- “Trumpeter” is hardly an adequate epithet for Jac Berrocal, a 1946-born musician, poet and sometime film actor who came of age in the ‘70s Paris improv scene, where the boundaries between music, art and theatre were porous and begging to be breached. Inspired by bebop, chanson, free jazz, beat poetry, early rock ‘n roll and myriad Eastern influences, and with an iconoclastic, anything-goes approach to instrumentation and technique that would later align him with post-punk sensibilities, Berrocal blazed an eccentric and unstoppable trail across the underground throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, both solo and as part of the Catalogue group he co-founded.
During this time his uproarious performances routinely wound up jazz and rock audiences alike, but earned the admiration of no small number of wised-up weirdos: Steven Stapleton invited him to perform on two Nurse With Wound albums, and other notable collaborators in his career include Sunny Murray, Lizzy Mercier-Descloux, Lol Coxhill, Yvette Horner and James Chance. In the 90s his protean achievements were celebrated on the Fatal Encounters compilation, but far from slowing down in the autumn of his life, Berrocal has maintained an extraordinary work-rate, keeping studio dates with Pascal Comelade, Telectu and Jaki Liebezeit, among others. In 2014 he released his first solo album proper in 20 years, MDLV.
Now Berrocal has found the perfect foil in David Fenech and Vincent Epplay, two fearlessly inventive improvisers, composers and catalysts who create challenging, acutely modernist yet historically aware settings – wrought out of synthesis, guitars, computer processing, field recordings and unorthodox percussions – for Berrocal’s unmistakeable voice and breathtakingly lyrical horn sound to flourish. Fenech cut his teeth in the mail-art scene of the early ‘90s, leading the Peu Importe collective in Grenoble. His 2000 solo debut was recently reissued by Felix Kubin’s Gagarin label, and he has also worked as a software developer at IRCAM, and played with Jad Fair, Tom Cora, Rhys Chatham and James Plotkin; in 2011 he formed a trio with Berrocal and Ghedalia Tazartes for the Superdisque LP. Epplay is a highly regarded sonic and visual artist with a particular interest in aleatory composition and autonomous pieces, concrète, and the puckish reappropriation of vintage sound and film material, with dozens of published works to his name on labels like Planam/Alga Marghen and PPT/Stembogen.
Antigravity is the trio’s first album together. A lugubrious mise-en-scène in which ice-cold outlaw jazz meets musique concrète, DIY whimsy and dubwise studio science, all watched over by the lost souls and hungry ghosts of rock ‘n roll."
- "Live Knots, Oren Ambarchi’s first release for PAN, presents two live realizations of ‘Knots’, the epic centrepiece of his Audience of One (Touch, 2012) release. Built on the interplay between Ambarchi’s swirling, guitar harmonics and the metronomic pulse and shifting accents of Joe Talia’s DeJohnette-esque drumming, the piece merges the organic push and pull of free improvisation with an overarching compositional framework.
‘Tokyo Knots’ presents the complete recording of a duo performance of the piece by Ambarchi and Talia recorded at Tokyo’s legendary SuperDeluxe in March 2013. The performance builds gently on the foundation of Talia’s insistent ride cymbal and the shifting tonal bed of Ambarchi’s rich overtone-drenched guitar, eventually going into a free rock free fall of buzzsaw harmonics and crashing drums. From within the maelstrom, Talia picks up a pulsing motorik rhythm that leads the piece back to where it began, with the addition of the shuddering, elastic tones of a hand-played spring reverb unit.
‘Krakow Knots’, recorded live at Unsound Festival in Krakow in 2013, works with the same basic structure but stretches it out to nearly twice the length and adds strings played by the Sinfonietta Cracovia, led by Eyvind Kang on viola. The strings expand the piece’s textural range with lush chordal blocks, uneasy dissonances and occasional Ligeti-esque swarms of micro-activity, the swelling string tones intensifying the ecstatic nature of the piece as it moves towards its mid-point crescendo in which Ambarchi unleashes a particularly malicious continuum of stuttering harmonic fuzz. The strings then enter with a series of swelling chords, announcing the piece’s final movement, and reaffirming the uniqueness of the tonal and compositional language that Ambarchi has patiently developed over the last two decades, in which the influence of post-minimal composers such as Alvin Curran, Gavin Bryars and David Behrman can be felt alongside the inspiration of raw free jazz, harsh noise and academic psychoacoustics. The final moments of the performance pit Talia and Crys Cole’s amplified objects and spring reverb textures against a field of gently gliding string glissandi before the audience erupts in much-deserved applause."
This is a film score: an instrumental series presented in themes, punctuated with echoes and variations, short sequences and choruses. This is the music composed by Stéphane Laporte for the movie directed by his friend, Tom Gagnaire who two years ago decided to direct in a very short time and with very little means, in a remote part of the Haut Languedoc, « a regionalist and post new-wave western ». A homemade film shot in the countryside, with the phantoms of Raoul Walsh and Eugène Green, where the sheriffs have lost their faith and where white nymphs haunt the cascades.
Recorded just before filming, in a very spontaneous, almost anarchic way the music was also made at home; at his parents’ house where the musician still has a bedroom, full of old instruments waiting to be used: an acoustic toy-guitar offered to him in the eighties by the works council of the candy maker Haribo where his father used to work, an old and out of tune valiha collected in the garage of neighbouring friends, a dusty drum kit, enough solitude and isolation to amplify - track after track, depending on the takes and intentions -, the song of this friendly movie that hasn’t been shot yet but promises to play with a few aesthetic primal emotions when filming the cowboys and the great landscape.
From the undergrowth, or by a night campfire, the music that we hear is a mixture of warm sounds and metallic resonances, harmonious choruses and dissonances: with some languid grandiloquence in the extended sounds of the Rhodes and the Philicorda organ, in these voices that multiply in the reverb and stretch out with the amble of a floydian drumsound circa Obscured by Clouds and with the domestic simplicity of a few motifs, in the spirit of Brian Eno’ and Aphex Twin’s melodic ambient. Fourteen musical sequences that are presented with literality: after the shiny « Une Détente » and the celestial « Entrainement du shériff et de son adjoint », « Un bandit de la pire espèce » brings an offbeat almost parodic Morricone touch. The story is told slowly with the magical extravagance of dreams, the music accompanies the drama only by assuming this sort of emotionless passion particular to the Greek choruses of the ancient tragedies, commenting on an unreal and remote action that the music simply contemplates.
The cinematic setting of Tom Gagnaire’s project provides a new alibi to his creative discretion: a guy by the campfire, that nobody notices, but whose music, by subtle graduation, transfigures the scene. In the vibrations of the air, his unobtrusive monody acts imperceptibly on the characters, and deep in the night, it builds the links of a silent community. This is how his Devil reaches for the sublime: by blending in the decor."
- "With her characteristic experimental singing style, often compared to such wonderful singers as Lisa Gerrard and Liz Fraser, Anneli has had the possibility to collaborate with many great artists. She participated in projects with Hector Zazou, Jah Wobble, Gavin Friday, DJ Krush, Tim Simenon, Simon Raymonde of Cocteau Twins, and Guy Sigsworth. Anneli has also cooperated with ECM artist Ketil Bjørnstad and recorded three albums based on poems by John Donne and Hart Crane. Few can claim that they have been singing duets with Morten Harket, but Anneli joined a-ha on two world tours as their guest singer.
In 1999, Röyksopp - consisting of Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge, also from Tromsø - released their debut album Melody AM. As Torbjørn had been a co-producer and live member of Bel Canto for a couple of years and also a co-producer of Anneli´s first solo album Tundra, it was natural for them to have Anneli as their singer when they went out on what would be the start of one of Norway´s biggest pop adventures. The song Sparks, which Anneli wrote with Svein and Torbjørn was the third single from Melody AM and featured on several movies and tv-series. She continued working with Röyksopp for more than ten years, touring the world and co-writing several songs with Svein and Torbjørn including True To Life, Vision One and You Don’t Have A Clue.
In 2012, Anneli left Röyksopp to return to her own music, and her new solo record, Rocks and Straws, is a homecoming song, an ode to her native town and region. Tromsø sits deep in the Arctic but still has a very vivid cultural life and is home to many of the great artists from Norway. The long, arctic winters have no sun, but there is still light – the glassy blue of the dusk-like midday glow in the south, and the flickering green and red aurora that can be seen across the horizon on many days.
Rocks and Straws is based on lyrics by the North Norwegian cult poet Arvid Hanssen, translated into English by artist and writer Roy-Frode Løvland. Hanssens poems are strongly influenced by the mysterious and powerful nature of this arctic region, like the writings of Knut Hamsun, born only a few miles from Hanssens birthplace. Man and nature, and man in nature – Hanssen captures the interaction of Northern Norwegians with their merciless but beautiful surroundings, and the sometimes-deadpan observations that follow.
It is a great personal pleasure for Anneli to make Hanssens work known to a wider audience, especially outside of Norway, as he has had a great influence on her. In 1982, as a child, she starred in a major motion picture based on Hanssens book Søsken på Guds jord(Siblings on God’s Earth). She met Hanssen during the shoot, and he and his works made a great impression on her.
Rocks and Straws is influenced by the arctic soundscapes that Anneli has always carried with her, but is above all an acoustic record. In a world of ever-simpler electronic recordings she has moved in the other direction, and made a record based on recording techniques from the seventies. The music is played live, acoustically, with the best musicians Norway (and the world?) can offer: Eivind Aarset, guitar God and well known for his collaborations with Nils Petter Molvær, and Rune Arnesen, infamous drummer who has played with everyone, are the musical backbone of the album. Ole Vegard Skauge, acclaimed bass player of Röyksopp, and Tromsø's orchestra, The Arctic Philharmonic, also contribute to the album. Apart from singing Anneli plays the piano and organ, and has produced the recording with the musicians. As a Ph. D. candidate at the Arctic University of Tromsø, she is doing a research project on the voice techniques of indigenous people, and this is apparent especially in the song Ocean´s Organ, with a Maori group singing kapa haka songs that Anneli recorded while in Auckland, New Zealand. The title refers to the voices of sailors that have drowned in the ocean, a subject that the Maori singers could easily relate to. A global reference. Something that we all are connected to: Water. And rocks. And straws."
- "This awesome full length album by Charlemagne solo has been recorded especially for idiosyncratics. It has been brilliantly engineered by our long term associate Fredéric Alstadt (Angström Studio) and mixed by maestro Aymeric De Tapol.
The artwork is an original collaboration between Charlemagne Palestine, labelboss Yannick Franck and Frau label designer Helena Dietrich"
- "There’s something, let’s say so, heavenly homespun in this new record by Charlemagne Palestine, which starts with a rubbed glass and an unsophisticated vocalization in trademark falsetto. A few instants in, we can hear him switching on some kind of machine before reprising the chant. From that device, an indefinite drone originates; it is formed by not precisely describable components in a general impression of blurred dampness. An orchestra stuck on a single chord as heard from the sink hole, if you see what I mean.
Simple as that? Not at all. The massive knowledge – interior and exterior – of an artist of Palestine’s stature translates in this circumstance into the advancement through the various stages of an organically urban/rural mantra which delivers, for lack of a better definition, a tangible teaching. Elicited by the word “sing” repeated a number of times, the crescendo reveals derivations that might bring the listener to think to an organ as the principal source. Perhaps. But it soon becomes clear that the composer is augmenting the intensity of the trance via superimposed tapes containing instrumental shades, several layers of his own singing, and echoes from the outside world. The latter comprise (presumably) airplanes, heavy rain, screaming children, chirping birds, vociferous sheep, marching drummers and choirs from what sounds like a local liturgical rite, even an Italian leftist speaker inviting to defend the workers’ rights at an open-air gathering. And much more, in a majestic maelstrom of sonic emanations.
All of these deeply human manifestations merge splendidly in a sort of miraculous collective radiance. It really feels as everything’s in tune; there’s no way of escaping the “impact within” caused by the music. The progressively growing force of the drone, the appearance of ghosts of memories related to what we have experienced directly, the deus ex machina’s shamanistic dedication, the multiplying flows: a hard-hitting combination, as we’re ultimately possessed by this strange ensemble shaped by entities that would have never dreamed of participating to such a purifying ceremonial.
The end comes suddenly, as Palestine switches off, rubs the glass again and plays with a cheap sampling toy, waving us bye-bye after having intoned the phrase “I love to sing”. A perfect ironic finale for one of the very best releases in the American maverick’s recent output."
Amon Tobin’s latest release, Dark Jovian - his first since 2011’s ISAM - is as astonishing and as perfectly formed as the space objects that inspired it. The latest result of his restless sonic experimentation, the EP’s music is breathtakingly elemental, and takes electronic music into the sort of capacious territory normally reserved for (dare we say) classical music: Dark Jovian is the thrilling return of a master.
In Amon’s own words:
"I made these tracks a year or two ago after binge-watching space exploration films. People have, from time to time, described things I've done as "scores for imaginary movies," which has always irritated me, but on this occasion it's sort of true.
Even so, what I was really trying to do was to interpret a sense of scale, like moving towards impossibly giant objects until they occupy your whole field of vision, planets turning, or even how it can feel just looking up at night.
I wanted it to pace very slowly, the way far off objects can seem still until you look away for a while and find they've shifted some distance when you look back. Tracks like Io work in that way; something changing gradually so you barely notice it, until at some point you no longer recognize it.
My musical influences are on my sleeve with this EP. Anyone who loves John Williams, Gerry Goldsmith or Gyorgy Ligeti will hopefully see what I'm drawing from, and how it then sits in an electronic context. Dark Jovian is a small personal project which is, nevertheless, dear to me: A one off indulgence into a genre that I love."
Meant to revisit this thread to post the concert announcement above...Which just hits that comics/jazz sweet spot for me. Would be planning to attend but for the little matter of 2,000 miles.
One of the Kickstarter rewards was the opportunity to suggest a cover song for the band to play, which they will do at this concert. I didn't get in on that, but I've been thinking of songs I could suggest ever since! I think I saw a notice that there were plans to video the concert, hope that's so.
Congrats and good luck on this project, Andrew...Really enjoying the music so far!
We will be pro-filming/recording it and posting it all online once it is mixed and edited. It is a completely bonkers set of songs. There are 12 in all and they range across the whole musical spectrum.
- "Unlike a number of his fellow Warp veterans (Aphex Twin, Boards Of Canada, Autechre), Squarepusher loves the stage, and has always been a natural performer. In addition to lending his work a fluid musicality, his background as a virtuosic drummer and bassist makes him a dynamite showman. In his earlier years, Tom Jenkinson tried to perplex us with his technical bravado; later on, he used improvisation to similar effect.Ufabulum, his divisive 13th album, introduced an element of hyperactive bombast, landing closer to EDM than IDM. Three years later, Damogen Furies picks up not far from whereUfabulum left off, but tempers the sensory overload with an uncomplicated recording technique: each track is performed live in a single take, with zero edits.
For Damogen Furies, Jenkinson relied exclusively on the software he's worked with over the last ten years, so it's surprising how much of his earlier sound shines through. Electronics sear and smolder, beats rumble and slice, and arrangements work like tightening vices. The sound palette recalls the bleak moments of Do You Know Squarepusher andGo Plastic. There's lightheartedness, too, but nothing as catchy and good-natured as, say, "My Red Hot Car." "Stor Eiglass," for instance, straps on a euphoric trance melody and zips around in concentric circles. "Blatang Ort" offers something completely different, all dissonance and savagery. If you're on board with both modes of Squarepusher, Damogen Furies has a lot to offer.
Music as boundless and overwhelming as this needs a dominant focal point, which Damogen Furies often has. Flexing unwieldy synth lines, murderous drum manipulations and squalls of noise, "Rayc Fire 2" somehow maintains a steadily ascendant trajectory no matter how belligerent it gets. "Exjag Nives" takes a brighter approach to Squarepusher's melodic drum & bass deconstructions, and uses neon-hued tones like a utopian backdrop for the flurries of enhanced breaks and toothy waveforms.
Things get dicey when he tries to graft his methods together. Overblown productions like "Kontenjaz" and "Baltang Arg" regress into wanky electro-prog at best and mindless EDM at worst. It's hard to hear those tracks as anything more than fuel for Jenkinson's sound-activated LED light rig.
At this point in his career, Jenkinson has the clout and capability to do just about whatever he wants. Massive multimedia shows, groundbreaking musical robots, orchestral re-interpretations—it's all within his reach. And though Damogen Furies hints at that vast potential, it succeeds when Jenkinson condenses his talents. WhereUfabulum felt like a garish souvenir from the performance built around it, Damogen Furies is more substantial and self-contained. You'll probably still want to see him on tour, but this time the live set has already been delivered straight to your headphones. For a mercurial prodigy who started out onstage, that might be the closest Squarepusher gets to coming full circle."
- "This German-Norwegian cooperation project features Alf Terje Hana 1000 guitar sound, the very unique sound world of Werner Cee’s electronic ch’in – and, above all, the chemical reaction provoked by the musical encounter of these two personalities.
In the course of the past few decades, weather has gradually been losing part of its “wildlife” character. Scientists are experimenting with interventions in the climatic system, and massive manipulations have become regular practise. The shamanistic rain doctor of yore has evolved into an inventor of latest high-tech weaponry.
The Toxic Skies Orchestra provides the soundtrack for this scenario: acoustic ambient manipulations, drones, iridescent atmospheres, sounding chemtrails, bizarre soundscapes and roaring sound cascades. The Toxic Sky Orchestra creates phantasmagoric visions of sunsets and apocalyptic thunderstorms, it creates nightmares . sound pictures / psychedelic drones – with lots of mood from the Sixties. Meet you on the dark side of psychedelic ambient.
All music was recorded during live studio sessions in Stavanger, later edited and mixed independently by Athana (No) and Werner Cee (DE), resulting in two different views of the same input.
CD1 NO focusses on the psychedelic and noise aspects, features 1000 guitar sounds and full band, harsh and beautiful.
CD2 DE is a pure guitar/chin duo, shows the ambient and drone world of the TSO, and features the ch’in’s capacities of “landscape painting”, with field recordings and spoken word by Freddie Wadling added."
- "Alf Terje Hana aka Athana, from Stavanger, Norway, guitarist, composer, soundscaper, noisemaker, always in experimental mode.
Combining guitar sounds from the inspirering early seventies, with contemporary electronics.
Worked with Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and Stewart Copeland(ex.Police), as the latest project, among other norwegian and international musicians. This is the eleventh Athana release. The other Additional musicians: Christian Hovda/voice, Astrid Kloster/vocals."
- "Werner Cee, from Germany. Sound-artist and musician, author and director of many international radio-drama projects, composer of electroacoustic music. http://www.wernercee.de His main instrument is the electroacoustic ch’in, a pentatonically tuned seven-stringed solid body zither, adapted from the chinese qchin. Sounds are picked up and radically processed by a sophisticated setting of live electronics. The e-ch’in displays an extraordinarily wide range of sounds which are constantly oscillating, changing in timbre, structure, atmosphere, emotion. In this sound world, distinction between tonality, noise, orchestral drone sounds, musique concrete, pop or avantgarde, din or trash is no longer relevant."
- "After last year's releases on Spectrum Spools, Italian techno masterminds Donato Dozzy and Neel are returning as the duo Voices From The Lake with a release on the mother label Editions Mego: »Live @ MAXXI« is a marvellous organic live-set of hypnotic ambient techno, proofing the outstanding and elegant craftsmanship of their sonic sculpturing, that they both are famous for. As was to be expected they stay true to their polyphonic topography of liquid scapes: aquatic sceneries are embedded in soaking dense atmospheres, gently gyrating us into trance. Sometimes soft echoes of sirenic voices are heard – the only remnants of human traces in these spaces that have suspended time, where smooth silky textures are being channeled into fractal structures that induce a state of transcendence. The haptic quality of their sound is adding up to a sonic matrix of metaphysic imaginary that is provoked by gentle glides and dynamic beat patterns of almost tribalistic quality. Dunked in a bath of dark fluid, sometimes washed away at the shores of Kosmische – VFTL's tunes are not scared to seduce us into a condition of haziness, culminating in a cover of Paolo Conte’s ‚Max’ which is turned into a dazzling sample of sweet, dreamy melancholia. With this release Voices From The Lake succeed again in strengthening their position as one of todays most refined ambient techno producers."
- "Voices From The Lake is the collaboration between two old friends, Italian producers Donato Dozzy and Neel (the engineer and producer Giuseppe Tilleci). Both are huge fans of contemplative electronica and ambient music in their many guises. Their music is thoughtful but physical, seemingly simple, punctuated by repetitive techno beats, hypnotic sound layers and micro-effects that evoke the spirit of their essential influence: nature. Their last self-titled album was released on Prologue, receiving rave reviews and high praise across the mainstream media, and was even listed as best album of 2012 by Resident Advisor. The duo will release their new material, "Live At The MAXXI", on June 22nd on Editions Mego, including a Paolo Conte cover.
Dozzy and Tilleci are expert creators in the field of electronica, Dozzy already being a highly respected artist for his numerous minimalist techno albums, some of which were released on his own label (Dozzy Music), as well as his most recent album on Spectrum Spools, sister label of Mego (soon to release Tilleci’s debut album under his Neel alias). Their partnership has been extremely rewarding both in the studio and for their live shows, as reflected by their latest release, "Velo di Maya", comprised of three long tracks that were the product of a six hours at the New York club The Bunker and included separate sets by both members."
A brand new and breathtaking album from Leafcutter John:
Leafcutter John - Resurrection
Credits:
Written and produced by Leafcutter John, with Varpu Kronholm playing additional percussion on “I Know You Can” and Shabaka Hutchings playing Clarinet on “Gulps.” “Endless Wave” contains elements of “Forest Of Spades” by Strings Of Consciousness, used with permission. Mastered by James Plotkin Photography by Max Baillie Design by Chris Koelle, Leafcutter John, and Varpu Kronholm.
- "A panoramic sound world of drifting vocals over a densely-processed terrain of mud- caked percussion and guitar, Leafcutter John’s new solo album, Resurrection, is a characteristically unique blend of the electronic and the acoustic, the hi-tech, the human and the homemade.
Resurrection is the sixth Leafcutter John album and his first solo release since 2006’s The Forest and The Sea CD/LP (Staubgold). In the intervening nine years, John has toured from Vietnam to Venice, appeared live with Beck Hansen and Imogen Heap, and provided the score for Crow, a major theatre project by Handspring (creators of War Horse). During this time, John has also maintained his permanent role as the unpredictable, electronic antagonist in Polar Bear, the twice Mercury Music Prize- nominated, genre-defying jazz band.
This new record marks fifteen years of releases by Leafcutter John. Born John Burton in Wakefield (Yorkshire, England), his highly original musical voice was first spotted by Mike Paradinas, label boss of Planet Mu Records. Over the course of his first three albums (2000-2003), John established and developed his idiosyncratic London-based studio, and his skills as an inventor of unusual instruments and extraordinary music software.
Resurrection begins with the sound of a single bell, in homage to one of John’s major influences, Bernard Parmigiani’s De Natura Sonorum (1976). From there, the album unfolds over five cinematically varied tracks, “like floating above a world in constant flux.” In fact, aerial photographs of the Japanese tsunami of 2011 were a direct inspiration for the record. “I would create complete, fully-formed compositions,” says John, “then later, I’d come back to them, playing the part of the destroyer, scraping and smearing away elements, weathering, piling up and re-ordering them, as if they’d been hit by a natural disaster.”
Not content with the usual tools available to the electronic musician, John has created innovative new systems and techniques for both live performance and production. This includes a light-controlled instrument that allows him manipulate his live sound through gesture, flickering candles, flashing torches and pyrotechnics. For the track “Gulps”, John coded special software to layer huge swathes of sound. Using a recursive system, he created 7.1 billion layers of a recording of the North Sea, one for each human alive on the planet at the time of writing. Featuring a guest appearance by Shabaka Hutchings (Sons of Kemet), “Gulps” is a neat demonstration of John’s approach: Hutchings’ intimate clarinet is gradually engulfed by a (literal) ocean of sound. This is music where technological innovation is always at the service of the emotional impact of the music: deeply human at its root and mind-expanding in its ambition."
- "Four years ago we had the fortune to release a split 12″ by Svarte Greiner and Le Corbeau. While it might be one of our more obscure releases, it is also one of our strongest, with both bands contributing great material.
Today, we have the honor of making Svarte Greiner’s side of the split available in the digital realm.
- "Svarte Greiner is the moniker of Berlin based musician and designer Erik K. Skodvin, also known as one-half of Deaf Center. Skodvin also runs Miasmah, one of the key labels of today’s ambient/neo classical scene, and co-runs the label Sonic Pieces out of Berlin."
- "Jasmine Guffond is an original creator of conceptual sound. This first output under her own name is its own study, and if you've heard her former projects Jasmina Maschina or Minit, you should not be surprised at the different driving force and fresh structure of sound behind this new venture. However, if youre anticipating veins of clean, melodious folk or purely experimental electronic, you should shift your expectations.
Yellow Bell presents a broad spectrum of musicality, floating within hazy electronics, lost vocals, and ambient dimensions. The balance of digital synthesizer, loops, processed voice, and guitar creates a meticulous soundscape that both intrigues and calms. With its delicacy and immediacy, Yellow Bell distorts the perception of time and creates an environment for engagement and understanding.
While creating its own memorable dynamic, Yellow Bell resonates with the delayed endlessness of Grouper or lovesliescrushing and touches on the early electronic sounds of Musique concrete."
- "In the ancient legend of the Yellow Bell it is said that in the third millennium B.C., Ling-Lun was sent by the emperor to the western mountains where he would ultimately obtain the fundamental pitches of music. He achieved this by cutting bamboo pipes, one of which would become known as the Yellow Bell. This is the pipe that essentially formed the very foundations of Chinese music, the tone from which all other pitches were derived, a symbol of universal harmony.
Jasmine Guffond’s drifting drones are her own Yellow Bell, the basis on which she builds her softly layered works of ambience. Her music moves freely and seamlessly without ever distancing itself from its foundations. Yellow Bell is haunting yet warm, her compositions full of a life yet subdued, augmented by carefully integrated field recordings and the occasional use of Grouper-esque vocals. The title track goes through multiple movements without ever sounding forced, concluding with a slow almost static drone during which time almost seems to stand still. Elephant is equally captivating, with its dense, unsettling atmosphere building to a climax that sees the first appearance of her evocative but suitably unimposing voice.
The album’s penultimate track, Lisa’s Opening, is exemplary of everything Guffond excels at on Yellow Bell. The eerie opening slowly turns into gentle melodies which are then met by the sound of voices, those of people engaged in light conversation, before concluding with the intimate voice of Guffond herself who in this moment recalls and even exceeds the most hauntingly beautiful vocal passages of Grouper’s Ruins. The album’s few brief vocal passages however are where the Liz Harris similarities end, as the ambient soundscapes Guffond has created here are very much her own and of her own aesthetic. With Yellow Bell Guffond has conceived a work of great maturity that is both cohesive and unpredictable, a rare combination within the current ambient music scene and if the aforementioned genre has anything better to offer in 2015 we’ll be looking at something very special indeed."
A rerelease of an album from 1977 by two former Henry Cow members:
- Lisa Herman / vocals - John Greaves / piano, organ, bass, vocals, percussion (7) - Peter Blegvad / vocals, guitar, Tenor saxophone (5)
Guest musiacinas: - Andrew Cyrille / drums, percussion - Mike Mantler / trumpet, trombone - Carla Bley / vocals, Tenor saxophone (1 & 7) - Michael Levine / violin, viola, vocals (9) - Vito Rendace / Alto & Tenor saxes, flute - April Lang / vocals (5 & 8) - Dana Johnson / vocals (2) - Boris Kinberg / clave (5)
- "The classic restored. No extra tracks, just this legendary release as it was originally conceived. Kew Rhone was made soon after Peter and John left Henry Cow, at Carla Bley and Mike Mantler’s Grog Kill studio in New York (they both appear on the CD). Fellow conspirators included singer Lisa Herman and drummer Andrew Cyrille. It’s one of those records which sums up a moment; a creative moment in which ideas have come into clear focus, and just need to be got down; an historical moment at which an innovative, collaborative run of cultural luck is about to run out. It couldn’t have been made earlier or later, we’re just lucky it got made at all."
- "Found sound from youtube. This month I started to sample voices and environmental sounds again... Combining lots of samples, often amazed by synchronicity. I couldn't stop, as I was enjoying it a lot, and two wonderful contributions by Joost Kroon and Maryana Golovchenko completed this little EP, that sounds perhaps more like my previous VoizNoiz albums. Furthermore I used some photos from recent trips for creating the artwork, inspired by the music. These recordings are available as a digital download only"
Two albums from a true master vintage synth operator:
- "Barons Court” is the debut full length album by Canadian electroacoustic composer Sarah Davachi, following short run releases on Important Records’ Cassauna imprint and Full Spectrum. Trained at Mills College, Davachi’s work marries an academic approach to synthesis and live instrumentation with a preternatural attunement to timbre, pacing, and atmosphere. While the record employs a number of vintage and legendary synthesizers, including Buchla’s 200 and Music Easel, an EMS Synthi, and Sequential Circuit’s Prophet 5, Davachi’s approach to her craft here is much more in line with the longform textural minimalism of Eliane Radigue than it is with the hyper-dense modular pyrotechnics of the majority of her synthesist contemporaries. Three of the album’s five compositions feature acoustic instrumentation (cello, flue, harmonium, oboe, and viola, played by Davachi and others) which is situated alongside a battery of keyboards and synths and emphasizes the composerly aspect of her work. “heliotrope” slowly billows into being with a low, keeling drone that is gradually married to an assortment of sympathetic, aurally complex sounds to yield a rich fantasia of beat frequencies and overtones. Later, “wood green” opens almost inaudibly, with lovely eddies of subtly modulating synth clouds evolving effortlessly into something much larger, as comforting and familiar as it is expansive. In an era in which the synthesizer inarguably dominates the topography of experimental music, Davachi’s work stands alone - distinctive, patient, and beautiful."
Following a release schedule spanning 64 weeks, 84 articles by over 60 guest writers, and 127 albums encompassing 1,657 tracks of music from over 70 countries, Smithsonian Folkways has completed the release of the UNESCO Collection of Traditional Music. This makes publicly available the highly acclaimed collection of field recordings from around the world (including twelve albums of previously unreleased material) via CD, digital download, streaming, and library subscription.
"Kirschner’s title, Compressions & Rarefactions, refers most directly to the physics of sound: the pressure waves in air that are the physical component underlying what we perceive as sound. This concept finds an evocative parallel in the art by Johnson, whose work is about visualizing the imperceptibly tiny physical phenomena that make up everything around us. The title can also be related to the compositions themselves: this is music that alternates between extreme density and extreme sparsity, using those contrasts as a major expressive element as they alternate like waves of pressure and absence in air. Finally, the title also evokes the very long durations of several of the pieces on the album, including two that stretch to over two hours in length."
"A Thousand Fields is the first collaboration between Denver, Colorado based artist offthesky (Jason Corder) and Warsaw, Poland based musician Pleq (Bartosz Dziadosz). From the opening restrained "Ashes of America" with intermittant ominous strings through the industrial landscape of "drown under..." with it's glittering glass and harmonious drones breaking through, this work of ambient tapestry sees each artist pulling the best work from one another."
Characteristic Dragon's Eye fare, very sparse. $2.97 on Amazon.
"The concept behind this 'Primary Locations' began with an investigation into the relationship between sound and light. Specifically, the conversion of the color centre wavelengths along the visible light spectrum into audio frequencies. The unit used to measure light is the Angstrom, and the visible spectrum of light runs from about 7000A (deep red) to about 4000A (deep violet). The audio humans are able to perceive runs roughly between 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, so these two scales can be converted. For Primary Locations the light range from red to orange have been converted to an audio range from 397 Hz to 431 Hz respectively. Yellow to lemon has been converted to 464 Hz to 497 Hz and blue to violet to 598 Hz to 665 Hz. These primary colors provided three sets of audio frequency ranges that would become the first components in the creation of new music.
The next step in creating 'Primary Locations' was to find three locations, each containing one of these primary colors. The “red location” was the main bridge at Matsumoto Castle, the “yellow location” was a metal overpass supporting train lines and the “blue location” was a tarp-covered shed situated among farmland and rice fields. Various recordings were made at each place: natural ambience and tones; contact microphone and hydrophonic recordings; and in the case of the metal overpass, impulse responses.
The basis of each track contained these field recordings and sine waves, the frequency of which correlated to the color/Hz range as stated earlier. Then as other sounds and layers were added, the direction of the pieces took shape. Each piece unfolds slowly, and is a sonic snapshot of three sites, their ambience and the sound of their colors."
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- “Trumpeter” is hardly an adequate epithet for Jac Berrocal, a 1946-born musician, poet and sometime film actor who came of age in the ‘70s Paris improv scene, where the boundaries between music, art and theatre were porous and begging to be breached. Inspired by bebop, chanson, free jazz, beat poetry, early rock ‘n roll and myriad Eastern influences, and with an iconoclastic, anything-goes approach to instrumentation and technique that would later align him with post-punk sensibilities, Berrocal blazed an eccentric and unstoppable trail across the underground throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, both solo and as part of the Catalogue group he co-founded.
During this time his uproarious performances routinely wound up jazz and rock audiences alike, but earned the admiration of no small number of wised-up weirdos: Steven Stapleton invited him to perform on two Nurse With Wound albums, and other notable collaborators in his career include Sunny Murray, Lizzy Mercier-Descloux, Lol Coxhill, Yvette Horner and James Chance. In the 90s his protean achievements were celebrated on the Fatal Encounters compilation, but far from slowing down in the autumn of his life, Berrocal has maintained an extraordinary work-rate, keeping studio dates with Pascal Comelade, Telectu and Jaki Liebezeit, among others. In 2014 he released his first solo album proper in 20 years, MDLV.
Now Berrocal has found the perfect foil in David Fenech and Vincent Epplay, two fearlessly inventive improvisers, composers and catalysts who create challenging, acutely modernist yet historically aware settings – wrought out of synthesis, guitars, computer processing, field recordings and unorthodox percussions – for Berrocal’s unmistakeable voice and breathtakingly lyrical horn sound to flourish. Fenech cut his teeth in the mail-art scene of the early ‘90s, leading the Peu Importe collective in Grenoble. His 2000 solo debut was recently reissued by Felix Kubin’s Gagarin label, and he has also worked as a software developer at IRCAM, and played with Jad Fair, Tom Cora, Rhys Chatham and James Plotkin; in 2011 he formed a trio with Berrocal and Ghedalia Tazartes for the Superdisque LP. Epplay is a highly regarded sonic and visual artist with a particular interest in aleatory composition and autonomous pieces, concrète, and the puckish reappropriation of vintage sound and film material, with dozens of published works to his name on labels like Planam/Alga Marghen and PPT/Stembogen.
Antigravity is the trio’s first album together. A lugubrious mise-en-scène in which ice-cold outlaw jazz meets musique concrète, DIY whimsy and dubwise studio science, all watched over by the lost souls and hungry ghosts of rock ‘n roll."
- Blackest Ever Black. - Emusic
- "Live Knots, Oren Ambarchi’s first release for PAN, presents two live realizations of ‘Knots’, the epic centrepiece of his Audience of One (Touch, 2012) release. Built on the interplay between Ambarchi’s swirling, guitar harmonics and the metronomic pulse and shifting accents of Joe Talia’s DeJohnette-esque drumming, the piece merges the organic push and pull of free improvisation with an overarching compositional framework.
‘Tokyo Knots’ presents the complete recording of a duo performance of the piece by Ambarchi and Talia recorded at Tokyo’s legendary SuperDeluxe in March 2013. The performance builds gently on the foundation of Talia’s insistent ride cymbal and the shifting tonal bed of Ambarchi’s rich overtone-drenched guitar, eventually going into a free rock free fall of buzzsaw harmonics and crashing drums. From within the maelstrom, Talia picks up a pulsing motorik rhythm that leads the piece back to where it began, with the addition of the shuddering, elastic tones of a hand-played spring reverb unit.
‘Krakow Knots’, recorded live at Unsound Festival in Krakow in 2013, works with the same basic structure but stretches it out to nearly twice the length and adds strings played by the Sinfonietta Cracovia, led by Eyvind Kang on viola. The strings expand the piece’s textural range with lush chordal blocks, uneasy dissonances and occasional Ligeti-esque swarms of micro-activity, the swelling string tones intensifying the ecstatic nature of the piece as it moves towards its mid-point crescendo in which Ambarchi unleashes a particularly malicious continuum of stuttering harmonic fuzz. The strings then enter with a series of swelling chords, announcing the piece’s final movement, and reaffirming the uniqueness of the tonal and compositional language that Ambarchi has patiently developed over the last two decades, in which the influence of post-minimal composers such as Alvin Curran, Gavin Bryars and David Behrman can be felt alongside the inspiration of raw free jazz, harsh noise and academic psychoacoustics. The final moments of the performance pit Talia and Crys Cole’s amplified objects and spring reverb textures against a field of gently gliding string glissandi before the audience erupts in much-deserved applause."
This is a film score: an instrumental series presented in themes, punctuated with echoes and variations, short sequences and choruses. This is the music composed by Stéphane Laporte for the movie directed by his friend, Tom Gagnaire who two years ago decided to direct in a very short time and with very little means, in a remote part of the Haut Languedoc, « a regionalist and post new-wave western ». A homemade film shot in the countryside, with the phantoms of Raoul Walsh and Eugène Green, where the sheriffs have lost their faith and where white nymphs haunt the cascades.
Recorded just before filming, in a very spontaneous, almost anarchic way the music was also made at home; at his parents’ house where the musician still has a bedroom, full of old instruments waiting to be used: an acoustic toy-guitar offered to him in the eighties by the works council of the candy maker Haribo where his father used to work, an old and out of tune valiha collected in the garage of neighbouring friends, a dusty drum kit, enough solitude and isolation to amplify - track after track, depending on the takes and intentions -, the song of this friendly movie that hasn’t been shot yet but promises to play with a few aesthetic primal emotions when filming the cowboys and the great landscape.
From the undergrowth, or by a night campfire, the music that we hear is a mixture of warm sounds and metallic resonances, harmonious choruses and dissonances: with some languid grandiloquence in the extended sounds of the Rhodes and the Philicorda organ, in these voices that multiply in the reverb and stretch out with the amble of a floydian drumsound circa Obscured by Clouds and with the domestic simplicity of a few motifs, in the spirit of Brian Eno’ and Aphex Twin’s melodic ambient. Fourteen musical sequences that are presented with literality: after the shiny « Une Détente » and the celestial « Entrainement du shériff et de son adjoint », « Un bandit de la pire espèce » brings an offbeat almost parodic Morricone touch. The story is told slowly with the magical extravagance of dreams, the music accompanies the drama only by assuming this sort of emotionless passion particular to the Greek choruses of the ancient tragedies, commenting on an unreal and remote action that the music simply contemplates.
The cinematic setting of Tom Gagnaire’s project provides a new alibi to his creative discretion: a guy by the campfire, that nobody notices, but whose music, by subtle graduation, transfigures the scene. In the vibrations of the air, his unobtrusive monody acts imperceptibly on the characters, and deep in the night, it builds the links of a silent community. This is how his Devil reaches for the sublime: by blending in the decor."
Soundcloud.
- "With her characteristic experimental singing style, often compared to such wonderful singers as Lisa Gerrard and Liz Fraser, Anneli has had the possibility to collaborate with many great artists. She participated in projects with Hector Zazou, Jah Wobble, Gavin Friday, DJ Krush, Tim Simenon, Simon Raymonde of Cocteau Twins, and Guy Sigsworth. Anneli has also cooperated with ECM artist Ketil Bjørnstad and recorded three albums based on poems by John Donne and Hart Crane. Few can claim that they have been singing duets with Morten Harket, but Anneli joined a-ha on two world tours as their guest singer.
In 1999, Röyksopp - consisting of Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge, also from Tromsø - released their debut album Melody AM. As Torbjørn had been a co-producer and live member of Bel Canto for a couple of years and also a co-producer of Anneli´s first solo album Tundra, it was natural for them to have Anneli as their singer when they went out on what would be the start of one of Norway´s biggest pop adventures. The song Sparks, which Anneli wrote with Svein and Torbjørn was the third single from Melody AM and featured on several movies and tv-series. She continued working with Röyksopp for more than ten years, touring the world and co-writing several songs with Svein and Torbjørn including True To Life, Vision One and You Don’t Have A Clue.
In 2012, Anneli left Röyksopp to return to her own music, and her new solo record, Rocks and Straws, is a homecoming song, an ode to her native town and region. Tromsø sits deep in the Arctic but still has a very vivid cultural life and is home to many of the great artists from Norway. The long, arctic winters have no sun, but there is still light – the glassy blue of the dusk-like midday glow in the south, and the flickering green and red aurora that can be seen across the horizon on many days.
Rocks and Straws is based on lyrics by the North Norwegian cult poet Arvid Hanssen, translated into English by artist and writer Roy-Frode Løvland. Hanssens poems are strongly influenced by the mysterious and powerful nature of this arctic region, like the writings of Knut Hamsun, born only a few miles from Hanssens birthplace. Man and nature, and man in nature – Hanssen captures the interaction of Northern Norwegians with their merciless but beautiful surroundings, and the sometimes-deadpan observations that follow.
It is a great personal pleasure for Anneli to make Hanssens work known to a wider audience, especially outside of Norway, as he has had a great influence on her. In 1982, as a child, she starred in a major motion picture based on Hanssens book Søsken på Guds jord (Siblings on God’s Earth). She met Hanssen during the shoot, and he and his works made a great impression on her.
Rocks and Straws is influenced by the arctic soundscapes that Anneli has always carried with her, but is above all an acoustic record. In a world of ever-simpler electronic recordings she has moved in the other direction, and made a record based on recording techniques from the seventies. The music is played live, acoustically, with the best musicians Norway (and the world?) can offer: Eivind Aarset, guitar God and well known for his collaborations with Nils Petter Molvær, and Rune Arnesen, infamous drummer who has played with everyone, are the musical backbone of the album. Ole Vegard Skauge, acclaimed bass player of Röyksopp, and Tromsø's orchestra, The Arctic Philharmonic, also contribute to the album. Apart from singing Anneli plays the piano and organ, and has produced the recording with the musicians. As a Ph. D. candidate at the Arctic University of Tromsø, she is doing a research project on the voice techniques of indigenous people, and this is apparent especially in the song Ocean´s Organ, with a Maori group singing kapa haka songs that Anneli recorded while in Auckland, New Zealand. The title refers to the voices of sailors that have drowned in the ocean, a subject that the Maori singers could easily relate to. A global reference. Something that we all are connected to: Water. And rocks. And straws."
- Rune Gramofon - Soundcloud
- "This awesome full length album by Charlemagne solo has been recorded especially for idiosyncratics. It has been brilliantly engineered by our long term associate Fredéric Alstadt (Angström Studio) and mixed by maestro Aymeric De Tapol.
The artwork is an original collaboration between Charlemagne Palestine, labelboss Yannick Franck and Frau label designer Helena Dietrich"
- Idiosyncratics.
- "There’s something, let’s say so, heavenly homespun in this new record by Charlemagne Palestine, which starts with a rubbed glass and an unsophisticated vocalization in trademark falsetto. A few instants in, we can hear him switching on some kind of machine before reprising the chant. From that device, an indefinite drone originates; it is formed by not precisely describable components in a general impression of blurred dampness. An orchestra stuck on a single chord as heard from the sink hole, if you see what I mean.
Simple as that? Not at all. The massive knowledge – interior and exterior – of an artist of Palestine’s stature translates in this circumstance into the advancement through the various stages of an organically urban/rural mantra which delivers, for lack of a better definition, a tangible teaching. Elicited by the word “sing” repeated a number of times, the crescendo reveals derivations that might bring the listener to think to an organ as the principal source. Perhaps. But it soon becomes clear that the composer is augmenting the intensity of the trance via superimposed tapes containing instrumental shades, several layers of his own singing, and echoes from the outside world. The latter comprise (presumably) airplanes, heavy rain, screaming children, chirping birds, vociferous sheep, marching drummers and choirs from what sounds like a local liturgical rite, even an Italian leftist speaker inviting to defend the workers’ rights at an open-air gathering. And much more, in a majestic maelstrom of sonic emanations.
All of these deeply human manifestations merge splendidly in a sort of miraculous collective radiance. It really feels as everything’s in tune; there’s no way of escaping the “impact within” caused by the music. The progressively growing force of the drone, the appearance of ghosts of memories related to what we have experienced directly, the deus ex machina’s shamanistic dedication, the multiplying flows: a hard-hitting combination, as we’re ultimately possessed by this strange ensemble shaped by entities that would have never dreamed of participating to such a purifying ceremonial.
The end comes suddenly, as Palestine switches off, rubs the glass again and plays with a cheap sampling toy, waving us bye-bye after having intoned the phrase “I love to sing”. A perfect ironic finale for one of the very best releases in the American maverick’s recent output."
- Touching Extremes.
Amon Tobin’s latest release, Dark Jovian - his first since 2011’s ISAM - is as astonishing and as perfectly formed as the space objects that inspired it. The latest result of his restless sonic experimentation, the EP’s music is breathtakingly elemental, and takes electronic music into the sort of capacious territory normally reserved for (dare we say) classical music: Dark Jovian is the thrilling return of a master.
In Amon’s own words:
"I made these tracks a year or two ago after binge-watching space exploration films. People have, from time to time, described things I've done as "scores for imaginary movies," which has always irritated me, but on this occasion it's sort of true.
Even so, what I was really trying to do was to interpret a sense of scale, like moving towards impossibly giant objects until they occupy your whole field of vision, planets turning, or even how it can feel just looking up at night.
I wanted it to pace very slowly, the way far off objects can seem still until you look away for a while and find they've shifted some distance when you look back. Tracks like Io work in that way; something changing gradually so you barely notice it, until at some point you no longer recognize it.
My musical influences are on my sleeve with this EP. Anyone who loves John Williams, Gerry Goldsmith or Gyorgy Ligeti will hopefully see what I'm drawing from, and how it then sits in an electronic context. Dark Jovian is a small personal project which is, nevertheless, dear to me: A one off indulgence into a genre that I love."
- Ninja Tune
- Emusic
For Damogen Furies, Jenkinson relied exclusively on the software he's worked with over the last ten years, so it's surprising how much of his earlier sound shines through. Electronics sear and smolder, beats rumble and slice, and arrangements work like tightening vices. The sound palette recalls the bleak moments of Do You Know Squarepusher andGo Plastic. There's lightheartedness, too, but nothing as catchy and good-natured as, say, "My Red Hot Car." "Stor Eiglass," for instance, straps on a euphoric trance melody and zips around in concentric circles. "Blatang Ort" offers something completely different, all dissonance and savagery. If you're on board with both modes of Squarepusher, Damogen Furies has a lot to offer.
Music as boundless and overwhelming as this needs a dominant focal point, which Damogen Furies often has. Flexing unwieldy synth lines, murderous drum manipulations and squalls of noise, "Rayc Fire 2" somehow maintains a steadily ascendant trajectory no matter how belligerent it gets. "Exjag Nives" takes a brighter approach to Squarepusher's melodic drum & bass deconstructions, and uses neon-hued tones like a utopian backdrop for the flurries of enhanced breaks and toothy waveforms.
Things get dicey when he tries to graft his methods together. Overblown productions like "Kontenjaz" and "Baltang Arg" regress into wanky electro-prog at best and mindless EDM at worst. It's hard to hear those tracks as anything more than fuel for Jenkinson's sound-activated LED light rig.
At this point in his career, Jenkinson has the clout and capability to do just about whatever he wants. Massive multimedia shows, groundbreaking musical robots, orchestral re-interpretations—it's all within his reach. And though Damogen Furies hints at that vast potential, it succeeds when Jenkinson condenses his talents. WhereUfabulum felt like a garish souvenir from the performance built around it, Damogen Furies is more substantial and self-contained. You'll probably still want to see him on tour, but this time the live set has already been delivered straight to your headphones. For a mercurial prodigy who started out onstage, that might be the closest Squarepusher gets to coming full circle."
- "This German-Norwegian cooperation project features Alf Terje Hana 1000 guitar sound, the very unique sound world of Werner Cee’s electronic ch’in – and, above all, the chemical reaction provoked by the musical encounter of these two personalities.
In the course of the past few decades, weather has gradually been losing part of its “wildlife” character. Scientists are experimenting with interventions in the climatic system, and massive manipulations have become regular practise. The shamanistic rain doctor of yore has evolved into an inventor of latest high-tech weaponry.
The Toxic Skies Orchestra provides the soundtrack for this scenario: acoustic ambient manipulations, drones, iridescent atmospheres, sounding chemtrails, bizarre soundscapes and roaring sound cascades. The Toxic Sky Orchestra creates phantasmagoric visions of sunsets and apocalyptic thunderstorms, it creates nightmares . sound pictures / psychedelic drones – with lots of mood from the Sixties. Meet you on the dark side of psychedelic ambient.
All music was recorded during live studio sessions in Stavanger, later edited and mixed independently by Athana (No) and Werner Cee (DE), resulting in two different views of the same input.
CD1 NO focusses on the psychedelic and noise aspects, features 1000 guitar sounds and full band, harsh and beautiful.
CD2 DE is a pure guitar/chin duo, shows the ambient and drone world of the TSO, and features the ch’in’s capacities of “landscape painting”, with field recordings and spoken word by Freddie Wadling added."
- "Alf Terje Hana aka Athana, from Stavanger, Norway, guitarist, composer, soundscaper, noisemaker, always in experimental mode.
Combining guitar sounds from the inspirering early seventies, with contemporary electronics.
Worked with Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and Stewart Copeland(ex.Police), as the latest project, among other norwegian and international musicians. This is the eleventh Athana release. The other Additional musicians: Christian Hovda/voice, Astrid Kloster/vocals."
- "Werner Cee, from Germany. Sound-artist and musician, author and director of many international radio-drama projects, composer of electroacoustic music. http://www.wernercee.de His main instrument is the electroacoustic ch’in, a pentatonically tuned seven-stringed solid body zither, adapted from the chinese qchin. Sounds are picked up and radically processed by a sophisticated setting of live electronics. The e-ch’in displays an extraordinarily wide range of sounds which are constantly oscillating, changing in timbre, structure, atmosphere, emotion. In this sound world, distinction between tonality, noise, orchestral drone sounds, musique concrete, pop or avantgarde, din or trash is no longer relevant."
West Audio Productions AS - Soundcloud
Werner Cee & Freddie Wadling @ Emusers
As was to be expected they stay true to their polyphonic topography of liquid scapes: aquatic sceneries are embedded in soaking dense atmospheres, gently gyrating us into trance. Sometimes soft echoes of sirenic voices are heard – the only remnants of human traces in these spaces that have suspended time, where smooth silky textures are being channeled into fractal structures that induce a state of transcendence. The haptic quality of their sound is adding up to a sonic matrix of metaphysic imaginary that is provoked by gentle glides and dynamic beat patterns of almost tribalistic quality.
Dunked in a bath of dark fluid, sometimes washed away at the shores of Kosmische – VFTL's tunes are not scared to seduce us into a condition of haziness, culminating in a cover of Paolo Conte’s ‚Max’ which is turned into a dazzling sample of sweet, dreamy melancholia.
With this release Voices From The Lake succeed again in strengthening their position as one of todays most refined ambient techno producers."
Dozzy and Tilleci are expert creators in the field of electronica, Dozzy already being a highly respected artist for his numerous minimalist techno albums, some of which were released on his own label (Dozzy Music), as well as his most recent album on Spectrum Spools, sister label of Mego (soon to release Tilleci’s debut album under his Neel alias). Their partnership has been extremely rewarding both in the studio and for their live shows, as reflected by their latest release, "Velo di Maya", comprised of three long tracks that were the product of a six hours at the New York club The Bunker and included separate sets by both members."
Leafcutter John - Resurrection
Credits:
Written and produced by Leafcutter John, with Varpu Kronholm playing additional percussion on “I Know You Can” and Shabaka Hutchings playing Clarinet on “Gulps.” “Endless Wave” contains elements of “Forest Of Spades” by Strings Of Consciousness, used with permission. Mastered by James Plotkin Photography by Max Baillie Design by Chris Koelle, Leafcutter John, and Varpu Kronholm.
- "A panoramic sound world of drifting vocals over a densely-processed terrain of mud- caked percussion and guitar, Leafcutter John’s new solo album, Resurrection, is a characteristically unique blend of the electronic and the acoustic, the hi-tech, the human and the homemade.
Resurrection is the sixth Leafcutter John album and his first solo release since 2006’s The Forest and The Sea CD/LP (Staubgold). In the intervening nine years, John has toured from Vietnam to Venice, appeared live with Beck Hansen and Imogen Heap, and provided the score for Crow, a major theatre project by Handspring (creators of War Horse). During this time, John has also maintained his permanent role as the unpredictable, electronic antagonist in Polar Bear, the twice Mercury Music Prize- nominated, genre-defying jazz band.
This new record marks fifteen years of releases by Leafcutter John. Born John Burton in Wakefield (Yorkshire, England), his highly original musical voice was first spotted by Mike Paradinas, label boss of Planet Mu Records. Over the course of his first three albums (2000-2003), John established and developed his idiosyncratic London-based studio, and his skills as an inventor of unusual instruments and extraordinary music software.
Resurrection begins with the sound of a single bell, in homage to one of John’s major influences, Bernard Parmigiani’s De Natura Sonorum (1976). From there, the album unfolds over five cinematically varied tracks, “like floating above a world in constant flux.” In fact, aerial photographs of the Japanese tsunami of 2011 were a direct inspiration for the record. “I would create complete, fully-formed compositions,” says John, “then later, I’d come back to them, playing the part of the destroyer, scraping and smearing away elements, weathering, piling up and re-ordering them, as if they’d been hit by a natural disaster.”
Not content with the usual tools available to the electronic musician, John has created innovative new systems and techniques for both live performance and production. This includes a light-controlled instrument that allows him manipulate his live sound through gesture, flickering candles, flashing torches and pyrotechnics. For the track “Gulps”, John coded special software to layer huge swathes of sound. Using a recursive system, he created 7.1 billion layers of a recording of the North Sea, one for each human alive on the planet at the time of writing. Featuring a guest appearance by Shabaka Hutchings (Sons of Kemet), “Gulps” is a neat demonstration of John’s approach: Hutchings’ intimate clarinet is gradually engulfed by a (literal) ocean of sound. This is music where technological innovation is always at the service of the emotional impact of the music: deeply human at its root and mind-expanding in its ambition."
Desire Path Recordings
Btw, Leafcutter John has created a free piece of remix software called Forester:
- It is very easy to use and very funny to play around with . . .
- "Four years ago we had the fortune to release a split 12″ by Svarte Greiner and Le Corbeau. While it might be one of our more obscure releases, it is also one of our strongest, with both bands contributing great material.
Today, we have the honor of making Svarte Greiner’s side of the split available in the digital realm.
- Fysisk Format - Soundcloud
- "Svarte Greiner is the moniker of Berlin based musician and designer Erik K. Skodvin, also known as one-half of Deaf Center. Skodvin also runs Miasmah, one of the key labels of today’s ambient/neo classical scene, and co-runs the label Sonic Pieces out of Berlin."
Yellow Bell presents a broad spectrum of musicality, floating within hazy electronics, lost vocals, and ambient dimensions. The balance of digital synthesizer, loops, processed voice, and guitar creates a meticulous soundscape that both intrigues and calms. With its delicacy and immediacy, Yellow Bell distorts the perception of time and creates an environment for engagement and understanding.
While creating its own memorable dynamic, Yellow Bell resonates with the delayed endlessness
of Grouper or lovesliescrushing and touches on the early electronic sounds of Musique concrete."
Jasmine Guffond’s drifting drones are her own Yellow Bell, the basis on which she builds her softly layered works of ambience. Her music moves freely and seamlessly without ever distancing itself from its foundations. Yellow Bell is haunting yet warm, her compositions full of a life yet subdued, augmented by carefully integrated field recordings and the occasional use of Grouper-esque vocals. The title track goes through multiple movements without ever sounding forced, concluding with a slow almost static drone during which time almost seems to stand still. Elephant is equally captivating, with its dense, unsettling atmosphere building to a climax that sees the first appearance of her evocative but suitably unimposing voice.
The album’s penultimate track, Lisa’s Opening, is exemplary of everything Guffond excels at on Yellow Bell. The eerie opening slowly turns into gentle melodies which are then met by the sound of voices, those of people engaged in light conversation, before concluding with the intimate voice of Guffond herself who in this moment recalls and even exceeds the most hauntingly beautiful vocal passages of Grouper’s Ruins. The album’s few brief vocal passages however are where the Liz Harris similarities end, as the ambient soundscapes Guffond has created here are very much her own and of her own aesthetic. With Yellow Bell Guffond has conceived a work of great maturity that is both cohesive and unpredictable, a rare combination within the current ambient music scene and if the aforementioned genre has anything better to offer in 2015 we’ll be looking at something very special indeed."
- John Greaves / piano, organ, bass, vocals, percussion (7)
- Peter Blegvad / vocals, guitar, Tenor saxophone (5)
Guest musiacinas:
- Andrew Cyrille / drums, percussion
- Mike Mantler / trumpet, trombone
- Carla Bley / vocals, Tenor saxophone (1 & 7)
- Michael Levine / violin, viola, vocals (9)
- Vito Rendace / Alto & Tenor saxes, flute
- April Lang / vocals (5 & 8)
- Dana Johnson / vocals (2)
- Boris Kinberg / clave (5)
Joost Kroon: drums & percussion
Maryana Golovchenko: additional vocal
Sarah Davachi - Qualities of Bodies Permanent
The next step in creating 'Primary Locations' was to find three locations, each containing one of these primary colors. The “red location” was the main bridge at Matsumoto Castle, the “yellow location” was a metal overpass supporting train lines and the “blue location” was a tarp-covered shed situated among farmland and rice fields. Various recordings were made at each place: natural ambience and tones; contact microphone and hydrophonic recordings; and in the case of the metal overpass, impulse responses.
The basis of each track contained these field recordings and sine waves, the frequency of which correlated to the color/Hz range as stated earlier. Then as other sounds and layers were added, the direction of the pieces took shape. Each piece unfolds slowly, and is a sonic snapshot of three sites, their ambience and the sound of their colors."