Netlabel: Absence of Wax

Brighternow

- A new netlabel:

________________
Absence of Wax is a new netlabel curated by Los Angeles-based composer Devin Sarno focusing on experimental/improvised/ambient sound.

- So far, 2 singles released:

Released on 01.01 2011:

Devin Sarno is a Los Angeles-based composer focusing on improvised subsonics. Over the better part of a decade, Sarno’s music has evolved from high volume feedback experimentation to a sonic examination of the meditative properties of low-end drone music. Influenced in part by artists such as: Phill Niblock, Deep Listening Band & Arvo Pärt as well as everyday ambience & silence,

Devin Sarno @ eMu - Website


***************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Released 01.09.2011:
- G.E. Stinson - “myo tai ~”

G.E. Stinson, born in kingfisher, oklahoma, is a musician of inexplicable origin and undetermined destination. coming from many disparate influences his unspoken intention is to construct coherent spontaneous composition while mutating individual sound until it is rendered unrecognizable as any known form of music. employing computer, several stringed instruments and far too many electronic effects, stinson creates lush and pixelated textural frequencies that roam beyond classification. stinson resides in los angeles with his wife, myotai, and a mysterious hound named vlad the impaler.

G.E. Stinson @ eMu - Website (very cool).

- I'm very exited about what this netlabel may bring. . .

Brighternow

Released 01.18.2011:

Lin Culbertson - "Five Or More Radiating Points"

Musician and composer Lin Culbertson’s extensive experience as an improvisor greatly informs her sound work. Her compositions are composed of synthesized sounds, field recordings, and conventional instruments, which are combined and controlled by semi-random systems. The influence of her graphic design background is evident in the use of graphic scores, video screen grabs, and visual translation software to include non-musical elements in the sound creation process. She is a founding member of the improvisational unit White Out and has performed and recorded with a wide range of artists including Jim O’Rourke, Thurston Moore, Nels Cline, William Winant, Mike Watt, C Spencer Yeh, and Carlos Giffoni among many others.

linculbertson.net

Brighternow

Will Thomas Long - Pathways In The Inverted Forest
Will Thomas Long has contributed a stunning 20 minute composition to Absence of Wax entitled “Pathways In The Inverted Forest.” The piece is comprised of synth & field recordings created in Tokyo, Japan (Jan 2011.)

William Thomas Long was born on December 8, 1980, in Jackson, Mississippi. He attended the University of Mississippi, and Belhaven College, studying History, Literature, Creative Writing, Philosophy, Film History, and Journalism. Will played piano at a very early age, as well as experimenting with recording on tape. Will, along with Danielle Baquet-Long, was a part of the acclaimed ambient sound duo Celer. He also runs the record label Two Acorns.

Website - Blog

Brighternow

- A message from Devin Sarno:

AoW thanks you.

It has been an exciting first month for Absence of Wax. I can’t thank everyone enough for contributing, listening & supporting. The point of all this is simply to share music from friends & artists that personally inspire me. I hope that along the way, this music does the same for others out there as well. Stay tuned…we have alot of irons in the fire and hope to release even more amazing sounds in the coming months!

Brighternow

Bob Bruno - "Galaxies"

Los Angeles-based multi instrumentalist Bobb Bruno has performed & recorded solo as well as with a number of wide ranging projects such as: Best Coast, Polar Goldie Cats, Goliath Bird Eater, Pocahaunted, The For Carnation, Owl & Friend…and more.

- http://www.bunnytuff.com/

Brighternow

- A gorgeous track from Mark Wheaton:

“Ripcord”
- "is the soundtrack composed by Mark Wheaton to a video piece which was a collaboration by Martin Kersels, Leslie Dick and Mark Wheaton (2008). The video was shown at the ACME Gallery in Los Angeles as a 4 channel installation. The gallery has an original copy of the video for viewing. This is a stereo mix of the soundtrack in its entirety."

Los Angeles based recording engineer/composer Mark Wheaton arrived in LA from Seattle in 1979 with the band Chinas Comidas. Their first gig was Halloween 1979 opening for the Germs at the Hong Kong Cafe. Since then, Mark has worked as the musical director for performance artist Johanna Went, and has provided music scores for performance artists such as SHRIMPS, Survival Research Labs, Torture Chorus and Martin Kersels. Mark also played synthesizer in the band Bent (the Deadbeats) during the late 1980?s. Mark currently runs the studio Catasonic, where he works with a wide range of artists.

Brighternow

"Los Angeles-based Contrabassguitarist/composer Steuart Liebig (under the moniker DEFAULT MODE NETWORK) delivers a texturally complex and stunning solo composition entitled “Wane.”

Contrabassguitarist/composer Steuart Liebig has had a varied career in music.
At the age of 19 he started a three-year stint playing rhythm guitar with soul-jazz pianist-singer Les McCann (playing on four albums). He quit Les’ band and returned to university, where he studied classical contrabass, music history and composition.
Realizing that the life of a symphony bassist was not for him, he started a rock band (BLOC). During this period, Steuart also played and recorded with noted saxophonist/composer Julius Hemphill and members of the Los Angeles improvised music community. Concurrently, he did much self-study and writing in “classical” composition, resulting in 20 pieces, ranging from chamber music to symphonies.
After BLOC, Steuart focused his energies on improvised music and composition, embarking on three more or less parallel lines of compositional investigation: 1) Improvising chamber groups: Quartetto Stig, Kammerstig, Stigtette and Minim; 2) Groups that revisit American blues and country music through the prism of “avant-garde” jazz: The Mentones and The Tee-Tot Quartet; 3) Jazz jazz-based groups: The Seconda Prattica Quintet and various trios.
Steuart has also written music for solo contrabassguitar; written for large-scale groups incorporating electronics and acoustic instruments; and written and performed music incorporating computer music technology.
He has performed and recorded with cutting-edge musicians like Nels Cline, Alex Cline, G.E. Stinson, Gregg Bendian, Michael Vatcher, Tom Varner, Mark Dresser, Anna Homler, etc.

http://stigsite.com/

Brighternow

Jason Kahn - "For Nam June Paik"
Jason Kahn: analogue synthesizer, percussion, short wave radio

“For Nam June Paik” is a concert recording made on November 21, 2008 at the Nam June Paik Art Center in Yongin, Korea. In these solo concerts I explore the performance space’s resonant properties through feedback from amplified percussion and analogue synthesizer. In a sense, the real instrument being played here is the space itself.
I named the piece “For Nam June Paik” because this was played in a room which had his New York studio installed there, and I felt like I was in his presence, in his space playing for him."

Jason Kahn was born in New York in 1960 and grew up in Los Angeles. He moved to Europe in 1990, first living in Berlin until 1999 then moving to Switzerland. He is currently based in Zürich. Kahn came of musical age in the late 1970?s, playing drums in punk bands and later making many records for the Los Angeles-based SST label.

He turned more to improvised music in the late 1980?s, culminating with his move to Berlin where he spent many years working as a drummer and percussionist in different projects of improvised music, as well as playing in composer Arnold Dreyblatt’s group The Orchestra of Excited Strings.

In Berlin Kahn began working with electronics and composing. He started releasing solo CD’s in 1998 on his Cut imprint, which ran from 1997 until 2007. Kahn also began exhibiting sound installations in 2001 and has since shown many works in museums, galleries, art spaces and public sites around the world.

Kahn collaborates regularly with many musicians, both in improvised settings and in the context of graphical scores which Kahn composes for specific groupings of musicians. He has performed throughout Europe, North and South America, Australia, Egypt, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Turkey and South Africa.

- Jason Kahn @ eMu
http://www.jasonkahn.net/

Brighternow

“16 Days” is a fixed media sound piece made with an instrument designed by the composer in Max/MSP. The patch consists of 100 sines organized into 16 individually tuned oscillator instruments. The numbers for the frequencies of the sines correspond to the flight numbers of 100 flights between Las Vegas, NV and Klamath Falls, OR between January 1-16, 2008. January 1st and 16th having the significance of being the respective dates a close family member was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died

Sarah J. Ritch found herself playing guitar and bass in several Punk and Metal bands between 1996 and 2003, eventually leading to an interest in composition. Originally from Nevada, Sarah continued on to Chicago, earning a BM from Roosevelt University, a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Sound from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is in-process of a Masters in Computer Science. Sarah is a mostly tonal composer working with acoustic instruments and electronics both separately and integrated in chamber ensembles.

- http://sarahjritch.wordpress.com/

Brighternow

Pillowdiver - "Flames"
http://archive.org/details/Pillowdiverflames

- Some words on “flames” from composer René Margraff:
- "The track uses samples of a guitar recording I made in preparation for a live gig. Instruments used were a Jazzmaster, Delay, Reverb- and Distortion pedals into a looper.
I slowed some of the samples down and arranged them within the computer, using some more processing, mainly Plug-Ins by Valhalla Dsp."


- "René Margraff (b. 1975) lives in Berlin. He started Pillowdiver in 2008 and released on 12k, Analog Path and Nomadic Kids Republic and some other lables. Other music projects include Le Mépris and the duo Two People In A Room.

Pillowdiver uses a number of different set-ups, sometimes digital, sometimes only hardware – a commonality is usually to focus on only a few elements."

kargatron

I'm enjoying this pleasantly weird, glitchy one: Hasan Hujairi - Wall Gods

Brighternow

Alexandre St-Onge - "Aimer la concrescence"
-“Aimer la concrescence” from Montreal, Canada-based composer Alexandre St-Onge is the result of a sound performance based on multiple translations of fragile destruction."
- Abcense of Wax


- "Alexandre St-Onge is an audio artist, a musician/improviser (acoustic bass, bass, voice and electronics) and a sound performer. He has studied literature and philosophy and he is currently doing his PhD in art. He is fascinated by creativity as a pragmatic approach of the ineffable and he has released eight solo CDs: Ailleurs (&records), Entités (Oral), Joseph Carey Merrick (Oral), Mon animal est possible (Alien8 Recordings), L’amitié ou les rumeurs insoutenables du désir (Squint Fucker Press), kasi naigo (Squint Fucker Press), Une mâchoire et deux trous (Namskéio Records), Image/négation (Alien8 Recordings). He also plays in quite a few bands, including Et Sans, K.A.N.T.N.A.G.A.N.O., Klaxon Gueule, Pink Saliva, mineminemine, Shalabi Effect and undo. As a composer he has worked for interactive/mixed-media company kondition pluriel, as well as composing for artists such as Marie Brassard, Karine Denault, Lynda Gaudreau, Line Nault, Jérémie Niel, Maryse Poulin and Mariko Tanabe."
http://alexandrest-onge.com
Alexandre St-Onge @ Emusic - Soundcloud

Brighternow

Damian Valles "Temporal"
- "“Temporal,” by Canadian composer Damian Valles, is a long-form track composed of field recordings, strings, and percussion which have been processed using real-time granulation."
http://devinsarno.com/absenceofwax/?p=1324