CM von Hausswolff, Jason Lescalleet and Joachim Nordwall - ENOUGH!!! - "ENOUGH!!! is a pan-atlantic trio of well known composers and
artists that had enough of everything. Still they don't hide
themselves inside caves like hermits or in the shade like
junkies - they sigh thrice and then they endlessly move on with
their skills like electrons around the atomic nucleus; like the
fruits on a thousand years old olive tree; like the harmony of the
spheres." Monotype Recordings - Soundcloud
Excellent news from Leyland Kirby aka. VVM and The Caretaker. (now also on music) The Stranger - Watching Dead Empires in Decay Polymath James Leyland Kirby must surely have one of the most confounding CVs in the business: he spent years taking the piss out of the music industry with anthems rallying against the (VV)MCPS, he notoriously fell out with various well known record labels for reasons youll just have to google, goaded Aphex Twin with a series of tributes and channelled his love of everything from Falco (Rock Me Amadeus), Chris De Burgh, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Stockport karaoke nights into a stream of increasingly bizzare 7s back in the early noughties.
But at the same time he was responsible for releasing some of the very earliest material from Boards of Canada (Hell Interface: 1997), made a ruck of frankly groundbreaking industrial electronic records, brought New Beat to the worlds attention and, in 1999, made his first album as The Caretaker, a project that would go on to release some of the most loved Ambient/ Lynchian albums of recent times. SInce then hes also produced an incredible suite of releases under his own name, scored various film projects and released three EPs under the Intrigue & Stuff banner which are, for our money, so ahead of their time they might just start sinking in properly by the end of the decade.
All of which brings us to Watching Dead Empires in Decay, a new album recorded under another of Kirbys pseudonyms The Stranger and released on Modern Love, a label that has been close to Kirby through these last eventful 15 years. Its a dream album for the label: perhaps the most ambitious of Kirbys career so far. Its complex, singular, enigmatic, percussive, dark, and you just cant work out how it was constructed. Gone are the sampled 78s of The Caretaker, but it also doesnt exactly sound electronic you just cant quite fathom how any of it was put together: Field Recordings? Found Sounds? Sheets of metal scraped and hammered? Drum machines re-wired? Its stark and unsettling, haunted, even troubling but often just beautiful.
It starts with the sharp clang of opener We Are Enemies But Not Here before the woozy percussive crawl So Pale It Shone In The Night sucks you into a bare landscape: somewhere between Eraserhead and Fumio Hayasakas music for Akira Kurosawa. And then there are moments that break through the tension with clarity and familiarity, nostalgia even: Where Are Our Monsters Now, Where Are Our Friends? could have been made by Boards of Canada if they had taken a turn into more noxious terrain back in 1998, while Spiral Of Decline offsets the drum programming youd most likely associate with a Powell record with an oblique sense of timing and space. It all ends with About To Enter A Strange New Period, an unusual, vaporous coda that offers no resolution it just shuts proceedings down with nothing settled." Modern Love
My first purchase from the Cuneiform drop: Chris Speed clarinet/tenor saxophone
John Hollenbeck drums
Red Wierenga accordion/piano
Drew Gress acoustic bass
Matt Moran vibraphone
+1? Matt Mitchell piano
- "Led by composer, drummer and three-time Grammy nominee John Hollenbeck, The Claudia Quintet have quietly but firmly and definitively recast jazz into shimmering new shapes inflected by classical minimalism, new music, progressive rock and post-rock. They are one of the most influential stylists on other musicians in cutting-edge jazz today and the sound of jazz and what jazz can be in our time has changed because of their sound and stance.
Celebrating 15 years of work together with the release of September, this NYC ensembles sound continues to explore the edge without alienating the mainstream, proving that genre-defying music can be for everyone." Cuneiform Bandcamp - http://johnhollenbeck.com/
Yes ! - out on music today: Nina Berman, vocals
Amanda Gregory, vocals
Katya Powder, vocals Andrew McKenna Lee, guitar
Paul Orbell, guitar
Jude Traxler, percussion
Michael McCurdy, drums and percussion
Joseph Higgins, bass
- with special guests, the MIVOS String Quartet
- "The Knells is a grand statement of purpose coming from Brooklyn-based artist Andrew McKenna Lee. A seasoned performer and composer who has showcased his talents in esteemed venues including the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Carnegie Halls Zankel Hall, Lee created The Knells to be a working reconciliation of the multitude of different musical styles he has absorbed: as a rock guitarist who has performed alongside legends Billy Idol and former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones; as a singer/songwriter; as a serious concert music composer; and as he is most widely known a classical guitar virtuoso.
The Knells is the name of both Lees adeptly-composed hour-long song cycle as well as the hybrid ensemble Lee assembled to perform the project, consisting of three stunning female vocalists (Nina Berman, Amanda Gregory, Katya Powder), dual electric guitars (Andrew McKenna Lee, Paul Orbell), drums (Michael McCurdy), mallet percussion (Jude Traxler), electric bass (Joseph Higgins), and the critically lauded Mivos String Quartet. Blending Renaissance polyphony, symphonic lieder, jazz, classic and progressive rock, and even 60s Motown vocal music, The Knells finds Lee expanding his creative scope, embracing many of the stylistic streams that have come to define modern song in a remarkably cohesive and unique experience.
Lyrically, The Knells pays homage to the classic idea of the thematic concept album, and examines some of the personal and eternal questions that define and confound the human search for meaning and significance. In service of this overarching theme, The Knells confronts such specific ideas as ones perception of the passage of time, the illusive nature of progress, the power of perspective in deriving meaning from ones own life, and the circular and ultimately transcendental if somewhat violent beauty of nature.
Sonically, The Knells finds Lee employing a veritable armada of instruments, sounds, and ideas to explore the wide dynamic range of the amplified ensemble. Softer chamber music passages for strings, bowed percussion, and quiet guitars frequently contrast with louder, more rhythmically driven passages. The constant throughout is a trio of female vocalists that deliver hypnotic incantations - sometimes homophonically, and at other times in complex contrapuntal arrangements.
The Knells was chosen for the title of the project for its connotations of sound (i.e. the ringing of a bell), its associations with death, and the way these two elements play into the overall fabric of the work. This interplay is further enhanced by the album artwork, which was designed by renowned artist Shepard Fairey. Overall, the album is an adventurous and rewarding exploration of the sounds and significance of the world around us.
Previously, Lee has released two commercial recordings. His debut release on New Amsterdam Records, Gravity and Air, was named one of the years Top Ten Best Classical Albums of 2009 byTime Out Chicago. Released the same year, Solar/Electric also met with critical praise, most notably from composer Steve Reich, who declared Lees realization of his work Electric Counterpoint, a magnificent performance beautifully recorded.
- New Amsterdam http://theknells.com - http://www.mivosquartet.com
Here's a Jonah Jazzpick from 10.30.13 from the always interesting Serein label, curated by Huw Roberts (1 half of Nest).
"Some of the more mesmerizing post-jazz you'll ever hear"
Jonah continues: . "Lots of music on the peaceful side of the spectrum this week, either laid down like a warm blanket or whispered in bursts of comforting words. Even the albums that get a little upbeat feature plenty of lovely harmonies to incite a wave of serenity.
On that note, lets begin
Colorlist, Sky Song: Excited to see a new album by the duo of Charles Gorczynski and Charles Rumback, a reeds-percussion collaboration that creates some of the more mesmerizing post-jazz youll ever hear. Ambient dissertations that drift lovingly from note to note, interlude to interlude, with an airy presence even when the tempo becomes a volatile kinetic energy. Jeff Parker guests on guitar for this recording. For those who liked recent Jazz Pick Oddarrang, definitely spend some time checking this out. Aside from his own album on the Clean Feed label, Rumback also hit the Jazz Picks column with his membership in the Stirrup trio, on Sewn. And if youre looking for more Colorlist, I still often listen to their recent EP, The Fastest Way to Become the Ocean. Just beautiful music. Pick of the Week."
- "Two years ago, Colorlist released The Fastest Way To Become The Ocean on Serein; a four-track EP released on 10 vinyl as part of the Seasons series. The bands core members (Charles Gorczynski and Charles Rumback) were both living in Chicago at that time. Shortly after the release of the EP, Gorczynski moved west to Oakland, California, leaving the pair on opposite sides of the United States. The two have somehow managed to keep working together despite the huge distance between them, so well forgive the couple of years it took for Sky Song, the album I present to you now, to come to fruition.
Sky Song is Colorlists third album proper and their first full length release since 2010. The music is deep, organic and involving - it feels like a spiritual successor to their 2008 album, Lists, which had a similarly robust and weighty sound. This may be thanks in part to the complement of modular synths which are present again on Sky Song. The deep, harmonic quality of analogue synthesizers seems a perfect companion to the pairs usual instruments, occupying the mid-range of frequencies between Rumbacks kicks and toms, and Gorczynskis woodwinds.
As with their previous work, Sky Song traverses a rich and wide sonic terrain. Its not music thats easy to classify because of the array of influences which mould the sound and indeed the improvised nature of many of the pieces. Importantly, though, Sky Song feels focused and coherent as a whole. The album has everything; peaceful and serene passages of music that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, deep, driving rhythms that make your feet twitch and occassionally, music that erupts like a firework exploding in the sky.
Colorlist dont have to stick to one style to establish a cohesive whole; there is something deeper common to these tracks that ties them all together. There is a quality to the pieces, a kind of airy, openness that I associate with being outdoors. Its a distillation of a certain feeling, walking in the woods perhaps, the sun dappling the earth below your feet, a warm breeze on the back of your neck; magical music.
Sky Song was recorded by Josh Eustis (Telefon Tel Aviv and Nine Inch Nails) and John Hughes (founder of Hefty Records) at HFT Studios, Chicago. Both play important roles in capturing Colorlists music which cannot be underplayed, on this occasion they are also both credited with playing modular synths on the track, Currents. http://www.serein.co.uk - music - Soundcloud (one free track)
Trevor Wilson & Vocal Ensemble All Material - The new recording from Trevor Wilson and Vocal Ensemble, entitled All Material, introduces the groups stunning vocal harmonies and Wilsons adventurous, compellingly complex emotional songcraft. Consisting of five singers male and female and spare instrumentation including nylon-string guitar, keyboards, and digital effects, the ensemble often known as TWVE is a tight-knit group of friends that met while attending Bennington College. Recorded in-house by Wilson, the album has shades of Meredith Monk (for whom Wilson worked), Björk, and Dirty Projectors, while still feeling unique and determined. The album comes beautifully packaged in a limited-edition 12? vinyl release featuring hand-stenciled artwork in a cardboard stock sleeve.
The music of Trevor Wilson and Vocal Ensemble has been described by the Portland Phoenix as, utterly unique just as difficult and noble as his mentor (Monk). Joe Holt, co-founder of Bandcamp, describes it as Difficult. Genius. Your grandchildren will call this pop music. New Amsterdam Records
Tim Berne: alto saxophone Oscar Noriega: clarinet, bass clarinet Matt Mitchell: piano Ches Smith: drums, vibraphone, percussion
- "Acclaim for the first, eponymous album from saxophonist-composer Tim Berne’s acoustic quartet Snakeoil came from far and wide: All About Jazz described the music as “unpredictable and fresh,” while The Guardian called it “an object lesson in balancing composition, improvisation and the tonal resources of an acoustic band.” The album made the DownBeat critic’s poll of the top 10 best releases of 2012, New York Times critic Nate Chinen listed it as his No. 1 release of the year, and Jazzwise underscored the stature of Snakeoil by declaring it to be “suffused with genuine humanity and more than a little wisdom.” Stoked by this reception, Berne’s Snakeoil has upped the ante with its second ECM release, Shadow Man. Over four years together, Berne and his band of New York standouts – pianist Matt Mitchell, clarinettist Oscar Noriega and drummer/ percussionist Ches Smith – have developed a rapport that sounds like communal telepathy. The studio outcome is a marvel of kinetic action, the six pieces of Shadow Man making for music as visceral as it is cerebral; there is rollercoaster dynamism and aching lyricism, roiling counterpoint and intriguing harmony, glinting detail and ensemble impact. The album is a dizzying experience for the senses, breathtaking – and, ultimately, moving – in its sheer imaginative verve. ECM - Screwgun - AAJ
Totally brilliant new album from Moby on Little Idiot Music Ltd. (?) - "The story of Moby's 11th album is one of collaboration: Innocents, his first full-length recording with an outside producer (Mark Stent, who's worked alongside virtually everyone in pop), finds the versatile multi-instrumentalist recruiting an impressive assortment of guest vocalists. Cold Specks' marvelous Al Spx lends soulful and vulnerable contributions to "A Case for Shame" and "Tell Me" her voice's idiosyncratic beauty meshes perfectly with Moby's warm-but-dark sensibilities while other songs bring in contributions from Damien Jurado, Skylar Grey, Mark Lanegan, The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne and others.
Moby isn't new to working with outside vocalists when NPR Music brought him in to write and record a song in two days, we paired him up with Kelli Scarr but Innocents is unusually generous in its abundance of prominent guests, especially men (a rarity for Moby). The result recalls an incomplete but sizable cross-section of the musician's many sounds, from Play-style appropriations of old spirituals ("A Long Time," "The Last Day") to gauzy ambient works ("Going Wrong") to gloomily atmospheric ballads like "The Lonely Night" (featuring Lanegan), with Innocents' title capturing its unifying theme.
As such, the album lacks the seamless cohesiveness of Moby classics like 1995's dreamily drifting Everything Is Wrong and 1999's sample-driven Play. But, more than 20 years after his breakthrough single and more than 30 years into a try-it-all career that began in punk and has since worked its way through countless iterations of dance music Innocents feels like the work of an artist who's been liberated to pursue beauty and emotion in as many forms as he can muster."
- NPR Full streaming on Moby's website
- I guess I just accept that the music business has fallen apart, says Moby, describing the unexpectedly fruitful environment that spawned his upcoming album, Innocents, set for release October [TK]. That demise means that, as a 47-year-old musician, when I make a record, its simply because I love making records I dont expect commercial success. Theres no reason to second guess whether somethings going to sell well, or if a radio programmer is going to like it so I can just make the record I want to make. . . . ."
"The Residents still break ground in 2013. They return to their own legacy and flood it with a madness that doesn't seem to fade."-Consequence Of Sound
"After 40 years, the Residents remain honest and defiant."-D Magazine
- "Music originally written for the performance MUSH-ROOM (2013) by Grace Ellen Barkey & Needcompany (a Belgian theatre/dance company). The Residents inspire movement with a mix of percussion and electronics that marries classical sensibilities with modern exploration. Essential for anyone who saw a performance, or anyone who didn't see it and wishes to mentally choreograph their own production." Wayside Music
- "Were not kidding! Dreams do come true, wishes are fulfilled: the iconic avant-garde American performance art collective The Residents has written music for Grace Ellen Barkey and Needcompany! The Residents leapt onto her shoulders and grabbed hold of her unruly hair, and then they galloped off together into another dimension and danced a divine duet. Just imagine: The Residents, the masters of weird, and Grace Ellen Barkey, the president of the movement against melancholy.
'This is just the beginning of the worldwide conceived movement of acceptance of all fungi that were considered potentially dangerous.'
In MUSH-ROOM we find ourselves in a forest full of mushrooms. These mushrooms unite and rise in rebellion...
Selaxon Lutberg - Simboli Accidentali - "SELAXON LUTBERG is the ambient project of the secluded Italian artist Andrea Penso. After two albums, a collaboration record with Subinterior and various EPs, 'SIMBOLI ACCIDENTALI' ('Accidental Symbols') constitutes his third full length record and third release on Denovali Records.
As most of his works, the new album is strongly linked to Andrea's biography. Indeed, he states: "In a long video-interview by Donatella Baglivo, the Russian filmmaker Andrej Tarkovsky says that childhood 'is the moment in human life that determines all his future, especially if future will be linked to art, inner life and psychological problems. In other words, childhood feeds all the creativity of the adult
period.' Composing this album I tried to focus on accidental symbols mostly born during my childhood, tried to study them not in detail but in their essence. The 'subjective sounds' of this album were born from these thoughts and considerations." To support this motive, the album artwork contains an impressionistic story from Andrea's childhood.
Simboli Accidentali is composed of 8 tracks, which have been recorded at Andrea's home between 2010 and 2012 and mastered by Miles Whittaker (Demdike Stare). The typically warm and encasing songs are mostly made with processed and unrecognizable guitars, an old and cheap organ and loops from ruined tapes and vinyls. The resulting sound can be found somewhere in the vast landscape spanned by the ambient/postrock of LABRADFORD and SLOWDIVE's Pygmalion era, the analogue and decayed loops of PHILIP JECK and WILLIAM BASINSKI and the cinematic feelings of STARS OF THE LID and DAVID LYNCH's drones. Time to explore." Denovali - Soundcloud - Ambient Blog
"Sad smile on a old photo,
snow in the hands,
abandoned places,
the magic of the simple things,
the colours and the energy of the nature
a return travel on a desolate train,
take of conscience,
the past, the present, the future,
and the dreaming visions" http://www.last.fm/music/Selaxon+Lutberg
Released 24 October 2013 Josh Maxey, guitar and compositions Brian Charette, piano Jeremy Noller, drums John Tate, bass
. . . . . "Rhythm of the Sound Current features four piano and guitar duos with one of my favorite musicians, Brian Charette. Songs five through seven add Jeremy Noller (a frequent collaborator from the series of albums) on drums and it is the second album to feature John Tate on bass.
It is a live performance of a new suite of music, recorded at Brooklyn's IBeam. The music was written specifically for the live recording.
In the last two years we have recorded 10 albums. Rhythm... is release number eight. It's the first full length album of new material after completing a six albums in twelve months recording project in January of 2013. The series has had over twenty thousand downloads. The singles Incarnate and Part III were both number one downloads on AllAboutJazz.com. The music has been reviewed on AAJ, Birdistheworm.com (also interviewed on BitW) as well as reviewed on other blogs, and has received airplay on jazz radio. The music features some of NYCs best musicians and those closest to me." - Josh Maxey.
pollen trio is Evan Dorrian - drums Marcus Whale - electronics + vocals Austin Buckett - piano
- "The latest incarnation of Pollen Trio, now based in Sydney is comprised of Austin Buckett (piano, electronics), Evan Dorrian (drums) and Marcus Whale (computer, electronics and voice). The addition of Whale (Collarbones, Scissor Lock) sees the group moving into new territories with the introduction of voice alongside more electronic textures and manipulations. The music on their first EP together Wreck showcases a more hypnotically repetitive side to the group, while still retaining their unique sense of exploration."
- "Pollen Trio emerged out of Canberra, Australia in 2009 as a band looking to explore the possibilities of experimental improvised music. Their approach has been regularly compared with iconic Australian experimentalists The Necks, while also assimilating influences from left-field electronic music, avant-garde Jazz and contemporary classical music. The result is music that feels deconstructed, off kilter, hypnotic and immersive.
Since 2009, Pollen Trio has released music through cult Canberra label HellosQuare Recordings, including 3 limited edition CDRs, and their 2011debut album Roll Slow which featured Australian Jazz icon Miroslav Bukovsky on trumpet and percussion." Wood & Wireb
- "Northern Loop is the end product of Paul Fretwell and Ambrose Fields collaborative composition project spanning five years of live performances at venues ranging from Kings Place in London, to churches in downtown New Orleans. Field and Fretwell first started collaborating in 2004. Jack Chorale, their first piece together, is an electroacoustic work that plays with genre and expectation, bringing in regular beats, fragmented rhythms, spectral sound transformations, harmony and noise. This piece triggered a long period of exploration where they began to focus on the very small details within sounds.
Northern Loop plays out over a continuous 80 minutes, working tiny loops of audio material into a spectral tapestry where small details are brought to the fore, revealing different facets of the evolving sound textures. The work has seven movements, although these flow into one another. The component sounds were generated from studio recordings of source materials using techniques of time stretching, convolution and mutation. These processes typically result in long, continuously evolving sounds. The composers then extracted short clips from these longer files to create their loops, finding interesting timbres and melodic fragments from within the larger whole. This magnification of small spectral details forms the central technique of Northern Loop, which charts a journey from darkness to light over a carefully-planned harmonic structure.
Fretwell and Fields motivation is described in the CD booklet: We decided to pick a single structural constraint one that is common to a variety of genres and well known the loop. The loop, historically, has been a tool for innovation, particularly in its use by pioneering minimal composers as Steve Reich in the 1960s. The ubiquity of the loop today however is unquestionable, but we feel that its widespread use in popular culture is often unchallenged. We would like to rescue the loop from entertainment-level apps, musical textural backgrounds and library background pads, and provide, through use of that structure, a listening experience of subtlety and delicacy. The result is a kind of self-similar, thoroughly stripped-down minimal music, but importantly our type of structure is not algorithmically generated: this is intuitive music, assembled through aural judgment and collaborative discussion. Sargasso
- "Paul Fretwell is a composer of instrumental and electronic music. He began his compositional career at Chethams School of Music in Manchester, where he was awarded a full scholarship, and composed a range of pieces for small ensembles to full orchestra. He also took a strong interest in the performance of contemporary music and played many concerts of twentieth-century piano repertoire, including Stockhausen, Cage, and Takemitsu. He later attended the University of Birmingham, where he first encountered electroacoustic music, and composed a series of purely electronic works which were performed on the BEAST system (Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre) in concerts across the UK. . . . . .
- "Ambrose Field is a British Composer. His music is recorded on ECM (Munich, Germany) and Sargasso (London, UK), and broadcast by the BBC and other international networks (SVR, RTE, ORF). . . . .
- " Field spent his early years learning violin and organ, taking part in festivals and events as a performer. After taking an undergraduate degree at York, he went on to graduate studies in Music Education at University of Cambridge, and sung bass in the choir of Pembroke College. In 1994 he moved to London and, funded by the British Academy, received a PhD in Composition from City University. Field served as a board director of the UKs Sonic Arts Network (the forerunner to todays Sound and Music Organisation) in the late 1990s. . . . . .
Max Eilbacher - Red Anxiety Tracers - "Max Eilbacher's Red Anxiety Tracers is the debut long player from the multi-talented Baltimore, Maryland stalwart . Elibacher has performed with various projects such as Matmos, Horse Lords, and the mind-altering underground Needle Gun aktionist unit. Despite years of busy touring and recording, Red Anxiety Tracers is the first vinyl artifact from this young mastermind.
Crafted over the course of a year, Tracers is a labyrinth of shapes and sounds which glide through a complex and arcane environment of found sounds and synthesis. An expertly crafted maze of deja-vu, audio hallucinations, and dislocating atmospheric forms an audio obstacle course for the listener. Complex editing techniques and sound structures recalls the works of J.D. Robb or Owl Records era Tod Dockstader albeit witha radically fresh perspective and educated hindsight.
"Red Anxiety Tracers" exhumes impeccable flow and careful attention to dynamic range, with it's surgical placement of sound events challenging the deep listening abilities of it's audience. Raw and manic tension overloads are cut with alien float and abstract aether transmissions with a constantly shifting palette of sounds spun from blasted modular electronics, vocoded terrestrial-speak, and glowing mellotron clouds. Eilbacher communicates a strange and beautiful dialect conceived through disciplined compositional structure and an intuitive improvisational style unparalleled in the current landscape. "Red Anxiety Tracers" breathes new life into modern electronic composition."
- Spectrum Spools / Editions Mego
Voyage/Home by Off Land
Just released. Very nice new ambient album. $3 @ bandcamp.
Voyage/Home is a 60 minute album centered around its two title tracks. Part 1 of Voyage & Home were recorded during the sessions that produced the album Tidewater Pulse. Part 2 of Voyage & Home were recorded a year later in reflection to the originals. The short tracks Estuary and Seiche act as a prelude to each title track. They were also part of the session that produced Tidewater Pulse. The final track, Current is a sprawling 22 minute ambient excursion. As a bonus for purchasing the entire album, you'll get 14 minute, seamless, mixed versions of Voyage & Home.
Tomas Phillips and Kenneth Kirschner - Five Transpositions - "SaD's second release is Tomas Phillips and Kenneth Kirschner's collaboration works.
Their sound is composed of playing acoustic instruments and computer processing etc .
This drone album is so sweet and It is a sad sound irresistibly.
You must taste to concentrate this sounds! Don't miss it!" SaD Records
- "The music of composer Kenneth Kirschner (b. 1970) exists at the intersection of avant-garde classical composition and contemporary electronic music.
Bringing together acoustic instrumentation with state-of-the-art digital technology to create results not possible with either approach alone, Kirschner's work is characterized by intricately intersecting patterns, complex long-form development, a strong focus on harmony, and experimentation with techniques such as chance procedures, indeterminacy, and microtonality within a technological context.
An advocate of open source practices, Kirschner releases his music freely online through his website, kennethkirschner.com, which represents a complete and open archive of his published compositions dating back to the 1980s.
His work has also been released by labels such as Sub Rosa, 12k, Line, Sirr, Leerraum, and/OAR, and Room40." http://soundcloud.com/five-transpositions/sets
Alexandre St-Onge - Viorupeeeeihean - "VIORUPEEEEIHEAN is the translation on audio medias of multiple sound performances generated by various tactics of pragmatic approach of the ineffable that testify on the emergence of monstrous voices and hermetic entities through the creative process. VIORUPEEEEIHEAN is a heterogenous creature possessed by sound spectres. VIORUPEEEEIHEAN."
- Oral Records - music
- "Alexandre St-Onge is an audio artist, a musician/improviser (acoustic bass, bass, voice and electronics) and a sound performer. He has studied literature and philosophy and he is currently doing his PhD in art. He is fascinated by creativity as a pragmatic approach of the ineffable and he has released eight solo CDs: Ailleurs (&records), Entités (Oral), Joseph Carey Merrick (Oral), Mon animal est possible (Alien8 Recordings), Lamitié ou les rumeurs insoutenables du désir (Squint Fucker Press), kasi naigo (Squint Fucker Press), Une mâchoire et deux trous (Namskéio Records), Image/négation (Alien8 Recordings). He also plays in quite a few bands, including Et Sans, K.A.N.T.N.A.G.A.N.O., Klaxon Gueule, Pink Saliva, mineminemine, Shalabi Effect and undo. As a composer he has worked for interactive/mixed-media company kondition pluriel, as well as composing for artists such as Marie Brassard, Karine Denault, Lynda Gaudreau, Line Nault, Jérémie Niel, Maryse Poulin and Mariko Tanabe." http://alexandrest-onge.com More @ the Absence of Wax thread
- "With "Beautyfear" the German electronic musician Marsen Jules (CCO, 12k, Kompakt) delivers one of his most outstanding albums so far. Mastered by no one else than 12K-labelboss Taylor Deupree and with a coverpicture taken by the highly acclaimed photographer Erik Madigan Heck from NYC, the best conditions are laid for a lasting experience of abstract musical poetry and touching soundscapeism. Jules has never been this dense, subtile and fragile before. All twelve tracks on Beautyfear were created during a week stay in a theatre workspace on one of the hills of Lisbon. The panoramic view over the dusty city in spring seemed to have been the perfect surrounding for this cloudy soundscapes, which at some points remind of Angelo Bandalamentis work for David Lynchs "Mullholland Drive". Its an album on the fragility of beauty, as Jules describes briefly. Music that can neither be described as ambient music or experimental sound art, but more likely delivers a poetic approach to music, live and sound itself. With Beautyfear Marsen Jules makes a great start into 2014 and with the already announced cooperation with Swedish filmmaker Anders Weberg and an upcoming release of his works from a residence at the legendary GRM studios in Paris, one should definitely keep an eye on what is coming next."
- "The German electronic music composer Marsen Jules is a poet in sound. Focused on minimalism and abstraction he creates atmospheric and deeply emotional tunes. Since his CD debut on City Centre Offices he released 7 full length albums and several compilation tracks on labels as 12K, Kompakt, Miasmah and Dronarivm as well as his own imprint Oktaf Records. In 2009 he received an award as best album at the Qwartz Electronic Music Awards in Paris which was also combined with a a two week residence in the legendary "GRM Studios" at Radio France. Marsen Jules played allready on international festivals as Mutek Montreal, Tranzvizualia (Poland), Node (Italy), Urban Explorers (NL), La Rout du Rock (Paris), Picknick Electronique (Montreal). "
Excellent news from Cuneiform . . . SONAR is
Stephan Thelen: guitar
Bernhard Wagner: guitar
Christian Kuntner: bass guitar
Manuel Pasquinelli: drums - "Sonar is a progressive post-minimal band from Switzerland. Their name stands for SONic ARchitecture, a name which alludes to their intention of creating polymetric and highly structured avant-rock. Static Motion is their second full-length release, and their first release outside of Switzerland.
Fusing a rigorous minimal esthetic with the power of a rock band, every note and rhythm is precisely composed and performed, all of which are designed to move you from one rhythmic and / or harmonic tension to the next. Sonar is the last word in a rock band that works by building their music out of blocks consisting of slowly rising and unfolding musical tension. While you can hear elements of Sonar's sound in ensembles such as King Crimson, Glenn Branca, Present, etc, ultimately, no one else sounds like this and Static Motion is a powerful and extraordinary listen!
Just about everything is different with Sonar: the sound, the harmonies, the rhythms, the whole musical concept. Their instantly recognizable sound is partly due to the special tuning of the guitars and the bass guitar to tritones (C / F# / C / F# / C / F#), an interval sometimes called the "devil in music" ("diabolus in musica").
A large proportion of their music is played using only the natural harmonics of these two notes, thereby creating a harmonically ambiguous musical microcosmos that the group calls "tritone harmonics" and that avoids conventional musical cliches. The group's rhythms are also highly unconventional and usually consist of layered polyrhythms and isorhythms in odd metres.
Sonar's music is always played live without any sequencers, loops or computers, using a minimum amount of equipment: 2 guitars, a bass guitar, 3 small amplifiers and a basic drum kit. Nearly effect-free (with just a touch of reverb and tremolo allowed), the band does this to keep the music as clear, direct and immediate as possible. Sonar does not consider itself or operate as a collection of soloists; rather, their efforts are oriented towards collective efforts making the music more than the sum of the individual parts of the players."
- Cuneiform Records - music - http://sonar-band.bandcamp.com/
This album is, for all intents and purposes, is an homage to classic ambient and ambient techno albums of the past (of course filtered through the distinctive sound world of The Green Kingdom). This is not to say that the aim was to recreate or mimic the sound of these recordings, but rather the feeling they create through the use of sustained tones, repetition, melody and texture.
As indicated by the title, these pieces are meant to evoke vast and expansive environments, either real or imagined. These landscapes can often provide a sense of calm and wonder at our relative insignificance in comparison to the majestic grandeur of the larger universe all around us. Although the cover is one example of such a landscape, the tracks remain untitled in hope that the listener might attach their own associations.
offthesky and radere - The Season of Lost Buttons
4 x 3" CDR, limited edition of 120, available for preorder now.
And my goodness, there are still a few copies left of The Door in the Wall book + CD (reviewed here) at offthesky's bandcamp page for less than I paid for it when it came out!
The wonders of one-way collaborations - "First and foremost, Plateforme is a concept, a restrictive framework Laurent Perrier imposed on himself: to create an electroacoustic piece using solely a set of sound sources provided by a "collaborator." The first three fruits of this vast sonic transmutation project are presented on Plateforme #1, the seeds having been planted by Felix Kubin, Lawrence English, and Gianluca Becuzzi. "I gave them no specific directions. I simply asked them to send me raw stuff close to their sound style," explains Perrier. "Some sent me a lot of material, others very little."
These sources have become unrecognizable in the end, but they gave birth to widely different works that retain something of the spirit of their originator: "Felix Kubin" is fanciful and kaleidoscopic; "Lawrence English," ethereal, stretches out across the listening space; and "Gianluca Becuzzi" feels nervous, jittery, and is full of glitchy sounds sent on knotty trajectories.
Laurent Perrier ranks among the most respected members of the French electronic music scene. His name is associated to the aliases Zonk't, Pylône, Heal, Cape Fear, and LP, and with the Odd Size label, an adventure that lasted a decade. His music art ranges from minimal techno to musique concrète, by way of several other states." Baskaru - Soundcloud - Bandcamp
- "From his industrial beginnings in Nox to his record industry adventures with the store/label Odd Size, from the electronica/breakbeat temptations of Cape Fear to the slow maturation of his Zonk't project, Laurent Perrier has consistently pushed his soundworld toward ever-more singular pastures. His fundamental search for the sensuality in the grain of sound, in its most powerful and disquieting eccentricities, finally led him to the fringes of artistic production, where genre barriers break down to let total, transversal art roam free. Perrier gradually invested the fields of video art, then mostly dance and theatre, working with Odile Duboc, Pietragalla, Alban Richard, Pedro Pauwels, Les Ballets de l'Europe/Jean-Charles Gil, Christian Bourigault, Philippe Ulysse, Toufik o.i, Laurence Wagner, Thomas Lebrun, Cécile Loyer and Yann Lheureux. His recent endeavours saw him cross into video installation and contemporary art as he worked on projects by Dominik Barnier for Marseille 2013.
Nowadays, he plays electronic music concerts under various aliases (Zonk't, Pylône, Heal, Cape Fear, LP), accompanied by his own video works.
The music Perrier develops in real time is abstracted, both organic and cerebral. It draws a vacant land pervious to density, highlighting, and sound range. His music distillates an extremely minimal "dubby" line, a rather cold ambience that ties capricious electronic tones up in an ascetic yet comfortable corset, chassés-croisés obeying to a complex and sophisticated structure. Near-surgical precision confronted to an environment yet ever-changing through playful games of modulation. This way, he manages to capture listeners and take them on a long hypnotic journey that leads to dreamier tracks. His video works develop in perfect synergy with sound. He often borrows material from dance films or abstract images whose components, colours and lighting he transforms.
Perrier has also been approached by Peugeot/Citröen to work as sound designer on their future electric cars."
- "R&S sister label Apollo are very proud to announce a four-track EP from James Leyland Kirby. Mastermind behind arch sonic provocateurs V/Vm as well as the more contemplative The Caretaker and The Stranger, Kirby has been responsible for some of the most unique, subversive and moving electronic music of the past two decades. Following a quiet 2012 and 2013, the EP marks both his Apollo debut and his first release since 2011 under the Leyland Kirby alias - an outlet for his most personal and reflective work.
Like 2011's acclaimed Intrigue & Stuff series, its four tracks flit between moods, from gorgeous, skin-prickling surges of ambience to cryptic rhythms and intricate, jazzy techno. As with all of his Leyland Kirby music, they're played in a manner so tactile and reflexive as to seem like direct reflections of his thoughts and memories. The melancholic drift of 'Breaks My Heart Each Time' builds to an dense, harrowingly beautiful climax, while 'Last Ditch Legacy' strafes a watery beat with blast upon blast of overdriven fuzz. 'Diminishing Emotion' strips away everything save soft synthlines that trace glowing arcs through an otherwise silent world." Piccadilly Records Apollo Records - http://soundcloud.com/leylandkirby
Kevin Drumm - Shut In - 'Shut In' is a "Beautiful piece of Easy Listening for Cabin Fever courtesy of Kevin Drumm" says Editions Mego, and who are we to argue? It yields some of the inimitable artist's most beautiful, oneiric sounds since his immense 'Imperial Distortion' album for Hospital Productions; in fact, we wouldn't be surprised if we were told it came from those same sessions. One singular piece unfolds for just over 30 minutes across two sides, slowly radiating a sort of soothing harmonic balm with an underlying sense of ecclesiastical grandness and purpose rooted in his Black Metal faith. Quite simply, this is Kevin Drumm at his most beautiful and transcendent. Highest recommendations to his fans and also followers of Eliane Radigue, Phill Niblock, La Monte Young."
- Boomkat Editions Mego
Comments
CM von Hausswolff, Jason Lescalleet and Joachim Nordwall - ENOUGH!!!
- "ENOUGH!!! is a pan-atlantic trio of well known composers and
artists that had enough of everything. Still they don't hide
themselves inside caves like hermits or in the shade like
junkies - they sigh thrice and then they endlessly move on with
their skills like electrons around the atomic nucleus; like the
fruits on a thousand years old olive tree; like the harmony of the
spheres."
Monotype Recordings - Soundcloud
The Stranger - Watching Dead Empires in Decay
Polymath James Leyland Kirby must surely have one of the most confounding CVs in the business: he spent years taking the piss out of the music industry with anthems rallying against the (VV)MCPS, he notoriously fell out with various well known record labels for reasons youll just have to google, goaded Aphex Twin with a series of tributes and channelled his love of everything from Falco (Rock Me Amadeus), Chris De Burgh, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Stockport karaoke nights into a stream of increasingly bizzare 7s back in the early noughties.
But at the same time he was responsible for releasing some of the very earliest material from Boards of Canada (Hell Interface: 1997), made a ruck of frankly groundbreaking industrial electronic records, brought New Beat to the worlds attention and, in 1999, made his first album as The Caretaker, a project that would go on to release some of the most loved Ambient/ Lynchian albums of recent times. SInce then hes also produced an incredible suite of releases under his own name, scored various film projects and released three EPs under the Intrigue & Stuff banner which are, for our money, so ahead of their time they might just start sinking in properly by the end of the decade.
All of which brings us to Watching Dead Empires in Decay, a new album recorded under another of Kirbys pseudonyms The Stranger and released on Modern Love, a label that has been close to Kirby through these last eventful 15 years. Its a dream album for the label: perhaps the most ambitious of Kirbys career so far. Its complex, singular, enigmatic, percussive, dark, and you just cant work out how it was constructed. Gone are the sampled 78s of The Caretaker, but it also doesnt exactly sound electronic you just cant quite fathom how any of it was put together: Field Recordings? Found Sounds? Sheets of metal scraped and hammered? Drum machines re-wired? Its stark and unsettling, haunted, even troubling but often just beautiful.
It starts with the sharp clang of opener We Are Enemies But Not Here before the woozy percussive crawl So Pale It Shone In The Night sucks you into a bare landscape: somewhere between Eraserhead and Fumio Hayasakas music for Akira Kurosawa. And then there are moments that break through the tension with clarity and familiarity, nostalgia even: Where Are Our Monsters Now, Where Are Our Friends? could have been made by Boards of Canada if they had taken a turn into more noxious terrain back in 1998, while Spiral Of Decline offsets the drum programming youd most likely associate with a Powell record with an oblique sense of timing and space. It all ends with About To Enter A Strange New Period, an unusual, vaporous coda that offers no resolution it just shuts proceedings down with nothing settled."
Modern Love
Chris Speed clarinet/tenor saxophone
John Hollenbeck drums
Red Wierenga accordion/piano
Drew Gress acoustic bass
Matt Moran vibraphone
+1? Matt Mitchell piano
- "Led by composer, drummer and three-time Grammy nominee John Hollenbeck, The Claudia Quintet have quietly but firmly and definitively recast jazz into shimmering new shapes inflected by classical minimalism, new music, progressive rock and post-rock. They are one of the most influential stylists on other musicians in cutting-edge jazz today and the sound of jazz and what jazz can be in our time has changed because of their sound and stance.
Celebrating 15 years of work together with the release of September, this NYC ensembles sound continues to explore the edge without alienating the mainstream, proving that genre-defying music can be for everyone."
Cuneiform
Bandcamp - http://johnhollenbeck.com/
Nina Berman, vocals
Amanda Gregory, vocals
Katya Powder, vocals
Andrew McKenna Lee, guitar
Paul Orbell, guitar
Jude Traxler, percussion
Michael McCurdy, drums and percussion
Joseph Higgins, bass
- with special guests, the MIVOS String Quartet
- "The Knells is a grand statement of purpose coming from Brooklyn-based artist Andrew McKenna Lee. A seasoned performer and composer who has showcased his talents in esteemed venues including the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Carnegie Halls Zankel Hall, Lee created The Knells to be a working reconciliation of the multitude of different musical styles he has absorbed: as a rock guitarist who has performed alongside legends Billy Idol and former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones; as a singer/songwriter; as a serious concert music composer; and as he is most widely known a classical guitar virtuoso.
The Knells is the name of both Lees adeptly-composed hour-long song cycle as well as the hybrid ensemble Lee assembled to perform the project, consisting of three stunning female vocalists (Nina Berman, Amanda Gregory, Katya Powder), dual electric guitars (Andrew McKenna Lee, Paul Orbell), drums (Michael McCurdy), mallet percussion (Jude Traxler), electric bass (Joseph Higgins), and the critically lauded Mivos String Quartet. Blending Renaissance polyphony, symphonic lieder, jazz, classic and progressive rock, and even 60s Motown vocal music, The Knells finds Lee expanding his creative scope, embracing many of the stylistic streams that have come to define modern song in a remarkably cohesive and unique experience.
Lyrically, The Knells pays homage to the classic idea of the thematic concept album, and examines some of the personal and eternal questions that define and confound the human search for meaning and significance. In service of this overarching theme, The Knells confronts such specific ideas as ones perception of the passage of time, the illusive nature of progress, the power of perspective in deriving meaning from ones own life, and the circular and ultimately transcendental if somewhat violent beauty of nature.
Sonically, The Knells finds Lee employing a veritable armada of instruments, sounds, and ideas to explore the wide dynamic range of the amplified ensemble. Softer chamber music passages for strings, bowed percussion, and quiet guitars frequently contrast with louder, more rhythmically driven passages. The constant throughout is a trio of female vocalists that deliver hypnotic incantations - sometimes homophonically, and at other times in complex contrapuntal arrangements.
The Knells was chosen for the title of the project for its connotations of sound (i.e. the ringing of a bell), its associations with death, and the way these two elements play into the overall fabric of the work. This interplay is further enhanced by the album artwork, which was designed by renowned artist Shepard Fairey. Overall, the album is an adventurous and rewarding exploration of the sounds and significance of the world around us.
Previously, Lee has released two commercial recordings. His debut release on New Amsterdam Records, Gravity and Air, was named one of the years Top Ten Best Classical Albums of 2009 byTime Out Chicago. Released the same year, Solar/Electric also met with critical praise, most notably from composer Steve Reich, who declared Lees realization of his work Electric Counterpoint, a magnificent performance beautifully recorded.
- New Amsterdam
http://theknells.com - http://www.mivosquartet.com
- "Two years ago, Colorlist released The Fastest Way To Become The Ocean on Serein; a four-track EP released on 10 vinyl as part of the Seasons series. The bands core members (Charles Gorczynski and Charles Rumback) were both living in Chicago at that time. Shortly after the release of the EP, Gorczynski moved west to Oakland, California, leaving the pair on opposite sides of the United States. The two have somehow managed to keep working together despite the huge distance between them, so well forgive the couple of years it took for Sky Song, the album I present to you now, to come to fruition.
Sky Song is Colorlists third album proper and their first full length release since 2010. The music is deep, organic and involving - it feels like a spiritual successor to their 2008 album, Lists, which had a similarly robust and weighty sound. This may be thanks in part to the complement of modular synths which are present again on Sky Song. The deep, harmonic quality of analogue synthesizers seems a perfect companion to the pairs usual instruments, occupying the mid-range of frequencies between Rumbacks kicks and toms, and Gorczynskis woodwinds.
As with their previous work, Sky Song traverses a rich and wide sonic terrain. Its not music thats easy to classify because of the array of influences which mould the sound and indeed the improvised nature of many of the pieces. Importantly, though, Sky Song feels focused and coherent as a whole. The album has everything; peaceful and serene passages of music that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, deep, driving rhythms that make your feet twitch and occassionally, music that erupts like a firework exploding in the sky.
Colorlist dont have to stick to one style to establish a cohesive whole; there is something deeper common to these tracks that ties them all together. There is a quality to the pieces, a kind of airy, openness that I associate with being outdoors. Its a distillation of a certain feeling, walking in the woods perhaps, the sun dappling the earth below your feet, a warm breeze on the back of your neck; magical music.
Sky Song was recorded by Josh Eustis (Telefon Tel Aviv and Nine Inch Nails) and John Hughes (founder of Hefty Records) at HFT Studios, Chicago. Both play important roles in capturing Colorlists music which cannot be underplayed, on this occasion they are also both credited with playing modular synths on the track, Currents.
http://www.serein.co.uk - music - Soundcloud (one free track)
Trevor Wilson & Vocal Ensemble All Material
- The new recording from Trevor Wilson and Vocal Ensemble, entitled All Material, introduces the groups stunning vocal harmonies and Wilsons adventurous, compellingly complex emotional songcraft. Consisting of five singers male and female and spare instrumentation including nylon-string guitar, keyboards, and digital effects, the ensemble often known as TWVE is a tight-knit group of friends that met while attending Bennington College. Recorded in-house by Wilson, the album has shades of Meredith Monk (for whom Wilson worked), Björk, and Dirty Projectors, while still feeling unique and determined. The album comes beautifully packaged in a limited-edition 12? vinyl release featuring hand-stenciled artwork in a cardboard stock sleeve.
The music of Trevor Wilson and Vocal Ensemble has been described by the Portland Phoenix as, utterly unique just as difficult and noble as his mentor (Monk). Joe Holt, co-founder of Bandcamp, describes it as Difficult. Genius. Your grandchildren will call this pop music.
New Amsterdam Records
Tim Berne: alto saxophone
Oscar Noriega: clarinet, bass clarinet
Matt Mitchell: piano
Ches Smith: drums, vibraphone, percussion
- "Acclaim for the first, eponymous album from saxophonist-composer Tim Berne’s acoustic quartet Snakeoil came from far and wide: All About Jazz described the music as “unpredictable and fresh,” while The Guardian called it “an object lesson in balancing composition, improvisation and the tonal resources of an acoustic band.” The album made the DownBeat critic’s poll of the top 10 best releases of 2012, New York Times critic Nate Chinen listed it as his No. 1 release of the year, and Jazzwise underscored the stature of Snakeoil by declaring it to be “suffused with genuine humanity and more than a little wisdom.” Stoked by this reception, Berne’s Snakeoil has upped the ante with its second ECM release, Shadow Man. Over four years together, Berne and his band of New York standouts – pianist Matt Mitchell, clarinettist Oscar Noriega and drummer/
percussionist Ches Smith – have developed a rapport that sounds like communal telepathy. The studio outcome is a marvel of kinetic action, the six pieces of Shadow Man making for music as visceral as it is cerebral; there is rollercoaster dynamism and aching lyricism, roiling counterpoint and intriguing harmony, glinting detail and ensemble impact. The album is a dizzying experience for the senses, breathtaking – and, ultimately, moving – in its sheer imaginative verve.
ECM - Screwgun - AAJ
- "The story of Moby's 11th album is one of collaboration: Innocents, his first full-length recording with an outside producer (Mark Stent, who's worked alongside virtually everyone in pop), finds the versatile multi-instrumentalist recruiting an impressive assortment of guest vocalists. Cold Specks' marvelous Al Spx lends soulful and vulnerable contributions to "A Case for Shame" and "Tell Me" her voice's idiosyncratic beauty meshes perfectly with Moby's warm-but-dark sensibilities while other songs bring in contributions from Damien Jurado, Skylar Grey, Mark Lanegan, The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne and others.
Moby isn't new to working with outside vocalists when NPR Music brought him in to write and record a song in two days, we paired him up with Kelli Scarr but Innocents is unusually generous in its abundance of prominent guests, especially men (a rarity for Moby). The result recalls an incomplete but sizable cross-section of the musician's many sounds, from Play-style appropriations of old spirituals ("A Long Time," "The Last Day") to gauzy ambient works ("Going Wrong") to gloomily atmospheric ballads like "The Lonely Night" (featuring Lanegan), with Innocents' title capturing its unifying theme.
As such, the album lacks the seamless cohesiveness of Moby classics like 1995's dreamily drifting Everything Is Wrong and 1999's sample-driven Play. But, more than 20 years after his breakthrough single and more than 30 years into a try-it-all career that began in punk and has since worked its way through countless iterations of dance music Innocents feels like the work of an artist who's been liberated to pursue beauty and emotion in as many forms as he can muster."
- NPR
Full streaming on Moby's website
- I guess I just accept that the music business has fallen apart, says Moby, describing the unexpectedly fruitful environment that spawned his upcoming album, Innocents, set for release October [TK]. That demise means that, as a 47-year-old musician, when I make a record, its simply because I love making records I dont expect commercial success. Theres no reason to second guess whether somethings going to sell well, or if a radio programmer is going to like it so I can just make the record I want to make. . . . ."
- "Music originally written for the performance MUSH-ROOM (2013) by Grace Ellen Barkey & Needcompany (a Belgian theatre/dance company). The Residents inspire movement with a mix of percussion and electronics that marries classical sensibilities with modern exploration. Essential for anyone who saw a performance, or anyone who didn't see it and wishes to mentally choreograph their own production."
Wayside Music
- "Were not kidding! Dreams do come true, wishes are fulfilled: the iconic avant-garde American performance art collective The Residents has written music for Grace Ellen Barkey and Needcompany! The Residents leapt onto her shoulders and grabbed hold of her unruly hair, and then they galloped off together into another dimension and danced a divine duet. Just imagine: The Residents, the masters of weird, and Grace Ellen Barkey, the president of the movement against melancholy.
'This is just the beginning of the worldwide conceived movement of acceptance of all fungi that were considered potentially dangerous.'
In MUSH-ROOM we find ourselves in a forest full of mushrooms. These mushrooms unite and rise in rebellion...
'We are alive and kicking! Full of exceptional dreams and cosmic wishes!'"
http://www.needcompany.org/EN/mush-room
Selaxon Lutberg - Simboli Accidentali
- "SELAXON LUTBERG is the ambient project of the secluded Italian artist Andrea Penso. After two albums, a collaboration record with Subinterior and various EPs, 'SIMBOLI ACCIDENTALI' ('Accidental Symbols') constitutes his third full length record and third release on Denovali Records.
As most of his works, the new album is strongly linked to Andrea's biography. Indeed, he states: "In a long video-interview by Donatella Baglivo, the Russian filmmaker Andrej Tarkovsky says that childhood 'is the moment in human life that determines all his future, especially if future will be linked to art, inner life and psychological problems. In other words, childhood feeds all the creativity of the adult
period.' Composing this album I tried to focus on accidental symbols mostly born during my childhood, tried to study them not in detail but in their essence. The 'subjective sounds' of this album were born from these thoughts and considerations." To support this motive, the album artwork contains an impressionistic story from Andrea's childhood.
Simboli Accidentali is composed of 8 tracks, which have been recorded at Andrea's home between 2010 and 2012 and mastered by Miles Whittaker (Demdike Stare). The typically warm and encasing songs are mostly made with processed and unrecognizable guitars, an old and cheap organ and loops from ruined tapes and vinyls. The resulting sound can be found somewhere in the vast landscape spanned by the ambient/postrock of LABRADFORD and SLOWDIVE's Pygmalion era, the analogue and decayed loops of PHILIP JECK and WILLIAM BASINSKI and the cinematic feelings of STARS OF THE LID and DAVID LYNCH's drones. Time to explore."
Denovali - Soundcloud - Ambient Blog
"Sad smile on a old photo,
snow in the hands,
abandoned places,
the magic of the simple things,
the colours and the energy of the nature
a return travel on a desolate train,
take of conscience,
the past, the present, the future,
and the dreaming visions"
http://www.last.fm/music/Selaxon+Lutberg
Josh Maxey, guitar and compositions
Brian Charette, piano
Jeremy Noller, drums
John Tate, bass
. . . . . "Rhythm of the Sound Current features four piano and guitar duos with one of my favorite musicians, Brian Charette. Songs five through seven add Jeremy Noller (a frequent collaborator from the series of albums) on drums and it is the second album to feature John Tate on bass.
It is a live performance of a new suite of music, recorded at Brooklyn's IBeam. The music was written specifically for the live recording.
In the last two years we have recorded 10 albums. Rhythm... is release number eight. It's the first full length album of new material after completing a six albums in twelve months recording project in January of 2013. The series has had over twenty thousand downloads. The singles Incarnate and Part III were both number one downloads on AllAboutJazz.com. The music has been reviewed on AAJ, Birdistheworm.com (also interviewed on BitW) as well as reviewed on other blogs, and has received airplay on jazz radio. The music features some of NYCs best musicians and those closest to me."
- Josh Maxey.
pollen trio is
Evan Dorrian - drums
Marcus Whale - electronics + vocals
Austin Buckett - piano
- "The latest incarnation of Pollen Trio, now based in Sydney is comprised of Austin Buckett (piano, electronics), Evan Dorrian (drums) and Marcus Whale (computer, electronics and voice). The addition of Whale (Collarbones, Scissor Lock) sees the group moving into new territories with the introduction of voice alongside more electronic textures and manipulations. The music on their first EP together Wreck showcases a more hypnotically repetitive side to the group, while still retaining their unique sense of exploration."
- "Pollen Trio emerged out of Canberra, Australia in 2009 as a band looking to explore the possibilities of experimental improvised music. Their approach has been regularly compared with iconic Australian experimentalists The Necks, while also assimilating influences from left-field electronic music, avant-garde Jazz and contemporary classical music. The result is music that feels deconstructed, off kilter, hypnotic and immersive.
Since 2009, Pollen Trio has released music through cult Canberra label HellosQuare Recordings, including 3 limited edition CDRs, and their 2011debut album Roll Slow which featured Australian Jazz icon Miroslav Bukovsky on trumpet and percussion."
Wood & Wireb
- "Northern Loop is the end product of Paul Fretwell and Ambrose Fields collaborative composition project spanning five years of live performances at venues ranging from Kings Place in London, to churches in downtown New Orleans. Field and Fretwell first started collaborating in 2004. Jack Chorale, their first piece together, is an electroacoustic work that plays with genre and expectation, bringing in regular beats, fragmented rhythms, spectral sound transformations, harmony and noise. This piece triggered a long period of exploration where they began to focus on the very small details within sounds.
Northern Loop plays out over a continuous 80 minutes, working tiny loops of audio material into a spectral tapestry where small details are brought to the fore, revealing different facets of the evolving sound textures. The work has seven movements, although these flow into one another. The component sounds were generated from studio recordings of source materials using techniques of time stretching, convolution and mutation. These processes typically result in long, continuously evolving sounds. The composers then extracted short clips from these longer files to create their loops, finding interesting timbres and melodic fragments from within the larger whole. This magnification of small spectral details forms the central technique of Northern Loop, which charts a journey from darkness to light over a carefully-planned harmonic structure.
Fretwell and Fields motivation is described in the CD booklet: We decided to pick a single structural constraint one that is common to a variety of genres and well known the loop. The loop, historically, has been a tool for innovation, particularly in its use by pioneering minimal composers as Steve Reich in the 1960s. The ubiquity of the loop today however is unquestionable, but we feel that its widespread use in popular culture is often unchallenged. We would like to rescue the loop from entertainment-level apps, musical textural backgrounds and library background pads, and provide, through use of that structure, a listening experience of subtlety and delicacy. The result is a kind of self-similar, thoroughly stripped-down minimal music, but importantly our type of structure is not algorithmically generated: this is intuitive music, assembled through aural judgment and collaborative discussion.
Sargasso
- "Paul Fretwell is a composer of instrumental and electronic music. He began his compositional career at Chethams School of Music in Manchester, where he was awarded a full scholarship, and composed a range of pieces for small ensembles to full orchestra. He also took a strong interest in the performance of contemporary music and played many concerts of twentieth-century piano repertoire, including Stockhausen, Cage, and Takemitsu. He later attended the University of Birmingham, where he first encountered electroacoustic music, and composed a series of purely electronic works which were performed on the BEAST system (Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre) in concerts across the UK. . . . . .
- "Ambrose Field is a British Composer. His music is recorded on ECM (Munich, Germany) and Sargasso (London, UK), and broadcast by the BBC and other international networks (SVR, RTE, ORF). . . . .
- " Field spent his early years learning violin and organ, taking part in festivals and events as a performer. After taking an undergraduate degree at York, he went on to graduate studies in Music Education at University of Cambridge, and sung bass in the choir of Pembroke College. In 1994 he moved to London and, funded by the British Academy, received a PhD in Composition from City University. Field served as a board director of the UKs Sonic Arts Network (the forerunner to todays Sound and Music Organisation) in the late 1990s. . . . . .
Max Eilbacher - Red Anxiety Tracers
- "Max Eilbacher's Red Anxiety Tracers is the debut long player from the multi-talented Baltimore, Maryland stalwart . Elibacher has performed with various projects such as Matmos, Horse Lords, and the mind-altering underground Needle Gun aktionist unit. Despite years of busy touring and recording, Red Anxiety Tracers is the first vinyl artifact from this young mastermind.
Crafted over the course of a year, Tracers is a labyrinth of shapes and sounds which glide through a complex and arcane environment of found sounds and synthesis. An expertly crafted maze of deja-vu, audio hallucinations, and dislocating atmospheric forms an audio obstacle course for the listener. Complex editing techniques and sound structures recalls the works of J.D. Robb or Owl Records era Tod Dockstader albeit witha radically fresh perspective and educated hindsight.
"Red Anxiety Tracers" exhumes impeccable flow and careful attention to dynamic range, with it's surgical placement of sound events challenging the deep listening abilities of it's audience. Raw and manic tension overloads are cut with alien float and abstract aether transmissions with a constantly shifting palette of sounds spun from blasted modular electronics, vocoded terrestrial-speak, and glowing mellotron clouds. Eilbacher communicates a strange and beautiful dialect conceived through disciplined compositional structure and an intuitive improvisational style unparalleled in the current landscape. "Red Anxiety Tracers" breathes new life into modern electronic composition."
- Spectrum Spools / Editions Mego
Jah Wobble & Marconi Union - Anomic. Souncloud sampler here
Bass + ambience. Good stuff.
Voyage/Home by Off Land
Just released. Very nice new ambient album. $3 @ bandcamp.
Important Records: Our release schedule for the next six months:
Tomas Phillips and Kenneth Kirschner - Five Transpositions
- "SaD's second release is Tomas Phillips and Kenneth Kirschner's collaboration works.
Their sound is composed of playing acoustic instruments and computer processing etc .
This drone album is so sweet and It is a sad sound irresistibly.
You must taste to concentrate this sounds! Don't miss it!"
SaD Records
- "The music of composer Kenneth Kirschner (b. 1970) exists at the intersection of avant-garde classical composition and contemporary electronic music.
Bringing together acoustic instrumentation with state-of-the-art digital technology to create results not possible with either approach alone, Kirschner's work is characterized by intricately intersecting patterns, complex long-form development, a strong focus on harmony, and experimentation with techniques such as chance procedures, indeterminacy, and microtonality within a technological context.
An advocate of open source practices, Kirschner releases his music freely online through his website, kennethkirschner.com, which represents a complete and open archive of his published compositions dating back to the 1980s.
His work has also been released by labels such as Sub Rosa, 12k, Line, Sirr, Leerraum, and/OAR, and Room40."
http://soundcloud.com/five-transpositions/sets
Alexandre St-Onge - Viorupeeeeihean
- "VIORUPEEEEIHEAN is the translation on audio medias of multiple sound performances generated by various tactics of pragmatic approach of the ineffable that testify on the emergence of monstrous voices and hermetic entities through the creative process. VIORUPEEEEIHEAN is a heterogenous creature possessed by sound spectres. VIORUPEEEEIHEAN."
- Oral Records - music
- "Alexandre St-Onge is an audio artist, a musician/improviser (acoustic bass, bass, voice and electronics) and a sound performer. He has studied literature and philosophy and he is currently doing his PhD in art. He is fascinated by creativity as a pragmatic approach of the ineffable and he has released eight solo CDs: Ailleurs (&records), Entités (Oral), Joseph Carey Merrick (Oral), Mon animal est possible (Alien8 Recordings), Lamitié ou les rumeurs insoutenables du désir (Squint Fucker Press), kasi naigo (Squint Fucker Press), Une mâchoire et deux trous (Namskéio Records), Image/négation (Alien8 Recordings). He also plays in quite a few bands, including Et Sans, K.A.N.T.N.A.G.A.N.O., Klaxon Gueule, Pink Saliva, mineminemine, Shalabi Effect and undo. As a composer he has worked for interactive/mixed-media company kondition pluriel, as well as composing for artists such as Marie Brassard, Karine Denault, Lynda Gaudreau, Line Nault, Jérémie Niel, Maryse Poulin and Mariko Tanabe."
http://alexandrest-onge.com
More @ the Absence of Wax thread
- "With "Beautyfear" the German electronic musician Marsen Jules (CCO, 12k, Kompakt) delivers one of his most outstanding albums so far. Mastered by no one else than 12K-labelboss Taylor Deupree and with a coverpicture taken by the highly acclaimed photographer Erik Madigan Heck from NYC, the best conditions are laid for a lasting experience of abstract musical poetry and touching soundscapeism. Jules has never been this dense, subtile and fragile before. All twelve tracks on Beautyfear were created during a week stay in a theatre workspace on one of the hills of Lisbon. The panoramic view over the dusty city in spring seemed to have been the perfect surrounding for this cloudy soundscapes, which at some points remind of Angelo Bandalamentis work for David Lynchs "Mullholland Drive". Its an album on the fragility of beauty, as Jules describes briefly. Music that can neither be described as ambient music or experimental sound art, but more likely delivers a poetic approach to music, live and sound itself. With Beautyfear Marsen Jules makes a great start into 2014 and with the already announced cooperation with Swedish filmmaker Anders Weberg and an upcoming release of his works from a residence at the legendary GRM studios in Paris, one should definitely keep an eye on what is coming next."
- "The German electronic music composer Marsen Jules is a poet in sound. Focused on minimalism and abstraction he creates atmospheric and deeply emotional tunes. Since his CD debut on City Centre Offices he released 7 full length albums and several compilation tracks on labels as 12K, Kompakt, Miasmah and Dronarivm as well as his own imprint Oktaf Records. In 2009 he received an award as best album at the Qwartz Electronic Music Awards in Paris which was also combined with a a two week residence in the legendary "GRM Studios" at Radio France. Marsen Jules played allready on international festivals as Mutek Montreal, Tranzvizualia (Poland), Node (Italy), Urban Explorers (NL), La Rout du Rock (Paris), Picknick Electronique (Montreal). "
Excellent news from Cuneiform . . .
SONAR is
Stephan Thelen: guitar
Bernhard Wagner: guitar
Christian Kuntner: bass guitar
Manuel Pasquinelli: drums
- "Sonar is a progressive post-minimal band from Switzerland. Their name stands for SONic ARchitecture, a name which alludes to their intention of creating polymetric and highly structured avant-rock. Static Motion is their second full-length release, and their first release outside of Switzerland.
Fusing a rigorous minimal esthetic with the power of a rock band, every note and rhythm is precisely composed and performed, all of which are designed to move you from one rhythmic and / or harmonic tension to the next. Sonar is the last word in a rock band that works by building their music out of blocks consisting of slowly rising and unfolding musical tension. While you can hear elements of Sonar's sound in ensembles such as King Crimson, Glenn Branca, Present, etc, ultimately, no one else sounds like this and Static Motion is a powerful and extraordinary listen!
Just about everything is different with Sonar: the sound, the harmonies, the rhythms, the whole musical concept. Their instantly recognizable sound is partly due to the special tuning of the guitars and the bass guitar to tritones (C / F# / C / F# / C / F#), an interval sometimes called the "devil in music" ("diabolus in musica").
A large proportion of their music is played using only the natural harmonics of these two notes, thereby creating a harmonically ambiguous musical microcosmos that the group calls "tritone harmonics" and that avoids conventional musical cliches. The group's rhythms are also highly unconventional and usually consist of layered polyrhythms and isorhythms in odd metres.
Sonar's music is always played live without any sequencers, loops or computers, using a minimum amount of equipment: 2 guitars, a bass guitar, 3 small amplifiers and a basic drum kit. Nearly effect-free (with just a touch of reverb and tremolo allowed), the band does this to keep the music as clear, direct and immediate as possible. Sonar does not consider itself or operate as a collection of soloists; rather, their efforts are oriented towards collective efforts making the music more than the sum of the individual parts of the players."
- Cuneiform Records - music - http://sonar-band.bandcamp.com/
The Green Kingdom - Expanses
offthesky and radere - The Season of Lost Buttons
4 x 3" CDR, limited edition of 120, available for preorder now.
And my goodness, there are still a few copies left of The Door in the Wall book + CD (reviewed here) at offthesky's bandcamp page for less than I paid for it when it came out!
offthesky - La Bella Dea
- "First and foremost, Plateforme is a concept, a restrictive framework Laurent Perrier imposed on himself: to create an electroacoustic piece using solely a set of sound sources provided by a "collaborator." The first three fruits of this vast sonic transmutation project are presented on Plateforme #1, the seeds having been planted by Felix Kubin, Lawrence English, and Gianluca Becuzzi. "I gave them no specific directions. I simply asked them to send me raw stuff close to their sound style," explains Perrier. "Some sent me a lot of material, others very little."
These sources have become unrecognizable in the end, but they gave birth to widely different works that retain something of the spirit of their originator: "Felix Kubin" is fanciful and kaleidoscopic; "Lawrence English," ethereal, stretches out across the listening space; and "Gianluca Becuzzi" feels nervous, jittery, and is full of glitchy sounds sent on knotty trajectories.
Laurent Perrier ranks among the most respected members of the French electronic music scene. His name is associated to the aliases Zonk't, Pylône, Heal, Cape Fear, and LP, and with the Odd Size label, an adventure that lasted a decade. His music art ranges from minimal techno to musique concrète, by way of several other states."
Baskaru - Soundcloud - Bandcamp
- "From his industrial beginnings in Nox to his record industry adventures with the store/label Odd Size, from the electronica/breakbeat temptations of Cape Fear to the slow maturation of his Zonk't project, Laurent Perrier has consistently pushed his soundworld toward ever-more singular pastures. His fundamental search for the sensuality in the grain of sound, in its most powerful and disquieting eccentricities, finally led him to the fringes of artistic production, where genre barriers break down to let total, transversal art roam free. Perrier gradually invested the fields of video art, then mostly dance and theatre, working with Odile Duboc, Pietragalla, Alban Richard, Pedro Pauwels, Les Ballets de l'Europe/Jean-Charles Gil, Christian Bourigault, Philippe Ulysse, Toufik o.i, Laurence Wagner, Thomas Lebrun, Cécile Loyer and Yann Lheureux. His recent endeavours saw him cross into video installation and contemporary art as he worked on projects by Dominik Barnier for Marseille 2013.
Nowadays, he plays electronic music concerts under various aliases (Zonk't, Pylône, Heal, Cape Fear, LP), accompanied by his own video works.
The music Perrier develops in real time is abstracted, both organic and cerebral. It draws a vacant land pervious to density, highlighting, and sound range. His music distillates an extremely minimal "dubby" line, a rather cold ambience that ties capricious electronic tones up in an ascetic yet comfortable corset, chassés-croisés obeying to a complex and sophisticated structure. Near-surgical precision confronted to an environment yet ever-changing through playful games of modulation. This way, he manages to capture listeners and take them on a long hypnotic journey that leads to dreamier tracks. His video works develop in perfect synergy with sound. He often borrows material from dance films or abstract images whose components, colours and lighting he transforms.
Perrier has also been approached by Peugeot/Citröen to work as sound designer on their future electric cars."
Leyland Kirby - Breaks My Heart Each Time
- "R&S sister label Apollo are very proud to announce a four-track EP from James Leyland Kirby. Mastermind behind arch sonic provocateurs V/Vm as well as the more contemplative The Caretaker and The Stranger, Kirby has been responsible for some of the most unique, subversive and moving electronic music of the past two decades. Following a quiet 2012 and 2013, the EP marks both his Apollo debut and his first release since 2011 under the Leyland Kirby alias - an outlet for his most personal and reflective work.
Like 2011's acclaimed Intrigue & Stuff series, its four tracks flit between moods, from gorgeous, skin-prickling surges of ambience to cryptic rhythms and intricate, jazzy techno. As with all of his Leyland Kirby music, they're played in a manner so tactile and reflexive as to seem like direct reflections of his thoughts and memories. The melancholic drift of 'Breaks My Heart Each Time' builds to an dense, harrowingly beautiful climax, while 'Last Ditch Legacy' strafes a watery beat with blast upon blast of overdriven fuzz. 'Diminishing Emotion' strips away everything save soft synthlines that trace glowing arcs through an otherwise silent world."
Piccadilly Records
Apollo Records - http://soundcloud.com/leylandkirby
Lastfm:
Kevin Drumm - Shut In
- 'Shut In' is a "Beautiful piece of Easy Listening for Cabin Fever courtesy of Kevin Drumm" says Editions Mego, and who are we to argue? It yields some of the inimitable artist's most beautiful, oneiric sounds since his immense 'Imperial Distortion' album for Hospital Productions; in fact, we wouldn't be surprised if we were told it came from those same sessions. One singular piece unfolds for just over 30 minutes across two sides, slowly radiating a sort of soothing harmonic balm with an underlying sense of ecclesiastical grandness and purpose rooted in his Black Metal faith. Quite simply, this is Kevin Drumm at his most beautiful and transcendent. Highest recommendations to his fans and also followers of Eliane Radigue, Phill Niblock, La Monte Young."
- Boomkat
Editions Mego
Previously unreleased tracks and mixes recorded between 1992 and 1994.
music