name, many which are much sought after items today. Of course only 500 copies of the album were pressed, which still meant a considerable financial risk given the small circle of potentionally interested listeners. But the enthusiasm and dedication of everyone involved lead to a self-evident «Nevertheless». Looking back at these years it has to be noted that I established a daring attitude then, which luckily developed positively and stayed with me until today. The fact that a german attorneys general confiscated a small number of the LP in 1990 deeming the cover as being immoral («A Call for abortion»), was registered with satisfaction. A case like this corresponds with the mark of quality granted by the «Stiftung Warentest». Go on Germany! “ [Asmus Tietchens, 2006] Editorial notes: The original masters of all the pieces incl. the bonus tracks are in perfect condition and were used 1:1 for the transfer onto CD. Only the fade-out at the end of «Mein erstes Erlebnis» was slightly corrected. | 2006 | €15.00 |
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| Aus Freude am Elend | CD | Wohl eine der ungewöhnlichsten & schönsten Tietchens-Alben, die augenzwinkernde Verwendung von vokalem Material war hier der Fokus, found sounds & field-recordings werden eigentümlichst verfremdelt, aus Schlager- oder Volksliedern die abartigsten Töne rausgekitzelt, absolut unkategorisierbare Klänge entstehen... ein wunderbares-wundersames Re-Kontextualisierungs-Projekt! JA WIR LIEBEN ES! 2 Bonus Tracks! "11th part in the ongoing re-release series of all early Tietchens albums between 1980-1991. AUS FREUDE AM ELEND is based on the human voice as a primary sound source and was originally released in edition of 500 copies on Dom America in 1988. The CD includes two previously unreleased tracks and comes in a jewel case with full color artwork and poster booklet also feat. the original front and back cover. First edition of 600 copies. Asmus Tietchens AUS FREUDE AM ELEND (Dom America Dom US LP 02) 1988 "Following my research of piano and water sounds (DS102, DS88) it didn't come as a surprise that my next project was about the human voice as a sound source. The great masters of Plunderphonics already showed the way in the early 80's, when they plundered the gigantic junk-shops packed full of already recorded material, which was stolen by them to use it for their own aesthetic targets. This album only consists of such stolen goods. Each track (with the exception of 'In memoriam P.F.') was based on voices of people who I naturally didn't ask their permission to use these recordings in the first place. So you can hear the voices of ecstatic religious people as well as other people making love. You'll also hear someone singing to Annette and Peggy out of the trash bin of a publishing company. Even the screams of furious teachers came in handy while I made loops from them. Especially loops: Rarely before this album and only once after it (on Stupor Mundi) did I made use of the structural means of loops to such an extent. I was fascinated by the rhythmical and harmonic permanence, in the same way as many of my musical colleagues at the time. The aspect of the 'Ritual' was a self-evident common formulation in difficult music during the 80s, so loops and tape voices, monotonous rhythms and LoFi became obvious means to shape the music. AUS FREUDE AM ELEND too was strongly spiced with these ingredients and therefore can be seen as a prototype album of this specific view of music during the time. This tendency was supported - even partly inspired - by a new generation of sound machines, which also made it possible for new aesthetic goals to appear at the horizon. The 90s were near at hand and sound art music would develop drastically in many ways in the years to follow. Samplers, digital editing, hard-disc recording and the first PC's opened new doorways. Half of the material on AUS FREUDE AM ELEND was already created with these digital tools. I never quite understood how the labels Dom America (run by Jon Carlson) and Dom here in Germany were connected. Did Carlson used to be a fan of Dom which was founded by Christoph Heemann and Achim Flaam. Did he simply liked the release politics of this label. And what became of Dom America ? Actually I don't know. I guess it was one of the small enthusiastic independent labels which released a handful of titles and which disappeared after being active for a couple of years during the 80s. However AUS FREUDE AM ELEND had vanished shortly after its release. I only used 'stolen' voices twice again ('Stupor Mundi', 1990 and 'Das Fest ist zu Ende. Aus', 1993) after this album by the way." [label info / credits] "... Much like some his previous records, most notably 'Formen Letzer Hausmusik' and 'Seuchengebiete', its foremost a work of electro acoustic or musique concrete. There is an element of repetition that one wouldn't easily spot with the original 'masters' of the genre, but Tietchens uses them in his own, highly personal, way, adding his own fine blend of electronics and in order to make a creepy sound, a sinister play of vocals. The people whose voices are used sound like they are singing in a far away cage, in isolation, a cry to get out. After all these years this record hasn't aged at all, and is a highlight in Tietchens career." [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| Nachtstücke | LP | "Nachtstücke owed its publication to former Tangerine-Dream member Peter Baumann,who was asked by the French label Barclay/EGG to produce three albums focussing specifically on German electronic music. He was working with Hans-Joachim Roedelius at the time, who had been given a few Tietchens tracks on cassette. When Baumann heard Roedelius play them in the studio during a break in proceedings, they sparked his interest and he met up with Tietchens some time later; they agreed that he would go over the material again and edit or abridge it in places. A release date was pencilled in for the latter part of 1978. The commissioning label, however, doubting the commercial potential of the project (Tietchens: “How right they would turn out to be”), postponed the release and had to be reminded of contractual commitments on more than one occasions. When the Nachtstücke LP finally appeared, almost two years later, it bore the unauthorized subheading Expressions et Perspectives Sonores Intemporelles and featured a completely different cover. Originally, the album was to depict a leathery embryo with a laser beam shooting through its eye (Tietchens: “I liked the idea of sta rting with something so gruesome”), but now three blurred figures danced on the sleeve: “I was pretty disgusted when I opened the package containing my copies”, Tietchens reports, taking the rerelease as his cue to create completely new artwork. Nachtstücke has surprisingly little in common with the pseudo-pop of the ensuing Sky Phase, but shines a light further ahead to the gloomy, spectral aspects of Tietchens’ later works. Created between 1975 and 1978, the Nachtstücke pieces reveal a deliberate approach, avoiding dissonance and discord wherever possible. Still, the release saw the album “fall right out of time” as Tietchens frankly admits: “Gentle rhythm and harmonic beatitude did not suit the concert of advanced pop music as it was then being played.” Nevertheless, the Nachtstücke tracks remain important to the artist, as they document his early encounters with the Moog Sonic Six and Minimoog. With this in mind, the material is presented here in its original, unadulterated form." [label info] www.bureau-b.com | 2014 | €25.00 |
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| Ornamente (zwischen Null und Eins) | CD | "(….) Wenn alles dich anwidert, wird das Mittagessen zum Fest. Die Lebensmittel ersetzen die Ideen. Vom letzten Bauern bis zum verfeinertsten Intellektuellen ist die Essenszeit die tägliche Liturgie der seelischen Leere. Die Umwandlung eines unmittelbaren Bedürfnisses in ein Zivilisationsphänomen ist ein gefährliches Fortschreiten und ein schwerwiegendes Symptom. (….) — E.M. Cioran „Über Frankreich“ TRACKS: Ornament 1 (05:18) Ornament 2 (11:11) Ornament 3 (08:44) Ornament 4 (11:14) Ornament 5 (11:14) Aufgenommen und von Okko Bekker produziert im Audiplex Studio E, Hamburg Druckvorlage: Karajew. Asmus Tietchens (b. 1947, Hamburg, Germany) 1965: First experiments with tape recorders and electronic sound devices (sine wave generator, rhythm machines) and concrete sound material. 1971: Minimoog and 8-track tape recorders 1980: First LP release Nachtstück in France, produced by Peter Baumann of Tangerine Dream 1982: begins Industrial music stage 1984: LP Formen letzter Hausmusik released by the Nurse with Wound’s label United Dairies. 1984-1989: several LPs on international industrial music labels including Esplendor Geometrico, Hamster Records, A-Mission, Multimood and others. 1985: Experiments with computerized keyboard Fairlight CMI 1986: First journey commissioned by the Goethe-Institut with concerts in Brazil 1989 – 2010: Teaching Sound Design and Sound Research at the University for Applied Sciences in Hamburg 1991: Second journey commissioned by the Goethe-Institut with concerts in the Argentine, Chile and Uruguay Since 1991: numerous CD releases on international labels (LINE, Staalplaat, Soleilmoon, Selektion, Mille Plateaux, and more) 2003: Karl Sczuka Award for Acoustic Art 2006: Karl Sczuka Award for Acoustic Art 2010-2013: Teaching Sound Design at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg tietchens.de " [label info / credits / biography] "A new album by Asmus Tietchens can be quite an intimidating prospect. The Hamburg-based acoustics professor has been investigating the inner and outer realms of electronic sound production since the mid-sixties. He makes no concessions to mass marketing: the 'press release' for this disc simply features a quote, in German, from everyone's favourite Romanian misanthropist philosopher, Emile Cioran, taken from a withering critique of French culture and high gastronomy. But you can forget about all that once you put the disc on and immerse yourself in the delicate, ethereal sounds that unfurl like wisps of light-reflecting dust. The otherworldy tones and subtle dynamics here are rich in detail and complexity, but the drama is on a microscopic scale, giving that sense of being opened up to a new dimension of musical experience. Some of the weird tonal characteristics Tietchens favours remind me of Alvin Lucier's 'I'Am Sitting In A Room' - where a narration is gradually blotted out by the resonant feedback of the room through a process of replaying and re-recording. Tietchens manipulates and arranges his strange resonances to open up a haunting sound world of tones that float eerily amidst watery, metallic glints. The disc's final track builds into the most expansive composition with a melodic arc surging through the deceptive stillness, suggesting more cosmic dimensions that I can imagine gracing an intense, introspective sci-fi film that's probably impossible to make." [normanrecords.com] www.lineimprint.com | 2015 | €15.00 |
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| Seuchengebiete 4 | CD | "Seuchengebiete 4, the continuation of Asmus Tietchens' almost legendary series of treated water sounds, consists of six Hydrophonies. The sonic palette ranges from deep gurgling bass pulses to fragile movements of showering bright particles. The overall mood is ernest, contemplative and dark. Seuchengebiete 4 is perhaps the ultimate soundtrack for our crises-ridden times." [press release] https://aufabwegen.bandcamp.com/album/seuchengebiete-4 "Der Hamburger Asmus Tietchens schätzt Serien, man denke etwa an die auf inzwischen sieben Teile angewachsene Mengenreihe. Auf den Alben der “Seuchengebiete”-Serie finden sich sogenannte Hydrophonien, Stücke, deren Basis das Geräusch von tropfendem Wasser ist. Der erste Teil erschien 1985, sechs Jahre später folgte Nummer zwei, 1997 auf Donna Klemms Label Artware Nummer drei. Schon in einem Interview im Jahre 2007 sprach Tietchens davon, an neuen Hydrophonien für einen vierten Teil zu arbeiten, jetzt erscheinen sechs neue Aufnahmen auf Auf Abwegen. Auf„Hydrophonie 21“ scheint Wasser in einer Höhle zu tropfen und zu (ver)hallen, im Vordergrund blubbert es, während im Hintergrund seltsam-melodische Flächen zu hören sind. Dann scheint Wasser ausgeschüttet zu werden und zu fließen. Dem Track wohnt eine leichte Unruhe inne. Die nicht nur numerisch, sondern auch auf dem Album darauf folgende Hydrophonie nimmt diese Bewegung zurück, ist tastender, reduzierter, minimalistischer. Zum Teil klingt das Fallen der Tropfen so, als zupfe jemand einen akustischen Bass. “Hydrophonie 24″ hat einen leicht metallischen Klang, ist vielleicht- etwas verkürzt gesagt- mit durchaus dissonanten Momenten das industriellste Stück auf diesem Album. Dagegen scheint “Hydrophonie 26″ zurückhaltender und weniger unruhig zu sein. “Hydrophonie” 32 hat einen leicht ambient-sakralen Charakter und ist der vielleicht atmosphärischste Track auf diesem Album. “Hydrophonie 27″ beginnt fast kaum wahrnehmbar, dann hört man entfernte, kristalline Momente, als würden Vögel zwitschern.Was klar gewoden sein sollte, ist, wie unterschiedlich trotz gleichen Ausgangsmaterials die einzelnen Stücke sind. Über die Jahre ist Tietchens immer sehr konsistent darin gewesen, wenn er über die (nicht vorhandene) “Botschaft” seiner Musik gesprochen hat. Schon 1991 meinte er: „I don’t try to create moods with my music, and I don’t try to tell stories, and my music doesn’t carry any message except an aesthetic one (now and then). Mostly my pieces are formalistic exercises, or better, the results of formalistic exercises. Music shall be no more than itself. Absolute Music.“ In einem jüngst erschienen Interview wird diese Haltung noch einmal klar artikuliert: “’Absolute Music’ is not connected with any political, spiritual, ideological or educational intention. The listener is totally free for his own impressions, feelings, possible pictures and thoughts when listening to ‘Absolute Music’. To me that is total freedom of perception. I am no teacher, no philosopher, no scientist – why should I intrude my thoughts on any other human being? I always try to let the music speak for itself. That should be enough.“ Dennoch darf auch auf diesem Album das obligatorische Cioran-Zitat natürlich nicht fehlen: “Der zügellose Optimismus hält der geringsten und bedeutungslosesten Offenbarung der menschlichen Natur nicht stand.” [MG / African Paper] "In the 80s, there was a small list of very hard to obtain records, records of the kind that everybody wanted. Among them was Seuchengebiete' by Asmus Tietchens, released by A-Mission Records. That label vanished quickly, and the records too. I am sure I traded some obscure Gerogerigegege LP for it, but it was worth the trade. I may have told this story when I reviewed the CD re-issue back in Vital Weekly 504. On 'Seuchengebiete', Tietchens explores the sound of water dripping in his studio sink. It was the first record on which Tietchens explored the quieter side of music. Later on, there were more volumes of this approach (although never called 'volume 2' etc.). The second volume was in 1991 (reviewed in Vital 23, when it was a paper fanzine; see advertisement elsewhere), and '3' was in Vital Weekly 121. I mentioned for the latter that I didn't get the design of the release, which is, maybe oddly, also the case here. As this CD arrived on Saturday, I took a whole Sunday off to play all four 'Seuchengebiete' instalments. Over the years, some things have changed in the music of Tietchens. It was the first 'Seuchengebiete', one of his first quiet works; these days, his music is soft. Many of his musical compositions contain sounds beyond recognition, but in this case, it is pretty clear what the source material is. The dripping of water can be recognized, but it is transformed in various ways, from delightful high-end splashes to low-end bass sounds; some of this sounds like it is changed with granular synthesis, but no doubt there is also another technology at work here. There is something profound about the music, slow, contemplative; maybe the music is a sign of the sorry state of our times. Perhaps it is the association I have with the water sounds here; that of leaky pipes in an abandoned industrial landscape. The soundtrack for a worse tomorrow? I am sure that is not what Tietchens put into his music, as I would think there is very little meaning put in by him, but it is all about the listener's associations. This time, Tietchens applies his current composing techniques to an older idea, working wonderfully well." [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2021 | €13.50 |
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| Abraum Zwo | CD | “In English, Abraum Zwo means Rubble Two. Twelve years ago I made field recordings in the Hamburg harbour. The most exciting recording was actually sensational: rubble being transported from a distant building site in a very long steel pipe (diameter approximately 80 cm.) flushed with water. I’ve never heard such sounds before. I derived four pieces (Abraum 1–4) from that material which were released in 2010. The new series (Abraum 6-10) is composed from the same basic field recordings but with a totally different approach. Due to the fact that the area where I’d recorded the original sounds has changed radically in the last twelve years, I tried to recall this bygone locale, hence the pieces’ highly atmospheric sound, as opposed to the first four which were pure musique concrète“. [Asmus Tietchens, Hamburg, April 2021] "On the day this new Asmus Tietchens CD arrived, I went to see the new James Bond movie, 'No Time To Die' (not bad, a bit long), so seeing the label being Universal Exports made me smile. Let's hope the good relatives of Chubby Broccoli didn't trademark the name. The front cover here doesn't depict where a Bond baddie hides, but the harbour of Hamburg. This is the location where Tietchens goes for the field recordings on 'Abraum Zwo'; that stands for 'Rubble Two'. You can find the first instalment of this series in Vital Weekly 775. Tietchens didn't return to the harbour to record new field recordings. That could have been an idea, as he says that the area changed quite a bit over the past twelve years, so that would have been interesting. He returned to the original field recordings of 'Abraum' and used (his words) "a totally different approach". This time around, it is all about the atmosphere of the place. Or perhaps one could say the residue left of the area. The music as the fading memory of location now re-shaped. Some of this sounds very mysterious and vague, but I mean this is in the most positive sense of the word. The first 'Abraum' was full of sound (relatively, of course; this is post-2000 Tietchens), created with the most refined and most delicate musique concrète techniques. On this new release, everything that reverts to musique concrète is removed, and shimmering sounds is what remains. At times quite droney, but in the world of Asmus Tietchens, nothing is static. Much like the water in the harbour, everything is fluid. Tietchens traces the contour of sound without touching too much upon the sound itself. I am biased when it comes to the work of Tietchens. I know you know. I think 'Abraum Zwo' is outstandingly good work. That may not come as a surprise. In the last few days, this has been the album that was on rotation a lot. Maybe that says it all?" [FdW/Vital Weekly] https://universal-exports.bandcamp.com | 2021 | €13.00 |
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| Conclusio | CD | From the label : New album by German sound veteran Asmus Tietchens and a return to his more industrial music roots, typefied by the title of the albums opening track ‘German Angst’. Edition of 300 copies . Digipak cover. no Bandcamp! "Die Stadt hatte zwischen 2003 und 2022 eine umfangreiche, aus insgesamt 18 Alben bestehende, Wiederveröffentlichungsreihe des Frühwerks Asmus Tietchens’ gemacht. Nun erscheint mit „Conclusio“ neues Studiomaterial auf dem Bremer Label. Während auf dem kürzlich hier besprochenen Album „Lichthöfe“ Tietchens mit Thorsten Soltau zusammenarbeitete und dessen Ausgangsmaterial seinen Bearbeitungen unterzog, ist “Conclusio” wieder eine reine Soloveröffentlichung, was heißt, dass sich – der Tradition gehorchend – wieder ein Zitat des großen rumänischen, schlaflosen Pessismisten E. M. Cioran findet. Diesmal kann man lesen: „Alles steuert der Hässlichkeit und dem Gangrän entgegen: Dieser Erdball – er eitert, und die Lebenden stellen dabei ihre Wunden zur Schau, auf die die Strahlen des Leuchtgeschwürs herabfallen.“ Wer wolle angesichts des (nicht nur) gegenwärtigen Irrsinns da widersprechen? Oft finden sich bei Besprechungen des Werks des Hamburgers Wörter wie „Abstraktion“ (etwa hier), er selbst verwendet einen Begriff, den ich in einem leicht anderen Kontext einmal bzgl. des Werks von David Jackman verwendet habe: Absolute Musik. In einem Interview meinte Tietchens einmal: „’Absolute Music’ means that it contains no message except an esthetic one. ‘Absolute Music’ is not connected with any political, spiritual, ideological or educational intention. The listener is totally free for his own impressions, feelings, possible pictures and thoughts when listening to ‘Absolute Music’. To me that is total freedom of perception. I am no teacher, no philosopher, no scientist – why should I intrude my thoughts on any other human being? I always try to let the music speak for itself. That should be enough“. „German Angst“ eröffnet das Album mit unruhigen, leicht hektischen Klängen, denen durchaus (insbesondere im Verlauf des Stücks) ein Moment des Bedrohlichen innewohnt. Der binnengereimte Track „Die Schwere der Leere“ beginnt ruhiger, erzeugt dann aber eine ähnliche Unruhe. Anfangs meint man, auf „Lammkopf im Ofen“ würden Bleche über den Boden gezogen, dann klingt es zwischendurch, als solle hier kurzzeitig eine E-Gitarre s(t)imuliert werden. Dagegen wirkt „Imperial Logistics“ mit einzelnen stampfenden Passagen reduzierter. „Organischer Restbestand“ ist melodischer, gegen Ende wird man an Streicher erinnert. Die ersten Minuten des minimalistisch-rauschenden „Kotbeutel über Korea – hurra!“ lassen fast an Ambient denken, bevor ein Loop einsetzt, der an demente Zirkusmusik denken lässt. Das Titelstück erweckt des Eindruck, in einem Schneegestöber aufgenommen worden zu sein. Von den zuletzt erschienenen Alben Tietchens’ klingt „Conclusio“ in besonderem Maße unheimlich, ist durchzogen von einer Atmosphäre des Irritierenden. Das im Innern der CD abgebildete Gesicht einer Person, deren Mund zum Schrei geweitet ist, das karge Interieur des Covers und das die Rückseite zierende Bild mit dem Wort “Auflösung” tragen ihr Übriges dazu bei, ein Schaudern auszulösen." (MG / African Paper] | 2025 | €15.00 |
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| TIETCHENS, ASMUS / MIKI YUI | Neues Boot | CD | TAL presents the first musical collaboration between Hamburg based Asmus Tietchens and Japanese artist Miki Yui, operating out of Düsseldorf for almost 20 years now. Highly respected and hugely influential artist Asmus Tietchens first made his mark on the electronic music scene in the late 1970s, whereas Miki Yui debuted her sonic settings in 1999. Their first joint album NEUES BOOT envelops the listener with a poetic sound sensibility and a conceptual clarity which was processed and passed back and forth between their individual studios in Hamburg and Düsseldorf. Asmus Tietchens: After Stefan Schneider suggested to release a Yui-Tietchens album on his TAL imprint Miki and I quickly developed some ideas towards our eventual collaboration. We agreed upon an ongoing mutual exchange of material. We have both been very familiar with each other's music for a long time and we found our individual approach towards sound design to be uniquely compatible. We do not use our electronic tools in order to merely achieve the maximum of technical possibilities, but to illustrate aesthetic necessities. This entails a deliberate reduction and refined perception of the sonic characteristics of the material. Only this approach enabled us to fully realise the complete spectrum of the sounds and noises we were working with in order to construct this New Boat. Each and everyone of my treatments is e x c l u s i v e l y based on a track supplied by Miki. I added no new sound sources. Naturally the spatial and temporal dimensions of the source material were thus altered. These transformations are exactly what makes our collaboration special and unique. Very early on we had agreed on New Boat as a working title and a guiding light . Of course in the beginning we had no idea where this New Boat might take us. Now we do know. After several months of ship-building the boat has now set sails for new sonic horizons. Ahoi! Miki Yui: The title of the album as well as the individual tracks have been inspired by conversations with Asmus. When we had a chat after one of his concerts, he told me about Kōdō, the Art or the Way of the Scent. It is a 8th century Japanese incense ceremony. Very frequently the names of Japanese incense sticks are derived from natural themes, e.g. Bairin is the plum grove, the scent of the first blossom heralding the end of winter. This poetry, the ephemeral nature of the world reminded me of Kigo, words from a Haiku (a form of Japanese poetry), which reference a particular season or a natural phenomenon. So I chose the names of the individual pieces from Kigo as if The Boat was exploring nature whilst sailing through the seasons. Only in retrospect I realised that the titles combined create this poem: Early spring a hazy view in the night (Oboro) Plum groves (Bairin) Over a Dayfly (Kagerou) A Milkyway (Amanogawa) Dawn (Akatsuki) Art of fragrance (Kōdō) On fragile thin ice (Usurai) https://asmustietchensandmikiyui.bandcamp.com/album/neues-boot "Exquisite electronic subtleties from two generations of explorative artists, pairing the tactile sensitivities of cult Hamburg based Asmus Tietchens with Düsseldorf resident Miki Yui for the first time with marked success. Mutual spirits, Tietchens and Yui have long operated in pursuit of a lower case, spectral muse, and now at the behest of TAL’s Stefan Schneider they present a beautifully insoluble sound that transcends the sum of their parts. Incredibly delicate, and full of nanoscopic movement, the seven tracks unfurl between passages of burbling pastoralism and oneiric drowse, with particular highlights in the hypnotic timbral artefacts of ‘Kagerou’ or ‘Usurai’, and their 10’ of lush scenery inhabited by peacocks and a canopy of phosphorescing animaliculae and atmospheres in ‘Akatsuki’ recalling aspects of Mark Fell & Rian Treanor’s tape for our Documenting Sound series." [Boomkat] "It’s a sad, hard fact that circulating music by means of physical objects is becoming the exception and not the rule. So, if you’re going to do it, might as well do it right and make it special. Future Audio Graphics makes LPs that bind interdisciplinary collaborations within gatefold LPs. Each combines a text by one artist, images by another and a record of sounds by a third. Ironically on Sculpture Gardens the efforts of writer François Bonnet (aka Kassel Jaeger), sculptor Virginia Overton and sound artist Anne Guthrie cohere into a consideration of impermanence. Through his efforts to reissue works of electronic music on vinyl, Bonnet, a published author and the artistic director of Groupe de Recherche Musicales in Paris, has had plenty of opportunity to think about how ready-made vinyl objects can concentrate attention upon work, as well as how rapidly records become items to be hunted rather than merely purchased. Even when one fixes one’s work within an object, other peoples’ perceptions of the object and the work cut into it aren’t fixed. Neither is the object’s availability; LPs sooner or later drift into the collector’s realm. Bonnet doesn’t waste words on the peculiar circumstances of vinyl records in his essay, but a reader might think about his efforts to present them while reading his discussion of the relationships between art objects, ready-made objects and time. Time and the changes that accompany its passage are, he suggests, part of the artist’s material. Virginia Overton’s images depict aluminum pans that she installed at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She used them as containers of small gardens; when the plants died, she flipped them over and used them as sound resonators. Inside one of the museum’s galleries, Overton had placed cast-off pieces of metal and wood, which she repurposed as sculptures. Nothing stays the same, but in change new phenomena emerge. Anne Guthrie’s portion of the work uses sounds collected from Overton’s exhibits as a starting point. She collected field recordings of the gallery interior, the outdoor area where the gardens were installed, weather, distant machinery and close-up captures of herself moving objects and deploying microphones. The magnified sounds of precise work and plants living and dying, sometimes straight and sometimes processed to draw out particular timbres, loom over distant jets and HVAC units, and into this mix Guthrie weaves the distant parping of her French horn. Across four discrete tracks, one can hear different moments and environments fixed for a moment in one representative configuration, which is now an object that can be bought and displayed and played in other times and places. Guthrie’s decisions and actions use Overton’s work as a starting point to illustrate Bonnet’s words." [Bill Meyer /DUSTED] | 2021 | €14.50 |
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| TIETCHENS, ASMUS / PEINEMANN | Harvesterhude | do-CD | "2 CDs in printed paper sleeves housed in carton slip case. Designed by Asmus Tietchens. 500 copies. Dedicated to C.V. Liquidsky. On „Harvestehude“ After more than 10 years of enthusiastic experiences and encounters with so-called „Difficult Music“ throughout the 1980ies Martin Peinemann and Asmus Tietchens deemed their somewhat differing approaches to making music compatible and agreed upon a loose collaboration in the year 1992. For various reasons (organizational and others) the work was not to take place at Audiplex studios but at Peinemann’s home studio. This modest lab featured all the necessary technical equipment needed to realize noise music meeting the standards of the day. This included an analogue 4-track-tape deck (9,5 cm/sec, Dolby noise reduction, integrated 6-channel mixer), soon after a digital 8 channel multitrack, a powerful periphery and sound producing devices of all kinds. For „Hochallee“, their first collaboration, Peinemann and Tietchens set themselves no definite deadline. The working sessions took place in an atmosphere of relaxation, usually on Saturday afternoons. By 1996 Peinemann and Tietchens finally had amassed a series of pieces they considered to be complete. At this time Peinemann began working on computer generated solo works and Tietchens moved on towards a more reductionist sound work. „Klosterallee“, their second collaboration, was realized under completely different circumstances. In the years gone by since their last work Peinemann had deeply immersed himself into the field of extreme digital sound manipulation that he often discussed with Tietchens. From this collection of sound structures Peinemann offered some to Tietchens as sourcings for further treatments. The following expanding of these structures was not done in the form of sessions but executed by Tietchens alone over a period of three months. Peinemann then authorised the final results. Unlike Asmus Tietchens Peinemann never released any music until now. He always valued the working process higher than the working result. The reason for this collaboration to finally come out as a double CD follows a noble motif that can be roughly translated as such: „A warning to the Old, an instruction to the Young.“ (Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, „Pädagogische Ergetzungen“, 1802). www.aufabwegen.com "Quite a treat: last week we reviewed a brand new release by Asmus Tietchens, and this week there is even a double CD of collaborative works. Asmus worked with lots of people in the past, from Merzbow to Vidna Obmana, from Achim Wollscheid to Arcane Device. Most of his collaborators are quite well known, save perhaps for C.V. Liquidsky (and we are still waiting for that particular album to be released on CD as part of Die Stadt/Auf Abwegen's re-issue program), but he's the man to whom Tietchens and Martin Peinemann dedicate their collaboration. Right, Peinemann, you may ask: now who's that? I also have no idea, really, as up until now he never released anything. The two discs here were recorded in two different periods. The first disc, called 'Hochallee' (the name of the street where Peinemann lived then) has recordings the two musicians made together in the period 1992 to 1996. For Tietchens this was an entirely different environment than the usual surroundings of the Audiplex studios where he always seems to record (well, save for a few exceptions). With rather 'low' standards, such as a four-track recorder, six-track mixer and all sorts of apparatus, they recorded thirteen pieces, and at the end they deemed this fit enough for a release (which then took another twenty years). The other disc is called 'Klosterallee' and it's here that in springtime 2005 Peinemann recorded basic sound material for Tietchens to re-use, and this he did at the beloved Audiplex studios. By then Peinemann had moved his work into 'extreme digital manipulations' (the word of the label). One is right when one says this is an interesting find, displaying us mid 90s Tietchens and mid 00s Tietchens, working in for him slightly different surroundings (at least on one disc) and with someone with whom we have absolutely no history. I was corrected following last week's review and told that Tietchens does work with computers since about fifteen years, using GRM tools, but of course on the first disc that is not the case. These thirteen pieces are rudimentary pieces of electronic music, sometimes blissful feedback, sometimes a dub inspired synth song ('Hochallee 12'), pieces with looped, rhythmic sounds, and in general it seems that the classic Tietchens treatment is never far away in these pieces. Several of these pieces could have been on, say, 'Aus Freude Am Elend', the various albums with Terry Burrows or some others from the early to mid 90s. That slightly mechanic play with sounds, the entrapment in sound effects (reverb plays some role indeed), but also a rolling rhythm (reminiscing krautrock, one could muse?) in 'Hochallee 6', which makes this first disc quite an odd bunch of different approaches, but it's a variety that works very well. The second disc is the Tietchens we know from recent years, and indeed he doesn't refer to himself as a reductionist, because his music doesn't resemble that of Ikeda or Noto; also knowledge picked up last week. His current music is all about quietness, not for any esoteric reasons, but simply because he wants us to listen more closely, and perhaps concentration is by now a lost art form in this hectic life everyone is supposed to have these days. Here none of the source material is easily recognized, in fact not at all, but it feeds through analogue and, as we have learned since last week, digital means and reduced to a few sounds here and there sometimes held together with a simple, sustaining drone like sound, a residue of what once perhaps a much bigger sound element. It's interesting to play both of the discs back to back and hear the progress of Tietchens and the way he treats his sounds. On the second disc perhaps less 'new', because there have been more works alike this and some of the early/mid 90s stuff has moved the background of our memory. I am not sure if that's really the case. However both CD's in this package are, no matter how different they turn out to be, quite beautiful. This is a must for every Tietchens fan." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2016 | €18.00 |
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| TIETCHENS, ASMUS & JON MUELLER | 8 Stücke | CD | "Second collaborative effort between german sound manipulation pioneer Asmus Tietchens and american improv-drummer Jon Mueller. The CD features 8 tracks that run up to 53 minutes. Jon Mueller on the second collaboration: “The previous collaboration between Asmus and I involved me using only sounds derived from drum heads. For Acht Stuecke, I've used only Chinese gongs and cymbals, so a completely different range of sound occurs. The performance of the percussion material was from various non-mechanical techniques (striking, swinging gongs, extended techniques, etc.) to create a palette of mostly textural sound with a large frequency range that Asmus could work with.” And indeed, work he did! The completeness that is Acht Stuecke is of breathtaking beauty and simplicity and complexity at the same time. The album is definately more homogenous and ‘together’ than the first meeting of the two musicians. It emanates a warm and deep sound evolving ou t of total soundless blankness as it seems. Jon Mueller has been active for several years in the us improv scene playing in various ensembles and doing solo work. he runs the excellent web mag/label/mailorder croutonmusic.com. Asmus Tietchens has been producing electronic music since the 1960ies and is one of the most renowned sound artists today in Germany. In the last five years he was awarded twice the SWR state radio prize “Karl Sczuka Preis” for radio art. He has released more than 80 records and CDs on labels all around the world." [label info] "...There are occasions in which one doesn’t need to speak too much to establish a truth, and the truth here lies inside the repeated bends and turns of a gorgeous album, among the best of both artists’ career. The original materials furnished by the Milwaukee percussionist - sounds of Chinese gongs and cymbals - were studio-treated by the German manipulator through his usual masterful methods, this time maintaining the qualities of the harmonic resonance of the metal rather evident amidst the choked gulps, the modified waves and the fractured hiccups that we’re used to receive from the Hamburg-based sonic transformer. There’s this splendid three-way cross between the real essence of Mueller’s stricken parts and swinging gongs, the instant mutated jargon developed by Tietchens over that, the final elemental amalgam bringing the whole to sound like a hidden microcosm where a hypnotically undulating presence is blemished by sparse singular voices of unknown entities. It’s really difficult to describe the overall feel in sheer words, but those who are gifted with the ability of picking disguised frequencies from the core of the more superficial ones are in for several special moments, aware of phenomena that not everybody can actually penetrate." [Massimo Ricci / Touching Extremes] www.aufabwegen.com | 2007 | €13.00 |
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| TIETCHENS, ASMUS + ALICE FRESHMOUTH | Lumieres | CD | listen: https://klanggalerie.bandcamp.com/album/lumi-res Kooperationsalbum der beiden lange befreundeten Hamburger Klangkünstler und Avantgardisten als CD im Digipack auf Klanggalerie. Asmus Tietchens ist Klangkünstler und Komponist aus Hamburg. Sein Interesse für Musique Concrete entdeckte er bereits im Alter von 10 Jahren als er eine deutsche Radiosendung hörte. Ab 1965 begann Tietchens mit Tapeloops zu experimentieren und daraus musikalische Collagen zu erstellen. Bald kam der Einsatz von Synthesizern hinzu. 1980 erschien sein Debütalbum “Nachtstücke”, produziert von Peter Baumann (Tangerine Dream). Es folgte eine Reihe von Alben mit elektronischer Popmusik für das Label Sky, Heimat vieler berühmter Krautrock-Bands. Tietchens verwendet für seine Kompositionen oft Klangquellen wie Wasser, menschliche Stimmen oder Papier. Auf Labels wie United Dairies, Esplendor Geometrico oder Dom Records vertreten, ist er mit der Industrial-Musikszene verbunden. Tietchens hat keinerlei akademischen Hintergrund, alles was er tut, ist autodidaktisch erlernt. Trotzdem war er viele Jahre Professor für Sounddesign in Hamburg (FH für Gestaltung). Tom Fleischauer aka. Alice Freshmouth ist als Musiker, Komponist, Engineer und Produzent seit Jahrzehnten im Hamburger Underground und darüber hinaus bekannt. Seit 40 Jahren miteinander befreundet, haben beide Musiker hier erstmals zusammengearbeitet, die elf Tracks bilden eine ideale Schnittmenge ihrer unterschiedlichen musikalischen Universen. Asmus Tietchens is a sound artist and composer from Hamburg, Germany. He got interested in Musique Concrete by listening to a German radio programme when he was 10 years old. In 1965, at the age of 18, Asmus started experimenting with tape loops and turned them into musical collages. Soon, the use of synthesizers was added. In 1980 his debut album Nachtstücke was released, produced by Peter Baumann of Tangerine Dream. This was soon followed by a series of albums of electronic pop music for the Sky label, home of many Krautrock bands. Tietchens often uses special source materials for his compositions such as water (Seuchengebiete), human voices (Von Mund zu Mund), paper (Papier ist geduldig). He is associated with the Industrial music scene through his collaborations and releases on labels such as United Dairies, Esplendor Geometrico or Dom Records. Tietchens never studied composition, he has no academic background, everything he does is self taught or learnign by doing. Nevertheless, he was professor for sound design in Hamburg in recent years. Alice Freshmouth is an anagram project by Tom Fleischhauer. Tom plays guitar and bass and has worked as producer, live sound engineer, booker, promoter and composer. Him and Asmus have been friends for over 40 years, they regularly meet in Hamburg, either as musicians or attending concerts. When Tom played Asmus his most recent musical compositions, the two decided that their work was not completely compatible, but shows enough similar approach to start a spontaneous collaboration. Soon afterwards first ideas were exchanged and half a year later an album was born. Both musicians think that there is equal measure of each of them to be heard on this CD. Full tracklist: 1. Courbé 2. Drone Léger 3. La Lueur 4. Bruit De Nuages 5. Sombre 6. Long Souffle 7. Sous La Lumière 8. À Partir De 9. Lune Souriante 10. Blanche 11. Claire. https://www.klanggalerie.com/gg482 "Let’s assume Asmus Tietchens needs no introduction; in about 1000 podcasts (yes, a small celebration coming up in Vital Weekly 1470), he appears 48 times. It’s also no secret I love his work very much. In recent years, Tietchens has worked with many people, mainly by exchanging sound files through the Internet. I am unsure if that’s also the case of Alice Freshmouth, which is an anagram of Tom Fleischhauer. I had not heard of him, but he’s a guitar and bass player and has worked as a producer, live sound engineer, booker, promoter, and composer. More importantly, he’s been friends with Asmus for 40 years, and they meet regularly at concerts. They believe their current work could have been more compatible, but a similar approach led to a spontaneous collaboration. Ideas were exchanged, and only a little later, there was an album. It could be like Tietchens’ approach to the studio-as-instrument that he could work with anybody. Yet, this album’s music also sounds a bit different from other recent Tietchens collaborations. The typical Tietchens sound he gets with the sort of processing he does is part of this, but unlike many other times, it’s embedded in whatever Fleischhauer brings. It is hard to say what that is, but the music sounds more musical or less abstract than what we usually hear from Tietchens (with or without guests). It is sometimes industrial or ambient, but always with that vague notion of a melody, or at least a trace. Also, there seems to be a greater diversity of sounds in the music here, with more field recordings, straightforward drone sounds, and vaguely industrial soundscapes. It is a vastly varied release, so it’s somewhat surprising. Indeed, this is the most different of his recent collaborations. Suppose what I suspect is accurate, and they recorded this together in the studio or sat together while working on the final mix. In that case, this might mean Tietchens should, perhaps, let more people in the studio and change his modus operandi, as these results are excellent. Following a string of re-issues, this is an all-new work for Tietchens on the Klang Galerie label." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2024 | €15.00 |
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| TILLY, THOMAS (TO) & JEAN-LUC GUIONNET | Stones Air Axioms | CD | "Stones, Air, Axioms" is a sound work based on the relationship between the architecture and acoustics of St Pierre Cathedral in Poitiers. It is articulated around informal acoustic experiments and a study of the site. It is restricted by the range of noises potentially generated by the site… [label info] www.circum-disc.com "The starting point of this is quite interesting. Before electricity arrived there we were other forms of technology to communicate. Look at the architecture of churches or amphitheaters, and you can see how clever they are to resonate a message. This sound work deals with that notion: the travel of air waves through space. In the St. Pierre Cathedral in Poitiers the church organ is used, as well as white noise generator opposite (some 75 meters away) of it and microphones are used to pick those sounds moving through the cathedral. Each piece here, four in total, deals with a specific quality of the relation sound and architecture. Although I am not sure if I can fully understand the exact nature of this process, I think this is a wonderful work. It opens with 'SAA1: Air Volume', which sounds like shifting heavy objects through a heavy reverberant space, some close by and some far away. Like testing the space. In the other pieces the mood is less heavy, or better in 'SAA2: For Standing Waves' is sheer quietness, occasionally interrupted by louder sounds and occasional long form sine wave like sounds. Here 'far away' comes more in play. In 'SAA3: For Standing Waves, Disturbances', organ and sine waves move about, indeed in a somewhat more disturbing way, pleasantly forceful, which continues in the final piece. I am not sure if I learned more about the spatial quality of this particular cathedral, but I do know I heard a more than excellent CD." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| TO / THOMAS TILLY | A Semiotic Survey | CD | https://fernsrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/a-semiotic-survey Limited to 200 copies. Cover drawing by Frederic Malette – Graphite, pastel, essence – 2018 Translation by William Ransone. Paraponera clavata picture by Didier Descouens. Field recordings made by Thomas Tilly at Saül and on the Rorota road, French Guiana, May 2015. Composed using field recordings, electronic sounds and microphones dysfunctions, from 2015 to 2018 by Thomas Tilly. All the recordings were realized during a residence supported by the DAC (direction des affaires culturelles) Guiana. | 2019 | €12.00 |
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| Codex Amphibia (Phonotaxis) | CD+booklet | THOMAS TILLY CODEX AMPHIBIA (PHONOTAXIS) Cd Digipack | APO 15 Booklet 24 pages + Leporello 5 pages. Digital version | FLAC | MP3 : thomastilly.bandcamp.com/album/codex-amphibia-phonotaxis Codex amphibia (Phonotaxis) has been recorded, composed and mixed between 2016 and 2020 in French Guiana and France by Thomas Tilly. credits released June 29, 2021 Teaser : www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1FH_8YPknk - Video teaser of the sound art and herpetology project realized by Thomas Tilly (composer) and Antoine Fouquet (Research associate at The French National Center for Scientific Research) during the frogs explosive breeding phenomenon, french Guiana 2016-2018. Pictures by Antoine Fouquet, Thomas Tilly and Audric Broux. This Pieces are part of a both scientific and artistic collaborative project conducted with Herpetologist Antoine Fouquet, research associate at French National Center for Scienctific Research Cnrs. These compositions follow Codex amphibia (an interpretation of the explosive breeding), released in 2018 on Glistening Examples. This work has benefited from an "Investissement d'Avenir" grant managed by Agence Nationale de la Recherche (CEBA, ref. ANR-10-LABX-25-01), and has been supported by Le Lieur Multiple, Jazz à Poitiers, Césaré, Studio d'en Haut, and has benefited of the grand "Brouillon d'un rêve, Pierre Schaeffer", by SCAM. https://label-aposiopese.bandcamp.com/album/codex-amphibia-phonotaxis | 2021 | €16.50 |
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| TOLVI, ANTTI | Taikuri Tali | LP | Antti Tolvi is a self-taught Finnish musician known for his participation in groups like Avarus, Kemialliset Ystävät, Lauhkeat Lampaat, Päivänsäde and Rauhan Orkesteri. 'Taikuri Tali' is a typical example of Finnish psychedelic folk music. A delectable solo work, not so minimalistic, as his first 'Pianoketo' double LP on Fonal Records, but a more trippy psychedelic one! His music takes on a meditative quality, with organ melodies and electronic noisy sounds. An amazing work and one of his best. https://ikuisuus.bandcamp.com/album/taikuri-tali | 2014 | €18.00 |
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| TOMKINS, KEVIN | Music for an unprepared Autoharp | CD | Kevin Tomkins is best known for his work in Whitehouse and his own group Sutcliffe Jugend, now called Sutcliffe No More. He also worked with Bodychoke, Inertia and Patient K. Most of his music has its background in the power electronics scene that evolved in Great Britain around the label Come Organisation and the group Whitehouse. Power electronics is a style of noise music that typically consists of static, screeching waves of feedback, analogue synthesizers making sub-bass pulses or high frequency squealing sounds; with screamed and distorted vocals. The genre is noted for its influence from industrial. It is generally atonal, like most noise music and also features a lack of conventional melodies or rhythms. To match its sonic excess, power electronics relies heavily upon extreme thematic and visual content: whether in lyrics, album art, or live performance actions. For his solo work, Kevin sometimes uses a very different style to his group work. An autoharp or chord zither is a string instrument belonging to the zither family. It uses a series of bars individually configured to mute all strings other than those needed for the intended chord. This album's music was all generated on such an instrument and is totally different to Sutcliffe No More. Its roots lie in avantgarde music rather than noise, with rhythms and melodies generated on the instrument. It was edited from over 20 different recordings to present an album of stunning variety and beauty https://www.klanggalerie.com/gg440 | 2023 | €15.00 |
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| TONIUTTI, MASSIMO | Shanghai Files - 6 (or more) Ring-Shaped Films | CD | Shanghai Files (6 or more ring-shaped films) This is a new partitura of a sound work whose origins date back to 2007. Initially conceived as an environmental piece, it consisted of six pre-recorded sequences of different lengths, each looping on its own speaker suspended from a large, centuries-old plane tree. The setting was the garden of a historic villa. The original installation was titled "6 Pellicole ad anello" (6 Ring-Shaped Films), echoing loops and growth rings alike — ideally protective sound films. In the unusual year of 2020, I dusted off those old audio files — including some alternate takes — and created a home-based quadraphonic version, which I eventually mixed down into a stereo snapshot of its ever shifting layers and shared through a month-long series of radio broadcasts. This stereo adaptation took on a different name. I pictured the sound files like sticks from the game Shanghai: held in the hand, then released — falling into a chance pattern, a circle of sound shifting with each new drop. Hence, "Shanghai Files." The new partitura began to take shape when Darren Tate asked me for a full-length work to inaugurate his newly founded label, Fungal Editions. I sent him an earlier version of what would become the main piece — he readily approved it as a fitting start to the project. That prompted me to revisit the material and expand it with two additional tracks. The composition eventually found its final form — revu et corrigé, so to speak. I actually had a second, much shorter track on hand — a sort of offshoot of S-Files. While the first leans more toward ambient, this one edges closer to the domain of radio art, with cut-ups and sonic manipulations that suggest a more radiophonic intent. At that point, space had opened up for a further development — there was a need for a 3rd chemical bath. The title speaks for itself: a slow, metamorphic wash that alters, dilates, and reconfigures a chosen cluster of the ring-shaped films. "Shanghai Files" partly draws on material from my documentary soundtrack work around 2007, when I would process sound to create specific backgrounds — or what I came to call “tints.” The voice, originally recorded for those documentaries, by contrast, was later isolated and broken down into tiny, luminous fragments that subtly come to mark the main piece. The release comes in a beautiful 6-panel Ecopack. Over the years, Darren has shared with me a number of nature photographs, which I’ve finally woven into a delicate visual montage. And our collaboration doesn’t end here… To Gualtiero Toniutti 27.4.1961 – 31.5.2023 original recordings 2007 additional recordings, “partitura”, mix 2020-2024 remastered by Colin Potter at IC Studio artwork by Massimo Toniutti based on Darren Tate’s photographs layout designed by Deison https://massimotoniutti.bandcamp.com/album/shanghai-files-6-or-more-ring-shaped-films ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Perhaps I'm mistaken, but this might be the first time I've received a CD from Darren Tate. It's not a release with his music, which, if remembered well, was on different labels, but the start of his Fungal Editions as a label. A label, so I suppose, to release his work and not that of others, so much to my surprise, it's new music by Massimo Toniutti. I always thought Massimo was the slightly unknown Toniutti, but these days it seems he does more releases than his brother Giancarlo. On this new CD, he has three pieces, of which the first is the primary one. The genesis of these pieces is in a work he already composed in 2007. That was "an environmental piece, it consisted of six pre-recorded sequences of different lengths, each looping on its speaker suspended from a large, centuries-old plane tree. The setting was the garden of a historic villa." In 2020, when we had time to revisit the past, he dusted off the sounds in his archive and composed ever-changing patterns with them. On CD, he treats these sounds like the game Shanghai; "held in the hand, then released — falling into a chance pattern, a circle of sound shifting with each new drop. Hence, "Shanghai Files." I admit I don't play many games, so I have no idea what this is. The sound sources are diverse, including spoken and murmured voices, large drones, and small sounds, all of which are digitally manipulated. Much like Steve Roden's work, these sounds overlap in numerous ways, never forming the same configuration twice. Unlike Roden's work, Toniutti's music on '41 Ring-Shaped Films', as the central piece is called, isn't as ambient and follows a slightly more cut-up feeling, moving through vastly different landscapes. 'Spillikins (Radio Edit)' is the shortest of the three pieces and a more traditional song-like composition, employing musique concrète-like cut-up techniques within a shorter time frame. Still, I would think with much of the same sound material, it would turn out to be a neat little radio play. The CD ends with 'A 3rd Chemical Bath', in which all sounds blend in a more amorphous tonal poem. It's a natural resting point of the CD, an ambient coda, and it's not that the album needs such a coda. It's not what happens before that must result in a ten-minute long-form drone piece, but it's a fine piece nonetheless. An excellent inaugural release for this label. (FdW) | 2025 | €15.00 |
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| TONTON MACOUTE | Mureedil | LP | “Tonton Macoute is a French band formed in 2006. With a stock of cheap instruments, the trio wanted to find a dense, subtle and massive sound, in order to create motorik soundscapes, psychedelic drones, electric hypnosis and timeless storms. Rehearsals and recordings took place in a basement. Using the studio as an instrument, all the tapes were re-worked to produce this LP record titled “Mureedil”. Early listeners mentioned experimental rock and compared the music of Tonton Macoute to F/i, This Heat, Harmonia or Sonic Arts Union. Etienne Coussirat : guitar, keyboards, drums, percussions, etc. Emmanuel Holterbach : guitar, tapes, analog synth, etc. Jacques Masson : guitar, bass, organ, etc. Recorded from February to June 2006. Edited, mixed and mastered at Studio Fluorescent, Lyon, France from August to November 2007. Etienne Coussirat (born in 1980) is a musician who builds impossible musical instruments and practices electro-acoustic improvisation. His work focuses on auditory perception and on the exploration of acoustic phenomena. Emmanuel Holterbach (born in 1971) plays enharmonic glasses with Orbes, offers acousmagic experiences with eHœCo, rocks with Tonton Macoute and presents his kaleidoscopic sound environments in Europe, Canada and China since 1992. He’s also in charge of Eliane Radigue’s archives. Jacques Masson (born in 1974) is a music fan and a music journalist. He writes poems, draws and composes electronic miniatures. Their first LP titled “Mureedil” is also the first record released by Les Productions Fluorescentes, available now in an edition limited to 300 copies.” [label info] | 2011 | €19.50 |
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| TOOP, DAVID | Entities Inertias Faint Beings | LP | From David Toop: The music existed already, spores maybe or dormant clusters of digital files. Out of three periods of solitude the germination began. The first was in Queensland, on Tamborine Mountain (an aboriginal name), so silent at night that I listened to recorded music – Japanese gagaku, Buddhist ritual from Bhutan, Korean Confucian music – as if drifting into cavernous black space. Stepping into sleep I saw a hypnagogic image - a transparent swimming pool suspended over the mouth of a volcano. I read Stephen Mansfield’s book on Japanese stone gardens – “Successful stone arrangements seem almost alive, the elements conversing among themselves with an occult vitality, the call and response that has been noted between well-placed rocks resembling the chanting of Buddhist sutras” ; Daylight listening in chill air, hearing whip birds, butcher birds, noisy mynahs, kookaburra chatter, rainbow lorikeets; catapult elastic, I wrote, radio waves in a kettle, electric buzzers. On Queensland’s Gold Coast I gazed at a distant humpback whale breaching out to sea, watched Yasujiro Ozu’s 1934 silent version of A Story of Floating Weeds, listened to cicadas burst into life as a helicopter flew overhead. Back into society and driving with Lawrence English I asked him, why would anybody release music in the 21st century? He laid out his philosophy; I was convinced. Then in St Ives, Cornwall, solitary again, drawing, reading Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects and Clarice Lispector’s Agua Viva (her beautiful sentence: “dry keys echo in the dark and humid early hours”), gazing at ocean flux, music trembling into life from secreted audio files, music becoming living entities. Phantoms rose up out of sea mist, images of black light and blistered skin from photographers (Takuma Nakahira and Tomatsu Shomei), the fermenting of sounds. From a distance I heard voices – the extraordinary painter Mariko Sugano reciting ancient Japanese garden texts on the taboos associated with stone setting; Emi Watanabe’s flute as if a ghost from the Noh; the sounds of underwater creatures in my pond; Sylvia Hallett’s sarangi crying (in cavernous black space); the fervent drumming of Rie Nakajima’s small mechanical beings (like cooking with paper, wire and batteries); John Butcher’s reeds, music as a scientific exploration of the body, the instrument. Rie talked about the properties of objects, soft or hard. In the Noh play Aoi no Ue, the spirit is compelled with drum and plucked string (the catalpa bow). In solitude I contemplated death, decay, the gush of life. Back in the car, Lawrence told me, when you die you’ll leave many projects unfinished. I laughed. Unspeakable truths, notes for a language to come, maybe not this world. room40.bandcamp.com/album/entities-inertias-faint-beings "Composer/performer/improviser David Toop’s latest release traces the seam between sound and music, paying attention to the hidden sounds that surround us and turning silence inside out. In a lot of ways I’ve come to dislike music,” David Toop told The Wire in 2003. “I love sound, I love silence, but music as a whole I don’t like anymore.” You might assume that would have troubled him, given that Toop, then 54, had been deeply involved with music for most of his life, in virtually every role imaginable: performer, improviser, composer, critic, theorist, archivist, curator, and label owner. But if it represented any sort of crisis for him—six years before, burnout and “indifference to contemporary music” had led Toop to hang up his hat as a music journalist—it didn’t hold back his output. Since making the statement, Toop has continued to perform and lecture, released a half-dozen albums, and written two books, including the recently published Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation, and the Dream of Freedom. But Toop’s turn away from music, that complicated category of organized sound, has been crucial in one very important aspect: It has allowed him to ask probing questions about the nature of listening. Those questions come to a head on Entities Inertias Faint Beings, his first studio album since 2007’s Sound Body. Offering a vibrant array of rustle and hum, the new album traces the seam between sound and music, between the intentional and the incidental, between expression and mute abstraction. A partial index of its sounds would include the whine of rubbed wineglass rims; shortwave radios on the fritz; the electric buzz of the forest canopy at night; the languid click of fingernails across guitar strings; the whirr and flap of a 16mm film projector’s take-up reel. It is an album about paying attention to the hidden sounds that surround us, about turning silence inside out. And it is an album about using sound to find one's own bearings. Entities Inertias Faint Beings got its start as an autobiography—or, more precisely, it is the result of what turned out to be an abortive case of writer’s block. Its genesis lies in three periods of solitude: first a stay on Tamborine Mountain in subtropical Queensland, Australia (“so silent at night that I listened to recorded music—Japanese gagaku, Buddhist ritual from Bhutan, Korean Confucian music—as if drifting into cavernous black space,” Toop writes in his introduction to the album), and then on Queensland’s Gold Coast, where cicadas harmonized with helicopters. Back in Cornwall, trying and failing to write his life’s story, he began sifting through several years' worth of personal recordings he had stored on his computer: small, percussive thunks; filament-like drones; the crinkling of paper. Shuffling, layering, and arranging—not so much composing as feeling his way through the material, as if improvising—he added new sounds to the mix, like a quiet passage of acoustic guitar from one of his daily practice sessions, and a hydrophone recording from his garden pond. And in London, he fleshed out the pieces with the help of musician friends. The improvising saxophonist John Butcher lends trilling, bird-like sounds to two tracks; Rie Nakajima's battery-powered motorized objects rattle and whirr, suggesting insect colonies in upheaval. The overall result—thematically, anyway—is something like one of W.G. Sebald’s literary peregrinations: a palimpsest of place, memory, and accident, although its precise route is unknown to all but its creator. There is little to tell us what any of these clicks and pings might actually be. Several of the album’s track titles suggest cryptic headings scrawled on notecards in dusty filing cabinets: “dry keys echo in the dark and humid early hours”; “pieces of wood and iron, phials of odours”; “sea slug.” They function as indices of possible experiences, and if they explain little—do the bassy gurgles of “sea slug” really come from a gastropod mollusk?—they offer unusual and inviting travelogues consisting of little more than white noise and feral throb. But Toop can’t quite resist sneaking music—that most elegantly ordered aspect of organized noise—back into the equation. Again and again, understated wisps of melody, harmony, and rhythm surface briefly and disappear just as quickly, sending out ripples that supercharge every corner of this lovely, engrossing album. In the album’s centerpiece, “ancestral beings, sightless by their own dust,” Sylvia Hallett’s sarangi, a bowed string instrument from Hindustani classical music, weaves an eerie, mournful air over slow, methodical pulses. Then, at the track’s end, a jungle’s worth of growling, chirping, buzzing sounds swells and is swallowed in turn by the steady gush of a tropical rainstorm. Toop has compared his compositional processes to traditional Japanese stone gardens—one track, “setting stones,” quotes a thousand-year-old passage on the subject—and at its most engrossing, Entities captures the uncanny qualities of inanimate objects in conversation with one another. It is a way of suggesting that the music exists independently even of its creator; it is a product of the act of listening itself. By the act of focusing our ears, we bring it to life—and vice versa." [Pitchfork] | 2016 | €23.50 |
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| TORBA | Musique Inconcrete | LP | After the quickly sold out »Ggràn« cassette, released on Fragment Factory in 2016, we are very happy to welcome back the Italian sound artist Mauro Diciocia aka Torba for his 2nd contribution to the FF label catalogue. »Musique Inconcrète« is the follow-up to »Musica Conventionale«, released earlier this year on his own Edizioni Aaltra imprint, and marks the second installment in a trilogy of related recordings, informally named »Le Musiche«. While being active in the field of contemporary sound art and noise music for more than a decade, Diciocia has produced a whole lot of mostly small run cassette releases. This LP is Torba's first and long overdue full-length album for the vinyl format. While Diciocia's latest work is far from being composed in classical terms, the concept behind the album revolves around the idea of sketch or annotation. Or better still: The inconcrète. A semi-false (or semi-correct) french word, used to undermine the consistency of the french Musique Concrète tradition in a rather light-hearted manner. During the conception of this album, MD was strongly influenced by the work »Incompiuto - The Birth of a Style« by the Italian contemporary art collective Alterazioni Video. They loudly claim that Incompiuto – the unfinished – is the only Italian art style of some significance in the past 50 years: "The term ‘incompiuto’ refers to the architectural and infrastructural works whose construction has been halted, and which can be witnessed throughout the entire Italian peninsula. They are all publicly funded, and for a variety of reasons (design errors, political decisions, inaccurate cost estimates, contractors' bankruptcies, evident disregard of building regulations, the disappearance of funds, etc.) their construction has been interrupted, leaving behind a series of ruins in reverse.” (Alterazioni Video) Far from any reference to post-architecture or mafia-political controversy, the final output of »Musique Inconcrète« is a macro cut-up of sound-screens reorganized as quasi-organic narration: Fragments of unfinished compositions, roughly assembled according to a mere aesthetic criteria. Beyond the sporadic use of oscillators and a few inserts of other people's music manipulated on ¼-inch tape, the whole LP is made out of field recordings collected in the region of Salento in southern Italy, where Diciocia is currently living. All environmental sounds were captured with common consumer electronics (walkman and mobile phones) in order to give back the domestic feeling of an abandoned opera. Speaking of geography, the first track Lapjèdr Fòr is the only exception. Intended as an introduction to the whole narration, it testifies MD's emotional and non-linear journey back from Germany, where he spent about eight years, to Southern Italy: It contains a clashing mix of recordings made in Berlin and around the seaside of Torre Lapillo. The pictures for the artwork of the album were taken by the photographer Gabriele Albergo, whose perpetual-in-progress project »Salento Death Valley - A Black Diary of the Most Beloved Italian Peninsula« aims to deconstruct the touristically idealized image of the region through the serial production of what he calls anti-postcards. Edition of 300 copies on black vinyl. https://fragmentfactory.bandcamp.com/album/musique-inconcr-te "Many of the sounds on Musique Inconcrète are thin, threadlike, fibrous, like amplified insect legs or the metallic rustle of uncut guitar strings. Usually such a description would apply to an album with much more sound processing and alteration involved in its construction, not a work that relies as heavily on mostly unmanipulated field recordings as this does, but the singular vision that audio collage maestro Mauro Diciocia (a.k.a. Torba) has adopted for Musique Inconcrète is unconcerned with “usually.” The six tracks on the LP are true sonic sketches, a structure he borrows from the Alterazioni Video collective’s tradition of Incompiuto—the incomplete. Diciocia warmly embraces a state of unfinishedness, fully content to explore acoustic settings and movements with qualities that might often be cited as weaknesses: insubstantiality, choppiness, frailty. He uses the aforementioned field recordings—most of which were captured in southern Italy—as fragile canvases for his sketches, their beautifully mundane soundscapes both contributing their own unique textures to the music as well as serving as a base for quiet interjections of buzzing static; occasional and very choice musical samples; and other oddities. The recordings themselves are often shaky and unstable, an effect that’s achieved via either subtle processing or the recording medium itself; Diciocia chose to use basic electronics like small tape recorders and mobile phones to evoke “the domestic feeling of an abandoned opera.” Such careful efforts to fully adopt an intentional lack of polish or seamlessness make Musique Inconcrète not only a fascinating and thought-provoking release but also more lush and well-realized than one could ever think possible." [Noisenotmusic] "Wenn das neue Torba-Album ein Pendant in der Welt der haptisch erfahrbaren Artefakte hat, dann ist es die Ruine – ein Phänomen, welches das Künstlerkollektiv Alterazione Video jüngst am Beispiel unvollendeter Architektur und Infrastruktur untersuchte, an verschiedenen Konstruktionen, die aus Geldmangel, wegen technischer Probleme, politischer Planänderungen und ähnlicher Gründe Fragment bleiben mussten. In der dazu entstandenen Studie wurden sie als die bedeutendsten Kunstwerke des heutigen Italiens bezeichnet. “Musique Inconcrète”, erneut eine Reihe an feinsinnigen Cut-Up-Kollagen, wurde stark von diesen Überlegungen getriggert und setzt sich aus eher spontan zusammengesetzten Komponenten zusammen, denen man ihre Fragmentiertheit anmerkt. Benannt hat Torba das Resultat allerdings nicht nach dem Unvollendeten, sondern nach dem “Inkonkreten”, was eine ganze Reihe weiterer Bedeutungsnuancen eröffnet. Im Vergleich zur One Track-CD “Musica Convenzionale”, dem ersten Teil der losen Reihe “Le Musiche”, erst recht aber zu früheren Veröffentlichungen, sind die sieben Tracks des neuen Longplayers noch ein ganzes Stück dezenter, andeutungshafter und ungreifbarer: Mikrosequenzen, deren Soundmaterial diffus an Zikaden, Straßenlärm, Sinustöne, Wind und Wasser und zwitschernde Vögel, aber auch an jazziges Basspiel erinnert, eine Viel-, wenn nicht Unzahl an per Telefon aufgezeichnetem Material, dazu Songzitate und immer wieder dezente Manipulation – all das liegt übereinander, greift ineinander und verschmilzt doch nur soweit miteinander, dass das Konstrukt einer Einheit verwehrt bleibt. Alles verbindet sich gerade so stark, dass die Konturen einzelner Klänge undeutlich und eben unkonkret werden. Man kann darin freilich eine Kritik an den Ideen der Musique Concrète, oder zumindest das Aufzeigen einer Kehrseite und eines blinden Flecks sehen, betonten die Pioniere dieser Musik doch besonders das Material in seiner wie selbstverständlich angenommenen Abgegrenztheit. Die einzig deutliche Grenze, die Torba hier zieht, ist die des immer wieder überraschenden Schlusspunktes einer Sequenz oder einer Tonspur, womit er an einige seine früheren Tape-Veröffentlichungen anknüpft. Torba ist nach wie vor ein Gelände mit vielen abrupt endenden Sackgassen. Mehr noch als in den opulenteren Stücken wird dies in den zwei minimalistischen “Intermezzi” deutlich, in denen der (teils verfremdete und im Tempo hochgeschraubte) Auftakt einer berühmten Klaviersonate durch ein Szenario verhuschter Sounds getrieben wird. Daran, dass das Motiv immer wieder nach drei Tönen de nova da capo geht, mag man sich gar nicht gewöhnen, und soll es vielleicht auch nicht. In dieser Spannung, in der die einzige klare Kontur die Evidenz des Unfertigen ist, liegt die Signifikanz und natürlich die größte Herausforderung von “Musique Inconcrète”. Hat man sich daran gewöhnt, erkennt man viel Schönheit in dem Gebräu aus Verkehrslärm, Stimmengewirr und verschwommener Jahrmarktsmusik." (U.S./African Paper) | 2019 | €18.00 |
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| TOTSTELLEN | Mein Licht beleuchtet nur Abgruende | CD-R | "processed fieldrecordings of a journey through the baltic states, finland + lapland. reflections on constructed nature + disruption as utopia. 01 - anorexie im bauch eines wals (12:42) 02 - faules blut in molochs adern (19:38) 03 - keinen traum mehr zu haben (01:24) 04 - fuer die noch lenenden toten (17:32) 05 - vermehrt zu gast im laeukemiecluster (23:38)" [label info] http://telenautik.de/grimm/totstellen "Der Alptraum kommt in lautleisegefälligen Schritten, die baltischen Länder bieten neben der touristisch entlegenen Industrieromantik auch etwas wie ein dreckig-verschlafenes Lokalkolorit, welchem mit Mikrophon und Sampler zu Leibe gegangen werden kann. Wann beginnt der Alptraum wirklich? Dann wenn man aufwacht und feststellt, dass die Realität sich bei aller Authentizität doch beliebig verformen lässt. Totstellen hat in 5 Kompositionen seine einjährige Reise durch die baltischen Länder festgehalten, streng feldrekorderistisch, wie ein audiophiles Tagebuch welches die jeweiligen Reisemomente auf ehrlichste und naheliegendste Art zu skizzieren vermag. Mal rauschen die Bäche, dann wiederum dräunt und hallt der industrielle Alltag der Straßen und öffentlichen Plätze durch die Aufnahmen, werden Funkstimmen und Wassertropfen zu grotesken Klangmonstern, die ihre Formwandlung auf unerklärlich hässlich-faszinierende Weise exhibitionistisch zur Schau stellen. Wenngleich Totstellen’s Abgründe sich ihrer Funktion wohl nur im Gedächtnis seiner eigenen Reiseerinnerungen öffnen, atmet »Mein Licht Beleuchtet Nur Abgründe« eine ganz eigene Sprache, das verworren-gutturale Geflecht aus Erinnerung und Lücke. Die archaische Umverpackung, handgenäht und mit Siebdruck versehen, macht aus diesem Release eine besonders intime Angelegenheit. Chapeau." [Thorsten Soltau / AEMAG] "...Totstellen uses both field recordings, but plays music, sound material creates what he encounters, like the rustle of plastic and metal buckets on ticking. In one way or another, the atmosphere is nostalgic and melancholic compositions and are true sound paintings. These beautiful CDR's packaged in a self-sewn cover with a picture book where the emptiness of the city and nature plays a central role. Highly recommended!" [JKH/Vital Weekly] | 2010 | €12.00 |
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| TREPANERINGSRITUALEN | Oberhausen Ritual | LP | 12" heavy 180 gram black vinyl. solid black matte cardboad sleeve with glossy black hot-foil print, plus 12" inlay and sticker. this lp includes an mp3-download-code. hand numbered edition 200 copies + overpressing it was in the fall of 2016 that trepaneringsritualen in the shape of th.oth XIX graced the maschinenfest stage with one of their infamous rituals, and naturally this is mandatory to be documented via the raubkauf series. trepaneringsritualen has made quite a name for itself, with the signature “dödsindustri” sound since 2008, an especially vile brew of upfront electronic noise, feedback and agitating night-rhythms, fuelled by eclectic references to all kinds of magick. the set presented on “oberhausen ritual” is a concise representation of their musical output so far, familiar tracks alternating with unheard ones, all coalescing into an intoxicatingly vile stream of sound, clocking in well under 40 minutes, yet leaving nothing to be desired. it’s with the bleak abyss of “immaculate & incorporeal” that the listener gets sucked into the otherworld that is trepaneringsritualen, with th.oth XIX’s trademark vibrant, guttural vocals kicking in on “a black egg”, and “the 7th man” offering the first appearance of the drums of death. from there, it’s a constant buildup, with every track adding more of the ritual’s raw, primordial force, culminating in the glorious “he who is my mirror”. and it’s that grand finale which also best exemplifies his crossover credibility with other extreme music scenes (i.e. metal). the success of trepaneringsritualen doesn’t simply come from producing led-heavy death industrial, it comes from being unique and authentic. originality and dedication, simplicity and a more than convincing overall picture – to which this live document adds an important feature. https://raubbau.bandcamp.com/album/oberhausen-ritual-live-at-maschinenfest-2016 | 2020 | €25.00 |
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| TRIANGULAR ASCENSION | Leviathan Device | CD | "Triangular Ascension is the debut album by Venezuela's Federico Agreda and a much welcomed addition to the Cyclic Law Roster. Taking inspiration from Thomas Hobbes book "Leviathan", the album aims to depict the inner nightmare of the reality of mankind, ever dwelling in fear and self-destruction. Upon activation of the "Device", the water once used by the Elohim to create life, rages over the lands cleansing the planet from every living creature that crawls the soil, concluding in a post-apocalyptic requiem sung by the leviathans themselves. The music translates into a carefully crafted work full of cinematic drones of ruthless atmospheric power, destined to make Triangular Ascension a name to be reckoned with. Edition of 1000 copies in 4 panel Digipack. 9 Tracks. Running Time 59:40" [label info] www.cycliclaw.com www.cycliclaw.com | 2011 | €13.00 |
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| TRICOLI, VALERIO | Clonic Earth | do-LP | "The experimental Italian composer returns to PAN with a new LP, titled 'Clonic Earth'. His ongoing output for the label has long-presented his electroacoustic sound compositions where since the mid-'00s, he has utilized analogue live sampling and real-time editing of field and studio recordings by means of manipulation of 1/4 inch tape. Asides from being a founding member of the Italian avant-rock group 3/4HadBeenEliminated, he has worked extensively with various musicians, choreographers and multimedia artists including Thomas Ankersmit, Antoine Chessex, Werner Dafeldecker, Anthony Pateras, and Robert Piotrowicz. His studio compositions, documented on few records, often explore themes of the internal - represented both by the psychological and the physical - and of the occult, which with the use of spoken text makes them often deeply existential works, self-investigations of the psychological, emotional and irrational horror within. The new record, 'Clonic Earth' is a perturbing, compelling and eventually mind-expanding work, marked by compositional strategies of exploded narratives, psychological insight and oracular literary references, where questions about the boundaries of spatial perception in the decoding processes of acousmatic music are overturned into existential, metaphysical questions. Tricoli's allegorical and philosophical universe takes the form of an unhinged mind's landscape swarming with estranged sound objects, and sometimes reminiscent, in the complexity of details and surrealistic effects, of Hieronymus Bosch's larger paintings. Compared to his previous works, the content of 'Clonic Earth' explores more synthesized and heavily processed sounds, especially vocals, often appearing in the form of a religious, electrified chanting. The record is described by its author as a natural consequence of the internal collapse depicted in his previous record, 'Miseri Lares': 'As if all the debris left inside my loudspeakers have been ignited to expand into the ether, to find a justification at the principle of Chaos, or Cosmos alike.' This movement is expressed by references to the theme of fire as original matter in the Chaldean Oracles which, together with the later work of Philip K. Dick, are the main sources for the vocal/text elements of the composition. Fire, intended as the convulsive principle of existence, but also an ontologically terminal element - hence a representation of the infinite decay and a mean of communication with the otherworldly Ð serves the author a metaphor for the acousmatic listening experience itself: a borderline perception of sounds eternally fixed in their spasmodic disappearance, which could eventually drag us into a different layer of reality, drastically changing, subverting, or expanding the space in which they are diffused. A ritual, somehow, which may link the listener and the perceptive space that he inhabits with whatever lies beyond the loudspeakers, beyond the vibrating surface of the world. The 2xLP is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, featuring artwork by Bill Kouligas." www.p-a-n.org | 2016 | €27.50 |
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| TROUM | AIWS | CD | "AIWS is the first full-length cd release from Troum since 2003. It covers studio-recordings composed from 2002-2005. These musicians have compiled some of their most favorable pieces through the years to be placed on this release. Presenting nine analogue (4&8 track) recorded compositions that lead the listener through vast feelings of beautifully deep melancholic and hypnotic states of mind. Composed with guitar-drones and harmonic phrases that are processed in various ways creating an atmosphere of the sublime and emotional meditative states that transcend listener to immerse within themselves. Ingredients: Sufi-songs, old vinyl-crackles, acoustic & e-guitars, e-bow, e-bass, voice & whisperings, accordion & flute. Stunning photography & design work by Alan McClelland(Eye.lyft). One of the most emotional and profound Troum releases to date now available on Transgredient Records. Dedicated to Eternity. TRACK LISTING of AIWS [* and meaning of titles & phrases] 1. AHMATEINS 2. AGGILUS 3. SPIRARE 4. PER SONUM 5. PANTAH 6. [GA] PLAIAN 7. PENTHOS 8. NEHEH 9. PELETÄ total length: 49:30 min [* AIWS=Eternity (gothic language), also shortcut for "Alice-In-Wonderland-Syndrome". 1. "Inspiration" (gothic) 2. "Angel - Carrier" (gothic) 3. "breathing - aspirating - sighing - smelling " (latin) 4. "through sound" (latin) 5. "way - path - line" (old indian) 6. "supplication" (persian) 7. "the sorrow of mourning - lament" (greek - also a greek god), 8. "Eternity" (egypt) 9. "escape - flight, also: rescue - salvation" (hebrew) " [label info] "... nach einigen 12“s und Kollaborationen die 7. CD des TROUM-Duos. GLIT[S]CH & BARAKA[H] sind dafür bekannt, dass sie sich zu Nietzsches „Die Welt ist tief, viel tiefer als der Tag gedacht“ tief in die Augen blicken und dann ihren Fliegenden Teppich starten. ‚Ahmateins‘ ist, bewusst analog und lo-fi, gewebt aus engen Gitarrenwellen und sämigen Drones von E-Bow und E-Bass. Flug und Flucht, Atmen und Seufzen sind dabei eins. Sound ist der Weg und das Ziel. AIWS ist nicht nur das gotische Wort für Ewigkeit, es steht auch für das Alice in Wonderland Syndrom. Prosaisch ist das eine mit Kopfschmerzen verbundene Sehstörung, metaphorisch aber heißt das doch: Die Welt mit Alicens Augen als Wunderland sehen können. Troums Zauberteppich schwebt auf harmonischen Strömen durch Rauch und Licht dahin, auf einem spiraligen Kurs ins Sublime. ‚Pantah‘ lässt den Saitenklang deutlicher erkennen, in [Ga]plaian‘ ist Sufigesang verdichtet, in ‚Penthos‘ scheint ein Akkordeon zu pumpen, in ‚Neheh‘ Licht nicht bloß zu schimmern, sondern zu singen. Tiefenmusic Reaching Our Unconscious Minds." [Bad Alchemy] "....The pieces on this new CD were recorded from 2002-2005 on Troum's own analogue equipment, all live to four-eight track recorders, without the involvement of computers. Troum, a duo (be it hard to believe), is best a live band, even when working in the studio. Their instruments are guitars, e-bow, bass, voices, accordion & flute, old vinyl. And oh, sound effects. Lots of those are involved in the music of Troum, but they never stand in the way of the end result. Spacious head music. Loud at times, quiet when necessary, but there is a certain roughness about the band, which is an element I really like. Even when things are quiet, they never really are quiet. 'Neheh' is just an example of some sparse organ like loops, feeding through some delay and bouncing gentle forward, but with a certain grittiness. Highly atmospheric even when experienced without the help of any chemicals or other illegal substances and the best but perhaps more frightful experience when played in the dark and with the headphones tied to your head. You are bound to play it again, if not only because it might be too scary to leave the room... Of all things experimental, ambient and industrial (Menche, Zoviet*France, Lustmord), Troum can easily stand the test and be the best of the lot." [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2007 | €12.00 |
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| Nargis | 7inch | Sehr rauhes, etwas älteres Material, basierend auf verzerrten e-bow Gitarren & extrem verlangsamten Gesang... majestätisch & unheimlich zugleich... die "heavy" Artwork stammt von MARS WELLINK (VANCE ORCHESTRA), fullcolour cover & inlay. "Latest slab of guitar based whir and drift from these masters of the drone (they do in fact run the DRONE record label after all). Formerly Maeror Tri, Troum embody the drone, they live, breathe, eat and sleep drones. And it shows. Their records are gorgeous and epic, but seem so effortless, as if the sounds they create are simply channeled through their corporeal forms, but have been created in some fiery forge at the center of an alien planet. The first half of this single still sounds like Troum, but is unlike anything we've heard from them, strange looped high end guitar, what sounds like backwards chords, almost choral vocals, dramatic and haunting and cinematic, very much like some super stylized horror movie music almost, warbled and wavery, over a distant grinding low end tone drifting way off in the background, washed over by epic sweeping swells.. The other side is a bit more raw and intense, a seriously corrosive guitarscape, distorted and crumbling chordal buzz, looped and layered into a strange glacial riff, strewn over deep dark swirls of slow shifting sound and haunting minor key melodies. It manages to be intense and fierce but also gloriously washed out and blissful. Super swank, full color covers, full color inserts, and pressed on nice thick vinyl. And of course limited, just not sure - how- limited..." [Aquarius Records] www.vivahaterecords.com | 2007 | €6.00 |
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| Symballein | CD | Sechs Stücke aus der Frühphase von TROUM, erschienen auf obskuren & raren Compilations im Zeitraum 1997 - 1999; dunkel, dronig-morastig, tieffrequent, von massiver Konsistenz, post-industriell, jenseitig ...am ehesten zu vergleichen mit der ebenfalls damals erschienenen Debut-CD RYNA. "...alle sechs sind gute beispiele für die "kl_F/B-S/comp-Theorie", bilden trotzdem ein fast perfektes gesamtwerk und zeigen troum durchweg von ihrer düsteren seite; kavernenartig, rhythmen durch meterdicke wände gefiltert, stimmen aus der zwischenwelt. ein stärkerer kontrast zur aktuellen, dagegen fast leichten A.I.W.S. erscheint kaum möglich...... ps: die "kl_F/B-S/comp-Theorie", deren erste erwähnung hier nicht mehr eruiert werden kann, stellt die (unbewiesene) vermutung in den raum, dass bands kleinere Formate/B-Seiten/compilation-Beiträge gerne dafür nutzen, ein wenig abseitigere tracks zu platzieren. neben dem wunsch, auch mal über die eigenen stränge schlagen zu können, der experimentierlust zu frönen, wird vermutet, dass zum teil auch stücke dergestalt eine heimat finden, die aufgrund von laufzeitbeschränkungen der veröffentlichungsmedien in vorhergehenden releases gekippt werden mussten. psps: und des wird zeit, endlich einmal small voices aus italien zu loben; allgemein + besonders und jetzt besonders wegen der coverartworks: hier strukturpappe-aufklapper mit schlitz zur cd-aufnahme: eine weitere perfekte annäherung an das lp-cover als die sowieso perfekte verpackung." [n, Unruhr.de] "Symballein" is the second TROUM releases on SmallVoices label after the well ... "Autopoiesis" LP picture disc (SVV001) actually SOLD OUT. This album is a collection of very rare material, from the very beginning of Troum (period: 1997 - 1999). As Troum meaning the music is dreamy... The concept of the ‘Dream’ is the common thread running through Troum; the name, the music and the philosophy. For not only is TROUM the old German word for "DREAM" but, according to their website, ‘the dream, seen as a central manifestation of the unconscious, symbolizes the aim of TROUM to lead the listener into a hypnotizing dream-state of mind, a pre-verbal and primal consciousness sphere. TROUM uses music as the direct path to the Unconscious, pointing to the archaic "essence" of the human’s inner psyche. TROUM tries to create music that works like a direct transformation of unconscious matter’. In Symballein dreams are obscure and indecipherable..., in one word nightmares; the music is archaic and droney, with multi-layered guitar drones..., oneiric ambient industrial nearly to Maeror Tri best releases. The disc in packaged in a elegant and luxurious embossed cardboard digi-sleeve. Symballein: "perceivable & non-perceivable things fall into one" [label press release] | 2007 | €10.00 |
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| SIGQAN | CD | "...„Sigqan" von 2003, remastered und in neuem cover auf neuem label, diesmal dem eigenen. und gerade bei so verbesserungen ist das ergebnis ja oft zwiespältig; das re-master hier dagegen subtil lebendiger, körper- und räumlicher, die (für troum verhältnisse) fast minimalistische, auf gebündelte sounds setzende klangästhetik unterstützend bzw. eben einfach besser ans ohr bringend: dunkel, fast glazial, gegeneinander verschiebende ebenen rund um den hauptstrom der einzelnen teile der sigqan-trilogie, im „part 3" mit ergänzender, eher subtiler rhythmustextur; bis zum ende nur noch ein feedback zwischen cello- und trompetenästetik den beginn widerspiegelt. unter den troum alben vielleicht eines der focussiertesten, vielleicht immer ein wenig versteckt zwischen der grossen tjukurrpa-trilogie; in jedem fall: schwer empfohlen. das neue cover, wieder ein digipack, diesmal in farbe, textur und besonders typografie irgendwie nicht einem bestimmten grafischen (zeit)geschmack verpflichtet wie damals die erste auflage." [N, Unruhr.de] "Deep beneath the ocean is a world of mystery, wonder, darkness, and danger. Even if it weren't for the cover art of this German duo's brilliant new album, there is unmistakably no other place in the universe that has influenced the sounds and movement of what is represented within. These drones are not passive in the least. The depth and volume are all encompassing, and moving slowly but steadily like an ancient and lonely large whale through the graveyards of shipwrecks, at the very beginning of the food chain in which all living creatures depend. Recorded live in the studio without overdubs, the first two parts are based on live performances the band was touring around with in 2001, the first being a dark blue rumble, heavy on the low end and marked by patient melodic movement, the second with swirling guitar strums and leads like the sun coming through in bended bands of beams: flickering, reflected, and refracted. The intangible overwhelming feeling of weight and pressure is unavoidable and inescapable, like being frozen in a dream, unable to move, but calm and comforting all the same. Around the half-way mark, it dips back into the darker regions as pitch and pace slow down deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper yet into the cold, black unknown. The third part was recorded as an afterthought, and is described as a new ending. Its brightness and chugging backwards-sounding guitars brilliantly accent the feel that it is a journey which is reaching its end. At this point, it feels that the central figure in the journey seems to be a vessyl of some sort, and the 16-minute Part 3 is thematic of a glorious resurfacing, reintroduction to the bright light of day, and returning to solid ground. But, as the brightness comes, so does an ominous sense that all might not be right. The world looks different than before, the places are familiar but everything's seemed to have changed. The credits may roll but this is certainly not the end." [Jon Whitney / Brainwashed] “Finally, the first Troum record to be widely available in the United States, released through Relapse subsidiary Desolation House, and we're pleased to say it's maybe their best yet. Troum are the ambient-drone ensemble that emerged from the dissolution of proto-industrial dronesters Maeror Tri. Unlike the primarily guitar based whir and rumble of Maeror Tri, Troum obfuscate their sound sources, laptops, found sounds, accordians, guitars too maybe, and the results are timeless, mysterious, haunting, ethereal and utterly breathtaking dronescapes. Sigqan is a lengthy three part epic, beginning with rich sonorous foghorn like swells, that ebb and flow, separated by near silence, and slowly building in intensity from warm crescendos to huge doomy pulses. Eventually, these roaring rumbles joined by complementary shimmers of high end, that sound out, and then dissipate like sonic ripples, fading into blackness. The swells slowly grow closer and closer until the edges begin to blur and a subtly more continuous melodic framework begins to emerge and so begins the second movement, a creepy and slightly ominous, slowly fluctuating slow-motion-melody, whose lazily shifting notes keep the sonic landscape dense and rich, and keeps the sounds from flatlining into monochromatic drones. As the piece winds down, the dynamics and melody start to smear together into a warm, diffused fuzzy hum, with the subtle traces of melody sinking deeper and deeper into the dark warmth. The third and final movement was a sonic afterthought, added/recorded later than the first two, but is a pleasantly dreamy coda, with a slightly sunnier tone, a keening upper register melody, stretched out into subtly slithering iridescence with a shuffling, staticky rhythm just below the surface. So nice.“ [Aquarius Records, 2003] "Beauty and profundity are the evident merits of the album - like the unity of oceanic and atmospheric elements, and namely the ocean is most frequently mentioned association used by critics and musicians. When you are at a depth of thousands metres, even the storm on the surface is impossible to hear." [Dmitry Vasilyev, IEM] | 2009 | €13.00 |
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| Mare morphosis | CD | "'Mare morphosis' forms the third & final part of TROUMs so called 'Power Romantic' trilogy that started with 'Mare Idiophonika' in 2010. The basic materials & arrangements for this one long epic piece were created from 2009-2013 (partly based on the recordings for the 'Bach Eingeschaltet, Dritter Band' 7" dealing with experimental reworkings of J.S.BACH pieces) & to some extent used live in different live-programmes: A piece like an 'Ocean of Transformations', morphing through various stages of intensity. 'Mare morphosis' stands out in the history of TROUM studio-albums as their most symphonic, refined and orchestral effort so far. Cover photography by Paul Takahashi, graphic design by Tilmann Benninghaus (8 panel fold out digipack). First edition: 1000 copies. 'Mare morphosis definitely gives Troum’s music a new dimension, reflecting ancient waves, amplifying the power of Sehnsucht, drumming the drowning heart." [Denis Boyer / Fear Drop] "Mare morphosis" ist eines der stimmungsvollsten und abwechslungsreichsten Werke von TROUM, die ich kenne. Die einzelnen Abschnitte wirken tatsächlich wie Sätze einer Sinfonie, ohne dass die Gesamtanmutung vernachlässigt wird: Es geht hörbar um die mächtigste aller Naturgewalten, das Wasser, in seinen unterschiedlichen Ausprägungen. Von ästhetisch über melancholisch bis düster und bedrohlich; vermutlich sind die 'Veränderungen' im Titel so zu deuten. Wunderschön und mit vielen Details zum Mehrfach-Hören gespickt.' [Michael We / nonpop.de]" [label info] "What comes with the Power Romantic trilogy (which pt. 1 and 2 are: Mare Idiophonika, Grote Mandrenke) is brooding from the core of Troum’s universe. Relating Troum with strong Romantic tropisms is like sewing an endless canvas. In every musical piece they work, the two musicians BarakaH and Glit[s]ch navigate a vast sea of sound, recalling the Romantic feeling in front of deep landscapes that reflect the very soul, threatening in a voluptuous appeal the observer to dissolve in the totality. Troum’s attraction to the notion of Dissolution is felt every time that the sound waves inflate to shape a luminous drone, every time that the pulsation melts into a magmatic rumbling. And what about the beauty of sadness, celebrated since the days of Maeror Tri… That sea of sound, of profound melancholic drones and waves gets its monument with the Power Romantic trilogy in which Troum show their skill in harmony, but not only. Drones and harmony still reign but a clear way is designed for melody and rhythms (as it already was in Tjukurrpa pt. 3). The oceanic feeling is fueled by new movements, like a storm upon and under the fluid. Mare morphosis, pt. 3 of the Power Romantic trilogy, opens as the very building of a Sunken Cathedral, with heavy rhythms like stone columns gently embraced by subtle sharpened melodic phrases. The whole soundscape navigates then by the tide and lets the strong motion of sound rumbling and driving to surface the heavy layers of undercurrents, bringing up to light their deep melancholic germ of melody. Mare morphosis definitely gives Troum’s music a new dimension, reflecting ancient waves, amplifying the power of Sehnsucht, drumming the drowning heart." [Denis Boyer / Fear Drop] listen: http://troum.bandcamp.com/album/mare-morphosis-cd-2013 www.troum.com | 2013 | €12.00 |
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| TROUM & MARTYN BATES | To a Child, Dancing in the Wind | CD | Nach über 2 Jahren konnte die lange geplante Zusammenarbeit von TROUM mit MARTYN BATES endlich fertiggestellt werden. Gedichte des irischen Dichters W.B.YEATS dienten als textliche Grundlage für sechs Stücke voller Sehnsucht & Emotion, Drone-Harmonics treffen auf expressiv gesungene Poesie.... “ - Profound songs inspired by YEATS-poems: The acoustic transformation of the deepest yearning - For this release, the german ‘transcendental-drone’-duo TROUM teams up with the legendary british singer / songwriter and EYELESS IN GAZA-member MARTYN BATES. More than 2 years in the making, MARTYN BATES has sung & played (mouth organ & melodica) over basic material TROUM provided – consisting of harmonic minimal loops & basic song structures derived from accordeon, e-bass & guitar, percussion), who were then also responsible for the final subsequent additions mastering (adding more guitar-work, voices & balalaika). MARTYN BATES has chosen to sing four poems of the famous Irish poet W.B.YEATS, and he did this with a most impressive sensitivity for TROUMS very sublime & rather hidden harmonic structures. There are also two instrumentals in a more experimental style on this disc, one being a dark drone reprise of the main piece “MAD AS THE MIST AND SNOW #2”. MARTYN’s voice is surely not something for everyone – it’s of an extreme emotional & yearnful quality that might be not easy to stand – a yearning which is like a deep “cry out to the horizon”, to something that is unreachable per se, feeling a passion that tears you apart inside. This is pure emotional poetry transformed into yearnful audible spherics! Artwork: Daniel Crokaert, founder of the dream-ambience CDR-label MYSTERY SEAS in Brussels and a long-time fan of both MARTYN BATES & TROUM, has created a stunning 6-panel digipack using pictures provided by Martyn. The Artists: MARTYN BATES is the legendary british songwriter, being active since the early 80’s, one half of EYELESS IN GAZA & also working solo with other musicians and with Alan Trench as 12.000 DAYS. He has established a unique own style combining elements of folk & various other influences with this remarkable singing, being expressively poetic & highly emotional at any time. TROUM is a german duo consisting of 2/3 of the remains of the ambient-industrialists MAEROR TRI (last year saw a rennaisance of M.T. with many re-releases of their works). TROUM describe their music themselves as “transcendental drone-muzak”, a very atmospheric & emotional but often also monumental and noisy, hypnotically & at times trance-inducing rhythmic melange. General Disc-Info: 6-panel 4-colour digipack, 6 tracks, 38:30 playtime” [press release] ”....Now its so much more than 'just' a drone record: the voice forms a counterpart of the music, perhaps because it fits so well. This is certainly on of the best drone records I heard this year, because it's so familiar as well as such a surprise.” [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2006 | €12.00 |
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| TSUNODA, TOSHIYA | Landscape and Voice | LP | Black Truffle is pleased to present Landscape and Voice, a radical new work (and rare vinyl release) from major Japanese sound artist Toshiya Tsunoda. Undoubtedly one of the most influential artists working with location recordings since the 1990s, Tsunoda’s work possesses a rigorously searching quality that sets him apart from his contemporaries. Tsunoda is known to many listeners for the subtle atmospheric poetry of his early Extract from Field Recording Archive series, which focussed on vibrations recorded in various indoor and outdoor environments in his native Miura Peninsula, often inside pipes, bottles and other vessels. In more recent years, his work has explored the implications of his claim that field recording should be seen as ‘depiction’ rather than ‘documentation’. He has explored disorienting editing and processing in his works with Taku Unami, and, perhaps most radically, represented Maguchi Bay as a kind of kinetic sculpture for shaking speakers by removing all but the inaudible low frequencies from a field recording (Low Frequency Observed at Maguchi Bay). One of the recurrent concerns of Tsunoda’s recent work, as he explains in the crystalline liner notes accompanying this release, is ‘exploring how I can establish a subjective relationship with an environment, rather than seeing it merely as an object to be recorded’. This has taken various forms, from documenting simultaneously an outdoor environment and the blood flowing through the listener/recorder’s body (captured with a stethoscope) on The Temple Recordings, to representing his own experience of the landscape as made up of ‘grains of space and time’ by inserting looped fragments into field recordings in Grains of Spring. On Landscape and Voice, this meeting between subject and object becomes an almost mystical union between the natural and the human. As with all of Tsunoda’s work, a relatively simple concept leads to compelling, thought-provoking results. Landscape and Voice combines vowel sounds spoken by six voices with short, looped fragments of field recordings, their noise character suggesting consonants: voice and landscape thus join together in something like words. The record consists of three pieces, each using a different, richly evocative field recording, which periodically freezes, catching on a looped fragment to which is synchronised an abruptly looped spoken vowel sound. The lengths between these interruptions vary, as do the tempi of the loops. The interruption of these lushly immersive recordings of the world – bristling with bird song, rushing water, distant traffic, and clinking metal – only serves to intensify them, as if the depicted environment itself had been returned to the listener each time it abruptly reappears. At the same time, the constant interruption creates an uncannily frozen effect, as if the recorded environment were an object rather than a stretch of recorded time. When combined with the bare human presence of the vowel sounds, the result is both austere and magical. Pressed on 45RPM for maximum fidelity, in a gorgeous sleeve designed by Lasse Marhaug with liner notes from the composer, Landscape and Voice is a radical proposition from one of the deepest thinkers in contemporary sound. https://blacktruffle.bandcamp.com/album/landscape-and-voice | 2022 | €23.50 |
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| TSUNODA, TOSHIYA / JUSTIN BENNETT | Cleavage of Acoustics / Cacerolada | LP | Nr. 3 in der Mixer Split LP Reihe ! JUSTIN BENNETT hat einem Protestmarsch in Barcelona gegen den Irak-Krieg im März 2003 beigewohnt, eine unglaubliche detailreicher Soundkulissensumpf aus Sirenen, Autohupen, Perkussion, Pfeifen & Gegröhl. T. TSUNODA arbeitet diesmal nicht mit reinen field recordings, sondern lässt Sinuswellen auf konkretes Material treffen, was zu knisternd-resonanzbildenden Effekten und merkwürdigen „small sounds“ führt. Tolle Geräuschmusikplatte ! “Both Justin Bennett and Toshiya Tsunoda have gained a reputation when it comes to fieldrecording-based soundworks. Using their sonic surroundings as the startingpoint for their work, both are unique in approach and result. "Cacerolada" is based on a noise-protest against the Iraq-war, recorded in Barcelona. It wakes up and dies out as any day does, gradually moving along all kinds of sonic occurrences in between. Compared to Tsunoda's, Bennett's work comes from a more contemplative approach, outlining to his listener the beauty, absurdness or musicality of the everyday soundtrack he's living in. Originally these protests served a highly political goal, to record them and treat these recordings as a piece, is what made "Cacerolada" into a sound-object, to be listened to with different ears. This is the core of Bennett's work. Using hardly any processing-tools (Bennett composes with the raw building-blocks he records), these environmental-pieces are very much like documents, with specific artistic or aesthetical qualities. He hunts for certain scenes or situations and captures moments in time that contain a specific type of gesture he is looking for. The reference to daily life might be very much upfront, though Bennett's work is much more than a highly associative collection of recorded sounds. His recordings easily keep up as complete compositions with a strong musical form, taking the listener beyond what is heard at first sight and this is exactly where the strength in Bennett's work as a composer and sound-artist lies. These works show a delicate timespam, organically interpolating from scene to scene. The so familiar sounding material constructs and underlines compositional shape and development, adding a rare compositional richness to environmental-soundworks. Tsunoda's "Cleavage of Acoustics" stands in close relation to previous works in which he tries to integrate somewhat technical concepts into the everyday beauty of singing birds and chirping crickets. Tsunoda adds to the body of these compositions of the public domain, as Justin Bennett does, but takes a different route to get there. He experiments to find out the musical relevance of technicality for natural sounds and forces a symbiosis between the two. The results still contain the associative character and organic development so typical for environmental recordings, but have a new, more abstract, mimicry. The sometime subtle, sometimes clashing, but always interesting interference between these two worlds, is what gives Tsunoda's work a very unique twist. It can exist as a completely autonomous entity while grafted upon the soundmaterial we all know so well. Tsunoda, like Bennett, makes us hear our surrounding acoustic reality in a different way. Not by fencing off certain parts of it, as Bennett does, but through simple yet very effective technical interventions, making it's appearance shift a bit or two. "When listening to field recordings, I am always surprised by the richness of it's acoustics. Vibrations echoe from various places, in mixed complexity, changing constantly over time. In some way, it looks like stratum. I would like to sharply cleave the stratum to see the surface of the crevice. This work shows the audibility of sound vibrations through an uncommon process. I tried to cut off the source (field recording) material using a gate device and sine-waves. In each track, specific sine-waves have been mixed with the source-material. In this work, I regard the sine-wave as the standard speed signal for the source. This has made any alternation within the audio signal detectable for the gate device. The linear audio signal (monoral) is cut horizontally into the advance direction, turning it into two signals. The amplitude of the alternating current has a separated + and - side, with 0 volt as base for the gate device. This split signal is simultaneously reproduced through the right- and left- channel of stereophonic audio equipment. Try mixing these 2 channels. The waveform is almost restored to it's original form, giving a peculiar result compared to the separated signal playback." [press release] | 2004 | €12.00 |
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| TUNNELS OF ĀH (TUNNELS OF AH) | The Smeared Cloth | do-CD | "The Smeared Cloth" is a double CD compilation containing the TUNNELS OF ĀH recordings from 2012-2018, which have not yet been published on any medium. The first disc is filled with compositions from the period before the debut in Cold Spring and outtakes from the sessions for "Thus Avici", the next album for the British label. The second disc contains tracks recorded during and between the sessions for "Surgical Fires" and "Charnel Transmissions". Although they were created as loose compositions, out of the concepts clearly outlined on each of the mentioned albums, they sound incredibly coherent, giving impression of being part of a concept release, this makes them a pleasure to listen to; especially when we get carried away in the world created by Stephen Ah Burroughs with the sounds characteristic of his work. Sometimes they evoke associations with ancient rituals, intensifying the impression of Egyptian darkness, the feeling of coldness and emptiness coming as if from a deep dungeon, and with them an echo. All this is a superstructure for the 21 tracks filling both discs, outlined and maintained, in a convention that allows them to be stylistically located somewhere between isolating dark ambient and death industrial, where the gloom aura and dense, mechanical structures coexist as if in symbiosis, thanks to which the balance between building the atmosphere and reflecting the true nature of the industrial collision. This release is undoubtedly a must-have for TOĀH fans, but it can also delight those who appreciate death industrial at a high level. The album's released on two CDs folded in a six-panel ecopack. Tracks 1-11 taken from "The Smeared Cloth" CD1 Tracks 12-21 taken from "The Smeared Cloth" CD2 https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/the-smeared-cloth-2012-2018-unearthed "In den frühen 80ern gründete Stephen R. Borroughs zusammen mit Justin Broadrick und Dave Cochrane das Trio HEAD of David, das einen der noisigsten Grundsteine dessen legte, das später Industrial Metal genannt werden sollte. Im Lauf der Jahre konzentrierte er sich mehr und mehr auf Soloprojekte, und neben Frag war dies seit etwas über zehn Jahren Tunnels of Āh, mit dem er einen Ritualkosmos von fast räudiger Abgründigkeit entstehen ließ. Dass Tunnels of Ah trotz der starken Abstraktion seiner ästhetischen Konzepte ein konsequent verfolgtes atmosphärisches Thema hat, wird bereits deutlich, wenn man die mittlerweile sechs Alben, die seit 2013 auf Cold Spring und zuletzt Hypershape erschienen sind, im Vergleich hört, denn da fallen die verbindenden Elemente sehr deutlich ins Auge. Mehr noch beeindruckt einen die musikalisches Stringenz angesichts der jüngst auf Tape und Doppel-CD erschienenen Compilation “The Smeared Cloth 2012 – 2018 Unearthed”, denn hier lassen frühe Stücke und Outtakes aus verschiedenen Albumsessions ein überraschend zusammenhängendes Bild entstehen. “The Smeared Cloth” ist nichts für Hörer, die Probleme mit Beklemmung, Dunkelheit und niederdrückender Schwere haben. Eine finstere, bedrohliche Stimmung zieht sich durch die oft kreisenden Soundgebilde, lassen durch ambiente Dröhnung, Saitenrasseln oder sirrende Streichersounds filmreife Phasen der Spannung und durch paukende und prasselnde Takte und plötzliche Schuttlawinen aufwühlende Momente entstehen, steigern sich vom subtilen Hauch eines – nur oberflächlich sanft wirkenden, in Wirklichkeit höllischen – Windes zu infernalischen Szenen von hochtönendem, schleifenden Lärm. Klangfarben von Stein und noch stärker Metall prägt das Gesamtbild, doch ist in gewissen Abständen auch immer die Illusion des Organischen spürbar, als würde das harte und kalte Material mit dürren Reiserbesen und ähnlichem traktiert. Auch die entmenschlichte menschliche Stimme ist gelegentlich zu hören, mal in Rezitation, mal als finsteres Growlen und Keifen, mal in Form eines sakralen Gesangs. Wenn man in den 20 Stücken die Kohärenz betont, sollte man hinzufügen, dass in ihnen natürlich auch Raum für Variation ist. Sollte ich einige herausragende Stücke betonen, dann wären es wahrscheinlich “Keys King At Womb Door Again”, in welchem sich ein anfangs kaum spürbares lykanthropisches Hecheln langsam zu etwas (noch) Monströse(re)m steigert – eine Entwicklung, die vielleicht etwas vorhersehbar ist, doch die urige Soundgestaltung, die durchweg an etwas Altes, seit Urzeiten Verschüttetes denken lässt, fällt weitaus stärker ins Gewicht. Ferner “Fountain of Life”, das nach gängigem Verständnis wohl eher wie das Gegenteil seines Titels klingt und an einen zerbrochenen Brunnen erinnert, dessen Wasser ein paar Erdklumpen mit sich reißt und am Ende im Schlamm versiegt. Nicht zuletzt auch der Titeltrack, dessen Spoken Word-Passage wie das Monument eines sinnlosen Aufwands vor infernalischer Kulisse am Ende von einer Schuttlawine geschluckt wird. Nach den über zwei dystopischen Stunden scheiden sich wahrscheinlich die Geister: Während die einen fürs erste genug gelitten haben, sind die anderen nun gewappnet für die regulären Alben des Projektes, und “The Smeared Cloth” gibt da tatsächlich einen großartigen Einblick in einen Kosmos, den ich allen empfehlen kann, die frühe Coil, alte Broken Flag-Releases und ausgewählte Death Industrial-Platten nebeneinander im Regal stehen haben." [African Paper] "Eager to get back into the Tunnels. Not long ago, I gave 'Deathless Mind' another spin, and I had been looking forward to some new material from Burroughs. Still.. two whole CDs, dearie me. I'm curious if I can make it through in one go. Also, it is not exactly 'new' material, but rather excerpts and unused tracks from two distinct periods: the first CD collects all discards from the Lost Corridors and Thus Avici era; the second contains material from the period between Surgical Fires and Charnel Transmissions - compiled into this 2,5-hour lasting tour de force. Me, oh my. Though branded as 'dark ambient' on Discogs, we've come to know Tunnels of Āh for industrial ambient landscapes and complex saturated loops and textures that range timbrally from (seemingly) acoustic in origin to overtly synthetic. Also, the 'loops' here should mostly be taken less literally; there are elements that seem to repeat, but for the most part, the chopped-up complexity of the textures ensures we won't have the typical 'looper' kind of experience in which repetition is often an easy way of tricking our brain into believing it is listening to something musical. On CD 1, many sounds seem to have acoustic sources, which is much more noticeable than on the more recent albums. We also seem to get a lot more vocal delivery than usual, making tracks like 'Brute World' and 'To the Pschal Victim' almost have an early Current 93 or 'ambient Test Dept kind' of ring to them. It is also completely dissimilar in many ways, e.g., production-wise, but for fans of those bands, these tracks may be the right point of entry into the Tunnels. The vocals are often mixed in quite deeply, so you won't be listening to poetry with a noisy background. With the choppy granulated ambient of 'Lost Corridors', a track that did not feature on the eponymous 2013 album, there seems to be somewhat of a 'natural' ending to the first part of the first CD. The subsequent ambient track 'Fountain Of Life' ramps the intensity again with its swirling vortex of delayed grit. Both 'Great Darkness' and 'The Cloth is Smeared' really stand out as two of the more memorable pieces. Disc 2 starts with the interesting combination of 'To the Paschal Victim' and 'Circumcision', which seem to be variations on the same bass riff/loop - though the latter track slides off into a murky bass swamp about halfway through. 'Red Distribution' and 'White Distribution' wrap this disc up in a manner that reminded me of Charnel Transmissions. There is a certain kind of dense lo-fi elegance to them, which also made me fall for that album when it first came out. I've said this before, and I'll repeat it: What I love about Tunnels Of Āh is that though it is clearly tarnished with the brush of industrial and perhaps even reminiscent of some noise - due to its complex textures, it never becomes too harsh or punishing, which given the length of most tracks may be a very deliberate choice either during mastering or in the composition process. Moreover, a wise one, since especially with a leviathan of this length, balance is a thing to aim for. Does it work as an album, though, or is this merely a release for us to be complete? Tough question. The first CD is consistent, albeit on the long side. With 77 minutes, it is about half an hour longer than any Tunnels release on average, and I definitely had to listen to the whole release in phases. That said, when it comes to textures and intensity, there seems to have been some thought put into the dynamic distribution of the tracks and though longer than usual, I would say both these discs work as stand-alone albums. Another keeper in a long line of excellent works from the Tunnels." [LdW / Vital Weekly] | 2023 | €17.00 |
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| The Charnel Working + The Klesha File | CD | TUNNELS OF AH. The famous EP "The Charnel Working" will be available on CD for the first time. Now expanded with additional, previously unpublished material from the "Klesha File" session. There are 10 compositions here, almost 70 minutes of ritual music, typical of the British artist's work.The dense atmosphere accompanying "The Charnel Working" is best described by a quote used by Stephen Ah Burroughs to describe the digital version, which leaves no doubt: "My charming ornaments are made from garlands of human skulls." says the Kāpālika, "I dwell in the cremation ground and eat my food from a human skull. I view the world alternately as separate from God (Īśvara) and one with Him, through the eyes that are made clear with the ointment of yoga... We offer oblations of human flesh mixed with brains, entrails and marrow. We break our fast by drinking liquor from the skull of a Brahmin. At that time the god Mahābhairava should be worshipped with offerings of awe-inspiring human sacrifices from whose severed throats blood flows in currents". CD edition in a six-panel ecopack. 'THE CHARNEL WORKING': RECORDED IN 2015 AS PART OF THE 'SURGICAL FIRES' SESSIONS. 'THE KLESHA FILE': RECORDED IN 2020 AS THE FOLLOW UP ALBUM TO 'CHARNEL TRANSMISSIONS'. REPLACED BY 'DEATHLESS MIND'. ALL TRACKS WRITTEN AND PRODUCED BY STEPHEN ĀH BURROUGHS AT THE CRACKED HIVE. https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/the-charnel-working-the-klesha-file | 2024 | €13.00 |
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| TWELVE THOUSAND DAYS | At the Landgate | maxi-CDR | Drei neue Studio-Stücke des kreativen “weird folk”-Projekts von MARTYN BATES und ALAN TRENCH...romantisch, poetisch, düster, folkig... auf einem neuen polnischen Label. “This is the latest missive from the otherworldly realm inhabited by Martyn Bates (Eyeless In Gaza) and Alan Trench (Orchis, Temple Music), the first since the splendid Devil In The Grain album and a taster for the forthcoming From the Walled Garden. Twelve Thousand Days have been playing live, and it shows; although this is a studio recording the sound is both immediate and delicate, with Bates’ sublime vocals shimmering over a cornucopia of plucked and blown instruments and ethereal guitars. Clocking in at vv minutes, this is more a mini album than an ep; the first track, Christmas and May is something of an epic, moving through several distinct parts while hallucinatory spoken word parts phase in and out, while the gorgeous title track soughs and sighs with the immensity of loss. The closer is the duos take on the trad I Once Loved A Lass, though with a dark and foreboding air of menace. The album is housed in a beautifully presented textured booklet with a front cover by Charles Altamont Doyle whilst the back is a detail from the frescoes depicting the descent of sinners into hell from the Rila monastery in Bulgaria, while pictures of Trench and Bates are on the inside pages. The numbered insert (also on textured stock) completes a package which beautifully complements the music., with the whole housed in a plastic wallet. Print throughout is full colour. The attention to detail on ths release is destined to make it an extremely desirable collectable.” [label description] | 2005 | €10.00 |
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| Insect Silence | CD | "MARTYN BATES (Eyeless In Gaza) & ALAN TRENCH (Orchis, Howling Larsons) return after a long hiatus with the fourth TWELVE THOUSAND DAYS album. From the opening “Death Went Fishing” (a free translation of “vgíke o cháros na psarépsei”, the classic rebetiko by Giannis Papaioannou) to the closing, haunting notes of “Red And Golden Fire”, the listener is taken on a journey made up of a thousand journeys, a thousand side trips, a thousand destinations, hinging around the sprawling central trip of “Pathless”, in which the ramifications of choices made swim into hazy view. The 13 tracks that make up “Insect Silence” are a concatenation of dulcimers, whistles, guitars, synths, disturbing digital background noise (“Night Harmonium”) and other instrumentation with slices of pure, aching melody echoing through strange darkened corners, all enlivened and enlit by the wondrous tones of Martyn Bates. MARTYN BATES is well-known for his brilliant long-time work with EYELESS IN GAZA, for his solo albums and for collaborations with MICK HARRIS and ANNE CLARK. ALAN TRENCH: co-founder of World Serpent Distribution and musician with brilliant projects/groups ORCHIS, HOWLING LARSONS, TEMPLE MUSIC." [label info] https://finalmuzik.bandcamp.com/album/twelve-thousand-days-insect-silence "It's been quite some time since Martyn Bates (Eyeless in Gaza) and Alan Trench (Temple Music, Orchis) have come together as Twelve Thousand Days. It's fair to say much water has passed under the bridge since their last album From The Walled Garden in 2006. Insect Silence follows a ditched compilation release with the same title scheduled for release a number of years back. Insect Silence continues with the folk based music provided by Alan Trench and fronted by the distinctive voice of Martyn Bates but Insect Silence more so than their previous albums doesn't dwell solely in folk music. It may be its starting point but Insect Silence differs with passages of psych guitar and its layering of synths and electronics, as well as in the ambient interludes which feature throughout and often open up the tracks way beyond its grounding in folk music. Lyrically Insect Silence is couched in an English familiarity and in the eternal themes of life, love and death. Just shy of 70 minutes it's a long winding path of 13 tracks involving a large assortment of instrumentation which are woven into a complex and intricate tapestry of sound. You will be surprised by the pathways Twelve Thousand Days roam on . Insect Silence opens to the spirited acoustic folk and percussive tambourine bashing of 'Death Went Fishing', outwitting death as it rushes onwards, weaving soaring psych guitars, which return throughout Insect Silence, as Bates implores that "he will return again". Its sets the scene for Insect Silence an album loosely based around folk music employing a rich multitude of instrumentation including guitars, dulcimers, harmonium, whistles as well as electronics. Twelve Thousand Days stretch the parameters of folk music with psych-guitar and ambient and instrumental interludes sprinkled throughout the 13 tracks. At times it likes listening to a Krautrock inspired psych-folk album with space rock leanings. In a good way, of course. Opening to an ambient interlude 'Mad As The Mist' is the first of three musical settings of the words of Irish poet W.B. Yeats. Dreamy folk guitars entwine twang and strum, as Bates in his pure folk tones recalls philosophers such as Plato, Homer, Tully and Cicero, swelling into another passage of soaring solo of psych guitar and back again to dreamy folk song. More restless psych-guitar features on 'A Coat'. There's more of an experimental edge to the Yeats setting here pitching Bates' strained (and occasionally treated) voice to the fore, embellished by the pluck of guitar notes augmented by glinting electronics, bass throb and a needling guitar casting vibrations of psychedelic proportions. 'Arrow', the final piece in the Yeats trilogy is starker and played more straightforward with the beautiful folk voice over ringing acoustic guitar and warm synth backing. Away from the Yeats tracks, a number of which Bates recorded with Troum in different musical forms, 'Errant Desires' moves to graceful ambience with flourishes of guitar notes. Bates' pure mournful tones add a sleepy lamentful melody, as faint electronics flicker behind the gentle flurry of guitar notes and assorted instrumentation. Beautifully atmospheric, it's one of my favourites on Insect Silence. Bates' voice is measured and melodic illuminating the sense of life passing in the evocative lyrics of rain falling, captured in our hands and gladly falling to the earth. More timeless folk arrives in the form of 'She Raises Her Eyes' where in captivating melodic tones Bates sings of a longing recalling long cold December months over duelling dulcimer chime. One of the more surprising tracks appearing in the first half of the album is 'Invoke Hecate' where over passages of whistle and rousing, beating strum, Twelve Thousand Days sounding not unlike Ostara invoke the Goddess of Witchcraft, through an assortment of occult techniques. Alan Trench in past endeavours has facilitated many musicians in the apocalyptic folk genre but this rare sojourn, even with it blistering psych solo, can still raise an eyebrow and something of a smirk. As mentioned earlier, Insect Silence is interspersed with instrumentals taking the music down alternate pathways, straying far off the beaten track. The first of these 'Night Harmonium' carries an air of arcane English mysticism with its loose folk stylings where strings chime and whistle billows merge over background synths and static clicks. The instrumental 'Old Ladies As Birds' is another brooding mystical moment where layers of whistles and flutes cast an age old melody over wheezing harmonium while loose guitar notes chime and ring out as distant electronics shudder underneath. While 'Old Ladies As Birds' is evocative of transforming souls and spirits, the jaunty folk offering of 'Fieldwork' is celebratory. Based on whistles and acoustic strum it comes across like a folk dance or Pagan procession. If 'Fieldwork' revels in a lost Englishness 'Descent' is dealing with nostalgia. A vintage crackling recording of 'See, The Conqu'ring Hero Comes' shrouds the descending organ scales of 'Descent'. Bates' voice is quiet, distant and softly murmured amidst the eerie disembodied voices of the choir as percussion rattles. You can almost picture the landscape on the pastoral 'Red and Golden Fire' another experimental offering mixing lulling electronics with whistles and flutes which closes the album. Insect Silence hinges around 'Pathless' an epic experimental 16-minute musical and lyrical journey which we all make on our travels through life. Set in the middle of the album it continues the theme first introduced on the opener 'Death Went Fishing'. With the huntsman at our heels, we try to outwit death to no avail. Travelling from ringing guitar with Bates' voice, wrapped in layered accompaniment, veering between passages of Krautrock electronics and wavering synths to psaltery, whistles and location recordings. All the elements of Insect Silence emanate from and come together on this track to great effect. As it flows together seamlessly it's difficult to pinpoint where 'Pathless Part I' ends and 'Pathless Part II' begins but it may be when a heartbeat bass pulses and acoustic guitars ring out and the spoken word of Lisa (I think this is Elizabeth S who features on releases from Eyeless In Gaza) surfaces amidst guitars and layers of spacey synths which lull, crash and wail, before Bates returns, to close this epic track in high registered tones. Insect Silence bustles with an immediacy, there's a sense of freshness of getting it all down on tape before the additional sound layers of instrumentation are added. Ambient, electronics, psych guitar, whistles, location recordings are all here embellishing the tracks making it intricate and complex. At the heart of it is an open-ended folk sound reflected in Bates' beautiful, distinctive voice which illuminate the timeless themes. Insect Silence is by far the best I've heard from Twelve Thousand Days and though the tracks are disparate there's an arching basis in folk music which traverses into other areas which holds it all together. As we said, Insect Silence is a journey, a pathway laid down just waiting for us to follow. Insect Silence is released digitally and on CD by Final Muzik in an edition of 500 copies. For more information go to Final Muzik and to download go to Final Muzik Bandcamp." [Compulsion Online] "Man neigt gerne dazu, Bands, die sich nur alle Schaltjahre oder seltener zu neuen Aktivitäten zusammentun, als klammheimlich aufgelöst zu betrachten, erst recht dann, wenn es sich dabei um noch anderweitig aktive Musiker handelt – so wie Sänger Martyn Bates mit Eyeless in Gaza und seinem Soloprojekt und Instrumentalist Alan Trench mit seinen Folk- und Psychedelic-Gruppen Temple Music, Orchis und Black Lesbian Fishermen. Nachdem mit ihrem Duo Twelve Thousand Days wahrscheinlich nur noch wenige gerechnet hätten, steht mit „Insect Silence“ nun ganz überraschend ein neues Album in den Regalen, das fast da anknüpft, wo die beiden vor gut zwölf Jahren mit „From the Walled Garden“ aufhörten. Fast, denn gerade bei Alan sind doch ein paar Spuren seiner neuen Arbeiten herauszuhören. Wie man es von früheren Aufnahmen her kennt, wechseln sich schmissige, fast frohsinnige Folksongs ab mit verträumt melancholischen Klageliedern und geheimnisvollen ambienten Soundscapes, und zusammen mit Bates’ unverkennbarer Stimme, die so klar und jugendlich wie eh und je klingt, kreiert die Musik ein verzaubertes Setting, das an ein langsam vor dem Auge verschwimmendes Jugenstilgemälde erinnert. „Death Went Fishing“ und „Invoce Hecate“ zählen zu den eingängigen Folkstücken, die mit feurigem Geschrammel und ekstatischen Rasseln nach vorn galoppieren – mystische oder makabre Töne schleichen sich über sanft gesungene Textzeilen in die Szenerie und bilden mit der harmonischen Musik eine heikle Mischung, und schon mit den allerorts spürbaren heidnischen Untertönen sind die Stücke vor jedem Indie- und Pop-Appeal gefeit. Impressionistische Tableaus wie „Mad as the Mist“, dessen anfangs noch ziellos umhertastendes Gitarrenspiel sich erst nach und nach zu einem anmutigen Stimmungsbild zusammensetzt, bilden einen Gegenpol dazu, ebenfalls das aus einer balladesken Märchenwelt herübergewehte „Old Ladies as Birds“ und das mit Knacken und Knistern leicht verfremdete Zwischenspiel „Night Harmonium“ – beide Stücke gewinnen noch an Charisma durch Alans berührendes Flötenspiel. In einigen dieser Tracks sind aber auch räudige Psych Rock-Elemente zuhören, die der Musik eine Kantigkeit verleihen, die in den klassischen Zeiten des englischen Folk nichts ungewöhnliches gewesen wären – zünftige E-Gitarrensoli und dröhnende Riffs, die die Folkmelodien, die sie spielen, gleichsam zerschreddern, als wären sie eine nationalhymne in Woodstock. Weder Eyeless in Gaza noch Orchis waren frei von solch rauen Beigaben, doch hier hat sich v.a. die Sprache jüngerer Temple Music in die Stilpalette geschlichen und gibt dem naturverbundenen Sound eine deutliche Prise Realismus. Es gäbe einiges, das sich in den einzelnen Songs hervorheben ließ, die anrührende Melodie in „Errant Desires“, die cinematischen Verfremdungseffekte in „Red and Golden Fire“ und der melierte Orgelsound in „Descent“, der in ein verwehtes Sample des Liedes „Hail the Conquering Hero!“ (im Deutschen die Melodie von „Tochter Zion, freue dich“) übergeht, sind nur einige davon, doch alles in allem funktioniert „Insect Silence“ am besten als zusammenhängendes Werk, das mit mehrmaligem Hören immer mehr zu verzaubern weiß." [U.S., African Paper] | 2018 | €13.00 |
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| TWIG HARPER | New Lost Knowns | LP | *Edition of 200 housed in silk screened jackets, white vinyl - One of our favourite labels, Planam, pulls out a real time-and-space bender from James Twig Harper, who's perhaps best known for his collaborations with Nate Young in Nautical Almanac and alongside Daniel Higgs for Thrill Jockey. Theres some genuine weirdness within, some of the strangest we've heard since Planam first gave birth to Pat Murano's Decimus series, but with a distinctly unique fidelity and gyroscopic dynamic that makes for a deliciously disorienting experience all of its own conception. There's an animalistic or perhaps even plant-like bio-logic to its devolved, dubbed-out arcana, a grunting, scraping, grubbing ecological complexity of sounds that grows, twists and bifurcates at seemingly haphazard junctions to catalyse chain reactions of constant change and multiple layers of surreality. The 2nd side in particular enters passages which sound almost like a primitive take on Florian Hecker's plonging, rubbery computer music or Rashad Becker's perplexing notional folk music." [Soundohm] "in the beginning of what exactly was this beginning that has remained one of the mysteries ever since? in this beginning the year might or might not be 2011 and the whole practice could still be in-process now (though we firmly reject the meaning of the meaning as an open forma s we consider it more a time-binding). it is doubtful if this sonic process would have ever evolved beyond the animal stage suspended as it is in a fragile balance between sounding familiar to the nervous system and unfamiliar and alien. this process is wholly dependant upon the integrity of the system and its necessary environment. an extermination program created by working multiple channels, reducing mixes, removing sections, adding segments, layering inversions under continual growths and constant changes, until we can no longer recognize the original source or process itself. a very limited unit of sound and image biologically activated to act as communicable dizziness existing in the past present and future when listening to it. let's turn it on. lp record and silkscreened sleeve are the access, your playback new "reality". edition of 200 copies which will turn your eyes and ears inside out, upward, backwards and in all directions." (label info) | 2013 | €21.50 |
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| TZESNE | Asimilacionismo | LP | "Twelve years separate the debut mini-album "Huffduff" from this solo LP titled "Asimilacionismo". Tzesne’s new vinyl is not a peaceful continuation of the last. Rather that being produced using drone-ambient techniques, his new work is atypical. Perhaps the easiness to find opportunities, or the hodgepodge of media used to register these intermediate materials, was the trigger to question where these methods occur and how to confront them by injecting some type of risk. This meant including a concept when composing, and opening a door to a game of possession-dispossession, implication and subjectivity; the one that has served to shape this story is the one named "assimilationism". All authors own tools and personal style are yielded to another authors, so that in turn the speech of the first one can be constructed. The result is the work itself, which emerges from a movement of resistance, widening as far as it is allowed to, considering the compositional margins, and reaching places where previous works have never ventured. But it is also possible to leave this information to one side and focus on listening alone, as it still holds the possibility to transform the place and the moment in which you are. Tzesne | "Asimilacionismo" seriesnegras | 2016 12” l white viny l 180 gr. 200 copies pressed Contents: 9 tracks Total duration: 39:18 Composed Amsia * Sounds Tzesne Recording & Mixing: 2014 - 2016 Mastering: Tzesne & Amsia Graphic: Jon Martín" www.seriesnegras.org, www.artoartian.org "Zweites Solo-Vinyl nach der Drone 7“ von 2005 überhaupt von diesem baskischen experimental Soundartist. Tzesne arbeitet fast immer mit (bearbeiteten) Fieldrecordings, bevorzugt solchen, die auf extra zu solchen Zwecken unternommenen Exkursionen aufgenommen wurden; als Verbindung mit dem Ort (der Aufnahme) oder bestimmten Handlungen, die dann das Thema der VÖ werden. Bzw. in abstrakt abstrahierter Weise an das Thema der Inspiration erinnern und so die Atmosphäre bestimmen. „Asimilacionismo“ führt genau diese Haltung fort und ist trotzdem ziemlich anders; geheimnisvoll, so dass es fast unbefriedigend ist, dass überhaupt keine weiteren Informationen vorliegen; auch über „Amsia“ nicht, der / die hinten auf dem Cover im Kleingedruckten Credits für Komposition bekommt (und Tzesne für „Sounds“). Neben dem Titel steht auf dem Cover vorn dann aber allein Tzesne… Wer soll das durchschauen? Was bleibt ist die Konzentration auf die Musik an sich, die auf „Asimilacionismo“ tatsächlich so erscheint wie eine Art von Erweiterung der undergründigen Soundpalette von Tzesne: Seite A dieser auf weisses Vinyl gepressten Platte, deren Labelartwork zusammen mit der Vinylfarbe diese Bezeichnung auch tatsächlich verdient, entwickelt ein zunehmend unruhiger werdendes Gespinst aus industriell anmutenden Loops, die über vier Etappen in ein immer elektronischeres Alter-Eho morphen, mit ebensolchen Sounds; definitiv neu im Hause Tzesne. Auch Seite 2 zeigt diese leichte Verschiebung der musikalischen Akzente, nutzt fünf Etappen, durch nahezu identifizierbare Fetzen von Gesprächen auf eine Art fast wie ein Hörspiel erscheinend, die jenseits von Fieldrecordings liegenden Elemente so etwas wie eine musikalische Grundierung, als Verstärkung der durch die Feldaufnahmen bestimmten Eindeutigkeit. Und am Ende das Finish in einem der für Tzesnes Ansatz typischen Multischicht-Fieldrecordings mit ihrer Vexiergestalt zwischen Versprechen und Auflösung (des Rätsels…). Sehr empfohlen, definitiv ganz oben / perfekt. Gerade auch, was Spannungsbogen und Dynamik betrifft. …wahrscheinlich am besten über den Artist selbst zu bekommen." [N / Black Magazin] | 2016 | €20.00 |
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| UBEBOET | Haereo | CD | "Madrid (and Cologne) based Miguel Angel Tolosa has a solid musical background both in electroacoustic & contemporary composition, and he’s also quite versed into sound engineering and producing techniques. Most of all, he’s the long operating figurehead behind the highly respectable Con-V label. His area of expertise is drones & field recordings tinted, and he has published works on many labels such as among others : Winds Measure Recordings, Non Visual Objects, Twenty Hertz, Drone Records… As a dedicated listener/explorer, his music displays a large textural palette, and is infused with that underlying beauty all around us… This album has been saved from loss and was initially to be released on Asher Tuil’s now defunct & missed Sourdine label. “haereo” speaks forlorn rainy tales or exhales morning urban springs… a sea of untranquility where small streams abound, like so many darker veins and obscure skin maps… Faint echoes exude from exhausted machinery, a mass of dying waves, a trail of stars pointing to nowhere, closed doors, and nocturnal flames in the distance, dead intrepid plants swaying in the wind… “haereo” is a flux of broken memories, something reached out for, brushed, something singularly mighty, which takes us beyond, deep at heart " [label info] www.mysterysea.net "Miguel Angel Tolosa works as Ubeboet since quite some time and has as such a number of releases, although the word 'overproduction' certainly doesn't apply to him. The cover says he worked on this from 2008 until 2012 and that he takes credit for electronics and field recordings; the latter being taped in Prague, Madrid, Lozoya valley area (Spain), Aguilar de Campoo area (Spain) and Serra San Bruno (Italy), while Ingar Zach plays bowed singing bowls on one piece. What's interesting to note is that in the first piece, 'Eaden', there are indeed quite some field recordings, but all of birds and insects, rather than what we are used to with this label, which is all things aquatic. In 'Umbrae' the microphone is thrown into the deep end and picks up signal below sea-level, along with Zach's bowed singing bowls. Below and above sea-level is where we find 'Sanatorium Rose', the final and longest piece on this release (which is about thirty-six minutes in total length), but there is also the motor-hum from a boat passing as drone music. In all three pieces we find Ubeboet's strong love of all things very dark. Much of the way he processes his sounds is to melt these field recordings by computer means and maybe all things analogue (either, or) and filter out much of the mid-high end until the darker rumble remains. In that way, Ubeboet surely has a strong own voice compared to his peers, which is a great thing and he shows it best in a release like this." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2014 | €13.00 |
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| UCHO / OKO | Qul Prad | Video-CDR | “Music to Adam Kossakowski's (OKO-Eye) pictures, or maybe pictures to Marek Rybicki/Rafal Dêtko¶ (UCHO-Ear) music. Old & new tracks, solo works & a fragment of only collaboration work with Solaris. Beautiful colours. CDR for PC computers only. Total time 40:40, stereo HiFi.” [Nefryt] | 2001 | €10.00 |
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| UGGERI, MATTEO & MOURNING DOVE | Does the Moon not Dream | CD | Elena Botts is American, lives in Washington DC. Matteo Uggeri is Italian, lives in Milan. When this album was conceived, in 2018, she was 22, he was 44. Three years after its conceiving, the album is now released in Spring 2021 by the historical ADN records (adnrecords.com), that since 1984 has published artists like Pascal Comelade, Merzbow, Pierre Bastien, Tasaday, Riccardo Sinigaglia, Cranioclast, Sigillum S, Christina Kubisch, Third Ear band and many others… Elena's works under her moniker Mourning Dove are primarily built on her voice and poems, Matteo's ones are usually instrumental releases in the so-called field of 'modern classical/experimental'. This joint album was made in an extremely spontaneous way, sending files across the Atlantic ocean: Elena recorded a set of spoken poems and three sung pieces, often outdoor, walking in streets and fields, and Matteo arranged them all grabbing mostly acoustic sounds often provided by his long time collaborators. Due to the strong and at the same time delicate timbre of Elena's voice, in spite of the relatively wide set of instruments, the album sounds minimal and rarefied, as a long gentle suite of sparse notes and occasional rhythms driven by female vocal chords. Mourning Dove (Elena Botts): lyrics, vocals. Matteo Uggeri: sounds, composing and mixing. My Dear Killer: acoustic and electric guitar. Andrea Serrapiglio: cello. Francesca Stella Riva: trombone. alessandro sesana: trumpet. Maurizio Abate: mandoloncello. Franz Krostopovic: piano and violin. Alberto Carozzi: electric guitar. Cristiano Lupo: bass. Made in Washington DC and Milan in summer 2019. Mastered by Marco Milanesio in January 2021. Photos by Elena Botts. Artwork by Matteo Uggeri. https://matteouggeri.bandcamp.com/album/does-the-moon-not-dream "Dass die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Matteo Uggeri und der Autorin Elena Botts alias Mourning Dove so spontan zustande gekommen ist wie es in den Liner Notes ihres gemeinsamen Albums “Does The Moon Not Dream” heißt, mag man sich kaum vorstellen. Meist sanfte Sounds verschiedener Umgebungen und Klangfarben, die bei genauerem Hören eine vielfältige Stimmungspalette entfalten, entspanntes Fingerpicking, stimmungsvolle Pianoparts und wehmütige Streicher, in ernsten Tönen vorgetragene Poesie und ein jazzig eingefärbter Sopran: All dies und einiges mehr fügt sich derart passgenau zum Narrativ eines musikalischen Hörspiels zusammen, dass man die dirigierende Hand einer alles im Griff habenden Personen vermutet. Umso schöner, wenn sich so etwas spontan ergibt. Die ruhige Gangart, mit der das Album startet, sollte nicht hinwegtäuschen über eine unterschwellige Aufgewühltheit, die nie ganz aus der Musik verschwindet und mit einem gewissen stoischen Charakter in den Dialog tritt. Im Opener, dessen Titel “Modular” bestens zu seinem kollagenhaften Charakter passt, gibt entspanntes, fast pastorales Gitarrenpicking den Hintergrund für den Sound zielgerichteter Schritte, für ein sanft leuchtendes Dröhnen, das bei genauerem Hinhören eher aufgeweckt als entspannt anmutet – und für eine fragile Stimme, die fast erschöpft eine Wahrnehmung beschreibt, die die so fragmetiert anmutet wie die Puzzelteile der Musik. Alles wirkt auf spröde Art organisch, auch der wie von einer alten Shellackplatte anmutende Sporan, der in “Ghosts of Sand” überleitet und diesem – entrückt, verschwommen und abgehoben im besten Sinne einen weitaus songhafteren Zug verleiht. Jeder der Tracks ist voller kleiner klanglicher und atmosphärischer Ideen: Auf Samples basierende Perkussion, die durch manche Stücke peitscht, mäandernde Sounds aus dem Fundus indischer Instrumente, glasklare Pianotupfer, Wind und quietschende Türen. Gedämpfte Bläser in “Bushwick”, Straßensounds in “An eleven Hour Sleep”, tropfendes Nass in dem berührenden “Mare Aperto” und “Bella Ciao“, von dem ich nicht sagen kann, ob es mehr als nur von Titel her auf das bekannte Partisanenlied bezug nimmt. Orientalisierende Gitarren in “Our Lady” von keinem geringeren als My Dear killer. Dann immer wieder die erschöpfte und doch resolute Rezitation. Viele dieser Details kehren in der einen oder anderen Abwandlung leitmotivisch wieder, und dies ist nur ein Grund, das Album als Ganzes, als gelungenes musikalisches Hörspiel zu rezipieren." [Uwe Schneider (African Paper)] | 2021 | €13.00 |
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| UHLIG, MIRKO | VIVMMI | LP | "As mummy thought us: you have to put your money where your mouth is. So when we claimed praise for a small CDR release by a relatively new German composer Mirko Uhlig we dabbled with the idea of releasing it on LP. Now we did. We doubled the edition of 65 to 130 and it has great carton sleeve (like last year's Pick-up LP). Since 2006 he has retreated to his nom de passport (formerly known as Aalfang mit Pferdekopf), Uhlig has exchanged the naive bewilderment of experimental bricolage with the pursuit of pure beauty and there is suddenly confusion as to his motives: Are these silent outbursts of refined romanticism intended as some sort of clever commentary on the Drone genre, as a neo-conservative return to proven values or part of something different altogether? 'VIVMMI' has been remastered for vinyl." [label info] www.kormplastics.nl | 2009 | €15.00 |
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| ULVER | Flowers of Evil | LP | "In the midst of the forest, the floor is littered with monstrous heads and mythical figures, frozen in torturous combat or threatened by wild beasts. A dragon fights a dog and a wolf. A lion sinks its teeth into the fire-breathing monster’s chest. This sacred grove, near Bomarzo in Lazio, Italy, reveals the nightmare vision of Vicino Orsini, a sixteenth century nobleman. It’s a forest of symbols, suggesting a civilisation overrun by the beasts, demons and monsters of the primordial world. Soon after Orsini’s death, trees began to close in on these many peculiar beings, and green moss would eventually seize them. Slowly, nature finished what he had started. Flowers of Evil, the new studio album from Ulver, finds the wolf pack exploring the fear and wonder of mankind’s fall from redemption. Visions similar to those of Orsini come to mind, as untamed life abounds: THEY SPREAD TWIST AND TURN IN THE KILLING FIELDS The threads of haunted places and images entwine. Have Ulver discovered new pastures under the sun? Or scoured the ruins of their own moonlit past? The truth is, they’re closer to their previous purlieu than perhaps ever before. “Doom dance”, someone dubbed their last studio album, the critically acclaimed, Impala Award-winning The Assassination of Julius Caesar (2017). Flowers of Evil comes across as an unfeigned progression along the course set by that album, revealing a band moving deeper into beats and grooves, hooks and choruses, synths and guitars, yet sounding more stripped back, making room for the distinctive detail. Once again Michael Rendall (The Orb) and legendary producer Martin “Youth” Glover have taken crystalline care of the mix. As Caesar demonstrated, Ulver haven’t abandoned any of their obsessions, worries or nightmares as they enter the gilded palace of pop. “One last dance / in this burning church”, Kristoffer Rygg announces on the album’s opening track, featuring old friend Christian Fennesz on guitar and electronics. It sees them locked inside their Hall of Mirrors. A slow build brings the music to the album’s pulsing theme: WE ARE WOLVES UNDER THE MOON THIS IS OUR SONG WE HAVE LOVED AND WE HAVE LOST WE ARE READY TO GO With Flowers of Evil Ulver have fled a burning Rome, only to confront further crime and corruption. ‘Russian Doll’, the album’s first single, moves determinedly through the night, with a story of unfolding tragedy and misery. ‘Machine Guns and Peacock Feathers’ brings fiery end-time imagery – “barrels are burning / great art will be destroyed” – with a disco beat and flashy ’80s synths. Dismal cries resound on ‘Hour of the Wolf’; echoing Bergman’s classic film, the song is dedicated to the hour between night and dawn, “when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are most real”. ‘Apocalypse 1993’ reveals Ulver at their catchiest, its bounding-goat groove running hand in hand with a grand chorus depicting the catastrophic events at Waco, Texas, during the winter of that year – the very same winter that saw the birth of Ulver’s first incarnation. From that thorny undergrowth, this is what they have become: an eclectic, many-headed beast, chanting the ecstasies of the spirit and the senses. Flowers of Evil unfolds with the shattering second single, ‘Little Boy’. A mysterious beat moves the track towards its thunderous climax, and here Michael J. York’s ominous pipes melt into the softer, moodier ‘Nostalgia’, a ’70s soul shuffle, and the heart-breaking Talk Talk-esque balladry of ‘A Thousand Cuts’. Finally, the wolves are back in the palace of excess, waltzing the night away. Yet around them, the wilderness rises, triumphant; “grass will grow over your cities”, as the Bible says. – Tore Engelsen Espedal https://ulver.bandcamp.com/album/flowers-of-evil | 2020 | €32.00 |
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| UMPIO | Acquired Tastes / Lost Tapes 2008-2011 | do-CD | UMPIO 2xCD collects "lost tapes". Couple tracks from rare and nearly impossible to get tapes, several tracks remained unreleased. Quite typical situation that after Freak Animal published Umpio "Muelas" CD, several flakey labels offered him deals for tape releases... that never came out. As enthusiastic noise maker, Umpio took the offers. Now, decade later Freak Animal fills the gaps with the missing parts in lineage of Umpio discography. Since then Umpio moved on to new ways of noise making, yet this "Acquired tastes" will be testament of junk noise era he is most known for. https://www.nhfastore.net/umpio-acquired-tastes?search=umpio | 2019 | €15.00 |
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| UN CADDIE RENVERSE DANS L'HERBE | The reversed supermarket trolley files towards the rainbow | CD | Neues Werk des Electronica-Projektes in unglaublicher Aufmachung (wie ein 3D-Kinderbuch mit Elementen zum Hochklappen) ! "This is a unique rare live recording of "Un Caddie Renversé dans l' Herbe" which took place at Iasmos, on Saturday, November 12th 2005 during the birthday party of Amaryllis. Enjoy the dreamy, surreal, avantgarde, ethnic sounds of Un Caddie mixed with sounds, toy instruments and songs the children perform. An unsusual & fascinating combination of laptop & traditional instruments as Balaphon, Mbira, Kalimba, Berimbau plus Piano, Cello, Guitar, Bass, Melodica, Chimes and more! The CD comes in an extremely special design and package which is folded like a cartoon picture toy-book and is limited to 388 hand-numbered copies..." [label info] | 2006 | €13.00 |
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| UNDER THE SNOW | The Background Noise | LP | "Under The Snow is a project by Stefano Gentile (guitar, objects, field-recordings) and Gianluca Favaron (microphones, field-recordings, processing). Stefano Gentile is well known for his work as owner of the Silentes and Amplexus labels; he is part of Maribor (along with Maurizio Bianchi, Nimh, Andrea Marutti and Gianluca Favaron) and in the past he has collaborated with Aube and Amir Baghiri. Beyond releasing under his own name, Gianluca Favaron collaborates with Ennio Mazzon on the Zbeen project; in the past he has released music as Ab'she and was part of Lasik Surgery along with Pierpaolo Zoppo. Released after a series of works for Silentes and U-Cover, "The Background Noise" is a single-sided 12" record, built starting from acoustic guitar sounds that develop on a background of statics and digital scoriae, where the cold and aseptic electronic frequencies melt with the plucked strings, resonating in a dramatic request for help or, maybe, in the warning of an imminent danger. A welcome release in the fast-growing discography of Under The Snow, that will appeal to fans of other Italian musicians like, among the others, Gianluca Becuzzi, Fabio Orsi, Enrico Coniglio, Stefano Pilia and Giuseppe Ielasi (who took care of the mastering). "The Background Noise" is released in a limited edition of 86 copies; an additional edition of 13 copies is also available, it includes a 30x30cm reproduction of the cover picture printed on high quality professional photo-paper. Due to the restricted amount of available copies you'd better not think twice about it!" [label info] http://13.silentes.it "As Under The Snow Favaron works with Stefano Gentile, who plays acoustic guitar and treated guitar picks, and Favaron is responsible for 'programming, electronics and signal processing'. They have released a bunch of CDs (see Vital Weekly 771, 786 and 826) of their improvised playing, in which the laptop picks up the guitar sound and treats that on the spot. Following a start in which the laptop seemed to prevail, the later releases had a more fine tuned balance of straight guitar sounds and laptop processing. This one sided LP has a twenty minute piece which continues the chosen road of the previous releases and shows us more crackles, static hiss and bangs on the guitar. Maybe a bit more chaotic than before, I thought, bringing out the element of improvisation more than on the previous releases. At the same time there is also a bit more drone like sounds, closing off the LP, and taking away some of the emptiness previously found in their music. I think it's great to see them slowly develop and become more and more like an improvised working unit. The combination of live laptop processing a live guitar is perhaps not something that hasn't been done before, as noted before, but again here, this seems to work rather well." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2013 | €16.00 |
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| UNIVERS ZERO | Ceux du Dehors | LP | "Third album (1981) by the Belgian band Univers Zero. The title alludes to the short story of the same name by H.P. Lovecraft; the players read the story in studio, then proceeded to record the piece. A key release for the band. Ceux du Dehors sometimes suggests a darker and more complex version of the motorik minimalism of classical music contemporaries Philip Glass and Steve Reich. This album finds the group continuing to evolve and return to the more general and varied chamber music sound of their first release, except with more precision and skill. The tricky charts of percussionist Daniel Denis and new keyboardist Andy Kirk are executed with great panache. The labyrinth-like compositions are typically filled with unexpected twists and turns, and angular repetitions of jagged riffs that accelerate, decelerate and mutate in passages of acute tension or quiet but ominous dread." [label info] | 2018 | €16.00 |
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| UNSONG | The frailty of angels, the treason of people | CD | Excellent debut release from this British project, silent but dense & eerie ambience with tension, a very own style... “Unsong (Mason Ball) is a project interested in producing stark, atypical and emotive audio regardless of logical progression, musicality or continuity. Unsong create rich, layered, instinctive sound works from the minimal to the extravagant, utilising a miscellaneous array of sources: electronically generated tones, processed field recordings, disassembled voices, domestic appliances, stolen sounds, chance; the list stretches on exponentially.The methodology employed by unsong is a simple one: proceed with what sounds right, abandon what doesn't, often producing broken and unintelligible sounds to engage, soothe, surprise and disorientate the listener. Unsong endeavours to fashion disordered audio for gleefully unsound minds. [label info] “ Dark, atmospheric music, that however doesn't tend towards something like dark ambient (with tons of digital synths), but more into the sound research areas of The Hafler Trio (circa How To Reform Mankind), Coil or Andrew Liles. One of the better pieces on this is the lenghty title piece, which is a slow beast moving onwards until a loop drops in and changes the slightly the atmosphere of the music. Sometimes the music falls below the point of hearing, but it always creeps back from under the carpet, right into your face. Scary music, this is. Music that could be easily used for some thriller film production. Very spooky but very well made. I am told that through the website of Unsong it is possible to order from each song a lenghty remix (one track per CDR), in case this wasn't enough... [FdW, Vital Weekly] Address: http://www.macrophonies.co.uk | 2002 | €13.00 |
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| UP-TIGHT | The Night is yours | CD | "Finally out this mighty masterpiece of dark and wild psychedelia from the Japanese three-piece legends! Fuzz and reverb drenched jamming sounds from the basements of Hamamatsu evoking the always welcomed ghosts of Amon Düül and Les Rallizes Denudes. Originally released as an instantly sold-out LP edition on Sloow Tapes in 2011, we decided to do justice and make The Night Is Yours available again, this time as a CD edition limited to 200 copies. Housed in our high quality tip-on mini-LP gatefold packaging (plus insert) featuring new sonic treatment by the mastermind Aoki Tomoyuki and expanded trippy artwork by Bart De Paepe!" “Tokyo psych monsters Up-Tight come out of the classically wasted/drug-damaged school of excessive fuzz and reverb, giving the nod to the endless jam style of Les Rallizes Denudes while spiking their sound with dark downer ballads that owe as much to The Jacks as they do to The Velvet Underground. The Night Is Yours is the absolute apex of their catalogue to date, crossing beautiful comedown folk-psych moves with whole sides of extended scorch. Indeed, there’s a new focus on psychedelic ritual here, especially apparent on the staggering “She’s So Heavy” with choirs of disembodied monks chanting in the background while the bass – played with all of the thunderous power of Mik from Kousokuya – marches the group ever forward and vocalist Tomoyuki hovers over the track like a wraith. If you can picture Spacemen 3 circa “The Perfect Prescription” produced by Ghost circa “Temple Stone” then you’re close to the outrageous levels of psychedelic excess captured here. Tomoyuki’s guitar tone has to be heard to be believed, with tactile garage punk crunch put to the service of endlessly euphoric orbits of three droning chords. Up-Tight have been responsible for a buncha the most memorable releases to come out of the post-PSF underground but this has to be their recorded pinnacle, the perfect balance of two chord Velvet downers and strung-out post-Rallizes string violence. One of our records of the year so far! Highly recommended!” (Volcanic Tongue) www.essence-music.com | 2014 | €15.50 |
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| V.A. (VARIOUS ARTISTS) (COMPILATIONS) | ARTIFICIAL MEMORY TRACE presents: Interpretations | CD-R | Interpretations of graphical works from AMT by: MAISON_MEDICALE, DALE LLOYD, KARKOWSKI, SECRET SOCIETY MUSIC, DAVID MC CARTHY, JEAN LUC GUIONNET, AIOFE MC GOVERN, NOISE-MAKER'S FIFES, and additional tracks by AMT, TBC, SKWI + Y.BUCHHEIM. Quite radical in approach & sounding, between extreme concrete microcospic field / soundobject recordings & instrumental use, electronic noises & drones, everything is possible... On Hamburgs "Wachsender Prozess"-Label ! | 2006 | €9.50 |
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| Guitars undressed | CD | Nackte Kühe auf’m Cover und Gitarren werden hier auch entkleidet... eine schöne Minimal / Microsound – Compilation mit Stücken von meist bekannteren Grössen, die wissen wie man Gitarren allerentrückteste Sounds entlockt: NAOAKI MIYAMOTO, OREN AMBARCHI, SHIFTS, DAVID GRUBBS, RICHARD YOUNGS, LEE RANALDO, RAFAEL TORAL.... “in my quest to bring you, the customer, the most osbscure items in a narrow range of out-sound tactics (amongs the greater scale: conceptual guitar-sound etudes) i came across this disc (well.. i bought a copy of this from rafael when he blew through town a few weeks back). lineup is something to die for in regards to contemporary out-guitar (sem)antics. most (bordering on all) pieces are extended, unreleased forays into the unknown far-reaches of space. especially nice outings from mr. ambarchi (possibly the last of the stacte variations, and one of the most engaging pieces in his entire gimundo oeuvre) and mr. toral (a 20+ minute bleep-epic verging on near-quietude). controlled coelacanth-removal radiation from mr. ranaldo (hazy scrunge-fest with much echoplexation). plus songs from mr. youngs (bright, acoustic folk-sounding ditty, mildly off-place here) and grubbs (well, more of a kind of restrained volume-pedal improv than a proper “song” per sé). and an ebow bit from franz de waard. first release on a fresh, young japanese label. all-star lineup. green grass and cows on the cover...” [Mimaroglu] | 2003 | €12.00 |
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| FRANNCE | 3 x CDR | Ausufernde Compilation auf dem DIY-Label aus Frankreich, wohl etwas ironisch als "Ode an France" untertitelt. 45 Projekte zwischen kraftvoller Drone-Psychedelia, wirbelnden Analog-Electronics & Instrumental-Madness, so ziemlich alles aus dem Bereich "Experimenteller / Impro Folk-Drone" was man sich nur vorstellen kann... "A quick look at the listing of groups on this super limited triple cd-r collection of songs from France, or about France, or with some sort of French angle, should have most weird music fans freaking out bigtime. All exclusive tracks from tons of AQ faves, including: The Shitty Listener, Quetzolcoatl, Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood, Silvester Anfang, Heavy Winged, Tom Carter, The North Sea, Taiga Remains, Ashtray Navigations, Uton, The Futurians, Mike Tamburo, Tanakh, Black Forest Black Sea, Ben Reynolds, Volcano The Bear, 6majik9, CJA, The Stumps, Gregg Kowalsky, Fursaxa, Seht, Valerio Cosi, Fabi Orsi, Birds Of Delay, Bjerga / Iverson, Robert Horton and more more more. 3+ hours of strange and magical sounds from all over the world, but all centered around France. From the ultra lo-fi barely audible pop genius of The Shitty Listener, the gorgeous mournful steel string Appalachian folk of The North Sea, the washed out murky drift of Quetzolcoatl, some super spare solo electric guitar drift from Tom Carter, a bit of haunting high end tribal buzz from Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood, some gorgeous shuffle and twang, slither and creep from Silvester Anfang, an epic druggy slowburning NZ-style krautrockish jam from The Stumps, some whispered crystalline shimmer from Fursaxa and we could go on and on. Varied and expansive, from folk to drone to noise to pound to swirl to buzz to twang... As with all RuralFaune stuff, meticulously packaged, each one hand assembled, three spray painted discs, rouge, blanc and bleu (the colors of the French flag), housed in a cool textured red and orange wallpaper cover, in a thick vinyl sleeve, with a sticker on the front. Inside is a huge fold out, 2 sided poster insert, with liner notes on one side and a painting on the other, as well as a bunch of other inserts, stickers, a tiny square of paper hand numbered and a "piece of blotting paper impregnated with red wine"! LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. We will NOT be able to get more..." [Aquarius Records] www.myspace.com/ruralfaunelovesyou | 2007 | €18.00 |
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| AIRPORT SYMPHONY | do-CD | Australische Compilation zum Thema "Erfahrungen des Reisens in moderner Zeit" mit Beiträgen v.a. aus dem Microsound und digital-ambience & drone Bereich. Jeder Musiker / Klangkünstler benutzte dabei Original-Aufnahmen vom Brisbaner Flughafen, das ganze kommt in einer Metallbox mit Banderole verpackt. "With David Grubbs, Richard Chartier, Francisco López, Camilla Hannan, Taylor Deupree, Christophe Charles, Dale Lloyd, Marc Behrens, Toshiya Tsunoda, Tim Hecker, Stephan Mathieu, Fennesz, Burkhard Beins, Jason Kahn, Ulrich Krieger, Keichi Sugimoto, Christopher Willits, Joel Stern. '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." [L. English, June 2007] | 2007 | €18.00 |
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| OEC 100 / THE OLD EUROPA CAFE | 7 x CD-Box | OLD EUROPA CAFE fing wie einige andere heute noch existierende Experimental-Labels (z.B. ANT-ZEN, KORM PLASTICS) in den 80er Jahren als Cassetten-Label an, um später auch Vinyl & CDs herauszugeben... Nun gibt es das Label von Mastermind RODOLFO PROTTI bereits seit 25 Jahren, und das wird mit dieser irren Compilation eindrucksvoll zum Ausdruck gebracht. 101 Stücke von Gruppen, Musikern & Projekten die irgendwie mit OLD EUROPA CAFE in Verbindung standen oder stehen sind hier verewigt, und das Thema soll sein: EUROPA. Von Post-Industrial über Harsh Noise, Dark Ambient und Neo-Folk, das Spektrum des Labels reicht sehr weit, die Wurzeln liegen aber ganz klar in geräuschvollen Industrialsounds.. "This compilation was planed during 2007 for the 25th OEC anniversary. For celebrate the label and all the work done over all those years 101 artists / groups / projects which was / are / will be involved with OEC was invited to submit an unreleased or anyway re-worked / exclusive track devoted to the theme : Europa ! Europe : from Portugal to Russia Europe : his history Europe : his culture Europe : his cities Europe : his beauty …. At last, a true Old Europe Cafe soundtrack .... Tracklisting / in Alfabetical Order : 1. A Challenge of Honour - Iberia 2. Aesthetic Meat Front – Twilight in Berlin 3. Ain Soph – Tra le Rovine 4. Albireon – Un Cavallo Senza Nome (Sonne Hagal’s Italian covered track) 5. Alessandro Pacciani – The Colour of the Human Ashes 6. All My Faith Lost … - Septembre 1871 7. Argine – Risveglio 8. Artefactum – The Night Waltz in Vienna 9. Asianova – Trieste 10. Astro - Old European Son 11. Autopsia & K.Rossmann – Fragment II 12. Bad Sector – Old Europa On Air 13. Beyond Sensory Experience - Fadren 14. Black Sun Productions – Gegen Verfuehrung / Grande Inno di Ringraziamento 15. Bleiburg – Europaean Heartbeat 16. Camerata Mediolanense - Guillotine 17. Circus Joy – Signora Europa 18. Claustrum – Penitential 19. Cristian Renou – U-Rop Impress (heavy version) 20. Cropcircle – The Balkan Doll will never Grow 21. D.B.P.I.T. – Lili Marlene 22. David E. Williams – Erlkönig 23. Dawn & Dusk Entwined – Occident 24. Dead Man’s Hill - Parc Abbey / The Heverlee Lakes 25. Deutsch Nepal – The Lonely Comming Down 26. Discordance – Jokela, Finland 27. Division S – Further Knowledge 28. Dogs Hate Monet - In This Dream 29. Dream Weapon Ritual – excerpt from The Mysteries Of E 30. Egida Aurea – L’Ardente Fiaccola della ragione 31. Folkstorm - United under a black sun of utmost splendour 32. Foreign Trade – With You 33. Foresta di Ferro – Europe Greets the Storm 34. Furvus – Evropa 35. Gerechtigkeits Liga – Controlled Europe 36. Grey Wolves – Decapitation Zone (Euro Carve Up) 37. GX Jupitter-Larsen – Norge Om Polybølge 38. H.E.R.R. – A Newer Rome (2007 Version) 39. Horologium – European Macht Muzik 40. Hybryds – Resistance (Old Europa Mix) with samplefood by Wejdas 41. 40.Jerome Deppe and Gentlemen Oscura – Song for Nero 42. K. Meizter – Prypiat 43. Kallabris – Holzweg , Scherzo for Scandinavian wood winds and tape manipulation 44. Kenji Siratori – Crusade 2007 45. Knifeladder – Warsaw , 4pm 46. Lark Blames – Small Cars 47. Lonsai Maikov & Dissonant Elephant – Occident : 111 48. Lt. Caramel – Estación de Princípe Pío 49. Macelleria Mobile di Mezzanotte- White Jazz (Excelsior Cafe Version) 50. Malato – EU 51. Mauro Guazzotti – Clockwork Europe 52. Moljebka Pulse – Avra 53. Musterion – Underneath Stockholm 54. MZ.412 - Overthrowing European Christianity 55. Naevus – The Petty Task 56. Nazi UFO Commander – Flying Dutchman 57. Ninth Desert – Oscript 58. Njurmannen - Music for an erotic TV show 59. Nocturne – Old Nocturne Cafe 60. Nordvargr - Facing the ghost of the past 61. Northgate – Brief 62. Ô Paradis – Contigo 63. Organisation Toth – Follow the L.ight O.V. .E.uropa 64. Pacific 231 – Mezquita 65. Peter Andresson – Kitchenscape 66. Post Contemporary Corporation – Il Martirio di Wagner (live attack !) 67. Rapoon – We Whisper Revolutions in the Cafe’s of Europe 68. Richard Ramirez – The Colours of Dark Clouds over Italy 69. Roma Amor – Der Treue Husar 70. Runes Order – In the Endless Regions of Europa (Hate IV) 71. S.Q.E. – Shards 72. Sacher Pelz – Pchearsezl 73. Sala Delle Colonne – Scilla e Cariddi 74. Second Amendment – The Stranger 75. Seelenblut – Sudden Light 76. Seelenlicht – Return to Summerisle 77. Selfishadows – Poison 78. Shining Vriel – Of Coin + Ruin 79. Siegmar Fricke - Euroceutik 2007 80. Simulacrum – Naturatum EU 81. Sleeping Pictures – Kiss the Dirt 82. Slogun - Palma:1986-2002 83. Space Alliance – Abduction of Europa 84. Spiritual Front – Funeral Blues 85. TAC - Sixth From Jupiter 86. Tam Quam Tabula Rasa – New Ropes Suffocate my Hopes (Rendhagyò Olasz Dallam) 87. Tears of Othila – Up our Banners ! (Special Old Europa version) 88. Teatro Satanico – Veneto Industrial in Europa 89. The Lindberg Baby – No Promises 90. The Soil Bleed Black - Thou Art Mine 91. Thomas Nola et Son Orchestre – Mother’s Ruin 92. Tribe of a Circle - Demokratür - Final Act 93. Troum / Asianova / Voice of Eye – Dream for a New Europa (Re-Entry Edit) 94. Ventral Metaphor – Lost in Pordenone 95. Vestigial – Substorm’s Curtains 96. Voice of Eye – Inside the Breath of the Adriatic 97. Vox Populi! – Soft entrance to nature’s camino de luz 98. Wermut – Maladia Europa II 99. Wertham – Which Way Western Man 100. Wheian – Europa 101. XX Century Zorro – Phelin Phelix Cover art-work features reproductions of oil paintings by : Mass Inc. As you can see this will be a true Mammoth compilation ! We didn't put limits to the sound stiles , so here you can really hear all the sounds of the Industrial sub-culture featured on OEC ! A BIG document on OEC work ... A BIG thank you to all the artists who was walking with OEC !!! A BIG thank you to all who was supporting OEC for such a long time !!!" [label info] www.oldeuropacafe.com | 2008 | €38.00 |
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| ELECTRIC LIGHT (COLUMN ONE REMIXES) | CD | "Schon die zweite Compilation auf dem neuen COLUMN ONE – Label “90% Wasser”, “Electric Light” beinhaltet Remixe von Material ihrer CD/picLP “Electric Pleasure”, von ihnen selbst sind alleine 5 Stücke dabei! Herausgekommen sind dabei v.a. Minimal-elektronisches, -technoides und –obskur-surreales, dekonstruktierte SoundWelten.." [Drone Records notes 2002] ”Here comes the long-awaited remix album following Column One's critically acclaimed electro milestone "Electric Pleasure" about which The Wire wrote it was "breathtaking in its thoroughness". Electric Light features remixes by: Column One | Silk Saw | Frieder Butzmann | Marc Wannabe | Mimetic Fake | Rechenzentrum | Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg | CoeUR y NaGL | Afanassi Viebeg | M.O.W.E.”. [press-release] | 2001 | €13.50 |
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| This Infernal Love of Life | CD | Wiederveröffentlichung einer schwedischen Compilation-LP von 1989 mit ELD-OMALA (symphonisch-apokalyptische Sounds), WHITE STAINS (experimenteller Ritual-Folk, waren eng mit PSYCHIC TV & TOPY verbandelt), PHAUSS (lebendiger Infinity-Drone / Noise), Z. KARKOWSKI (schon damals kaum zu beschreibender undurchdringlicher Komplex- & Amorph Noise voller innerer Bewegung) Thema der Compilation war der "Wille zum Leben", das Feiern der Lebenskräfte, eine entsprechend rituelle & kraftvolle Zusammenstellung ist es geworden... ein sehr lohnenswerter Re-Release, neues Cover, Auflage 500 Stück. "A visionary showcase of Sweden's finest artists, paying tribute to the mighty currents of LIFE within us all. This album was originally released as an LP by TOPYSCAN in Stockholm in 1989, in a limited, hand-numbered edition. Included was a booklet with texts, artwork and photographs by the artists. The idea, if any, was to invite artists working with sound and experimental music to illustrate the philosophical, emotional concept of the "will to live". Eld-Omala and White Stains were based in Stockholm, Phauss and Karkowski in Gothenburg. One could say that this album presents a pretty correct picture of what was going on musically in Sweden at the time. Digitally remastered by Thomas Tibert in 2006, the album comes with new cover,first time in digital format." [label info] www.monochromevision.ru | 2008 | €13.00 |
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| ERRATUM # 4, Revue Sonore | 3 x CD | "Poetry of sound / sound of poetry. Erratum brings together personalities both atypical and unclassifiable : outriders, stalkers, survivors of the sonic crash zone, those transgressing the strictures and clichés of unimaginative sound habits. Visual and sonic artists, bards, iconoclastic noise makers come together to create a subtle, hybrid, ever-changing, disseminated collective sonic psyche. From the time of Marcel Duchamp's Musical Erratum and Luigi Russolo's Art of Noises in 1913 to the latterday recuperation of software bugs, hardware crashes, along with the eclectic array of contemporary poetical noise praxis, there is a rich, complex and poorly understood history. Erratum's aim is not so much to associate poetry and music as to seek out their potential to merge : the crossovers, the openings, the interzones, meetings and fault lines, the ineffable yet tangible open fusion, that blends the different vibrations of voice, noise and electronics. Erratum weaves a lively and diagonal concretion, an alternative to restrictive and mechanical technological visions and it stands out as a realm of a possible Utopia of the indivisible that leads towards active questioning. with : AGF Pierre André Arcand Llorenç Barber Stéphane Bérard Xavier Boussiron Raoul Beckman Christophe Charles Henning Christiansen Chlorgeschlecht Ira Cohen Doc. Courbe Jacques Demarcq Le Dépeupleur Fréderic Dumond Yvan Etienne EHB Vincent Epplay Joana Preiss Arno Fabre Giovanni Fontana Michel Giroud Guillermo G.Peña Guillermo Galindo Tommi Grönlund Petteri Nisunen Charles E.Henry Gary Hill Joël Hubaut José Iges Jil Keita Christina Kubisch Brandon LaBelle laboiteblanche David Larcher Rainier Lericolais Francisco López Robin Minard Joachim Montessuis Phill Niblock Julien Ottavi Charles Pennequin Finnbogi Pétursson Cédric Pigot Jörg Piringer Lee Ranaldo Jean Philippe Roux Erik Samakh Samon Takahashi Atau Tanaka Alexandre Yterce Randy H.Yau" [label info] www.erratum.org | 2004 | €26.00 |
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| Offstrings | LP | "Some guitar players immerse themselves in their instrument's rich and varied traditions, while others exploit innovations of technique and technology to find new expressive possibilities. But regardless of whether they celebrate or subvert its iconic status, they're gilding an aura that makes it ripe for use and abuse as a Duchampian found object. The five guitarists on Offstrings come to the instrument from both sides of the altar. While they can play like virtuosos, recontextualize familiar sounds, or come up with new ones, they know that these are means, not ends. They wield all of the sound-producing and conceptual qualities inherent in the Guitar to play the chords of human experience. They offer you a chance to listen. Various artists featuring new work from Chicago musicians: David Daniell (San Agustin, Rhys Chaham, Daniel-McComb Duo), Mark Shippy (Shorty, US Maple), Travis Bird (Leavitt Ours, Dense Reduction) & Daniel Burke (Illusion of Safety, Cheer-Accident, Tertium Quid), Michael Vallera (Sinkane). 180 gram colored vinyl with download coupon." [label info] "Its been a while since we last had a new release on Complacency Records, primarily the label of Illusion Of Safety, but here is a compilation that deals with guitarists from the Chicago area. Five artists, of which two form a duo, Travis Bird and Daniel Burke (of Illusion Of Safety), while the other three are new to me: David Daniell, Mark Shippy and Michael Vallera. The guitar is still a machine to play music on, which can be basically anything, from nicely played string to abstract drone patterns. This album seems to be dealing with the latter. The three pieces on side, Bird/Burke (who have two pieces) and Vallera are both great examples of the guitar as a resonating box of sounds, and no doubt sound effects. The second of the two Bird/Burke pieces is a more improvised one and works a bit less but all together they are great pieces though. David Daniell opens up on side B and here it starts with the tinkling of guitars, which are gradually being pick up by various loop devices and the result is a desolate piece of music. Mark Shippy's piece uses also the same idea of tinkling guitars, but are drenched in reverb and is the weakest link on an otherwise fine compilation." [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2010 | €18.50 |
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| Compilation Festival Electronica en Abril * 2003-2012 | do-LP BOX | "To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Festival Electronica en Abril, born in 2003 at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, La Casa Encendida has invited some of the artists that have left their personal mark on the event, right now the oldest music festival in Madrid. All of them have contributed exclusive tracks to this 2LP that provide an insight into the quality and diversity of the festival. These are ten exclusive tracks that research a very specific sound quality (Eleh, Radian, nsi.), take introspective journeys (Thomas Körner, Maja Ratkje) and summon deep rhythmic collisions (Farben aka Jan Jelinek, Dopplereffekt, Elektro Guzzi, Matmos, SND). All of them seem to share a desire for experimentation that encompasses the emotional as a response to a general state of things that hits us with an overdose of data and experimentation. Matmos' track was composed playing around with a friend's new synthesizer. Eleh added field recordings to his usual microscopic sound aesthetic for the first time. Thomas Körner composed this intimate and melancholic piece for his grandmother, and Maja Ratkje goes deep into an alien ambient lullaby of ravishing simplicity and beauty. Farben deconstructs rhythm to build it up again as a pure ecstatic house beat. Nsi., the project of Tobias Freund and Max Loderbauer embark on an abyssal expedition to the far reaches of sound. Dopplereffekt melt their retro-futurist electro into crystalline emotions. Elektro Guzzi, always recording live, without overdubs, was helped in the studio by Patrick Pulsinger, taking the bullet train directly to the heart of their amazing analog techno, where guitar, bass and drums truly count. And SND (Mark Fell and Matt Steel) ride on an oblique and funked-up carousel of their own making, where rhythm and math surf together. And finally, Farben goes deep into glorious house-not-house." [label info] | 2012 | €29.50 |
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| 70 Years of Sunshine | do-CD | "In 1943 a Swiss chemist accidentally absorbed through his finger-tips a tiny amount of a compound he was researching. Later, he recorded the effects in a journal - a document of the world's very first LSD trip: 'Last Friday, April 16,1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.' - Dr. Albert Hofmann - Sandoz Lab Report. 50 years later, in 1993 (the height of the Rave scene in San Francisco) Silent Records released a very special double CD set, curated and produced by Kim Cascone. This was no ordinary release - it was a stellar collection of music from artists paying homage to Albert Hofmann's very first LSD trip. '50 Years of Sunshine received many positive reviews and was praised for being a welcome tribute to the man who changed 20th century human consciousness with a single molecule. The musical homage to Hofmann struck a chord with the public, serving as a reminder to keep the doors of perception open and the creative imagination nourished. Given the bleak times we find ourselves in today, Cascone felt that another tribute to Herr Hofmann was in order. To celebrate the 70th anniversary of the first LSD trip, a batch of etheric lysergic soundscapes were contributed to this project by Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mother's Temple, Robert Wheeler of Pere Ubu, Legendary Pink Dots, Andrew Liles (Nurse With Wound), Andy Rantzen (Pelican Daughter's), various artists from the Silent label and some newer sound artists as well. Consider '70 Years of Sunshine' to be a muchanticipated software update. One that will hopefully make your auditory operating system run smoother and more colorfully. With Kawabata Makoto, Lord Tang, Chihei Hatakeyama, Makyo, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Legendary Pink Dots, Ethernet, Invisible Path, Phil Legard, Andrew Liles, Rapoon, Komora A, (Darius Ciuta), Mike Rooke, Lonely Crowd, Mystical Sun, Mirt, Ceremonial Dagger, Cotton Ferox, Andy Rantzen." [label info] www.monotyperecords.com | 2013 | €16.00 |
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DRONE-MIND // MIND-DRONE Vol. 3
(SOLD OUT) |
LP | the NEW LP-series from Drone Records, dedicated to the Drones of the World, and the Drones of our Minds. A kind of continuation of the Drone 7"-series on a more user-friendly format. Each LP features four artists from the international drone-scene and is limited to 500 copies, pressed on four different vinyl-colours. Vol. 3: JIM HAYNES (USA), MANINKARI (France), KSHATRIY (Russia), EXIT IN GREY (Russia). stunning artwork paintings by British artist PETE GREENING, design by TILMANN BENNINGHAUS. JIM HAYNES: psychogeographical drones of rust and decay. This highly interesting sound-artist from San Francisco (also active as painter, label-manager, & writer) is focused on the unpredictable processes of rust & decay in connection with the perception of time. For his contribution "He stopped at a picture..." to the re-newed Drone Rec-series he is using field recordings from a world war 2 era radar outpost (located near the Golden Gate Bridge), combined with shortwave, motors, wire-tapping microphones, analogue electric sounds.. => a breathtaking experimental & raw drone-collage, full of tension & almost dramatic suction, sound of " psychic loss & american paranoia" (JIM HAYNES). EXIT IN GREY: timeless natural drones. The main project of Russian Sergey [S] from the Moscow-area (who is also active as FIVE ELEMENTS MUSIC & SISTER LOOLOMIE) is mesmerizing the listeners since years with small & handmade editions of emotional daydream-drones, intuitively woven together with guitar, field recordings & analog synths. The long piece "Drawn by Memory/The Wind 2012" is a perfect example of his skills and creates with minimal instrumental & natural sound-sources an atmosphere of timelessness and nostalgia.. KSHATRIY : dark psychedelic (higher?) consciousness drones KSHATRIY means 'warrior' in Sanskrit and expresses the artists believe in the universal power of sound. Hailing from the fascinating St. Petersburg scene in Russia comes this "fractal dark drone ambient' project, especially focused on cosmic/transpersonal consciousness themes - these "Shifting Waves" sound secretful & mysterious with a phantastic spatial sound-quality (open to both digital & analogue sound sources) for the perfect cosmic mind-movie. MANINKARI : handplayed / instrumental trance drones. This French duo (consisting of two twin-brothers from Paris) has blown us away with their captivating "handplayed" instrumental drone music, with influences from various styles like Jazz, Art Rock and Classical Music, combining improvisation and composition. Often based on percussion & strings, they look at their sound as a spiritual tool causing a disorder of the mind, a 'visible' transformation of the uncontrollable dreams & their own subsconscious. The two pieces "Enstase 1 & 2" sound at the same time subtle, airy and dense using a suprising instrumentation, and show impressively one of the possible new directions of drone music. = four projects that differ considerably from each other, but united through the idea of the power of the Drone. ~ ~ The drones of their minds "materialized" ~ ~ The "intelligence" of drones materialized ~ ~ four vinyl-colours, each 125 x: WHITE & GREEN MIXED // BLACK // MIXED YELLOW RED // CHRYSTAL CLEAR & WHITE MIXED. design by Tilmann Benninghaus (Berlin) using bronce-colour & UV gloss Mastered by Sergey Uak-Kib http://kshatriy.pro/ | 2013 | €15.00 | ||
| Wieza Cisnien II | CD | " „Wieża Ciśnień 2” is a continuation of the first volume of the same title, which was released in 2010 under the auspices of CKiS Gallery "Tower". In a sense these two albums summarize nearly ten years of activity of the Gallery associated with the presentation of works of sound artists / musicians looking for innovative forms of creative articulation (individual performances, auditory part of three edition of Permutacje festival – curator: Roman Bromboszcz, three editions of Restytucje retrospective - curator Marcin Olejniczak) . The common denominator for both sets of tracks is the space where we held meetings of creators, recipients and sounds. The difference between these records refers to the aesthetic coherence of the recordings: in the first case repertoire diversity (or even eclecticism) was shown; in the second case, the selection of recordings belongs with the idea of Restytucje related to the accentuation and rehabilitation of sounds that are not typically treated as music. An additional advantage of the compilation is the fact that all the tracks on the album (both live and studio) have not been previously released. The compilation includes tracks by the following artists: Zenial, Sumpf, Demonszy, Monopium, Sambar, Bachorze, KaLeka, X-NAVI:ET, TER, Micromelancolié i Mirt. The album is released in a 2-panel ecopak with a 4-page booklet in a strictly limited edition of 500 copies. The cover is by Tomek Mirt. It is mastered by Robert Skrzyński (Micromelancolié/ForrrestDrones)." [label info] www.zoharum.com | 2015 | €12.00 |
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| NEW SONGS OF THE HUMPBACK WHALE | CD | New Songs of the Humpback Whale is a comprehensive investigation into the form and meaning of whale song with graphic visualizations from infographic designer Michael Deal. Liner notes and song selection by artist, scientist, author, and philosopher David Rothenberg. What album was so important that ten million copies of it needed to be pressed at once? Songs of the Humpback Whale, which National Geographic included with every copy of its January 1979 issue, distributed in 25 languages. No human pop star has ever received such magnanimous treatment, so what is it that is so special about the song of the humpback whale? Well, for one, humans knew nothing of this fabulous sound until the US Navy released its classified recordings at the end of the 1960s, at the very moment the world was most poised to listen to the unknown, the psychedelic, and the trippiest of sounds. Humpback whale song fit the bill perfectly. From high wails to deep growls to rhythmic scratches to tearful moans, it encompasses the full range of emotions in the longest song performed by any animal, a tune that can go on for nearly 24 hours at a time. The stereotypical long moan of whale song is only one note in a complex composition, with distinct phrases, repetition, structure, organization, shape, and form akin to many kinds of human music. This is no random outburst of cries and whispers, but a song with power, verve, identity, and design. New Songs of the Humpback Whale aims to gather the best recordings since 1990 by scientists and whale-listeners the globe over, offering a chance to assess what has happened to whale song since 1979. Infographic designer Michael Deal has designed colorful glyphs based on sonograms familiar to sound scientists, making the structure of this grand underwater music easier to understand than ever before. Though humpback whale song did not evolve for humans to appreciate, it may be no accident that humans do. Upon hearing the great song for the first time, whale scientist Roger Payne said he heard the size of the ocean, "as if I had walked into a dark cave to hear wave after wave of echoes cascading back from the darkness beyond ... That's what whales do, give the ocean its voice." Includes recordings by made by Salvatore Cerchio near Madagascar in 1990, Olivier Adam near Madagascar in 2007, Glenn Edney near Tonga in 2008, and David Rothenberg near Maui in 2007 and 2010. Track Listing: Disc 1 01. Madagascar Whale One (recorded by Salvatore Cerchio, 1990) 10:08 listen 02. Madagascar Whale Two (recorded by Olivier Adam, 2007) 10:28 listen 03. Tonga Whales (recorded by Glenn Edney, 2008) 09:45 listen 04. Maui Whale One (recorded by David Rothenberg, 2007) 11:40 listen 05. Maui Whale Two (recorded by David Rothenberg, 2010) 08:01 listen 06. Madagascar Whale Lower, Faster (recorded by Olivier Adam, 2007) 05:11 listen - Recordings of humpback whale song from 1990-2010, with graphic visualizations from infographic designer Michael Deal. - From high wails to deep growls to rhythmic scratches to tearful moans, humpback whale song encompasses the full range of emotions in the longest song performed by any animal (up to nearly 24 hours long); the stereotypical long moan of whale song is only one note in a complex composition, with distinct phrases, repetition, structure, organization, shape, and form akin to many kinds of human music. - A follow-up of sorts to National Geographic's Songs of the Humpback Whale, which it pressed in an edition of ten million and included with every copy of its January 1979 issue, distributed in 25 languages. - Liner notes and song selection by artist, scientist, author, and philosopher David Rothenberg. www.importantrecords.com | 2015 | €15.00 |
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| Dark Ambient Radio Volume 3 | CD | "This compilation lets you know what it is right up front, and in some ways it flows together like a good radio show should. If you didn't know it was a compilation, it would be easy to think that it was the work of the same artist for several tracks. I had not heard of any of these artists, so I was interested to see what this group had to offer. Aspectee, Nepenthe, and Valerio Orlandini open the disc with three tracks respectively of nice spacey ambient. Mortaja mixes it up a bit with some ritualistic chanting. Crepuscular throws down some crunchy ambient with the feel of tectonic plates shifting. Myth Industries and Sjellos also departs from the space ambient feel with slow waves of rattling and light drumming. Sjellos takes on his own track with some drums that I didn't really expect to kick in, but it worked. Then he goes back to the comfort of droning ambiance. Winterbound provides the base for your next Halloween mix ' this has a nice horror movie soundtrack feel to it. Mytrip finishes us off with 'Small Humyn,' which has a nice heaviness to it. There is a feeling of pressure and depth, like the thick drone that you might find in the inside of a beehive. For me this was one of the standout tracks on this disc. Overall this was interesting dark ambient and it was curated well. If you want to hear some new blood in the dark ambient scene, this is one to pick up. This compilation is limited to 500 copies and weighs in at around 72 minutes." [Chain DLK] www.darkambientradio.de | 2013 | €13.00 |
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| Thousands of Eyes in the Dark | LP | "For two decades, Ghostly International has functioned at the joints of genre, distinctly connecting many, demarcated by none. Among the more curious throughlines in the label's stylistic architecture is its use of the tag SMM. Launched discreetly in 2003, the undefined acronym has designated calm, slow-moving music that straddles the synthetic/organic divide in surprising ways. 2011 compilation SMM: Context pieced together landscapes imagined by the likes of Leyland Kirby and Christina Vantzou. 2013 follow-up SMM: Opiate proposed the evocative possibilities of sound with artists such as Noveller and A Winged Victory for the Sullen. The letters have since emphasized releases ranging from harpist Mary Lattimore to synthesist Steve Hauschildt. In 2019, alongside the label's 20-year milestone, Ghostly extends Thousands of Eyes in the Dark, a collection celebrating international talent with an outward gaze. Ten original works of contemporary melodic and incidental electronics — fragments, moods, vignettes — sequenced as one continuous suite, a pairing of personal expression with wide angle vision. Submissions stretch far beyond Ghostly’s roster and roots. Tracing the tracklist on a map, we begin in the Netherlands with Suzanne Kraft operating under his SK U Kno alias. Stabs of guitar mingle with washes of restless sound design on “Cut and Faze,” a gripping, asymmetric opener. Pan over to Los Angeles next, where emerging modular synth practitioner Emily Sprague patches “Mesa,” lightly coiling the tonal hymn skyward. The third track, “This Was Us,” belongs to Berlin-based Dutch-Italian composer Aimée Portioli aka Grand River. She says the tender, strolling piece references the dissolution of a relationship and was improvised on a Yamaha DX7 following a night with friends; “I just sat with the instrument and started to play. I kind of needed a moment to myself.” Back in Ann Arbor, Ghostly’s first home, label mainstay Tadd Mullinix renders an oscillating study of sensations titled as a nod to the film Woman in the Dunes. In his words: “I was inspired by the beautiful imagery and mood of the film which conveys, very sensually, passion as a consolation for life's looming impasse of bondage and drudgery.” Closing side A is Canadian composer Sarah Davachi, who drafted her cathedral-filling drone for Mellotron and Hammond organ. She explains, “The title is multivalent: taken in the middle ages from Latin origins, a Sybil was a sort of pagan fortune teller; in recent history, it refers to a psychiatric disposition to feel away from oneself.” The entry point to Side B hazily stirs and crackles in the care of Orcas, the collaboration between veterans Rafael Anton Irisarri (The Sight Below) and Thomas Meluch (Benoit Pioulard). They cite a lineage of classic ambient inspirations: Mark Hollis, Pieter Nooten & Michael Brook, Fennesz & David Sylvian. Vancouver producer and recent signee Dylan Khotin-Foote provides one of the series’ sweetest moments yet, “Angel Epicenter,” his signature dream-like climes anchored by a steady pulse. Immediately following is its twangiest, “Shepherd Canyon” by Saariselka, the meditations of Oakland, California composers Marielle Jakobsons (Fender Rhodes, organ, synthesizers) and Chuck Johnson (pedal steel guitar and treatments). That pastoral terrain is left to linger a moment before into turning to concrete, courtesy of Manchester duo Space Afrika, known for their vast, disintegrating urban dubscapes. Thousands of Eyes in the Dark finishes its first cycle in Japan, as producer and field recordist Yosi Horikawa leads listeners through a lush forest of sound, outlining every step with melancholic piano phrasings, inching into the sublime. Designed for repeat play-through, these ten tracks from some of the world’s finest sound artists double as a worthy metaphor for Ghostly’s 20-year run with SMM: a discerning set keeping us engrossed and guessing." https://ghostly.bandcamp.com/album/thousands-of-eyes-in-the-dark | 2019 | €20.00 |
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| Bookwar Records - Famous Lathe Cuts | LP | "This collection of tracks has been gathered from the original masters of the extremely limited 7" lathe cut editions produced by Bookwar over the past few years. Features some of the best and most obscure Russian Post-Industrial / Noise / Experimental / Post-Punk music from: Cisfinitum, YAO 91404 D, Grazhdanskaya Oborona, Dao De Noize, Post-Materialists, Obozdur, Ivan Bookwar, Electro-Haram, ADMI, Mount/Ant, Pichismo, Junkmeat, and more. Ltd x 100 copies in a j-card cover." | 2017 | €18.00 |
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DRONE-MIND // MIND-DRONE Vol. 8: AUME, K. ISHIGAMI, HIROSHIMABEND, BALDRUIN
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LP | Four "Drones" on one record! Volume EIGHT (MIND-08) is OUT NOW (11/2021) feat.: KAZUYA ISHIGAMI ҉ AUME ҉ HIROSHIMABEND ҉ BALDRUIN Drone on! We're finally back with a more 'pulsative' and post industrial-influenced issue, presenting the following artists: KAZUYA ISHIGAMI (*1972 / Osaka / Japan) is a prolific composer, engineer, sound designer and performer active for many years (also under the name DARUIN), with broadcasts of his works around the globe. His track 'Clean2020' works on the theme of 'memories" and is based on the idea to accept and acknowledge even the painful memories to reach a state of ease and to transform the subjective past... AUME is the duo of SCOT JENERIK (23five Inc. / Mobilization Records) and ALEPH OMEGA (ex CHROME), from the US west coast, both also active in F-SPACE before, creating stunning audio-visual 'immersion dark ambience" with true archaic energy.. HIROSHIMABEND (aka 'puppy38') hails from Austin, Texas but has been based in Vienna for many years now, and has impressed with many long-form works in the field of electronic / esoteric emanations, mostly self-released via Opiumdenpluto. He is also active as a visual and mastering artist...- "Listening to the music of hiroshimabend has been likened to swimming in a milky lake of black ink." BALDRUIN is a German project with a very electronic and musical edge. His pieces appear to be like excursions into a (bad) fairy-tale world.. - "well constructed cosmic ambient-scapes with a dark psychedelic / cinematic / surrealistic touch; when strange voices, subtle percussion and whistling noises enter the scenery.." Let your MIND be surrounded by adventurous sonic landscapes - organic repetitions as coming from a ghostly otherworld, oriental field recordings, layers of pipe organ-like drones, mysterious electric ether-potentials etc..- "Vier feine Synapsenputzer machen einem mal wieder so manches klar.." [Bad Alchemy} cover-art & mastering by puppy38 using two paintings by British artist PETE GREENING https://www.saatchiart.com/Pete_G Edition of 400 copies on VELVET PURPLE (solid purple and solid red mixed) coloured VINYL. listen: soundcloud.com/drone-records order: www.dronerecords.de basic concept: DRONE-MIND // MIND-DRONE - Volume 8 LP The series shows the various sides of today's experimental drone-music This LP-series from Drone Records is dedicated to the Drones of the World, and the Drones of our Minds. A kind of continuation of the Drone 7"-series, with artwork based on paintings by British artist PETE GREENING. Drone Music is seen as more than a mere 'music style', it expresses an approach to perceive and understand the world. DRONE-MIND and MIND-DRONE build a circle of diverse inter-relations. The Drone as a metaphor for everything that vibrates, that releases energy - from atoms and elementary particles to the hum of the earth and the universe. The Drone as an entity that connects everthing that exists within our own "mind-space", perception and self. ######################################### "Würden Drone Records den Begriff, der von Beginn an so etwas wie ihr Motto werden sollte, enger fassen, dann wäre ihre Reihe “Drone-Mind // Mind-Drone” wahrscheinlich auf viel weniger Interesse gestoßen und vielleicht sogar eine kurzweilige Angelegenheit geblieben. Stattdessen setzte das Bremer Label von Beginn an auf eine Idee des Drone, die, wie es in einer früheren Besprechung bereits zitiert wurde, pars-pro-toto für verschiedene Arten der Vibration und der Freisetzung von Energie im buchstäblichen wie im übertragenen Sinne stand. Und so sind auch auf dem gerade erschienenen achten Teil der Reihe wieder vier Geheimtipps aus drei Kontinenten vertreten, die die Dröhnung als eine Art verbindendes Element gemeinsam haben, diese jedoch in ganz unterschiedlichem Maß und auf unterschiedliche Art mit anderen Aspekten verknüpfen. Bereits in der Ankündigung hieß es, dass die neue LP pulsierender ausfallen und Einflüsse des Post-Industrial aufweisen sollte, und den Opener “Clean2020″ des aus Osaka stammenden Sound Designers Kazuya Ishigami kann man da bereits exemplarisch anführen. Der Track, der sich mit dem Thema (auch schmerzhafter) Erinnerugen und ihrer Akzeptanz befasst, entwift ein über zwölf Minuten langes, ansatzweise episodisches Narrativ, das mit Samples und zahlreichen Effekten ein veränderliches Stimmungsbild entwirft. Das an Zikaden (vielleicht nicht nur) erinnernde Zirpen zu Beginn zieht sich durch weite Teile des Stücks, lässt ein durchaus angenehmes Alltagskolorit entstehen, doch ein zwiespältiges Gemisch anderer Sounds – mechanisch anmutendes Klappern, beklemmende Hochtöner, Vögel, das Dudeln einer versteckten Melodie – kommt hinzu, und da die eizelnen Sequenzen in ihrer Dauer und Veränderlichkeit kaum vorhersehbar wirken, ist eine der zentralen Stimmungskomponenten Spannung. Ein ähnlich veränderliches Soundpanorama entwirft das amerikanische Duo Aume – namentlich Scot Jenerik und Aleph Omega aus dem F-Space-Umfeld. Ihr Beitrag wirft die auditiven Antennen mit rauem Knarren in die Mitte eines Geschehens, dessen Richtung man in den Sprachsamples und dem industriellen Hantieren zunächst noch nicht ausmachen kann. Während es unablässig reibt und schabt und knackt und ein unterschwelliges Dröhnen immer mehr anschwillt und irgendwann den ganzen Raum ausfüllt, treiben die Stimmen einen merkwürdigen Schabernack, scheinen wie Schafe zu blöken, bis alles in Kriegsgeschrei mündet. Doch in der zweiten Hälfte bekommt der Track noch einmal eine überraschende Wendung und prescht mit monoton-rhythmischer Perkussion dem Horizont entgegen. Insgesamt ist die zweite Seite um einiges “schöngeistiger”. “Puppy38″ des in Wien lebenden Amerikaners Hiroshimabend beginnt mit entrückten Orgelsounds, in die sich ein undefinierbares Summen mischt. Just wenn sich eine hypnotische Wirkung einstellt, setzt eine eindringliche Melodie ein und entführt den entsprechend angefixten auf einen Trip durch einen imaginären Raum voll mit plastischen, knisternden, vibrierenden Sounds und etwas, das wie menschlicher Atem klingt. Hier scheint jede Raumwahrnehmung (bzw. Projektion) so unsicher, das sich kaum sagen lässt, ob die so entrückt anmutenden Sounds nicht doch der Sog eines abgründigen Höllenschlundes sein könnte. Rituelles Pochen holt den Hörer zurück auf vertrauten Boden, wo ein beruhigender Abspann erfolgt. Baldruin ist das Projekt des deutschen Künstlers Johannes Schebler, der auch musikalisch – sowohl solo als auch mit seiner Band Diamantener Oberhof – sehr umtriebig ist. Seine drei etwas kürzeren Track offenbaren eine Schlagseite in Richtung Psychedelic und World Music eine weitere Facette offenbaren. Fast wie eine perfekte Miniatur führt das mit mollastigen Bläsersounds (einer Duduk?) beginnende “Die Katakomben von Tesco Libra” mit entspannten Handdrums zu einem kleinen Höhepunkt hin, kein Ton ist hier zu viel. Elektronischer und von einer gefahrvollen Spannung durchzogen mutet “Verstecken” an. Die schöne Loungemelodie, die einen mit Lärm, basslastigem Knarren, fiesen Hochtönern und Stimmen gefüllten Raum in einen Traum aus Plastik verwandelt, reizt fast zu einem NWW-Vergleich. Das abschließende “Klima und Psyche” dagegen zeigt Baldruin hier von seiner folkigsten Seite und lässt die Sammlung mit tremolierenden Bläsern, Saitenpicking und klapperden Handdrums in wehmütiger Heiterkeit – falls es so etwas gibt – ausklingen. Es scheint, als würde dem Phänomen Drone vielerorts eine große Ausschließlichkeit angedichtet: Musik ist entweder Drone oder nicht, und wenn, dann ist sie nur dies. Tatsächlich aber kann Drone sehr unterschiedliches bedeuten und in sehr unterschiedlicher Musik eine Rolle spielen – eine Rolle, die keineswegs an Bedeutung einbüßt, wenn sie ein Aspekt unter mehreren ist. Drone kann den Aufbau einer Musik gestalten, ihre Materialität prägen, eine Musik hypnotischer machen und ihr Rückgrad verleihen, und immer besteht eine starke Wechselbeziehung zwischen dem Dröhnen und dem suchenden, repziperenden und interpretierenden Geist. Dies unter der Formel “Drone-Mind // Mind-Drone” zu vereinen, ist auch beim achten Teil ein starkes Argument gegen alle, die behaupten, Drone hätte sich über die Jahre totgedröhnt." [U.S. / African Paper] | 2021 | €16.00 |
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| TIME ENDS - A Tribute to J.G. Ballard's Tetralogy of Transformation (special ed.) | do-LP / CD | Desiderii Marginis, Troum, Martin Bladh & Karolina Urbaniak and Anemone Tube have gathered to pay homage to the first four novels of British writer J.G. Ballard: The Wind From Nowhere, The Drowned World, The Drought and The Crystal World, which are often seen as disaster novels. Each of the four projects presents a very unique take on the chosen work, using the respective text as a starting point to offer sonic representations of and (further) perspectives on these books, using drones, field recordings, words and much more to create evocative and richly layered soundscapes. Adorned by a painting of German artist Alex Tennigkeit depicting a sphinx-like hybrid creature, a phoenix rising from the ashes of our civilization, the double album also includes an in-depth essay by Michael Göttert (African Paper) on Ballard's works in which he argues that the novels can best be understood as texts of transformation, as well as texts by the sound artists. The double album starts with Desiderii Marginis' track “The Wind From Nowhere”, on which field recordings and intense drones suck the listener into a stormy vortex. Troum interpret The Drowned World, and their two dynamic tracks illustrate both the changes happening to the (outer) landscape and the (inner) world of the protagonists. Martin Bladh & Karolina Urbaniak make use of sound and words on “The Poisoned Well”, their interpretation of The Drought, referring to Shakespeare, the Bible and scorched earth policy amongst other points of reference. The album closes with Anemone Tube's take on The Crystal World, using field recordings made in Japan’s Mount Fuji forest. “Sea Of Trees” aims to show a devolutionary process, in which man gains access to his actual spiritual home – a primordial wisdom, which lets him discover an internal non-dual space, allowing to ultimately becoming one with the earth as body-being consciousness – the ‘perfect dream’ landscape. Format CD | Double LP & download | Playtime: 79:27 min CD Edition CD in oversize 148x148mm sleeve including postcards & foldout poster, limited to 140 copies. Regular Edition Regular edition double LP in sci-fi neon yellow vinyl limited to 250 copies. Special Edition Special edition double LP & CD set limited to 150 copies including A2 poster signed and hand-numbered by artist Alex Tennigkeit. | 2022 | €36.00 |
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| Visions of Darkness II ( (In Iranian Contemporary Music ) | do-CD | When the anthology "Visions Of Darkness (In Iranian Contemporary Music)" was released in 2017 (co-published in collaboration between Cold Spring and Unexplained Sounds Group), it was immediately clear that the Iranian music scene was not just promising, but already a rich chest of treasures. Years later we have further confirmation of the creative excellence and variety of musical languages that flourished in the Persian land. In spite of the title, this second volume of the legendary anthology also gives us a broad picture of the musical experience of the Iranian underground that is not limited to the dark ambient, but explores sonic territories that reach concrete music, electroacoustic experimentation and sonic abstractionism. Persia, the cradle of a millenary culture, is teeming with young talents who continue their musical research with enthusiasm, pride and self-denial in the territories of drone music, as in electronic experimentalism and in the contamination of genres. To some familiar names already present in volume I (Xerxes The Dark, IDFT, Reza Solatipour, etc ..), new discoveries are added that contribute to making the journey through the new Persian music exciting to the point that we can no longer speak of an emerging scene, but of a consolidated musical reality akin to others in the West. Presented in a double digipak. https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/visions-of-darkness-volume-ii-csr316cd | 2022 | €17.50 |
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| Ode to MARCO VERONESI | CD | "A compilation dedicated to the late Marco Veronesi, who founded the ADN label, in the 80's with Alberto Crosta, Piero Bielli and Rudy Pavesi. Without ADN and Marco the Italian / International experimental scene would have been much less important and relevant than it was, including releasing the very first Sigillum S LP, "Boudoir Philosophy" and introducing thousands of people to endless examples of gorgeous noise and industrial provocation. This compilation features a number of artists who were fundamental in the development of ADN during the 1980's: Angelo Avogardi, Bene Gesserit, Cellula Ascolto Attivo, Christina Kubisch, DDAA, Francesco Paladino, La 1919, La STPO, Merzbow, Ralf Wehowsky, Riccardo Sinigaglia, Sigillum S, T.A.C., Tasaday, The Motor Totemist Guild. Ltd x 300 copies in poster cover." https://adnrecords.com/album/vv-aa-ode-to-marco-veronesi/ "Marco Veronesi was one of the founders of the Italian underground ADN label, who passed away in 2013 after a lengthy illness. This compilation (a limited edition of 300 copies) features various outtakes by a number of artists who were fundamental in the development of ADN during the 1980s. The set opens with “An Elegy” by the experimental electronic ensemble T.A.C. (Tomografia Assiale Computerizzata), an eerie five-minute piece featuring haunting wordless female voice backed by multi-layered pulsating and incidental electronics and metal percussion. Riccardo Sinigaglia offers “Magik,” a piece of haunting Middle Eastern exotica where Sinigaglia plays all the instrumentation (an experimental cauldron of strings, percussion, winds, and electronics) with beautiful wordless vocalizations by Lilli Coda. Jumping forward a bit, we have “Fetides Humbert et Jacques” by La STPO, the typical craziness one might expect from this French band, a mix of spoken parts, odd vocalizations, mallet and metal percussion, saxes, and low growling bass with strange electronic sounds in play that, all taken, really sounds like nothing else. Following up on that we have “Black Phoebe” by the Motor Totemist Guild sans Grigsby, an odd and quirky chamber-rock piece for flute, piano, trombone, and percusion. Italian duo Sigillum S guides us forward with “Happiness in the Kooky Cracks among Dimensions,” beginning as an airy and peaceful keyboard piece with much added ambience, adding many strange electronic embellishments as it goes toward an almost frightening end. Jumping forward again, La 1919’s offering “Hcabial” approaches near symphonic proportions using layered keyboards, electric guitar, and percussive loops, all twisted up in a stew of musical madness. Jumping further forward, Merzbow offers a pulsating electronic rhythm overlaid with mega-blasts of snarly grating noise with “Mix 05.23.” The set closes with “Japa(n)chinko” by Cellula Ascolto Attivo, a nine-minute piece mixing industrial sounds and field recordings with voices, loops, odd instrumentation, and more. There are fifteen tracks in all, I’ve only detailed about half of what’s here, but if one appreciates challenging and experimental musical styles of all kinds, then you can’t go wrong with this one! The CD is packaged in a huge poster that folds down to roughly the size of the disc." [Expose] | 2014 | €13.00 |
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| Sintomas de Techno: Ondas Electronicas Subterraneas Desde Peru | LP | Síntomas de techno : Ondas electrónicas subterráneas desde Perú (1985-1991) Symptoms of techno: Underground electronic waves from Peru (1985-1991) This compilation presents for the first time various underground techno groups and projects that emerged in Lima in the mid-1980s. Projects such as Disidentes, Paisaje Electrónico, T de Cobre, Meine Katze Und Ich, El Sueño de Alí, Cuerpos del Deseo, Círculo Interior, Ensamble and Reacción were responsible for introducing styles such as techno-pop, EBM, industrial and minimal synth in Peru. Coinciding with the explosion of punk in Lima and the appearance of the so-called Rock Subterráneo [underground rock], these techno groups shared the same DIY spirit, performing in many punk concerts and even creating their own fanzines, and, above all, opening a space for other types of sonic experiences. Meine Katze Und Ich, El Sueño de Alí and Paisaje Electrónico were also the parallel projects of the members of Narcosis, the iconic punk band, one of the founders of Rock Subterráneo. Disidentes and T de Cobre brought extreme sounds to local electronics: viscerality, mechanical rhythms and the use of Casiotones or synthesizers, which resulted in an atypical sound that, in turn, portrayed a critical time in Peru, and which has made them an unavoidable reference for any historical account of techno and industrial music in Latin America. The title of this compilation is inspired by the name of a concert held in Lima in 1991, considered to be the first techno concert to have taken place in Peru. Even though not all intervening groups were doing techno at that time, they did share the fact that they all used keyboards. Four of them, however (Cuerpos del Deseo, Ensamble, Círculo Interior and Reacción), were in fact affiliated to an electronic sound (techno-pop, EBM). The concert was a sign of the diversification of musical styles in Lima's alternative scene, and in particular of the emergence of a micro scene, for which the concert Síntomas de techno [Symptoms of Techno] represented an important step towards the development of a local culture of electronic music during the 90s. Many of the recordings included here are extracted from demos with limited circulation, practically impossible to find. Other tracks are unpublished pieces which come from the private archives of the artists themselves. The compilation has been made by Luis Alvarado and is part of the Essential Sounds Collection, with which Buh Records is making available a vast archive of avant-garde Peruvian music. This compilation is published in vinyl format in a limited edition of 300 copies, with extensive information and visual documentation. Mastered by Alberto Cendra. Art by René Sánchez. Cover photography by Rogelio Martell. This project was awarded with funding from the Economic Stimuli program of the Peruvian Ministry of Culture. Limited edition of 500 copies, booklet with extensive information in spanish and english, and visual documentation https://buhrecords.bandcamp.com/album/s-ntomas-de-techno-ondas-electr-nicas-subterr-neas-desde-per-1985-1991-essential-sounds-collection | 2022 | €25.00 |
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| Музыкальное Приношение (Musical Offering) | CD | listen: https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/musical-offering-csr326cd Available on CD (or any other format) for the first time outside USSR, five Soviet composers perform their works on the legendary ANS synthesizer. Recorded in 1971, "MUSICAL OFFERING" is 6 tracks (42 mins) of experiments on the unique machine by: Eduard Artemiev (2 tracks), Oleg Buloshkin, Sofia Gubaidulina, Edison Denisov, and Alfred Schnittke. "MUSICAL OFFERING" demonstrates a 'musical' machine unlike any other and has long fascinated cutting edge, modern electronic composers, notably COIL and THE ANTI GROUP COMMUNICATIONS (TAGC) / CLOCK DVA, that have both released recordings utilising the ANS. Try to imagine a score sounding by itself without a conductor; an orchestra without musical instruments. This magic is possible by using the musical ANS synthesizer. Created by Soviet scientist Evgeny Murzin over the course of 20 years, ANS is an instrument with which a composer can not only create but also draw their music without notes. You can see the twinkling of different lamps, the rotation of grooved glass discs... The drawings on the glass are 'sounding notes'. To listen to the drawn picture, press the button and a wonderful transformation will begin. Inside the ANS are five rotating glass discs with 144 tones printed (by hand) on each one. Light is projected through the discs and onto photovoltaic cellbank which converts the light into electricity and sends signals to the ANS's amplifiers and bandpass filters. The ANS can generate 720 tones this way and, unlike a human musician, play them all at the same time. Murzin dedicated his photoelectronic apparatus to Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin, hence the name ANS. Scriabin, the creator of the 'Poem of Ecstasy', and a famous explorer of synesthesia, used in his works a highly chromatic, new type of harmonic style designed to express his beliefs, views and wishes. Soviet music lovers will already know recordings made on ANS from Tarkovsky's films Solaris, The Mirror, and Stalker, Konchalovsky's film Siberiade, and others. Presented in a digipak with the new artwork by Abby Helasdottir (who also created the compelling promo video), complimenting the ANS process perfectly. Officially licensed from Russian state label Melodiya. Watch promo video (YouTube): bit.ly/Musical-Offering Copyright © – ВТПО "Фирма Мелодия" (Melodiya) All-Union Recording Studio. Recorded in 1971. Recording supervised by Юрий Богданов Mastered by Martin Bowes at The Cage Track listing: 1. OLEG BULOSHKIN - \'Sacrament\' (3:32) 2. SOFIA GUBAIDULINA - \'Vivente-Non Vivente (Alive And Dead)\' (10:44) 3. EDUARD ARTEMIEV - \'Mosaic\' (4:05) 4. EDUARD ARTEMIEV - \'Twelve Looks At The World Of Sound\' (12:53) 5. EDISON DENISOV - \'Birds\' Singing\' (5:04) 6. ALFRED SCHNITTKE - \'Stream\' (5:57) ###################### "A new batch of Cold Spring CDs, and I must say... At least with one of them, they stole my mathematic sound nerdish heart. "Musical Offering" is a sampler with Russian composers using the ANS, probably entirely up to its limits. Two tracks by Eduard Artemiev and one track each by Oleg Buloshkin, Sofia Gubaidulina, Edison Denisov and Alfred Schnittke. I only knew about Artemiev on this list because of his movie soundtracks. So to hear his work without a movie and, of course, images of empty landscapes, a brutalist-themed forgotten society and demise and a void enter my head, but fair is fair: all images were in colour. Nothing bleak or grey but the richness of the ANS is all over the place. So for those who don't know what an ANS is all about, it's a Russian synthesizer designed over 20 years by Evgeny Murzin, and there is only one. It works with drawings on glass plates and devices that transform light into voltages, and those voltages create sounds. The glass discs spin, and well ... Wiki / YouTube is your friend here. Many artists have worked with the ANS, including Coil, The Anti Group Communications. Yes, [law-rah] also used original sounds from the ANS on their split with Cisfinitum (released on Fario). Maybe working on that release is the reason why I have a personal weakness for this machine. I just couldn't get over how rich the sounds were that we got to use. Sure: A completely different thing than Coil being in the museum and drawing on the discs and us 'just' working with some recordings one of the museum guys did for us. Yet still ... I was impressed then, and I'm still impressed now. For this disc, I am keeping the review smallish. Why? Because you already know if you are a) interested in neo-classical compositions by Russian composers. If you are, you will get this release and not be disappointed. It's as simple as that. If you are b) a nerd who loves different forms of synthesis like me, this album is one to consider. Because it's very varied and shows a lot of the ANS in 'its original environment': Russian composers on a Russian synth, and if you are c) curious about composition techniques, this will break your mind. Because from the ritualistic rhythmic parts in "Sacrament" (by Buloshkin), the 'voices' in "Vivente-Non Vivente" (by Artemiev) and the birds and frogs in "Birds Singing" (by Denisov), can you tell what is the origin of the sound? Is it a bird? Is it a recording? Or is it super ANS? For me, it's not one of those reasons to love this album, and it's d) all of the above." [BW / Vital Weekly] | 2023 | €15.00 |
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| DAIS223 (DAIS X RETROSPECT) COMPILATION | MC + Portable Cassette Player | Dais Records, das in LA/NYC ansässige Label, das klanglich ausdrucksstarke und visuell dynamische Künstler vertritt, ist mit dem analogen Innovator und Produktdesignstudio Retrospekt eine Kooperation eingegangen. Das Vermächtnis und die Tradition von Dais passen hervorragend zum Leitbild von Retrospekt: "Wiederbelebung von Retro-Tech für eine neue Generation". Das Ergebnis ihrer ersten Zusammenarbeit ist ein schickes, weißes, limitiertes Exemplar des tragbaren Kassettenspielers CP-81 von Retrospekt, das eine exklusive 19-Track-Kompilationskassette mit unveröffentlichtem Material aus den Reihen des Labels mit dem Titel DAIS223 enthält. Nathaniel Young, Kreativdesigner bei Dais, hat die Standardpräsentation des CP-81 sowohl für den Player als auch für die Verpackung neu gestaltet. Die weiße Dais-Edition des Kassettenspielers wird in einer weißen Schachtel mit schwarzem Text verpackt, zusammen mit einem Satz weißer Dais-Kopfhörer und dem C23-Compilation-Tape. Das Gerät verfügt über alle wichtigen Funktionen eines Kassettenspielers: Abspielen, Vorspulen, Zurückspulen, Aufnehmen und wird mit einem verstellbaren Dais-Kopfhörer geliefert. Der Dais x Retrospekt Kassettenspieler ist auf 1000 Stück limitiert - die Kassette wird nicht separat verkauft. Zu den Funktionen gehören: Wiedergabe, schneller Vorlauf, Rücklauf, Aufnahme, Mikrofonbuchse, Kopfhörerbuchse, Typ-C-USB-Stromversorgung, Batteriebetrieb möglich Enthalten sind: Tragbarer Kassettenspieler, C23-Kassettenband, 2x AA-Batterien, Verstellbare Dais-Kopfhörer, Benutzerhandbuch Der Compilation-Titel DAIS223 bezieht sich auf die Katalognummer (DAIS223). DAIS223 enthält unveröffentlichte Tracks von High Vis, High-Functioning Flesh, RIKI, Private World, Helm, Tor Lundvall, CoH, AURAGRAPH, ADULT., Drew McDowall, SRSQ, Cold Gawd, Remixe von SPICE und Cold Showers sowie Demos von Body of Light, Choir Boy, VR Sex und Xeno & Oaklander. https://daisrecords.bandcamp.com/merch/dais-x-retrospekt-collab-limited-cp-81-cassette-player-and-compilation We are proud to announce our collaboration with analog innovators and product design studio: Retrospekt. The Dais x Retrospekt Portable Cassette Player is a limited edition release of Retrospekt’s CP-81: reimagined with a new graphic design in white, with rose-adorned artwork by Dais creative director Nathaniel Young. The device features all of the core cassette player functions, packaged with adjustable Dais branded headphones and an exclusive 19-track compilation cassette of unreleased material from our roster. Limited to 1000. Tape not sold separately. DAIS223 Tape Compilation Listen to Sampler: found.ee/DaisXRetrospekt SIDE A: High Vis - Forgot To Grow High-Functioning Flesh - Down To Sense Riki - SAS (For Those Who Speak And Spake) Private World - Through The Distance Body of Light - Out of Season (Demo Instrumental) Helm - Evil Ceramics Choir Boy - Happy to Be Bad With You (Demo) Tor Lundvall - Black Fly Day CoH - Vow a Vow SPICE - I Dont Want To Die In NY (Remix) SIDE B: VR SEX - Runway Runaway (Demo) Xeno & Oaklander - Hoplite (Demo) Tempers - Camino Del Sol (Antena Cover) Cold Showers - Sliver (Inner City Remix) AURAGRAPH - No Control ADULT. - Few Warnings Are Important (2003) Drew McDowall - Animals Will Sing SRSQ - Phantasmata Cold Gawd - Gin (At The Mountain) Contents include: - Portable cassette player - Dais Records "C23" Compilation Tape - 2x AA batteries - Dais adjustable headphones - User guide Tape Player Features include: - Play, fast-forward, rewind, record - Microphone jack - Headphones jack - Type-C USB power supply - Battery operable | 2023 | €100.00 |
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| Anthology of Experimental Music from Indonesia | CD | https://unexplainedsoundsgroup.bandcamp.com/album/anthology-of-contemporary-music-from-indonesia For many centuries Indonesia, from the Malay Peninsula throughout the vast archipelago, has been subjected to successive foreign cultural invasions which have left their deep imprint on the indigenous way of life. Among the first was the Mongolian intrusion from central Asia. A later cultural wave came from India when Hindu merchants and immigrants introduced Hinduism and Buddhism into the islands. Subsequently, about the 13th century A.D. Islamic influences penetrated the archipelago. Finally in the 16th century, Western culture and Christianity came into the picture. Although, after four centuries, Western civilization has by no means superseded the Islamic hold on Indonesia (90% of the population are Muslims), it has already reshaped the outward appearance of Indonesia life to a considerably extent. The cultural diversity is naturally reflected in the music. In the current globalized and digital communications-dominated era, influences from the Western world become more and more evident, in everyday life, as well in popular art and music from Indonesia. But listening to the tracks included in this compilation presented by Unexplained Sounds Group, you’ll discover how traditional Indonesian music, even in its more 'primitive' forms, as well in the very elaborate and developed ones from Javanese and Balinese tradition, are still very much recognizable. The current mix of influences in the experimental and avant-garde music from this region has resulted in an extremely fascinating kaleidoscope of sounds. | 2020 | €14.00 |
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| Электронная Музыка АНС (ANS Electronic Music) | CD | 1. Eduard Artemiev, Stanislav Kreitchi - Music For The Film "Cosmos" 12:17 2. Stanislav Kreitchi - Intermezzo 02:23 3. Alexander Nemtin - Chorale Prelude In C Major (J S Bach) 02:32 4. Alexander Nemtin - Tears 04:44 5. Sándor Kallós - Northern Tale 05:41 6. Stanislav Kreitchi - A Voice Of The East 02:04 Available on CD (or any other format) for the first time outside USSR, Soviet composers perform their works on the legendary ANS synthesizer. Recorded in 1969, "Электронная Музыка АНС (ANS Electronic Music)" features 6 tracks of experiments on the unique machine by: Eduard Artemiev, Stanislav Kreitchi, Sándor Kallós, and Alexander Nemtin. A 'musical' machine unlike any other which has long fascinated cutting edge, modern electronic composers, notably COIL and THE ANTI GROUP COMMUNICATIONS (TAGC) / CLOCK DVA, that have both released recordings utilising the ANS. Try to imagine a score sounding by itself without a conductor; an orchestra without musical instruments. This magic is possible by using the musical ANS synthesizer. Created by Soviet scientist Evgeny Murzin over the course of 20 years, ANS is an instrument with which a composer can not only create but also draw their music without notes. You can see the twinkling of different lamps, the rotation of grooved glass discs... The drawings on the glass are 'sounding notes'. To listen to the drawn picture, press the button and a wonderful transformation will begin. Inside the ANS are five rotating glass discs with 144 tones printed (by hand) on each one. Light is projected through the discs and onto photovoltaic cellbank which converts the light into electricity and sends signals to the ANS's amplifiers and bandpass filters. The ANS can generate 720 tones this way and, unlike a human musician, play them all at the same time. Murzin dedicated his photoelectronic apparatus to Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin, hence the name ANS. Scriabin, the creator of the 'Poem of Ecstasy', and a famous explorer of synesthesia, used in his works a highly chromatic, new type of harmonic style designed to express his beliefs, views and wishes. These tracks have only ever been available on vinyl pressed by the state-run Soviet Union label Melodiya over 50 years ago. Soviet music lovers will already know recordings made on ANS from Tarkovsky's films Solaris, The Mirror, and Stalker, Konchalovsky's film Siberiade, and others. Presented in a digipak with the new artwork by Abby Helasdottir, complimenting the ANS process perfectly. Officially licensed from Russian state label Melodiya. Copyright © – ВТПО "Фирма Мелодия" (Melodiya) Recorded in 1969. Mastered by Martin Bowes at The Cage Graphic Design by Abby Helasdottir coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/ans-electronic-music-csr307cd "After the simply gorgeous sampler 'Musical Offering, ' which Jo and Justin of Cold Spring released in July 2023, this is the second album about the ANS synthesiser. I can't tell you much about the ANS other than the basics I've written back then, so as an introduction, I'll simply copy and paste my own words. 'The ANS is a Russian synthesiser designed over 20 years (between 1937 and 1957) by Evgeny Murzin, and there is only one. It works with drawings on glass plates and devices that transform light into voltages, and those voltages create sounds. The glass discs spin; Wiki / YouTube is your friend here. Many artists have worked with the ANS, including Coil, The Anti Group Communications.' The advice to check out YouTube and Wiki to learn more about this machine still stands if you are interested. Or maybe check the particular releases of the projects that worked with it. Some additional technical data from the promo sheet already dives deeper. Inside the ANS are five rotating glass discs with 144 tones printed (by hand) on each one. Light is projected through the discs and onto the photovoltaic cell bank, which converts the light into electricity and sends signals to the ANS's amplifiers and bandpass filters. The ANS can generate 720 tones this way and play them all simultaneously, unlike a human musician. "??????????? ?????? ???" is the original title because yes, this sampler is a rerelease from 1969 from Melodiya. And don't tell me you have the original album; I simply don't believe you! On this album, we can find compositions by Eduard Artemiev, Stanislav Kreitchi (with two pieces and a collaboration with Artemiev), Sándor Kallós, and Alexander Nemtin (twice). "Music For The Film Cosmos" by Artemiev & Kreitchi is a great soundtrack and fits the Russian cinema of the 60s. "Intermezzo" seems a bit carnevalesk; it reminds me of an organ player, but it would also fit an ice cream truck in a horror movie. Alexander Nemtin performs "Chorale Prelude In C Major" by Bach, and both of these tracks show that the ANS could also be used for 'normal' music. The following "Tears" and "Northern Tale" show some of the more extreme sounds the ANS is capable of. Don't forget we're talking 720 voices that could be played simultaneously, so yes. This will rumble on a proper audio setup. The closing "A Voice Of The East" by Kreitchi is filled with weirdness again. No idea how or what, but it holds the midst between an experimental composition with a non-western scale and even has a bit of jazzy melody lines in there. Closing statement: I love it. Many thanks to CSR for finding this gem. A must-have for people who like 60s experimentalism like White Noise (Vorhaus / Derbyshire), Wendy Carlos and/or Russian soundtracks and movies. Oh, and sound nerds and/or geeks. And if you fit more than one category, well... *hint* " [Vital Weekly] | 2025 | €15.00 |
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| VAN DER VLEUTEN, MAARTEN | High Intolerance toward low Energies | LP | "Van Der Vleuten, 1967 geboren, veröffentlicht mit der "High Intolerance Towards Low Energies" LP sein erstes Album unter seinem Geburtsnamen, den er fortan für seinen musikalischen Output verwenden will. "High Intolerance Towards Low Energies" ist eine von Tonefloat sehr ansprechend gestaltete LP, limitiert auf 500 Exemplare, und auf 180g Vinyl gepresst. Das luxuriöse Gatefold Cover mit einem eher rostig anmutenden Artwork trifft gut den submarinen Charakter des Albums: Man meint von der Wasseroberfläche des Meeres langsam abzutauchen, Druck baut sich auf, je tiefer man sinkt. Dröhnen in den Ohren und plötzlich sieht man in der Tiefe ein altes, mächtiges Schiffswrack auf dem Grund liegen. Der Rost zeigt, dass es da schon gar Jahrhunderte liegt. Neugierig und interessiert umkreist man es, aber irgendetwas scheint nicht zu stimmen. Flüstern und Murmeln, wabernde Stimmen und rhythmisches, maschinelles Stampfen. Nervöse, pulsierende Bass- Frequenzen und seltsame, gebrochene Melodiefetzen. Halluzinationen? Tiefenrausch? Man weiß es nicht. Maarten Van Der Vleuten gelingt es auf "High Intolerance Towards Low Energies" ein eigentümlich dichtes Gewirr aus Drohnen und Ambiancen zu schaffen, das in seiner Gesamtheit zu überzeugen weiß. Dass Van Der Vleuten mit dieser LP ein anderes Bild im Kopf hatte als mein submariner Eindruck, ist nicht weiter schlimm. Er legt den Fokus der Interpretation eher auf eine radikale Darstellung unserer sich immer schneller beschleunigenden Umwelt und will diesen Eindruck mit "High Intolerance Towards Low Energies" eingefangen haben. Diese Intention passt auch wunderbar zu dem unruhigen, fast bedrohlich wirkenden Charakter des Albums. Die enthaltenen 4 Stücke offenbaren eine nervöse Welt in der man entweder immer wieder ob der Bildhaftigkeit paralysiert und staunend stehen bleibt oder eben wie im Fieberwahn durch einen Irrgarten voller unruhiger, fremder Stimmen stolpert." [Creative-Eclipse] "Amidst an infinite ocean of information, finding yourself is turning into a complex mission nowadays. On his latest full-length, ambient house pioneer Maarten van der Vleuten is returning to the memories of demolished Dutch monastery Regina Coeli, his head still spinning from the confounding excess of images and impressions. on his long and winding journey, he has come a long way from his early dance singles to being recognised as a widely respected, colourfully uncompromising personality. High intolerance towards low energies, pressed in a limited edition of 500 copies in a luxurious gatefold sleeve, has consciously been conceived as a radical representation of our rapidly accellerating environment: nervously pulsating bass frequencies and frenzied percussion are underpinning shattered sonic figments like the ground drone of a surreal urban raga, with shardes of song and prayer forming broken melodies. Finding his way through this menacing maze has certainly paid off for van der Vleuten: after releasing under 26 different pseudonyms over the last two decades, he has found his definitive musical identity on this haunting soundscape, with future works to be published exclusively under his common name. The album is pressed as a 180 grams black vinyl lp in heavy gatefold picture sleeve." [label info] www.tonefloat.com | 2008 | €16.50 |
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| VAN GULICK, JASON | Concrete | LP | "Jason Van Gulick is one of the most inventive drummers on the contemporary music scene. For more than a decade, he has used his education as an architect to explode the foundations of drumming. Maintaining a distance from all aesthetic, disciplinary or formal limitations, he has developed his artistic approach in the confrontation between the acoustic character of his chosen instrument and architectural resonant spaces. This piece is the result of several years of research on the deep existing connection between the production of sounds and their dffusion in space. It has to do with our primitive bond to music, with the concrete experience that is specific to every diffusion of sound and explores the acoustic specifities of an architectural space through percussions. The work combines, through the process of improvisation and of composition in situ, the idea of the metamorphosis of material : « Halle B » due to its volume, its ability to reverberate the sound and its echoing faculty, transforms the sound of the percussions following the example of former places of worship. This industrial nave made of concrete has forged the creation of the music by imposing to the latter a specific temporality and an almost spiritual depth." [label info] 2More along the lines of Vital Weekly is the work of percussion player Jason van Gulick. I didn’t review his previous release, 'Entelechy' (Vital Weekly 930), so this is the first time I hear his music. I believe he is from Belgium, but recorded his CD in Halle B of the 'La Condition Publique' in Roubaix. It is apparently a space with some great acoustic proportions and Van Gulick has an interest in using sound and the way it travels through a space. Interestingly enough not all of the five pieces here have this massive, natural reverb. In the opening piece everything is very close and quite direct. The ringing of cymbals open up and at one point in this (untitled, all are) piece the sound is being picked up from a bit further away and we hear a massive drone like. Van Gulick shifts back and forth with his playing, using sticks, bows, and objects on the entire kit. This results is an occasional thick, massively sound, in which Van Gulick's playing blends refined with the travels of those sounds through that space. I can imagine he used quite a bit of microphone set-ups in this to come up quite close or, as a total opposite very far away and in the process of making this CD, Van Gulick mixes these recordings together. While it may sound like a 'live' record, I am pretty sure it isn't. Quite a bit of work went into balancing the various recordings and Van Gulick delivers a beautiful record. Loud and dark, light and quiet; he knows how to built excellent soundscapes in space, but also he knows how to transfer these to the listener and give him a similar experience." [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2018 | €20.00 |
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| VAN WISSEM, JOZEF / SQÜRL | Only Lovers left Alive (OST) | do-LP | "Soundtrack for the critically acclaimed Jim Jarmusch film Only Lovers Left Alive, starring Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton. The score for Only Lovers Left Alive - a collaboration between SQÜRL (Jim Jarmusch, Carter Logan and Shane Stoneback) and Dutch lutenist Jozef Van Wissem - serves as a reflection of the distinct textures of Detroit and Tangier, bridging ancient and modern sounds, entangled and timeless. Avant-Baroque lute weaves through twenty-first century guitar grit, heavy back beats, Moroccan percussion, synth bass, field recordings, and numerous sonic effects to create a cinematic tapestry. Guest vocalist Madeline Follin (Cults) appears on SQÜRL's syrup soaked re-interpretation of the Wanda Jackson hit "Funnel of Love". Zola Jesus' commanding vocal soars through Van Wissem's "In Templum Dei". And Yasmine Hamdan's intimate and evocative "Hal", recorded on the set of the film and mixed by SQÜRL. The film and soundtrack album were released worldwide in 2014, and quickly earned the group the Cannes Soundtrack Award from a consortium of film and music critics. In the years that have followed it has remained a favorite of critics and fans alike, who have continued to hunt down the limited vinyl copies in existence." https://squrlnyc.bandcamp.com/album/only-lovers-left-alive-original-motion-picture-soundtrack | 2021 | €29.50 |
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| VENROOY, ESTHER | Shift Coordinate Points | LP | Schon mit “To shape volumes, repeat“ (CD, Robo Records] war diese belgische Komponistin aufgefallen, jetzt erscheint diese sehr konzeptuelle Soundart-Platte als erste LP-Veröffentlichung auf dem britischen ENTR’ACTE, die ominöse Spionage-Radiodurchsagen als Soundquellen benutzt. “Composed and produced by Esther Venrooy in 2005. Commissioned by Happy New Ears with the kind support of the Flemish community. In 1997, British maverick label Irdial-Discs collected a selection of so-called ‘numbers stations’ or ‘spy stations’ recordings under the title The Conet Project. This plays like a ‘best of’ of more than 30 years’ worth of secret radio and contains fragments of American, German, Swedish and Russian transmissions. Belgian composer Esther Venrooy was given permission to work with the material and for the occasion of the celebration of 75 years of Belgian radio created a highly personal interpretation of the medium’s secret history. Using manipulated sound and collage techniques she manages to distill an abstract poetry of sounds and thereby succeeds in extracting some meaning out of these hermetic transmissions.K9 moved back into the combat area ‹ Standing now in the Chineseyouth sent the resistance message jolting clicking tilting through the pinball machine ‹ Enemy plans exploded in a burst of rapidcalculations ‹ Clicking in punch cards of redirected orders ‹ Crackling shortwave static ‹ Word falling ‹ Photo falling ‹ Break through in Grey Room ¬ Pinball led streets ¬ Free doorways ¬“ [label description] “About nine years ago, Irdial Records released a four CD 'The Conet Project', collecting sounds from number stations, or spy stations: transmissions found on radio waves of various secret services. A great and no doubt worrying work, if you understand the consequences of it, but also a wealth of great sound. I believe it is not allowed to use these sounds at will (I forget what the fuzz was all about, but somebody got sued for sampling some of it), but Esther Venrooy asked and got permission to use the material to create a sound piece for Belgium radio, which existed seventy-five years. If one is familiar with the original 'Conet Project' recordings, then it's easy to spot all the original voices ('five - three - two - zero - five'), but Venrooy knows her classics in music, especially that of musique concrete: the sudden shifts in sounds, the gentle gliding electronic tones, but also incorporating a little melody at the beginning of the second side. There is nothing really frightening about these voices anymore, they are isolated from the original context, and placed in this new, abstract picture, where they become voices of the unknown. They no longer have their original meaning, but rather a new one. This is a more than excellent record, and by far the best work by Venrooy to date.” [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2006 | €15.50 |
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| VERNON & BURNS MEETS LIED MUSIC | Lost Lake | LP | Lost Lake sees the return of the collaborative project between sound art duo Vernon &: Burns (Mark Vernon and Barry Burns) and Lied Music (Luke Fowler and John W Fail). It is a sequel to the long-sold out LP Lied Music vs.Boy-Band Tax Returns (released on Ultra Eczema, 2006). This LP merges musique concrète compositional approaches with absurdist improvisational strategies. The four artists met in Glasgow where they recorded a series of sporadic improvised sessions using a diverse array of sound-making instruments (amplified toys and objects, guitar, analogue synths, percussion, squeeze box, field recordings and found tapes). Improvised sessions from 2008 were subsequently manipulated, tortured and caressed, both individually and collectively, into a series of highly idiosyncratic song-forms and sound collages. https://vernonandburns.bandcamp.com/album/lost-lake "The latest entry in the Vernon & Burns catalogue sees this Glasgow duo teaming up with Lied Music, the duo of Luke Fowler and John W. Fail. Lost Lake (SHADAZZ SHA.11) is one of the stranger and darker emissions from these talented creatives, particularly if you care to compare it with the sometimes more playful assemblages of V&B, or the deliciously offbeat melodic avant-pop tunes created by Fowler as part of Rude Pravo. At first spin the record is a near-bewildering toasted-cheese sandwich, a concoction which contains at least a zillion ideas apparently thrown together any which way. Faced with such an array, discerning avant-LP listeners may want to reach for The Faust Tapes as one touchstone, but another credible precedent is the unearthly Bladder Flask LP 1, that ne plus ultra of cut-up sound art put together by a teenaged Richard Rupenus as if possessed by some fevered desire to surpass the worst excesses of the lunatic fringe end of the United Dairies catalogue. But the Bladder Flask release had the underlying sinister aim of sending all those who heard it mad, through highlighting the complete absurdity and futility of everything. Lost Lake has a more benign mission, thankfully. The album has been very carefully crafted, using sets of recorded improvisation sessions produced by the four players, aiming to resculpt the near-chaos of that source material into a coherent structure. Within that structure, fractured songs and equally fractured stories emerge; yes, a scrambled form of a radio listening or cinematic experience, which is an effect Vernon & Burns have striven for with a good deal of their work (and have produced many items expressly in radiophonic mode). As to the cinematic, Fowler is also a film-maker. There is a logic to this scheme, but it is hard to follow and weaves its way around in a highly secretive and intuitive fashion, like an errant underground stream full of eccentric fish and darting river-insects stained in unnatural colours. We could account for some of this quirkiness by pointing out that all four creators were involved in the refashioning process, rather than a single editorial hand behind the editing knife; one can imagine the clashing dynamism generated by four powerful personalities, each of them bending the path of events in their favour. Additionally, the source material itself was not exactly straightforward music to begin with, but created using the now-virtually-standard set-up of the modern improviser, that is amplified instruments, toys, found tapes, field recordings, and live electronics. From this rich stew, voices and tunes emerge from amid a varispeeded and highly layered humid aggregation of extremely strange sounds. And yes, like the Rupenus LP, it is quite absurdist, but I like to think it’s a fun and cartoony absurdity, rather than bleak and Beckett-like. That said, this aural bric-a-brac crawls out from a dark attic of the mind, and is as much an unsettling listen as it is entertaining. Corin Sworn’s cover art encodes all the above information quite perfectly. Using collage technique (naturally), it depicts a figure sitting on a sofa surrounded by hideously “tasteful” drapes and furnishings. This image of bourgeois normality is thoroughly disrupted by replacing the outline of the figure with fragments of urban horror and machinery, then further scrambling the visual schema with concentric rings and diagonal bars, suggesting the power of the aural emanations on the record. The album is, we are told, a sequel to a 2006 release called Lied Music vs Boy-Band Tax Returns, which we reviewed in our Vinyl Viands issue." [Ed Pinsent, Sound Projector online, December 15, 2012] | 2011 | €16.00 |
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| VERNON, MARK | An Annotated Phonography of Chance | LP | "An Annotated Phonography of Chance expands upon the soundtrack to an uncompleted 16mm film made in collaboration with English filmmaker Martha Jurksaitis and the Portuguese artist duo Von Calhau! The film ‘Nossos Ossos’ (which also lends its name to one of the tracks on this record) was shot largely on location in the Alentejo region of Portugal in 2013. Sites visited included Evora, Evoramonte, the bone chapel ‘Capela dos Ossos’, Almendres Cromlech and many other castles, churches and megalithic sites in the area. These locations were used to make experiments with natural reverbs, for the most part sounding out the spaces with voices. Along with location field recordings and found tapes this provided the raw material for much of the soundtrack." https://markvernon.bandcamp.com/album/an-annotated-phonography-of-chance https://misanthropicagenda.bandcamp.com/album/an-annotated-phonography-of-chance “Glasgow’s radio producer/sound artist Mark Vernon is about to release his follow-up to the incredible Ribbons of Rust (Flaming Pines, 2019). His sound is intensely intimate, one might think their own pipes are dripping as each droplet is painstakingly captured with precise fidelity. These ten tracks that span forty minutes are woven with zags and fluctuating warp that brings to mind the inversion of a jazz trumpet, its brackish and suspenseful. The Consensus is to Delete sounds like one of those lost Coil tracks that continue to permeate the underground, paced and plotting, a bit of the spirit world and low in timbre. Perfect for the bewitched season of hallowed souls (and all that jazz). He tends to his set of reels with a real vision, one based on “a soundtrack to an uncompleted 16mm film made in collaboration with English filmmaker Martha Jurksaitis and the Portuguese artist duo Von Calhau! The film ‘Nossos Ossos’ was shot largely on location in the Alentejo region of Portugal in 2013.” It’s as cinematic as it sounds. Still, Vernon, while capturing the spellbinding echoes of cathedral oration, songbirds tweeting and other street noise, this is far from the typical field recording document, not only in form, but much more deeply in nuanced atmosphere. The slow-churn of ‘scenes’ like Revolving Rivers is almost numbing as a retrospective snapshot in time. Yet it dances in the moment via its sing-song visceral qualities, obliterated transmissions and melodic wooziness. Only at marked times does one feel ‘cozy’ here, due to the carpet being psychically unfurled from under your feet, sending the listener adrift into new atmospheric scapes. A visionary tale of chance and observation.” [T.J. Norris, Toneshift, October 28, 2019] | 2019 | €18.00 |
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| Sheet Erosion | CD | Audio Archaeology Series Volume 3: Brest. Sheet Erosion is the third episode in a series of works based around ideas of audio archaeology and found sounds. The setting this time is the city of Brest in France. It is composed of field recordings made in early 2020 during the storms Ciara and Desmond plus a batch of found open-reel tape recordings dating from the '70s and '80s. The tapes include domestic home recordings but mostly document recordist Michel's tastes in music and radio programs of the time. Daily life bleeds into these lo-fi recordings of radio and TV shows. Captured with a mic in front of a speaker rather than directly cabled, ambiguous activities can be heard in the background; babies crying, feedback, chairs scraping and muffled conversations. In the composition, family histories and musical tastes are transposed over a more contemporary soundscape of Brest. Over-saturated tape distorts time as well as sounds. Speeds change. Chronologies become confused. Different instances in time are blended and fused. What seeps through these chronological crevices are events and incidents unmoored from linear time taking place in a chimerical non-space. https://www.sonoris.org/product/mark-vernon-sheet-erosion/ Mark Vernon is a Glasgow based artist who explores concepts of audio archaeology, magnetic memory and nostalgia through his sound works. At the core of his practice lies a fascination with the intimacy of the radio voice, environmental sound, obsolete media and the reappropriation of found recordings. A rich collection of domestic tape recordings; audio letters, dictated notes, answer-phone messages and other lost voices often find their way into his unorthodox soundworlds. These diverse elements are distilled into radiophonic compositions for broadcast, multi-channel diffusion, fixed media and live performances. His solo music projects have been published through labels including Kye, Glistening Examples, Flaming Pines, Discrepant, Entr’acte, 3Leaves, Misanthropic Agenda, Canti Magnetici, Granny, Calling Cards Publishing, Psyché Tropes, Persistence of Sound and Gagarin Records, as well as a series of small CDR and LP editions on his own Meagre Resource imprint. https://markvernon.bandcamp.com/album/sheet-erosion | 2023 | €13.00 |
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| VERTONEN | Return of the Interrobang | CD | VERTONEN gehört mittlerweile zu den interessantesten US–Elektro-Geräuschmusikern, tönt stets abwechslungsreich und überraschend. So auch hier, ein übergreifendes „Thema“ sind repetitive Klangstrukturen..... so gibt es ein langes welliges Drone-Stück, welches sich gut entwickelt; pumpende Sinustöne- und Gameboy-artige Sounds beim nächsten, repetitive Orgel-artige Loopmuster, Samples von lockerer Piano-Barmusik, etc. etc. “Produced with support from a CAAP grant, this disc highlights three aspects of experimental audio I have been exploring over the past years: deep drone washes, throbbing, lurching activities, and manipulated turntables/vinyl.” [Vertonen] “Have seen a lot of Vertonen shows here in Chicago, bumped across a comp track or two, heard him on the radio twice, but this is surprisingly the first time I've sat down at home with a Vertonen release. So far the live stuff has come across as great loud deep-flow crash-sizzle, often with a nasty beat orientation wrecking through it, but on wax it's been unpredictable, softer but somehow heavier--and Return of the Interrobang surprises me further with deep glacial industrial dare-I-say-mellow textures. First track is a rather gorgeous and fairly soft (but thick) drone, not completely unlike something you'd hear from Birchville Cat Motel.... Great tones, glowing embers with doom undercurrents, packed with a sci-fi title: "Toroidal Circulation 1 & 2." (Never mind, I just looked it up and it's a science fact title.) Second track comes in with a hard beat, your basic urban alarm siren drill kind of thing, with mysterious sounds floating in the background, and it's pretty heavy, but ends up the most 'typical' track on the CD, because the remaining three, a trilogy called "The Medical Turntable Variations," are just lovely little subtle stumbling loop miniatures. I mean, sure, you can infer a creepy entropic 'broken machine' connotation with all three tracks, and the title of the third part, "Deplete To Ruination, The Wide Shift," is of course something scary to contemplate, and topical too: the ostensibly approaching era where dystopian science fiction becomes dystopian science fact. (There's that "it's not science fiction, it's science fact" thing again, he's good with that.) Possibly the loveliest of the three, but it does have a haunted piano thing going on...like, say, the haunted piano bar of a big-city luxury hotel in ruins, long abandoned by human life, now a bizarre gargantuan relic of the oil age...oh, and hey, what's an interrobang?! Is that science fiction or science fact?!—[Blastitude 18] | 2004 | €12.00 |
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| VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA | The queen of guess | CD | “While certainly VCO's most upbeat and percussive music, the nine tracks on this immense, visceral slab of rackety action run through a wide range of styles. "Ramshackle Sunrise" has a gamelan-like, five-note melody overlaid with a hovering drone. "The Silent Socket" rocks with "Sister Ray"-style guitar careening along side actual drums. The two 20-minute epics that bookend the record are a study in contrasts: "Your Head Shone Like A Stone" has a heavy, excited buzz, while the closing "Goodnight Stars Goodnight Air" is a gentler acoustic epilogue, gliding into the rosy future.” [press release] | 2003 | €14.00 |
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| Versatile Arab Chord Chart | CD | Zweite CD der drownig-dronigen Impro-Combo aus UK... "Versatile Arab Chord Chart is the second full-length outing by the quintet of Neil Campbell, Michael Flower, Julian Bradley, Bridget Hayden, and Adam Davenport. Like their UK cousins and fellow VHF recording artists Sunroof!, Vibracathedral Orchestra usually works from a base of modal improvisation. Led by Campbell's sawing violin, tracks like 'Wearing Quid Frock' and the epic 'Japan Banjo' build up arcs of lingering overtones beneath an undercurrent of melody. They cut the drones in their life with extremely effective bursts of near rock, in a style reminiscient of the pre-Nico Velvet Underground (circa 1966 or so). The band's combination of clattering percussion, droning strings, and considerable sense of where to put the 'groove' on tracks like 'Catching Loners With Blank Arms' makes them unique among their peers. Versatile Arab Chord Chart follows the band's previous Lino Hi outing on Giardia and a series of intriguing and extremely limited self-released titles, including the currently available Filling Sacks With Leaves 10-inch. New work for VHF and live work around the UK are planned for the near future, if there is one." - label press release. www.vhfrecords.com | 2000 | €14.00 |
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| Joka Baya | LP | "The ever-mysterious Vibracathedral Orchestra returns from another relatively quiet period with an uncompromising set of outre jams on a trio of limited-edition LPs. Slightly reorganized around a line-up of stalwarts Mick Flower and Adam Davenport with frequent collaborators John Godbert (Total) and John Moloney (Sunburned Hand of the Man), the band here stretches way, way out over these six sides. Joka Baya offers up a set of shorter pieces on the A-side in a high-fidelity style that contrasts the dark, smoky sound of the rest of the tracks. The percussive grooves are overlaid with Sunroof!-like shimmer, stabbing electric leads, gentle acoustic rain, and droning organ peeking through at opportune moments. The roaring side-long epic on the flip is a droning, phasing slice of psychedelia with Moloney's drums battering the tape in between long stretches of humming stasis." [label info] www.vhfrecords.com " It's been a while since we've heard from UK ur-drone spacelords Vibracathedral Orchestra, founder Neil Campbell took off on his own a while back, and now kicks up a ruckus as Astral Social Club, but the Orchestra is still going strong, fronted by long time members Mick Flower and Adam Davenport, who for this new set of THREE (!!) full length releases, is joined by John Moloney of Sunburned Hand Of The Man and the mighty John Godbert of the legendary Total. Each of the three, Joka Baya, The Secret Base and Smoke Song, function on their own as fully formed proper albums, but the three also seem to fit together into one expansive whole, a sweeping sprawling songsuite, that seems to drift from one lp to the next, and in fact, although we didn't try it, we imagine you could probably play these records simultaneously in various combinations and the results would be even trippier. Needless to say, most folks will most likely want all three, but no harm done in starting with one, and then grabbing the others later, unless they sell out that is, which seems very likely considering that these are quite limited. Up first is Joka Baya (in the black cover) beginning with a bit of African drumming, which gives way to some gorgeously glimmering and glistening prismatic dronemusic, swirling effects, all dreamlike and bleary eyed, with what sounds like birdsong mixed into the chiming notes and extended tones. The record shifts gears after that into something much heavier and more blown out, a full on psychedelic post Hawkwind spacejam, a heavy krautrock rhythm beneath a flurry of tangled psych guitars. The African drums return briefly before the band lock into a throbbing processed minimal looped dronescape, murky and washed out, dark and hypnotic. The flipside is a single side long epic, a slow burning cloud of processed guitars, cymbal shimmer, glitched out FX, building to a pounding psychedelic crescendo before slipping into a propulsive muted buzzdrone raga outro. The second lp is called The Secret Base (in the white and red cover) and begins immediately with a total Spacemen 3 / Loop styled drug rock jam, repetitive, mesmerizing, super hypnotic, the guitars smoldering and incendiary. The next track is an Eastern tinged spacekraut groove, strangely Southern sounding as well, a bit twang flecked, a little dubby even, melodic, and major key and surprisingly playful. Like the first record, The Secret Base also fills its second side with a single extended track, this time, it's all clattery and ritualistic and tribal, shakers, bells, hand drums, moaned and chanted vocals, very reminiscent of Avarus, NNCK, Sunburned Hand, eventually the sound locks into a skeletal groove, hypnotic and propulsive, but still abstract and way loose. Finally, the third art in the trilogy, Smoke Song (in the Orange cover), which begins with a sprawling bit of Clattery, twangy tribal free drift, fluttery flutes, lots of percussion, a sort of wild and wooly drum circle, laced with woodwinds and swirling effects, before slipping into a muted spacey jam, all subtle drumming, wheezing chords, little bits of guitar jangle, warm whirring keyboards, druggy, psychedelic, and just a bit Doors-y (or Wooden Shjips-y, for a more contemporary reference). Smoke Song too offers up a side long closer, this one ending the whole trilogy, and it's a doozy, full on droned out drug rock, cyclical, mesmerizing, sitar-like buzz wrapped around a simple, but pounding motorik beat, while all around it a swirling cloud of hiss and buzz and shimmer. Needless to say, all three are recommended, and again, not sure how limited these are, or how long they'll be around..." [Aquarius Records] | 2009 | €16.00 |
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| Rec Blast Motorbike | LP | "Return of the mighty “classic” lineup of the VCO with their first new music in many years. Here the quintet of Michael Flower, Neil Campbell, Bridget Hayden, Adam Davenport, and Julian Bradley (joined by raconteur John Godbert) feature in a set of upbeat tracks that put the group's radical instrumental strategies into a package of full on rock action. Recorded live using a binaural head system, the sound is nicely ragged in a you-are-there way, with scouring guitars and bleeping electronics riding atop the band’s signature grooves. As with some of the band’s other records, there’s more than a hint of the early Velvet Underground spirit here – if you wish that Cale and Reed would have been more into being an instrumental band, here it is. Includes download code." [label info] "We’ve long worshipped at the altar of these psychedelic shamans, dutifully prostrating ourselves before them, and bathing in the luxurious glow of their din, a din that has constantly evolved over the years, sometimes pure, cosmic ur-drone, other times, free-from, avant rock space-psych, and at others, a sort of mutant electronica. But in each incarnation, the group never failed to conjure up a sort of transcendental soundstate, the music, whether caustic and chaotic, or moody and minimal, always evoking a tranced out sense of mesmer, a true psychedelia that is rare, even amongst proper ‘psych’ bands. Rec Blast Motorbike, finds the group’s original line-up together again (Michael Flower, Bridget Hayden, Neil Campbell, Adam Davenport, Julian Bradley and John Godbert) and it sounds like it. If we didn’t know better, this could easily have been some old self released cd-r, which is fine with us, the sound raw, and free, lo-fi, yet somehow lush and epic, beautiful blustery blowouts set alongside fractured folkiness, essentially rhythmless, but the rhythms that are present are more spluttery and loose, sounding like an errant snare rolling down an immense flight of stairs one minute, a field recording of someone bored restlessly tapping a tabletop at others, some tracks are driven by what could be a junkyard wind chime, and others, by a veritable hippie percussion ensemble. All the while, the rest of the crew are unfurling streaking arcs of distorted guitar buzz, rippling sheets of feedback and grinding FX doused riffage. It’s hard to define exactly what would qualify as ‘classic’ Vibracathedral’, but to our ears, this is pretty much it. The old gang together again, making a glorious noise, like they never stopped in the first place." [Aquarius Rec] | 2015 | €20.00 |
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| VIDEO-AVENTURES | Musiques pour Garcons et Filles | LP + 12inch | After the experience of Camizole, Dominique Grimaud began a new (and different) adventure in 1979 with Monique Alba. Alongside Gilbert Artman (Urban Sax), Guigou Chenevier (Etron Fou Leloublan), Jean-Pierre Grasset (Verto) and Cyril Lefebvre (Maajun), Vidéo-Aventures is composed of instrumentals capable of reconciliating Captain Beefheart, Henry Cow, Suicide and… John Barry. All with the backing of Rock In Opposition, which enabled this Musiques pour Garçons et Filles to become known worldwide. “Let us enter your hearts”: is the request made by Vidéo-Aventures, and how can we refuse? Especially as Musiques pour garçons et filles, recorded by Dominique Grimaud and Monique Alba fifty years ago along with handpicked colleagues, is as fresh as ever. 1979: having improvised a huge amount (and how!) with Camizole, Grimaud tried his hand at composition and studio recording with Alba. Their first instrument was the AKS synthetiser, with which the duo recorded the instrumental tracks that were then offered to their comrades Guigou Chenevier (Etron Fou Leloublan), Gilbert Artman (Lard Free, Urban Sax), Jean-Pierre Grasset (Verto) and Cyril Lefebvre (Maajun). At the end of the year, they all came into the studio for a week to record the eight tracks of this mini album that Chris Cutler would issue a few months later on his label, Recommended. In France it was the beginning of the agitation around Rock In Opposition, to such a point that Musiques pour Garçons et Filles would rise to second place in the NME independent Charts. And this is hardly surprising… For these instrumental miniatures (here with the bonus of rare archives, some of which are previously unpublished) are uncontrollable: electronics augmented by lap-steel guitar (“Tina”), cunning pop (“Zazou sur la piste”), mechanic sound (“Une vie moderne”), street piano (« French Kiss »), disturbing atmospheres (“La ballade des cardiaques”) or something like a TV theme tune capable of adjusting all the colours (“Telstar”)… With such promising ingredients, why stop Vidéo-Aventures from entering? Carefully remastered from the master tapes by Gilles Laujol Graphic design by Stefan Thanneur 8 page booklet - Heavyweight 180 gr. LP 425 gsm brownboard outer sleeve Licensed from Dominique Grimaud https://soufflecontinurecords.bandcamp.com/album/musiques-pour-gar-ons-et-filles-in-dits | 2023 | €34.00 |
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| VIGROUX, FRANCK | Totem | CD | New full length album by one of France’s most singular contemporary composer. Reflecting on ancient culture’s use and reverence for emblematic monuments which most often represent myths and stories, the album’s narrative has been infused with such symbolic and depicts an envisioned mythology, unfolding through it’s 10 aural pieces. Franck Vigroux‘s music is unique and comprised of tectonic tension, pulsating rhythms and abrasive analog textures like few can produce. Applying his own calculated personal signature in his sonic explorations his distinctiveness comes not only by his unique approach to sound but also by his incorporation of new media practices and performing arts into his A/V work. Mastering by Denis Blackham. Cover Photography by Emile Barret, model Armand Yerly / 2010 Double Vinyl Edition of 500 copies in matt laminated Gatefold Sleeve. 10 Tracks. Running Time 55:10. https://aesthetical.bandcamp.com/album/totem "With a title like Totem and its evocation of Native American traditions and the stereotypical association that evokes of nature and animals one could be forgiven for assuming French producer-composer Franck Vigroux has gone down a folk road. Instead his collision of musique concrète and electronica reasserts folk’s relationship to both the avant-garde and dance music, albeit in brutalist and abrasive fashion. This isn’t music for a campfire sing-song or to be played in a pub at midsummer but its rugged vigour nonetheless stretches away from modern production tools into something more primeval. Totem features some of the most uncompromising and colossal electronic music you will hear this year. In a manner not a million miles away from the later work of the great Scott Walker, Vigroux builds up and juxtaposes hefty blocks of sound, often alternating between moments of calm and seething noise, as on ‘Capaupire’ on which a metronomic, minimal backbeat and ambient textures are sporadically interrupted by walls of abrasive white noise. On ‘Tropiques Tropiques’ these slabs of noise come close to echoing the caustic doom metal of a SUNN O))) or a Wolves in the Throne Room, another North American pagan leitmotiv to chime with the album’s title even as it slyly confounds any expectations of the tropics. For all the sturm und drang, however, Totem is a subtle and intricate album that owes just as much to Wolfgang Voigt as it does Throbbing Gristle or Merzbow. Tracks like ‘Rhinocéros’, ‘Frontières’ and ‘Baron’ are low-key electronic explorations, hypnotic beats and looped synth patterns building quietly, with the expected explosions of noise kept at bay. The joy is in delving into the sonic depths Vigroux plunders to parse out hidden melodies and meanings. ‘Cris’ and ‘Chronostasis grand finale’ meanwhile are redolent of Ben Frost’s epic constructions but with the Australian’s bombast stripped away to reveal a moody, haunted core. ‘Elephant’ takes this mood to notable heights as synth lines and disembodied voices swim in and out of focus like ghosts pleading to be noticed before a wave of drone swallows them whole like a tide. On Totem, Franck Vigroux’s take on folk traditions sees him heave up almighty boulders of sound to unearth the hidden ghosts underneath. Quite how they relate to a notion of totems remains somewhat out of reach, as do the animals evoked in certain track titles. Is this a form of unpleasant cultural appropriation or a case of sardonic humour? Such questions can make it a frustrating experience but on the other hand Totem certainly towers like its namesakes tend to and between this scale and the mysteries it contains, it’s an album that lingers in the memory even after the last notes have faded away." [The Quietus] | 2019 | €13.00 |
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| VIKTOR, KNUD | Les Ephemeres | do-LP | The lost masterpiece Les Éphémères by the self labeled ‘sound painter’ Knud Viktor (1924-2013) now sees its first ever release by Institute for Danish Sound Archaeology – 40 years after it was conceived. Viktor’s pioneering work – his Images Sonores – are composed of field recordings of insects, animals and the his surroundings. A finished master tape and even a complete cover layout for Les Éphémères was found in Viktor’s archives after he passed away in 2013. The phenomenal piece was originally commissioned by the French radio station France Musique in 1977. The twenty short ‘sound images’ of Les Éphémères were originally broadcast as vignettes in-between other radio programs. From the middle of the 1970’s Viktor began composing almost exclusively for four channels. He invented his own intuitive quadraphonic mixer – the Tetramix – to realise his spatial visions for his Image VI – The Lubéron Symphony, and from then on worked with quadraphonic sound, thus making the release of his works difficult. Les Éphémères is close in time and also holds close ties to The Lubéron Symphony, which Viktor considered his magnum opus. Perhaps most strikingly is the shift in the way he uses the recordings of insects, birds and animals in both The Lubéron Symphony and Les Éphémères: Often untreated and clearly recognizable, the field recordings leave the inherent melody and rhythm of the animal sounds to sing for themselves, layering recordings to create simple and elegant sound images. In two of the twenty pieces Viktor’s own voice blends with the animals, as he recites two poems. One about the singing vineyard populated by musical crickets, the other painting an autumn picture with wine bubbling in the barrels as we hear the wine flies humming. Viktor’s work emanates with a tremendous love and fascination with his companion species and the landscape and geology that surrounded him. His works are devoted to depicting the life on the mountain where he lived for fifty years. Hearing how the ecology of the landscape changed as commercial farming and pesticides took effect, a larger perspective in his work became clear to him: "As it turns out, my work has actually set many things in motion; it touches upon something universal that I feel I have a duty to convey to others. A duty that I feel as a citizen of the earth. Not as a human citizen, but as a citizen of the earth. It may sound pretentious, but this is a question of generations to come." – Knud Viktor The world has seen dramatic ecological change since Viktor recorded his sounds. Not only have the individual insects and animals that he recorded vanished from Lubéron, so too have entire species. Like fossils, their imprints now exist only in his works, in the recordings stored on tape. In the midst of our planet’s sixth mass-extinction event, the growing silence that Viktor heard in his immediate surrounding is now global: scientists estimate that half of the planet’s animal life has already disappeared. Viktor’s sound works allow us to borrow his ears. They convey his love for the animal worlds that surrounded him and perhaps we too can see our companion species differently through his works. | 2018 | €24.00 |
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| VISHUDHA KALI | Unfinished Devastation Narrative | CD | lim./numb. 689 copies with many full colour postcards SPECIAL OFFER Sehr ruhiges, spirituell-meditatives Album des St. Petersburger Projekts mit vielen Harmonika-artigen Sounds, gewidmet der Heimatstadt. Beeindruckende Aufmachung mit vielen Vollfarb-Postkarten.... "Unfinished Devastation Narrative\" is probably the most notable album in VK's discography, of course if there are any unnotable. It is a very personal work and it's the best recommendation for fans of the author. This album is not similar to his previous releases neither in style or sound. Listeners will find here a sort of cosmic-music, played on a physharmonica (portative organ), singing bowls, accordion, various handmade and analogue instruments, Sounds of nature, recorded in sacred places on uninhabited islands of Ladoga lake, where author has been meditating for a long time, have also been used in the album. The album includes: - 5 11-minute tracks of assembled acoustic ambient - new ways of playing various handmade instruments & natural sound sources - conceptually re-worked melodies, structures & streams, creating endless mystique moods & dreams. - quality sound and professional mastering - a luxurious conceptual package art The pictures must be noticed individually. All of them are reprints of the author's drawings, reflecting his esoteric experiences. Each picture adds new sense and depth to the corresponding track. In this sense there are no analogues to this release. The album is very deep and extremely conceptual in every point, there is not a single accidental sound or design element. Every listener will enjoy the album, everybody will find something interesting in this release. Limited edition of 689 copies, and this number also represents a deep conceptual idea. Number 6 symbolizes the beginning, 8 - the infinity and 9 - the ending.“ [label description] | 2005 | €13.00 |
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| VLOR | A fire is meant for burning | CD | Ähnlich wie THIS MORTAL COIL eine Art 4AD-Supergroup waren, bestehen VLOR aus Musikern des Labels SILBER aus North Carolina. Die Musik: Minimale Gitarrenpickings & -riffs vermählen sich mit Electronics und anderen Instrumenten, einsame driftende & melancholisch schöne Instrumentals mit Drone-Folk- & Wave-Nähe sind dabei entstanden.... einmal singt auch JESSICA BAILIFF... "Vlor is Silber's This Mortal Coil-like supergroup, featuring members of the roster in collaboration with label head Brian John Mitchell. Joining him in the jam-sessions are Rivulets' Nathan Amundson, Jessica Bailiff, Aaartika's Jon DeRosa, Remora's Jesse Edwards, and Lycia's Mike VanPortfleet. The music found on a fire is meant to burn is mostly instrumental, all guitars, and fits nicely between the folk/rock/drone stylings of the collaborators. At times the music is rough, such as on "Houses Not Homes" and "New Machine," other times, it's extremely hypnotic, such as on "Wires" and the rare vocals of Bailiff on "Suncatcher" makes for a nice treat amongst the focus on instrumental acumen. This is mood music for the thinking man; it's never too dull, never too flat, even though it is mainly an instrumental collection. Best moment: the gorgeous ambience of "Days Like Smoke," where Mitchell and Mike VanPortfleet turn in a Lycia-like soundscape that's extremely lush and utterly beautiful." [Joseph Kyle, Mundane Sounds] | 2006 | €12.00 |
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| VOICE OF EYE |
Substantia Innominata
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10inch | "geistermusik aus der wüste... oder der wind in den felsen... voice of eye's beitrag zur substantia innominata serie auf drone. voice of eye haben schon ganz am anfang dieser anderen serie auf drone-records, der 7” reihe (genauer: im november 1994; dr-09), einen beitrag bringen können, der das ganz eigene drone-verständnis von diesem us-duo noch immer perfekt mitteilen kann. einer der gründe dafür mag sein, dass voice of eye (immer noch) zum teil selbstgebaute geräte nutzen, oft in form von streichinstrumenten, deren klang, zusammen mit flöten, stimmen und fieldrecordings quasi aus dem stand eine eigenartige stimmung evozieren kann. vor allem aber vermeiden sie dabei jede art von bombast oder auch nur das endlose übereinanderschichten von einzelnen spuren. die beiden haben, mit anderen worten, einfach ein sehr gutes gespühr für aufbau und spannung und eine sehr eigene vorstellung von klangästethik: einzelne töne sind in ihrem sound in einer form texturiert, die unmittelbar anspricht und voice of eye erreichen das, meiner meinung nach, neben der nutzung dieser wirklich ausgefallenen, exotischen instrumente, gerade nicht durch geheime effektgeräte, sondern vielmehr durch eine eher fast karge bearbeitung, durch ein rohlassen des klangs. daran hat sich seitdem (zum glück) nichts geändert, die “substantia innominata” 10” baut in allen drei stücken (“vira”, “dhyana”, “purusa”) auf dieses klangverständnis und webt (und das ist hier mal fast wörtlich zu nehmen) ein sehr zartes und transparentes gespinst mit einer, technisch gesehen, für eine 10” geradezu unglaublich langen spielzeit. musikalisch / atmosphärisch dann mit diesem zeit-ausschalt-faktor, den nur wirklich packender ambient schafft. daher: volle empfehlung (auch wenn die superlange spielzeit ihren vinyltribut fordert)." [N, Unruhr.de] "This release marks the comeback of the legendary duo from New Mexico, USA, consisting of BONNIE McNAIRN and JIM WILSON! Over a decade ago (1992-1995) VOICE OF EYE released three albums with their unique style combining ethnic, ritualistic & folklore influences in an experimental and highly organic way to create a kind of "transcendental drone ambience", using only "real" instruments & self-built devices and an array of electronic effects. In November 1994 they released an EP entitled "Sprocket" on Drone Records (DR-09), which is still one of the absolute highlights in the Drone series. After this first phase of musical creation VOICE OF EYE focused on building an incredible "Earthship" house in the deserts of New Mexico. In 2007 they returned doing shows in the States, Germany, France & Italy and releasing two limited CDRs. This 10" has 3 tracks with NEW material (entitled "VIRYA", "DHYANA" and "PURUSA") inspired by the wisdom of Buddhist / Advaitic meditation & philosophy, where the contemplation within music & sounds appears as a tool to reach a higher consciousness & awareness of reality. This highly sublime & emotional "other-dimensional" ambience is based on lots of ethereal vocal material, flute-sounds and their typical self-built string-instruments, full of yearning and beauty - almost 39 minutes of material coming on clear vinyl with golden striae, with superb artwork by THOMAS DOHMEN. This is the celebration of the "Unknown", seen as a state of mind where the Ego dissolves into a timeless universal consciousness." [label description] | 2008 | €12.00 |
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| Seven directions divergent | CD | Endlich das erste offizielle "volle" Album nach der Wiederbelebung des Ethno-Drone Paars, die stets alle Instrumente selber einspielen. Sie erweitern hier ihren Transzendental-Ambient mit psychedelischen und Song-orientierten Einflüssen, es wird gesungen, alles versinkt in wattigen Echo-Effekten und halluzinogenen Klangpulsen. Die sieben Stücke wirken in der Tat wie sieben verschiedene Richtungen ihres neuen Musik-Kosmos. Perkussive Bass-Gerüste bilden oft die Basis für die höchst harmonischen, warmen Stücke, die einen stark indisch-orientalen Touch aufweisen. Wunderbar z.B. das fünfte Stücke OM SHANTI, ein dronig-sanft & sphärisch-melancholisches Sehnen... engelshafte Gesänge und butterweiche Instrumentalparts bilden oft einen fast ozeanisches Flair, das letzte Stück "Transformational Birth " ist ein grossartiges schamanistisches Geister-Drone-Stück (18 Minuten) mit unheimlicher Sog-Wirkung !! Zwischen Transzendental-Pop und drone-basierter Psychedelic, VOICE OF EYE's Musik bleibt faszinierend spirituell & kontemplativ ! "Seven Directions Divergent (2009) is the latest release by Taos, New Mexico based artists Voice of Eye. Taking over a year to produce, Seven Directions Divergent is the third CD to be released on Conundrum Unlimited, and the fifth full-length Voice of Eye CD. As artists experimenting with sound we have been inspired by many different styles of music and noise. Seven Directions Divergent pays homage to some of the diverse musical sources that have influenced us over the years from traditional Sanskrit chants to Steve Hillage to cute Euro pop to shamanic transcendence. This is an ambitious project melding many different sources together with the ethereal beauty and yearning magnificence you expect from Voice of Eye. This CD transports the listener along a narrative history of our personal journeys of change and transformation as told through the medium of sound. Seven Directions Divergent was mastered by award winning engineer Jon Gold for the best sounding Voice of Eye release to date. Comes in a Digipack with beautiful full color artwork by Jim Wilson. Voice of Eye formed in 1991 out of the ashes of experimental bands Esoterica Landscapes 7 and Cruor. Through Voice of Eye, members Bonnie McNairn and Jim Wilson explore profound aspects of consciousness as the music is shared as a tool for entering different states of consciousness. The motivation behind forming Voice of Eye was to connect to a deeper truth we first sensed within our music. This unformed presence first revealed itself to us through music and has continued to manifest taking shape throughout our life’s journey leading to profound mystery. Voice of Eye’s modus operandi is to take sound sources that are acoustic in origin, then process them through little black boxes to warp time and widen sonic perception. Voice of Eye’s sound shifts from gentle soundscapes to primal wrenching malevolence with such ease that the listener is unaware of the transition until it is too late and they are fully immersed in the voyage. Voice of Eye took a hiatus from music in 1997 to build an off-the-grid sustainable home and studio in Taos, New Mexico. The process would take the next ten years. The result is an enormous sculptural free flowing work of art built entirely by the hands of Jim and Bonnie. Living in the open and empty spaces of the desert had the additional effect of deeply connecting them to the truth of their being as begun through music. The desert is the fire that burns away everything. Both members are now focused on the healing arts. Their journey has transformed what was begun through music into a way of life. Please see www.voiceofeye.com and www.myspace.com/voiceofeyemusic for discography, photographs and more information" [label info] www.voiceofeye.com "Since some time Jim Wilson and Bonnie McNairn, together known as Voice Of Eye are back. In 1997 they stopped creating music to 'build an off-the-grid sustainable home and studio in Taos, New Mexico', which took them ten years to build. Since their return their have been a couple of releases, which saw them return to their fine of lengthy, warm ambient electronics with great emphasis on the psychedelic quality of the pieces. Maybe therefore the opening piece here on their twelfth CD 'Seven Directions Divergent' is quite a surprise: its almost popmusic, slow rhythm, e-bow on the guitar, and Bonnie McNairn on some heavenly voice trip, and sounding a bit like Cosey Fanni Tutti. Laid-back popmusic. Almost. This is continued in the following piece 'Where Are You?', which is, me think, even better. Voice Of Eye changed that radical? Hard to believe, and no, they didn't. At least not to that extent. Throughout it seems indeed that elements of popmusic have been brought in, without losing the original ambient sound. 'Transformational Birth', the piece that closes this CD is one of those typical lengthy Voice Of Eye ambient excursions. A bit without any sense of direction, sounds flowing about, like being in space. They drift in and out of the mix, without any synthesizers (according to the cover), like the real cosmic music thing. That makes this a great CD. Drifting, flowing in all pieces, bouncing back and forth towards the more 'pop' like tunes and lengthy, atmospheric excursions. A great album, I'd say, an excellent combination of both ends, making a very mature album. Great psychedelic music." [FdW / Vital Weekly] | 2009 | €13.00 |
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| VOLCANO THE BEAR | Classic Erasmus Fusion | do-CD | Was soll man zu dem britischen Quartett VOLCANO THE BEAR noch sagen? Wer auf der Suche nach überraschender & neuer, (noch) nicht klassifizierbarer Musik ist, die nicht am Computer entsteht, muss hier einfach mal reinhören!! Ihre Musik mit Einflüssen aus Folk, Drone, Avant-Rock & Impro-Jazz ist nicht nur oft irgendwie “weird” und verquer, sondern weist auch streckenweise grosse harmonische & elegante Schönheit auf... wie immer ist vokales Material omni-präsent! “.... zeigt Antifolk flippernd zwischen Didgeridoo und Handy, Daumenklavier und elektrischer Störung, als Folklore des Absurden, die es fertig bringt, in raffinierter Unschuld zerebralen Goldstaub aufzuwirbeln..” [Bad Alchemy # 51] „...Describing Volcano the Bear's music is about as difficult as identifying the instruments. The quartet's arsenal of gear is transcendant of time and space, culled from different cultures and different eras, from classically orchestral woodwinds (albeit sometimes just blowing through the mouthpiece) to African thumb piano, helicopter sounds, thunderstorm and rain and running water, medieval squeeze boxes, squeak toys, chirping or crying bird sounds, and Asian stringed things. While improvisation has been integral to the band's development, Volcano the Bear can always be counted on very cold-calculated and composed songs appearing on their official studio albums. Their arrangement is loose but never wanky or show-offey. Perhaps it's this lack of soloing and pretention that has kept them from appropriate recognition by some of the major experimental media in favor for a whole "free folk"/"weird rock"/"new weird America" obsession.“ [Brainwashed] "VTB have crafted a strange geometry in their musique concrete between celestial duck honks and what sounds like a flood in the living room, there are more than a few occasions of heads cocked at the speaker in mundus caninus. Of course, this bodes well for humans, too. Augmented by all the dog friendly moments is a double album of sprawling musical invention. Record one births gently into a lo-fi-adelic Comus-like saline that even might even win over the Devendra crowd, if the Devendra crowd had ingested just a little too much mushroom tea on that day and left their ironic trucker hats at the door. Song becomes fever dream and then pitches into a barren place of low estate and low chanting whose Residents might well be Eskimos. With typical minimalist pageantry, VTB mutate from piece to piece, punctuating along the way with surprise sounds that the aforementioned dogs love so well; the kinds of quirks that make Nurse With Wound and P16.D4 records such fun listens. VTB spin some very melodious tales, which are subliminally hooky, after a fashion. Spiritual and surreal are sisters. Quiet ritualism queues with dadaistic and with progressive harmonies, together on the same fractured, out world, sing-along journey. And that's just record one. Record two crawls slowly from the echoey ooze, grows legs and then presents as a different and, in many ways, more dramatic creature. A long, shifting organ drone becomes a deeply psychedelic statement that bleats loud and strong like an acid bleached Spiral Insana or a sneaky This Heat.” [label info] www.blrrecords.com | 2006 | €14.00 |
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| Amidst the Noise and Twigs | CD | "Die vier buchdeckelartigen Hochglanzseiten mit surrealen Bilderwelten des Nick Mott – Würfelkopfgestalt, gesichtslose Männchen fliegen durch die Luft, eines legt seine Stielaugen vor sich auf den Tisch – würden den Kauf von VOLCANO THE BEARs Admidst The Noise and Twigs (mt204a) fast schon alleine rechtfertigen. Umso besser, wenn dann die Musik auch noch überzeugt. Neben dem Artworker zeichnen für diese wieder Aaron Moore, Clarence Manuelo und Daniel Padden verantwortlich. Sie jagen den Hörer durch eine scheinbar zufällig chaotische Dadaund Patchwork-Welt, die bisweilen Dilettantismus höchst gekonnt suggeriert und mit allen musikalischen und technischen Tricks Illusionen aufbaut und zerstört. Hippiegeschrammel trifft auf orientalische Flöten und Gongs der Chinaoper. Dann paaren sich Flötengedudel, Geklapper und Geknarze ’Before We Came To This Religion’. Auf ’Larslovesnicks Farm’ steht ein altes verstimmtes Klavier, auf dem ein Langweiler vier Töne tonleiteraufwärts stetig wiederholt, dazu scheinen Türen zu knarzen und Wasser wird verspritzt. Ein Banjo beschränkt sich auf 2 Töne, die während des Anschlagens getunet werden. ’Cassettes Of Berlin’ ist eine negativländlerische Collage aus Geräuschen, Stimmfetzen und Radioeinspielungen, abgehackt, weil am Frequenzeinstellrad weitergedreht wird. ’Splendid Goose’ ähnelt den langen Mothers-Stücken der zweiten Freak Out-Scheibe. Das Schlagzeug unterbreitet den treibenden Rhythmus, über dem sich monotone Frequenzteppiche ausbreiten, gestört und unterbrochen von Kracheinspielungen und begleitet von brummiger Stimmakrobatik oder Flötengequengel. ’She Vang Moon’ kreiert eine Atmosphäre tibetanischer Klöster mit Mönchsgesang, Harmonium, Gonggeschepper, verzerrt dann immer mehr durch unsaubere Frequenzen. Es geht auch gefühlvoll, wenn die Trompete zu einer Art Hymne ansetzt, aber dann wird gegrunzt, gejammert und durch den Kamm geblasen. Das letzte Stück, ’The Three Twins’, beginnt in getragenem Tempo mit 3 Tönen und der tiefgreifenden Aussage “Hi-a-o, Hijä-jah...“ (oder so ähnlich), geht über in dilettantisches Geklopfe, Kindergeschrei, Klaviergeklimper - das Schlagzeug wuselt im Hintergrund – und entwickelt sich tatsächlich noch zu einem Song, der am Ende vom Sax regelrecht ’zerquetscht’ wird." [Bad Alchemy] "The first 1000 copies are packaged in a full color book bound case with an eight page booklet. Volcano The Bear "Amidst The Noise And Twigs" is the follow up to the critically acclaimed "Classic Erasmus Fusion" album. Who knew that amidst the noise and the twigs there was music…sweet, sweet music?! This world is Volcano the Bear’s womb. At last, the year that VTB gets a shot at Top Of The Pops, assuming the pops finally snaps out of its vapid trance and embraces the standards of Comus, 3 Hurel, early Residents and 12th century Arabo-Andalusian music. As usual, our heroes are found keeping things stripped to the bone trumpet, but dripping with a juicy, melodic marrow. The record pours slowly and resolutely like a folk-psych dream urn, loaded with full metal banjoes; crumhorns at 12 O’clock; and autoharps at defcon 5. The experimentalism is this time couched in shifting tides of self-spun acidic harvest ballads that noisily well up into proto-Kraut thrums and tribal night t rips around the pyre. A rural, squelchy, DIY delicacy which stinks of occidental embouchure so crystal crisp that every skkrrrr, pphaaapph and brrruuuummmm resonates like a small, sound-specific god, intertwined with beautifully skewed notes, voices and rhythms. "Amidst The Noise And Twigs" plays like a recently discovered field recording of some obscured Celtic clan who accidentally stumbled onto psychedelia 600 years ahead of its time. These pipers truly rock the gates of dawn." [label notes] www.blrrecords.com | 2007 | €13.00 |
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| Golden Rhythm / Ink Musik | LP | "Das brandneue Studioalbum von VOLCANO THE BEAR ist eine kalkuliert-hysterische Verschmelzung von THIS HEAT, ROBERT WYATT, FAUST und THE RESIDENTS, aus Musique Concrete und Ethnofolk, gesehen durch ein Kaleidoskop aus theatralischer Improvisation. Gegründet 1995 waren es VOLCANO THE BEAR, die Steven Stapleton von NURSE WITH WOUND derart in Aufregung versetzten, dass er sein United Diaries Label wiedererweckte, nur um 2000 ihr erstes Album ,The Inhazer Decline" herauszubringen. Seitdem haben VOLCANO THE BEAR Alben auf einer ganzen Stange von Labels (und ihrem eigenen!) veröffentlicht, von denen ,Classic Erasmus Fusion" von 2006 ein definitives Highlight ist. Wenn die Band aufnimmt, dann geht es darum, krasse Absurditäten auf bizarr-schönste Weise darzustellen. "Golden Rhythm/Ink Music" ist ihr erstes "richtiges" Studioalbum seit "Amidst The Noise And Twigs" von 2007. Das neue Album konzentriert sich auf die soundtechnische Trennlinie zwischen Aaron Moore und Daniel Padden und dürfte das fokussierteste Album von VOLCANO THE BEAR überhaupt sein. Es zeigt ,Rockmusik" aus der leicht verdrehten Perspektive von VOLCANO THE BEAR und wartet mit mehr Schlagzeug/Gitarren Kombinationen auf als jemals zuvor. ,Golden Rhythm/Ink Musik" übersetzt die bizarre Energie der VOLCANO THE BEAR Liveperformance in die Umwelt des Studios. ######################################### Rune Grammofon presents the brand-new studio album from Volcano The Bear, a calculated, hysterical melting-pot of This Heat, Robert Wyatt, Faust and The Residents, of musique concrète and ethno-folk, all seen through a prism of theatrical improvisations and unhinged set pieces. Formed in 1995, and after several self-released tapes and CD-Rs, VTB so excited Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton, that he brought his United Dairies label out of cold storage to release their first album proper, The Inhazer Decline, in 2000. Since then they've released music on such labels as Misra, Beta Lactam Ring, Textile, Digitalis, Pickled Egg, Alt Vinyl as well as their own imprints Volucan and Volfurten with the exceptional Classic Erasmus Fusion from 2006 being a possible highlight. On record, VTB offer stark and stunning absurdities in the most bizarrely beautiful way. Recycling and re-contextualizing their material is an innate habit, and the variety of recording options they might choose (be it a highly-equipped professional studio or a second-hand dictaphone) allows their craft to be formed in a myriad of different ways. VTB have toured extensively throughout Europe and North America and in concert they are the duo of Daniel Padden and Aaron Moore. Absurd humor and eclectic ways of producing sounds are characteristic of their live performances and their extensive knowledge of the traditions of experimental and folk music makes the band difficult to categorize. The band record everything they play and will often use these recordings as raw material for their albums. VTB have released a number of records since the start, often mixing studio, live and home recordings. Golden Rhythm/Ink Music is their first more or less "proper" studio album since Amidst The Noise And Twigs back in 2007. Largely based on the sonic fault-line between Aaron Moore and Daniel Padden, it's also the most focused and driven of VTB's prolific output so far, showcasing the duo's unique musicality and interplay, while retaining their trademark eccentricity and humor throughout. It presents "rock music" as seen through VTB's skewed eye, featuring more of Padden and Moore's drum/guitar combination than on previous albums. Taking the bizarre energy of their live duo performances into a studio environment, and combining it with VTB's eclectic instrumentation and Clarence Manuelo's singular audio-work, GR/IM shows VTB making their most vital work to date. Includes mp3 download code." [label info] www.runegrammofon.com | 2012 | €20.00 |
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| Yak Folks Y'Are | CD | Nefryt - N 029 Format: CD Country: Poland Released: 26 May 2018 Genre: Electronic, Rock Style: Avantgarde, Experimental Tracklist 1 Where Are The Bounds? 2 Banket Ball 3 Nobody's Falling 4 Egg Knowledge 5 Oslo Top 6 Hello Graham 7 My Favourite Lungs 8 Massive Furniture Invasion Notes: Yak Folks Y'are originally issued by Pickled Egg in 1999 as a mini LP. My Favourite Lungs & Massive Furniture Invasion originally issued by Alt.Vinyl in 2006 as a lathe cut 8". Thank You Alan Jenkins, Stew Brackley, Steven Freeman, Steve Hill, Alan Freeman, Kev Reverb. Copyright Volcano The Bear 1998 4 panel gatefold sleeve. Limited to 444 copies. "Out on Pickled-Egg from the UK, Volcano's first LP consists of 6 new songs by these growing and mind-expanding UK surrealists. On a whole, the release is filled with a bizarre emotion that leaves a sinking feeling in your stomach. Side A ("Yak Folk") starts with the low-fi, reverb-drenched track, "Where Are the Bounds?," which is reminiscent in feel of the first track ("Planetary Bethlehem") from The Inhazer Decline. The second track is a short snippet of eerie noise, leading into "Nobody's Falling," which utilizes their eccentric—but extremely compelling—vocal work. With a very psychedelic-rock sound, they play horns, organs, and consistent high hats, which blend to conjure up a surrealist lounge. Side B ("Y'Are") has some beautiful, brilliant work—the best VtB I've yet heard. "Egg Knowledge" makes me feel as if I am in the presence of ghosts. The vocals are haunting and extremely bizarre (comparable only to a dying elderly), and combine with the tension-building noises and tribal-esque drums to leave a queasy, almost painful mindset. Next is "Oslo Top," made of twinkly noises with demonic vocals. And finally, "Hello Graham," the long ending track, tops the album with its usage of slurred vocals and beautifully simple acoustic guitar overlayed and interchanging, putting emotions out for grabs that are both frightening and captivating. The feeling for most of the LP is, in fact, a strange, ambiguous line between comforting and terrifying; but it is executed in such a manner that is purely hypnotic." [Brainwashed review on the original LP edition from 2000] nefryt.bandcamp.com/album/volcano-the-bear-yak-folks-yare | 2018 | €13.00 |
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| VOLCANO THE BEAR / LA STPO | The Shy Volcanic Society at the Beat and Bird Parade | CD | "A split CD containing five tracks from Volcano the Bear and four by STPO. The French group STPO is a long existing and very underestimated group with limited releases over the years. Their history of dadaist and experimental music started in 1984. Beta-lactam Ring released and re-released some of their older material. For this release they choose four tracks that were recorded in 2003 and were not included on earlier releases. These tracks again illustrate their very odd musical universe. I admire them for staying close to their unique musical vision and language. For Volcano the Bear things are opposite in at least one aspect. Namely, they released already a bulk of records in the past. Less bizarre then STPO Volcano the Bear refer in their experimental music to folkmusic. Their compositions stay somewhere in the middle between song-structure and soundcollage. Also they are one dimensional compared to the compositions of STPO that are structured along the inimitable logic of their musical fantasies. The same for their carefully worked out arrangements. The over the top and very expressive vocal work by Pascal Godjikian is the heart of most of the tracks on this CD. Can't get enough from them." [DM, Vital Weekly] "CD issued early May 2009 as an edition of 500 copies in a full color gatefold sleeve. A split album with Volcano the Bear and La STPO. VTB tracks 1-5 and STPO tracks 6-9. Bears and Birds, oh my! One side keeps the hot hot. And the other keeps the weird weird. VTB’s typically atypical entomological set scratches like a hive that has evolved just to the point of thumping out tribal fealties to its giant insect God-Thing. Environmentally ritualized sub-rhythms mix musique-concrete with actual concrete, forming freakishly minimal foundations for the hive of whatevers to swarm within. Noise, once again, for heroes. All this, of course, juxtaposed against France’s hidden reverse: La STPO, who absolutely let it blurt. Their pounding system of post-post-punk-neo-Zeuhl cracks the mantle, with bass lines thicker than Sequoias. And louder than screaming Sequoias. La STPO vacillates between two extreme extremes: something approximating a kind of industrial strength nouveaux bâtiments s'effondrants (German buildings are not the only ones susceptible to collapse), and crushing riffs ala SunnO))). Pascal Godjikian’s fierce grunts and barks keep the hive on the other side believing he is their God-thing. He is someone’s God-thing, that’s for sure." [label info] www.blrrecords.com "Diese Split-CD vereint Stücke zweier experimenteller Bands, Volcano the Bear aus England und La Société des Timides à la Parade des Oiseaux aus Frankreich. Beide bieten, so viel vorweg, alles andere als leichte Kost. Volcano the Bear zeigen sich bereits reichlich unkonventionell. Die bis auf einige textlose Lautäußerungen instrumentale Musik wälzt sich wie ein zeitlupenartiger Klangstrom aus den Boxen, ohne dabei eine rechte Form anzunehmen. Streich- und Blasinstrumente mäandern entlang, allerlei Schlagwerk rumpelt vor sich hin, dazu knurrt oder brummt ab und zu jemand, was letztlich wie ein weiteres Instrument klingt. Einige undefinierbare Geräusche vervollkommnen das Ganze. Da hört man gelegentlich schrilles Kreischen wie von einer Kreissäge, oder wurde da ein Instrument malträtiert? Wer weiß. Ein andermal spielt eine einsame Flöte (oder ähnliches) eine seltsam schiefe Melodie, nur von sporadischen Beckenschlägen begleitet, oder Blechbläser stimmen eine Art ländliche Weise an. Äußerst kurios. So strukturlos diese Klänge sich über weite Strecken zunächst präsentieren, herrscht doch nicht völlige Planlosigkeit, es scheint doch irgendein System dahinterzustecken. Auf jeden Fall entwickelt diese Musik nach anfänglicher Skepsis eine starke Faszination. LaSTPO agieren hier noch ein ganzes Stück avantgardistischer als auf ihren mir bisher bekannten Alben. Vor allem die Stimme von Sänger Pascal Godjikian schlägt hier noch wildere Kapriolen, es ist kaum möglich, dieses permanente Knurren, Bellen, Heulen, Brüllen, Würgen mit Worten adäquat zu beschreiben. Da glaubt man, der selige Demetrios Stratos von Area sei wieder auferstanden! Dazu liefern seine Mitstreiter Klänge, die mit dem üblichen Verständnis von Rockmusik, auch von progressiver, kaum noch etwas gemein haben. Das ist zu großen Teilen schon radikale Anti-Musik! Da knarzen Streicher in Zeitlupe, als würde ein alter Holzschrank quälend langsam über einen Dielenboden gezerrt, Bläser schnarren, Schlagwerk rasselt, bis unvermittelt eine gigantische Lärmeruption einsetzt, in der die einzelnen Instrumente nur noch durcheinander purzeln. Les Oreilles Internationales treibt es in dieser Hinsicht auf die Spitze, es wirkt wie ein einziges Konglomerat unterschiedlichster Arten von Lärm. Und immer wieder die brutalen Lautäußerungen, als deren Urheber man kein menschliches Wesen annehmen möchte. Diese Lärmorgien sind wirklich so ziemlich das krasseste, das ich je gehört habe. In Worten lässt sich kaum beschreiben, was hier auf den Hörer einprasselt. Grandios! Mehr davon! Warum gibt es nur so wenige CDs von LaSTPO? Tipp für alle abenteuerlustige Hörer! Und wer die Gelegenheit hat, die Band live zu sehen: Hingehen! Es lohnt sich!" [Jochen Rindfrey / Babyblaue Seiten] | 2009 | €14.00 |
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| VOLGA | Pomol | CD | Trancig-tribale, durchaus ungewöhnliche hypnotische und z.T. sehr wuchtige Beats, ost-europäisch anmutender weiblicher Gesang, harmonische Flächen & Instrumenteneinsatz, manchmal hat das sogar einen Orient-touch, manchmal klingt es mehr nach Electro-Wave der 80er.. . Atmosphärischer, einnehmender Avant-Pop aus Russland! "VOLGA stammen aus Moskau, kamen 1997 zusammen und arbeiten seitdem extrem hart: auf Touren haben sie einiges der Welt gesehen und zehn Jahre nach ihrer Gründung steht mit "Pomol" ihr insgesamt siebtes (und fünftes Studio-) Album in den Startlöchern. Mit Alexei Borisov, der als bekannter Solokünstler elektronische Soundkunst erschafft, weben VOLGA einen dichten Electronica-Klangteppich, der mit bunten Mustern aus elektroakustischen Elementen, mantrischen Tanzrhythmen und traditionellen, schamanischen Folktexten glänzt. Die Texte von Sängerin Angela Manukjan stammen aus der russischen Folklore des 19. Jahrhunderts und lässt die Volksgesänge umso einzigartiger wirken. ,Pomol' ist auf der einen Seite eingängig und heimelig, auf der anderen Seite düster und akustisch kontrovers; aus den beiden Polen entsteht Musik, die das lose Konzept des Pop gründlich auf links zieht." [Cargo] "The latest album by this Moscow-based group, scheduled to go into production anytime shortly, alongside the above release. Thirteen wonderful tracks that, helmed by the powerful, dynamic, expressive and unique voice of Angela Manukjan, sway between electronica's moody yet accessible outer reaches, folk and other traditional music, plus the same kind of sensibilities ensnared so well by contemporary pop's more wayward souls such as Bjork and Sigur Ros." [label info] www.lumbertontrading.com | 2007 | €14.00 |
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| VOLLMER, CARSTEN | Arbeit Nr. 23 - Ich arbeite mit Frequenzen Teil 1 - 3 (ansteigend / abfallend / 2600 Hertz / Phreaking) | 3 x CDR set | The last part of the trilogy Ich arbeite mit Frequenzen forms a trilogy in itself: it is made up of three tracks while its two predecessors only contain one long track each. And while parts 1 and 2 work through a frequency grid of apparently mathematical rigour, this one focuses on the particularly distortion-rich frequency band around 2600 hertz. The two 2600 Hertz tracks are live recordings of a performance by Carsten Vollmer. Here, and on the opening track Phreaking, the first non-electronic sounds of the whole trilogy can be heard: the performer's screams put into relief the expressive quality of noise that was consciously underexposed on the 'antihumanist' parts 1 and 2. The fact that all of Carsten Vollmer's releases come as numbered Arbeiten (works), but in particular the verb arbeiten (to work) in the title of this release, emphasise the (physical) labour of building up his walls of sound. Thus, part 3 of Ich arbeite mit Frequenzen once more enacts the drama of 'man vs machine' or 'body vs bodily harmful frequencies and volumes' through which the noise genre time and again confronts existential and social alienation with an ecstatic, but 'parole-less protest' against it (to borrow a phrase from Carsten Vollmer's fellow noisician Anton Kaun aka Rumpeln). The first track of the album, Phreaking, also features a list, but not one of frequencies, but a list of textual references to Ron Rosenbaum's classic 1971 feature story The Secrets of the Little Blue Box about the hardware-hacking network of the Phone Phreaks, who built a counter-network within the official telephone network of the U.S.A. From the vantage point of the officially sanctioned telephone signals, these subversive actions were undoubtedly noise, and it is plain to see that Carsten Vollmer's Phreaking is a sympathetic homage. In a 'communication guerilla' practice such as this, Michel Foucault's basic tenet 'Where there's power, there's also resistance' meets the axiom of information theory: 'Where there's a signal, there's also noise'. The fact that this third and final album comes not as one monolithic track, but as an object fragmented within itself, is programmatic for ways in which noise can stand for the freeing of spaces in political contexts: instead of the monologue of an author(itarian) voice – 'I, and only I, work with frequencies' –, this album signals within itself the clamourous debate of different, dissenting voices, which in the political field is always preferable to the undisputed monologue of an absolute power. At the end of the live recordings, one eventually hears the voices of the audience; the author is no longer alone within his work, and someone says: 'It continues here, in the next room.' Thus the album ends with an invitation to claim new spaces of possibility. File under: Noise https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/arbeit-nummer-23-ich-arbeite-mit-frequenzen-teil-1-ansteigend https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/arbeit-nummer-23-ich-arbeite-mit-frequenzen-teil-2-abfallend https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/arbeit-nummer-23-ich-arbeite-mit-frequenzen-teil-3-2600-hertz-phreaking *** Der letzte Teil der Trilogie “Ich arbeite mit Frequenzen” bildet selbst eine Trilogie in sich – anders als die beiden Vorgänger, die jeweils nur aus einem langen Track bestehen, umfasst er drei Stücke. Statt ein mathematisch-kalkuliert wirkendes Frequenzschema durchzuarbeiten wie Teil 1 und Teil 2, wird hier auf 2600 Hertz in einem in Sachen Verzerrung besonders effektiven Frequenzbereich gearbeitet. Die beiden “2600 Hertz”-Tracks sind Livemitschnitte von einer Performance von Carsten Vollmer. Hier, aber auch auf dem Opener “Phreaking”, sind erstmals auch nicht-elektronische Klänge zu hören: Schreie des Performers rücken jene expressive Qualität von Noise in den Fokus, die auf den beiden “antihumanistischen” Teilen 1 und 2 betont ausgespart blieb. Nicht nur die Titulierung von allen Veröffentlichungen Carsten Vollmers als durchnummerierte “Arbeiten”, sondern speziell das Verb im Titel dieser Veröffentlichung betont die (physische) Anstrengung, die in die Errichtung seiner Klangwände einfließt. So führt auch Teil 3 von “Ich arbeite mit Frequenzen” das Drama “Mensch vs. Maschine” bzw. “Körper vs. körperfeindliche Frequenzen und Lautstärken” auf, mit dem das Genre Noise immer wieder existenzielle und gesellschaftliche Entfremdung sowie den ekstatischen, aber “parolenlosen Protest” dagegen (eine Formulierung von Carsten Vollmers Noise-Kollegen Anton Kaun aka Rumpeln) inszeniert. Das erste Stück des Albums, “Phreaking”, führt ebenfalls eine Liste auf, allerdings keine mit Frequenzen, sondern eine mit textlichen Anspielungen auf Ron Rosenbaums klassische Reportage “The Secrets of the Little Blue Box” von 1971 über das Hardware-Hacker-Netzwerk der “Phone Phreaks”, die im offiziellen Telefonnetzwerk der USA ein Gegen-Netzwerk aufbauten. Aus Sicht der offiziell im Telefonnetz vorgesehenen Signale waren diese subversiven Aktionen zweifellos “Noise”, und es ist unschwer zu erkennen, dass Carsten Vollmers “Phreaking” eine von Sympathie geprägte Hommage ist. In einer “Kommunikationsguerilla”-Praxis wie dieser trifft sich Michel Foucaults Grundsatz “Wo Macht ist, ist immer auch Widerstand” mit dem Axiom der Informationstheorie: “Wo Signale sind, da ist immer auch Rauschen”. Dass dieses dritte und letzte Album nicht als ein monolithischer Track, sondern in sich fragmentiert daherkommt, kann dabei programmatisch dafür gelesen werden, wie Noise auch im politischen Raum für das Schaffen von Freiräumen stehen kann: Statt des Monologs der Autor(itäts)stimme – “Ich, und nur ich arbeite mit Frequenzen” – wird hier innerhalb des Albums der lautstarke Widerstreit von verschiedenen Stimmen angedeutet, der im politischen Feld allemal wünschenswerter ist als der unumstrittene Monolog einer absoluten Herrschaft. Auf den Liveaufnahmen hört man dann am Ende auch die Stimmen des Publikums, der Autor ist nicht mehr allein in seiner Arbeit, und jemand sagt: “Hier im nächsten Raum geht es weiter.” So endet das Album ausdrücklich mit der Eröffnung von Möglichkeitsräumen, die es zu nutzen gilt. File under: Noise ----- VITAL WEEKLY Origami derives from ori, meaning "folding", and kami meaning "paper". The mathematics of the fold is relevant, is analogical to 'the fold'. This can be understood as the new mathematics of the curve, of changing quantities which is often difficult for non-mathematicians, of which I am one. Put simply in simple geometry of a flat surface, say a chessboard, a piece, pawn, knight etc. can be located by two coordinates. These are static set properties, which Deleuze via Leibniz relates to Descartes. Complex curves, changing velocities, cannot be precisely modelled using such a method. This was accomplished by using mathematics to model dynamically changing events, the Calculus. If modernism in its linear development fixes and finalizes itself in a Cartesian / Euclidean fixed point, a null event, the Baroque does not. The metaphor of calculus is useful, for around it are mathematical objects such as the limit. In simple non-mathematical terms, a series of calculations can approach a limit but never reach it, and in getting closer, to a potential infinity of numbers. For non-mathematicians, this is best seen in the obvious Baroque of The Mandelbrot Set. Folding can produce an infinite variation. Associated with 'folding' in Deleuze derives the aesthetic, especially the visual aesthetic in the Baroque, one of the dynamic curves and dramatic events. “Leibniz is endlessly drawing up linear and numerical tables. With them he denotes the inner walls of the monad. Folds replace holes...” (The Fold). Elsewhere (in The Logic of Sense) Tenth series of the ideal game -”of which we speak cannot be played by either man or God. It can only be thought as nonsense. But precisely for this reason, it is the reality of thought itself and the unconscious of pure thought. This game is reserved then for thought and art.” Baroque music of the 'classical period' - (late 17thC- 18thC) used accomplished improvisation, complex polyphony, multiple independent melody lines, the fugue and ricercar (which explore the permutations of a given motif). The 'metaphysics' that the Baroque produced was significant in music. Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Monteverdi, Scarlatti, Purcell, Telemann... such that with Bach there is the deployment of a pure abstract formalism which could be regarded as a metaphysics of the free play of the potentialities of the abstract (windowless) structures of music. And in thinking the Baroque we also arrive at Leibniz and German Idealism, but also the more recent 'idealism' of Deleuze and the Speculative Realists and Object Oriented Ontologists. To judge these metaphysics in 'scientific', empirical terms, would then be to miss the point. They are not in all cases Monads, as they are not closed off to ourselves. They are like Monads in that they seem closed in on themselves. The point is that 'Baroque Folding' is an internal programme. Thus it typically appears when genres become exhausted or fully mature. A very early classical example is the development of Corinthian Architecture from that of the Doric & Ionic, or the much more recent, post-modernism, especially noticeable in Architecture. A certain playfulness which can and does in Po-Mo reduce, at times, to mere sensation and irony. Within contemporary music, 'noise music' and 'harsh noise' was to lead to a reductionist, 'analytics' of the extreme minimalism of Harsh Noise Wall's monolithic unchanging noise. This cul-de-sac has an obvious problem, and various methodologies have evolved in order to circumvent its effective closure of the noise genre, from abandoning noise altogether (Wolf Eyes), to alternatives, such as shit folk and ultra shit folk (Romain Perrot). The process of 'folding' is synthetic, not analytic (reductionist, minimalist walls). Both processes are to be found in Metaphysics and Art. In The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant sets out to establish an a priori basis for his transcendental metaphysics and makes two distinctions, that of the analytic a priori and the synthetic a priori. The philosophy of this needn't concern us. What is useful is concerning the idea of The Fold. The epistemological, philosophical implications disputed by some also need not bother us here. For us, what is significant in Kant is that Kant maintains that the Synthetic can produce (a priori) new objects without recourse to finding them in the outside world. In Analysis, something is broken down or examined to find its fundamental form or origin (The Wall of Noise). This is normally regarded as a task that will arrive at something fundamental. In early philosophy – the Atom – in Jungian analysis the archetype. It may well be that such a final analysis is not possible, that analysis is potentially infinite, or results in a void. Synthesis is the reverse. Given some fundamental objects, we can create new objects and structures – out of what is already given. A triangle can be analyzed into its basic three sides of straight lines, but we can synthesize new objects given a triangle. We can make a quadrilateral with two triangles and continue – pentagons, hexagons, and no limit – and no recourse to anything external to our basic element. And whereas Analysis is contained by the analysis of 'what is there' synthesis creates new objects that are not 'already there'. The Baroque is this distinction between the Analytic A Priori and Kant's idea of a Synthetic A Priori. An example in the arts is that of Analytic Cubism and Synthetic Cubism. Whereas Analytical Cubism broke up the picture plane into its elements, Synthetic Cubism used these basic 'elements' to synthesize new compositions. The tendency in modernism was analytical. “What is painting?” “What is music?” “What is Art?”, the analytical desire of what is “essential”. In Cubism, the 'Analytical' phase was relatively short-lived, the Synthetic move allowing Picasso and others an alternative continuous productive methodology. The (Baroque) fold is a synthetic methodology. At the most pedantic Origami – (from ori "folding", and kami "paper"). An origami Swan is a synthesis of a flat sheet of paper. All creations of Origami are in the last analysis, flat sheets of paper. The methodology of Origami, of 'folding', is Synthetic and offers an infinity of productions. Which is occasioned in Noise – here! which is not the abandonment of noise or a retrograde movement back into music. The baroque fold, abstractly using the tropes, forms etc., of noise music not as an external expression but as internal work exploring the permutations and improvisational possibilities of a given motif. The tropes of Harsh Noise, the motifs of feedback, oscillator sweeps, distortion, white noise etc. Abstract sounds, found in Harsh Noise before its collapse into a minimal wall. What is removed is the idea of a linear 'progress' (modernism) replaced by that of infinite synthesis. Ansteigend, Abfallend and 2600 Hertz_Phreaking are 3 parts of Arbeit Nummer 23 - Ich Arbeite Mit Frequenzen. www.vitalweekly.net/1316.html "Steht 'Frequenzarbeiter' schon im Duden? CARSTEN VOLLMER arbeitet jedenfalls daran, mit seiner Arbeit Nr. 23: Ich arbeite mit Frequenzen (3xCDr, jeweils in DVD-Schuber). Dieser nächste Arbeitsschritt nach der bad alchemystischen „Arbeit Nr. 22“ (BA 103) ist ein in strenger Schwarzweiß-Optik vereinter Triptychon, den drei Labels stemmen: Teil 1 – Ansteigend (ACU 1027), Teil 2 – Abfallend (Cat Killer), Teil 3 – 2600 Hertz / Phreaking (Krater Recordings, KR05-010). Das oft genug unangebracht verwendete 'experimentell' ist dabei halbwegs gerechtfertigt durch die demonstrativen 'Versuchs'-Reihen mit 55 – 77 - 160 – 300 – 666 – 800 – 1000 – 2000 – 4400 – 5000 – 9000 Hz rauf und runter ('Ansteigend'/ 'Abfallend') sowie drei Episoden mit 2600 Hz. Darunter, neben zwei Live-Exzerpten vom Schrei/Ende/Ohren-Festival, eine Hommage an das in den 70ern popularisierte und bis in die 90er mögliche Phone-Freaking in den USA, wo die von Hackern entdeckte, von den Yippies popularisierte Freischaltung auf eben der 2600 Hz-Frequenz als Akt des zivilen Widerstands aufgefasst wurde. Aber diese Frequenz-Folklore erscheint wie ein narratives Surplus in Vollmers bildlos purer Darbietung eines Blizzard-Kontinuums, in dem McLuhans 'kalte' und 'heiße' Medialität verwischt. Indem ein schrillendes, zerrendes Zuviel mit myriodophonem Rausch überwältigt und lähmt, doch in seinem informatorischen Überschuss zugleich nach Kryptologen schreit. Für einen auch merkwürdig flötenden Code. Aber vor allem für ein Unsagbares, das sich als kataklysmische Schallmauer zeigt wie bei Wittgenstein das Mystische. Dass in allem, was der Fall ist, atomare Niagarafälle toben, die jedes menschliche Maß übersteigen. Der infernalische 'Gesang' der Neuronen, das heulende Elend der Elektronen, das universale Alpha, Vollmer hat es zwischen Infra und Ultra brachial orchestriert als kakophon schillernde Metapher für das Mega-, Giga-, Tera-Chaos im elektromagnetischen Radio- und Mikrowellendschungel. Als Sturz der Erkenntnis über die Marmorklippen durch die Stahlgewitter ins Spektrum der Strahlungen, als total mo-bilgemachter Black Metal vor einem Schwarzlicht-Horizont. Das von Ernst Jünger immer wieder gebrauchte Tat Tvam Asi [Das bist du] zeigt dazu seinen technologisch fitten 'Ar-beiter', der als 'organische Konstruktion' mit der technoiden Mobilmachung heißläuft. Und einige wenige, die, obwohl gleichermaßen involviert, in kühler Desinvoltura dazu Distanz halten. Vollmers akribische Abbildungen, 48 + 48 + 50 Minuten intensive Immersion, können als stoischer Härtetest erscheinen. Als stockholm-syndromatische Affirmation eines Factum brutum. Oder sogar als akzelerationistisches Vorwärts (Nick Land), das die transhumane Umgestaltung des Menschen (durch die aggressiven Metastasen des Kapitalismus) ins Auge fasst. Mit der Utopie einer KI-generierten 'technologischen Singularität' würde Jüngers 'organische Konstruktion' zum Pionier der transhumanen Erlösung. Jede durchgestandene Noisattacke wäre, gerade indem sie das hinfällige Fleisch von den Knochen schabt, ein Evolutionsschritt dorthin. Der Geist, schon bei Hegel ein harter Knochen, steckt seinen Kopf, wie sein Renaissance-Vorgänger durch die Käseglocke seiner Scheibenwelt, unter die Bremsscheiben eines endlosen Güterzuges, in einen brausenden Bienenstock, der Züge von StanisławLems Partikelschwarm auf Regis III trägt. Steht Hz auch für neuen Horizont, für abenteuerliches Herz? Vollmer gibt sich, wenn er 'ich arbeite...' sagt, beeindruckend cool und souverän. Oder verdolmetscht er so bloß die Mutter der Teilchen und Wellen? Alan Moores Parent of suns and substance, she! Womb of all possibility! Als menschliche Spur im Dauertrommelfeuer der Klangpartikelstrahlung bleiben dann nur die Schreie, die Vollmer zuletzt, von 2600 Hz-Stacheln an die Wand gespießt, ausstößt. Kein 'Banzai!', aber doch wie mit geballter Faust und mehr als nur Schmerz und Angst. Noise als Waffe der Kritik an Betonköpfen, verkrusteten Strukturen, Kalk, Rost, marmornen Popanzen. Als, o Killer-Kaninchen von Caerbannog, o schwarze Bestie von Aaa, als Speer, der die Wunde heilt, die von ihm herrührt?" [Bad Alchemy] | 2021 | €20.00 |
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| VON EULER-DONNERSPERG, DITTERICH | Knüllungen, Wulstungen, Klumpungen | LP | Geierberg Sterben Sie Bitte! Und Ist Kein Jammer In Der Welt Wahres Gegen Nichtwahres Die Schläferfalle Vom Ende Der Zeit Studioaufnahmen 1980-82, geringfügig überarbeitet und ergänzt 2012. Recorded 1980-82, slightly enhanced and added to 2012 © MOLOKO+ 2015 MOLOKO PLUS 080 PICTURE DISC donnersperg@web.de www.molokoplusrecords.de „Wer Versucht, Den Menschen Mit Seinem Tiersein Zu Versöhnen, Wird Selbst Zum Menschen.“ KLOPSTOCK „The One Trying To Reconciliate Man To His Beastly Existence, Is Doomed To Become a Human Himself.“ KLOPSTOCK VIRB: Ein grauer Knurrhahn und Grummelsack, der eine Schule für Honiggewinnung und Schnittblumenzucht in Alt Wrietzen im Oderbruch betreibt. Steht neben Dr. Kurt Euler, dem Vorsitzenden der Parteikommission für Volksbildung und Kulturkampf beim ZK der Kommunistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands (KED) in dem (ungerechtfertigten?) Ruf eines im Geiste Johann Gotthilf KLOPSTOCKs, des Lehrers einer irrenden Menschheit, wirkenden, sinnenfrohen Zuchtmeisters fehlgeleiteter junger, mitunter auch alter Menschen, welche in hemmungslosen Daseinsirrtümern schwelgen und ihr Leben von dessen Ende her betrachten. Tritt seit dem Rübenwinter 1946/47 als Sachwalter des Werkbundes und des traditionsreichen Tonverlages Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien unbedingt gegen Wirrnis und verstocktes, kleinbürgerliches Schwarzsehertum auf und betreibt unter den Leitgedanken Verdunkeln! Der Feind sieht dein Licht! Beginne den Tag mit Sterben! Das „Scheitern als schöne Kunst“. Im Jahre 1980 gründete Euler-Donnersperg die WALTER ULBRICHT SCHALLFOLIEN Hamburg, welche sich im Geiste Walter Ulbrichts, des damals meistgehaßten Menschen der Erde, des Erbauers des Berliner Antifaschistischen Schutzwalls, unbedingt der Langsamkeit verpflichtet fühlen und unter dem Leitwort NEU KONSERVATIW die ehernen Werte des klassischen „Industrials“ zu pflegen bestrebt sind (vgl. SPK: The Cathedral of Death - Die Kultur der Todesverdrängung). Bis Ende der 80er Jahre des 20. Jahrhunderts veranstaltete Euler-Donnersperg zahlreiche Auftritte mit geistverwandten Klanggestaltern, u. a. mit Illusion of Safety, Jim O’Rourke, The Hafler Trio, Bourbonese Qualk, Nocturnal Emissions, Whitehouse, Gerechtigkeitsliga, The Legendary Pink Dots, Laibach, Asmus Tietchens. Gleichzeitig geben die Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien Dokumente der Gruppen SPK, Throbbing Gristle, Laibach, John Watermann, Asmus Tietchens, The Hafler Trio, Werkbund, Mechthild von Leusch, Column One, Evapori und Hyph heraus. Im Nebenamt Sachwalter des WERKBUNDES tritt Euler-Donnersperg mit Lesungen und Klangschöpfungen eigener Werke hervor – unter anderem mit Michael von Hausswolff, Leif Ellgren, Kent Tankred, The Hafler Trio, Asmus Tietchens, Dan Burke, Organum, John Duncan. Seit 1996 jährliche Herausgabe eine Heftes der Pelzwurstlieder, Bildschallplatte im handgestalteten Portfolio, Reimdichtungen im Geiste Klopstocks mit elektronischem Zuspielband: Zustandsbeschreibung der Welt mit den Augen der Listspinne, der Trugnatter, der Assel, der Klappnase, des Stachlers. www.molokoplusrecords.de | 2018 | €18.00 |
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| Weisheit aus des Kindes Mund tut uns stets die Wahrheit kund | LP | Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg, also known as Uli Rehberg and most certainty other names, is a mythologized figure in Germany's industrial underground. The man behind Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien, a label responsible for early releases by Throbbing Gristle and SPK and for being the home of the enigmatic Werkbund, it is long believed that Ditterich is part of, or completely behind, Werkbund himself. A Colourful Storm presents another piece of his puzzle. Wisdom from the child’s mouth always tells us the truth. It’s hard to overstate the influence of Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg on A Colourful Storm; indeed, it’s almost impossible to imagine the label’s existence without it. A figure whose movements within Germany’s industrial avant-garde span almost forty years, it would be in 2010 that he unknowingly entered our orbit through two important releases. At the time, SPK’s Auto-Da-Fé and Throbbing Gristle’s Journey Through A Body left some impression on us, their discovery propelling an interest in the possibilities opened up by industrial music that we still explore today. Responsible for publishing these releases was Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien - who, or what, were they? Founded in 1980 by Hamburg-based Uli Rehberg, Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien was a base for Laibach, Asmus Tietchens and Werkbund as well as Rehberg’s own artistic endeavours: the most devilishly humorous his adopting of the name Dr. Kurt Euler, spokesperson of a satirical political party comprised of musicians Felix Kubin and Gregor Hartz. The project would foreshadow the life of Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg, an alias unveiled in 1998 with the first in a series of spoken word 7” picture discs that have since become highly collectable. Attracting an enviable list of collaborators throughout his career (John Duncan, Thomas Köner and Column One have all lent their expertise), it is perhaps the enigmatic Werkbund project that remains most coveted within the world of von Euler-Donnersperg. Cloistered and clandestine since their inception in 1987, their brooding, synthetik atmospheres have long been speculated to be the work of von Euler-Donnersperg himself. Listen to Werkbund’s Skagerrak or Stahlhof and tell us we’re wrong... The culmination of decades of sound research and electroacoustic investigation, Weisheit aus des Kindes Mund tut uns stets die Wahrheit kund is significantly also a tribute to von Euler-Donnersperg’s children, their voices and spoken word hocus-pocus conjuring clairvoyant visions amongst soaring metallic sheen and spectralist digital debris. Cybernetic ooze spilling into servers and causing subdued bleep signals and static. A slasher film soundtrack starring the German avant-garde dressed in laboratory coats. The latest piece of von Euler-Donnersperg’s peerless, endlessly imaginative puzzle. https://acolourfulstorm.com/album/weisheit-aus-des-kindes-mund-tut-uns-stets-die-wahrheit-kund | 2021 | €20.00 |
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| VON EULER-DONNERSPERG, DITTERICH / FELIX KUBIN | NNOI#01 | LP | NNOI#... In this series, the recordings and documents of the actors of the NNOI Festival gather and reveal the primitive anatomy of the NNOI that sinks onto the frosted glass of nature, like the printing ink unconscious in the letters of the newspaper. The design of the entire series is based on drawings by Frank Diersch - made for this project. forthcoming: NNOI#2: Rashad Becker & Robert Schalinski, NNOI#3: Asmus Tietchens & Frieder Butzmann, NNOI#4: Air Cushion Finish D.v. Euler-Donnersperg - side: unreleased tracks from his wild beehive. Felix Kubin - side: Felix Kubin accompanies René Clair‘s silent film »Entr’acte« from 1924 live with a new electro-acoustic soundtrack, which refers to the surreal choreography, the contrasts in content and the fast editing sequences of the film in rhythmic cut-ups. Rene Clair‘s film „Entr‘acte“ from 1924 is a real jewel of surrealism and is largely unknown to this day. The director radically experiments with cinematographic effects, provokes absurd exaggerations, which sometimes take on blasphemous proportions, and is not afraid to commit violence. The staff of actors is made up of famous artists such as Erik Satie, Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp, who, quite self-ironically, bounce through the image rather than stride. Men and women roles are reversed, a death procession turns into a roller coaster ride. The bizarre humor of the film also testifies, among other things, to the artistic daring of its time. Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg »I hate long announcements now. Everyone writes something and brags about all kinds of information (especially celebrity names). Something has become completely uniform over time. I hate that. Simply state briefly: „The old gray gurnard from the Waterkant creaks and growls its funny and less funny ways ..“ GLÜCKAUF! Felix Kubin„I am a child living in the body of Juri Gagarin. He is empty like a corpse. His eyes move slowly like radars. First comes the idea then the technology. Children are angels, sometimes they fall into nothingness. I am Juri‘s ventriloquist.“ Felix Kubin, messenger of exploding lungs, lives and works against gravitation. At the age of 12 he started composing electronic 4-track music. His activities comprise futurist pop, electroacoustic and chamber orchestra music, radio plays, lectures, workshops and his label Gagarin Records. He has been involved with the noise project Klangkrieg, the communist singing group Liedertafel Margot Honecker and the tetchy teenage bands Die Egozentrischen 2 and x2. Frank Diersch - a German draftsman and painter. NNOI - festival for 12,756 tone music, obscure teaching & organ of the world-ventriloquist-lodge. https://www.facebook.com/donnersperg/ www.frank-diersch.de/ www.felixkubin.com www.nnoi.de https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YxuYqL52is https://www.facebook.com/nnoi.festival/ NNOI - festival for 12,756 tone music, obscure teaching & organ of the world-ventriloquist-lodge "In der NNOI Festival-Reihe werden Aufnahmen von Künstlerinnen und Künstlern veröffentlicht, die auf dem gleichnamigen Festival , “für 12,756 Tonmusik, obskure Lehren & Organ der Weltbauchrednerloge”, gespielt haben (u.a. werden noch Asmus Tietchens und Frieder Butzmann folgen). Den Auftakt macht eine Split-Veröffentlichung: Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg, Sachwalter des Werkbunds, selbst so titulierter „Knurrhahn“ hat mit den zwischen 1996 und 2014 erschienenen “Pelzwurstliedern”, sogenannten „Reimdichtungen im Geiste Klopstocks mit elektronischem Zuspielband“, originellste, kaum kategorisierbare und von beißendem Humor durchzogene Lyrik herausgebracht. Felix Kubin hat neben zahllosen musikalischen Veröffentlichngen, auf denen auch immer ein absurder Humor deutlich wurde (im Presseinfo heißt es: „„I am a child living in the body of Juri Gagarin.“), eine ganze Reihe von Hörspielen produziert. Auf der ersten Seite befinden sich acht bisher unveröffentliche Stücke von Euler-Donnersperg, bei denen sich das Ausgangsmaterial, was bearbeitet wurde, nur erahnen lässt: „Krebs im Schlafrock“ beginnt mit einem ratterndem Loop, man hört zerhäckselte Stimmen. Einem Teil der Stücke haftet etwas Fragementiertes an. So auch bei „Kleiner Irrtum“ mit den hektischen Wassersounds, flirrenden Tönen und dann so etwas, das sich wie ein Echolot anhört. Auf „Mit geknickten Dichterschwingen“ hört man einen Loop, der an Jahrmarktsmusik erinnert, auf „Ein letzter großer Seher“ muss man zwischenzeitlich an Vogelkreischen denken. Die drei dann folgenden Stücke nehmen das Hektisch-Fragentierte zurück: „Verlangen, den Regenbogen zu fangen“ ist von ruhigen, kristallinen, flächigen Sounds durchzogen, die teilweise an ein Theremin denken lassen. Auf „Verknausertes Korn“ dröhnt und knistert es. Bei „Angenehm müde“ meint man das Ticken eines Metronoms zu hören, am Ende scheint eine bearbeitete Stimme aufzutauchen. Kubins Beitrag ist ein langes Stück, das als neuer Soundtrack für den 1924 entstandenen Stummfilm “Entr’acte” von René Clair konzipiert ist. Bei dem Film wirkten damals Erik Satie, Francis Picabia und Marcel Duchamp mit und gerade durch Clairs Einsatz von Effekten wie Zeitlupe und Überblendungen (ein Gesicht starrt einen aus dem Wasser an, ein Papierboot durchpflügt die Dächer von Paris) erzeugt Clair eine durchaus kurios-absurde Atmosphäre (Puppen verlieren ihre Köpfe, der Rock einer Tänzerin scheint eine Blume zu sein, ein Zauberer entsteigt einem Sarg). Der Track beginnt mit kuriosen Knarzen, Brummen, Loops, Fiepen, am Ende meint man ein Sample aus Coils “Things Happen” zu hören – in Passagen ist das durchaus nicht so weit entfernt von manchen Arbeiten Steven Stapletons und von der Stimmung und Herangehensweise ist das ein mehr als passender Soundtrack zu “Entr’acte”." [MG / African Paper] | 2020 | €20.00 |
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| VON HAUSSWOLFF, C.M. (CARL MICHAEL) | Perhaps I Arrive - music for Atatürk Airport, Istanbul | do-CD | "This double disc set includes some of the most unusual sounds you will have heard from Carl Michael von Hausswolff. The story goes like this. Von Hausswolff was chosen by the 1997 Istanbul Biennal to create a sound installation for Atatürk Airport. His classic sound combining low frequency rumblings, very monotonous oscillations and hissy non-narrative sequences was deemed too confusing for the commutors. It was feared, von Hausswolff’s sound installation might be mistaken for an alarm and would be capable of causing serious panic at the airport. Hence the original soundtrack for “Perhaps I Arrive” was neglected. This music can now be heard for the first time on disc 1. Carl Michael von Hausswolff’s response to the artistic restrictions was to produce the four tracks you hear on the second disc. These only make use of the very basic pre-set industry sounds included in the Yamaha QY22 and show a new side to the von Hausswolff sound. Very simple, post-nuclear lounge music. These four tracks you guessed it! ¬were happily used in the context of the Biennal exhibition. Art is a three-letter word (William S Burroughs)" [label info] "Nothing is for a musician more annoying than a response like: whatever you are doing, it sounds like a test tone, alarm signal, hiss or worse: I think your equipment is broken. So when Carl Micheal von Hauswolff was asked by the Istanbul Biennale to make a site specific work at their airport, he was probably very annoyed when they turned down his piece of low rumbling, because it could have caused alarm. So instead he created something else, on a Yamaha QY22, using preset sounds only - probably to annoy the organizers. Now both versions are released as part of this double CD - the rejected piece on one CD, and the accepted on the other. The rejected piece is indeed a piece of low rumbling, a bit of hiss sounds (long waves picked up from the ether I think) which may not have worked at the airport - depends of course on how things are presented - but for home listening I must say this is quite nice. Perfect Hauswolff styled hiss music. And what a difference indeed with the accepted version. Four pieces there of lounge like music, but with a more forceful rhythm underneath, so it wouldn't entirely work in lounge bar. But you can imagine people at an airport, hastily walking along Hauswolff march like beats and bittersweet keyboards with a vague trace of arab-like sounds. This is a side that we haven't heard from him before, and it's not something he should do a lot (or in fact never did again, as far as I can recall), but it's surely a curious album. " [FdW / Vital Weekly] www.aufabwegen.com | 2008 | €18.00 |
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| VOWINCKEL, ANTJE | Terra Prosodia | CD | "Sound composition with dialects and disappearing languages from Europe With: George Cadéac, Nesa Engler, Don Eoil, Remy Graillon, Ingvar Larsson, Peter Meyer und Ingrid Wahlgren 1. Rumansch 2. Gutamal 3. Provencal 4. Wallis-Deutsch 5. Provencal 6. Gascon 8. Scottish-Gaelic 8 Tracks (33′46″) CD (500 copies) Currently about 6000 languages are spoken on the world. Most of them will disappear soon – and together with them a meldodic richness of human expressivness. However, the fact, that dialects and disappearing languages are only spoken by a few people has one advantage: only if one does not understand the contents it is possible to really listen tot he sound, saying far away from their homeland these languages unfold their musical enchantment (charme?). What you find are melodies that nobody invented (conceived of?). They arise in the process of impulsive speaking, on the grounds of oral tradition. Landscapes seem to continue there with melodic heights and valleys. Often single sentences remain in our heads as catchy tunes. In Terra Prosodia people tell a short spontanuous story based on a personal experience. Stories about storms, excursions, accidents and so on. Particularly speakers who have spent their lifes in remote valleys or islands often speak with much more distinct modulation. This expressiveness gets lost quickly one cou live in a big city. In the compositions the contents of these stories do not matter any longer. The pieces focus on the melodies in the dialects and add second instrumental or humed melodic voice. By this also the melody of the speaking voice is underlined. In the beginning the second voice will imitate the speaking voice, later becomes indpendent and follows own directions. As soon as the focus of perception is on the melody, you can listen to both lines as independent voices. During my work I found out, that an even more exact decoding and mapping oft he intervalls (which would be possible technically) on no account lead to better results. Quite the contraray the effect of a catchy tune that occurs when you remember the melodies is based on the fact the our brain is already during hearing looking for characteristic figures and intervalls. Our ear behaves like the eye in a stalagtite cave. In a vast array of stalagtites and stalagmites we always remember nothing then typical single shapes. „Look, that looks like….“. Only this mechanism allows us to remember something of huge amount of shapes. (Antje Vowinckel, translation: Chris Heenan) Text by Christina Kubisch: Many things disappear and only then gets attention. Images, texts, sounds appear in archives in audio-visual documentations in the net. But archiving the no more living existence is partial maybe even sometimes absurd or naiv. Language only can remain vivid and interesting, if it is spoken everyday. When it is staying in a process of change, articulated by different persons, when it is depicting facts, information, thoughts, emotions and so on. Antje Vowinckel’s Terra Prosodia makes happy and sad at the same time. The musicality of the spoken word sinks in even more by the melodical adaption as in case of pure listening of an unknown lanugage. You admire the beautiness and complexity. You instantly wish to speak one of these languages yourself for not leaving them to archivars and linguists but forward them to people who would use them in future. In Terra Prosodia Antje Vowinckel succeeds in a wonderful mixture of a political important theme, a formally convincing process and a subtle and profound humour, that is hard to find. Once you have listened to the voices you will listen differently to spoken language in every day life." [label info] www.gruenrekorder.de www.gruenrekorder.de | 2014 | €13.00 |
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| VOX POPULI! | Psyko Tropix | LP | Touch Sensitive is honoured to dig into the vaults of legendary cult French group Vox Populi! with a collection primarily pulling from their creative highpoint of 1986-1990. The vast majority of the works are unreleased and all make their first appearance on vinyl. The recordings have been licensed from the group's extensive archive, mastered by Rupert Clervaux and cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnitstelle. The release is completed by liner notes focusing on Vox Populi!'s creative process and prolific output. Springing from the rip it up restart of post-punk in 1980 and primarily active throughout that decade, Vox Populi!'s discography is a perfect showcase of an almost unclassifiable group. The often-used 'ethno-industrial' tag - even if not approved by the group - goes some way to describing a melting pot of primarily self-taught techniques and vast cultural influences. Founding member Axel Kyrou's parents were avant-garde musicians and filmmakers resulting in a heavy cultural immersion from a young age. His partner and bandmate Mitra moved from Iran to Paris in 1978 - followed a few years later by her virtuoso brother Arash who joined the group at the age of 14. Based in their 14th arronidissement studio - previously Axel and his brother's family playroom - Vox Populi! quickly became a lynchpin in the Parisian experimental scene and beyond through the burgeoning mail-art scene. The group contributed work to a huge number of independent labels. Their music and approach quickly progressed from rudimentary experiments to harness transcendental spiritual qualities and moments of intense beauty. In this collection, we can feel the vibrations of Don Cherry's Organic Music Society, Faust's communal explorations and King Tubby's forward-thinking studio experimentation. "We recorded everything - every idea. We would always have a cassette or a reel running. We made such different styles - freaky, alternative, experimental, industrial etc. We had no rules and no plans - our main motives were play and pleasure. I think that many people can feel that in the music." Three tracks recorded in 2017 by a reconfigured Vox Populi! sit perfectly with music from 30 years previous - "We were never defined by fashion or the zeitgeist. So we remained ourselves. Our sound is still natural. We had to be turned on by our own music and we wanted the music to have an impact on consciousness. We were the subjects of our own experiments and there was also a kind of mystery - even for us." The Psyko Tropix collection is another magical and mysterious addition to the open-hearted and open-eared world of Vox Populi! "The music of Vox Populi! found me several years ago and it was one of my record digging highlights. Their stark contrast of dark and light paints a beautiful picture of the physical and mental world we all live in. This new album doesn't miss a step in exploring further in both directions" Cut Chemist https://touchsensitiverecords.bandcamp.com/album/psyko-tropix | 2022 | €29.50 |
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| VROMB | Rayons | LP | Konzeptuell und musikalisch wieder überzeugend – das neue VROMB-Album beschäftigt sich mit der akustischen Umsetzung von STRAHLEN... “ vromb's intention on 'rayons' is to translate several kinds of rays into music - ranging from sunbeams to optical rays. so, 'rayons' can also be seen as an aural sight-seeing tour. the 'speed' factor is that of a person moving (whether by foot or in different vehicles). this movement was transformed into rhythmic patterns. imagine the aural equivalent of taking a walk during a thunderstorm ('éclairs') or feeling the sun peaking through a clouded sky while window shopping ('boulevard'). all sounds were generated with analog and digital synthesizers. the listener might believe that they are hearing modulated samples but this is not true. it is once again, an example of girard's virtuosity in creating 'naturalistic' soundscapes with pure electronic equipment. for the images on the album cover, girard gave the photographer, alain gauvin the basic audio tracks for inspiration. the final musical structure on 'rayons' is based on inspirations from gauvin's pictures which were taken in the montreal area. so close your eyes, let yourself go and feel the rays coming out of your speakers.” [label info] | 2003 | €8.00 |
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| Rayons | CD | "Konzeptuell und musikalisch wieder überzeugend – das neue VROMB-Album beschäftigt sich mit der akustischen Umsetzung von STRAHLEN..." [old Drone info] “ vromb's intention on 'rayons' is to translate several kinds of rays into music - ranging from sunbeams to optical rays. so, 'rayons' can also be seen as an aural sight-seeing tour. the 'speed' factor is that of a person moving (whether by foot or in different vehicles). this movement was transformed into rhythmic patterns. imagine the aural equivalent of taking a walk during a thunderstorm ('éclairs') or feeling the sun peaking through a clouded sky while window shopping ('boulevard'). all sounds were generated with analog and digital synthesizers. the listener might believe that they are hearing modulated samples but this is not true. it is once again, an example of girard's virtuosity in creating 'naturalistic' soundscapes with pure electronic equipment. for the images on the album cover, girard gave the photographer, alain gauvin the basic audio tracks for inspiration. the final musical structure on 'rayons' is based on inspirations from gauvin's pictures which were taken in the montreal area. so close your eyes, let yourself go and feel the rays coming out of your speakers.” [press release] | 2003 | €13.50 |
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| Chorégraphie. Electro-Bruits et Tonalites Low-Fi | CD | "for more than twenty years the canadian project vromb a.k.a. hugo girard has masterly transformed a plethora of different inspirations into sound, resulting in a multitude of releases based on many topics. for the realization of his recent opus, girard drastically changed his approach: instead of choosing an exterior subject he wanted to transcribe the tones and voices generated in his own mind, keep hold of them and etch them onto record, and thus he is the choreographer of imaginary sounds which become physical musical entities. 'chorégraphie' demonstrates vromb's incredible skills at handling his' analog electronic equipment, which means in large part the sound manipulations are created by directly using the machines with only a little part of computer assisted sequencing, audio montages and overdubs. subliminal trance-inducing beats, mighty pulsating sub basses and repetitive sequencer textures enriched with surrealistic ambient dronescapes and hugo girard's recognizable voice generate a steady but everchanging semi-ritualistic flow which was, is, and will be associated uniquely with the sonic world of vromb. a wonderfully composed album which allegorizes the disposal of the sounds created by an artist's inner self, and at the same time an essential listening for those with a different view. highly recommended." [label info] www.ant-zen.com | 2015 | €13.00 |
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| WAKINYAN | Copal Flow | LP | "In November 2011, after 20 years, the Italian band TERRORITMO became "WAKINYAN". "Copal Flow" is the first step in Wakinyan's exploration. Like the strong scent of copal brings ancient memories and visions, each track here depicts a scenery and involves the listener directly, totally. Introduced by the obscure night of "Notturno", like in a wood, crowded with spirits and animals, you're guided through 9 gates, each one opening on a different space and time. As if the purpose was to awake the slumbering ancestral memory of man, this record is fundamentally based on the dualism of elements strictly relating to the human being: "voice" and "iron". Whispers and screams, heartbeats and metal clashes, pulsing rhythms and voodoo drumming, ancient chants of the earth. Anything takes place all around you... and inside you. Enjoy your journey! Backwards released this record in a limited edition of 350 copies as gatefold sleeve. First 50 copies are in coloured vinyl with a special silkscreened insert and an additional DVD by Davide Pepe. The remaining 300 copies are in standard black wax." [label info] about the band: "In November 2011, after 20 years, Wakinyan became the new name for Terroritmo. Since the very beginning, in 1991, this Italian collective has explored unconventional music, using any kind of instruments, objects and tools to create its distinctive sound, with roots in industrial music and musique brut. Metal pipes and springs, glasses, Tibetan bowls, gongs, metal sheets, oil bins, knives, custom drums, rattles create hypnotic rhythms or powerful crescendos, while subtle drones made of processed voices, harmonics and noises fill up the atmosphere. Chants inflate Life in these layers of primal cadences. The industrial meets the organic. Fire and darkness. Wakinyan's act is a modern ritual. What's below and what's above get connected. The emotional and the spiritual, the individual and the shared, they all melt into each other. Sounds perceived physically, almost unconsciously, take the listener into a mysterious place, the unknown, the hidden. Out of space and time." | 2012 | €15.00 |
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| WALKER, SCOTT & SUNN O))) | Soused | do-LP | "Freigeister unter sich: Der US-Chansonier trifft auf die Drone-Doom-Band: Als Sunn O))) im Jahre 2009 erstmals bei Scott Walker anfragten, ob er einen Beitrag zu ihrem Album "Monoliths & Dimensions" beisteuern wolle, ahnte niemand, dass es einmal eine echte Zusammenarbeit geben würde. Vier Jahre später meldete sich Scott Walker schließlich bei der US-amerikanischen Drone-Doom-Band: Er habe neue Musik geschrieben und dabei stets eine Kollaboration mit Sunn O))) im Sinn gehabt. "Soused" ist das beeindruckend wuchtige Ergebnis einer Kooperation zweier Freigeister. Scott Walker feierte in den 60ern weltweite Erfolge mit den Walker Brothers, veröffentlichte in Folge viel beachtete Soloplatten und etablierte sich als Chansonier mit teils bitterböser Lyrik. In den 80ern erfolgte ein radikaler Stilwechsel und zudem eine Änderung seiner Arbeitsweise. Alben wie "Climate Of Hunter" (1984), "Tilt" (1996) und "The Drift" (2006) zeigten einen wandlungsfreudigen Künstler, der 2013 mit dem komplexen Meisterwerk "Bish Bosh" seinen Weg fortsetzte. Mit "Soused" folgt die logische Konsequenz Walkers künstlerischen Schaffens. Das Vinyl erscheint mit Downloadcode. /// When Sunn O))) first approached Scott Walker about appearing on their 2009 album Monoliths & Dimensions, little did they know what it would actually lead to. Four years on, Scott was back with something even more enticing, collaborating on Soused, a body of work he was writing with them in mind. Recorded in London in early 2014 and produced by Scott Walker and long-time ally Peter Walsh with the assistance of musical director Mark Warman, Soused is a 5-track 50-minute body of work that cements both acts’ wide-reaching and otherworldly renown." [label info] www.4ad.com "When we first heard about the collaboration, it sounded like a joke, like some internet meme. It did seem crazy, and on the surface, pretty hilarious, but eventually it was proven to be an actual thing. Then when we first heard a little snippet online, we weren’t entirely sold, Walker sounded even more over the top than usual, and the title Soused seems to indicate that maybe Walker was in fact completely wasted when he recorded his vocals, cuz it definitely sounded like it. But when we finally got to hear the whole thing, it suddenly all made sense, Walker’s vocals, while still insanely dramatic and over the top, were somehow perfect, and SUNNO))), instead of just doing the guitars-against-the-amps drone thing, really seem to be working way outside their comfort zone, and in fact, lots of this record sounds extremely, sonically uncomfortable. Fantastically so. We were so smitten by opener “Brando”, we had trouble digging any deeper into the record. Right from the get go, opening with Walker crooning over a whirring organ, shimmery and sun dappled, and what sounds suspiciously like the Guns ’N Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine” guitar lick, but then the thick, viscous drones creep in, accompanied by strange ticks and pulsations, as well as what sounds like a bull whip, as well as the occasional burst of distorto guitar, the combination of that low end creep, and Walker’s vocals, as well as a cool feedback/high end that seems to echo the vocal melody, it’s pretty powerful, and stunning, weird, but also weirdly beautiful. “Herod 2014” was our next obsession, with it’s weird squelchy electronic rhythm, buried in thick rumbling thrum, it’s Walker who carries the song, some sort of demented, and yeah, likely seriously soused, torch song, flecked with static, and driven by a slo-mo Sabbath riff stretched out into near static sprawl, Walker’s vocals wreathed in lots of mysterious noise, the whole track peppered with what sounds like some strange banshee wail, or pterodactyl cry, but it’s somehow so perfect, that it becomes as integral to the song as any other element. “Bull” is downright balladic after the previous heaving monoliths, but not for long, the song exploding into some serious Swans like pummel, with Walker kicking it up a notch, some loose chaotic drum damage, some junkyard percussion, and a ‘hook’ that manages to be the catchiest bit on the whole record, the song slipping into slo-mo somnambulant creeps, before launching right back into that ‘chorus’. We have to be honest, the first three songs are so perfect, it’s not until maybe the 20th listen that we even made it to the last two, but they’re similarly broody and bombastic, “Fetish” featuring some seriously buzzed out bass (assuming that’s a bass), and like “Bull” before it, another killer ‘chorus’, that sounds like Swans gone haywire, dosed on some serious narcotics, a wild cacophony of elephant like electronic bleats, churning metallic riffing, monstrous drumming, before settling into what sounds like some sick, mutant strain of kraut-doom. And don’t even get us started on Walker’s INSANE lyrics, in this case, a refrain of “Choo Choo, Choo Choo mama”, which sounds ridiculous, but in the context of the song, it sounds mad, maniacal, and like some sort of twisted genius, which we’re assuming it is. Finally, there’s “Lullaby”, which is one, at least for a moment, until another blurt of atonal, moaning, keening, doom cabaret explodes from the murk, only to settle right back down, most of the track spent in hushed lowercase mode, finishing off super dramatically, a field of barely there guitar rumble, distant sonar like pings, ominous swells, mysterious insectoid clicking, and one final, haunting stanza from Walker. Most definitely a twisted outsider masterpiece, and considering how skeptical we were, it’s even more surprising that this might just end up being a record of the year contender for some of us!" [Aquarius Records] | 2014 | €29.50 |
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| WATERMANN, JOHN | Calcutta Gas Chamber | pic-LP | Wiederveröffentlichung dieses Klassikers, jetzt als picture Vinyl! "....ein dunkles, dichtes Werk mit elektro-akustischen Qualitäten, viele konkrete Geräusche & Sounds & Cut-ups, meist undefinierbar, aber voll von unheimlich beseeltem maschinellen Leben... absolut packend!" [Drone Records] "Re-release of the long out-of-print album by the late John Watermann. The idea for this project came about after a visit to Calcutta in 1990, and through the nightmarish experiences during that short visit. The concept of aurally conveying the horror of a gas chamber was realised through field recordings in an abandoned electrical power station in Brisbane in 1992. The sounds are grating and harsh, a mixture of field recordings and electronic manipulations. One can rarely pinpoint a location or action but the images the sounds conjure up are of all sorts of nefarious activites related to death by machinery. The sleeve notes take you into the horror that is the Calcutta Gas Chamber. John Watermann started the re-design for this re-issue (originally released in 1993 on US label ND), but tragically passed away in 2002 before its realisation. A beautifully composed and produced album, completely remastered and feat. new artwork. This special picture LP is limited to 444 numbered copies. A CD version of 'Calcutta Gas Chamber' was released by Cold Spring in late 2006." [label info] | 2007 | €18.00 |
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| WATKINS, CLINTON | Raaswater | CD | “In 1871, Thomas Baines, on his way back from visiting Lobengula and the Tati Goldfields, crossed the Limpopo on Mmabolela, and camped near the “Raaswater” where the Limpopo tumbles over granite rocks polished smooth by the passage of water over thousands of years.” www.mmabolela.co.za/history Raaswater is a seamless album of compositions using sound recordings made whilst participating on the 2018 Sonic Mmabolela residency for sound artists and composers in the Limpopo province of South Africa. With a small group of likeminded people led by Francisco López & Barbara Ellison, I spent countless hours exploring the dynamic environments of the Mmabolela reserve by walking, resting, listening, interacting, experiencing and recording a plethora of environments, objects, phemonema, structures, fauna and phyla unique to the area. Raaswater is a personal aural reflection depicting a rare, isolated and complex sonic environment rich with life, death and enlightenment. (Clinton Watkins, 27 November 2019) LOCATION : Mmabolela reserve, Limpopo, South Africa. Written and produced by Clinton Watkins 2020 @ small window studios,Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. ~ Special thanks to : Francisco López, Barbara Ellison, Neil Lowe, Mark and Lesley Berry, Roché van Tiddens, Andy Martin, Jun Mizumachi, Luke Pearson, Kim Foscato, Steve Norton, Jim Speers, Tim Checkley, Starkwhite Gallery, Auckland University of Technology (NZ), my wife and children AD, Moss & Winter, and the environment of Mmabolela. https://unfathomless.bandcamp.com/album/raaswater | 2021 | €14.00 |
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| WATSON, CHRIS | Locations, Processed | LP | "Chris Watson, a.o. known as the keyboard player of Cabaret Voltaire and a founder member of The Hafler Trio, creates an all new sound journey in honour of Bob Moog via a series of his own location recordings, subtlety processed through The Moog Sound Labs System 55. It's almost a return to the principles that birthed Cabaret Voltaire's earliest experiments." "The cover and series name shout “Moog!” Yet the sound is what we’ve come to expect from Chris Watson: field recordings treated with love. The fact that the chapters were filtered through the Moog Sound Lab’s System 55 seems incidental, but widens the understanding of the processing tool. This 12″ is part of a new series that also includes entries from Hieroglyphic Being, Charlemagne Palestine, Mika Vainio, Gazelle Twin and The Grid, a remarkably diverse group ~ our only quibble being the consistent, yet unrevealing cover art. Watson’s set concentrates on New York City, and offers a sonic window into the experience of visitors. “Grand Central Terminal” offers the hum of human traffic, along with gentle specific reminders: the announcement of a train, the departure from the platform, a child’s voice. A clear contrast is made by “Rockefeller Centre” (using the British spelling) as the hum disappears but the other sources remain. This time the journey of the train claims the ear, including the distinctive two-note warning tone, somehow devoid of the ubiquitous warning, “Watch the closing doors.” The sound of running children in “Central Park” is particularly endearing, as is a hint of birdsong, although less than one might expect considering the location. Still, those who have visited New York without living there are likely to be able to relate to the dominant soundscape of traffic and transit; they have not yet discovered the city’s hidden places. The intrusion of airplanes, sirens, and fire horns makes a good case for the city as the antithesis of Olympic National Park. Abandon all hope, those who seek one square inch of silence. Watson makes an interesting sequencing choice with “Times Square,” as the earlier pieces progress from south to north. Times Square is actually south of Rockefeller Center. But as the loudest of the tracks (by virtue of conversation, honking, bicycle bells, passing bass, cries of “Taxi!” and more), the sequencing makes sense. Just as one seems to have escaped to relative peace, the real world rushes in with a vengeance. Some grow acclimated to such sounds, but the noise levels remain at dangerous levels throughout most of the day. This makes “Jamaica Bay to Leigh Valley” seem a welcome escape. The sirens can still be heard in the distance, but the waterfowl drown them out. The finale serves as a litmus test for the ears: if one were forced to choose between extremes, which would one prefer?" [Richard Allen/ A Closer Listen] | 2018 | €20.00 |
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| WE LIKE WE & JACOB KIRKEGAARD | Time is Local | LP | Time is Local is a project by Danish collective We like We and sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard built around a 12-hour live sound installation and performance at Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen. The piece was initiated and performed by the artists during the G((o))ng Tomorrow Festival in 2017. As they slowly wandered the halls and rooms of the museum for a whole day, they performed extended sound compositions for a visiting audience at each of the 12 chambers for a longer session - a haunting experience as the outside world disappeared and the focus was on quiet sonic moments unfolding in midst of the grand, reverberous space. For this album they have collected 12 fragments revolving around the chambers in the museum. Each chamber is being represented by its own handful of tones, instruments and voice. The statues within, depicted by neo-classicist sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen get their own soundtrack of quiet emanating gusts. Barely heard frequencies reflect through the walls. The marble carved busts of Greek gods that line the museum hallways gaze eternally with a blank stare as decades pass and new audience arrives. Although We like We should need no introduction to followers of the Sonic Pieces label, the Danish all female sound quartet consists of Katrine Grarup Elbo (violin), Josefine Opsahl (cello), Sara Nigard Rosendal (percussion) and Katinka Fogh Vindelev (voice). Together they have forged a dynamic and intuitional sound beyond genres through the last decade. Only two years ago they released the nordic neo-classical opus Next to the entire All. This time they emerge in collaboration with sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard. Jacob’s works are sonic reflections on complex aspects of the human civilisation, treating themes such as radioactivity, melting ice, border walls and tones emitted by the ears. Through the last decades he has released records and sound documents through labels such as Touch, Important Records and more. As a document of their 12h performance, Time is Local is a beautiful sonic evocation that shines as a bright line of sun through the cracks of a tomb. https://welikewe.bandcamp.com/album/time-is-local | 2019 | €29.00 |
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| WHETHAM, SIMON | Hydrostatic | CD | " ‘Hydrostatic’ was commissioned by the McNeill Street Pumping Station New Music Festival, Shreveport, Louisiana, USA in November 2011, and presented as a multi-channel performance. Simon Whetham spent more than a week exploring the site, capturing the sounds of the space, the vibrations of the buildings, the spirit of the community and perhaps the echoes of past activity… Mastered by Miguel Carvalhais.. Simon Whetham – Biography 2013 Over the past eight years Simon Whetham has developed a practice of working with sound recordings as a raw material for composition. These are often environmental sounds he has captured employing a variety of methods and techniques, in order to obtain discreet or obscured sonic phenomena. In removing sound from it’s source, sometimes amplifying it significantly, it becomes abstract – familiar yet otherworldly. More recently, when presenting work in a performance or installation, for him the space and the objects within become instruments to be played. Simon has a large number of works published through many specialist organisations, including Touch Music, Cronica, Dragon’s Eye, Monochrome Vision and Entr’acte; has performed extensively internationally; collaborated with artists from musicians to performance artists, painters to video artists, dancers to poets; has run listening and field recording workshops in UK, Colombia, Chile and Australia; and received a large number of commissions and awards for projects and installations – notably ‘Active Crossover’. Supported by the Arts Council England and PRS for Music Foundation, the project comprises sound installation, performance, collaboration and workshops. ‘Active Crossover’ has toured six cities in the UK, and also been hosted in Estonia, Argentina, Australia, Chile and Colombia, with future residencies in Germany and Norway in 2013." [label info] www.aufabwegen.com "SIMON WHETHAM, dem wir zuletzt als Eyjafjallajökull-Gestrandeten im April 2010 in Lissabon begegnet sind, treffen wir wieder im November 2011 in Shreveport, Louisiana. Das dort stattfindende McNeill Street Pumping Station New Music Festival hatte ihn mit einem Beitrag beauftragt. Er verbrachte eine ganze Woche in dem einstigen Pumpwerk, um den hydrophonen und postindustrialen Genius loci oder Hausgeist zu begegnen. Das Rauschen von Wasser, der Geschmack von Eisen, Rost und Patina wurden zu Ingredienzen seines Dröhnscapes Hydrostatic (aatp39), den nicht zuletzt der Fluss der Zeit durchströmt. Pfeifende Laute und geisterhaft summende evozieren dabei etwas Älteres als das Industriezeitalter. Hölzernes und metallisches Gestöber suggeriert eine verlassene Geisterstätte, eine Ruine, die nach noch Brauchbarem durchsucht wird. Organum hat schon auf Vacant Lights solche Klänge eingefangen, Ephraim Wegner hat kürzlich ähnliche in verlassenen Hotelruinen gefunden. Immer ist damit ein ‘Danach’ verbunden, ein ‘Vorbei’. Latten scharren über den Boden, der Wind faucht, als wollte er noch den letzten Eindringling verjagen. 1887 in Betrieb gegangen, wurde bis 1980 dampfbetrieben, heute ist das McNeill-Pumpwerk ein National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. Whetham erschafft mit droneüberwölbtem Getröpfel und Geplätscher die Illusion einer Quelle, des verborgenen Anfangs einer Lebensader, die hier mit nahezu kultischer Aura widerhallt und wieder als pumpende Mechanik zu ‘atmen’ beginnt. Das Elementare, das das vermeintlich so rationale und funktionale Maschinenzeitalter ignoriert und verdrängt hat, kommt wieder im Denkmal zum Vorschein, nachdem die Funktionalität modernisiert und inzwischen noch unbewusster geworden ist. Ich glaube, es war Ernst Jünger, der zuletzt Zweifel an einer Freiheit hatte, die davon abhängt, dass Wasser, Strom und Gas in unsichtbarer guter Hand sind." [Rigobert Dittmann, Bad Alchemy] "The ever so busy bee Simon Whetham and his multiple travels around the world. Here we find him guest of the McNeill Street Pumping Station New Music Festival in Shreveport, Louisiana in November 2011 where Whetham spend a week going about this pumping installation to create a multi-channel performance of his music. It's not only the pumps, but the complete site, the buildings and the people around it that have been captured by him and collages into five pieces of music, totaling around 53 minutes. With Whetham, I must admit, I am never sure what it is that he does. Obviously he picks up sounds from the environment, that's hardly a secret, but then what does he do? Is he playing them one at a time (which I doubt), is he layering them together, or is there any sort of electronic treatment going on? I assume the latter is the case, but I might be wrong altogether. Whetham does apply 'musical' techniques to create his music, like using loops in the fifth part of a jackhammer, the melodic drone touch in the third part and such like. He creates all these little touches which stretches it far beyond the mere documentation of a certain area. Spooky and mysterious at times, this is another fine addition to what mounts to a vast amount of releases by now. It's almost on par with his recent 'Never So Alone' (see Vital Weekly 870), which I thought was his best so far. This one is almost as refined I am to say. It's only in the smaller, somewhat untouchable details that I think this is just a bit less. Just a bit, I may add. If the name Whetham is new to you, then 'Hydrostatic' is an equal fine starting point." [FdW/Vital Weekly] "The globe-trotting British sound artist Simon Whetham found himself in Shreveport, Louisiana in 2011 where he was commissioned to develop a body of work based on the defunct MacNeill Street Pumping Station. This artifact of the 19th Century was the last known steampowered water plant in the United States and has been a historical site for several decades now. He was one of many acclaimed artists asked to contribute to the seemingly inactive MacNeill Street Pumping Station New Music Festival, alongside Tim Hecker, Lawrence English, Mark Fell, Eli Kezler, and about a dozen other denizens of avant-garde soundcraft. It was a great idea to have all of these artists develop compositions, installations, and performances within such an interesting space; and we can hope that the festival is merely on temporary hiatus. Needless to say, here we have the stereo mix of Whetham's multichannel installation that he presented at the festival. His source material consists of drones from the huge metal pools and the network of pipes from that space, focusing mostly on the resonant frequencies of the ghostly drones and watery tones. Overlapping, sinewy electric vibrations tumble into a pool of isolationist dank at the beginning of the album before a reverberant flute utters a solitary bellow amidst the metallic klang reverb articulating two of the techniques of Whetham's sound-hunting - that of the contact microphone on sonorous objects and the open-air recordings of those reflective surfaces. Deep, low-end rattlings gird the bulk of Hydrotasic with wind-swept thrumming, agitated found objects, and plenty of nocturnal clutter being moved around by the ghosts that lurk in the sticky humidity of a Louisiana swamp, or at least that's what it sounds like. Brilliantly akin to the processed field recording work of Jonathan Coleclough, Thomas Koner, and BJ Nilsen." [Aquarius Records] | 2013 | €13.00 |
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| Never so Alone | CD | During an extended stay in Lisbon, courtesy of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland erupting and causing european airspace to be closed, Simon Whetham explored the sonorities of city, and the surrounding countryside, using the various microphones he employs in his work. In addition to a Sennheiser shotgun microphone and two Tram lavalier mics, which capture ambient sounds we all hear, he uses contact microphones and hydrophones to expose sound vibrations that travel through objects, an electromagentic coil pickup and a radio receiver. Simon then composed with these sound materials, in part responding to the geography and architecture of the location, the inhabitants, the weather even, but also the broad spectrum of feelings and emotions felt while investigating the place. Field recordists tend to work alone when gathering their recordings, entering a state removed from their surroundings, but simultaneously absorbing them and becoming part of them. The loneliness alluded to in the title should therefore not be read as negative, but positive, and essential for the creation of this work. https://cronica.bandcamp.com/album/never-so-alone "In 2010 the volcano Eyjafjallajokull erupted and made air traffic impossible for some time in Europe. Simon Whetham was in Portugal and has to extend his stay. He decided to capture the sounds of the city, using a Sennheiser shotgun microphone, two Tram lavalier mics, contact microphones and hydrophones, and later on composed pieces of music that are now released by, how appropriate, a label from Portugal (though not Lisbon). The title of the CD reflects the lonely state the field recordist does his work with, but it's not to seen in a negative way. This is a long album, close to 80 minutes and that is a bit much, considering the careful nature of the music, I think. Whetham does a fine job capturing sounds from the city and melting them together into seven pieces of music. Whetham knows how to create sustaining sounds from those city sounds and waves in between, down there and on top smaller blocks of sound, crackles, someone walking a tunnel and that sort of thing in single play mode or in loop form and makes some beautiful collage of sounds. Whetham has a particular interest in the world of ambient music, rather than just pure field recordings or heavy computer processing. This makes his music very delicate and spacious even at times. It's long, but it's great. I almost track of time when I was playing this, dreaming away. Maybe of a sunny city as opposed to a grey day in February. Very delicate, very refined indeed. Maybe the best thing I heard from him so far." [FdW /Vital Weekly] | 2013 | €12.00 |
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| WHITE STAINS | Dreams Shall Flesh (redux) | CD | https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/dreams-shall-flesh-redux "Dreams Shall Flesh" (redux) is the second chapter in the series of WHITE STAINS publications reissued by Zoharum. It is also the second studio album in the band's discography. As indicated by the note "redux" in the title, this edition has been enriched with bonus recordings, found in Carl Abrahamsson's private archive, which have never been published before. We are still dealing here with dark wave music with elements of gothic rock. However, unlike the compilation containing vinyl EPs, a new direction is increasingly felt here, which will be fully developed on the next albums. In these songs with a verse-chorus-verse structure typical of rock music, there is more and more space for a slightly atmospheric, slightly psychedelic aura, which is reflected in the final sound that the band achieved on this material. This is especially noticeable on the additional songs, which they perfectly complement the new version of "Dreams Shall Flesh" (redux). The material has been remastered again and has a new graphic design. Edition of 300 CDs folded in a six-panel digipack. | 2024 | €13.00 |
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| WHITE, FRANCES | In the Library of Dreams | CD | "I was going to write about how this is an absolutely beautiful and disturbing record, but I think quoting from the liner notes of James Pritchett really does sum it up. 'Frances White invites us to take a walk through her Resonant Landscape. Where are we going? We are walking through the woods, marshes, and streams of New Jersey. She points out the birds and frogs that make their home there, the water that flows through it and the wind that shakes the trees. But then we turn and there is that other sound world, the one in which these woodland sounds are transformed, or in which we find sounds altogether new: spectral birds singing to us through a sparkly haze; distant colored winds, like the breath of giants; the air around us, alive, charged with long, low drones and sudden electric crashes. There is something magical about this other world, and (like most magic) there is something disturbing here as well. We move between the two worlds almost at random, bumping into one sound after another. We find ourselves rising off the path and floating, then falling abruptly into silence, reappearing in a marsh full of geese and blackbirds. This is more than a sonic postcard from Princeton: it is a journey into the inner world of Frances White. We could call it an electroacoustic dream drawn from her memories of hikes in the woods. As in a dream, real experience is placed in a surreal context, a play of inner and outer. We fill in the gaps, supplying connections among the random fragments of reality, memory, and imagination. This gets to the heart of White's music. She has made a body of work in which she takes the real, brings it into her being, transforms it there, and then brings it out again in her compositions. Technically, she works by using the computer to manipulate recorded sounds and to synthesize wholly new ones. She mixes her timbres by hand as a painter would mix colors, and she applies them lovingly and painstakingly to her canvas of silence. But the power of her work comes from her ability to take listeners on journeys through her inner sense of sound, finding something luminous, exalted, dramatic, and at times frightening there. Her music is like the work of dreams, both the pleasant ones and the nightmares. It is not by accident that Gus Van Sant set the calmly-executed bloodbath of his film Elephant to one of White's Walks through 'Resonant Landscape'. White's unsettling juxtapositions of real and imagined sound work well with Van Sant's matter-of-fact treatment of almost unwatchable violence. Frances White studied composition at the University of Maryland, Brooklyn College, and Princeton University. She has received awards, grants, commissions, and fellowships from organizations such as the Guggenheim Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Alice M. Ditson Fund, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Prix Ars Electronica, the International Computer Music Association, ASCAP, the Bang On A Can Festival, and the Other Minds Festival. Ms. White's music can be heard on CD on the Wergo, Centaur, Nonsequitur, Harmonia Mundi, and Bridge Records labels. A CD devoted to her chamber works, Centre Bridge, was released in August of 2007 on the Mode label. Ms. White's music was featured as part of the soundtrack of three of Gus Van Sant movies." [label info] www.pogus.com "This new Pogus release is a work of a composer who is completely new to me. White studied composition at the University of Maryland, Brooklyn College, and Princeton University. Some of her work has been released by labels like Mode, Bridge, Harmonia Mundi, etc. This new release gathers six compositions for very different line ups. The first one, ‘Chosi’ is for solo shakuhachi, beautifully played by Ralph Samuelson. White studied Shakuhachi herself and feels inspired by traditional music that has shakuhachi in a main role. Also she feels inspired by nature. No wonder that she often uses natural field recordings in her electronic work. Just like Jonas Braasch, White has a comparable fascination for space and environment in her musical output, like titles as ‘Walk through Resonant Landscape 5.1’and ‘Walk through Resonant Landscape 5.2’ indicate. Both titles provide a picture or metaphor that describes how one can experience these pieces: it feels like a travel through different parts of a jungle. Here birdcalls dominate, there sounds from insects. The works are built up as a series of waves of manipulated environmental sounds. The works have a fine balance of acoustical natural sounds and electronics. White builds successful imaginary landscapes and surroundings. Also I would say she is searching for some spiritual quality in sound. The title piece ‘In the Library of Dreams’ is written for viola d’amore played here by David Cerutti, against a background of electronic sounds. Only one piece is for an ensemble, ‘The Ocean Inside’ played by Eight Blackbird, an ensemble of six musicians. It is a romantic piece of work of slowly moving patterns that disappear in a background of fragile sounds. The closing piece ‘The Book of Roses and Memory’ has very sensible playing by Liuh Wen Ting on viola and Thomas Buckner as narrator. The electroacoustic music of White takes you into dreamy atmospheres, with compositions that are not extremely complicated. In fact her work is very accessible. It is also very solid work and far from some easy romantic pastiche." [DM/Vital Weekly] | 2012 | €13.00 |
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| WHITEHEAD, CHRIS | Ravenscar | CD | “Ravenscar stands 600ft above the restless North Sea. To many it is simply a stopping off point between Whitby and Scarborough, commanding expansive views of the beautiful North Yorkshire coastline. Yet this place is also a canvas on which the overlapping layers of history have left their fingerprints. The recordings that form this work were collected over two years during various seasons and in a range of weather conditions. Natural materials collected from the site were manipulated in several ways to add a sense of intimacy and perspective. Although the piece is intended to be listened to as an unbroken whole, five distinct phases are passed through: Wind: A consequence of Ravenscar’s exposure is its surrender to the wind which sculpts the cliff top trees and relentlessly batters the sparse buildings. Much the same prospect must have confronted the Romans when they built a signal station here in the 4th century AD. Alum: In 1640 alum was discovered in the rocks, the production of which became the first British chemical industry. An alum works was built on the cliff top where the complex production process took place. It involved fire, seaweed and huge quantities of stale human urine. Tunnel: When the railway came to Ravenscar in 1884, W. H. Hammond paid for a 279 yard tunnel to be built so that the view from his house was not compromised. The line closed in 1965. The disused tunnel now remains as a dark and baleful monument to the ghosts of steam. Grass: In 1897 the Ravenscar Estate Company Ltd. began building roads, laying sewers and creating gardens. Their optimistic vision to fashion a holiday resort rivalling nearby Scarborough bore little fruit. Few plots were sold, and in 1913 the company folded leaving nature to reassert her dominance. Radar: The stark remains of a Second World War radar station stand at Bent Rigg. Operational from 1941 to monitor shipping and aircraft, these long redundant concrete buidings are now used by sheep as a welcome refuge from the unceasing winds.” (Chris Whitehead) www.unfathomless.net "This Whitehead is not to be confused with the other, Gregory (of whom we haven't heard much lately, sound wise that is) and I don't think I heard music from Chris Whitehead before. He did his bunch of field recordings in a place called Ravenscar, in North Yorkshire but he also uses materials which he retrieved from the site. I looked the place up on google maps and it looks like a quiet small place near the coast. But maybe that was something I could have told you from listening to this forty-three minute work. It starts out with sea waves, it has the cracking of leaves, rusty agricultural devices (which occasionally buzz), all melted in a fine long piece that has somewhere between the twenty and thirty break (indicated on the cover as 'Tunnel') some hollow sounds, the tunnel probably, and some close range fire like sounds. It has a nice drone like texture to it. Towards the end the live farm stock plays a small role too, as well as a bit of street sounds. This is not the work of pure sound documentation which we sometimes see in the area of music, but Chris Whitehead has perhaps (!) processed a bit of the sounds, and if not, then he surely did a more than fine job in putting all of these recordings into an excellent audio picture of that area." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2012 | €14.00 |
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| WHITMAN, KEITH FULLERTON | live | 7 | Atmosphärische, experimentelle Gitarren-Pickings für Freunde von TORAL, MAZZACANE-CONNERS, KRANKY Records.. “ this is the second release by keith fullerton whitman as keith fullerton whitman - and it's a beautiful diversion to his mighty drill'n'bass productions as hrvatski (on his own label reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge) or dj hekla (recently on planet mu). you could witness that already last year on his first release on apartement b, a stunning guitar-cum-laptop cd. although "live (at the tremont theater)" also consists of these elements the result differs from that cd for it's more a coalition between the fragile sound of the acoustic guitar and the punctual sparkling electronic interruptions by the computer processing. the sublime beauty of the two long pieces – the 7" contains almost 14 minutes of music - of, say, loren-mazzacane connors or some of o'rourkes early pieces which results in a strumming drone-fest. this live recording was the opening slot for a peter kowald-daniel carter-lawrence cook-jonathan lamaster quartet show at the tremont theatre in boston's thriving theatre district and shows once more whitman's ability to combine different aspects of experimental and electronic music. imagine godspeed you black emperor! stripped down to a solo project - watch out for his longplayer on kranky soon.” [press-release] www.tonschacht.com | 2002 | €6.00 |
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| WIEMAN | Cryptonesia | LP | "Ini.itu is releasing a new vinyl LP, composed by Wíeman (Roel Meelkop and Frans de Waard). Roel Meelkop studied visual arts and art theory at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He is a member of Goem, Kapotte Muziek and THU20. In the last couple of years, Meelkop has focused on solo works in composition and installation work. Frans de Waard is making music since more than 25 years under many aliases and in different line-ups, the most well-known being Kapotte Muziek, Goem, THU 20, Beequeen, Ezdanitoff, the Tobacconists and of course Freiband, under which name he already released an LP on ini.itu a few years ago. Wíeman is their «meltpop» duo, which was previously known as Zèbra. The project for this LP started when some obscure tapes released under the moniker Cybe in the early 80’s found their way to one of those MegaUpload accounts that disappeared a few months later. So “Positive Movement Muzak / New Age Synthesis” “Cybernetika” and “Cybonesië -Tropische Klankbeelden” were temporarily out in the world again. With the help of some synth forums the man behind that name could be located. With his approval and upon request from ini.itu, Wíeman, already famous for their reappropriation of Martin Hannett samples on “Live in Leugen”, used snippets from those Cybe tapes to create new pieces. What you have now with “Cryptonesia” is the unexpected meltpop child of dangdut and krautrock, filtered through electronica and post - exotica lenses. Refusing the temptation of going subtropical gabber, the good-natured beats, boisterous and carefree, exhale a cheerful and joyous mood. The epic 18 minutes long B-side is a freewheeling and energetic construction of meandering and hypnotic pseudo-gamelan riffs, resulting into trippy and lush washes of bliss. A record to enjoy, not only for its hedonistic take on music history reverse engineering, but also for the sake of its ecstatic feeling. The LP was mastered by Taylor Deupree." [label info] | 2015 | €13.00 |
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| WINDEREN, JANA | The Blue Beyond | LP | Jana Winderen's practice focuses on sound and knowledge production as she seeks to raise awareness of the environmental issues we face as a society. Audemars Piguet Contemporary collaborated with Winderen on two new sound installations compositions. The first, "Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux", was developed during two field trips to Le Brassus in the Vallée de Joux, at the heart of the Swiss Jura, where Audemars Piguet has been based since 1875. On these trips, Winderen captured sounds in the waters of the Lac de Joux and in the Risoud forest. When Audemars Piguet Contemporary invited the artist to present a second composition for exhibition in Miami Beach, Winderen proposed a site-specific sound environment. For \"The Art of Listening: Under Water\", Winderen used sounds recorded in the Atlantic Ocean in the Miami area, as well as sounds from the Barents Sea around the North Pole and the Tropical Oceans to expose the constant underwater presence of human-created sound today. In both pieces, the artist offers a unique opportunity to listen closely to the underwater inhabitants of a specific region and to reflect on how human activity interacts and interferes with aquatic and also terrestrial life in a seemingly beautiful and visually calm environment. Jana Winderen often draws the fish, amphibians and plankton she meets. This release also consists of a drawing of two fish that probably would never meet; the pike from the freshwater Lac de Joux in the Jura Mountains and the snapper from the saltwater environment by Miami. https://janawinderen.bandcamp.com/album/the-blue-beyond | 2023 | €26.50 |
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| WINTER FAMILY | Red Sugar | CD | "Second long awaited album by duo Ruth Rosenthal and Xavier Klaine, actually based in Brooklyn. A rare and unique audio worldview expressed by the singular approach of Ruth Rosenthal (voice) and Xavier Klaine (harmonium, organ etc..). From the first bares of Searching Donkeys this new album creates a glowering and intense atmospheric...part nightmare, part uplifting dreamscape. It permeates and builds into a compelling whole. a reference point might be some of the output of Constellation records - indeed GYBEs Norsola Johnson plays on this record.. However it is doubtful whether any of those artists ever produced anything to match the taut tension of the title track Red Sugar..an hymn to absence. The ambition of Winter Family is evident on the expansive, orchestral epic dancing in the sun..crank your speakers, sit back and open your mind.. it WILL blow you away." [label info] www.subrosa.net | 2011 | €13.00 |
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| WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM | Thrice Woven | CD | Now, a portal into the dreamworld of Wolves in the Throne Room opens again with THRICE WOVEN. It is a glorious return to the blazing and furious Black Metal that they alone can create! The album begins with Born From the Serpent’s Eye a true thrashing black metal epic that is bisected with a haunting northern lament sung by Swedish star Anna von Hausswolff. The band worked with metal documentarians Peter Beste and Nico Poalillo to create a video for this track which captures a bonfire-lit performance in the forest near their Olympia compound. The Old Ones Are With Us opens with the crackling of a fire and the voice of Steve Von Till (Neurosis) invoking the springtime thaw. It then storms into a dirge inspired by 90’s Finnish doom with lyrics that celebrate Imbolc, the holy day which marks the end of winter and the first stirrings of spring. Figures from Norse mythology intertwine with personal heartbreak and rebirth in the bleak Angrboda. The song is named after a frost giantess who birthed Fenris Wolf, a beast who was destined to destroy the world and murder the gods. Fenris Wolf also appears on the cover of THRICE WOVEN in a painting by Russian occult artist Denis Forkas. Forkas’ obscure medieval painting techniques perfectly compliment the music of Wolves in the Throne Room. A raven’s wings stir the air in the interlude Mother Owl, Father Ocean. Anna von Hausswolff returns in a duet with Turkish harpist Zeynep Oyku. Forlorn industrial atmospheres haunt the mix. Hausswolff’s lyrics, sung in Swedish, echo over a barren grey seascape. Fires Roar in the Palace of the Moon is the classic Cascadian Black Metal epic. The third eye opens to see holy rivers being born from the ice on the tallest peaks. The lyrics offer blessings to the waters of the earth as they flow from the high places to the source of darkness, the ocean. https://wolvesinthethroneroom.bandcamp.com/album/thrice-woven | 2017 | €14.50 |
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| WRIGHT, PETER | Red Lion | CD | Londoner Aufnahmen von 2004: field recordings von verschiedenen Plätzen Londons (Red Lion Square, Tate Modern, etc.), feedbackin’ hyper-effektierte Drone-Guitars, merkwürdige Obertonräume entstehen, Daydream-Akustikgitarren verschmelzen mit Environmentals, sowas wie Helikopter-Vibrationen(?), einzelne metallische Töne ziehen Resonanzen wie Schweife hinter sich her, himmlische Vibratos, die in der Luft schweben & zu schimmern scheinen, sirrend-fräsende Klangwolken mit Siren-Effekt... Wie fast kein Zweiter ruft PETER WRIGHT aus seinen Gitarren manchmal fast aberwitzig zu nennende Obertonresonanzenschwälle hervor, schafft sirrend-schwirrenden Singsang par excellence, der nie in langweiligen tumben Noise oder Drone abgleitet, sondern immer in fein- ästhetischer Balance bleiben.... RED LION ist ein poetisch-verträumtes Werk mit vielen Facetten und sei hiermit allen die PETER WRIGHT noch nicht kennen ans Herz gelegt. 9 tracks, ca. 55 min. “You can remove a Kiwi from New Zealand but you sure as hell can't remove New Zealand from a Kiwi. Such is the case with Christchurch transplant, Peter Wright. Over the course of a decade, Wright has etched his name in glass in the annals of drone-world superstardom. And while I'm not sure what that really means, the point is that when it comes to soaring dronescapes, few do it better than Peter Wright. He has helped pave the way with contemporaries such as Birchville Cat Motel and Double Leopards, but clearly has his own distinct voice. With his past few albums, Wright seems the logical successor to native Kiwi, sound manipulator extraordinaire, Roy Montgomery. "Red Lion" is Wright's latest incarnation and, once again, pushes the boundaries of what he can do with his trademark 12 string Danelectro to the absolute outer limits. He pushes the limits of simplicity without ever breaking. Wright's albums are a thing of sheer, pure beauty, existing in a vacuum where nothing on the outside can tamper with their grace. Even with his lofty intentions, "Red Lion" is immediately approachable and grabs the listener from the opening notes. As always, Peter Wright offers up something wholly infectious and undebatably magnificent. Press about Peter Wright: "The finest in underground free noise / drone...mostly from New Zealand but all around the world as well. For those of you new to the CpsiP label, imagine classic Siltbreeze (Dead C, etc.) mixed with Jewelled Antler (Thuja, Blithe Sons etc.), dark and deep listening that sometimes verges on all out noise, but more often than not remains subtle experiments in avant drone and abstract sound." - Aquarius Records "This is easily some of the most evocative proto-drone work to reach these ears in a while, with beautiful almost folk melodies that flutter on the edge of audibility cut up with a thick soup of early-evening smog and long forgotten geographies. Somewhere between early Flying Saucer Attack, Mirror and William Basinski. Highly recommended." - David Keenan, Volcanic Tongue "If Windy & Carl's vision of Antarctica is your idea of bliss, you will drool over this soundscape depiction of Peter Wright's home in New Zealand. Now living in London, these are what the label calls "love-drones," as Wright's memories of his home's wide open spaces inspire slowly unfolding waves of lush guitar." - Jim Steed, Fakejazz “ [label info] | 2006 | €13.00 |
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| Yellow Horizon | CD | Der grossartige Neuseeländer PETER WRIGHT (auch aktiv als POLIO) liefert seit Jahren Gitarren-drone durchtränkte Traumlandschaften ab, die sich dunkel aber unpathetisch in den Äther schwingen. Seine tänzelnden Gitarren-Ozeane sind von besonderer untergründiger emotionaler Spannung und Melancholie beseelt, und wirken doch auch entspannend....keine Oberflächenmusik, sondern der „wahre“ Kern des Selbst scheint hier aufzuflackern..... Demnächst auch eine 7“ auf Drone Records !! NZ-Import. “New Zealand guitarist and sound-artist Peter Wrights back catalogue stretches to something like 30 releases over the last dozen years. 'Yellow Horizons' is the most recent of these and follows on from 2004's 'Distant Bombs' (Last Visible Dog), and 'Desolation Beauty Violence' (Digitalis). This CD finds him relocated to dirty old London town from where he has written a series of love-drones to the wild South Island of his homeland. Described by David Keenan (of The Wire, Volcanic Tongue) as a "consistently impressive thinker", Wrights guitar craft opens vistas that are as contemplative as they are emotionally engaging. Periods of preperatory silence awaken into long slow shifting drones; layered 'folk' patterns build to an almost psychotropic intensity before being subsumed once more within the drone... These scenes are as varied as the South Island itself. There are glaciers as well as sunburnt plains. Writing about the recording of Yellow Horizons, Peter had this to say: "The nature of my reduced travelling bag of equipment has meant a more concise distillation of sounds than before with the 12 string guitar now dominating. To make things even more cohesive I tuned the guitar to an open C chord and every track on this disc uses this tuning, creating an almost seamless continuity, and an overall foundation". [press release] “Another fucking stunner from this re-located New Zealander, Desolation Beauty Violence is mostly based around various manipulations of Danelectro 12-string guitar using minimal effects and field recordings but for the most part the source feels supremely dislocated. This is easily some of the most evocative proto-drone work to reach these ears in a while, with beautiful almost folk melodies that flutter on the edge of audibility cut up with a thick soup of early-evening smog and long forgotten geographies. Somewhere between early Flying Saucer Attack, Mirror and William Basinski. Highly recommended.“ [David Keenan/ Volcanic Tongue] www.pseudoarcana.com | 2005 | €13.00 |
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| WYNESS, JAMES | Objects wrapped in Objects wrapped in Objects | mCDR | "james wyness is a rare scottish sound artist with only a handful of releases on various labels like gruenrekorder, conv or mystery sea. for "objects wrapped in objects wrapped in objects", james has gathered two delicate and precise compositions. "the hearth" was composed in response to the theme of sound and rural architecture following a three week residency in northern portugal with "binuaral/nodar" in april 2012 as part of the "festival som e arquitetura rural". the piece investigates the sounds of open and closed hearths recorded in the san macario region of northern portugal. it reveals the dense dynamic textures and sonic morphologies of one of the fundamentals of architecture. "foil" is an investigation of materiality and recursive procedures in which tin foil was set in a picture frame, played by hand and recorded using contact microphones. the recorded sounds were then played back through the foil using transducers, the foil was performed simultaneously and the results mixed live to tape. www.taalem.com "James Wyness has a great title of his release: it leaves stuff to imagine. He has two pieces, of exactly ten minutes each. In the first he uses 'metal wood burning stoves, open domestic fires and domestic utensils' and in the other 'tin foil, transducers and contact microphones'. I don't like long quotes, but the website says it better than I can do: "the hearth" investigates the sounds of open and closed hearths recorded in the san macario region of northern Portugal. It reveals the dense dynamic textures and sonic morphologies of one of the fundamentals of architecture. "Foil" is an investigation of materiality and recursive procedures in which tin foil was set in a picture frame, played by hand and recorded using contact microphones. The recorded sounds were then played back through the foil using transducers, the foil was performed simultaneously and the results mixed live to tape." In the first of these pieces we hear something of light crackling nature, the burning of something inside a small hollow, metallic space, whereas in the tin foil piece it becomes all a bit darker and even percussive, slowed down. The tin foil has great sonic qualities but here it sounds very much unlike that. Dark and obscured sounds, but with a fine imaginative headspace. Two excellent pieces and also perhaps something that sounds less like what you would expect on Taalem." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2014 | €5.00 |
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| WZT HEARTS | Threads Rope Spell Making Your Bones | LP | Bemerkenswertes Album einer Combo aus Baltimore, läuft lt. press-release unter "psych-rock", ist aber vielmehr eine Art komplexer Impro-Drone, wo sich vielerlei elektronische und instrumentelle Quellen zu rauschenden Soundformen vermählen. "The second full-length from Baltimore’s WZT HEARTS (pronounced “wet hearts”). Threads Rope Spell Making Your Bones is an album of improvised electronic psych-rock action at times reminiscent of sound sculptors like Fennesz, but with a nice krautrock touch throughout. A blend of the organic and synthetic, digital and analog, difficult and easy." [label info] "Baltimore band bundles digital noise and tasteful drumming with unstable organ drones and long stretches of shaped hiss, evoking urbanity with a loose, folk-like quality. There's a boring trope in responses to noise-based music that goes something like, "You won't get it unless you turn it up so loud that," and follows with the grisly description of a physical ailment or violation of a city ordinance. But the logic of only understanding music when it inspires you to nausea is about a step away from saying it's easier to agree with conservatives on C-SPAN if you vacuum while they talk-- volume can obscure as much as it might reveal. Listen to Baltimore's Wzt Hearts loud if you have an arbitrary preference for loudness. But there's nothing on Threads Rope Spell Making Your Bones that suggests you have to, and there's plenty to suggest you shouldn't. Though at times trenchant and aggressively noisy, there's nothing particularly bodily about the album. So, caution to the horror and viscera freaks, who won't find anything that sounds like a yeast infection (too sexual and gross, too intimate) or the breaking of a fever (too glorious and climactic, too confused). Instead, Wzt Hearts bundle digital noise and the tasteful drumming of Shaun Flynn with unstable organ drones and long stretches of shaped hiss. Though the record evokes urbanity, the feeling isn't industrial or militaristic-- there's a loose, folk-like quality to it. In that sense, it's just as reasonable to listen to it at a normal volume, to let its waxes and wanes crest at the level of distant traffic. But listening to it as ambience-- admittedly, this is a very tough quality to talk about-- reveals a certain "unstickiness," for lack of a better term. Though Wzt Hearts clearly suggest a chromed-out, decaying city through their sound, it's painted to varying degrees of clarity; as a listener, I find myself sliding around under the drum flutters of "Hearth Carver" or the terminal wooziness of "Viszla", but other pieces remind me that I left the oven on or that it's sunny outside. This might have something to do with inertia, it might have to do with composition-- Threads isn't exactly a record of discrete or easily articulated qualities. And for however refreshing the digital ambience is-- the elements on Threads pickle in static but never surrender to a big, warm, nasty picture-- much of it feels curiously stuck in 2D. But there's no point in harping on the band's shortcomings considering how great how great "Hearth Carver" and "Viszla" are, and how much better they sound than on last year's live Heat Chief (Zach Baron, in his Pitchfork review, rated it higher than I would have). Though it's not something you'd often say about doomsayers, with Wzt Hearts, it's worth hoping for the future." [Pitchfork] | 2007 | €16.00 |
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| X-MAL DEUTSCHLAND | Early Singles | LP | "Gothics” - a time before the word goth had even taken shape - believed in the do-it-yourself punk ethos that anyone could pick up an instrument. Gray clouds were starting to form and in the unlikely city of Hamburg, a brazen and haunting gang of five women formed Xmal Deutschland. As any true punk would, Xmal Deutschland’s members Caro May, Rita Simon, Manuela Rickers, Fiona Sangster and Anja Huwe, started the band despite any previous musical experience. The “Schwarze Welt” seven-inch was released on the local punk label, ZickZack, in 1981 and introduced the band as an unsettling swarm of intensity. There’s an urgency in its repetitive dirge, a swirling mania that persists on the b-side with “Die Wolken” and “Großstadtindianer” whose crude synthesizer noises escalate intention. Most of all, Huwe’s uniquely venomous German vocals quickly became embedded in the unbridled and burgeoning scene of glamorous gloom. Punk’s independence from the stiff grip of tradition allowed the band to find solace in anti-establishment art and music, far from the conventions of the past.With their peacocked hair and thick kohl-lined eyes, Xmal Deutschland’s music retained both a restlessness and delicacy, transcending any confines of the “Neue Deutsche Welle” movement (much like their colleagues and friends DAF and Einstürzende Neubauten) with the release of the “Incubus Succubus”single in 1982. It instantly became a post-punk classic. The guitar’s buzz ransacks through the melody as the ghoulish primitiveness of Huwe’s voice teases that maybe, just maybe, she is the nightmarish creature of which to be aware. The b-sides, “Zu Jung Zu Alt” and “Blut Ist Liebe,” keep strict militaristic dance beats as they teem in agitation. That same year, the band performed in London as support for the Cocteau Twins; it was the platform they needed to ricochet into the arms of the ripped fishnet masses. Early Singles (1981-1982), is a map of the foundational movements of Xmal Deutschland, just seconds before takeoff. Bonus tracks on the compilation, “Kaelbermarsch” and a gritty live version of “Allein,” further accentuate their fusion of toughness with the quixotic decadence of atmospheric synthesizers. The band’s pursuit of something greater is palpable with this release, a reflection of a time that introduced accessibility to new means of making music following the onset of punk. https://xmaldeutschland.bandcamp.com/album/early-singles-1981-1982 | 2024 | €25.00 |
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| X-NAVI:ET | Brain Overloaded | CD | "The album is dedicated to William S. Burroughs - one of the most enlightened minds of the era in which we are to live. The author of the paintings used on the cover is Ewa Bińczyk, an artist from Toruń. Performed, recorded and mixed by Rafał Iwański 2008-2011, studio Eter, Toruń, Poland limited to 444 hand-numbered copies packaged in ecopack + postcard" [credits] www.zoharum.com "Rafal Iwanski is the man behind X-Navi:et, but also the man behind Hati and to his personal use he has analog filter machines, analog synthesizer, digital drummer, electronic effects, sampling unit field recordings, acoustic objects and microphones. All of the pieces were recorded over a period of three years before it was finally edited to this release. Like Rale (see elsewhere) this is at that same cross road of noise, improvisation, musique concrete, drone and such more, but throughout it doesn't seem to match Rale (or various others). X-Navi:et's music is a bit more noisier, a bit more single minded and a bit less worked out. X-Navi:et goes for the bigger picture, in single colors and lacks the refinement of others in this field. However I thought this was quite a nice one too, as it moves around, shifts that particular field of music upwards and towards the area of noise perhaps and makes a release that I do quite like for what it is: a sturdy, monolithic work of mild noise." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2012 | €12.00 |
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| Dead City Voice | LP | "Dead City Voice" is the second vinyl album by Rafał Iwański aka X-Navi:Et(of HATI, Voices of the Cosmos, KAPITAL, Innercity Ensemble fame). It's the follow-up to acclaimed "Soundtracks for the Dying Moments" LP released on Instant Classic last year. It contains 6 new electroacoustic compositions recorded from 2010 to 2013. The theme of the city has appeared in the modern art territory quite a few times before. Wim Wenders, a cult German director, once said that "thecity shapes people, leaves its stigma on them and deforms them to its own likeness." Murray Schafer, a Canadian composer, while working on the concept of "soundscape", claimed that many of the surrounding sonic incidents infiltrates the music of our times. Following the footsteps of Charles Baudelaire among others, urban artists, Rafał Iwański and Ewa Bińczyk, replayed the city, penetrated its spirit and echoed it in their activities. Telling the city by means of sound and vision is becoming an inward journey as well. Inside the cover one can also find the literary text by Dariusz Brzostek (Ph.D. at the University of Toruń, Poland) - a literari, anthropologist and music journalist who has collaborated with many magazines, such as Glissando, Trans/Wizje, Antena Krzyku, Teksty Drugie, Magazyn Fragile. Visually the album is of the highest value. The gatefold cover is adorned with works by Ewa Bińczyk. Additionally, a special edition of 33 copies will include genuine intaglio prints signed by the author making it a true collector's item. The album was released by Zoharum in collaboration with Eter Records, a label set up by Rafał Iwański to release music by his projects X-Navi:Et, HATI, Voices of the Cosmos in digital and analogue formats. The album is released in a gatefold cover in a strictly limited edition of 250 copies." [label info] www.zoharum.com "On vinyl, in a fine fold out cover, we find Hati's Rafal Iwanski's solo project X-Navi:et. Both this and his Hati project are quite active when it comes to releasing music, so you could wonder: do they ever sleep? The main concept behind the six pieces on his new LP is the 'city', but not in a very strict sense I would think. This is not twice 20 minutes of city sounds, or something like that set to music, but pieces that depict the sounds of city through musical means. He uses analog filter machine, analog synthesizer, sampling pad, loop system, hulusi, bells, rattles, metal objects, field and found recordings and effects. Me think that a lot of the acoustic sources here have been sampled and treated extensively before finding their place inside a composition. Take for instance 'Tinnitus Auris': the tinkling of bells are the sounds that a lorry makes when trying to park. Next to that we hear a conveyer belt like sound - the other cars on the same street. Below that is a fiery drone-ventilation shafts on the side walk. That's what I heard. In the other pieces there is a similar liveliness, which we find a big cities - not in the street where I live, and not many cars or people pass on an ordinary working day. But of course all of this is easily said, when you look at the title(s), the picture, the text and such like and make these connections with a big city. I wonder what someone would imagine playing this music as it is, without knowing these references; it might not be the city. But who cares about that? We know what it is about and it's the gesamtkunstwerk that counts. This is a beautiful record of some fine, dark ambient music, with a nice industrial touch to it, very occasionally. Great release!" [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2013 | €16.00 |
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| YASNAIA | Oniro | do-CD | Zoharum is proud to present “Oniro” an extended 2CD reissue of 1996 classic previously released by World Serpent - home to projects like Current 93, Death In June, Coil and alike. Leen Smets aka Yasnaia - vocalist of Hybryds project (until her departure in 2000) takes us on a great journey through many states of consciousness and dimensions. Her haunting and hypnotising voice guides us through 10 tracks of the album. Chants and incantations keep us captivated from very beginning to the very end. Dark rites and ethereal psychedelia. A sexual energy channeled in rhythm driven magical tribalism. Exclusive to this release is a second CD containing live performance recorded at "Wolfsmond", München, Germany on 16th of August 1997 giving you a pretty good impression of how the whole ritual conducted by Yasnaia might sound and look like. The CD ends with 3 tracks, two of which were previously released on 7” vinyls courtesy of Ant-Zen and Spectre (Nexus) and third has been unreleased - until now. A great testimonial of '90s Art of industrial music. Unparalleled and essential. 2CD edition of 500 copies comes in 6 panel digipack. Tracks 1-10 taken from the original album released by World Serpent in 1996. Tracks 11-17 Live recordings Track 18 taken from 7" Picture Disc (AntZen 1997) Track 19 taken from 7" split with Hybryds / P.A.L.(Spectre 1997) Track 20 unreleased https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/oniro-extended-edition | 2021 | €17.00 |
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| Z'EV [ZEV] | An Uns Memento | CD | Re-Release einer Cassette, die 1996 in einer 100er Auflage auf Subterranean erschien. “Best known for his innovative percussive work, Z'EV's short-lived (1980-82) uns project combined his interest in sound poetics and voice treatments with dense sonic landscapes; the result was-and still is-challenging, unique, and rewarding. This 70 minute CD features two long-unavailable recordings: Life Sentense, originally released in 1986 in a cassette-only edition of 100, and "Save What?", a document of the final uns performance, originally released in 1982 in a cassette-only edition of 50. 100 copies (sold out) were specially packaged, signed and numbered. Both editions come with a complete Life Sentense "texts" and the first-ever extensive writing by Z'EV on the uns project.”[label info] “In the early '80s, Z'ev had developed the Uns persona to stand outside of the percussive heavy physicality of Z'ev. Uns built a portable unit of 4 Lenco turntables (which have the unique ability to pitch speeds from 0 - 78 rpm), a few tape decks, echo-plex, and a fire-damaged organ to generate a scraping mid-range rumble over which he barked out a cyclical stream of fragmented vocal elements. While the noise elements definitely predate / parallel some of the early noise constructions from Merzbow, the vocals are what keep this record interesting-as Z'ev would rant and mumble as if caught in a manic fit of Tourette's Syndrome, before catching one interesting phrase in a lock groove for a four or five repetitions ("and you don't know my problem - and it's like crash grass - it's like crash glass - it's like crash glass - and it's uh a clean cut") before continuing on the strange vocalizations. While the noise elements from all of the tracks retain a very similar timbre, the vocals offer the major differentiation for Uns. Fortunately, this piece has ample room between the numerous (99?) tracks for the audience to catch its breath before Z'ev picks up with another semi-comprehensible ramble. This holds up quite well under the test of time, in spite of / because of the fact that Uns sounds like any of the totally flyin' speed freaks that buzz around the 16th & Mission Bart station.”[Aquarius Records] | 1999 | €13.00 |
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| Heart Beat Ear Drum | DVD | “Heart Beat Ear Drum” is a feature length documentary about the late artist and musician Z’EV (1951-2017), known for his punk era scrap metal music – an extraordinary range of acoustic phenomena resulting in trance-inducing sounds. This documentary shows how his music changed and grew and how his personal journey led him to the margins of art and the depths of heart. From 2007-2015, director Ellen Zweig followed Z’EV, shooting concerts and interviews, and collecting archival footage. In addition to interviews with Z’EV, there are interviews with a community of artists who have known him since the 1970’s, curators who have encountered him in the 1990’s, and younger people who have only heard his recorded music or read his philosophical texts (Bob Bellerue, Bow Gamelan Ensemble, HATI, Barbara Stevini, Simone Forti, Zach Layton, Carl Stone, Ned Sublette, Johanna Went and more). Z’EV began with a “wild style”, crashing and throwing pieces of metal to make sound. He collected the materials for his art at scrap yards. 30 years later, almost all the scrap yards are closed. Z’EV now uses mallet percussion to explore acoustic phenomena. Z’EV was a crusader: for art, for trance meditation, and for living a thoughtful life. His found object aesthetic made us see art in all of the objects around us. His art activities included drumming, sculpture, gardening, even cooking. This film is divided in chapters and organised with both a narrative and a digressive structure. The structure is topic based, not strictly chronological. The first half of the film uses archival concert footage and interviews to establish Z’EV’s place in the world of art and music. The second half uses contemporary concert footage and interviews to explore the changes that led Z’EV to a more contemplative style. The film ends with an extended concert. There is music throughout the film, but at the end, you are immersed in the music and in Z’EV’s exploration of resonance. Director: Ellen Zweig Co-Editor: Lili Chin Sound Design: Ron MacLeod DVD case with inserts. PAL, Region 0. https://coldspring.co.uk/2019/12/zev-heart-beat-ear-drum-dvd/ | 2020 | €17.50 |
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| Z'EV & RAMONA PONZINI | Ankoku | CD | "... »Ankoku« entführt den Zuhörer auf eine filigrane, düstere Reise zwischen flirrenden Feedback-Drones, den für Z'EV typischen, aber sehr zurückgenommenen Stahlpercussions und der traumwandler-ischen Stimme Ponzinis, die klingt, als ob es sich dabei um eine Geisterbeschwörung einer japanischen Yūrei oder um mit Schattenwesen aus der Zwischenwelt bevölkerte Filmsequenzen handeln würde: Wenn schon Magick, dann so etwas wie »Ankoku«, dessen spirituelle Kraft an Coil erinnert und auf der die italienische Sängerin/Musikerin ihr Debüt gibt." [Skug] "ANKOKU: Ramona's personal touch is certainly her own particular Japanese chant, together with the use of traditional percussions, bells and cymbals from Japan. Z'EV has been enchanted by all those elements (listening to Praxinoscope), asking to Ramona for this cooperation. This is the result of this "long-distance encounter". ANKOKU is a Japanese word which means "deep darkness". For this debut Ramona's voice and percussions has been registered by My Cat is an Alien in their mysterious studio, placed somewhere in Western Alps, adding some field recordings. Recordings has then been sent to Z'EV who has processed them with some of his typical percussions. Z'EV deconstruct the sweetness of Ramona's chants, enfolding the pieces with a darker atmosphere. We have an obscure 5 tracks album, structured on charming vocal melodies moving out from a "haunted house"." [label description] www.asilentplace.it | 2008 | €12.00 |
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| ZARDO, GINO & JANEK SCHAEFER | Walking East | maxi-CD | GINO ZARDO ist ein Fotograf, der für dieses Projekt beeindruckende Fotos und Feldaufnahmen von seinen Reisen nach Indien, Nepal und Papua-Neu-Guinea mitbrachte. JANEK SCHAEFER hat das akustische Material zu einem 21.40 minütigen psychogeographischen Eindruck verwebt, der Musik & Gesänge, Alltags-Geräusche, Natur und Sprache zu gleichen Teilen im Wechselspiel aufscheinen lässt. GINO ZARDO ist kein Tourist auf voyeuristischen Pfaden, sondern hat dort monatelang in Familien gelebt und mitgearbeitet – so ist ein einmaliges & authentisches Dokument aus Klang & Bild entstanden, welches uns das „andere Leben“ der Menschen dort wirklich näher zu bringen vermag! Digipack incl. 24 p. Booklet. “Gino Zardo is a photographer and field recordist born to Italian parents in Australia in 1968. He lives New York and has worked along side with some of the most prominent photographers in the world for 15 years. Walking East is his debut release. ‘Walking East is a photographic sound portrait of my travels through the North Western provinces of India, the Himalayas of Nepal and the Island of Papua New Guinea. I set out to explore, through the people I met, the way in which my photographs and sound recordings could magnify the sense of time and place. I began the project in January 1999. Covering 50,000 miles over the next 12 months. I found myself trekking for days through the vast contrasting of landscapes, a western desert, a tropical monsoon, and a dense jungle before I would reach a remote village. Camping along the way and living amongst the families and tribes, I was able to experience their daily lives and acquire an understanding of their histories and cultures. Documenting a variety of people as they performed in music festivals, worked in steel mills, sold their wares in markets, and celebrated their tribal rituals together, I found many similarities. The presence of community; joy, hardship and survival are universal. My thanks to everyone I met throughout my journey who shared their homes and lives with me.’ “ [from the liner notes] | 2005 | €12.00 |
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| ZEBRA | The Black & White Album | CD | Das "Pop"-Projekt (sozusagen die Nachfolge von den eher technoiden GOEM) von FRANS DE WAARD und ROEL MEELKOP überrascht mit zum Teil sehr gradlinigen Beats, Pop-Versatzstücken in neuem Gewand, einem 70er Jahre Disco-Feeling, Glitch-Effekten und weiteren Dingen die nicht unbedingt zusammenpassen, aber es darf hier auch mal etwas "unseriöser" zugehen, oder??? "The long awaited debut album of Roel Meelkop and Frans de Waard's post Goem project. They show their love for a good pop song and their love for a bad song also - hacked and spliced together, held together by a set of groovy beats (beasts?). They call it 'Meltpop', symphonic macrosound disco glitch. Includes new versions of their hit single 'Leif Is Leif/Last Night A DJ Saved By File' (final copies of the 7" still available). Great liner notes, great cover by Meeuw." [label info] "Zèbra's The Black & White Album is something of a shaggy dog stray finding a welcome within the SI homestead. According to Roel Meelkop and Frans de Waard (the man who gave you Goem, Kapotte Muziek, and Beequeen, among others), the recording was passed on by any number of potential patrons for being too off-kilter. And in fact much conceptual mischief and general oddity manifests, initially in external dressing, e.g. in scientific graphs with impenetrable textual commentaries, and track durations misrepresenting actual times. The set itself is a collage of techno and disco, noise-mongering, and sampledelic antics, “Dream Music for Diamand Redheads” being representative; it makes a tentative gestural nod towards Romanticist euphony before morphing into a marching slab of upright techno and a looped voice sample. “Last Night A DJ Saves My File” digitally as well as morphologically mangles Indeep’s 80s classic, peppering it with telephone rings and sundry spicy interpolations. In terms of sonic-conceptual forebears, de Waard and Meelkop's exercise in bricolage-styled playroom mischief - self-styled “meltpop” - bears a loop-y stamp that nods clearly towards the spirit of :zoviet*france, while the loony leaps from avant- to electro-/disco to pop remind of the likes of KLF or 808 State, or, in brief orgies of low-end technoid minimalism, nudge towards Pan Sonic." [Ear-Rational] www.kormplastics.nl | 2008 | €12.00 |
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| ZEITKRATZER | Zeitkratzer performs Songs from 'Kraftwerk' and 'Kraftwerk 2' | LP | Format: 180gr LP incl. DL code + insert, 500 items Release date: march 24th 2017 #DOUBLE BIRTHDAY RELEASE !! KARLRECORDS celebrates its 10th birthday, ZEITKRATZER even its 20th! And the party starts with the necessary re-interpretations of early compositions by electronic pioneers KRAFTWERK. Founded in 1997 by REINHOLD FRIEDL, ZEITKRATZER have since been creating an impressive catalogue of recordings that embraces 20th century avant-garde composers (CAGE, STOCKHAUSEN, LUCIER) as well as electronic artists (CARSTEN NICOLAI, TERRE THAEMLITZ) or underground experimentalists like THROBBING GRISTLE or COLUMN ONE. In their 20th anniversary year, the critically acclaimed ensemble will release a series of diverse albums that will explore new grounds in the typical, adventurous zeitkratzer way – the first of these albums is dedicated to KRAFTWERK and their early, kraut-esque albums “Kraftwerk” and “Kraftwerk 2”. As KRAFTWERK never re-released these albums, ZEITKRATZER gave its best to cover the first tranche of the songs (second tranche to come…). Recorded in Marseille / France in May 2016, the six tracks reveal a bucolic and even psychedelic aspect of the ensemble that’s mostly known (or feared) for its interpretatory and aesthetic acerbity. And yet there’s no doubt that “Songs From The Albums „Kraftwerk“ And „Kraftwerk 2“ turned out a true ZEITKRATZER recording in the best and full meaning! zeitkratzer directed by Reinhold Friedl Frank Gratkowski / flute, clarinets, Elena Kakaliagou / french horn, Hilary Jeffery / trombone, Reinhold Friedl / harmonium, piano, Didier Ascour / guitar, Maurice de Martin / drums, Lisa Marie Landgraf / violin, Burkhard Schlothauer / violin, Elisabeth Coudoux, violoncello, Ulrich Phillipp / double bass Recorded and mixed by Martin Wurmnest Mastered & cut by Mike Grinser at D&M, Berlin www.karlrecords.net | 2017 | €18.00 |
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| Serbian War Songs | LP | zeitkratzer and its special guests SVETLANA SPAJIĆ (voice), DRAGANA TOMIĆ (voice) and OBRAD MILIĆ (voice, diple, gusle) present traditional Serbian songs from and about World War I. Within its 20 years of existence, REINHOLD FRIEDL’s ensemble zeitkratzer has proved its interpretatory mastership on a wide range of fields such as contemporary / avant-garde composers, electronic artists, industrial underground – and, probably most surprising on this list, also in traditional music / folklore as documented on the two albums “Volksmusik” and “Neue Volksmusik” . For “Serbian War Songs”, a selection of traditional songs from and about World War I, the “modern composition supergroup” (THE WIRE) have invited some special guests: the renowned singers SVETLANA SPAJIĆ and DRAGANA TOMIĆ (who both worked a.o. with ROBERT WILSON) and the diple / gusle player OBRAD MILIĆ. REINHOLD FRIEDL and SVETLANA SPAJIĆ (probably the most acknowledged expert for traditional songs in Serbia) selected some traditional Serbian songs from and about World War I, and OBRAD MILIĆ contributes „Assassination In Sarajevo“, a song in the classic epic form he had learnt from his father Bogdan, a famous gusla player at the beginning of the 20th century. Commissioned by Berlin’s Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt, the performance was recorded and mixed by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer MARTIN WURMNEST and mastered by MIKE GRINSER at D&M. zeitkratzer directed by Reinhold Friedl Frank Gratkowski, bassclarinet, clarinet I Hild Sofie Tafjord, french horn I Hilary Jeffery, trombone I Reinhold Friedl, piano I Maurice de Martin, drums, percussion I Lisa Marie Landgraf, violin I Burkhard Schlothauer, violin I Nora Krahl, violoncello I Ulrich Phillipp, doublebass + special guests: Svetlana Spajić, voice Dragana Tomić, voice Obrad Milić, voice, diple, gusle recorded and mixed by Martin Wurmnest at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, January 16, 2016 produced by Reinhold Friedl mastered by Mike Grinser at D&M, Berlin | 2017 | €18.00 |
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| ZEITKRATZER & CARSTEN NICOLAI | Electronics | CD | "This cd documents the cooperation between Zeitkratzer and Carsten Nicolai, started nearly a decade ago; a cooperation between an avantgarde ensemble and a non-academic electronic musician. The electronic music of Carsten Nicolai - partly being of even aseptic clearness and quality suddenly becomes sensual and physical through Zeitkratzer's instrumental sounds. Inversely, Zeitkratzer sounds different too: in '5 min' the musicians play only electric sound generators: humming of plugs, the peeping of the synchronised Zeitkratzer-clocks, white noise, TV cheeping at 10 kHz. 'Synchron Bitwave', the latest piece is the most sensual and warmest; no other sounds than a small third and its electric derivates, finally leading to high, dabbed string spiccati. While 'c1' transfers electronically conceived asymmetrical loops into a 19-16th rhythm. A strange undertow results, partly because of the pieces' grounding with merging split sounds. Here, Carsten Nicolai virtually becomes metaphysical, perhaps even romantic...' [label info] ".. So, when taking on a collaboration with Carsten Nicolai, who is best known for his swaggering rhythms for pure tone and minuscule glitches as Alva Noto, we had to ask how this would work. Well, essentially, Nicolai has adapted his sound for Zeitkratzer, not the other way around, which might have been a real challenge for Zeitkratzer to attempt to adopt the thud and rumble of something like the Transall series. Instead, Nicolai and Zeitkratzer pursue long-form compositions, mostly for electronics, but occasionally with the assistance of a particular instrumental coloring from say a clarinet, a cello, or a piano. Each of the three pieces here were performed live, commissioned for this sound art festival or that in Europe. The first of which swarms around static-laden drones and crackling hiss which spirals around a Niblockian drone from a sustained clarinet, eventually a rhythmic undercarriage from a softly tapped piano ebbs against the slow- building arc of sound. The second piece seems to be staged from prepared piano, amplified televisions, and tone generators, offering another skeletal rhythm to the clinical frequencies. The third piece returns to the ideas of the first with the reprise of that piano, but here a semblance of a melody encroaches the slow-motion raga drone from low-thumbing electronics and rasping sustained strings. It's not all that far from another of Nicolai's storied collaborations, with Ryuichi Sakamoto. Both Zeitkratzer and Nicolai are guilty of playing it safe on these three pieces, but the results are striking and lovely nonetheless." [Aquarius Records review] | 2008 | €15.00 |
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| ZENIAL | Foil Punk | CD | https://zoharum.bandcamp.com/album/foil-punk The new album by Łukasz Szałankiewicz aka ZENIAL contains a total of eight tracks, ranging from broadly understood experimental electronics, which is the result of his experience gained in numerous musical projects. You can hear here echoes of previous achievements under ZENIAL, but with the influence of music previously known from, among others, Angst’78, NOR_POL or Aabzu. The subsequent issues close with a clasp outlined by the topic, which is also a tribute to cyberpunk culture, with all its character, philosophy and formula, often drawing a dystopian, slightly post-apocalyptic vision of the future, but also engaging in a discourse on issues related to conspiracy theories arising from in a wide stream, as a reflection of the fears that consume communities in the face of the unknown. The musician does not provide answers, but invites us to a discussion about AI and the dangers lurking in the near future, in which scenarios caused by fears and ignorance are to be realized, while presenting the point of view of a person who is more aware of the futuristic model in which humans are only the mode of the great dehumanized wave of the universe. The material was recorded at the French institute Center National De Création Musicale in Reims. Music by: Łukasz Szałankiewicz Mastering by: Rafał Sądej Front cover by: Łukasz Pazera "In a world brimming with uncertainty and quickening paranoia, Lukasz Szalankiewicz - known to the realms of experimental electronic enthusiasts as Zenial - has unveiled a dystopian soundtrack for our times, one that smacks of cyberpunk echoes, metallic ghosts, and the palpable tension of a future where humanity grapples with its own obsolescence. "Foil Punk" is an album forged in the unsettling hum of machines, where each track feels like a sonic fragment from a fractured, possibly doomed, future. Recorded at the prestigious Centre National De Création Musicale in Reims, and heavily influenced by cyberpunk aesthetics and conspiracy theories, "Foil Punk" invites listeners to engage in an uneasy discourse about artificial intelligence, human fear, and the inexorable march of technological dehumanization. The album is an experience where fear is not merely a backdrop - it is the architect, the engine, and the very air we breathe. From the very first track, "Katedra 2.11" a rapid-fire flurry of glitchy, otherworldly pulses, Zenial doesn't hold back, pulling the listener into a world that is both harsh and hypnotically alluring. There's an overwhelming sense of urgency, as though the machinery of the universe is accelerating past our comprehension, leaving us in a state of perpetual catch-up. The track lasts just over four minutes, but it feels like a condensed eternity - sound unfurling like an unraveling narrative of our technological plight. "I'm Yours" follows, with its ethereal, almost romantic quality. A deceptive track, it might first sound like a reprieve from the chaos, but in typical Zenial fashion, it quickly becomes disorienting. The melody collapses into a stuttered rhythm, like a heart skipping beats, a metaphor for a world where control is a façade. Track 3, "Access granted" feels like an invitation - and a warning. Its cold, mechanical voice proclaims permission granted, but the warm rush of relief that accompanies the words soon morphs into something unsettling. The tone suggests that in the near future, our access to everything we desire will come with a price. And who is in charge of granting it? This question lingers, even after the track ends. And then comes "Deckard" - a sprawling 13-minute epic that calls to mind the towering, sterile landscapes of Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner". The track is built on low, rumbling bass and erratic, fractured rhythms that stretch across the entire piece, as though the machinery of this dystopia is malfunctioning, pushing through systems that were never meant to interact. Zenial’s knack for weaving tension from silence and noise is unmatched here, as the soundscape builds relentlessly, like a machine on the brink of overload. When you reach "Leon Kowalski, serial number N6MAC41717", the longest track of the album, you're deep in the belly of the beast. This 14-minute piece feels like an odyssey, a journey through the decaying underbelly of a world run by algorithms, surveillance, and a profound sense of human alienation. The name itself - a nod to "Blade Runner" - suggests that this track is more than just a sonic exploration; it's a tribute to the forgotten souls in a post-human landscape. Zenial’s use of sound here is almost cruel, pushing the listener into an emotional corner where the lines between synthetic and organic are no longer distinct. "Upgrade" follows with its eerily smooth synths and sharp percussion, a soundtrack to an ascension that feels as much like a surrender as it does a technological upgrade. The track flows into "Bialy Szum" - White Noise - which lingers in the air like an afterthought, like the hum of a world that's too saturated with information to ever pause for breath. The rhythm is sparse, minimalistic, as if representing the stillness before a storm of bytes and signals. Finally, "Event Horizon" closes the album with a slow, creeping dread. The title alone brings to mind the edge of a black hole - the point of no return - and as the track moves through low, vibrating drones and distant metallic rumbles, it’s impossible not to feel a sense of inevitable collapse, as though there’s no way out. Time stretches and warps, much like the concept it’s named after. Here, Zenial pulls no punches, leaving you in a state of suspended finality. What strikes you as you journey through "Foil Punk" is Zenial’s skillful weaving of sounds that both engage and alienate. He draws from his deep well of experience, particularly from projects like Angst'78, NOR_POL, and Aabzu, but here, he steps into new territory - where cold, analytical sound meets a very human, very emotional landscape of fear, anxiety, and the unknown. As much as this album is a tribute to the culture and philosophy of cyberpunk, it is also an invitation to discuss the ways in which humanity is at the mercy of the technologies we’ve birthed. But Zenial, like the best experimental musicians, provides no clear answers. Instead, he invites you into the conversation, asking you to reflect on the dangers that lurk just beneath the surface of our ever-connected world. In a world increasingly defined by machine learning and artificial intelligence, "Foil Punk" is a prophetic soundtrack for the not-so-distant future, where humanity may find itself as mere passengers on a ship piloted by algorithms. What happens when we lose control? What happens when we can no longer distinguish between human and machine? These are the questions "Foil Punk" dares us to consider, all while delivering a listening experience that is as mesmerizing as it is unnerving. It's a dark, compelling, and, at times, absurd journey - a punk manifesto for a new era, where foil hats and neon-lit streets are as real as the machines that will one day rule them." [CHAIN D.L.K., Vito Camarretta] | 2025 | €13.00 |
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| ZIMIAMVIAN NIGHT | Zimiamvian Night 2 | CD | "Mike Bennett's guitar-based ambient drone is draped across sounds created on the other side of the world. Using New Zealander Christopher Orczy's harmonium works from his October release as a basis, Bennett recreates an entirely new majestic work. The result is a chilly, nearly mournful depiction of the sound of northern lights as they ascend and fall in the night sky. Bennett previously released his debut, Zimiamvian Night 1 on Infraction Records in 2005. It was a dark cavernous foray into Zoviet-style old-school ambient with tape loops and guitar-based drone. This new work is a leap forward in texture and atmosphere two years in the making." [label info] www.infractionrecords.com | 2007 | €13.50 |
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| ZOVIET FRANCE | Tables are Turning | do-LP | "Somewhere in the rainy, misty forests of the Pacific Northwest of America, three ladies have the unlikely task of sewing together the packaging for a new album by :zoviet*france:. :zoviet*france: are releasing ‘The Tables Are Turning’ on compact disc and double LP through Soleilmoon Recordings. The music was composed as the soundtrack to ‘Designer Body’, a dance that toured England from 2008 to 2009. The work explores the transformational relationship between humans and the clothing they wear. Seven dancers, performing on continuously rotating plinths, slowly remove layers of their costumes, revealing the sensuous nude bodies beneath. The music accompanying the dancers is by turns dense and moody, then lyrical and soaring, underlining the mounting vulnerability of the dancers as they undress. Liv Lorent, balletLORENT's artistic director and choreographer, spoke with Kelly Apter, writer for The List, saying “At the beginning, the body is the most designed it can be. They’re wearing hats, coats, heavy costumes and make-up – all the man-made and artificial things we do to disguise ourselves everyday. Then, over 50 minutes, we take it all away. And because there are several layers, there’s a real sense of metamorphosis.” The members of :zoviet*france:, who prefer to remain annonymous, write “We've known Liv Lorent for a long time. When she started to conceive 'Designer Body', which she wanted to be a hybrid of contemporary dance and performance art, she decided that an unconventional performance needed an unconventional soundtrack. The composition of the soundtrack and the choreography evolved alongside each other so it became a dialogue between Liv and ourselves. The main inspiration that we took from the production's concept was rotation; throughout the one hour performance, the dancers are located on turntables that turn continuously, at varying speeds and changing direction. We mirrored this in much of the soundtrack, with circular and rotating sounds.” Both formats (CD and double LP) are presented in a deluxe dual-layer green satin bag with fold-over flap. The letters ‘ZF’ are hand-stitched into the flap in white thread, and a two-sided color insert printed on sturdy cardstock completes the package. There are 400 LPs and 600 compact discs in the first edition. The LP, with music on three of the four sides of the records, will go out of print when the initial pressing sells out." [label info] www.soleilmoon.com "With hindsight it is of course not easy to tell when you first heard something, let's say the music of :Zoviet*France:. I think, in my case, this must have been at my friend Peter, when staying over one night after a concert, and he would proceed to play me records, as that was the kind of stuff he was into, unlike me, who was more into cassettes (and waking up, always, to the sound of 'Erector' by Whitehouse). I am however pretty sure I knew the name before as their records where sold by the then existing mail order of Ding Dong Records. Slowly over the years in the mid 80s I got to hear and see those crazy packed records and was immersed by them. In 1990 or so I saw them play live, in the UK, where Peter's band was due to play also, in a multiple day event. I think one night just had :Zoviet*France:, and they played for what I remember as two hours in a seated theatre. Their extended sound tapestries of acoustic sounds, lots of electronics went on and on, from mood to mood. A bit later I remember them playing at the Dutch radio station, VPRO in this case, for a recording that later turned out to be 'Mort Aux Vaches'. They were downstairs fiddling with the soundcheck and I was up in the control room. 'You can start the recording', one member said, and after 90 minutes the DAT was full. One of the radio people went down and told them it might be time to stop, which they did with a quick fade out. Now I could have been disappointed by that, being cut out of such beautiful music, but I wasn't. Seeing them playing around with the simplest of means, tea cups, flutes, and electronic devices was great. Following the extreme productivity of the 80s, there were some releases in the 90s, and in the 00s? One CD, and one 12"/10"/7"if I recall well. Zoviet*France, since many years a duo do play live and share live recordings easily but for whatever reason it never comes to a release that easily. Maybe they foresee that physical releases may disappear, maybe their sometimes complex packaging proofs to be difficult (this new one comes in a 'dual layer green satin bag with fold over flap') but more realistic: :Zoviet*France: are no longer part of the world of concerts, CDs and such like. For quite some time now they create soundtracks for dance companies and performances, and you don't sell CDs at those gigs (I guess, actually). 'The Tables Are Turning' was created for Ballet Lorent in 2008 and I am sure this is not a live recording, but I am also not sure how it works. There are twelve pieces here, quite distinctive pieces, so maybe these are used in this order, no breaks in between or maybe in some other configuration. There is an interesting distinction between the live releases by :Zoviet*France: and their studio work. A typical live CD has one or two pieces in which everything flows right into each other, like an endless stream of subconscious sounds. In their studio work they perform much shorter pieces which occasionally have an odd start or ending , like it's being cut out of a bigger whole. In the dance piece, the dancers are located on turntables - hence the title - and the revolving sound, the looping sound is something that returns in the music. From spacious and melodic in 'Prophecy Loved A Child' to the processed music boxes of 'Green Air' to the gritty organ opening of 'The Grit In The Cloud'. In the past :Zoviet*France: would refer to this as 'songlets', as opposed to real songs, but the shorter ditties here like 'The Fire Of Revolution', 'Sandbox', and 'A Moment Of Film' hark back the best days of 'Popular Soviet Songs' or 'Lohland'. I played this pretty much everyday for a week, and decided this is a great :Zoviet*France: release; not their best, which would be for me 'Mohnomishe', 'Shouting At The Ground', 'Digilogue' and 'What Is Not True', but it's up there with pretty much everything else I know by them, and which is a lot. This christmas will be spend with an entire day of :Zoviet*France: music." [FdW/Vital Weekly] | 2013 | €65.00 |
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| The Decriminalisation of Country Music | do-LP | " * 300 copies * As Glasgow\'s Tramway building evolved from train station into arts space, Zoviet France were present recording the ambient sounds for use in their commissioned themes for the Scottish Arts Council. Though you\'d hardly believe it from the mostly non industrial nature of these very comfortable soundscapes. Five tracks range between five and twelve minutes apiece and the remaining four serve as in-between filler. In \"Something Spooked the Horses\" a constant warm drone and panning scratchiness are overlaid with yearning strands of pedal steel guitar. \"Electron Gate\" gently pulsates a bass loop as microscopic bits click and fuzz. \"Pyroclastic Flow\" is noisier with some possible power tool abrasion honed into layered drones. \"Spiiltek\" is dancing plastic chips and electronic blips which relinquish to the deep bass waves beneath. \"Light Abrasion\" closes with a higher pitched wall of sound and occasional cricket like chirping. All in all \"Decriminalisation..\" is an engaging work of auditory art. And it\'s as suited for busy high brow art rooms as it is lonely late night bed rooms. | 2022 | €35.00 |
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| The Tables are Turning | do-LP | "With hindsight it is of course not easy to tell when you first heard something, let's say the music of :Zoviet*France:. I think, in my case, this must have been at my friend Peter, when staying over one night after a concert, and he would proceed to play me records, as that was the kind of stuff he was into, unlike me, who was more into cassettes (and waking up, always, to the sound of 'Erector' by Whitehouse). I am however pretty sure I knew the name before as their records where sold by the then existing mail order of Ding Dong Records. Slowly over the years in the mid 80s I got to hear and see those crazy packed records and was immersed by them. In 1990 or so I saw them play live, in the UK, where Peter's band was due to play also, in a multiple day event. I think one night just had :Zoviet*France:, and they played for what I remember as two hours in a seated theatre. Their extended sound tapestries of acoustic sounds, lots of electronics went on and on, from mood to mood. A bit later I remember them playing at the Dutch radio station, VPRO in this case, for a recording that later turned out to be 'Mort Aux Vaches'. They were downstairs fiddling with the soundcheck and I was up in the control room. 'You can start the recording', one member said, and after 90 minutes the DAT was full. One of the radio people went down and told them it might be time to stop, which they did with a quick fade out. Now I could have been disappointed by that, being cut out of such beautiful music, but I wasn't. Seeing them playing around with the simplest of means, tea cups, flutes, and electronic devices was great. Following the extreme productivity of the 80s, there were some releases in the 90s, and in the 00s? One CD, and one 12"/10"/7"if I recall well. Zoviet*France, since many years a duo do play live and share live recordings easily but for whatever reason it never comes to a release that easily. Maybe they foresee that physical releases may disappear, maybe their sometimes complex packaging proofs to be difficult (this new one comes in a 'dual layer green satin bag with fold over flap') but more realistic: :Zoviet*France: are no longer part of the world of concerts, CDs and such like. For quite some time now they create soundtracks for dance companies and performances, and you don't sell CDs at those gigs (I guess, actually). 'The Tables Are Turning' was created for Ballet Lorent in 2008 and I am sure this is not a live recording, but I am also not sure how it works. There are twelve pieces here, quite distinctive pieces, so maybe these are used in this order, no breaks in between or maybe in some other configuration. There is an interesting distinction between the live releases by :Zoviet*France: and their studio work. A typical live CD has one or two pieces in which everything flows right into each other, like an endless stream of subconscious sounds. In their studio work they perform much shorter pieces which occasionally have an odd start or ending , like it's being cut out of a bigger whole. In the dance piece, the dancers are located on turntables - hence the title - and the revolving sound, the looping sound is something that returns in the music. From spacious and melodic in 'Prophecy Loved A Child' to the processed music boxes of 'Green Air' to the gritty organ opening of 'The Grit In The Cloud'. In the past :Zoviet*France: would refer to this as 'songlets', as opposed to real songs, but the shorter ditties here like 'The Fire Of Revolution', 'Sandbox', and 'A Moment Of Film' hark back the best days of 'Popular Soviet Songs' or 'Lohland'. I played this pretty much everyday for a week, and decided this is a great :Zoviet*France: release; not their best, which would be for me 'Mohnomishe', 'Shouting At The Ground', 'Digilogue' and 'What Is Not True', but it's up there with pretty much everything else I know by them, and which is a lot. This christmas will be spend with an entire day of :Zoviet*France: music." [FdW/Vital Weekly_ review to the first edition from Soleilmoon Rec.] | 2022 | €31.50 |
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