Somi is the new full-length from Taylor Deupree following 2014’s Faint (12k1073/12k2025). The release comes packaged as a CD inside a 20-page hardbound book of Deupree’s photographs that inspired the creation of the music. For the music, made with a small number of instruments (electric piano, glockenspiel, DX7, handheld cassette recorder) Deupree originally set out to create a follow-up to his classic album Stil.. Steeped in subtle repetition and soft electronic sound, Stil. explored themes of time and change. However, Stil. was created with purely electronic means - software synthesizers and looping algorithms which explored the then-novel frontier of DSP based “microsound.” With a strong desire to bring the aesthetics of Stil. to his current way of working Deupree used no software or automatic looping, instead opting for the imperfections of creating “loops” by hand. The result is warm and quietly decayed work of spare, discreet tones and dozens of interwoven slow polyrhythms that create repetitions that constantly fall apart and shuffle themselves back together. While these ideas of phase relationships are not new in music, nor to Deupree’s catalogue of work, it was the way he approached the composing that was different, and more challenging, than his work in the past. Wrapped up warmly in the sonics of cassette players and cheap built-in speakers, Somi’s dusty melodies sit quietly, but uneasily, and question the passing of time and present one of Deupree’s most alluring albums to date.
This album is a musical approach to traditional children stories, which have a circular narrative, innocent and eerie at the same time. A haunting aura caught me while I was recording this music, in the attic of my home in La Cumbre, at dusk, as a fairy tale. Every piece of "Pavel" could be a company for rainy days, a train journey, in a park, walking under the stars after work, or during a nap: its melodies almost hypnotic will guide you towards to a dream state, as if you were inside your own legend of the forest.
Two reworks of TSB tracks. We uncovered a few stems (ones we thought were long gone) on the Ghostly server and decided to rework these tracks for a live performance in Poland at Festival Ambientalny on Dec 3, 2016. Upon my return to the US, I decided to release these two versions, as a way to raise funds to help the victims of the Oakland Ghost Ship fire. I'm absolutely heartbroken. Not only a huge loss of life, but also of incredibly creative and talented people. It's a small community, and many friends of friends were affected. I've played at so many DIY spaces like Ghost Ship over the last 10+ years. So many artists friends live/work in similar settings. It just hits too close to home. My thoughts with everyone affected by this tragedy. If you can spare it, please consider donating something. Not only people lost their lives, but many others lost their homes and livelihood. Others will have mounting medical bills. Any little bit you can spare will help.
- "An Overview of Experimental and Electronic Music in Turkey:
this anthology features 29 turkish artists: from the electronic music of
the '60s to all forms of experimental music of the '10s. This is the
second volume of an exploration by zone or sphere of influence.
The
constellation built between 2000 and 2012 with the seven-part series An
Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music continues to expand through the
Early Electronic collection (consisting mostly of tracks composed
between the 50's and the 80's) and these 'area anthologies' (we prefer
the phrase 'area of influence' to 'country'), this one having been
preceded by An Anthology of Chinese Experimental Music 1992-2008. You
probably noticed how larger is the time frame for this collection. The
reason is that, in Turkey, two exceptional composers emerged very early
on to show the way to future generations that followed in a piecemeal
fashion. Indeed, Arel and Mimaroglu did not have immediate followers.
The explosion happened later, through the 'serious music' of
conservatories and universities (Cenk Ergün, Koray Tahiro?lu, Mehmet Can
Özer...) and the electronic/noise music avant-garde ((Mete Sezgin,
Nilüfer Ormanlı, Utku Tavil...) - the great wave of the 2000s and 2010s.
The beauty of this album is found in its multifaceted nature; it
features purely formal music, hijacked electronica, remnants of Turkish
harmonies, and pieces that are more conceptual or even political
(vaguely or strongly) in design. Batur Sönmez and Erdem Helvacıoglu have
managed to capture this diversity and energy. And it so happens that
this profusion of music related to an urgency to live and think freely
is blooming within an increasingly-stifling space. Call it the
spectacular beauty of an explosion."
It is actually but it's not on the Boomkat site. I thought the design was too similar!
The 7 anthologies of noise and electronic music look like they need investigating too.
Oh ! - there it was and on Sub rosa . . . Certainly calls for investigation - Thanks ! --------------------------------------------- This album was released in 1970 and with copyright at Composers Voice in 2016. I seriously doubt that 1970 is correct, I find it more likely that she was born in 1970.
In any case this is an utterly mindblowing release:
Anna Mikhailova
After
graduation Rotterdam University of Arts (Codarts) as a theater director
(2013), Den Haag Royal Conservatory composition and sonology department
(2011), Chicago Columbia University film music (2008, special
programm), Moscow conservatory (2007) as a composer, organ player and
koto player, working with impro, jazz, pop, rock musician, dancers,
collecting the folk songs in the folk expeditions, writing music for
movies, animations, theater, performances, computer games, moving from
on place to another, I discovered that the roots started to call me and
my childhood dreams of what is all about, raised up and I just had to
follow them and start to approach the music from the beginning again.
I
am in music from 6 years old and I love it, I love to speak this
language and to discover the possibility of it. After working on several
operas, performances, installations, which gave me an amazing
experience of the team work and collaboration; playing in different
bands, as techno, pop, impro, jazz, rock, industrial, experimental, I
found out, that for me is more and more important not only to express
myself through the music, but to find a new way to show the audience
they personal reasons to be. (while listening to the language of music,
experiencing the magic of theatre, getting lost in the exhibition
place…)
Franck Dadure, saxophone, clarinette turque, électroniques & the Fakir Orchestra : Christophe Elliott Touzalin, trompette | Daniel Zimmermann, trombone | Frédéric Sachs, guitare | Dominique Grimaldi, basse | Fabien Duscombs, batterie. Signature / Radio France
- "Franck Dadure brilliantly charts an untraveled road in the jazz
world by marrying it with finesse to electronics. From this union is
born a language freed of any inhibition, defying adherence to any
aesthetic school. To illustrate his project Franck Dadure brings
together the cream of the French scene (Dominique Grimaldi, Fabien
Duscombs, Fred Sachs, Elliott Touzalin and Daniel Zimmermann) giving
birth to UMO (an unidentified musical object)."
- Editions Mego is proud to present the latest opus from legendary British
composer, actor, sound designer and all round fine human Simon Fisher
Turner. Giraffe is a new major work which blurs the lines between sound
design and song, machine severity and narrative sentimentality.
Subtitled ‘living in sounds and music’ Giraffe take the listener through
a vast journey where an abstract clacking of unknown origin rubs up
against a melancholic electronic sequence. ‘Life sounds’ were captured
with a portable hard disc recorder and i-phone and appear alongside
contemporar sound design. Emma Smith provides the narrative on ‘Slight
Smile’ whilst electronic machines grind amongst background industrial
klang in ‘Mud Larks’. 'Save As' revolves around a beautiful simple piano
motif which soon folds into an unnerving field recording and drone
combination.
Giraffe is a document of interior and exterior duality. A living space
where machines and the surrounding world collide, a sonic landscape
where musical and nonmusical elements are placed on an level hierarchy.
The alchemy of these constituent parts results in the magic of Giraffe,
one where the symbiotic sequence of events highlights a unique approach
to sound as rapturous matter in whatever form it takes."
This mixtape of “self-identified non-male artists making experimental
electronic music” brings together 34 female or non-binary artists of
over 6 different nationalities. Launched in the fall of 2016 on social
networks by the label Hylé Tapes, this call to contributions had a
large international appeal, so much that the resulting mixtape can boast
3 tapes as well as a book-fanzine compiling the details of each
project.
The success of this call and its dense end-product make it a unique
political object. Unique because the works reflect the diversity of
experimental music as a field; political because the voices that can be
heard in it are often unheard or silenced. Those voices belong to women
and non-binary people, whose common project is to experiment with sound,
to explore its textures and combinations. This mixtape brings together
artists who make music a space of radical exploration, a place where
technologies, gender and practices come together to create singular
works.
Far from promoting exclusion, this mixtape, on the contrary, calls for
inclusion in order to remind us that music is a political space shaped
by power dynamics and logics of domination. By creating a platform for
female and non-binary artists, Hylé Tapes shows that it is time to take
those problematics seriously. It is time to act and to take a stand as
allies; this is a fundamental step on the path to lessening the
marginalisation faced by female and non-binary artists. By bringing them
together in this way, Hylé Tapes also allows those artists to make
their presence known. Finally, it brings to the forefront a large
community for whom this mixtape is a real opportunity to create a
network for sharing experiences and skills: indeed, today more than
ever, “sisterhood is powerful”.
Beyond the motivations forging the record, the process by which this edition was created was unlike many of my other records. Having worked largely alone in recent years, I wanted to shift away from that approach. I wanted the opportunity for exchange, to trial new ideas in various spaces and to find myself surprised by the perspectives of others. It was this desire that led me to reach out to friends, old and new, and invite them to contribute to Cruel Optimism. It also led to me using a range of studio spaces to explore new techniques, informed by what I had learned taking Wilderness Of Mirrors on the road for the better part of two years.
- "After his highly acclaimed „A Requiem For Edward Snowden“ LP, Matthew
Collings returns with a collaboration with Swedish sound artist Dag
Rosenqvist. „Hello Darkness“ is dark and it is bleak and it’s
fragmented. It feels like those days when you want to just annihilate
everything, and then stare at a river. It demands your attention. It
sounds like it’s breaking from the inside. It’s serious. And not.
Rosenqvist
& Collings started their work on „Hello Darkness“ already back in
2012, right after they had released the Wonderland EP (on Hibernate
Recordings). There really were no guidelines or rules for what they were
going to create, they just wanted to make music together, and
surprisingly it came naturally, and felt pretty good…
This turned
out to be one of those collabs that are kind of off and on. At times
both were too busy with other things, and so sometimes months would pass
between working sessions. And when they picked it up again, most of the
times they had basically forgot where they left off, having to retrace
their steps, remember things, re-create ideas, trash ideas that didn’t
work, misplace tracks and sounds only to add them to songs they weren’t
meant to be a part of. Rosenqvist & Collings worked destructively
from processed stereo tracks with botched fade-ins, scrapping entire
sessions and adding new layers and sounds of all kinds, letting it go in
any directing it needed to, adding different time signatures on top of
each other, turning sounds and entire tracks inside out and upside down.
They found a freedom to go in any direction they wanted to, free from
what they’ve done before, free from any expectations on both each other
and from anyone else.
Despite all of this, there is a humour to
the album. There’s something tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing. This
was also one of the reasons they choose to go with the title of the
album, which is – in all honesty – slightly over the top. This was also
the commission when creating the cover design. No holds barred, no
restrictions.
The title is of course “borrowed” from the Simon
& Garfunkel track The Sound of Silence, a fact that probably doesn’t
make them any cooler. Thinking about it now, Matthew Collings second
album was called Silence Is A Rhythm Too. Coincidence? Some say there
are no coincidences."
A re-narration of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 movie ‘Vampyr’
with
Olga Politova - Piano
Sylvain Chauveau - Guitar
- "The beginnings of the album date back to 2004 when I was invited to
perform a live score for Vampyr at the Louvre in Paris. I started making
recordings with classical trained pianist Olga Politova whom I asked to
play some variant forms of Clara Schumann’s Nocturnes for me, for
instance by playing selected chords in extreme slow motion with the
sustain pedal held down, or harmonic movements as frozen clusters using
strumming techniques. By the same time I started using shortwave radio
as a live input for my processing techniques, so I've created various
long tracks by modulating Olga’s playing with random radio input. Back
then I didn't understand the resulting pieces and since the Louvre
performance soon got cancelled, I've shelved the material until Winter
2015 when I rediscovered Dreyer’s movie and decided to work on the music
again.
While I had initially planned to create a synced score to play along
with the Criterion edition of the high-definition transfer from the 1998
restoration of Vampyr, Radiance X eventually contains a series of sonic
images from the film as well as portraits of the three main female
characters. In addition to the aforementioned piano recordings I used
the 10" record of the Hollywood String Quartet’s performance of
Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht and guitar recordings made by Sylvain
Chauveau.
Radiance X has a deliberate sonic edginess, so in some parts you will
hear a soft harmonic clipping or out of phase content. As always, I
recommend to download a lossless version of the music.
Her Dark Gaze Drowned in Light is dedicated to Maryanne Amacher."
- "It all started with a book, as these things often do: an
English anthology of metaphysical poetry from the 17th century, to be
exact. Which may not sound like the sexiest option on the shelves, but
hear us out. The gentleman plowing through those weathered pages
happened to be Michał Jacaszek, the Polish composer who's spun dramatic
shades of darkness and light into gold for more than a decade now. An
absolute master of melancholy, from the trickle-down electronics of
Treny to the vapor-trailed verses of its looming spiritual cousin KWIATY.
"The
poems were simple, pure and beautiful," Jacaszek says of the book's
poignant Robert Herrick passages. "They spoke about death, pain, longing
and loneliness, but somehow these pieces were bringing hope, solace,
and peace."
They also sounded a hell of a lot like
songs when read out loud. Structurally at least. Herrick's rhyme schemes
and rhythms still needed the right musical accompaniment, and Jacaszek
had just the ticket: a backlog of previously unreleased
recordings—warm-blooded samples, lonesome synth lines, pared-down guitar
parts—begging for proper arrangements and dynamic mixdowns. Not to
mention the most vocal-driven material Jacaszek's ever written, melding
his stormy melodies with a breakout performance by Hania Malarowska and
the robust supporting roles of Joasia Sobowiec-Jamioł and Natalia
Grzebała.
"I tend to always create organic, acoustic
sounds, even though I work within a digital environment," explains
Jacaszek. "Because KWIATY is actually a vocal
album, the electronic sounds in the background seemed to be a perfect
opposition. It's all unintentional, really; this is just my music
language and I can't run away from it."
- "Author and producer of electroacoustic music that
combines electronically prepared sounds with acoustic instruments.
Composer of soundtracks and theatre music. He is a co-curator of C3 Festival /Club Contemporary Classical/. Member of Polish Society for Electroacoustic Music. Lives in Gdansk, Poland. . . . ."
- Perhaps The most gorgeous album from Jacaszek ever !
- "Timely outing from two grand masters of exploratory electronics.
Kassel Jaeger is the moniker of French musician François Bonnet who
works at the GRM and has released a number of books including the highly
regarded The Order of Sounds, A Sonorous Archipelago published by
Urbanomic in 2016. Jim O’Rourke is known to most through his
explorations of the song and shapes, the high and low, the east and
south.
Wakes on Cerulean is a joint adventure where process folds upon process
and the operation of procedure remains unknown. Amongst a mysterious
cloud of excited high frequencies tiny whistling howls. Frog leaps in
technique lay out a thrilling and uplifting journey that runs from the
soothing to ecstatic and back to the buoyant again.
Wakes on Cerulean is a staggering feast of the joys found in electronic
process. A malleable bubble of hovering excitement, melody and joyous
refrain."
‘Monads' is the latest work by Iranian sound artist Porya Hatami. A departure for Hatami, this new album eschews melody in favour of abstract and at times very experimental sound design. The 12 tracks of ‘Monads’ neglect to follow structure or narrative. They propose repetition, temporarily and indeterminacy as their substantial qualities Occasionally the textures reach the jagged end of the spectrum, tactile but never abrasive. An exploration of frequencies is present on many pieces here, subsonic at times, almost undetectable by ear, making themselves felt more than heard.
Zeitkratzer directed by Reinhold Friedl Frank Gratkowski / flute, clarinets, Elena Kakaliagou / french
horn, Hilary Jeffery / trombone, Reinhold Friedl / harmonium, piano,
Didier Ascour / guitar, Maurice de Martin / drums, Lisa Marie Landgraf /
violin, Burkhard Schlothauer / violin, Elisabeth Coudoux, violoncello,
Ulrich Phillipp / double bass
#DOUBLE BIRTHDAY RELEASE !! KARLRECORDS celebrates its 10th
birthday, ZEITKRATZER even its 20th! And the party starts with the
necessary re-interpretations of early compositions by electronic
pioneers KRAFTWERK.
- "Founded in 1997 by REINHOLD FRIEDL, ZEITKRATZER have since been
creating an impressive catalogue of recordings that embraces 20th
century avant-garde composers (CAGE, STOCKHAUSEN, LUCIER) as well as
electronic artists (CARSTEN NICOLAI, TERRE THAEMLITZ) or underground
experimentalists like THROBBING GRISTLE or COLUMN ONE. In their 20th
anniversary year, the critically acclaimed ensemble will release a
series of diverse albums that will explore new grounds in the typical,
adventurous zeitkratzer way – the first of these albums is dedicated to
KRAFTWERK and their early, kraut-esque albums “Kraftwerk” and “Kraftwerk
2”. As KRAFTWERK never re-released these albums, ZEITKRATZER gave its
best to cover the first tranche of the songs (second tranche to come…).
Recorded in Marseille / France in May 2016, the six tracks reveal a
bucolic and even psychedelic aspect of the ensemble that’s mostly known
(or feared) for its interpretatory and aesthetic acerbity. And yet
there’s no doubt that “Songs From The Albums „Kraftwerk“ And „Kraftwerk
2“ turned out a true ZEITKRATZER recording in the best and full meaning!
"This album is a bit different than other music I created. The tracks on
this album were created as the audio background for an audiobook. That
audiobook contains stories about my hometown. As the stories are pretty
dark (full of murders, breakouts, explosions, arrests by communist
regime), the music is sometimes dark and disturbing, too. The music on
"Stories of an Old Man" are reworked versions and they are a bit darker,
full of ambient, experimental sounds and even some techno pulses.
Also it is worth mentioning that the album was mastered by Michał
Wolski, so you can be sure that there will be many beautiful noises and
tape hiss! ENJOY."
GRZEGORZ BOJANEK (1975)
- as an artist consequently introduces field
recordings and electroacoustic sounds into his compositions which are
the combination of the melodic ambient, guitar sounds and sometimes
noise. He cooperated with many artists from USA, Canada and China. His
latest compositions can be described as organic ambient with the
elements of noise and field recordings. He has cooperated with many
artists from the USA, Canada and China. Grzegorz is the co-founder of
ChoP project where he concentrates his efforts on multicultural
collaboration between artists from China and Poland. Together with Zen
Lu, Grzegorz collaborated with British film director Isaac Julien on his
project “Better Life” (“Ten Thousand Waves”). Grzegorz cooperates with
many labels like Preserved Sound (PL), Etalabel (PL), Twice Removed
(Australia), Dynamophone (USA), Post Label (CZ), Soft Recordings (FR),
Twin Springs Tapes (USA), OHM Resistance (USA). Grzegorz performed
during many festivals, such as Unsound Festival (PL), Shanghai
Electronic Music Week (CN), Ambient Festiwal in Gorlice (PL), Ambient
Park (PL), and Firmament Festival (PL), Festiwal Ambientalny (PL) and
ChoP Festival, Shenzhen and Hong Kong (CN).
- "This album has emerged as a compilation of works written for my
smallest ensemble yet, a quartet, that consists of my most loyal musical
comrades over the last several years: Slobodanka, Sinisa and Lav. If it
was not for them, this album would not be what it is. Jasna, who
recently joined us as a new member and complements my way of playing
music in a unique manner, has brought an extra quality to this album,
enriching what was originally written only for the quartet. The
compositions were all written within a period of 15 years, and, despite
their evident diversity, share something in common, as well. They are
all dominated by contemplative, intimate tones…lyrical, wistful,
melancholic… and their momentary ecstatic bursts are all sudden
energetic and expressive digressions that almost automatically return to their
original state of “quietude”. I would like to hope that this “quietude”
will bring the listener a certain internal charge, a charge that will
open up to him/her a world that idealistically eschews the “turbulence”
of contemporary urban everyday life… Because it is quite probable that
my life in the countryside has enabled me to hear the sounds of space
within me, a space closer to nature and silence."
"Avifaunal" is the latest album from UK based duo Pausal, the audio and visual art project of Alex Smalley and Simon Bainton. It follows previous releases on labels such as Barge Recordings, Students of Decay, Own Records and Infraction. Individually, Alex has released numerous works under his Olan Mill alias and Simon has released on Hibernate Records. Their music has been described as "billowing, vaporous, and cloud-like", "a shimmering haze of humid ambience and sparkling field recordings", "a colourful, yet ghostly, world of slow-moving, rejuvenating sound".
- Andrew Liles is a prolific solo artist, producer, remixer and studio
engineer. He has worked with many leading lights in experimental and
outsider music and is renowned for his extensive contributions to the
recordings and live performances of Nurse With Wound and Current 93.
Recording since the mid 1980’s his work has been used in Theatre, Film,
Radio and T.V. He has appeared on well over 200 releases creating a
unique, eclectic and diverse back catalogue that crosses many genres and
styles.
He has also worked in some capacity with the following groups and individuals:
Darren Tate, Colin Potter, The Hafler Trio, Danielle Dax, David
Tibet, Unsong, Band of Pain, Steven Severin, Maja Elliott, Current
93, John Murphy, Pantaleimon, Edward Ka-Spel, Årabrot, Steven
Stapleton, Nurse With Wound, Cadaverous Condition, Voice of the Seven
Thunders, Jonathan Coleclough, Jean-Hervé Peron, Peter Strickland, Bass
Communion, Ernesto Tomasini, Frans De Waard, Freek Kinkelaar, Tony
Wakeford, Benjamin Louche, David Janssen, vidnaObmana, Joolie Wood, Jac
Berrocal, Kenji Siratori, Freida Abtan, Hush Arbors, Alex
Jako, Aranos, Faust, Ruse, Maniac, Lord Bath, Sion Orgon, Andrew
King, Nick Mott, Daniel Menche, Black Leather Jesus, Paul Bradley, Aaron
Moore, Nigel Ayers, Irr. App (Ext), Rose McDowall, Daniel Padden, Brian
Poole, Fovea Hex, Annie Kerr, Elisabeth Oswell, Attila Csihar, Karl
Blake, Damo Suzuki, Fabrizio Palumbo, Sutekh Hexen, The Sonic Catering
Band, Razen, Alex Neilson, Lavinia Blackwall, Bobbie Watson, Michel
Faber, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Kommissar Hjuler Und Frau.
Silentium is an
electroacoustic piece based on sounds of bells and church
organs that where recorded during a residency at gallery
Školská 28 in Prague, in December 2015.
The title was inspired by the “Silentium” signs that were
regularly displayed in the churches where these recordings
were made. Entering the temple requires the visitor to be
quiet, to keep the noise down. This thoughtful silence is an
intense and active condition essential for profound
listening. It creates a liminal state between the natural
and the supernatural world.
In this work, the properties of the churches’ sonic
atmospheres subtly emerge; echoes of quiet interiors created
by the whispers reverberating, the crackling of wooden
chairs, a door closing, the water dripping down the
pipelines. It should be noted that the title is not a hint
at the piece being quiet. Some passages are indeed really
silent, reaching the realms of the barely audible; other
parts are rather loud.
Yiorgis Sakellario
- is a composer of experimental and electroacoustic
music. Since 2003, he has been active internationally
being responsible for solo and collaboration albums, having
composed music for short films and theatrical
performances, leading workshops and ceaselessly performing
his music around the globe.
He is a member of the Athenian Contemporary Music Research
Centre and the Hellenic Electroacoustic Music Composers
Association. Since 2004 he has curated the label
Echomusic.
This track is an unedited recording of an improvised
performance on the church organ of Sv. Salvator in Prague on December 9,
2015.
Exploring church organs' textures, in a partly improvised
manner, was a primary method I used to select and record material for
"Silentium", a composition released on CD by Pogus Productions. www.pogus.com/21088.html
This
unedited recording is only a small sample of the great variety of organ
sounds that were recorded and it has been included in the 50 minutes
composition almost in its original form.
Posted yesterday on Amanda Palmer's Bandcamp page:
Vocals and instruments: Amanda Palmer and Edward Ka-Spel
Violins: Patrick Q. Wright
Singing saw: Alexis Michallek
I CAN SPIN A RAINBOW marks the first full-length collaboration
between Palmer and Ka-Spel, founding member of visionary Anglo-Dutch
psychedelicists The Legendary Pink Dots and one of her greatest artistic
heroes. I CAN SPIN A RAINBOW is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for
Palmer, an avowed fan of Ka-Spel and the Legendary Pink Dots since
discovering their psycho-theatrical, multi-textural work in her teens.
As noted in her best-selling 2014 memoir, The Art of Asking, the LPD
have long been an inspiration to Palmer, their deeply connected
relationship with fans as important to her life and work as their
fearless autonomy and impossible-to-pigeonhole musical approach.
Recorded largely on Ka-Spel’s computer, I CAN SPIN A RAINBOW is a
truly collaborative effort, “a spiritual experience,” says Palmer, in
which both artists’ stories, song fragments, poems, and lyrics became
wholly meshed with loops, melancholy piano playing, melodic beds, and
strange rhythms. The results range from the enchantingly minimal The
Clock at the Back of the Cage and the album-opening Pulp Fiction
mysterious and strange with a luxurious theatricality that conjures both
of its creators’ prior oeuvres while also opening a curtain into a
heretofore unheard shared sonic world. Sensing the need for strings, the
pair enlisted frequent LPD collaborator Patrick Q Wright, who
contributed violin tracks from his studio in Italy. Alexis Michallek,
Heap’s longtime studio assistant, contributes singing saw to Beyond The
Beach.
“We merged our songwriting heads and poetic worlds to make a new universe,” Palmer says. “We
would sit in Imogen’s house drinking cups of tea, bemoaning the state
of the upcoming election, binge drinking in the UK, the refugee crisis,
our internet addictions, frightening news we had read, our
relationships… and then we’d distill all of the ingredients of our fears
and conversations into song form. The Rainbow metaphor – which is also a
nod to the ‘spinning beach ball of death’ on a Mac – was a wide-open
image that kept popping up as a recurring theme on the record. It’s both
dark and light at the same time. To me, the songs are simultaneously
frightening and comforting, like a thunderstorm heard from a living
room.”
“Making this record with Amanda felt a little like discovering a twin you didn’t know you had,” says Ka-Spel, “until a mysterious email lands in your inbox at a particularly auspicious moment. Some things are just meant to be…”
At what point does sound become music, and music sound? The practice
of the renowned European improvising quartet Dans les arbres - three
Norwegians and a Frenchman - explores the ambiguous edgelands between
these binary extremes. By blurring the border separating one from the
other, they find music in sound, and vice versa, through spontaneous
compositions of striking beauty and tactility. In performance, they move
with great precision through different combinations of players and
instruments, as if navigating an uncertain course towards some
mysterious destination, while their wide variety of customized noises
can suggest the heroic late modernism of John Cage as well as the bleep,
burr and hum of the technological present.
As a performing and
recording unit, Dans les arbres has considerable hinterland, going back
to the duo of Ivar Grydeland and Ingar Zach at the turn of the
millennium, when they also founded the label Sofa. After expanding to a
quartet with the addition of Christian Wallumrød and Xavier Charles in
2004, the group made two highly acclaimed ECM albums: the self-titled
debut, Dans les arbres, which was released in 2008 but recorded two
years earlier, and the follow-up, Canopee, from 2012, which received a
nomination for the annual music prize awarded by the Nordic Council.
Now
comes the third album, ‘Phosphorescence’, which moves away from its
predecessors' aesthetic context of contemporary improvised chamber music
performed on acoustic instruments towards a more mixed economy of
means, with some electronic processing, amplification (of the prepared
piano and guitar) and real-time sampling added to the repertoire of
sounds familiar from the first two recordings. Recorded at Isitart, “the
studio in a forest” in rural Sweden south of Oslo, it’s tempting to see
‘Phosphorescence’ as in some way a more relaxed, even bucolic
production, but this may not be the case at all. Indeed, the four
compositions/improvisations that comprise ‘Phosphorescence' are as
nervous and unsettling as they are consolingly ‘ambient’, although the
pieces work well listened to inattentively, like edgy ‘furniture music’.
The clarity of the mix (by Johnny Skalleberg) and mastering (by Helge
Sten, AKA Deathprod) is especially important, helping to create an
almost three-dimensional depth and transparency to the sound, and
emphasising the tension between the acoustic and electronic elements.
But
what is most apparent in ‘Phospherescence' is how masterful the four
members of the collective have now become, and how intensely focused in
their work, secure in the group’s identity as a kind of modest
’supergroup’ making absolutely contemporary music that’s totally unlike
that of anyone else. Even the range of sounds they choose to inhabit has
taken on a satisfying sense of familiarity: Dans les arbres make Dans
les arbres music out of Dans les arbres sounds. It is, all in all, a
considerable achievement.
Box set of some of the 2012 - 2016 concerts. It’s gonna be different and, I think, much better than that other live CD set (the one that looked like a laptop) because the technology is even better these days. Amazing stuff that you'll get on the DVD and each album is in 3 different kinds of amazing sound recorded at the concerts.
A Common Truth is the second album by Saltland, the solo project of veteran Montréal cellist and composer Rebecca Foon. Following the acclaimed 2013 debut I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us,
Foon performed Saltland live in various successful configurations, but
as the concept and compositions for a new album began to materialize,
she wished to further expand on an approach with her cello as primary
source for all sounds on the record. Combining unadulterated, processed
and sampled cellos, A Common Truth largely reflects this
commitment and results in an album of gorgeous integrity, restraint, and
meditative intensity. The one notable exception: longtime friend and
prior collaborator Warren Ellis
(Nick Cave, Dirty Three) is the album's special guest player,
contributing violin, pump organ and loops to the album's four
instrumental tracks.
Working with engineer Jace Lasek
(The Besnard Lakes), Foon has produced a song cycle that alternates
between wordless instrumentals and lyric-driven pieces, balancing
austere, organic intimacy and lush, multi-layered expansiveness. The
analog warmth of Lasek’s naturalistic rock production anchors Saltland’s
juxtaposition of dry and processed strings, with the placement of
Foon's voice very much within the mix but never veiled or concealed; a
voice described as "an instrument of somnolent, gossamer allure which
floats gracefully amid the eddying, amniotic music" (Mojo, 2013).
Electronic music strategies, via signal processing and re-sampling, are
deployed minimally and judiciously – and all the more powerfully as
such.
A Common Truth also importantly channels other strands from
Rebecca's life: the record is about climate change and marks an attempt
to musically translate a complex mix of emotional, social and political
resonances in this regard. The album's atmosphere and pace is guided
by the coexistence of optimism and despair, resolve and resignation, the
intimacy of the local/personal and the hope of the global/collective.
Foon has devoted much of her life in recent years to working for
decarbonization, land conservation and renewable energy – as a member of
Sustainability Solutions Group cooperative, as founder of the conservation charity Junglekeepers, and as co-founder of Pathway to Paris,
an international concert series bringing together musicians, writers
and activists to help raise consciousness toward implementation of a
robust international climate agreement.
Rebecca Foon's new Saltland album A Common Truth is a
compelling coalescence and fullest musical expression of the inspiring
trajectories charted by this committed and renowned artist, activist and
organizer
Fabio Orsi - Il Ricordo Improvviso Dell'Assoluto Stupore
The first Fabio Orsi book of photography! Comes with a one-sided Picture Disc vinyl with one long exclusive track. The
vinyl has a long track that is a sort of "summa" of Fabio Orsi musical
world: like his early releases, "Il Ricordo Improvviso Dell'Assoluto
Stupore" is deep drone ambient track, with distant guitars and a
nostalgic touch. Hypnotic and melodic at the same time... Perfect
complement and completion to his photos.
Stick Men and King Crimson fans are in for a treat. For the recent shows
in Japan, Mel Collins joined the power prog trio Stick Men (Tony Levin,
Pat Mastelotto and Markus Reuter) for six concerts. It's not the first
time the Stick Men have collaborated with a Crimson alumni. In April
2015 David Cross went out to work with the trio, which resulted in the
double album "Midori". Fans' hopes that the much anticipated concerts
with Mel Collins would also be documented are now becoming a reality. We
are digitally releasing two complete shows recorded live in Tokyo on
February 21, 2017.
http://www.iapetus-media.com/
Comments
Taylor Deupree - Somi
(Ships February 3)
CD comes with book of photographs.
Federico Durand - Pavel
The Sight Below - Reworks
- Sub Rosa - Boomkat review
- Thanks !
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This album was released in 1970 and with copyright at Composers Voice in 2016.
I seriously doubt that 1970 is correct, I find it more likely that she was born in 1970.
In any case this is an utterly mindblowing release:
Anna Mikhailova
https://www.unlistedprojects.com/project/anna-mikhailova/
Franck Dadure, saxophone, clarinette turque, électroniques
& the Fakir Orchestra : Christophe Elliott Touzalin, trompette | Daniel Zimmermann, trombone | Frédéric Sachs, guitare | Dominique Grimaldi, basse | Fabien Duscombs, batterie.
Signature / Radio France
Bandcamp
Self-identified non-male artists making experimental electronic music
Lawrence English - Cruel Optimism
(Longer description on bandcamp page)
- Denovali Records - Mathew Collings at Emusers.
RADIANCE X: HER DARK GAZE DROWNED IN LIGHT
by Stephan Mathieu
A re-narration of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 movie ‘Vampyr’with
Olga Politova - Piano
Sylvain Chauveau - Guitar
- Ghostly International - Emusic
- Perhaps The most gorgeous album from Jacaszek ever !
Kassel Jaeger & Jim O’Rourke - Wakes on Cerulean
- Editions Mego - BC
Kassel Jaeger at Emusers here and here.
Porya Hatami - Monads
Releases April 7 on LINE
Zeitkratzer directed by Reinhold Friedl
Frank Gratkowski / flute, clarinets, Elena Kakaliagou / french horn, Hilary Jeffery / trombone, Reinhold Friedl / harmonium, piano, Didier Ascour / guitar, Maurice de Martin / drums, Lisa Marie Landgraf / violin, Burkhard Schlothauer / violin, Elisabeth Coudoux, violoncello, Ulrich Phillipp / double bass
- Karlrecords
.
.
____
- Awesome !
- More Kovac at EmusersHidden Orchestra - Dawn Chorus
Pausal - Avifaunal
Lovely stuff.
Andrew Liles - LIFE IS AN EMPTY PLACE
Vocals and instruments: Amanda Palmer and Edward Ka-Spel
Violins: Patrick Q. Wright
Singing saw: Alexis Michallek
- Cooking Vinyl
- Hubro
Dans les Arbres
Kraftwerk / 3-D: The Catalogue box sets
Box set of some of the 2012 - 2016 concerts. It’s gonna be different and, I think, much better than that other live CD set (the one that looked like a laptop) because the technology is even better these days. Amazing stuff that you'll get on the DVD and each album is in 3 different kinds of amazing sound recorded at the concerts.
Saltland - A Common Truth
Fabio Orsi - Il Ricordo Improvviso Dell'Assoluto Stupore
Fabio Orsi