"Last years stellar collaboration between The Orb and Lee Scratch Perry unsurprisingly produced more music than one album could handle, so Scratch, Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlmann are returning in fine style with More Tales From The Orbservatory.
- "The second set of proto-reggae collaborations from ambient titans The Orb and Jamaican icon Scratch, More Tales From The Orbservatory takes us back to the murky universe the two stars created last year. No Ice Age is a prayer for Rasta peace over bobbing bass and shimmering chords, possibly the clearest reggae track here, while Africa fidgets with flutes and ambient pads that sound like lions roaring in the distance. Scratch and The Orb make beautifully strange stuff - hopefully theres another LP in them after this." Bleep
I was a big fan of Eluder's earlier (debut??) album, The Most Beautiful Blue, especially the first half. Their next few became more abstract, to my ear a little less personable - I kept up but with not quite as much enthusiasm. (Here's a free one if you want to dip in without cost) This new one starts a little forbidding, and is one of those tremendously patient releases where in conventional terms not much is happening, but by half way through it has opened up to become deep, warm, enveloping. An album-length exploration of a particular register of drone, it's quite abstract in concept, but nevertheless is really drawing me in. Similar sort of territory perhaps to, say, some of Richard Chartier's work, though in the end less austere.
- "French-Catalan musician Pascal Comelade's world is atypical and his inspirations come from many different sources -- from contemporary music to The Cramps -- making him one of the most creative and original artists of our times. At the crossroads of many different arts, never where he's expected, he never ceases to surprise his audience, taking the listener on poetic paths of primitive perception. El Pianista del Antifaz is the latest album in Comelade's galaxy. The artwork was designed by Dutch illustrator Joost Swart." Forced Exposure
- "Pascal Paul Vincent Comelade (born June 30, 1955), is a French-Catalan minimalist. His debut album Fluence was released in 1975.
Comelade born was in Montpellier, France. After living for several years in Barcelona, he made his first album, Fluences, influenced by electronic music and by the group Heldon.
Subsequently, his music has become more acoustic and is characterised by the sounds of toy instruments, used as solo-instruments and as an integral part of the sound of his group, the Bel Canto Orquestra.
He has collaborated with many singers and musicians from diverse genres of music including Robert Wyatt, Dani, Faust, Christophe Miossec, Toti Soler, Jac Berrocal, and P.J. Harvey to mention just a few.
Comelade is considered an adherent of electro acoustic post-modernist music and a follower of Heldon, Brian Eno, Michael Nyman, Robert Wyatt and Carla Bley.
Pascal Comelade is a French composer who specializes in a progressive-rock format with childish nuances such as toy instruments. The resulting scores are soundtracks of an imaginary Wonderland, somewhere between Erik Satie and Barry Adamson." Last.fm - Because Music
100 Minutes of remixes of the track Second Narrows by loscil which was written as the soundtrack to the puzzle game Hundreds. Rremixes by: Fieldhead, Beno
Oh boy, have been watching for this and up it pops in this week's new releases. Didn't know it had Gregory Porter too, all the better! Less than 4 bucks in eMu dollars.
"Another compelling, genre-defying slab of good graciousness from Jim Black's AlasNoAxis is OUT NOW"
Jim Black AlasNoAxis - Antiheroes - "In May 2012 drummer Jim Black started composing music for his new upcoming recording of »Antiheroes« in his house in Brooklyn, NY. In summer of the same year he traveled through Europe and found inspiring locations at friends places to compose, such as a peaceful farm near Salzburg in Austria and in a private house on a beautiful island in Greece. Here – surrounded by quiet and the power of silence – he was able to fully concentrate on his work, and continued writing his songs for drums, saxophone, bass, and guitar. A few months later he recorded the album "Antiheroes" far, far away from Greece yet in another paradise on Iceland. This record presents music and sound stories about creatures, characters and things who do not just exist but try to make a better world without being afraid to take risks.
»Antiheroes« is a studio production, recorded with the Icelandic musicians Hilmar Jensson (guitar) and Skúli Sverrisson (bass) plus Jim Black's long-standing musical partner Chris Speed (saxophone). These four individual musicians are AlasNoAxis, which is the name of this homogeneous group and "Antiheroes" is their sixth album and Jim Black's seven album as a band leader for Winter&Winter. Stefan Winter produced the recording session near Reykjavík, and Ron Saint Germain (sound engineer of Kraftwerk, Michael Jackson, Ornette Coleman and Soundgarden, to name a few) was responsible for the sound design of the mix."
Jim Black about »Antiheroes«: - "My last two recordings for Winter & Winter focused on complete songs and compositions. For our sixth recording with AlasNoAxis, I wanted to create a miniature or a reduction of what happens when we perform a live concert. A piece of music, an idea, or a short song, chained together by improvisation - arriving from or departing to the next piece of written music. I was looking for more of a through-composed experience - one that didn't cycle back on itself constantly but something that would take the listener from a starting place, only move forward, and never return back to the beginning. . . . . ." Winter & Winter
Short biographical information about Jim Black: - "During his youth in Seattle Jim Black (born in 1967) played in various formations which covered a wide range from garage rock to Big Band Swing. In 1985 Black moved to Boston to visit the Berklee Collage of Music. Since 1991 Jim Black lives in New York City. As a sideman, co-leader and leader he toured the world and recorded 20 albums for Winter&Winter. With the Ellery Eskelin Trio, Pachora, AlasNoAxis, Human Feel, Chris Speed´s Yeah No, Tim Berne's Bloodcount, Dave Douglas' Tiny Bell Trio, Uri Caine´s Mahler-Projekt and Laurie Anderson he recorded outstanding music."
The Last Hurrah!! - The Beauty Of Fake - "The Last Hurrah!! is the project of Norwegian guitarist HP Gundersen plus a jamboree of international players and singers. Based in Bergen in western Norway, Gundersen has a long history in Norwegian music and beyond. As a producer he discovered and nurtured the career of Sondre Lerche, one of Norways most successful international exports. He has produced over 50 albums - including Tim Rose´s final album American Son.
An encounter with a Gambian kora-playing folk musician a few years ago was life-altering and, in his own words, took him to a new level of musical understanding. Afterwards he would sit with his guitar and play the same chord for hours, lost in a sonic whirl that induced deep meditation or even sleep. He disciplined himself to stay on one note, but found that it finally made him hear the note for the first time. I shed twenty years of rust, he says.
In 2011, their cover of Pink Floyds impossible The Great Gig In The Sky on the free Mojo tribute CD Return To The Dark Side Of The Moon drew high praise from readers. Their previous album, Spiritual Non-Believers, was voted album of the year in VG, Norways most popular newspaper; The Wire called it maddeningly well executed and it received great reviews from all quarters.
HP Gundersen grew up in the 1960s, tuning in to European radio stations and having his mind blown by the sparkling melodies of the decades pop music, like The Byrds and The Beatles. Notably, these two groups were among the first to absorb Eastern influences, as Gundersen has done in The Last Hurrah!!. Chinese guzheng (zither) resonates with pastoral flutes, Hawaiian guitars and the plangent tones of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle. Listening to the repetitive pluckings of the opener, The Rush, you cant help but think of Steve Reichs solo guitar trance-out Electric Counterpoint; elsewhere youll hear echoes of Don Cherrys multicultural visions, the soaring harmonies of Rubber Soul-era Beatles, and the magical open tunings of folk-rockers like David Crosby and Stephen Stills and Davy Graham. Country music meets raga meets psychedelic sugar rush." Rune Grammofon
Newish release on Raster-Noton, very much doing what that label does best. Cool stuff. So far it's kind of like Alva Noto with samples added.
ETA, not quite as interesting all the way through as the opener suggested. Some nice tracks though.
News from Maurizio Bianchi on Frans de Waard's (Beequeen) Korm Plastics label: - "We at Korm Plastics safely assume that M.B., also known as Maurizio Bianchi doesnt need much introduction. In the early 80s he was responsible for a string of compelling electronic music albums in the first wave of industrial music. After a hiatus of many years he returned in the late 90s and since then has been very active with many new solo releases, but also on the side with collaborations. Here he works with Mario Costa, also known as Sostrah Tinnitus, from Italy, who has had a number of releases on labels as Umbra, Beyond, Mystery Sea and Silentes. The music is not as dark as it was in the early years, but has grown into a more complex affair with room for electronic textures and acoustic sounds hence the title of this album." Korm Plastics - Soundcloud
A new EP from Planet Mu founder Mike Paradinas prior to the forthcoming Chewed Corners album - the first µ-Ziq album in 6 years: - "Bar the occasional remix, and of course the formation of Heterotic with his wife Lara Rix-Martin, who recently released their debut LP 'Love and Devotion', Mike Paradinas' µ-Ziq solo project has been quiet for a while. However, with XTEP, he makes a welcome return from hiatus and gives us a gentle taster for a forthcoming brand new µ-Ziq album due this summer.
In stark contrast to a large percentage of his previous work, XTEP is joyous all the way through. The five compositions abandon the furrow-browed quest for cutting-edge exploration exchanging it for an altogether more carefree fun approach, with only the footwork-influenced 'Monj2' directly referencing any current electronic influences, however even on Monj2, the vintage sound palette dominates.
Opening with the gorgeous 'XT'; a smudged piano/moog melody recalls the abandon of 70s pop melodies before the composition falls out into airy arpeggiated funk with splashy drums. 'Ritm' debuts with ravey piano and whistling synths, condensing early dance music tropes into a gauzy bitter-sweet haze. 'Pulsar' is a perfect interpretation / tribute to late 70s electronic cosmic space-disco, gently nudged towards more modern dancefloors with pulsing electronics racing above robust kicks / claps. After the aforementioned Monj2, comes 'New Bimple' which succinctly uses a short space of time, woody, swinging 2-step drums and downcast piano melody, to bring the EP to a conclusion on a sadder, unresolved note.
If one thing unites the approaches here it's a new-found sense of emotion transformed into sound with the skill of a truly seasoned innovator and soldier. Welcome back µ-Ziq!" Planet Mu
- "Paradinas was born in Charing Cross and began playing keyboards during the early 1980s and listened to new wave bands like The Human League and Heaven 17. He joined a few bands in the mid-1980s, then spent eight years on keyboards for the group Blue Innocence.
During this period, Paradinas had been recording on his own as well with synthesizers and a four-track recorder. In 1995, following a performance at "The Orange" in London, Blue Innocence broke up. Paradinas and the bass player, Francis Naughton, bought sequencing software and re-recorded some of Paradinas's older tracks. After the material was played for Mark Pritchard and Tom Middleton the duo behind Global Communication and the heads of Evolution Records it was to be released; however, recording commitments later forced Pritchard and Middleton to withdraw their agreement. Fortunately for Paradinas, Richard D. James (aka Aphex Twin) had also heard the tracks and agreed to release their music on Rephlex Records under the alias µ-Ziq.
Naughton then left µ-Ziq to start Rocket Goldstar. A second album Bluff Limbo was scheduled to be released in mid-1994, though only 1000 copies were published. It was re-issued by Rephlex in 1996 after Paradinas served papers on the label.[citation needed] Paradinas's first major-label release came later in 1994, after he undertook a remix project for Virgin Records: the remix EP The Auteurs Vs ?-Ziq for the britpop band the Auteurs. The remixes Paradinas offered sounded nothing like the original song, a familiar practice for many experimental electronic musicians in those times.
Even though the EP was hardly a high sales success, Virgin signed up Paradinas and gave him his own sublabel, Planet Mu, to release his own work and to develop similar-minded artists. (Paradinas later broke with Virgin and in 1998 established Planet Mu as his own independent label.) Written into his own contract was a provision for unlimited recording under different names, and during 1995 Paradinas unveiled three aliases and released many albums within less than a year. The neo-electro music label Clear released his debut single under the alias Tusken Raiders (named after the Star Wars species) early in the year. Clear Records also released the first Paradinas alias full-length album, Jake Slazenger MakesARacket, later in 1995. Although they were still audible, the LP ignored the electro influences in favour of some synthesizer figures and the previously unheard influence of jazz-funk. Paradinas continued to release solo albums under the above-mentioned names as well as Gary Moscheles, and a one-time collaboration with Aphex Twin under the Mike & Rich moniker.
In 1997 Paradinas made a style change again, mixing experimental electronic music with drum'n'bass, a similar aesthetic path taken by Squarepusher and Aphex Twin. During this year he was also touring with popular musician Björk. Björk inspired the 1999 album Royal Astronomy, with its mixture of unusual vocals, strings and breakbeat. All of his albums until 2003 were released in the USA on the more mainstream label, Astralwerks.
Paradinas is the owner of the Planet Mu label, which hosts cult favourite electronic musicians such as Venetian Snares, Capitol K, Datach'i and Luke Vibert." Wikipedia
David Lynch - The Big Dream , Available July 16th 2013 as LP/CD/Download. Link goes to YouTube. Pretty decent bluesy tune, with that Twin Peaks creep.
Describing his style of music as "modern blues," Lynch says the songwriting process for his new album was similar to his debut. "Most of the songs start out as a type of blues jam and then we go sideways from there. What comes out is a hybrid, modernized form of low-down blues."
As you would expect from an accomplished film director, the songs are cinematic in scope. Lynch uses his reverb-drenched guitar and processed voice to summon primal moods and melodies that color a strange world populated by character archetypes familiar to fans of his films: the irresistible femme fatale in "Star Dream Girl," the tender romantic in "The Big Dream," and "Are You Sure," the smooth psychopath in "Say It," and the quirky oddball in "Sun Can't Be Seen No More."
Excellent new album from Marsen Jules Trio on his own Oktaf Records label. - With one recycled track from "Les Fleurs Variations" (track 1)
- "German ambient-connaisseur and soundpoet Marsen Jules (aka Martin Juhls) is well known for his releases on City Center Offices, Kompakt or his own label Oktaf Records. On stage he often combines his atmospheric soundscapes with live musicians. A steady formation is the Marsen Jules Trio, which features the twin brothers Anwar Alam and Jan-Philipp Alam on piano and violins accompanied by Jules´ restrained live-sampling, bowed percussions and singing wine glasses. For tours and festivals the Trio already played in the US as well as in Canada and all over Europe. With their debut-album „Présence Acousmatique“ on Oktaf Records the musicians bring their „acoustic presence“ to CD for the first time. It features six highly atmospheric soundsculptures between ambient, avantgarde-classic and modern jazz. Whereas the opening „OEillet Parfait / OEillet Sauvage“ is still a variation of a track from Jules´ „Les Fleurs“ album, all other tracks are composed for the Trio or developed out of the cooperation itself. Two tracks also feature saxophone player Roger Döring (Dictaphone) as a guest musician. The combination of dark scapes and saxophone on „Histoire de la nuit“ and „Éclipse“ makes one think of an ambient version of Bohren und der Club Ghore. The abstract „Excalibur“ and „Maison en Vitre“ remind of early avantgarde-classic and twelve-tone music and the closing „Les trains stortent de la gare“ brings a bittersweet composition for piano and violin hold together by sparkling percussions." €music
OMG ! Andere - Waking Life - "Initially conceptualized when both artists were living on the east coast, the recording process for 'Waking Life' didn't begin until after Ritger's relocation to Colorado in the summer of 2011. The album began as a humble stash of loops and samples that Lee passed off to Ritger, who proceeded to mold them into the bedrock of the album. These basic arrangements were then methodically volleyed between the two artists over the course of the next year, resulting in two sprawling compositions that unspool into space as a trail of unhurried mist, separating the anxieties of the everyday from the subdued pleasures of the subconscious. 'Waking Life' manages to successfully combine the aesthetic cues that each contributor has built their reputation upon, with Anduin's smoke-hued synthetic pads and found sound rhythmics finding a worthy counterpoint in Radere's subtle guitar work and penchant for slow-paced evolution. In solidarity with Slow Machete, all proceeds from these recordings go back to support the Haitian people through education and agricultural programs in the Cap Haitien area." SMTG / Morr Music GBR
Brand new from Sub Rosa: - "Sub Rosa presents another release in their New Series Framework editions -- an extension of the Concrete Electronics Noise series -- highlighting a brand-new mix-up of unusual conceptions of sound material by young unknown composers, well-known not-so-young composers, and old but clever composers. Limited editions. Bérangère Maximin was born on the remote French colonial island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean and moved to France at the age of 15. Performing first as a singer, she later studied electroacoustic music with the composer Denis Dufour at the Perpignan Conservatoire. Her first professional experiences occurred in Paris, and in 2002 she moved there permanently. From 2002 to 2007, while running the organizations Motus (concerts production and record label, Paris) and Futura (International Festival of Acousmatic Art, Crest, France) as the assistant of Denis Dufour, she started to work as an independent composer (collective concerts and audiovisual installations). She is most interested in preserving the spirit of live music in the studio, a passion passed on to her from her friends, guitarists and singers in rock and world music bands. Working out of her own Home Sweet Home studio, she shoots sounds in a dark and silent room, records soundscapes and acoustic sounds, plays with samplings, digital effects, performs on a variety of objects and sings. Her attraction to light and powerful sounds gives her work a very unique quality. Infinitesimal is the follow-up to her highly-acclaimed first album on Sub Rosa, No One Is an Island" Forced Exposure
Morr Music - "Slow Machete is a collaboration that came to life as Joseph Shaffer was recording Haitian choirs in 2009 and found himself with dozens of practice recordings and outtakes. These outtakes would be woven with downtempo and Cuban rhythms into what eventually became the debut LP Evening Dust Choir. The songs were recorded in several hundred pieces then reassembled in a small apartment in Costa Rica with the help of accordions and pitched down percussive machete samples, hence the name 'Slow Machete'. The Six Haitian vocalists that graced the original Choir album have continued to complement the arrangements found in Evening Dust Choir. The ultimate aim of Slow Machete is to use the group's collective gifts to respectfully capture and share the spirit of the Haitian culture and to use the proceeds from album sales to support education and agriculture programs in Cap Haitien.
Enjoy!" Soundcloud - music
Petrels - Wat Tyler - "Just posted a new release up on bandcamp - 'Wat Tyler'. It's a single, longform piece utilising cello and electronics and you can download it for free.
For those who don't know of Wat Tyler, he was a leader of the Peasants' Revolt in England in 1381. Ostensibly a revolt against the poll tax, the movement was built on an undercurrent of a desire for social change and a demand for an end to the stiflingly limiting social structures of the time. Initially successful, the rebellion was abruptly cut short after Wat Tyler was murdered by the Mayor of London after Tyler supposedly insulted the young kind of England, Richard II during a parley. A quick internet search will bring in a lot more detail than I'm going to go into here but its an interesting point in history and well worth reading up on.
I'm releasing it on June 14th as that's the anniversary of when the Peasants' Revolt marched on London 632 years ago, the day before Tyler was murdered (not a particularly auspicious anniversary but a neater one isn't going to come along for a while).
I'm not going to make claims to a 22 minute instrumental track as a revelatory protest song. But I will say that over 6 centuries on, a lot less has changed in the world than those involved in the Peasants' Revolt might have hoped. Those without power do the labouring and the rich ride roughshod over everybody else. Basically we could do with a lot more Wat Tylers and a lot less Kings and Mayors. Here's hoping."
- Oliver Barrett aka Petrels @ http://floatinglimb.com
Who: I'm Oliver Barrett and grew up in the past-its-prime seaside town of Weston-super-Mare in Somerset before moving to London ten years ago where I studied a degree in sound art. Since then I've played in various different bands/projectssome of which are still ongoingand put out my first album under the moniker of Petrels Haeligewiellelast April.
What: My first instrument was/is the cello, and I've been using this as a basis to combine my interest in classical music with electronics/synthesised instruments and improv/noise. I'm interested in telling stories, contrasting different elements and approaches and in the tensions you can create by placing sounds together that might initially seem opposedwith Haeligewielle I focused quite a bit on trying to make the acoustic instruments sound as synthesized as possible and visa-versa, for example. Mainly I'm constantly striving to create something all-encompassing and immersive that I can lose myself in.
Influences and inspirations: This list could go on for pages and pages but here're a few that are maybe more Petrels-specific (in no particular order): Vaughan Williams, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Todd Dockstader, Lau Nau, Ernst Reijseger, Tsai Ming-Liang, Belong, BusRatch, Arthur Russell, Angela Carter, Kuupuu, Vibracathedral Orchestra, John Carpenter, Markus Popp, William Vollmann, travelling, walking, eating, listening.
- Edited from Textura
chris watson - in st cuthbert's time: the sounds of lindisfarne and the gospels
To celebrate the exhibition of the Lindisfarne Gospels at Durham Cathedral from July to September 2013, award-winning wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson has researched the sonic environment of the holy island as it might have been experienced by St. Cuthbert in 700 A.D. Throughout human history, artists have been influenced by their surroundings and the sounds of the landscape they inhabit. When Eadfrith, the Bishop of Lindisfarne, was writing and illustrating the Lindisfarne Gospels on that island during the late seventh century and early eighth century, he would have been immersed in the sounds of the holy island while he created this remarkable work. This production aims to reflect upon the daily and seasonal aspects of the evolving variety of ambient sounds that accompanied life and work during that period of exceptional thought and creativity. Cuthbert was an Anglo Saxon monk, bishop and hermit who became prior of Lindisfarne in c. 665. In later life Cuthbert felt called to be a hermit and moved to the nearby island of Inner Farne to begin fighting the spiritual forces of evil in solitude. Cuthbert became associated with the birds and other animals on the island and gave special protection to the Eider duck which is still known locally as Cuddy's duck.
- "Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in Woerden, Holland) is a self-taught composer, performer and poet.
He went to university for mathematics and musicology but did not finish those studies.
In the late 1970s he took up saxophone and started to compose music.
A few years later he discovered his potential as a vocal performer, at first in reciting poetry and later on in improvisations and his own compositions. For almost two decades the voice was his main means for the discovery and development of new sounds.
From around the year 2000 on Blonk started work with electronics, at first using samples of his own voice, then extending the field to include pure sound synthesis as well.
He took a year off of performing in 2006. As a result, his renewed interest in mathematics made him start a research of the possibilities of algorithmic composition for the creation of music, visual animation and poetry.
As a vocalist, Jaap Blonk is unique for his powerful stage presence and almost childlike freedom in improvisation, combined with a keen grasp of structure. He performed in many European countries, as well as in the U.S. and Canada, Indonesia, Japan, South Africa and Latin America. With the use of live electronics the scope and range of his concerts has acquired a considerable extension.
Besides working as a soloist, he collaborated with many musicians and ensembles in the field of contemporary and improvised music, like Maja Ratkje, Mats Gustafsson, Nicolas Collins, Joan La Barbara, The Ex, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble and the Ebony Band. He premiered several compositions by the German composer Carola Bauckholt, including a piece for voice and orchestra. A solo voice piece was commissioned by the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2002. On several occasions he collaborated with visual computer artist Golan Levin.
Blonk's work for radio and television includes several commissioned radio plays.
He also makes larger-scale drawings of his scores, which are being exhibited.
He was the founder and leader of the long-standing bands Splinks (modern jazz, 1983-1999) and BRAAXTAAL (avant-rock, 1987-2005). He also has his own record label, Kontrans, featuring a total of 15 releases so far. Other Blonk recordings appeared on Staalplaat, Basta and VICTO.
"Keynote Dialogues" is first Jaap Blonk solo album since 2000." MonotypeRec / Morr Music GBR - Soundcloud - http://www.jaapblonk.com/
New on Sub Rosa:
[url=https://www.emusic.com/album/1566699/Novisad/Neuroplanets][img]http://novi-sad.net/pics/SR369.jpg[/img][/url] - "‘Neuroplanets’ is an audio project which explores the aesthetics of information on sound. Initially, I worked in commissioned tracks from other artists, by transmitting on them sound analysis results from extremely rare sonic phenomena in other planets. After that, I manipulated these tracks by applying on them numerical/quantitative data and statistical elements from Neurosciences research in serious diseases. My aim was to ‘visualize’ on sound the diseases characteristics and impact on human nature.
The analysis of sounds includes methods enabling the permanent extraction or automatic structuring of diverse sorts of information given off by the signal, such as the fundamental frequency or the spectral evolution determining the pitch and timbre of a perceived sound. The methods used are based on signal processing, statistical analysis, information theory, machine learning and recognition techniques, but also on knowledge of auditory perception and acoustic system sound production.
Contemporary Neurosciences suggest the existence of fundamental algorithms by which all sensory transduction is translated into an intrinsic, brain-specific code. One of ‘Neuroplanets’ main goals was to directly simulate these codes within the human audible range. . ." http://novi-sad.net/projects/neuroplanets/
"Novi_sad is the guise for Thanasis Kaproulias (b. 1980) who holds a degree from the Economic University of Piraues. He lives and works in Athens, Greece. . ."
Warren Haynes' band, Gov't Mule, will release a brand new double CD, Shout!, Sept. 24 on Blue Note Records. Disk 1 is 11 new Gov't Mule songs, and Disk 2 is each of the new songs covered by a guest vocalist. Guest vocalists include Dave Matthews, Jim James, Elvis Costello, Dr. John, Steve Winwood, and Ben Harper.
Deep in the throes of recording Gov't Mule's 10th full-length studio album, frontman Warren Haynes sought the advice of a close friend. The Mule had recently finished writing "Funny Little Tragedy," a hard-charging, punk-inflected rocker; a song, the guitarist felt, was different from anything the band had ever done. To glean wisdom on his band's new direction, Haynes got in touch with Elvis Costello. "I just thought I would get his advice," Haynes tells Rolling Stone. "But I have to say, after he responded so positively, every time I would listen back to [the song] after that I would start thinking, 'It sure would be cool to hear him singing it.'" Haynes's fantasy soon became a reality: Costello contributed vocals to the song, which Rolling Stone premieres today.
It worked out so well that Gov't Mule called upon a host of all-star singers, including Dave Matthews, My Morning Jacket's Jim James, Dr. John, Ben Harper and Steve Winwood to help flesh out the band's new tunes. The result, Shout!, due out September 24th on Blue Note Records, is a sprawling double-album assault: disc one is an 11-cut Mule album; the second features each of their new songs covered by a guest vocalist.
"Funny Little Tragedy," a song Haynes says reminds him of the Clash or the Attractions, and features keyboardist Danny Louis on lead guitar and Haynes on rhythm, illustrates the risk-taking and boundary-pushing attitude Gov't Mule took with Shout! "We definitely wanted to make a more diverse record," Hayne says. "But that's easier said than done."
The guest singers, hand-picked by Haynes, recorded their vocals in a New York City studio with the band, which also includes includes bassist Jorgen Carlsson and drummer Matt Abts; or remotely. Hearing others sing the Mule's new material allowed Haynes to reevaluate his band's new offerings. "Pretty much in every case the guest vocalist interpreted the songs in ways that I would have never thought of myself and took it to another place." - Rolling Stone
Full stream of a track from disk 2, Funny Little Tragedy, featuring Elvis Costello here
Alessandro Cortini - Forse 1 -"All pieces were written and performed live on a Buchla Music Easel**, in the span of one month. I found that the limited array of modules that the instrument offers sparked my creativity.
Most pieces consist of a repeating chord progression, where the real change happens at a spectral/dynamic level, as opposed to the harmonic/chordal one. I believe that the former are just as effective as the latter, in the sense that the sonic presentation (distortion , filtering, wave shaping, etc) are just as expressive as a chord change or chord type, and often reinforce said chord progressions.
Of all the years with Nine Inch Nails the period spent writing and recording the instrumental record Ghosts I-IV is probably the one which changed my approach to music making the most. After that record I started getting more into instrumental composition, although I tried to approach it in a different way. While we had a vast array of tools and instruments at our disposal then, I decided to approach my pieces limiting myself to one instrument only, as I found myself being more decisive when faced with a limited creative environment." Important Records - Soundcloud
- "Alessandro Cortini (born May 24, 1976) is an Italian musician best known for touring and recording with the American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails from 2004 to 2008, and he rejoined the band in spring 2013.[1] Currently, Cortini is also the frontman for the Los Angeles based electronic-alternative band SONOIO. In addition, he was a touring member of The Mayfield Four from 2000 to 2002. Cortini was also a founding member of Modwheelmood, an Electronic-Alternative band from Los Angeles, California along with former Abandoned Pools guitarist Pelle Hillström. He recently completed a small Canadian tour under the guise of his solo project, blindoldfreak." Wikipedia
A 24 hours (!) album from Andrew Liles : Andrew Liles - INCOMMENSURABLE MAGNITUDES - "'Incommensurable Magnitudes' is composed of 26 tracks totalling 24 hours in length. Ideally this album would have consisted of 24 tracks each an hour long but due to the limitations of the amount of data that can be uploaded to the download site, each track is 59 minutes long. To complete the full 24 hour cycle 2 shorter tracks of 12 minutes in length ('Tea Break' and 'Up the Wooden Hill') have been added.
The reason for 'Incommensurable Magnitudes' coming into being is a further extension of my musical research and philosophical musings on concepts of time, already supported and theorised with my '...Through Time' quartet of releases. These notions are my own and are NOT based on any intellectual 'reason', academic discipline or mathematical 'truth'. They are personal experiments with sound, sonic structures and clichés that (for me) represent ideas about time travel, memory, illusions of time, astral travel, oblivion, OOBE, nostalgia, death, space travel, science fiction, science fact, marine biology, delirium, human anatomy, non-existence, sleep, hallucinations, suspended animation, hibernation, black holes, dark matter, vacuums, anti-matter, eternity, infinity and.... beyond.
Releasing the recording in this digital form is the perfect format for the piece to be listened to, utilised, experimented with and enjoyed. 'Incommensurable Magnitudes' can be streamed from your digital player in its entirety from beginning to end with no breaks! It can be played as a purely functional piece of music, to while away the hours as you go about your daily routine.. a faint drone in the background or a suffocating, all encompassing sonic assault. Equally it can be utilised as an aid to spend your evenings 'researching' a field of your choosing. The tracks can be played randomly or in order, none of the titles relate to any given time of day. Use, abuse and enjoy the music in any way you see fit and hopefully some of you will take on the marathon challenge of listening to it all in one day, a non-stop cycle of 24 hours." - Andrew Liles
"Andrew Liles (born 1962, UK) is a sound artist and multi-instrumentalist. He has a vast output of recordings that he has released since the mid-1980s, covering a variety of styles as experimental music, dark ambient music, progressive rock and even hints at hard rock.
Along with his solo work he has worked with many international artists including Bass Communion, Steven Stapleton, Darren Tate, The Hafler Trio, Mr Blobby, Karl Blake, Faust, Unsong, Nurse With Wound, Daniel Menche, Band of Pain, Lord Bath, Sion Orgon, Andrew King, Nick Mott, Current 93, Paul Bradley, Aaron Moore, Nigel Ayers, Irr. App (Ext), Jonathan Coleclough, Tony Wakeford, Frans De Waard, Freek Kinkelaar, Danielle Dax, Rose McDowall, Edward Ka-spel, Kommissar Hjuler & Mama Baer, vidnaObmana, ruse and Ernesto Tomasini." Wikipedia
Lattice-like manifestations are here and although complex in theory, show life though more visceral and ancient means. From infinity and up to infinity. Awakened into an expansive present.
"Finnish experimental electronic musician Mika Vainio's first solo album for Blast First sees him return to his classic power electronics/heavy beats approach that made Pan Sonic garner a worldwide reputation. The album developed from Vainio's recent live sets to make 10 tersely-titled tracks inspired by the shipping container industry. Four stars in Mojo: "heavy-freight," The Quietus describes it as "fearsome." Experimedia @ Soundcloud Blast First (petite)
"Mika Vainio, currently based in Berlin, was one half of the minimal electronic duo Pan Sonic from Finland, (the other half was Ilpo Väisänen). Before starting Pan Sonic in the beginning of the 90's, Mika Vainio has played electronics and drums as part of the early Finnish industrial and noise scene.
His solo works, under his own name and under aliases like Ø, are known for their analogue warmth and electronic harshness. Be it abstract drone works or minimal avant techno, Vainio is always creating unique, physical sounds. He has released on labels like editions Mego, Touch, Wavetrap and Sähkö and he has been producing among others with Alan Vega of Suicide, Keiji Haino, Chicks on Speed, John Duncan and Bruce Gilbert." Medialoca
For people with a soft spot for musique concrète: Giuseppe Ielasi & Kassel Jaeger - Parallel / Grayscale Editions Mego
- “When you listen to a concert, for example for cello and orchestra, you are not pointing out each instant ‘this is a cello sound’, you listen to music. And it is the same with sound.” This is Christian Zanesi, artistic director of France’s INA GRM, making the argument for sound, as opposed to notes and scales and such, as a musical device. More specifically, he’s referring to our limited way of understanding musique concrète, the form of music the French studio is famous for. It’s about more than identifying what sound X used to be or how it was transformed, he’s suggesting. It’s about more than describing the physical characteristics of a sound or generating a catalogue of sonic ingredients on a particular recording. It’s about getting at musical relations. It’s an intellectual challenge as well as an intuitive one. It’s about us as listeners actively locating expressiveness.
It’s just this sort of challenge that Zanesi’s colleague at GRM, François Bonnet (working under his Kassel Jaeger moniker) and Giuseppe Ielasi lay down over these releases. Parallel / Greyscale is the debut recording of the duo’s collaborations, while Fernweh is Bonnet’s sixth solo release (and third on Ielasi’s own Senufo Editions). There are field recordings, laptop improvisations, analog devices from synthesizers to small motors, mechanically excited string instruments and more. But the music on these records is impossible to reduce to instruments or methods. The sources are too varied, and more crucially, the process is subsumed into the fabric so thoroughly that it ceases to matter.
Ielasi and Jaeger constructed Parallel / Greyscale from improvisations they conducted in Paris and Italy. So while the album might be improvised in its origins, it feels hermetic, sealed off from how we might normally understand a spontaneous performance. It mixes the evolutionary with the episodic, as Jaeger and Ielasi freely move between hives of microrhythms and inscrutable pulses to passages of extended, enveloping low frequencies. Transitions come gradually or emerge from fade-outs. Intention and accident are intertwined in the compositions. These are hybrids, in more ways than one, the constant push-and-pull between the flow of electronic and acoustic sounds producing a fascinating, hypnotic tension.
Fernweh follows the arc of Bonnet’s previous Senufo releases. There is the unceasing stream of sound, what some reviewers have called drone, but it is more about density and detail. Bonnet doesn’t use the pure tone of a string instrument or its chording ability. Instead, he zooms in on the feral buzz. Static becomes pointillist, an all-encompassing drizzle of texture. But more important than Bonnet’s acoustic/synthetic contrasts are how he highlights them. Background becomes foreground, jump cuts open up fissures in the compositions to new worlds, gradual overlays evoke a slow metamorphosis of sound.
Ultimately, this obsession with the peripheral, marginal and gradual is what the two releases share. This is secretive music. It obscures its origins and hides its logic. The title Fernweh becomes a mission statement for both releases, a way of listening, of experiencing the music. The word means “wanderlust” in German, and it gets as close as any verbal form to what this music invokes. You have to wander about inside it, determine its idiosyncratic logic and come up with your own geography for it. It’s why the transitions are so crucial. These moments alert you to the essential instability of these pieces. Instead of contrast between sounds we hear as organic and biological and sounds we hear as synthetic, we hear a continuum. One system illuminates another." Matthew Wuethrich @ Dusted Magzine - http://www.kasseljaeger.com/
Comments
- "The second set of proto-reggae collaborations from ambient titans The Orb and Jamaican icon Scratch, More Tales From The Orbservatory takes us back to the murky universe the two stars created last year. No Ice Age is a prayer for Rasta peace over bobbing bass and shimmering chords, possibly the clearest reggae track here, while Africa fidgets with flutes and ambient pads that sound like lions roaring in the distance. Scratch and The Orb make beautifully strange stuff - hopefully theres another LP in them after this."
Bleep
Eluder - Through Horizon
$7 Bandcamp.
I was a big fan of Eluder's earlier (debut??) album, The Most Beautiful Blue, especially the first half. Their next few became more abstract, to my ear a little less personable - I kept up but with not quite as much enthusiasm. (Here's a free one if you want to dip in without cost) This new one starts a little forbidding, and is one of those tremendously patient releases where in conventional terms not much is happening, but by half way through it has opened up to become deep, warm, enveloping. An album-length exploration of a particular register of drone, it's quite abstract in concept, but nevertheless is really drawing me in. Similar sort of territory perhaps to, say, some of Richard Chartier's work, though in the end less austere.
- "French-Catalan musician Pascal Comelade's world is atypical and his inspirations come from many different sources -- from contemporary music to The Cramps -- making him one of the most creative and original artists of our times. At the crossroads of many different arts, never where he's expected, he never ceases to surprise his audience, taking the listener on poetic paths of primitive perception. El Pianista del Antifaz is the latest album in Comelade's galaxy. The artwork was designed by Dutch illustrator Joost Swart."
Forced Exposure
- "Pascal Paul Vincent Comelade (born June 30, 1955), is a French-Catalan minimalist. His debut album Fluence was released in 1975.
Comelade born was in Montpellier, France. After living for several years in Barcelona, he made his first album, Fluences, influenced by electronic music and by the group Heldon.
Subsequently, his music has become more acoustic and is characterised by the sounds of toy instruments, used as solo-instruments and as an integral part of the sound of his group, the Bel Canto Orquestra.
He has collaborated with many singers and musicians from diverse genres of music including Robert Wyatt, Dani, Faust, Christophe Miossec, Toti Soler, Jac Berrocal, and P.J. Harvey to mention just a few.
Comelade is considered an adherent of electro acoustic post-modernist music and a follower of Heldon, Brian Eno, Michael Nyman, Robert Wyatt and Carla Bley.
Pascal Comelade is a French composer who specializes in a progressive-rock format with childish nuances such as toy instruments. The resulting scores are soundtracks of an imaginary Wonderland, somewhere between Erik Satie and Barry Adamson."
Last.fm - Because Music
Illuha - Interstices
Seaworthy & Taylor Deupree - Wood, Winter, Hollow
Oh boy, have been watching for this and up it pops in this week's new releases. Didn't know it had Gregory Porter too, all the better! Less than 4 bucks in eMu dollars.
Also new Alasnoaxis, awaiting Jonah's review.
Jim Black AlasNoAxis - Antiheroes
- "In May 2012 drummer Jim Black started composing music for his new upcoming recording of »Antiheroes« in his house in Brooklyn, NY. In summer of the same year he traveled through Europe and found inspiring locations at friends places to compose, such as a peaceful farm near Salzburg in Austria and in a private house on a beautiful island in Greece. Here – surrounded by quiet and the power of silence – he was able to fully concentrate on his work, and continued writing his songs for drums, saxophone, bass, and guitar. A few months later he recorded the album "Antiheroes" far, far away from Greece yet in another paradise on Iceland. This record presents music and sound stories about creatures, characters and things who do not just exist but try to make a better world without being afraid to take risks.
»Antiheroes« is a studio production, recorded with the Icelandic musicians Hilmar Jensson (guitar) and Skúli Sverrisson (bass) plus Jim Black's long-standing musical partner Chris Speed (saxophone). These four individual musicians are AlasNoAxis, which is the name of this homogeneous group and "Antiheroes" is their sixth album and Jim Black's seven album as a band leader for Winter&Winter. Stefan Winter produced the recording session near Reykjavík, and Ron Saint Germain (sound engineer of Kraftwerk, Michael Jackson, Ornette Coleman and Soundgarden, to name a few) was responsible for the sound design of the mix."
Jim Black about »Antiheroes«:
- "My last two recordings for Winter & Winter focused on complete songs and compositions. For our sixth recording with AlasNoAxis, I wanted to create a miniature or a reduction of what happens when we perform a live concert.
A piece of music, an idea, or a short song, chained together by improvisation - arriving from or departing to the next piece of written music. I was looking for more of a through-composed experience - one that didn't cycle back on itself constantly but something that would take the listener from a starting place, only move forward, and never return back to the beginning. . . . . ."
Winter & Winter
Short biographical information about Jim Black:
- "During his youth in Seattle Jim Black (born in 1967) played in various formations which covered a wide range from garage rock to Big Band Swing. In 1985 Black moved to Boston to visit the Berklee Collage of Music. Since 1991 Jim Black lives in New York City. As a sideman, co-leader and leader he toured the world and recorded 20 albums for Winter&Winter. With the Ellery Eskelin Trio, Pachora, AlasNoAxis, Human Feel, Chris Speed´s Yeah No, Tim Berne's Bloodcount, Dave Douglas' Tiny Bell Trio, Uri Caine´s Mahler-Projekt and Laurie Anderson he recorded outstanding music."
The Last Hurrah!! - The Beauty Of Fake
- "The Last Hurrah!! is the project of Norwegian guitarist HP Gundersen plus a jamboree of international players and singers. Based in Bergen in western Norway, Gundersen has a long history in Norwegian music and beyond. As a producer he discovered and nurtured the career of Sondre Lerche, one of Norways most successful international exports. He has produced over 50 albums - including Tim Rose´s final album American Son.
An encounter with a Gambian kora-playing folk musician a few years ago was life-altering and, in his own words, took him to a new level of musical understanding. Afterwards he would sit with his guitar and play the same chord for hours, lost in a sonic whirl that induced deep meditation or even sleep. He disciplined himself to stay on one note, but found that it finally made him hear the note for the first time. I shed twenty years of rust, he says.
In 2011, their cover of Pink Floyds impossible The Great Gig In The Sky on the free Mojo tribute CD Return To The Dark Side Of The Moon drew high praise from readers. Their previous album, Spiritual Non-Believers, was voted album of the year in VG, Norways most popular newspaper; The Wire called it maddeningly well executed and it received great reviews from all quarters.
HP Gundersen grew up in the 1960s, tuning in to European radio stations and having his mind blown by the sparkling melodies of the decades pop music, like The Byrds and The Beatles. Notably, these two groups were among the first to absorb Eastern influences, as Gundersen has done in The Last Hurrah!!. Chinese guzheng (zither) resonates with pastoral flutes, Hawaiian guitars and the plangent tones of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle. Listening to the repetitive pluckings of the opener, The Rush, you cant help but think of Steve Reichs solo guitar trance-out Electric Counterpoint; elsewhere youll hear echoes of Don Cherrys multicultural visions, the soaring harmonies of Rubber Soul-era Beatles, and the magical open tunings of folk-rockers like David Crosby and Stephen Stills and Davy Graham. Country music meets raga meets psychedelic sugar rush."
Rune Grammofon
HP Gundersen:
Recommended.
Aoki Takamasa - Rv8
Newish release on Raster-Noton, very much doing what that label does best. Cool stuff. So far it's kind of like Alva Noto with samples added.
ETA, not quite as interesting all the way through as the opener suggested. Some nice tracks though.
- "We at Korm Plastics safely assume that M.B., also known as Maurizio Bianchi doesnt need much introduction. In the early 80s he was responsible for a string of compelling electronic music albums in the first wave of industrial music. After a hiatus of many years he returned in the late 90s and since then has been very active with many new solo releases, but also on the side with collaborations. Here he works with Mario Costa, also known as Sostrah Tinnitus, from Italy, who has had a number of releases on labels as Umbra, Beyond, Mystery Sea and Silentes. The music is not as dark as it was in the early years, but has grown into a more complex affair with room for electronic textures and acoustic sounds hence the title of this album."
Korm Plastics - Soundcloud
- "Bar the occasional remix, and of course the formation of Heterotic with his wife Lara Rix-Martin, who recently released their debut LP 'Love and Devotion', Mike Paradinas' µ-Ziq solo project has been quiet for a while. However, with XTEP, he makes a welcome return from hiatus and gives us a gentle taster for a forthcoming brand new µ-Ziq album due this summer.
In stark contrast to a large percentage of his previous work, XTEP is joyous all the way through. The five compositions abandon the furrow-browed quest for cutting-edge exploration exchanging it for an altogether more carefree fun approach, with only the footwork-influenced 'Monj2' directly referencing any current electronic influences, however even on Monj2, the vintage sound palette dominates.
Opening with the gorgeous 'XT'; a smudged piano/moog melody recalls the abandon of 70s pop melodies before the composition falls out into airy arpeggiated funk with splashy drums. 'Ritm' debuts with ravey piano and whistling synths, condensing early dance music tropes into a gauzy bitter-sweet haze. 'Pulsar' is a perfect interpretation / tribute to late 70s electronic cosmic space-disco, gently nudged towards more modern dancefloors with pulsing electronics racing above robust kicks / claps. After the aforementioned Monj2, comes 'New Bimple' which succinctly uses a short space of time, woody, swinging 2-step drums and downcast piano melody, to bring the EP to a conclusion on a sadder, unresolved note.
If one thing unites the approaches here it's a new-found sense of emotion transformed into sound with the skill of a truly seasoned innovator and soldier. Welcome back µ-Ziq!"
Planet Mu
- "Paradinas was born in Charing Cross and began playing keyboards during the early 1980s and listened to new wave bands like The Human League and Heaven 17. He joined a few bands in the mid-1980s, then spent eight years on keyboards for the group Blue Innocence.
During this period, Paradinas had been recording on his own as well with synthesizers and a four-track recorder. In 1995, following a performance at "The Orange" in London, Blue Innocence broke up. Paradinas and the bass player, Francis Naughton, bought sequencing software and re-recorded some of Paradinas's older tracks. After the material was played for Mark Pritchard and Tom Middleton the duo behind Global Communication and the heads of Evolution Records it was to be released; however, recording commitments later forced Pritchard and Middleton to withdraw their agreement. Fortunately for Paradinas, Richard D. James (aka Aphex Twin) had also heard the tracks and agreed to release their music on Rephlex Records under the alias µ-Ziq.
Naughton then left µ-Ziq to start Rocket Goldstar. A second album Bluff Limbo was scheduled to be released in mid-1994, though only 1000 copies were published. It was re-issued by Rephlex in 1996 after Paradinas served papers on the label.[citation needed] Paradinas's first major-label release came later in 1994, after he undertook a remix project for Virgin Records: the remix EP The Auteurs Vs ?-Ziq for the britpop band the Auteurs. The remixes Paradinas offered sounded nothing like the original song, a familiar practice for many experimental electronic musicians in those times.
Even though the EP was hardly a high sales success, Virgin signed up Paradinas and gave him his own sublabel, Planet Mu, to release his own work and to develop similar-minded artists. (Paradinas later broke with Virgin and in 1998 established Planet Mu as his own independent label.) Written into his own contract was a provision for unlimited recording under different names, and during 1995 Paradinas unveiled three aliases and released many albums within less than a year. The neo-electro music label Clear released his debut single under the alias Tusken Raiders (named after the Star Wars species) early in the year. Clear Records also released the first Paradinas alias full-length album, Jake Slazenger MakesARacket, later in 1995. Although they were still audible, the LP ignored the electro influences in favour of some synthesizer figures and the previously unheard influence of jazz-funk. Paradinas continued to release solo albums under the above-mentioned names as well as Gary Moscheles, and a one-time collaboration with Aphex Twin under the Mike & Rich moniker.
In 1997 Paradinas made a style change again, mixing experimental electronic music with drum'n'bass, a similar aesthetic path taken by Squarepusher and Aphex Twin. During this year he was also touring with popular musician Björk. Björk inspired the 1999 album Royal Astronomy, with its mixture of unusual vocals, strings and breakbeat. All of his albums until 2003 were released in the USA on the more mainstream label, Astralwerks.
Paradinas is the owner of the Planet Mu label, which hosts cult favourite electronic musicians such as Venetian Snares, Capitol K, Datach'i and Luke Vibert."
Wikipedia
Kenny Barron made a new record with a bunch of Brazilian players, with predictably euphonious results. I got it in FLAC for 9 bucks at Bandcamp
ETA, I now see there is a 'deluxe edition' on iTunes with 5 extra tracks - One of which is on the Bandcamp version.
David Lynch - The Big Dream , Available July 16th 2013 as LP/CD/Download. Link goes to YouTube. Pretty decent bluesy tune, with that Twin Peaks creep.
Describing his style of music as "modern blues," Lynch says the songwriting process for his new album was similar to his debut. "Most of the songs start out as a type of blues jam and then we go sideways from there. What comes out is a hybrid, modernized form of low-down blues."
As you would expect from an accomplished film director, the songs are cinematic in scope. Lynch uses his reverb-drenched guitar and processed voice to summon primal moods and melodies that color a strange world populated by character archetypes familiar to fans of his films: the irresistible femme fatale in "Star Dream Girl," the tender romantic in "The Big Dream," and "Are You Sure," the smooth psychopath in "Say It," and the quirky oddball in "Sun Can't Be Seen No More."
- With one recycled track from "Les Fleurs Variations" (track 1)
- "German ambient-connaisseur and soundpoet Marsen Jules (aka Martin Juhls) is well known for his releases on City Center Offices, Kompakt or his own label Oktaf Records. On stage he often combines his atmospheric soundscapes with live musicians. A steady formation is the Marsen Jules Trio, which features the twin brothers Anwar Alam and Jan-Philipp Alam on piano and violins accompanied by Jules´ restrained live-sampling, bowed percussions
and singing wine glasses. For tours and festivals the Trio already played in the US as well as in Canada and all over Europe. With their debut-album „Présence Acousmatique“ on Oktaf Records the musicians bring their „acoustic presence“ to CD for the first time. It
features six highly atmospheric soundsculptures between ambient, avantgarde-classic and modern jazz. Whereas the opening „OEillet Parfait / OEillet Sauvage“ is still a variation of a track from Jules´ „Les Fleurs“ album, all other tracks are composed for the Trio or
developed out of the cooperation itself. Two tracks also feature saxophone player Roger Döring (Dictaphone) as a guest musician. The combination of dark scapes and saxophone on „Histoire de la nuit“ and „Éclipse“ makes one think of an ambient version of Bohren und der Club Ghore. The abstract „Excalibur“ and „Maison en Vitre“ remind of early avantgarde-classic and twelve-tone music and the closing „Les trains stortent de la gare“ brings a bittersweet composition for piano and violin hold together by sparkling percussions."
€music
Andere - Waking Life
- "Initially conceptualized when both artists were living on the east coast, the recording process for 'Waking Life' didn't begin until after Ritger's relocation to Colorado in the summer of 2011. The album began as a humble stash of loops and samples that Lee passed off to Ritger, who proceeded to mold them into the bedrock of the album. These basic arrangements were then methodically volleyed between the two artists over the course of the next year, resulting in two sprawling compositions that unspool into space as a trail of unhurried mist, separating the anxieties of the everyday from the subdued pleasures of the subconscious. 'Waking Life' manages to successfully combine the aesthetic cues that each contributor has built their reputation upon, with Anduin's smoke-hued synthetic pads and found sound rhythmics finding a worthy counterpoint in Radere's subtle guitar work and penchant for slow-paced evolution. In solidarity with Slow Machete, all proceeds from these recordings go back to support the Haitian people through education and agricultural programs in the Cap Haitien area."
SMTG / Morr Music GBR
Soundcloud
- "Sub Rosa presents another release in their New Series Framework editions -- an extension of the Concrete Electronics Noise series -- highlighting a brand-new mix-up of unusual conceptions of sound material by young unknown composers, well-known not-so-young composers, and old but clever composers. Limited editions. Bérangère Maximin was born on the remote French colonial island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean and moved to France at the age of 15. Performing first as a singer, she later studied electroacoustic music with the composer Denis Dufour at the Perpignan Conservatoire. Her first professional experiences occurred in Paris, and in 2002 she moved there permanently. From 2002 to 2007, while running the organizations Motus (concerts production and record label, Paris) and Futura (International Festival of Acousmatic Art, Crest, France) as the assistant of Denis Dufour, she started to work as an independent composer (collective concerts and audiovisual installations). She is most interested in preserving the spirit of live music in the studio, a passion passed on to her from her friends, guitarists and singers in rock and world music bands. Working out of her own Home Sweet Home studio, she shoots sounds in a dark and silent room, records soundscapes and acoustic sounds, plays with samplings, digital effects, performs on a variety of objects and sings. Her attraction to light and powerful sounds gives her work a very unique quality. Infinitesimal is the follow-up to her highly-acclaimed first album on Sub Rosa, No One Is an Island"
Forced Exposure
Morr Music
- "Slow Machete is a collaboration that came to life as Joseph Shaffer was recording Haitian choirs in 2009 and found himself with dozens of practice recordings and outtakes. These outtakes would be woven with downtempo and Cuban rhythms into what eventually became the debut LP Evening Dust Choir. The songs were recorded in several hundred pieces then reassembled in a small apartment in Costa Rica with the help of accordions and pitched down percussive machete samples, hence the name 'Slow Machete'. The Six Haitian vocalists that graced the original Choir album have continued to complement the arrangements found in Evening Dust Choir. The ultimate aim of Slow Machete is to use the group's collective gifts to respectfully capture and share the spirit of the Haitian culture and to use the proceeds from album sales to support education and agriculture programs in Cap Haitien.
Enjoy!"
Soundcloud - music
Today's Daily Download is a track from Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument: Shemonmuanaye, distributed by Awesome Tapes From Africa. Here is the original release info on Awesome Tapes website, where you can order a vinyl or cassette cpy of the album.
Hailu Mergia is of course "the Ethiopian one-man-band accordion/keyboardist extraordinaire."
Petrels - Wat Tyler
- "Just posted a new release up on bandcamp - 'Wat Tyler'. It's a single, longform piece utilising cello and electronics and you can download it for free.
For those who don't know of Wat Tyler, he was a leader of the Peasants' Revolt in England in 1381. Ostensibly a revolt against the poll tax, the movement was built on an undercurrent of a desire for social change and a demand for an end to the stiflingly limiting social structures of the time. Initially successful, the rebellion was abruptly cut short after Wat Tyler was murdered by the Mayor of London after Tyler supposedly insulted the young kind of England, Richard II during a parley. A quick internet search will bring in a lot more detail than I'm going to go into here but its an interesting point in history and well worth reading up on.
I'm releasing it on June 14th as that's the anniversary of when the Peasants' Revolt marched on London 632 years ago, the day before Tyler was murdered (not a particularly auspicious anniversary but a neater one isn't going to come along for a while).
I'm not going to make claims to a 22 minute instrumental track as a revelatory protest song. But I will say that over 6 centuries on, a lot less has changed in the world than those involved in the Peasants' Revolt might have hoped. Those without power do the labouring and the rich ride roughshod over everybody else. Basically we could do with a lot more Wat Tylers and a lot less Kings and Mayors. Here's hoping."
- Oliver Barrett aka Petrels @ http://floatinglimb.com
Who:
I'm Oliver Barrett and grew up in the past-its-prime seaside town of Weston-super-Mare in Somerset before moving to London ten years ago where I studied a degree in sound art. Since then I've played in various different bands/projectssome of which are still ongoingand put out my first album under the moniker of Petrels Haeligewiellelast April.
What:
My first instrument was/is the cello, and I've been using this as a basis to combine my interest in classical music with electronics/synthesised instruments and improv/noise. I'm interested in telling stories, contrasting different elements and approaches and in the tensions you can create by placing sounds together that might initially seem opposedwith Haeligewielle I focused quite a bit on trying to make the acoustic instruments sound as synthesized as possible and visa-versa, for example. Mainly I'm constantly striving to create something all-encompassing and immersive that I can lose myself in.
Influences and inspirations:
This list could go on for pages and pages but here're a few that are maybe more Petrels-specific (in no particular order): Vaughan Williams, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Todd Dockstader, Lau Nau, Ernst Reijseger, Tsai Ming-Liang, Belong, BusRatch, Arthur Russell, Angela Carter, Kuupuu, Vibracathedral Orchestra, John Carpenter, Markus Popp, William Vollmann, travelling, walking, eating, listening.
- Edited from Textura
chris watson - in st cuthbert's time: the sounds of lindisfarne and the gospels
- "Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in Woerden, Holland) is a self-taught composer, performer and poet.
He went to university for mathematics and musicology but did not finish those studies.
In the late 1970s he took up saxophone and started to compose music.
A few years later he discovered his potential as a vocal performer, at first in reciting poetry and later on in improvisations and his own compositions. For almost two decades the voice was his main means for the discovery and development of new sounds.
From around the year 2000 on Blonk started work with electronics, at first using samples of his own voice, then extending the field to include pure sound synthesis as well.
He took a year off of performing in 2006. As a result, his renewed interest in mathematics made him start a research of the possibilities of algorithmic composition for the creation of music, visual animation and poetry.
As a vocalist, Jaap Blonk is unique for his powerful stage presence and almost childlike freedom in improvisation, combined with a keen grasp of structure. He performed in many European countries, as well as in the U.S. and Canada, Indonesia, Japan, South Africa and Latin America. With the use of live electronics the scope and range of his concerts has acquired a considerable extension.
Besides working as a soloist, he collaborated with many musicians and ensembles in the field of contemporary and improvised music, like Maja Ratkje, Mats Gustafsson, Nicolas Collins, Joan La Barbara, The Ex, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble and the Ebony Band. He premiered several compositions by the German composer Carola Bauckholt, including a piece for voice and orchestra. A solo voice piece was commissioned by the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2002. On several occasions he collaborated with visual computer artist Golan Levin.
Blonk's work for radio and television includes several commissioned radio plays.
He also makes larger-scale drawings of his scores, which are being exhibited.
He was the founder and leader of the long-standing bands Splinks (modern jazz, 1983-1999) and BRAAXTAAL (avant-rock, 1987-2005). He also has his own record label, Kontrans, featuring a total of 15 releases so far. Other Blonk recordings appeared on Staalplaat, Basta and VICTO.
"Keynote Dialogues" is first Jaap Blonk solo album since 2000."
MonotypeRec / Morr Music GBR - Soundcloud - http://www.jaapblonk.com/
[url=https://www.emusic.com/album/1566699/Novisad/Neuroplanets][img]http://novi-sad.net/pics/SR369.jpg[/img][/url]
- "‘Neuroplanets’ is an audio project which explores the aesthetics of information on sound. Initially, I worked in commissioned tracks from other artists, by transmitting on them sound analysis results from extremely rare sonic phenomena in other planets. After that, I manipulated these tracks by applying on them numerical/quantitative data and statistical elements from Neurosciences research in serious diseases. My aim was to ‘visualize’ on sound the diseases characteristics and impact on human nature.
The analysis of sounds includes methods enabling the permanent extraction or automatic structuring of diverse sorts of information given off by the signal, such as the fundamental frequency or the spectral evolution determining the pitch and timbre of a perceived sound. The methods used are based on signal processing, statistical analysis, information theory, machine learning and recognition techniques, but also on knowledge of auditory perception and acoustic system sound production.
Contemporary Neurosciences suggest the existence of fundamental algorithms by which all sensory transduction is translated into an intrinsic, brain-specific code. One of ‘Neuroplanets’ main goals was to directly simulate these codes within the human audible range. . ."
http://novi-sad.net/projects/neuroplanets/
"Novi_sad is the guise for Thanasis Kaproulias (b. 1980) who holds a degree from the Economic University of Piraues. He lives and works in Athens, Greece. . ."
Full stream of a track from disk 2, Funny Little Tragedy, featuring Elvis Costello here
Alessandro Cortini - Forse 1
-"All pieces were written and performed live on a Buchla Music Easel**, in the span of one month. I found that the limited array of modules that the instrument offers sparked my creativity.
Most pieces consist of a repeating chord progression, where the real change happens at a spectral/dynamic level, as opposed to the harmonic/chordal one. I believe that the former are just as effective as the latter, in the sense that the sonic presentation (distortion , filtering, wave shaping, etc) are just as expressive as a chord change or chord type, and often reinforce said chord progressions.
Of all the years with Nine Inch Nails the period spent writing and recording the instrumental record Ghosts I-IV is probably the one which changed my approach to music making the most. After that record I started getting more into instrumental composition, although I tried to approach it in a different way. While we had a vast array of tools and instruments at our disposal then, I decided to approach my pieces limiting myself to one instrument only, as I found myself being more decisive when faced with a limited creative environment."
Important Records - Soundcloud
- "Alessandro Cortini (born May 24, 1976) is an Italian musician best known for touring and recording with the American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails from 2004 to 2008, and he rejoined the band in spring 2013.[1] Currently, Cortini is also the frontman for the Los Angeles based electronic-alternative band SONOIO. In addition, he was a touring member of The Mayfield Four from 2000 to 2002. Cortini was also a founding member of Modwheelmood, an Electronic-Alternative band from Los Angeles, California along with former Abandoned Pools guitarist Pelle Hillström. He recently completed a small Canadian tour under the guise of his solo project, blindoldfreak."
Wikipedia
**The Buchla Music Easel:
Andrew Liles - INCOMMENSURABLE MAGNITUDES
- "'Incommensurable Magnitudes' is composed of 26 tracks totalling 24 hours in length. Ideally this album would have consisted of 24 tracks each an hour long but due to the limitations of the amount of data that can be uploaded to the download site, each track is 59 minutes long. To complete the full 24 hour cycle 2 shorter tracks of 12 minutes in length ('Tea Break' and 'Up the Wooden Hill') have been added.
The reason for 'Incommensurable Magnitudes' coming into being is a further extension of my musical research and philosophical musings on concepts of time, already supported and theorised with my '...Through Time' quartet of releases. These notions are my own and are NOT based on any intellectual 'reason', academic discipline or mathematical 'truth'. They are personal experiments with sound, sonic structures and clichés that (for me) represent ideas about time travel, memory, illusions of time, astral travel, oblivion, OOBE, nostalgia, death, space travel, science fiction, science fact, marine biology, delirium, human anatomy, non-existence, sleep, hallucinations, suspended animation, hibernation, black holes, dark matter, vacuums, anti-matter, eternity, infinity and.... beyond.
Releasing the recording in this digital form is the perfect format for the piece to be listened to, utilised, experimented with and enjoyed. 'Incommensurable Magnitudes' can be streamed from your digital player in its entirety from beginning to end with no breaks! It can be played as a purely functional piece of music, to while away the hours as you go about your daily routine.. a faint drone in the background or a suffocating, all encompassing sonic assault. Equally it can be utilised as an aid to spend your evenings 'researching' a field of your choosing. The tracks can be played randomly or in order, none of the titles relate to any given time of day. Use, abuse and enjoy the music in any way you see fit and hopefully some of you will take on the marathon challenge of listening to it all in one day, a non-stop cycle of 24 hours."
- Andrew Liles
"Andrew Liles (born 1962, UK) is a sound artist and multi-instrumentalist. He has a vast output of recordings that he has released since the mid-1980s, covering a variety of styles as experimental music, dark ambient music, progressive rock and even hints at hard rock.
Along with his solo work he has worked with many international artists including Bass Communion, Steven Stapleton, Darren Tate, The Hafler Trio, Mr Blobby, Karl Blake, Faust, Unsong, Nurse With Wound, Daniel Menche, Band of Pain, Lord Bath, Sion Orgon, Andrew King, Nick Mott, Current 93, Paul Bradley, Aaron Moore, Nigel Ayers, Irr. App (Ext), Jonathan Coleclough, Tony Wakeford, Frans De Waard, Freek Kinkelaar, Danielle Dax, Rose McDowall, Edward Ka-spel, Kommissar Hjuler & Mama Baer, vidnaObmana, ruse and Ernesto Tomasini."
Wikipedia
Panabrite - Cortex Meridian
Translation: some nice burbly cosmic synth music.
"Finnish experimental electronic musician Mika Vainio's first solo album for Blast First sees him return to his classic power electronics/heavy beats approach that made Pan Sonic garner a worldwide reputation. The album developed from Vainio's recent live sets to make 10 tersely-titled tracks inspired by the shipping container industry. Four stars in Mojo: "heavy-freight," The Quietus describes it as "fearsome."
Experimedia @ Soundcloud
Blast First (petite)
"Mika Vainio, currently based in Berlin, was one half of the minimal electronic duo Pan Sonic from Finland, (the other half was Ilpo Väisänen). Before starting Pan Sonic in the beginning of the 90's, Mika Vainio has played electronics and drums as part of the early Finnish industrial and noise scene.
His solo works, under his own name and under aliases like Ø, are known for their analogue warmth and electronic harshness. Be it abstract drone works or minimal avant techno, Vainio is always creating unique, physical sounds.
He has released on labels like editions Mego, Touch, Wavetrap and Sähkö and he has been producing among others with Alan Vega of Suicide, Keiji Haino, Chicks on Speed, John Duncan and Bruce Gilbert."
Medialoca
Giuseppe Ielasi & Kassel Jaeger - Parallel / Grayscale
Editions Mego
- “When you listen to a concert, for example for cello and orchestra, you are not pointing out each instant ‘this is a cello sound’, you listen to music. And it is the same with sound.” This is Christian Zanesi, artistic director of France’s INA GRM, making the argument for sound, as opposed to notes and scales and such, as a musical device. More specifically, he’s referring to our limited way of understanding musique concrète, the form of music the French studio is famous for. It’s about more than identifying what sound X used to be or how it was transformed, he’s suggesting. It’s about more than describing the physical characteristics of a sound or generating a catalogue of sonic ingredients on a particular recording. It’s about getting at musical relations. It’s an intellectual challenge as well as an intuitive one. It’s about us as listeners actively locating expressiveness.
It’s just this sort of challenge that Zanesi’s colleague at GRM, François Bonnet (working under his Kassel Jaeger moniker) and Giuseppe Ielasi lay down over these releases. Parallel / Greyscale is the debut recording of the duo’s collaborations, while Fernweh is Bonnet’s sixth solo release (and third on Ielasi’s own Senufo Editions). There are field recordings, laptop improvisations, analog devices from synthesizers to small motors, mechanically excited string instruments and more. But the music on these records is impossible to reduce to instruments or methods. The sources are too varied, and more crucially, the process is subsumed into the fabric so thoroughly that it ceases to matter.
Ielasi and Jaeger constructed Parallel / Greyscale from improvisations they conducted in Paris and Italy. So while the album might be improvised in its origins, it feels hermetic, sealed off from how we might normally understand a spontaneous performance. It mixes the evolutionary with the episodic, as Jaeger and Ielasi freely move between hives of microrhythms and inscrutable pulses to passages of extended, enveloping low frequencies. Transitions come gradually or emerge from fade-outs. Intention and accident are intertwined in the compositions. These are hybrids, in more ways than one, the constant push-and-pull between the flow of electronic and acoustic sounds producing a fascinating, hypnotic tension.
Fernweh follows the arc of Bonnet’s previous Senufo releases. There is the unceasing stream of sound, what some reviewers have called drone, but it is more about density and detail. Bonnet doesn’t use the pure tone of a string instrument or its chording ability. Instead, he zooms in on the feral buzz. Static becomes pointillist, an all-encompassing drizzle of texture. But more important than Bonnet’s acoustic/synthetic contrasts are how he highlights them. Background becomes foreground, jump cuts open up fissures in the compositions to new worlds, gradual overlays evoke a slow metamorphosis of sound.
Ultimately, this obsession with the peripheral, marginal and gradual is what the two releases share. This is secretive music. It obscures its origins and hides its logic. The title Fernweh becomes a mission statement for both releases, a way of listening, of experiencing the music. The word means “wanderlust” in German, and it gets as close as any verbal form to what this music invokes. You have to wander about inside it, determine its idiosyncratic logic and come up with your own geography for it. It’s why the transitions are so crucial. These moments alert you to the essential instability of these pieces. Instead of contrast between sounds we hear as organic and biological and sounds we hear as synthetic, we hear a continuum. One system illuminates another."
Matthew Wuethrich @ Dusted Magzine - http://www.kasseljaeger.com/