Steven Brown saxophones, clarinet, piano, keyboards
Peter Principle bass guitar
Blaine L. Reininger violin, guitar, laptop, voice, keyboards
Luc van Lieshout trumpet, fluegelhorn, harmonica, keyboards
- "The first new release in 5 years by the legendary US band consists of original music written and recorded in 2011 at the instigation of French film festival L'Etrange Festival, as a new score for the eponymous, scandalous cult film from 1971, directed by James Bidgood. Tuxedomoon performed this soundtrack during a screening of the film in Sept 2011 in Paris.
This 53-minute opus ranks amongs their best instrumental suites ever, and will be released in a limited edition of 1000 copies exclusively on vinyl and digital !"
- Crammed Discs http://www.tuxedomoon.co/
- "Cult legends Tuxedomoon are a welcome exception in today's over-formatted musical world.
Born in 1977, in the heady atmosphere of San Franciscos postpunk golden age, the band soon became a central part of New York's No Wave scene (as documented in the recent "Downtown 81" film, centered around Jean Michel Basquiat and featuring performances by Blondie, James Chance, DNA and Tuxedomoon). "No Tears", their 2nd single (1979), has remained an electro punk club classic to this day. The band went on to sign to The Residents' Ralph Records, and released two seminal albums, "Half Mute" (1980) and "Desire" (1981) which soon got them overseas exposure.
Fleeing Reagan's America, Tuxedomoon moved to Europe in the early '80s, and stayed there throughout the decade. Although their ability to crystallize a certain dark and romantic zeitgeist quickly turned them into one of the most influential bands around, their music transcended all genres and included impossibly wide parameters rock, electronics, minimal music, classical, jazz, Gypsy music and pop were all simultaneously consumed and transmutated into a quasi-prescient blend.
After releasing a string of albums on CramBoy (the imprint they set up with Brussels-based label Crammed Discs), the band stopped recording together in 1988, and the various members pursued solo careers, becoming as disparate geographically as sonically, with Steven Brown (vocals, keyboard & saxophone) living in Mexico, Peter Principle (bass, electronics) in New York, Blaine L. Reininger (vocals, violin, guitar) in Greece, and Luc Van Lieshout (trumpet) & Bruce Geduldig (films/visuals) in Brussels.
Many years later, Tuxedomoon got back together to write and record the awesome "Cabin In The Sky" album (2004), which found them in absolute top form, as romantic, rebellious and boundlessly imaginative as they ever were. "Cabin" featured contributions by a carefully hand-picked selection of guests such as Tarwater, Tortoise's John McEntire, Nouvelle Vague's Marc Collin and DJ Hell.
Shortly after finishing "Cabin In The Sky", Tuxedomoon traveled back to San Francisco, the band's birthplace, in order to start writing material for their next album. But the local atmosphere had unexpected effects on them, and drove them to record a series of "spontaneous compositions" (as Mingus would have put it) instead, which soon formed the basis of a side project entitled "Bardo Hotel Soundtrack" loosely connected to Brion Gysins novel The Bardo Hotel set in the Paris hotel where he and William Burroughs invented the radical cut-up/fold-in technique.
Both "Cabin " and "Bardo Hotel " were warmly welcomed, and a wildly eclectic array of references sprang from the pens of reviewers trying to describe Tuxedomoon's music (Charles Ives, Radiohead, Philip Glass, Miles Davis, German electronica, Tom Waits, John Cage, Kurt Weill, Tortoise, Can ).
If anything, these two recent albums revealed that Tuxedomoon were never connected to a particular period: they had become '80s cult figures simply because that's the period in which they happened to develop and rise to fame but the band have always been evolving in their own space, and their music is as relevant and fresh today as it was then. An impression to be further strengthened by their latest album "Vapour Trails" (2007), which appealed equally to fans of contemporary cutting-edge avant-rock, electronica and jazz."
- Crammed Discs
Massive new double CD from Loren Dent. Over 3 years in the making, Anthropology Vols. 2 & 3 continues from Anthropology Vol. 1 CD (INFX 034) and the Anthropology Extras (INFX 032 FD). Epic sweeping ambience with layered drones punctuated by piano interludes. Anthropology Vols. 2 & 3 features 25 tracks and over 140 minutes of all new material.
ETA, personally, this one is not grabbing me as much as his earlier Anthropology Volume 1 did.
Machinefabriek - Stillness Soundtracks
Out June 16 on Glacial Movements
When Esther Kokmeijer approached me with the idea of making the scores for a series of short films she was working on, I didn't hesitate. Having seen a lot of her photography, I immediately knew how inspiring the footage she shot in Antarctica and Greenland would be. And this expectation proved to be correct. In quite a short period (we had set a deadline, to show the result at an open studio date) we swapped sketches and edits of the videos and audio, until the combinations felt perfect.
Esoteric Antenna is an imprint dedicated to releasing brand new albums of the best Progressive and Classic Rock by both established artists and also new emerging acts. The label came into being in March 2012 with the expanded release of the album 'Diving Bell' by Oxford band Sanguine Hum.
- "Esoteric Antenna is proud to announce the release of the eagerly awaited new studio album by the legendary JACK BRUCE, one of the greatest popular musicians Britain has ever produced. A supremely talented instrumentalist and vocalist, eminently respected by his peers, Jacks pioneering bass playing style has influenced successive generations of bassists, including such luminaries as Paul McCartney, Jaco Pastorius and Sting, alongside more contemporary musicians such as Flea of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. He is also the possessor of one of the most powerful voices in modern music and a composer of some of the most original and influential music of the past forty-five years. As a songwriter he has written some of popular musics enduring classics such as Sunshine of Your Love, White Room, I Feel Free and Theme from an Imaginary Western.
"Silver Rails is Jacks first studio album in ten years, recorded at the world famous Abbey Road studios.Produced by Rob Cass, "Silver Rails is a splendid collection of carefully crafted songs written in partnership with lyricists Pete Brown, Kip Hanrahan and Margrit Seyffer. He is joined on the album by a host of celebrated instrumentalists including Phil Manzanera, Robin Trower, Bernie Marsden, Uli Jon Roth, John Medeski, Malcolm Bruce and Cindy Blackman Santana. "Silver Rails is the next chapter in the recorded legacy of one of popular musics most respected innovators." http://www.cherryred.co.uk/shopexd.asp?id=4540 http://www.jackbruce.com
Seismology sees the soaring romanticism of Olan Mill combined with the mind-bending noise of Keung Mandelbrot. Between them they have graced labels such as Highpoint Lowlife, Preservation, Facture and Serein and shared a stage with the likes of Svarte Greiner, Kemper Norton, Simon Scott and Isan. In his solo work, Keung Mandelbrot focuses on experiments in guitar manipulation, using effects pedals and samplers to create intense soundscapes that take the listener from immersive drones to twitchy static. Olan Mill is well known for his expansive take on modern classical and incorporates strings, woodwind, piano and vocals alongside his processed guitar.
- Jay ! - Richie Hawtin as brilliant as always . . .
- "Plastikman, aka Richie Hawtin, recorded EX at the Guggenheim, New Yorks iconic art museum. This very special performance was at the invitation of influential Belgium fashion designer and artistic director at Dior, Raf Simons, for the Guggenheims annual fundraiser, performed around a specially constructed LED obelisk.
Richie Hawtin explains, I knew that Raf was a long time Plastikman fan so by accepting his offer to perform at the Dior event at the Guggenheim I knew Id set myself up to a huge challenge. Although Raf was happy to have the already complete Plastikman Live 1.5 show, I locked myself away in a series of intense studio sessions and quickly recorded enough new material for the performance and realized I might also have enough for a complete new album. The music came out of me effortlessly as I was very inspired by the opportunity to play in this beautiful architectural space renowned more for art than music. The location also allowed me to step far away from the dancefloor, giving me a huge amount of freedom to EXplore any sonic ideas that I had. Art, music, architecture, painting, sculpture these mediums are supposed to live together. Mute Records Soundcloud - http://plastikman.com/
Excellent news from Miasmah: Shivers - Shivers - "Shivers is the trio of Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek), Gareth Davis and Leo Fabriek, who join forces to conjure up a surreal album of parasitic intimacy and intensity. Though the three have played and recorded together in various combinations, this Miasmah release marks their first output as Shivers and manages to pull out quite a few surprises.
Named after David Cronenberg's first film, Shivers the album readily adopts this concept of body horror, the fear of bodily transformation and infection--a theory and technique that Cronenberg brilliantly captures with his first film and many thereafter. An aural invader immediately travels through your ears into your body, to infiltrate your soul with gorey supernatural sci-fi.
Crawling through the thick sludge of Ash and into the chaotic Otomo, you’re treated with what sounds like a beyond-the-grave collaboration of Albert Ayler with Alva Noto producing the soundtrack to Transformers. From entering Rabid, a chorus of intense destructive voices blindfolded leads you to an abandoned spot amidst a buzz of florescent lights. Here you're abducted into a new life hundreds of years in the future, moving you through stumbling jazz, John Carpenter styled themes, repeating organ-beats, and Moroccan doom. The psychological and physical combine to make Shivers a collective understanding of the grotesque, fascinating, and personal. You might not be the same." - Miasmah @ Soundcloud - And the mindblowing "Replicant" track @ Soundcloud http://shiversband.com/ - Machinefabriek.nu with reviews
- "When Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek) and I first talked about the L/M/R/W release ‘Drifts’, I was soon made aware of his work with the enormously talented clarinetist Gareth Davis. Following on from their 3? releases of 'Soundlines' and 'Ghost Lanes', 'Drape' was released on Home Normal in 2010. This was followed up with the superb record with Romke and Jan Kleefstra 'Tongerswel' in 2011. Gareth is also a member of the group The Whalers Collective (with Ian Hawgood, Rie Mitsutake, Ryo Nakata, and Felicia Atkinson). Their debut will be released on KOMU at the end of September 2013. He is also involved with the soon to be released album from Birdt, 'Place For One Day', due out on Home Normal in October 2013. Finally, his group Mere with Leo Fabriek and Thomas Cruijsen will release their second album ('Mere II') towards the end of 2013.
Here's a little more information about Gareth Davis and his love of coffee:
Gareth Davis plays various clarinets. He also partakes regularly in the consumption of coffee, in particular, that which is brewed by forcing hot water, under pressure, through finally ground beans. Espresso /es?pres.??/. Either single origin or a few signature blends, stalwart companions, that, year in year out, retain a solidity by clinging to their name. Changing yes, but temperamental no. Ascaso stepless burr grinder. La Pavoni Europicola machine which, on occasion, has been known as the chrome peacock.
New from the french Clapping Music Label (Egyptology, Yeti Lane etc.) - An album packed with pleasant surprises !
Mermonte - Audiorama Musicians : Ghislain Fracapane, Julien Lemmonier, Mathieu Fisson, Matthieu Noblet, Astrid Radigue, Régis Rollant, Eric Hardy, Eléonore James, Charlotte Mérand, Jeanne Lugue, Pierre Marais, Snaevar Njall Alberton, Jérôme Bessout, Clément Lemennicier, Paul Lugue, Gaëlle Lonongo, Matthieu Prual, Antoine Tharreau, Morgane Haudemont, Benjamin Jarry, Robert Fracapane, Gaël Levionnois, Stanislas Chomel.
- "Mermonte was created a few years ago in the mind of the composer and multi-instrumentalist Ghislain Fracapane. He wanted to write pop songs inspired by the great artists of previous generations (The Beatles, Jim O’ Rourke, Gastr Del Sol, The Beach Boys, The Cure, Steve Reich, Tortoise) as well as the contemporary scene (Efterklang, Sufjan Stevens, The Redneck Manifesto). With help from his network of friends and musicians in Rennes, France, the young thirtysomething began to record his first album in 2011. He performed almost all of the instruments himself (voices, guitars, bass, glockenspiel, drums, percussions, trumpet, keyboards). But Mermonte was not destined to remain the project of a single man in a studio and quite soon, the question of how to reproduce these complex symphonies on stage emerged. The quality of the compositions and the arrangements of Ghislain attracted the interest of his musician friends. Ten instrumentalists, coming from the most diverse disciplines (from classical music to death metal, as well as punk rock and even gospel), began to rehearse at the beginning of 2012 for a first concert at the Jardin Moderne (Rennes). Not only friends were present at the concert, but also most of music professionals of the area, having heard of this new exceptional band. The concert was a success and word of mouth, amplified by social networks, soon led to an increasing buzz about the project. A series of concerts followed, the growing public were enthusiastic, and the band won the hotly contested awards “Inrocks Lab” and the “Tremplin des Jeunes Charrues” in 2012; the blogosphere became excited, and the release of the first album soberly entitled Mermonte (Hiphiphip Records/ Les Disques Normal) brought critical acclaim from the media (Magic, France Inter, FIP, and Inrockuptibles, …). In this first work, Ghislain Fracapane and Mermonte invite the listener to explore the shores of a sparkling melodic pop, with modern and sophisticated arrangements, complex but accessible. This is a fairy tale journey into an intriguing and beautiful universe. A mix of French and English, post-rock and instrumental pop, repetitive music and pastoral folk song, somewhere between Saint-Malo, London and Chicago, right in the middle of the ocean as a matter of fact, with the horizon clear as far as the eye can see. But it will take more that this growing success to calm the creative enthusiasm of Ghislain Fracapane and his crew. The man is not the kind to rest on his laurels, so he is already getting down to work writing new songs. New compositions are taking form and the first demos of what will become the second album of Mermonte are being recorded on tour or at home, between concerts. The demands of stage performance are having a considerable influence on these pieces, and Ghislain’s rising fame is giving him the confidence to experiment with the sounds. The instrumentation has become even more varied with clarinets, flutes, saxophones, vibraphones, xylophones and timpani all invited to join the party. The new recordings showcase the creative excitement of Mermonte, the mixing and the production values are generous and all encompassing. We can hear the influence of Can, Alice Coltrane, the records of the cutting edge label Touch, but also the punk and the catchy pop of Block Party. The album is dedicated to Ghislain’s friends, who influenced him in music and in other aspects of his life. Songs bear the names of each one of them. All this will be revealed in May, with the release on the Parisian Record label Clapping Music (Orval Carlos Sibelius, Yeti Lane, Ramona Cordova), an album which is already one of the most awaited albums of the year. Mermonte have every intention of fulfilling these expectations." €music - http://mermonte.bandcamp.com/ - https://soundcloud.com/mermonte
Editions Mego news: Edvard Graham Lewis - All Over - - "Editions Mego is proud to present the first recordings by Edvard Graham Lewis released this century. Having made his name in legendary punk/experimental outfits Wire, Dome and He Said Lewis has developed an exceptional voice with ceaseless exploration of a wide variety of musical forms. 'All Over' is a song based album that resides amongst the cracks between narrative and song, sound and music. Cloaked in an atmosphere of beauty and paranoia 'All Over' conjures the spirit of Wire's experimental pop trajectory whilst simultaneously exploring a multitude of sonic possibilities. Gritty mechanical operations support Lewis' wry human observations in a uniquely disturbing melange of punk, industrial, techno and pop. A dream logic plays throughout 'All Over' courtesy of Lewis' odd lyrical content being set with all manner of disorientating sound and rhythm. All tracks were written and composed between 2003-13 in parallel with the works included on ‘All Under’. Several contributors generously collaborated at distance from LA, Japan, Scotland, Italy, Germany, UK and Sweden furthering this catchy excursion into the unstable grid of the 21st Century. 'All Over' is a major amalgamation of music, media, man and mind." - Editions Mego - Soundcloud - Bandcamp Brainwashed review
- "Edvard Graham Lewis, or Graham Lewis (born Edward Graham Lewis, 22 February 1953), is an English musician currently living in Uppsala, Sweden.
Lewis is the bassist with punk rock/post-punk band Wire, a band formed in 1976. On Wire’s first studio album Graham Lewis was credited as Lewis; he continued to be known by this abbreviation; however some subsequent record credits give his full name.
He worked on various other music projects, usually of a more electronic and experimental nature, such as Dome (with fellow Wire member B.C. Gilbert), Duet Emmo (with B.C. Gilbert and Daniel Miller), P’o, Kluba Cupol, Ocsid (with Jean-Louis Huhta), Where Everything Falls Out (with Kenneth Cosimo and Anna Livia Löwendahl-Atomic), He Said Omala, and Halo. His solo projects have been He Said and Hox.
Graham studied textiles at Middlesex Polytechnic in London in the early seventies. He later switched to fashion but formed the band before he was able to have a substantial career in this world. The time at art school was very influential on his later music as he was able to go and see a range of bands (usually pub bands) including Kilburn And The High Roads, Ramones, Dr Feelgood etc." - Last.fm
- and here's part two of this unique and astonishingly brilliant album that are destined to become one of the milestones of 2014: Edvard Graham Lewis - All Under Soundcloud - Bandcamp
- "The companion album, All Under, takes a far more abstract direction in comparison, for the first half dropping the beats and vocals for dissonant electronic textures and odd effects in an overall sound that fits well with the more difficult Dome moments with Bruce Gilbert. "All Under (Film Score)" drifts from an industrial scrape to a modular synth twinkle into pure DSP crunch in just under six minutes; all the more impressive considering it was recorded live with just a sampler and effects. The "All Under (Installation Loop)" version is significantly longer and more skeletal, at first hollow and drifting, then mixed with sharper feedback and pinging electronics that upset things nicely.
Graham takes the remaining half of the album in even odder directions. "The Eel Wheeled" is a spoken word piece: a surrealist tale of espionage backed by Lewis' heavy mangling of a standard sound effects library, with a second half that progressively becomes unhinged in the most brilliant way. The lengthy "No Show Godot" has some hints of the sound that defined All Over, but in a sprawling, 18 plus minute expanse. Initially opening as drifting ambient piece with a slight acerbic edge to it, it becomes more abrasive via stuttering passages of noise that ends up locking into an oddly skewed rhythmic structure. This moves into an overt, electronic drum circle type pounding and mostly untreated vocals.
Given the length of time since the last full-fledged solo release from Graham Lewis, I had high expectations for All Under/All Over. Considering the fact they were recorded over the past decade, it makes sense that these two cover the gamut of his previous styles as a series of ideas and snippets that benefited from the time Lewis took to polish and expand. With one half encompassing dissonant and experimental electronic music that has a uniquely powerful penchant for pop hooks and memorable vocals, and the other hinting back to his earliest experiments with music and noise, the two albums are inseparable sides of the same coin. They both also clearly show that nearly 40 years into his career, Graham Lewis is an artist unlike any other in the quality and uniqueness of his work." Creaig Dunton @ Brainwashed
I almost forgot about this brilliant album, out on Cuneiform in january 2013 and on Emusic in november 2013, but better late than never:
Guapo is all about a strain of prog you dont take home to mom. When early prog was heavy, it was heavier than Sabbath. Put your head
around a much cleaner Lightening Bolt (or Ruins and This Heat), then add a touch of Meshuggahs histrionics for the Guapo agenda.
Magnet
The band currently comprises drummer and founding member David J. Smith with mainstays Kavus Torabi (Cardiacs, Knifeworld) on guitar and James Sedwards (Nøght) on bass, joined by recent addition Emmett Elvin (Chrome Hoof, Knifeworld) on keyboards.
-"Prepare yourself for an experience thats simultaneously otherworldly and assaultive. On paper, the music of Guapo reads like a riddle the British quartets sound is based around ideas like controlled chaos, atonal harmony, uplifting darkness, and beautiful destruction. Nothing about the band or their work seems to adhere to even the most open-minded set of preconceptions about the meaning of umbrella terms like rock, or progressive, or even experimental. But when you abandon the need to reconcile any of these concepts with each other, and simply let their latest album, History of the Visitation, speak for itself, everything becomes radiantly clear.
History of the Visitation is the ninth album from the forward-looking foursome. This album finds them following through on the kind of epic constructions that sprung forth from their albums like Five Suns and Black Oni.
The record is dominated by the 26-minute tour de force The Pilman Radiant, offset only by the 11-minute journey Tremors from the Future and the considerably more compact sonic sculpture known as Complex #7. Bandcamp with live recordings and free radio edit
- "Guapo is a British trio that plays an intense music that straddles the boundaries of progressive, noise, minimalism and avant-rock. Their sound has been compared to such artists as Magma, Boredoms, King Crimson, Univers Zero, This Heat, Ruins, Sun Ra and Terry Riley. As Sound Projector put it, "Guapo come on like all the hellhounds of Magma, Eskaton and Ruins were after them...on a par with Magmas Kohntarkosz or Univers Zeros Ceux Du Dehors". Cuneiform Records - http://www.guapo.co.uk
As one might expect from the artists this is understated, precise, suggestive ambient music. Nicely done, suspect it will grow on me. One small complaint: it's 33 minutes long and priced at $6.99, which combined with its minimal approach may make it one for the committed fan, but on first listen I think it was worth getting.
Renaldo M - Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Glockenspiel, Flute, Harmonica, Percussion, Vocals, Voice
Ted The Loaf - Guitar, Lead Guitar, Loops, Clarinet, Voice
- "So folks.... after the deluxe editions of "Struve & Sneff" and "Songs For Swinging Larvae" we bring you the holy grail for RATL enthusiasts. The first ever release of the 1978 recordings: the "Tap Dancing In Slush" EP and the "Behind Closed Curtains" LP. Both were recorded as Plimsollline, a short-lived entity that just predated the adoption of Renaldo and the Loaf as the band's title. Arguably, the spirit of what would become RATL is very evident in this work but be prepared for some surprises as well. We know this is already more than enough to whet your appetites, but being generous we are giving you even more: a full CD of recordings entitlted "Rotcodism". These contain the earliest recordings by Renaldo & The Loaf and show a totally unknown side of the band."
- Klanggallerie
- "Renaldo & the Loaf was a musical duo from Portsmouth, England, active in the late seventies and most of the eighties, consisting of a pathologist (David Janssen or Ted The Loaf) and an architect (Brian Poole or Renaldo Malpractice, most often simply Renaldo M).
Of all the groups that The Residents signed to their Ralph Records, English duo Renaldo & the Loaf were the closest to their label heads in sound. Twisted, high-pitched vocals, child-like melodies, an atmosphere of menace and unease with a stripped-down approach to instrumentation characterised their output.
By their own assertion, they achieved their unique sound in part by striving to get unnatural synthesizer-like sounds using only what instruments they had available (acoustic ones.) To that end they routinely used muffled and de-tuned instruments, and often to striking effect, tape loops/manipulation. The two released four full-length albums, one collection, various songs on compilation albums, and several self-produced demos. They were discovered by The Residents when Brian dropped off a tape at Ralph Records headquarters in San Francisco, during a visit to the US. After being signed to Ralph, they collaborated with The Residents on Title in Limbo.
By 1989, the collaboration had lost its steam, and the duo disbanded after recording a sea shanty, Haul On The Bowline, which appeared only on a Ralph various artists release. Brian Poole (Renaldo) contributed to sporadic recordings in the 1990s. In 2006 upon the launch of the new Renaldo & the Loaf web site, the duo were reunited for the first time in the better part of two decades." Last.fm - http://www.renaldoloaf.com/ - More about RATL
New Robert Plant! "Comes out on Sept. 9 on a new label for Plant, Nonesuch. In a press release, he calls it "a celebratory record, powerful, gritty, African, Trance meets Zep."" - Quote from NPR's All Songs Considered, where you can stream one of the songs from the album.
Notable because Wil Bolton is excellent, slightly puzzling because the label page says it releases August 15 and Wil Bolton's own website, which is usually updated pretty regularly, does not even mention it yet (and it's not on his bandcamp page), but you can already buy it on emusic/Amazon etc where it says it was released in February. But I am not seeing reviews in the places where I might expect them. Buying it now anyhow. Album preview here.
Some recent additions to the raster-noton catalog that seem worth a listen if you like raster's brand of stark technological austerity:
Kangding Ray - Solens Arc
Cold, cold techno with ambient passages.
The synthesisers often sound like they've been taken out of a Vangelis soundtrack and played in a cathedral. The gritty rhythms, meanwhile, are deconstructed into sculptures of static. The tracks themselves act as individual scenes, ones that we're led through with subtle motions and variations. Vague motifs recur throughout, tying each part of the album together. - RA Reviews
Ryoji Ikeda - Supercodex
For those who want to hear what their hard drive is singing while that stuff that sounds more like music is playing over the top of it.
In amongst the squared-off hums and quantum beeps is a strong affinity with dance music: occasional bursts of regular pulse, euphoric blasts of low frequencies, deliberately structured escalations into climactic activity. But here its stripped of musical flab and reduced to pure sensation each sound is a meticulous compound of specific frequencies, designed to both integrate seamlessly with the surrounding noises and maximise visceral impact. - Attn: Magazine
Ryoka - Is (is superpowered)
Post-human meets quirky.
Advanced electronica with rhythmic heft from Japan's Kyoka, co-produced and refined by Robert Lippok and Frank Bretschneider for her debut Raster-Noton album. ...12 constructions touching on techno-pop, glitch and dub in a unique, visceral style. Kyoka babbles indecipherable, playfully cut-up vocals like some demented AI pop sprite against complex, knotted grooves dissolving techno, dancehall, wavey electro and power electronics in urgent, stylish new forms. - Boomkat
News from Aagoo Records REV. Lab series.
- where Murcof & Philippe Petit is one of them . . .
- The fourth entry in the REV. Lab series is Deison/Mingle Everything Collapse[d].
North-east Italy, late summer 2013: Cristiano Deison and Andrea Gastaldello (aka Mingle) meet online and begin to lay the foundations for what will be their first project together. Out of this comes Everything Collapse[d], an album centred around melancholy and desolation; a concept that does not leave much hope, forcing you to look within yourself. A foreign body coming from far away: sidereal matter which is about to implode; an object that has reached its limit. And everything collapses, swallowed up by itself.
Recorded and produced between Mingle's Tower Home Studio and Deison's 1st Floor Studio, Everything Collapse[d] is a perfect union of our two sounds: drones, field recordings and processed loops intermingled with disturbed rhythms, melancholy harmonies and piano chimes. A gloomy and dirty electronic sound that turns into an extremely evocative score which is full of pathos. A precise, precious and cosmic album... One Million Parsec From Your Sun.
REV. LAB.
In 2013 Bas Mantel began curating and designing the REV. Lab. series in collaboration with Aagoo Records -Alec Dartley-. The sound and tone of the label finds its inspiration in electronic, ambient, experimental, cinematic and abstract sound scapes/compositions. This series investigates the relation between the graphic translation of the music and its physical output
Recorded and mixed by Andrea Gastaldello e Cristiano Deison. Mastered by Simon Balestrazzi.
Produced by Andrea Gastaldello, Cristiano Deison and Aagoo / Rev. Lab. Graphic design: Bas Mantel.
Daniele Santagiuliana vocals on "Failure" by Swans.
- http://www.deison.net - http://revlaboratories.com/ - Soundcloud
If you like Berlin school analog synthesizer music, Arc are good at it. Ian Boddy releases a lot in this genre under his own name, and Mark Shreeve is in Redshift, who are also no slouches at this stuff.
Umbra (DiN45) is a recording from their headline performance at the E-Live festival in Oirschot, the Netherlands on 19th October 2013. ... The set constantly evolves in an organic fashion from the traditional sequencing grooves of the opening track Arcadia through to the powerhouse encore track Cherry Bomb. The second piece, Proximo Obscuro, hearkens back to the classic, simple grooves of early Berlin style sequencing. Umbra & Panthera have a darker, more gothic feel and bookend the more delicate sequencing of Autostratus.
- "Walking a line between what has passed and what is yet to come, seminal trio To Rococo Rot have carved an identifiable niche for themselves, and one which has crossed a variety of styles; neither wholly in the realms of ambient or pure electronics. The late 1990s albums of Veiculo and The Amateur View brought their fundamental and innovative landscapes of sound to the fore, whilst 2001s collaboration with I-Sound, Music is a Hungry Ghost, showed their ability to blend disparate influences into something wonderfully cohesive. Remixed by Four Tet and Daniel Miller and heralded by the likes of Modeselektor, their influence extends as far as their unique approach deserves.
Returning to Berlin-based label City Slang in 2014 for their first full-length since 2010s Speculation (released on Domino) and their eighth album in total, Instrument is a landmark record for the group. The serenely soft melodies of No Wave pioneer Arto Lindsay adorn three tracks (Many Descriptions, Classify and The Longest Escalator in the World), offering up a new perspective. As much a progression as a refresher course for older material, it is arguably their most refined record so far.
The music of brothers Robert and Ronald Lippok and Stefan Schneider has always existed in its own world. Schneiders prominent and melodic bass lines sit between drums, guitar, synths and peripheral electronics from the Lippok brothers. The amount of depth is vast; the invitation is nevertheless there to explore the complex levels beyond the basic instrumental foundations, or to simply let the tide of sound wash over and envelope you.
There is a degree of open-endedness in the albums title. Instrument is not only referred to in its musical sense but also conceptually. We dont see the title as only a musical instrument but instrument as a tool to work on your creation as an expansion of yourself. Says Robert Lippok. Instrument is also something between you and the gegenstand, the thing you interact with.
After eight records without a bona fide, original To Rococo Rot song, the band have made their first forays into non-instrumental music. The question of why now? is a pertinent one. Lippok explains that it was as much down to happenstance as anything else. I dont know how it came but it came quite naturally. A lot of our music people say is longing for vocals, he says. We never felt like that but when we were in the rehearsal room and played the stuff we could hear these voices. Maybe because there were about 40 old pianos and when we played, all the strings of the pianos resonated. That made us feel that there should be a new and another element in this music. There was no discussion about it.
The decision to recruit Lindsay was both swift and natural. He was there the first time the trio played New York, and admired what Lippok calls the unique handmade minimalism they were practising in those days. More recently Lindsay wrote a lengthy feature in Germanys Electronic Beats about the City Slang re-issues of Veiculo, The Amateur View and Music is a Hungry Ghost. In it he states admiration for their non-musicians way of making music, in particular the way a simple idea is manipulated to a variety of ends. Once the band read the article, the decision to ask Lindsay was inevitable. We thought this is a sign from god or somewhere. He was totally into the idea from the first second on, Lippok says. The admiration and respect cuts both ways. I really like the combination of the way he plays the guitar and the beauty of his voice. Its magic how these two worlds come together, says Lippok.
The end result exceeded expectations absolutely. His way of both composing and singing melodies, all created from scratch in the studio, was especially impressive, Lippok says: They are so unique and fit so well with the sound structure that we build. The shared experimental philosophy of Lindsay and To Rococo Rot is what makes Instrument such a fascinating and exciting prospect. The Americans vocal decorations add new colour to the varied textures and sketches in which they feature.
Lindsays laid-back and unhurried words lend themselves perfectly to the aesthetic of To Rococo Rot whilst pulling them through to an unfamiliar and occasionally pop-based space. Though melodies have always been a big part of their sound, the inclusion of a human voice is a distinctive modification. It sits perfectly within the warm timbres created by Lippok, Lippok and Schneider.
The pulsing Many Descriptions is a bold opening statement; with Lindsays breezy vocals the focal point. Its position in being the opener was a must, Lippok says. We wanted to make clear that something is different. The difference this time round is not just noticeable, but also profound. Yet, Instrument is still unmistakably To Rococo Rot; with recognisable complex landscapes of sound and structure that they have practised and made their own.
The appeal of To Rococo Rot lies not only in their music but also their ethos, from the writing process to the finished record. An often rudimentary and uncomplicated approach is reflected in their overall world view. Weve been nomads through all these years weve never had a studio, weve never had a rehearsal space, we hardly own instruments just the basic stuff. Stefan lives in Dusseldorf, so we dont see each other very often. This maybe keeps things fresh and exciting.
Arto Lindsay is more than just a vocalist and what he brings to the record is manifold. His melodic appearances have the potential to bring about a reassessment of what To Rococo Rot are capable of, as well as enabling a fresh perspective on their music. A new figure in the creative process yielded invaluable insight.
When we work with other people we try to stay focused. Whenever you play your music to somebody new, your view on the music changes. We have never opened up our material so widely to somebody. Lindsays skill as a producer came to the fore. His input and presence was something new and created a different drive to their other releases. Aside from the striking nature of the crystal-clear and laid-back vocals, Instrument is incredibly refined throughout its ten tracks. This is partly due to the economical and efficient working manner in which ultimately-unused material was discarded early on and the remainder became the sole focus. We were just looking for a very clear, focused sound out of only a few elements, Lippok says.
Down in the Traffic shows a classic yet refreshed sound as a bass line is locked in, its groove continuing for the best part of five minutes, whilst electronics puncture the foreground and retreat to the background. Lindsay appears again on the languid Classify, offering up soothing and rhythmic proclamations in the verse and an effortlessly-sung chorus, all among Schneiders crawling bass chords and Ronald Lippoks mellow drumming; itself a hugely prominent aspect of the record.
Spreading The Strings Out begins the more unconventional and electronic-based latter half, a contrast from the earlier pieces which recollect some of the acoustic building blocks of Speculation. A disjointed and robotic piano riff plays the lead role as the texture around it gradually deepens and thickens. Lindsay gives his unconventional guitar tones to the minute-and-a-half of Sunrise; a metallic and futuristic sounding collection of noises, redolent of some of the unusual textural experimentalism of early releases.
Instrument may be a To Rococo Rot record unlike any other and one which treads unfamiliar ground, especially on the digital pulse of tracks like Pro Model but it also represents a return to the beginning. I think maybe weve come in a way back to where we started. Weve been through a lot of experimenting, buying new gear, trying this and that with electronic and non-electronic stuff, says Lippok. Yet Instrument is by no means a regression; the process this time has merely been a vehicle for To Rococo Rot to reaffirm and even advance their relevance and status as one of electronic musics great innovators."
- City Slang - Soundcloud
Two albums fit for both N&N threads, thus the double posts:
Fantastic news from Denovali Records by Mathew Collings - "Must check outs" for Ben Frost fans ! Composed, Performed and Recorded by Matthew Collings
Except Strings on Everything you love… and Toms performed by McFalls Chamber Ensemble, taken from 'News from Nowhere', composed by Matthew Collings, recorded by Alex Fiennes French Horn by Matt Giannotti Clarinet and Bass Clarinet on Stills by Pete Furniss Violins by on Stills and Cicero by Paul Evans Additional Drum Recording on Silence is a Rhythm Too by Daniel Rejmer Toms features recordings from 'The Acoustic Amplifier', designed by Matthew Collings, Gareth Griffiths and Giorgios Aposkotis
- "Silence seems to be harder and harder to achieve in this technologically saturated age. Collings admits that it reveals the habits of his own hearing, from being obsessed with its opposite: noise. “Silence Is A Rhythm Too” is about trying to find grace, space and expanse as much as tension and menace, and reconciling the two.
Still being intrigued by the idea of materials on the edge of collapse, he catches them up in their dying breath: The record is full of these processes, including prepared amplifiers and electronics pushed to the extreme to coax new sounds, close-micing and high volume. Despite the fact that most of his work is mediated by technology, he’s far more excited by the sound of acoustic. Featuring brass ensembles and a string quartet the instruments and sounds are full of cracks, breath, embedding rough materials informed by luscious intentions. “Silence Is A Rhythm Too” keeps an eye on the small textural details as it is about harmony and physicality in the moment where silence and noise meet."
Mathew Collings - Splintered Instruments Composed and Performed by Matthew Collings Except 'Vasilia', Composed by Collings/Frost Produced by Ben Frost
Drums and Additional Percussion on 'Vasilia' and 'They Meet on the Subway' by Brady Swan Clarinet and Bass Clarinet by Pete Furniss Contrabass by Caitlin Callahan Cimbalom and Theremin by Frank Aarnick Violin on 'Pneumonia loves the Moon' by Paul Evans Violin on 'Routine' by Lorcan Doherty Trombone by Helgi Hrafn Jonsson Trumpet by Ari Bragi Additional Synth, Piano and Prepared Piano on 'Vasilia' by Ben Frost
- "Splintered Instruments is not an empty claim. It is the sound of acoustic components on the verge of collapse, as if spitting out something articulate with their dying breath. It is real-world, analog, dusty and broken, but still forward-looking.
Matthew Collings – the Edinburg-based composer and producer – makes his solo debut with this Fluid Audio release. He says, “Emotionally this record comes out of reckoning with the destructive forces in my life. I’ve felt my whole life as if there is an immense, violent force ready to come out of me. I wanted to finally reach it and reckon with it. Here it rears its head, filtered through melody.”
Of the album’s spilling percussion, exquisite spans of silence and its almost petroleum viscidity, Collings writes, “Very few thing in nature are truly repetitive. There is always subtle variation and imprecision. It’s a revolt against machines: precision doesn’t express anything and is pretty unnatural. Everything I play is messy, but on the border of being out of place. I use the computer for convenience, not as a principle. It is electronic only because I don’t have the hands or people to do it all at once. If I could, then I would.” Nearly all of Splintered Instruments is organic, played on acoustic instruments or sourced from physical objects and then manipulated, often considerably.
- "Collings's work contrasts the crushed guitars and textures of My Bloody Valentine or Sonic Youth with structures more akin to contemporary classical composers like Steve Reich or David Lang. In his powerful live performances, he uses the amplifier as an instrument and the guitar as a control device for innovative digital processes. Using numbers of 'prepared amplifiers', he coaxes unique sounds by placing bells, rice and wood directly onto the speaker cone and manipulating the physical vibrations with his fingers, producing a highly visual and physical performance.
These approaches a viscerally demonstrated on his debut full-length release 'Splintered Instruments' (2013). This music is textural, melodic and often sonically overwhelming.
He received an ALT-W award from New Media Scotland in 2012 for 'The Third Mind', an algorithmic cinema performance and installation with Erik Parr, premiered at sell-out shows at Glasgow's Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA). He was recently invited to participate at the 50th Design Biennial in Ljubliana, Slovenia (2014).
His work for films includes a specially commissioned live score for Dziga Vertov's 1929 silent classic, 'The Man with the Movie Camera' for the Reykjavik Design Festival (2010) and an invitation to work on 'The Invisibles' (2010), a commission from Amnesty International with Ben Frost, featuring Gael Garcia Bernal. His score for Ha?kon Palsson ?s film 'Guilt' was recently performed at the opening of the Glasgow Short Film Festival.
His work has also featured in Installations at Glasgow City Halls (2011), Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Dundee Neon Digital Arts Festival (2010, UK), Burning Man Festival (2010, USA), Chattanooga Gallery of Contemporary Art (2010, USA), Icelandic Academy of Arts (Iceland, 2009) and Manipulate Festival (UK, 2011).
He has performed alongside many respected artists in his field, including Tim Hecker, Ben Frost, Chris Corsano, Nico Muhly and Jasper TX.
He is currently developing an audio-visual 'opera' for strings, clarinet, electronics and real-time visuals, entitled 'A Requiem for Edward Snowden' (2014)
Physical editions of Deaf Center's new release, Recount, are now in the Sonic Pieces store. Amazon is saying Aug 29 for US digital release though. Tantalizing!
The soundscape of The Garden forms from whispers and murmurs of rural nature, from that noiseless noise which lives in the summer air that are captured in a macro mode, so one can almost touch.
Like a sluggish snail, the music ploughs its way through blades of grass, like a humming bee, it glides smoothly down to a flower, and like a firefly, it shimmers at cool evening twilight.
Porya Hatami invites the listener to take a leisurely journey through green labyrinths together with fluttering, creeping and buzzing creatures, thus taking us back to the primeval garden and its objective reality.
Atmospheric in a summer way, meditative in the Oriental style and just beautiful music.
“I used to think that music was my escape from reality, now I think it’s an escape into reality.” – Mike Weis, 2014.
- "Mike Weis is probably best known for sitting behind a plethora of drums and gongs in long-running Chicago three-piece Zelienople, but his music is just as potent unaccompanied. Weis might be an obsessive collaborator (his work with Scott Tuma, Mind Over Mirrors and Kwaidan is also essential), but on his own, he is able to allow his unique percussive skills to bubble to the surface, without the intervention of conflicting egos.
He began working on Don’t Know, Just Walk under particularly difficult circumstances. It was 2013, he had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and was gearing up for a punishing year of “man-diapers and boner pills,” that could very well have been his last. Thankfully though, the time wasn’t entirely spent holed up in a hospital bed under the watch of urologists – Weis managed to spend choice moments in the woods or on prairies with a microphone, and in the Zelienople studio (which has long been in his basement) while the family slept upstairs.
These late night sessions weren’t only musical – Weis used the time to meditate, and to clear his head of the mental baggage that was clouding his view of the world. In spending time using Zen Buddhist techniques (which the title references), this allowed him to not only meditate on life (and its brevity), but also to inform his compositional and recording techniques. At this point, the music came naturally, and Weis began experimenting and recording without hindrance.
Using loops of field-recordings, gongs, radios, home-made instruments, drums and traditional Korean percussion, Weis pieced together an album that is as reflective as it is mesmerizing. Solo percussion albums are rare, certainly, but Weis uses his drumming simply as the record’s backbone, allowing his ideas to flourish overhead.
Don’t Know, Just Walk is a complicated record – an album about death that doesn’t dwell on the negative, and one created by a drummer that doesn’t contain a whole lot of rhythms. It’s right to expect the unexpected, and as Weis found solace in the recording process, and we too can find solace in the listening." - Type Records - €music - Soundcloud
No Lands - Negative Space - "Negative Space is the debut full-length LP from No Lands, the recording project of Brooklyn-based electronic musician and sound artist Michael Hammond. Negative Space was mixed by Alexander Overington and mastered by Joe Lambert."
. . . "Written and recorded over the course of 3 years, the album is an atlas of the sounds that have preoccupied Hammond. While the majority of the instruments were performed by Hammond, the album features cameos from Anthony LaMarca (current touring member of The War on Drugs and previously a member of St. Vincent), Aaron Roche (who performs regularly with R. Stevie Moore and Chris Schlarb), and Jay Hammond.
When performing live, Hammond is joined by these musicians. The four-piece becomes a digital hive mind of wires and devices, with each individual's vocals and instruments filtered through the central brain of Hammond's computer.
In visual art, the concept of negative space refers to the areas around and between the subject of a work of art. The auditory equivalent of negative space is not immediately apparent. Is it silence (as John Cage might conceive of it)? Or maybe noise? On Negative Space, No Lands plumbs the depths of these questions with a patience and intensity that is rare. Ultimately, the album is a document of this obsessive relationship with both sound and song, the genesis of which spans the course of three years and a hurricane.
Negative Space consists of 9 sonic environments that range from ambient soundscapes to sprawling song structures. The album drifts from one environment to the next as if navigating a dream state. Swirling digital textures give way momentarily to tightly arranged songs. Some tracks are cut off abruptly and swallowed whole (see the end of “Pretender” or “City”) while others transfix the listener into a deep hypnosis (“Sleep Atlas”).
Much of the music for Negative Space was written and recorded following a period of itinerancy in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The flood swept through Hammond’s apartment and studio space in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn and leaked a particular feeling of unease and rootlessness into his music. The watery world that displaced him became a renewed object of fascination, kindling a nascent obsession with all things aquatic.
Visions of vast bodies of water and civilization lost pervade the album: on “Seawall,” Hammond sings: "Sea flowing westward, reveal the streets of gold." At the same time, the name No Lands itself suggests both a warning and a fantasy, a liminal state where blissful glitch sets the stage for a synthesizer melody desperately gasping for its final breath (“Icefisher”). The No Lands sound is born of the clash between the creative and destructive qualities of water, where the difference between the displacement of a flood and the zeal of an afternoon swim is never quite clear." https://soundcloud.com/nolands - €music
Great news from Zeitkratzer, intense and powerful as always . . .
Played by a live group, "Metal Machine Music" sounds even wilder and more frenetic, and zeitkratzer's act of fandom moves "Metal Machine Music" into a context where, perhaps, it always belonged: as an avant-garde piece of bristling minimalism rather than a rock musician's bizarre experiment.
- New York Times, USA
zeitkratzer directed by Reinhold Friedl
Frank Gratkowski, clarinets | Matt David, trumpet | Hilary Jeffery, trombone | Reinhold Friedl, piano | Marc Weiser, guitar | Maurice de Martin, percussion | Burkhard Schlothauer, violin | Anton Lukoszevieze, cello | Uli Phillipp, doublebass.
- "About 10 years after their first, critically acclaimed performances of Lou Reeds adventurous album, zeitkratzer presents an audacious new interpretation of this 20th century avant-garde classic. Here, for the first time ever, all four parts of Metal Machine Music played by zeitkratzer on one recording! Seriously "clangorous"!
This new version of Metal Machine Music is even more transparent, instrumentally pure and radical than the shortened 2007 release; Live recordings from concerts in Rome and Reggio Emilia, Italy, mixed and mastered by Rashad Becker. A real sound experience!
After their first performances in 2002 (documented on the 2007 CD release on Asphodel) zeitkratzer gave Reeds album a new thorough listen and transcribed the sounds to create an acoustic score for the ensemble to play live. Those familiar with the oft-criticized two-disc album might wonder how they pulled this off, but they did and their interpretation of the work brought it to the attention of a wider audience. It is therefore partly thanks to the zeitkratzer version that Lou Reeds Metal Machine Music has been rediscovered as a classic of the Twentieth Century. It was at the live performance with zeitkratzer in Berlin, that Lou Reed spoke for the first time in public about the musical details of his composition, in an interview with Diedrich Diedrichsen.
zeitkratzer was clearly ready for the challenges of performing Metal Machine Music live, and drew packed houses for their presentation of the work. This confirmed their assertion that rocknroll as serious contemporary music has been ignored for too long, in too arrogant a way. The relentless sound forces the mind to put aside its preconceptions about what music is supposed to sound like, or feel like, or look like. The brain starts to implode, or explode, or dissolve Zen-like into the controlled chaos of the performance, discovering a strange exhilaration, accepting an invitation to explore the outer reaches of texture and timbre, to experience a sonic freedom thats rare in any art form. These recordings from the
Metal Machine Music has become even more intense and worked out during the ten years of zeitkratzer playing it live at numerous international festivals contemporary music festivals, noise festivals, improvisation festivals, - its impossible to limit this music to one genre. Metal Machine Music has gained a new quality of clarity, sound transparence and musical intensity. Real radical contemporary chamber noise music! These recordings from the Festival Romaeuropa in Rome and the Festival Aperto in Reggio Emilia (2012) present zeitkratzer not only at their very best, the splendid mix by Rashad Becker also reveals new aspects of this 20th century avant-garde classic!" http://www.karlrecords.net/ - http://www.zeitkratzer.de/ - music http://www.digitalarti.com/blog/mcd/zeitkratzer_hyper_contemporary_ensemble
Three (!) new albums from Jaap Blonk, the first two on his own Kontrans Records This album is the most accessible of the three. Described by Blonk as a "disturbingly, engaging collection of songs on the topic of insomnia." There is little chance that these dense and wordless songs comprised of troubled vocals spiced with electronic noises will ease any kind of insomnia. But these songs may affect the coming dreams with vivid alien soundscapes, thus exchanging one nocturnal distress with one that is perhaps more comforting.
Blonk's commanding vocals are highly expressive, convincing in its inventive phrasing and committed delivery of the experience of sleepless nights, including the occasional nightmares, but with an eccentric-dadaist, dark sense of humor. He is completely possessed in his own emotionally charged dramas, playing different roles of exhausted men, all delivered with imaginary languages. His moving tributes to the late Canadian sound poet Claude Gauvreau, "Yapping at the moon," and the Austrian Dada writer and sound poet Raoul Hausmann, "Reading Light," both seminal influences on Blonk's art, are fascinating.
Blonk, surprisingly enough, succeeded in creating a coherent album out of these disturbing songs. All offer enough lively vocal adventures to keep the listener alert and regrettably, awake despite the insomnia." Soundcloud
- "In the mid-eighties Blonk began to write sound poetry but found out that the common Latin alphabet and later the International Phonetic Alphabet(IPA) can not capture the whole spectrum of his voice sounds. He developed a system for his sound poetry scores, naming it BLIPAX (Blonk's IPA extended). Now he discovered that the symbols of BLIPAX are not contented with the symbols of dead letters, but took a life of their own. His new scores of sound poetry became drawings, something halfway between sound poetry and visual poetry, traces of actual speech.
Blonk converted these drawings into electronic sounds, importing them into audio software and later converted them again into English and German texts through Optical Character Recognition software. Each of the three forms were subjected to further digital treatment.
The seven chapters of this album-book (available also as a PDF file on Blonk's website) feature abstract, almost Dada-like texts. All force Blonk to find a meaningful way to recite and interpret the multitude of punctuation signs, still with a distinct variation of each of the seven electronic-vocal sound environments, but intentionally refraining from pursuing any personal expression.
The sonic result is arresting. The primary usage of vocalsreal, sampled and processed ones, is liberated from the disciplined conventions, grammar, etiquette and sense of time of space of known earthly languages. Suddenly the most familiar sonic aspect of human communication is transformed to an unworldly, futuristic level. As if the language of human beings was adopted and enhanced by aliens who charged any basic articulation with tons of information, employing vocals as one but not the dominant practical in a chain of sounds, keeping its expressiveness and emotional delivery neutral. Now, after this radical alteration, only a margin of this intriguing form of communication can be deciphered by us humans, but allearthlings and other forms of beings in the greater universecan get a glimpse of its infinite options. Soundcloud
Jaap Blonk / Sandy Ewen / Damon Smith / Chris Cogburn
-"This session brings together Blonk with three experimental improvisors from Texasguitarist Sandy Ewen, double bassist Damon Smith and percussionist Chris Cogburn/ Bonnie Jones/ Bhob Rainey. Together they create six complex, rich and multi-layered textures, recorded during a short tour by the quartet.
None of the four plays or expresses himself/herself sonically in an even remotely obvious manner. Blonk, compared to the three Texans, sound rather relaxed and even amused in these noisy, nervous improvisations. The underrated Ewen extracts otherworldly metallic sounds from her guitar, attaching various objects to its strings; Smith, whose label released this album, first played with Blonk in 1998 in an ad-hock improvising quartet and collaborates frequently with Ewen, plays a prepared double bass, inspired by the sonic ideas of the double bass duo PascalitoPascal Niggenkemper and Sean Ali who wrote the poetic liner notes for this album; and percussionist Cogburn colors these open-ended textures with subtle touches.
The 21-minutes "Brewing Tools" feature this fearless quartet at its best. Blonk moves organically between few eccentric, talkative vocal characters, all tuned and integrating into the like minded restless sonic texture. His vocal acrobatics are nurtured by the strange sounds that Ewen, Smith and Cogburn produce, but dominating the intensity of the piece's immediate and tight interplay and its shifting emotional atmosphere."
- All About Jazz
Comments
Steven Brown saxophones, clarinet, piano, keyboards
Peter Principle bass guitar
Blaine L. Reininger violin, guitar, laptop, voice, keyboards
Luc van Lieshout trumpet, fluegelhorn, harmonica, keyboards
- "The first new release in 5 years by the legendary US band consists of original music written and recorded in 2011 at the instigation of French film festival L'Etrange Festival, as a new score for the eponymous, scandalous cult film from 1971, directed by James Bidgood. Tuxedomoon performed this soundtrack during a screening of the film in Sept 2011 in Paris.
This 53-minute opus ranks amongs their best instrumental suites ever, and will be released in a limited edition of 1000 copies exclusively on vinyl and digital !"
- Crammed Discs
http://www.tuxedomoon.co/
- "Cult legends Tuxedomoon are a welcome exception in today's over-formatted musical world.
Born in 1977, in the heady atmosphere of San Franciscos postpunk golden age, the band soon became a central part of New York's No Wave scene (as documented in the recent "Downtown 81" film, centered around Jean Michel Basquiat and featuring performances by Blondie, James Chance, DNA and Tuxedomoon). "No Tears", their 2nd single (1979), has remained an electro punk club classic to this day. The band went on to sign to The Residents' Ralph Records, and released two seminal albums, "Half Mute" (1980) and "Desire" (1981) which soon got them overseas exposure.
Fleeing Reagan's America, Tuxedomoon moved to Europe in the early '80s, and stayed there throughout the decade. Although their ability to crystallize a certain dark and romantic zeitgeist quickly turned them into one of the most influential bands around, their music transcended all genres and included impossibly wide parameters rock, electronics, minimal music, classical, jazz, Gypsy music and pop were all simultaneously consumed and transmutated into a quasi-prescient blend.
After releasing a string of albums on CramBoy (the imprint they set up with Brussels-based label Crammed Discs), the band stopped recording together in 1988, and the various members pursued solo careers, becoming as disparate geographically as sonically, with Steven Brown (vocals, keyboard & saxophone) living in Mexico, Peter Principle (bass, electronics) in New York, Blaine L. Reininger (vocals, violin, guitar) in Greece, and Luc Van Lieshout (trumpet) & Bruce Geduldig (films/visuals) in Brussels.
Many years later, Tuxedomoon got back together to write and record the awesome "Cabin In The Sky" album (2004), which found them in absolute top form, as romantic, rebellious and boundlessly imaginative as they ever were. "Cabin" featured contributions by a carefully hand-picked selection of guests such as Tarwater, Tortoise's John McEntire, Nouvelle Vague's Marc Collin and DJ Hell.
Shortly after finishing "Cabin In The Sky", Tuxedomoon traveled back to San Francisco, the band's birthplace, in order to start writing material for their next album. But the local atmosphere had unexpected effects on them, and drove them to record a series of "spontaneous compositions" (as Mingus would have put it) instead, which soon formed the basis of a side project entitled "Bardo Hotel Soundtrack" loosely connected to Brion Gysins novel The Bardo Hotel set in the Paris hotel where he and William Burroughs invented the radical cut-up/fold-in technique.
Both "Cabin " and "Bardo Hotel " were warmly welcomed, and a wildly eclectic array of references sprang from the pens of reviewers trying to describe Tuxedomoon's music (Charles Ives, Radiohead, Philip Glass, Miles Davis, German electronica, Tom Waits, John Cage, Kurt Weill, Tortoise, Can ).
If anything, these two recent albums revealed that Tuxedomoon were never connected to a particular period: they had become '80s cult figures simply because that's the period in which they happened to develop and rise to fame but the band have always been evolving in their own space, and their music is as relevant and fresh today as it was then. An impression to be further strengthened by their latest album "Vapour Trails" (2007), which appealed equally to fans of contemporary cutting-edge avant-rock, electronica and jazz."
- Crammed Discs
Loren Dent - Anthropology Volumes 2 & 3
ETA, personally, this one is not grabbing me as much as his earlier Anthropology Volume 1 did.
Machinefabriek - Stillness Soundtracks
Out June 16 on Glacial Movements
Streamable at bandcamp.
- "Esoteric Antenna is proud to announce the release of the eagerly awaited new studio album by the legendary JACK BRUCE, one of the greatest popular musicians Britain has ever produced. A supremely talented instrumentalist and vocalist, eminently respected by his peers, Jacks pioneering bass playing style has influenced successive generations of bassists, including such luminaries as Paul McCartney, Jaco Pastorius and Sting, alongside more contemporary musicians such as Flea of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. He is also the possessor of one of the most powerful voices in modern music and a composer of some of the most original and influential music of the past forty-five years. As a songwriter he has written some of popular musics enduring classics such as Sunshine of Your Love, White Room, I Feel Free and Theme from an Imaginary Western.
"Silver Rails is Jacks first studio album in ten years, recorded at the world famous Abbey Road studios.Produced by Rob Cass, "Silver Rails is a splendid collection of carefully crafted songs written in partnership with lyricists Pete Brown, Kip Hanrahan and Margrit Seyffer. He is joined on the album by a host of celebrated instrumentalists including Phil Manzanera, Robin Trower, Bernie Marsden, Uli Jon Roth, John Medeski, Malcolm Bruce and Cindy Blackman Santana. "Silver Rails is the next chapter in the recorded legacy of one of popular musics most respected innovators."
http://www.cherryred.co.uk/shopexd.asp?id=4540
http://www.jackbruce.com
Seismology by Olan Mill / Keung Mandelbrot
- "Plastikman, aka Richie Hawtin, recorded EX at the Guggenheim, New Yorks iconic art museum. This very special performance was at the invitation of influential Belgium fashion designer and artistic director at Dior, Raf Simons, for the Guggenheims annual fundraiser, performed around a specially constructed LED obelisk.
Richie Hawtin explains, I knew that Raf was a long time Plastikman fan so by accepting his offer to perform at the Dior event at the Guggenheim I knew Id set myself up to a huge challenge. Although Raf was happy to have the already complete Plastikman Live 1.5 show, I locked myself away in a series of intense studio sessions and quickly recorded enough new material for the performance and realized I might also have enough for a complete new album. The music came out of me effortlessly as I was very inspired by the opportunity to play in this beautiful architectural space renowned more for art than music. The location also allowed me to step far away from the dancefloor, giving me a huge amount of freedom to EXplore any sonic ideas that I had. Art, music, architecture, painting, sculpture these mediums are supposed to live together.
Mute Records
Soundcloud - http://plastikman.com/
Edward Ka-Spel - Ghost Logik 2
released 13 June 2014
EK-voice,keys,treatments
- "A quiet accompaniment for those ..umm...darker moments.
And,of course,it's Friday the 13th. . . ."
Shivers - Shivers
- "Shivers is the trio of Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek), Gareth Davis and Leo Fabriek, who join forces to conjure up a surreal album of parasitic intimacy and intensity. Though the three have played and recorded together in various combinations, this Miasmah release marks their first output as Shivers and manages to pull out quite a few surprises.
Named after David Cronenberg's first film, Shivers the album readily adopts this concept of body horror, the fear of bodily transformation and infection--a theory and technique that Cronenberg brilliantly captures with his first film and many thereafter. An aural invader immediately travels through your ears into your body, to infiltrate your soul with gorey supernatural sci-fi.
Crawling through the thick sludge of Ash and into the chaotic Otomo, you’re treated with what sounds like a beyond-the-grave collaboration of Albert Ayler with Alva Noto producing the soundtrack to Transformers. From entering Rabid, a chorus of intense destructive voices blindfolded leads you to an abandoned spot amidst a buzz of florescent lights. Here you're abducted into a new life hundreds of years in the future, moving you through stumbling jazz, John Carpenter styled themes, repeating organ-beats, and Moroccan doom. The psychological and physical combine to make Shivers a collective understanding of the grotesque, fascinating, and personal. You might not be the same."
- Miasmah @ Soundcloud - And the mindblowing "Replicant" track @ Soundcloud
http://shiversband.com/ - Machinefabriek.nu with reviews
- "When Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek) and I first talked about the L/M/R/W release ‘Drifts’, I was soon made aware of his work with the enormously talented clarinetist Gareth Davis. Following on from their 3? releases of 'Soundlines' and 'Ghost Lanes', 'Drape' was released on Home Normal in 2010. This was followed up with the superb record with Romke and Jan Kleefstra 'Tongerswel' in 2011. Gareth is also a member of the group The Whalers Collective (with Ian Hawgood, Rie Mitsutake, Ryo Nakata, and Felicia Atkinson). Their debut will be released on KOMU at the end of September 2013. He is also involved with the soon to be released album from Birdt, 'Place For One Day', due out on Home Normal in October 2013. Finally, his group Mere with Leo Fabriek and Thomas Cruijsen will release their second album ('Mere II') towards the end of 2013.
Here's a little more information about Gareth Davis and his love of coffee:
Gareth Davis plays various clarinets. He also partakes regularly in the consumption of coffee, in particular, that which is brewed by forcing hot water, under pressure, through finally ground beans. Espresso /es?pres.??/. Either single origin or a few signature blends, stalwart companions, that, year in year out, retain a solidity by clinging to their name. Changing yes, but temperamental no. Ascaso stepless burr grinder. La Pavoni Europicola machine which, on occasion, has been known as the chrome peacock.
Gareth spends a fair amount of time at airports, but prefers traveling by train."
http://homenormal.com/gareth-davis
- An album packed with pleasant surprises !
Mermonte - Audiorama
Musicians : Ghislain Fracapane, Julien Lemmonier, Mathieu Fisson, Matthieu Noblet, Astrid Radigue, Régis Rollant, Eric Hardy, Eléonore James, Charlotte Mérand, Jeanne Lugue, Pierre Marais, Snaevar Njall Alberton, Jérôme Bessout, Clément Lemennicier, Paul Lugue, Gaëlle Lonongo, Matthieu Prual, Antoine Tharreau, Morgane Haudemont, Benjamin Jarry, Robert Fracapane, Gaël Levionnois, Stanislas Chomel.
- "Mermonte was created a few years ago in the mind of the composer and multi-instrumentalist Ghislain Fracapane. He wanted to write pop songs inspired by the great artists of previous generations (The Beatles, Jim O’ Rourke, Gastr Del
Sol, The Beach Boys, The Cure, Steve Reich, Tortoise) as well as the contemporary scene (Efterklang, Sufjan Stevens, The Redneck Manifesto). With help from his network of friends and musicians in Rennes, France, the young thirtysomething began to record his first album in 2011. He performed almost all of the instruments himself (voices, guitars,
bass, glockenspiel, drums, percussions, trumpet, keyboards). But Mermonte was not destined to remain the project of a single man in a studio and quite soon, the question of how to
reproduce these complex symphonies on stage emerged. The quality of the compositions and the arrangements of Ghislain attracted the interest of his musician friends. Ten instrumentalists, coming from the most diverse disciplines (from classical music to death metal, as well as punk rock and even gospel), began to rehearse at the beginning of 2012 for a first concert at the Jardin Moderne (Rennes). Not only friends were present at the concert, but also most of music
professionals of the area, having heard of this new exceptional band. The concert was a success and word of mouth, amplified by social networks, soon led to an increasing buzz about the project. A series of concerts followed, the growing public were enthusiastic, and the band won the hotly contested awards “Inrocks Lab” and the “Tremplin des Jeunes Charrues” in 2012; the blogosphere became excited, and the release of the first album soberly entitled Mermonte
(Hiphiphip Records/ Les Disques Normal) brought critical acclaim from the media (Magic, France Inter, FIP, and Inrockuptibles, …).
In this first work, Ghislain Fracapane and Mermonte invite the listener to explore the shores of a sparkling melodic pop, with modern and sophisticated arrangements, complex but accessible. This is a fairy tale journey into an intriguing and beautiful universe. A mix of French and English, post-rock and instrumental pop, repetitive music and pastoral folk song, somewhere between Saint-Malo, London and Chicago, right in the middle of the ocean as a matter of fact, with
the horizon clear as far as the eye can see. But it will take more that this growing success to calm the creative enthusiasm of Ghislain Fracapane and his crew.
The man is not the kind to rest on his laurels, so he is already getting down to work writing new songs. New compositions are taking form and the first demos of what will become the second album of Mermonte are being recorded on tour or at home, between concerts. The demands of stage performance are having a considerable influence on these pieces, and
Ghislain’s rising fame is giving him the confidence to experiment with the sounds. The instrumentation has become even more varied with clarinets, flutes, saxophones, vibraphones, xylophones and timpani all invited to join the party.
The new recordings showcase the creative excitement of Mermonte, the mixing and the production values are generous and all encompassing. We can hear the influence of Can, Alice Coltrane, the records of the cutting edge label Touch, but also the punk and the catchy pop of Block Party. The album is dedicated to Ghislain’s friends, who influenced him in music and in other aspects of his life. Songs bear the names of each one of them. All this will be revealed in May, with the release on the Parisian Record label Clapping Music (Orval Carlos Sibelius, Yeti Lane, Ramona Cordova), an album which is already one of the most awaited albums of the year. Mermonte have every intention of fulfilling these expectations."
€music - http://mermonte.bandcamp.com/ - https://soundcloud.com/mermonte
Edvard Graham Lewis - All Over
- - "Editions Mego is proud to present the first recordings by Edvard Graham Lewis released this century. Having made his name in legendary punk/experimental outfits Wire, Dome and He Said Lewis has developed an exceptional voice with ceaseless exploration of a wide variety of musical forms.
'All Over' is a song based album that resides amongst the cracks between narrative and song, sound and music. Cloaked in an atmosphere of beauty and paranoia 'All Over' conjures the spirit of Wire's experimental pop trajectory whilst simultaneously exploring a multitude of sonic possibilities. Gritty mechanical operations support Lewis' wry human observations in a uniquely disturbing melange of punk, industrial, techno and pop. A dream logic plays throughout 'All Over' courtesy of Lewis' odd lyrical content being set with all manner of disorientating sound and rhythm.
All tracks were written and composed between 2003-13 in parallel with the works included on ‘All Under’. Several contributors generously collaborated at distance from LA, Japan, Scotland, Italy, Germany, UK and Sweden furthering this catchy excursion into the unstable grid of the 21st Century.
'All Over' is a major amalgamation of music, media, man and mind."
- Editions Mego - Soundcloud - Bandcamp
Brainwashed review
- "Edvard Graham Lewis, or Graham Lewis (born Edward Graham Lewis, 22 February 1953), is an English musician currently living in Uppsala, Sweden.
Lewis is the bassist with punk rock/post-punk band Wire, a band formed in 1976. On Wire’s first studio album Graham Lewis was credited as Lewis; he continued to be known by this abbreviation; however some subsequent record credits give his full name.
He worked on various other music projects, usually of a more electronic and experimental nature, such as Dome (with fellow Wire member B.C. Gilbert), Duet Emmo (with B.C. Gilbert and Daniel Miller), P’o, Kluba Cupol, Ocsid (with Jean-Louis Huhta), Where Everything Falls Out (with Kenneth Cosimo and Anna Livia Löwendahl-Atomic), He Said Omala, and Halo. His solo projects have been He Said and Hox.
Graham studied textiles at Middlesex Polytechnic in London in the early seventies. He later switched to fashion but formed the band before he was able to have a substantial career in this world. The time at art school was very influential on his later music as he was able to go and see a range of bands (usually pub bands) including Kilburn And The High Roads, Ramones, Dr Feelgood etc."
- Last.fm
Edvard Graham Lewis - All Under
Soundcloud - Bandcamp
- "The companion album, All Under, takes a far more abstract direction in comparison, for the first half dropping the beats and vocals for dissonant electronic textures and odd effects in an overall sound that fits well with the more difficult Dome moments with Bruce Gilbert. "All Under (Film Score)" drifts from an industrial scrape to a modular synth twinkle into pure DSP crunch in just under six minutes; all the more impressive considering it was recorded live with just a sampler and effects. The "All Under (Installation Loop)" version is significantly longer and more skeletal, at first hollow and drifting, then mixed with sharper feedback and pinging electronics that upset things nicely.
Graham takes the remaining half of the album in even odder directions. "The Eel Wheeled" is a spoken word piece: a surrealist tale of espionage backed by Lewis' heavy mangling of a standard sound effects library, with a second half that progressively becomes unhinged in the most brilliant way. The lengthy "No Show Godot" has some hints of the sound that defined All Over, but in a sprawling, 18 plus minute expanse. Initially opening as drifting ambient piece with a slight acerbic edge to it, it becomes more abrasive via stuttering passages of noise that ends up locking into an oddly skewed rhythmic structure. This moves into an overt, electronic drum circle type pounding and mostly untreated vocals.
Given the length of time since the last full-fledged solo release from Graham Lewis, I had high expectations for All Under/All Over. Considering the fact they were recorded over the past decade, it makes sense that these two cover the gamut of his previous styles as a series of ideas and snippets that benefited from the time Lewis took to polish and expand. With one half encompassing dissonant and experimental electronic music that has a uniquely powerful penchant for pop hooks and memorable vocals, and the other hinting back to his earliest experiments with music and noise, the two albums are inseparable sides of the same coin. They both also clearly show that nearly 40 years into his career, Graham Lewis is an artist unlike any other in the quality and uniqueness of his work."
Creaig Dunton @ Brainwashed
The band currently comprises drummer and founding member David J. Smith with mainstays Kavus Torabi (Cardiacs, Knifeworld) on guitar and James Sedwards (Nøght) on bass, joined by recent addition Emmett Elvin (Chrome Hoof, Knifeworld) on keyboards.
-"Prepare yourself for an experience thats simultaneously otherworldly and assaultive. On paper, the music of Guapo reads like a riddle the British quartets sound is based around ideas like controlled chaos, atonal harmony, uplifting darkness, and beautiful destruction. Nothing about the band or their work seems to adhere to even the most open-minded set of preconceptions about the meaning of umbrella terms like rock, or progressive, or even experimental. But when you abandon the need to reconcile any of these concepts with each other, and simply let their latest album, History of the Visitation, speak for itself, everything becomes radiantly clear.
History of the Visitation is the ninth album from the forward-looking foursome. This album finds them following through on the kind of epic constructions that sprung forth from their albums like Five Suns and Black Oni.
The record is dominated by the 26-minute tour de force The Pilman Radiant, offset only by the 11-minute journey Tremors from the Future and the considerably more compact sonic sculpture known as Complex #7.
Bandcamp with live recordings and free radio edit
- "Guapo is a British trio that plays an intense music that straddles the boundaries of progressive, noise, minimalism and avant-rock. Their sound has been compared to such artists as Magma, Boredoms, King Crimson, Univers Zero, This Heat, Ruins, Sun Ra and Terry Riley. As Sound Projector put it, "Guapo come on like all the hellhounds of Magma, Eskaton and Ruins were after them...on a par with Magmas Kohntarkosz or Univers Zeros Ceux Du Dehors".
Cuneiform Records - http://www.guapo.co.uk
Captiva by STEPHEN VITIELLO + TAYLOR DEUPREE
As one might expect from the artists this is understated, precise, suggestive ambient music. Nicely done, suspect it will grow on me. One small complaint: it's 33 minutes long and priced at $6.99, which combined with its minimal approach may make it one for the committed fan, but on first listen I think it was worth getting.
Renaldo M - Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Glockenspiel, Flute, Harmonica, Percussion, Vocals, Voice
Ted The Loaf - Guitar, Lead Guitar, Loops, Clarinet, Voice
- "So folks.... after the deluxe editions of "Struve & Sneff" and "Songs For Swinging Larvae" we bring you the holy grail for RATL enthusiasts. The first ever release of the 1978 recordings: the "Tap Dancing In Slush" EP and the "Behind Closed Curtains" LP. Both were recorded as Plimsollline, a short-lived entity that just predated the adoption of Renaldo and the Loaf as the band's title. Arguably, the spirit of what would become RATL is very evident in this work but be prepared for some surprises as well. We know this is already more than enough to whet your appetites, but being generous we are giving you even more: a full CD of recordings entitlted "Rotcodism". These contain the earliest recordings by Renaldo & The Loaf and show a totally unknown side of the band."
- Klanggallerie
- "Renaldo & the Loaf was a musical duo from Portsmouth, England, active in the late seventies and most of the eighties, consisting of a pathologist (David Janssen or Ted The Loaf) and an architect (Brian Poole or Renaldo Malpractice, most often simply Renaldo M).
Of all the groups that The Residents signed to their Ralph Records, English duo Renaldo & the Loaf were the closest to their label heads in sound. Twisted, high-pitched vocals, child-like melodies, an atmosphere of menace and unease with a stripped-down approach to instrumentation characterised their output.
By their own assertion, they achieved their unique sound in part by striving to get unnatural synthesizer-like sounds using only what instruments they had available (acoustic ones.) To that end they routinely used muffled and de-tuned instruments, and often to striking effect, tape loops/manipulation. The two released four full-length albums, one collection, various songs on compilation albums, and several self-produced demos. They were discovered by The Residents when Brian dropped off a tape at Ralph Records headquarters in San Francisco, during a visit to the US. After being signed to Ralph, they collaborated with The Residents on Title in Limbo.
By 1989, the collaboration had lost its steam, and the duo disbanded after recording a sea shanty, Haul On The Bowline, which appeared only on a Ralph various artists release. Brian Poole (Renaldo) contributed to sporadic recordings in the 1990s. In 2006 upon the launch of the new Renaldo & the Loaf web site, the duo were reunited for the first time in the better part of two decades."
Last.fm - http://www.renaldoloaf.com/ - More about RATL
New Robert Plant! "Comes out on Sept. 9 on a new label for Plant, Nonesuch. In a press release, he calls it "a celebratory record, powerful, gritty, African, Trance meets Zep."" - Quote from NPR's All Songs Considered, where you can stream one of the songs from the album.
I am definitely going to need this.
Bokeh by Wil Bolton
Notable because Wil Bolton is excellent, slightly puzzling because the label page says it releases August 15 and Wil Bolton's own website, which is usually updated pretty regularly, does not even mention it yet (and it's not on his bandcamp page), but you can already buy it on emusic/Amazon etc where it says it was released in February. But I am not seeing reviews in the places where I might expect them. Buying it now anyhow. Album preview here.
Kangding Ray - Solens Arc
Cold, cold techno with ambient passages.
Ryoji Ikeda - Supercodex
For those who want to hear what their hard drive is singing while that stuff that sounds more like music is playing over the top of it.
Ryoka - Is (is superpowered)
Post-human meets quirky.
- where Murcof & Philippe Petit is one of them . . .
- The fourth entry in the REV. Lab series is Deison/Mingle Everything Collapse[d].
North-east Italy, late summer 2013: Cristiano Deison and Andrea Gastaldello (aka Mingle) meet online and begin to lay the foundations for what will be their first project together. Out of this comes Everything Collapse[d], an album centred around melancholy and desolation; a concept that does not leave much hope, forcing you to look within yourself. A foreign body coming from far away: sidereal matter which is about to implode; an object that has reached its limit. And everything collapses, swallowed up by itself.
Recorded and produced between Mingle's Tower Home Studio and Deison's 1st Floor Studio, Everything Collapse[d] is a perfect union of our two sounds: drones, field recordings and processed loops intermingled with disturbed rhythms, melancholy harmonies and piano chimes. A gloomy and dirty electronic sound that turns into an extremely evocative score which is full of pathos. A precise, precious and cosmic album... One Million Parsec From Your Sun.
REV. LAB.
In 2013 Bas Mantel began curating and designing the REV. Lab. series in collaboration with Aagoo Records -Alec Dartley-. The sound and tone of the label finds its inspiration in electronic, ambient, experimental, cinematic and abstract sound scapes/compositions. This series investigates the relation between the graphic translation of the music and its physical output
Recorded and mixed by Andrea Gastaldello e Cristiano Deison. Mastered by Simon Balestrazzi.
Produced by Andrea Gastaldello, Cristiano Deison and Aagoo / Rev. Lab. Graphic design: Bas Mantel.
Daniele Santagiuliana vocals on "Failure" by Swans.
- http://www.deison.net - http://revlaboratories.com/ - Soundcloud
Arc - Umbra
If you like Berlin school analog synthesizer music, Arc are good at it. Ian Boddy releases a lot in this genre under his own name, and Mark Shreeve is in Redshift, who are also no slouches at this stuff.
- "Walking a line between what has passed and what is yet to come, seminal trio To Rococo Rot have carved an identifiable niche for themselves, and one which has crossed a variety of styles; neither wholly in the realms of ambient or pure electronics. The late 1990s albums of Veiculo and The Amateur View brought their fundamental and innovative landscapes of sound to the fore, whilst 2001s collaboration with I-Sound, Music is a Hungry Ghost, showed their ability to blend disparate influences into something wonderfully cohesive. Remixed by Four Tet and Daniel Miller and heralded by the likes of Modeselektor, their influence extends as far as their unique approach deserves.
Returning to Berlin-based label City Slang in 2014 for their first full-length since 2010s Speculation (released on Domino) and their eighth album in total, Instrument is a landmark record for the group. The serenely soft melodies of No Wave pioneer Arto Lindsay adorn three tracks (Many Descriptions, Classify and The Longest Escalator in the World), offering up a new perspective. As much a progression as a refresher course for older material, it is arguably their most refined record so far.
The music of brothers Robert and Ronald Lippok and Stefan Schneider has always existed in its own world. Schneiders prominent and melodic bass lines sit between drums, guitar, synths and peripheral electronics from the Lippok brothers. The amount of depth is vast; the invitation is nevertheless there to explore the complex levels beyond the basic instrumental foundations, or to simply let the tide of sound wash over and envelope you.
There is a degree of open-endedness in the albums title. Instrument is not only referred to in its musical sense but also conceptually. We dont see the title as only a musical instrument but instrument as a tool to work on your creation as an expansion of yourself. Says Robert Lippok. Instrument is also something between you and the gegenstand, the thing you interact with.
After eight records without a bona fide, original To Rococo Rot song, the band have made their first forays into non-instrumental music. The question of why now? is a pertinent one. Lippok explains that it was as much down to happenstance as anything else. I dont know how it came but it came quite naturally. A lot of our music people say is longing for vocals, he says. We never felt like that but when we were in the rehearsal room and played the stuff we could hear these voices. Maybe because there were about 40 old pianos and when we played, all the strings of the pianos resonated. That made us feel that there should be a new and another element in this music. There was no discussion about it.
The decision to recruit Lindsay was both swift and natural. He was there the first time the trio played New York, and admired what Lippok calls the unique handmade minimalism they were practising in those days. More recently Lindsay wrote a lengthy feature in Germanys Electronic Beats about the City Slang re-issues of Veiculo, The Amateur View and Music is a Hungry Ghost. In it he states admiration for their non-musicians way of making music, in particular the way a simple idea is manipulated to a variety of ends. Once the band read the article, the decision to ask Lindsay was inevitable. We thought this is a sign from god or somewhere. He was totally into the idea from the first second on, Lippok says. The admiration and respect cuts both ways. I really like the combination of the way he plays the guitar and the beauty of his voice. Its magic how these two worlds come together, says Lippok.
The end result exceeded expectations absolutely. His way of both composing and singing melodies, all created from scratch in the studio, was especially impressive, Lippok says: They are so unique and fit so well with the sound structure that we build. The shared experimental philosophy of Lindsay and To Rococo Rot is what makes Instrument such a fascinating and exciting prospect. The Americans vocal decorations add new colour to the varied textures and sketches in which they feature.
Lindsays laid-back and unhurried words lend themselves perfectly to the aesthetic of To Rococo Rot whilst pulling them through to an unfamiliar and occasionally pop-based space. Though melodies have always been a big part of their sound, the inclusion of a human voice is a distinctive modification. It sits perfectly within the warm timbres created by Lippok, Lippok and Schneider.
The pulsing Many Descriptions is a bold opening statement; with Lindsays breezy vocals the focal point. Its position in being the opener was a must, Lippok says. We wanted to make clear that something is different. The difference this time round is not just noticeable, but also profound. Yet, Instrument is still unmistakably To Rococo Rot; with recognisable complex landscapes of sound and structure that they have practised and made their own.
The appeal of To Rococo Rot lies not only in their music but also their ethos, from the writing process to the finished record. An often rudimentary and uncomplicated approach is reflected in their overall world view. Weve been nomads through all these years weve never had a studio, weve never had a rehearsal space, we hardly own instruments just the basic stuff. Stefan lives in Dusseldorf, so we dont see each other very often. This maybe keeps things fresh and exciting.
Arto Lindsay is more than just a vocalist and what he brings to the record is manifold. His melodic appearances have the potential to bring about a reassessment of what To Rococo Rot are capable of, as well as enabling a fresh perspective on their music. A new figure in the creative process yielded invaluable insight.
When we work with other people we try to stay focused. Whenever you play your music to somebody new, your view on the music changes. We have never opened up our material so widely to somebody. Lindsays skill as a producer came to the fore. His input and presence was something new and created a different drive to their other releases. Aside from the striking nature of the crystal-clear and laid-back vocals, Instrument is incredibly refined throughout its ten tracks. This is partly due to the economical and efficient working manner in which ultimately-unused material was discarded early on and the remainder became the sole focus. We were just looking for a very clear, focused sound out of only a few elements, Lippok says.
Down in the Traffic shows a classic yet refreshed sound as a bass line is locked in, its groove continuing for the best part of five minutes, whilst electronics puncture the foreground and retreat to the background. Lindsay appears again on the languid Classify, offering up soothing and rhythmic proclamations in the verse and an effortlessly-sung chorus, all among Schneiders crawling bass chords and Ronald Lippoks mellow drumming; itself a hugely prominent aspect of the record.
Spreading The Strings Out begins the more unconventional and electronic-based latter half, a contrast from the earlier pieces which recollect some of the acoustic building blocks of Speculation. A disjointed and robotic piano riff plays the lead role as the texture around it gradually deepens and thickens. Lindsay gives his unconventional guitar tones to the minute-and-a-half of Sunrise; a metallic and futuristic sounding collection of noises, redolent of some of the unusual textural experimentalism of early releases.
Instrument may be a To Rococo Rot record unlike any other and one which treads unfamiliar ground, especially on the digital pulse of tracks like Pro Model but it also represents a return to the beginning. I think maybe weve come in a way back to where we started. Weve been through a lot of experimenting, buying new gear, trying this and that with electronic and non-electronic stuff, says Lippok. Yet Instrument is by no means a regression; the process this time has merely been a vehicle for To Rococo Rot to reaffirm and even advance their relevance and status as one of electronic musics great innovators."
- City Slang - Soundcloud
Fantastic news from Denovali Records by Mathew Collings - "Must check outs" for Ben Frost fans !
Composed, Performed and Recorded by Matthew Collings
Except Strings on Everything you love… and Toms performed by McFalls Chamber Ensemble, taken from 'News from Nowhere', composed by Matthew Collings, recorded by Alex Fiennes
French Horn by Matt Giannotti
Clarinet and Bass Clarinet on Stills by Pete Furniss
Violins by on Stills and Cicero by Paul Evans
Additional Drum Recording on Silence is a Rhythm Too by Daniel Rejmer
Toms features recordings from 'The Acoustic Amplifier', designed by Matthew Collings, Gareth Griffiths and Giorgios Aposkotis
- "Silence seems to be harder and harder to achieve in this technologically saturated age. Collings admits that it reveals the habits of his own hearing, from being obsessed with its opposite: noise. “Silence Is A Rhythm Too” is about trying to find grace, space and expanse as much as tension and menace, and reconciling the two.
Still being intrigued by the idea of materials on the edge of collapse, he catches them up in their dying breath: The record is full of these processes, including prepared amplifiers and electronics pushed to the extreme to coax new sounds, close-micing and high volume. Despite the fact that most of his work is mediated by technology, he’s far more excited by the sound of acoustic. Featuring brass ensembles and a string quartet the instruments and sounds are full of cracks, breath, embedding rough materials informed by luscious intentions. “Silence Is A Rhythm Too” keeps an eye on the small textural details as it is about harmony and physicality in the moment where silence and noise meet."
Mathew Collings - Splintered Instruments
Composed and Performed by Matthew Collings
Except 'Vasilia', Composed by Collings/Frost
Produced by Ben Frost
Drums and Additional Percussion on 'Vasilia' and 'They Meet on the Subway' by Brady Swan
Clarinet and Bass Clarinet by Pete Furniss
Contrabass by Caitlin Callahan
Cimbalom and Theremin by Frank Aarnick
Violin on 'Pneumonia loves the Moon' by Paul Evans
Violin on 'Routine' by Lorcan Doherty
Trombone by Helgi Hrafn Jonsson
Trumpet by Ari Bragi
Additional Synth, Piano and Prepared Piano on 'Vasilia' by Ben Frost
- "Splintered Instruments is not an empty claim. It is the sound of acoustic components on the verge of collapse, as if spitting out something articulate with their dying breath. It is real-world, analog, dusty and broken, but still forward-looking.
Matthew Collings – the Edinburg-based composer and producer – makes his solo debut with this Fluid Audio release. He says, “Emotionally this record comes out of reckoning with the destructive forces in my life. I’ve felt my whole life as if there is an immense, violent force ready to come out of me. I wanted to finally reach it and reckon with it. Here it rears its head, filtered through melody.”
Of the album’s spilling percussion, exquisite spans of silence and its almost petroleum viscidity, Collings writes, “Very few thing in nature are truly repetitive. There is always subtle variation and imprecision. It’s a revolt against machines: precision doesn’t express anything and is pretty unnatural. Everything I play is messy, but on the border of being out of place. I use the computer for convenience, not as a principle. It is electronic only because I don’t have the hands or people to do it all at once. If I could, then I would.” Nearly all of Splintered Instruments is organic, played on acoustic instruments or sourced from physical objects and then manipulated, often considerably.
I wanted to reach into the deepest part of me and pull out the true nature of things, or at least a faithful side to them: admitting you are violent, you are a beast of nature as much as a romantic, civilised human being.”
http://denovali.com/matthewcollings/ - https://soundcloud.com/mattcollbadger - €music
- "Collings's work contrasts the crushed guitars and textures of My Bloody Valentine or Sonic Youth with structures more akin to contemporary classical composers like Steve Reich or David Lang. In his powerful live performances, he uses the amplifier as an instrument and the guitar as a control device for innovative digital processes. Using numbers of 'prepared amplifiers', he coaxes unique sounds by placing bells, rice and wood directly onto the speaker cone and manipulating the physical vibrations with his fingers, producing a highly visual and physical performance.
These approaches a viscerally demonstrated on his debut full-length release 'Splintered Instruments' (2013). This music is textural, melodic and often sonically overwhelming.
He received an ALT-W award from New Media Scotland in 2012 for 'The Third Mind', an algorithmic cinema performance and installation with Erik Parr, premiered at sell-out shows at Glasgow's Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA). He was recently invited to participate at the 50th Design Biennial in Ljubliana, Slovenia (2014).
His work for films includes a specially commissioned live score for Dziga Vertov's 1929 silent classic, 'The Man with the Movie Camera' for the Reykjavik Design Festival (2010) and an invitation to work on 'The Invisibles' (2010), a commission from Amnesty International with Ben Frost, featuring Gael Garcia Bernal. His score for Ha?kon Palsson ?s film 'Guilt' was recently performed at the opening of the Glasgow Short Film Festival.
His work has also featured in Installations at Glasgow City Halls (2011), Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Dundee Neon Digital Arts Festival (2010, UK), Burning Man Festival (2010, USA), Chattanooga Gallery of Contemporary Art (2010, USA), Icelandic Academy of Arts (Iceland, 2009) and Manipulate Festival (UK, 2011).
He has performed alongside many respected artists in his field, including Tim Hecker, Ben Frost, Chris Corsano, Nico Muhly and Jasper TX.
He is currently developing an audio-visual 'opera' for strings, clarinet, electronics and real-time visuals, entitled 'A Requiem for Edward Snowden' (2014)
Porya Hatami - The Garden ETA, $2.94 at emusic.
Aidan Baker - Hypnotannenbaumdronefuzz
NYOP, Bandcamp.
Described as: Though it has three tracks.
Mike Weis - Don't Know, Just Walk
“I used to think that music was my escape from reality, now I think it’s an escape into reality.”
– Mike Weis, 2014.
- "Mike Weis is probably best known for sitting behind a plethora of drums and gongs in long-running Chicago three-piece Zelienople, but his music is just as potent unaccompanied. Weis might be an obsessive collaborator (his work with Scott Tuma, Mind Over Mirrors and Kwaidan is also essential), but on his own, he is able to allow his unique percussive skills to bubble to the surface, without the intervention of conflicting egos.
He began working on Don’t Know, Just Walk under particularly difficult circumstances. It was 2013, he had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and was gearing up for a punishing year of “man-diapers and boner pills,” that could very well have been his last. Thankfully though, the time wasn’t entirely spent holed up in a hospital bed under the watch of urologists – Weis managed to spend choice moments in the woods or on prairies with a microphone, and in the Zelienople studio (which has long been in his basement) while the family slept upstairs.
These late night sessions weren’t only musical – Weis used the time to meditate, and to clear his head of the mental baggage that was clouding his view of the world. In spending time using Zen Buddhist techniques (which the title references), this allowed him to not only meditate on life (and its brevity), but also to inform his compositional and recording techniques. At this point, the music came naturally, and Weis began experimenting and recording without hindrance.
Using loops of field-recordings, gongs, radios, home-made instruments, drums and traditional Korean percussion, Weis pieced together an album that is as reflective as it is mesmerizing. Solo percussion albums are rare, certainly, but Weis uses his drumming simply as the record’s backbone, allowing his ideas to flourish overhead.
Don’t Know, Just Walk is a complicated record – an album about death that doesn’t dwell on the negative, and one created by a drummer that doesn’t contain a whole lot of rhythms. It’s right to expect the unexpected, and as Weis found solace in the recording process, and we too can find solace in the listening."
- Type Records - €music - Soundcloud
No Lands - Negative Space
- "Negative Space is the debut full-length LP from No Lands, the recording project of Brooklyn-based electronic musician and sound artist Michael Hammond. Negative Space was mixed by Alexander Overington and mastered by Joe Lambert."
. . . "Written and recorded over the course of 3 years, the album is an atlas of the sounds that have preoccupied Hammond. While the majority of the instruments were performed by Hammond, the album features cameos from Anthony LaMarca (current touring member of The War on Drugs and previously a member of St. Vincent), Aaron Roche (who performs regularly with R. Stevie Moore and Chris Schlarb), and Jay Hammond.
When performing live, Hammond is joined by these musicians. The four-piece becomes a digital hive mind of wires and devices, with each individual's vocals and instruments filtered through the central brain of Hammond's computer.
In visual art, the concept of negative space refers to the areas around and between the subject of a work of art. The auditory equivalent of negative space is not immediately apparent. Is it silence (as John Cage might conceive of it)? Or maybe noise? On Negative Space, No Lands plumbs the depths of these questions with a patience and intensity that is rare. Ultimately, the album is a document of this obsessive relationship with both sound and song, the genesis of which spans the course of three years and a hurricane.
Negative Space consists of 9 sonic environments that range from ambient soundscapes to sprawling song structures. The album drifts from one environment to the next as if navigating a dream state. Swirling digital textures give way momentarily to tightly arranged songs. Some tracks are cut off abruptly and swallowed whole (see the end of “Pretender” or “City”) while others transfix the listener into a deep hypnosis (“Sleep Atlas”).
Much of the music for Negative Space was written and recorded following a period of itinerancy in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The flood swept through Hammond’s apartment and studio space in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn and leaked a particular feeling of unease and rootlessness into his music. The watery world that displaced him became a renewed object of fascination, kindling a nascent obsession with all things aquatic.
Visions of vast bodies of water and civilization lost pervade the album: on “Seawall,” Hammond sings: "Sea flowing westward, reveal the streets of gold." At the same time, the name No Lands itself suggests both a warning and a fantasy, a liminal state where blissful glitch sets the stage for a synthesizer melody desperately gasping for its final breath (“Icefisher”). The No Lands sound is born of the clash between the creative and destructive qualities of water, where the difference between the displacement of a flood and the zeal of an afternoon swim is never quite clear."
https://soundcloud.com/nolands - €music
zeitkratzer directed by Reinhold Friedl
Frank Gratkowski, clarinets | Matt David, trumpet | Hilary Jeffery, trombone | Reinhold Friedl, piano | Marc Weiser, guitar | Maurice de Martin, percussion | Burkhard Schlothauer, violin | Anton Lukoszevieze, cello | Uli Phillipp, doublebass.
- "About 10 years after their first, critically acclaimed performances of Lou Reeds adventurous album, zeitkratzer presents an audacious new interpretation of this 20th century avant-garde classic. Here, for the first time ever, all four parts of Metal Machine Music played by zeitkratzer on one recording! Seriously "clangorous"!
This new version of Metal Machine Music is even more transparent, instrumentally pure and radical than the shortened 2007 release; Live recordings from concerts in Rome and Reggio Emilia, Italy, mixed and mastered by Rashad Becker. A real sound experience!
After their first performances in 2002 (documented on the 2007 CD release on Asphodel) zeitkratzer gave Reeds album a new thorough listen and transcribed the sounds to create an acoustic score for the ensemble to play live. Those familiar with the oft-criticized two-disc album might wonder how they pulled this off, but they did and their interpretation of the work brought it to the attention of a wider audience. It is therefore partly thanks to the zeitkratzer version that Lou Reeds Metal Machine Music has been rediscovered as a classic of the Twentieth Century. It was at the live performance with zeitkratzer in Berlin, that Lou Reed spoke for the first time in public about the musical details of his composition, in an interview with Diedrich Diedrichsen.
zeitkratzer was clearly ready for the challenges of performing Metal Machine Music live, and drew packed houses for their presentation of the work. This confirmed their assertion that rocknroll as serious contemporary music has been ignored for too long, in too arrogant a way. The relentless sound forces the mind to put aside its preconceptions about what music is supposed to sound like, or feel like, or look like. The brain starts to implode, or explode, or dissolve Zen-like into the controlled chaos of the performance, discovering a strange exhilaration, accepting an invitation to explore the outer reaches of texture and timbre, to experience a sonic freedom thats rare in any art form. These recordings from the
Metal Machine Music has become even more intense and worked out during the ten years of zeitkratzer playing it live at numerous international festivals contemporary music festivals, noise festivals, improvisation festivals, - its impossible to limit this music to one genre. Metal Machine Music has gained a new quality of clarity, sound transparence and musical intensity. Real radical contemporary chamber noise music! These recordings from the Festival Romaeuropa in Rome and the Festival Aperto in Reggio Emilia (2012) present zeitkratzer not only at their very best, the splendid mix by Rashad Becker also reveals new aspects of this 20th century avant-garde classic!"
http://www.karlrecords.net/ - http://www.zeitkratzer.de/ - music
http://www.digitalarti.com/blog/mcd/zeitkratzer_hyper_contemporary_ensemble
This album is the most accessible of the three. Described by Blonk as a "disturbingly, engaging collection of songs on the topic of insomnia." There is little chance that these dense and wordless songs comprised of troubled vocals spiced with electronic noises will ease any kind of insomnia. But these songs may affect the coming dreams with vivid alien soundscapes, thus exchanging one nocturnal distress with one that is perhaps more comforting.
Blonk's commanding vocals are highly expressive, convincing in its inventive phrasing and committed delivery of the experience of sleepless nights, including the occasional nightmares, but with an eccentric-dadaist, dark sense of humor. He is completely possessed in his own emotionally charged dramas, playing different roles of exhausted men, all delivered with imaginary languages. His moving tributes to the late Canadian sound poet Claude Gauvreau, "Yapping at the moon," and the Austrian Dada writer and sound poet Raoul Hausmann, "Reading Light," both seminal influences on Blonk's art, are fascinating.
Blonk, surprisingly enough, succeeded in creating a coherent album out of these disturbing songs. All offer enough lively vocal adventures to keep the listener alert and regrettably, awake despite the insomnia."
Soundcloud
- "In the mid-eighties Blonk began to write sound poetry but found out that the common Latin alphabet and later the International Phonetic Alphabet(IPA) can not capture the whole spectrum of his voice sounds. He developed a system for his sound poetry scores, naming it BLIPAX (Blonk's IPA extended). Now he discovered that the symbols of BLIPAX are not contented with the symbols of dead letters, but took a life of their own. His new scores of sound poetry became drawings, something halfway between sound poetry and visual poetry, traces of actual speech.
Blonk converted these drawings into electronic sounds, importing them into audio software and later converted them again into English and German texts through Optical Character Recognition software. Each of the three forms were subjected to further digital treatment.
The seven chapters of this album-book (available also as a PDF file on Blonk's website) feature abstract, almost Dada-like texts. All force Blonk to find a meaningful way to recite and interpret the multitude of punctuation signs, still with a distinct variation of each of the seven electronic-vocal sound environments, but intentionally refraining from pursuing any personal expression.
The sonic result is arresting. The primary usage of vocalsreal, sampled and processed ones, is liberated from the disciplined conventions, grammar, etiquette and sense of time of space of known earthly languages. Suddenly the most familiar sonic aspect of human communication is transformed to an unworldly, futuristic level. As if the language of human beings was adopted and enhanced by aliens who charged any basic articulation with tons of information, employing vocals as one but not the dominant practical in a chain of sounds, keeping its expressiveness and emotional delivery neutral. Now, after this radical alteration, only a margin of this intriguing form of communication can be deciphered by us humans, but allearthlings and other forms of beings in the greater universecan get a glimpse of its infinite options.
Soundcloud
Jaap Blonk / Sandy Ewen / Damon Smith / Chris Cogburn
-"This session brings together Blonk with three experimental improvisors from Texasguitarist Sandy Ewen, double bassist Damon Smith and percussionist Chris Cogburn/ Bonnie Jones/ Bhob Rainey. Together they create six complex, rich and multi-layered textures, recorded during a short tour by the quartet.
None of the four plays or expresses himself/herself sonically in an even remotely obvious manner. Blonk, compared to the three Texans, sound rather relaxed and even amused in these noisy, nervous improvisations. The underrated Ewen extracts otherworldly metallic sounds from her guitar, attaching various objects to its strings; Smith, whose label released this album, first played with Blonk in 1998 in an ad-hock improvising quartet and collaborates frequently with Ewen, plays a prepared double bass, inspired by the sonic ideas of the double bass duo PascalitoPascal Niggenkemper and Sean Ali who wrote the poetic liner notes for this album; and percussionist Cogburn colors these open-ended textures with subtle touches.
The 21-minutes "Brewing Tools" feature this fearless quartet at its best. Blonk moves organically between few eccentric, talkative vocal characters, all tuned and integrating into the like minded restless sonic texture. His vocal acrobatics are nurtured by the strange sounds that Ewen, Smith and Cogburn produce, but dominating the intensity of the piece's immediate and tight interplay and its shifting emotional atmosphere."
- All About Jazz
http://www.balancepointacoustics.com/ - music