A new double album from the amazing Nicolas Bernier:
Music For A Piano
Music For A Book
- "I began to work on the composition of these two works during a residency at The Banff Centre, a quite amazing place welcoming artists from around the world in the fields of media art, classical music, dance, photography, theatre, and so forth. Literally in the middle of the Canadian Rockies, I was working in one of the little studios during these two months. Trees, mountains, fresh air, art a dream. I was working in this little cabin, you have to have a look, I was in the Davidson Studio:
In the room, there was not much but this strange and ancient music making object, this instrument of a startling complexity. I have always hesitated in front of the piano, feeling small before an icon of several centuries of music.
But I jumped.
The piano and I spent several nights tinkling together to the songs of crickets in July and Music For a Piano is the result of those nights.
In the meantime, I was beginning to work on one of my greatest fantasies: a soundtrack for a book. There are soundtracks everywhere too many I would say: for dance, video, film, shopping centres, theatre, news, even imaginary soundtracks but not many for books. And there is something that can enchance the reading there I think, that can add a dimension to the reading of a book. At least it worked for me when, in the late 90s, I was discovering modern music, reading Marguerite Durass Un barrage contre le Pacifique while listening John Zorns Duras.
I had to wait about ten years to be fortunate enough to meet an author who would be enthusiastic about having an exploratory music soundtrack for his book. From the sessions with the piano, I then started another set of tracks for the third novel of a quite brilliant young author here in Montréal, Marc-André Moutquin.
The book entitled Entre laurore et la nuit will soon be published by Guy Saint-Jean Éditeur. The plot of the novel takes place in Nunavik, the cold, desertic northern region of the province of Québec. Ive composed seven eerie sound aurora, an etherreal soundtrack that stands like the counterweight weight of the heavy climate that can sometimes inhabit this part of the world."
- Nicolas Bernier @ Home Normal
NICOLAS BERNIER
Born : Ottawa, Canada, 1977
Residence: Montréal, Québec
- "Nicolas Bernier is joyfully flowing from musique concrète to live electronics, post-rock, noise improv, performance, installation, video art while also working with dance, theatre, moving images and interdisciplinarity contexts.
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.
The sound of Nicolas Bernier is somewhere between the old and the new. It is electronic music made from objects of the past: typewriter, old machines, tuning forks, soundscape memories and, yes, musical instruments. It is made with a modern apparatus but feels like completely handmade. It is gently articulated textures alongside enormous masses.
His works have been of interest for Prix Ars Electronica (Austria), SONAR (Spain), Mutek (Canada), DotMov Festival (Japan) and Transmediale (Germany) and have been published on lovely labels like Crónica (Portugal), Ahornfelder (Germany), leerraum (Switzerland) and Home Normal (UK).
He his currently undertaking a PhD in sonic arts at the University of Huddersfield (UK) under the direction of Dr. Pierre Alexandre Tremblay and Dr. Monty Adkins. He his a member of Perte de signal, a media arts research and development centre based in Montreal."
- http://www.nicolasbernier.com/
- Emusic
- "Dawn Undefeated" is a focused affair, full of analog processing, chiming tones, pianos and tortured strings. Only briefly does it flirt with the type of crumbling, murky sound design that I'd previously associated with the project. The B-side in particular, a long suite of dynamic and engaging drones, twinkling keys and modulating static, proves well worth a listen."
- Alex Cobb, Experimedia @ Soundcloud
- And brand new from Debacle Records: Deep Magic - Closed Eyes
- Emusic
Fire! With Oren Ambarchi - In The Mouth - A Hand - "For their third album Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin team up with Oren Ambarchi, a true explorer of the guitar, "re-routing the instrument into a zone of alien abstraction where it´s no longer easily identifiable as itself" as The Wire once wrote. As with Jim O´Rourke on the previous album this is not a mere guest appearance, Ambarchi is fully intergrated as a member making this a glorious monster of a record. With their heavy, hypnotic, psychedelic rock´n´jazz explorations they have carved out a monumental and different sound than any of the projects they are normally associated with."
- Rune Grammofon
- http://www.earthwindand.com/
I came on board to see if anybody else had discovered that Nicolas Bernier "Music for Piano/Music for Book" album. Unsurprised to find BN and GP already made posts about it.
It's a really good album. I've been mellowing out to it late at night since I picked it up. The only reason I discovered it at all was that it was inexplicably categorized on emu under Jazz. Actually, worth mentioning that a bunch of Home/Normal and Dynamaphone cds have been getting slotted on emu under Jazz.
"Golden Clouds is the first single taken from the brand new album The Orb featuring Lee Scratch Perry presents "The Orbserver In The Star House." The album will be released on Cooking Vinyl on September 3rd 2012"
- Soundcloud
- More tracks @ Soundcloud
- A Bandcamp pre-release from Nico Muhly on Bedroom Community: Released 20 August 2012
Pekka Kuusisto Violin
Nico Muhly Piano, drones
Nadia Sirota Viola - I started writing the Drones pieces as a method of developing harmonic ideas over a static structure. The idea is something not unlike singing along with one's vacuum cleaner, or with the subtle but constant humming found in most dwelling-places. We surround ourselves with constant noise, and the Drones pieces are an attempt to honor these drones and stylize them.
- Nico Muhly
- "Laila Je T'Aime is a compilation of guitar music from the Western Sahel - including Mauritania, Senegal and Mali. Selected from three years of field recordings, the compilation highlights guitarists and guitar bands and the vast differences in interpretation of the instrument. Recorded on location from the riverside houses of the Niger to the desert campfires of Northern Malian desert."
- http://sahelsounds.com/
There's a sample track from the forthcoming Kane Ikin release on 12k just went up on soundcloud. Can be listened to here. It has raised my expectation for this album up a notch.
According to Paste, September 2012 New Releases are looking particularly good. I have high hopes for Dylan, Mumford, Avett Brothers, but David Byrne and St. Vincent might be the most interesting of all.
- "Reines dAngleterre is a fascinating collaboration between avant outsider musician Ghédalia Tazartès and two electronic botanists, èlg and Jo aka Opéra Mort. This LP covers more of the wild ground the band started with on Les Comores released back in 2010, but going further into a musical terrain that defies definite description a slow trip into wizards intimacy, synthetic jungles, underseas zoos and tibetan-industrial complexes. It feels like one has stumbled into disturbing dreams from a different realm. A quality of mystery, trickery and halucinatory movements slip and shift across the recording. This is out there music, experimental music with no fixed abode with a unique quality that defies most things today."
- Bo' Weavil Recordings
Lost in the Humming Air (Music inspired by Harold Budd) by Various Artists
I heard about this in a loscil tweet months back, then forgot about it until a poster on the emusic message board pointed out it had arrived (so that board is still good for some things every now and then). Strong collection of artists.
Theres not a lot of artists who had such an important influence on todays ambient music like the outstanding piano player and composer Harold Budd. Albums like his classical Pavilion of Dreams or his cooperations with Brian Eno like The Pearl are well known to many electronic and Ambient musicians and listeners of the last decades. Especially the two fellow musicians Martin Juhls (aka Marsen Jules) and Rafael Anton Irisarri (aka The Sight Below) were often talking about the influence that Budds music had on them and how much respect and admiration they had for him and his work. Out of this came the idea of paying respect to Budd in some way, to give something back to him. Lost in the Humming Air is the result of this thought in form of a musical tribute and its a big honor to release this in the 50th year of Mr. Budds career as a composer. We invited some of our favorite artists to contribute a song that, in some way, resembles the music of Harold Budd or channeles the influence he had on them as musicians. We are very glad that Lost in the Humming Air has turned out to be a special selection of thirteen modern Ambient pieces, with illustrous contributors such as Mokira, Taylor Deupree, Deaf Center, Christopher Willits, Biosphere, Porn Sword Tobacco and Bvdub. While all of the tracks offer a unique perspective on how the now classical sounds of Harold's music have been an influence in one way or the other, they still manage to maintain a sound that is closely connected to the individual musician.
All tracks written and produced by Ben Lukas Boysen
track 14 performed and recorded by Nils Frahm.
Mastered by Nils Frahm at Durton studio.
- "Ben Lukas Boysen has been writing, producing and performing music since 2003, specializing in sound design and composition. with a series of highly regarded albums as Hecq on hymen records, plus a busy schedule producing music for a number of high-profile advertising, film and gaming clients, he has firmly established himself as a forward-thinking electronic musician and sophisticated sound designer. The focus of his every project is to find an efficient and direct way to leave a strong emotional impact, whether it is the production of an album or the conception and completion of a commercial project. he invests a lot of thought and time into every single piece of work and therefore makes every production special rather than settling with something fast and convenient. He is determined that every score, commission, track, or remix should get the same amount of attention and detail. in short: moving away from music and sound as a product and perceive every project as a customizable and individual challenge. a number of companies like cartier, bmw, leica, greenpeace, lacoste or mtv have made use of this approach for their commercials, websites and general sound concepts.
Restive is not the first film ben boysen made the music for, but it is his first soundtrack to be independently released as an album. as on his previous works as hecq where he has already demonstrated his ability for cinematic sound design, this soundtrack works perfectly as a stand-alone release for those who are not familiar with the movie. with its beautifully elaborate compositions carrying dense moods from light sadness to subliminal tension and disturbance, restive's music is strong enough to speak for itself and to create a motion picture in the listeners mind. with a basis of mighty sub basses and partial beats, dramatic orchestral ambience interweave with atmospheric synthesized pads and deep reverberation carrying a continuous imaginative suspense of something hiding right beneath the shadow of a thinly layered sonic veil.
listening to this perfect symbiosis of electronic soundscapes and acoustic sounds, you can draw a parallel between this release and hecq's 'night falls' album from 2008. restive defines a journey through varied aural spaces interspersed with sounds and tempers beyond the listener's imagination."
- http://www.hymen-records.com/ - Emusic
Newish: - "Jason Swinscoe of The Cinematic Orchestra has long been intrigued by the link between vision and sound. From TCOs re-soundtracking of Man With A Movie Camera, through his soundtrack to an imaginary film, Ma Fleur, to his bands name itself, Swinscoe has continued to pick away at the issues and emotions found at this intersection. With In Motion #1 he continues this process by inviting some of his favourite musicians and producers to provide soundtracks to or musical re-imaginings of seminal work by great avant-garde film-makers.
Responding to visuals which run from René Clairs surrealist classic "Entracte" (The Cinematic Orchestra) right up to Peter Tscherkasskys Outer Space (Dorian Concept & Tom Chant), the musicians wrote for and worked with a string quartet to create music of remarkable emotional reach. The results are so vivid, so complex yet immediate, that they can be enjoyed as freestanding pieces in their own right.
The first of a series of releases curated by Jason Swinscoe for Motion Audio, the artists involved run from LA-based pianist Austin Peralta, through the Grey Reverend in New York, to Dorian Concept in Austria and Tom Chant and the other members of TCO in London.
- http://www.cinematicorchestra.com/
Fairly new on Debacle Records from a truely remarkable acustic guitar player:
(possibly posted somewhere before)
- "A drink concocted by restless Civil War troops, "Oh Be Joyful" was made out of such things as turpentine, tar water, lamp oil, and brown sugar. As Daniel Bachman puts it, "...it fucked them up. They drank it and they loved it." Such interest in minute details are reflected not only in the Philadelphian's passion for mid-1800's history, but also in his song construction. Oh Be Joyful is the 7th release for Bachman, and the 2nd on Debacle. This digital/CD format re-issue (from the vinyl on One Kind Favor) features the 21-year old virtuoso's warm, unfolding rhythms meandering from his finger picked steel guitar. Branching beyond the American primitive style he's recognized for, this latest 7-track offering forays into new elements of style, particularly on tracks "Sita Ram (Who is God)" and "The Bridge of Flowers".
I've been listening to that Cinematic Orchestra In Motion Pt.1 every single day since I picked it up about a month ago. It's a staple of my early morning listening routine.
From Scott Morgan: "This album gets its name from an odd little ocean side park that borders industry and the Vancouver port authority and lays claim to being the birthplace of the city.
"In a way, Sketches from New Brighton it is a continuation of a dialogue with my environment that started with First Narrows (kranky 2004) and continued with the Strathcona Variations EP (Ghostly International 2009). It is not a rigorous "study" per se, but more a series of sketches, loose interpretations of the spaces I inhabit as well as an acknowledgement of their influence on my practice. These are my impressions, a kind of sketch of New Brighton and the surrounding area in an abstract form."
This sixth full length album from kranky mainstay Scott Morgan sees his pulsing compositions gently unfolding in the understated fashion that has become his trademark. He designs a sonic architecture, slowly constructing, making subtle additions and subtractions, until an almost tactile virtual space is formed. Inside these spaces an aural feng shui is achieved, where less is more, where every element is in its place, and where maximum harmony is attained through the masterly placement of sound.
Actually released in July, when I missed it. Not on emusic :-(. More angular, moody techno in the spirit of his excellent recent full-length "Or" (as well as recent work by Alva Noto and Byetone).
Due out tomorow. Probably also not on emusic due to the label.
Deadbeat's eighth studio album lands replete with guest assistance from longtime collaborator Robert Henke aka Monolake, fellow Canuck-in-Berlin Mathew Jonson, Cobblestone Jazz dude Danuel Tate, and Chilean micro-groove guy Dandy Jack. It's a solid reaffirmation of Scott Montieth aka Deadbeat's sheer production skills and deft way with a Dub Techno flex, refining the stripped down and propulsive style he's honed with countless 12"s and remixes for respected labels such as Wagon Repair, Echocord and ~scape. Highlights have to be tense but spacious dub flux of 'Elephant In The Pool', the signature SH101 narration from Jonson on 'Wolves And Angels' and no doubt the sleekly streamlined and bodily synced TechnoHouse flex of 'My Rotten Roots', punctuated by Robert Henke's super criss woodblock snares and rendered sharp by his "metal room design".
Gregg Kowalsky with Jozef van Wissem - Movements in Marble and Stone
- "Movements in Marble and Stone (AMI-034R/W) includes two new pieces recorded live in 2011. While these performances occurred on opposite coasts, the source material is closely aligned in both concept and process. These works highlight his ongoing preoccupations with sound and setting, incorporating the focused blend of acoustic and electronic sources that Kowalsky is already well known for.
Electronic Music for Square and Sine Waves documents Kowalskys contribution to the 2011 Activating the Medium festival in San Francisco. This commissioned piece continues Kowalskys interest in how sound engages, manipulates and modifies ones awareness of space. This piece generatesas both the name of the festival and Kowalskys composition suggestsound that amplifies a hearing subjects relation to his or her environment. For this composition, Kowalsky tuned an AM radio to random interference between channels, static abstractions that bookend the work. Within the core of the piece, Kowalsky used contact mics to process this, and other, sound source(s) as he moved around the performance space. The effect of this movement generates both melodic feedback and acoustic forms that provide a subtle complement to the static interference of the radio frequencies.
For Baroque Lute, Tapes and Resonant Space documents Kowalskys on going tape chants process, a project previously realized on both his Battery Townsley (2011) and Tape Chants (2009) LPs. For this iteration, Kowalsky tuned square and sine waves to Dutch lutanist Jozef van Wissems lute and then played these recordings through cassette players. Though they have collaborated previously, this performance at Issue Project Room in October 2011 is the first chronicling of van Wissem and Kowalksys duo-work."
- http://www.amishrecords.com/
- Gregg Kowalsky had some excellent albums out on Amie Street and Jozef Van Wissem was mentioned by Bad Thoughts @ the A Bounty of Lute-ny thread.
- Jozef Van Wissem is also mentioned on the previous page concerning his collaboration with Jim Jarmusch.
Comments
John Hollenbeck & Orchestra National de Jazz - Shut Up and Dance
Stream most of it at ONJ's site, and buy it at Amazon or emusic (similar prices).
Hollenbeck's roster of large ensemble recordings is fabulous, this is just as good as his previous entries Joys & Desires and Eternal Interlude.
Music For A Piano
Music For A Book
- "I began to work on the composition of these two works during a residency at The Banff Centre, a quite amazing place welcoming artists from around the world in the fields of media art, classical music, dance, photography, theatre, and so forth. Literally in the middle of the Canadian Rockies, I was working in one of the little studios during these two months. Trees, mountains, fresh air, art a dream. I was working in this little cabin, you have to have a look, I was in the Davidson Studio:
In the room, there was not much but this strange and ancient music making object, this instrument of a startling complexity. I have always hesitated in front of the piano, feeling small before an icon of several centuries of music.
But I jumped.
The piano and I spent several nights tinkling together to the songs of crickets in July and Music For a Piano is the result of those nights.
In the meantime, I was beginning to work on one of my greatest fantasies: a soundtrack for a book. There are soundtracks everywhere too many I would say: for dance, video, film, shopping centres, theatre, news, even imaginary soundtracks but not many for books. And there is something that can enchance the reading there I think, that can add a dimension to the reading of a book. At least it worked for me when, in the late 90s, I was discovering modern music, reading Marguerite Durass Un barrage contre le Pacifique while listening John Zorns Duras.
I had to wait about ten years to be fortunate enough to meet an author who would be enthusiastic about having an exploratory music soundtrack for his book. From the sessions with the piano, I then started another set of tracks for the third novel of a quite brilliant young author here in Montréal, Marc-André Moutquin.
The book entitled Entre laurore et la nuit will soon be published by Guy Saint-Jean Éditeur. The plot of the novel takes place in Nunavik, the cold, desertic northern region of the province of Québec. Ive composed seven eerie sound aurora, an etherreal soundtrack that stands like the counterweight weight of the heavy climate that can sometimes inhabit this part of the world."
- Nicolas Bernier @ Home Normal
NICOLAS BERNIER
Born : Ottawa, Canada, 1977
Residence: Montréal, Québec
- "Nicolas Bernier is joyfully flowing from musique concrète to live electronics, post-rock, noise improv, performance, installation, video art while also working with dance, theatre, moving images and interdisciplinarity contexts.
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.
The sound of Nicolas Bernier is somewhere between the old and the new. It is electronic music made from objects of the past: typewriter, old machines, tuning forks, soundscape memories and, yes, musical instruments. It is made with a modern apparatus but feels like completely handmade. It is gently articulated textures alongside enormous masses.
His works have been of interest for Prix Ars Electronica (Austria), SONAR (Spain), Mutek (Canada), DotMov Festival (Japan) and Transmediale (Germany) and have been published on lovely labels like Crónica (Portugal), Ahornfelder (Germany), leerraum (Switzerland) and Home Normal (UK).
He his currently undertaking a PhD in sonic arts at the University of Huddersfield (UK) under the direction of Dr. Pierre Alexandre Tremblay and Dr. Monty Adkins. He his a member of Perte de signal, a media arts research and development centre based in Montreal."
- http://www.nicolasbernier.com/
- Emusic
- Lots of info @ Emusers member number 240's blog: I Care If You Listen
- Excellent stuff ! - Thanks and welcome to Emusers.
Emusic
Strange video with Willem Dafoe
Failing Lights - Dawn Undefeated
- "Dawn Undefeated" is a focused affair, full of analog processing, chiming tones, pianos and tortured strings. Only briefly does it flirt with the type of crumbling, murky sound design that I'd previously associated with the project. The B-side in particular, a long suite of dynamic and engaging drones, twinkling keys and modulating static, proves well worth a listen."
- Alex Cobb, Experimedia @ Soundcloud
- And brand new from Debacle Records:
Deep Magic - Closed Eyes
- Emusic
Fire! With Oren Ambarchi - In The Mouth - A Hand
- "For their third album Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin team up with Oren Ambarchi, a true explorer of the guitar, "re-routing the instrument into a zone of alien abstraction where it´s no longer easily identifiable as itself" as The Wire once wrote. As with Jim O´Rourke on the previous album this is not a mere guest appearance, Ambarchi is fully intergrated as a member making this a glorious monster of a record. With their heavy, hypnotic, psychedelic rock´n´jazz explorations they have carved out a monumental and different sound than any of the projects they are normally associated with."
- Rune Grammofon
- http://www.earthwindand.com/
It's a really good album. I've been mellowing out to it late at night since I picked it up. The only reason I discovered it at all was that it was inexplicably categorized on emu under Jazz. Actually, worth mentioning that a bunch of Home/Normal and Dynamaphone cds have been getting slotted on emu under Jazz.
"Golden Clouds is the first single taken from the brand new album The Orb featuring Lee Scratch Perry presents "The Orbserver In The Star House." The album will be released on Cooking Vinyl on September 3rd 2012"
- Soundcloud
- More tracks @ Soundcloud
Released 20 August 2012
Pekka Kuusisto Violin
Nico Muhly Piano, drones
Nadia Sirota Viola
- I started writing the Drones pieces as a method of developing harmonic ideas over a static structure. The idea is something not unlike singing along with one's vacuum cleaner, or with the subtle but constant humming found in most dwelling-places. We surround ourselves with constant noise, and the Drones pieces are an attempt to honor these drones and stylize them.
- Nico Muhly
- "Laila Je T'Aime is a compilation of guitar music from the Western Sahel - including Mauritania, Senegal and Mali. Selected from three years of field recordings, the compilation highlights guitarists and guitar bands and the vast differences in interpretation of the instrument. Recorded on location from the riverside houses of the Niger to the desert campfires of Northern Malian desert."
- http://sahelsounds.com/
- "Mika Vainio, currently based in Berlin, was one half of the minimal electronic duo Pan Sonic from Finland, (with Ilpo V
Lost in the Humming Air (Music inspired by Harold Budd) by Various Artists
I heard about this in a loscil tweet months back, then forgot about it until a poster on the emusic message board pointed out it had arrived (so that board is still good for some things every now and then). Strong collection of artists.
All tracks written and produced by Ben Lukas Boysen
track 14 performed and recorded by Nils Frahm.
Mastered by Nils Frahm at Durton studio.
- "Ben Lukas Boysen has been writing, producing and performing music since 2003, specializing in sound design and composition. with a series of highly regarded albums as Hecq on hymen records, plus a busy schedule producing music for a number of high-profile advertising, film and gaming clients, he has firmly established himself as a forward-thinking electronic musician and sophisticated sound designer. The focus of his every project is to find an efficient and direct way to leave a strong emotional impact, whether it is the production of an album or the conception and completion of a commercial project. he invests a lot of thought and time into every single piece of work and therefore makes every production special rather than settling with something fast and convenient. He is determined that every score, commission, track, or remix should get the same amount of attention and detail. in short: moving away from music and sound as a product and perceive every project as a customizable and individual challenge. a number of companies like cartier, bmw, leica, greenpeace, lacoste or mtv have made use of this approach for their commercials, websites and general sound concepts.
Restive is not the first film ben boysen made the music for, but it is his first soundtrack to be independently released as an album. as on his previous works as hecq where he has already demonstrated his ability for cinematic sound design, this soundtrack works perfectly as a stand-alone release for those who are not familiar with the movie. with its beautifully elaborate compositions carrying dense moods from light sadness to subliminal tension and disturbance, restive's music is strong enough to speak for itself and to create a motion picture in the listeners mind. with a basis of mighty sub basses and partial beats, dramatic orchestral ambience interweave with atmospheric synthesized pads and deep reverberation carrying a continuous imaginative suspense of something hiding right beneath the shadow of a thinly layered sonic veil.
listening to this perfect symbiosis of electronic soundscapes and acoustic sounds, you can draw a parallel between this release and hecq's 'night falls' album from 2008. restive defines a journey through varied aural spaces interspersed with sounds and tempers beyond the listener's imagination."
- http://www.hymen-records.com/ - Emusic
- "Jason Swinscoe of The Cinematic Orchestra has long been intrigued by the link between vision and sound. From TCOs re-soundtracking of Man With A Movie Camera, through his soundtrack to an imaginary film, Ma Fleur, to his bands name itself, Swinscoe has continued to pick away at the issues and emotions found at this intersection. With In Motion #1 he continues this process by inviting some of his favourite musicians and producers to provide soundtracks to or musical re-imaginings of seminal work by great avant-garde film-makers.
Responding to visuals which run from René Clairs surrealist classic "Entracte" (The Cinematic Orchestra) right up to Peter Tscherkasskys Outer Space (Dorian Concept & Tom Chant), the musicians wrote for and worked with a string quartet to create music of remarkable emotional reach. The results are so vivid, so complex yet immediate, that they can be enjoyed as freestanding pieces in their own right.
The first of a series of releases curated by Jason Swinscoe for Motion Audio, the artists involved run from LA-based pianist Austin Peralta, through the Grey Reverend in New York, to Dorian Concept in Austria and Tom Chant and the other members of TCO in London.
- http://www.cinematicorchestra.com/
(possibly posted somewhere before)
- "A drink concocted by restless Civil War troops, "Oh Be Joyful" was made out of such things as turpentine, tar water, lamp oil, and brown sugar. As Daniel Bachman puts it, "...it fucked them up. They drank it and they loved it." Such interest in minute details are reflected not only in the Philadelphian's passion for mid-1800's history, but also in his song construction. Oh Be Joyful is the 7th release for Bachman, and the 2nd on Debacle. This digital/CD format re-issue (from the vinyl on One Kind Favor) features the 21-year old virtuoso's warm, unfolding rhythms meandering from his finger picked steel guitar. Branching beyond the American primitive style he's recognized for, this latest 7-track offering forays into new elements of style, particularly on tracks "Sita Ram (Who is God)" and "The Bridge of Flowers".
loscil - Sketches from New Brighton
Kangding Ray - Monad XI
Actually released in July, when I missed it. Not on emusic :-(. More angular, moody techno in the spirit of his excellent recent full-length "Or" (as well as recent work by Alva Noto and Byetone).
Deadbeat - Eight
Due out tomorow. Probably also not on emusic due to the label.
Gregg Kowalsky with Jozef van Wissem - Movements in Marble and Stone
- "Movements in Marble and Stone (AMI-034R/W) includes two new pieces recorded live in 2011. While these performances occurred on opposite coasts, the source material is closely aligned in both concept and process. These works highlight his ongoing preoccupations with sound and setting, incorporating the focused blend of acoustic and electronic sources that Kowalsky is already well known for.
Electronic Music for Square and Sine Waves documents Kowalskys contribution to the 2011 Activating the Medium festival in San Francisco. This commissioned piece continues Kowalskys interest in how sound engages, manipulates and modifies ones awareness of space. This piece generatesas both the name of the festival and Kowalskys composition suggestsound that amplifies a hearing subjects relation to his or her environment. For this composition, Kowalsky tuned an AM radio to random interference between channels, static abstractions that bookend the work. Within the core of the piece, Kowalsky used contact mics to process this, and other, sound source(s) as he moved around the performance space. The effect of this movement generates both melodic feedback and acoustic forms that provide a subtle complement to the static interference of the radio frequencies.
For Baroque Lute, Tapes and Resonant Space documents Kowalskys on going tape chants process, a project previously realized on both his Battery Townsley (2011) and Tape Chants (2009) LPs. For this iteration, Kowalsky tuned square and sine waves to Dutch lutanist Jozef van Wissems lute and then played these recordings through cassette players. Though they have collaborated previously, this performance at Issue Project Room in October 2011 is the first chronicling of van Wissem and Kowalksys duo-work."
- http://www.amishrecords.com/
- Gregg Kowalsky had some excellent albums out on Amie Street and Jozef Van Wissem was mentioned by Bad Thoughts @ the
A Bounty of Lute-ny thread.
- Jozef Van Wissem is also mentioned on the previous page concerning his collaboration with Jim Jarmusch.