Electric Sewer Age was conceived in 2006, a glowing spark in the
imagination of John Deek of Divine Frequency. A brief, cryptic
announcement in 2009, followed by a few rough tracks released online,
heralded its birth. Announced with nothing more than the tagline “an
Infinity of Sewers thrown open beneath the Threshold House”, little was
known about this upcoming project other than it likely featured some
involvement of former Coil legends Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson and
Danny Hyde, and perhaps, it was rumored, with the posthumous
contributions of Jhonn Balance. Because Electric Sewer Age was intended
to be an anonymous aural experiment meant to free the listeners mind of
any preconceptions about who or what created it, little more was ever
planned to be publicly revealed about the project, even after the first
release. However, following the unexpected and untimely passing in 2010
of Christopherson, the first Electric Sewer Age EP became an epitaph to
the loss of this peerless musician, for these were the last tracks he
and his decades long collaborator and friend Danny Hyde ever completed
together.
The music, originally intended to conclude Coil’s “Moon’s Milk”
series, was released on CD by Divine Frequency in 2012, and then on
vinyl the next year by Danny Hyde. Both editions sold out quckly and
have been unavailable until now.
Mechanics Of Dominion is perhaps Esmerine's most dynamic and narratively-informed work, tracing an arc through Neo-Classical, Minimalist, Modern Contemporary, Folk, Baroque, Jazz and Rock idioms to invoke lamentation, meditation, resolve, resistance and hope. It is a requiem for our intractably suffering planet and a paean to the inscrutable, essential dignity of indigenous ethics and the natural world, and to modern human frailty and ingenuity. Stylistically, Mechanics Of Dominion brings mallet instruments to the fore, with marimba, glockenspiel, piano and amplified music box providing a prominent foundation and through-line on the album's diverse tracks. Multi-instrumentalist Brian Sanderson's contributions are also an ever greater part of Esmerine's songwriting – his stately melodic lines on horns and acoustic strings are formidable elements in the ceremonious lyricism and keening vitality of this song cycle.
It seems that ReR Megacorp distributed albums are showing up on Emusic 0n different labelpages:
- "Recorded in Australia, Brasil, Italy, Japan, Turkey and America on his
2015/16 world tour, these excellent recordings offer an astonishing
range of styles and sounds - all somehow emanating from Angeli’s fingers
and feet – and his highly modified, prepared, extended and amplified
giant Sardinian guitar which – like Angeli himself - is routinely able
do several very different things at once. You have to keep reminding
yourself as you listen that this is just one person with one instrument,
working in real time. And even knowing that, it’s hard to figure out
sometimes how what you hear is technically possible - and there are no
loops or machines to help out. More importantly, the music itself is
great and able - like Sun Ra’s Arkestra - to absorb coherently within
itself a vast range of differing styles: from the deeply traditional to
the extremely experimental – orchestrated and articulated with a mixture
of mysterious and familiar sonorities. Talea is a document in which
imagination, technology, executive skill, virtuosic technique and a deep
musicality conspire to produce a satisfying, immersive, unpredictable
and very personal music of great maturity."
Brand new from the always mysterious and intriguing Hanetration:
I found an interview where he explains a bit about why it's important for him to remain anonymous (interesting reading) Here's some of it:
Why did you decide to go under an alias rather than your actual name? When I first started putting out my stuff I had an idea it
might be amusing to craft some kind of ridiculous alter-ego, but it
seemed kind of pretentious – so I just figured it was easiest to keep
everything to myself.
I’m not really interested in having my name attached to my work – the
idea seems almost conceited. LOOK AT ME! I MADE SOME MUSIC! Only a few
of my friends know I do this stuff. There’s a huge amount of ego in
music – especially in London – and it’s just not really my thing. The
idea of using my own name to approach people with my stuff makes me very
uneasy. Sending out emails, bothering people, trying to convince people
you’re worth a listen. Yuck. Being able to hide behind the Hanetration
name makes the process of getting my stuff out there much more bearable.
I just want to put together stuff I’m happy with and make it available
to people who want to hear it.
There is a high level of secrecy around your identity, why is this? I’m not all that interesting. I’m just a guy who lives in
London. I was born elsewhere and have lived elsewhere. I have a day job.
I’m not a big fan of musicians letting the world into their lives. We
all know artists are only people, but music is so powerful it seems a
shame to let reality get in the way. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy
chewing through music biogs, but I also listen to a lot of music with no
knowledge of the artist and I find that quite refreshing.
31
minute long-form collaborative track by Aaron Turner and Daniel Menche -
utilizing field recordings, choral vocal arrangements, prepared guitar,
processing, electronics, percussion, etc. Meditative and immersive.
The One Ensemble's new album 'Saint Seven'. A through-composed 40 minute
piece of post-punk orchestral folk, featuring accordions, bass
clarinets, cello, percussion, guitar and voices.
Saint Seven, played in the round by The One Ensemble,
is a dramatic hybrid of voices and instruments that seamlessly
interweaves elements of experimental, folk and classical chamber music.
Challenging conventional approaches to performance, this epic acoustic
quartet is shot through with a rare theatricality.
The One Ensemble is a Scottish-based quartet comprising cello, clarinet
and bass clarinet, guitar, accordions, percussion and vocals. Working
collaboratively, this highly individualistic group creates songs and
compositions that weave esoteric narratives around joyous centres,
chameleon-like in its ability to move between various genres without
losing its unique identity. Incorporating Eastern European traditions
with a distinctly Anglo-Scottish twist, classical chamber music,
minimalism and the experimental avant-garde into a heady brew, their
music is otherworldly, magical and unmistakable. Individually and
together the members of The One Ensemble are artists who draw on hidden
folk heritages and influences from diverse European musics whilst
retaining a distinctly contemporary sound of their own.
”Blending ancient folk, avant-garde chamber music and the kind of
melodies that might have been lifted from some 1940s film soundtrack,
The One Ensemble return in an expanded format, now with added players
and voices. It’s a move that’s clearly paid off, and this new record is a
unique and enigmatic thing…” (Boomkat on Other Thunders)
Danish label/imprint and platform founded in 2014, run by Danish musician Mads Emil Nielsen. arbitrary publishesgraphic scores,
prints, a curated mix (assemblage) series and electronic &
electroacoustic recordings on various formats. The editions are
distributed to music / book shops, galleries and mail-order services in
Germany, US, DK, Japan and elsewhere.
Hanno Leichtmann: drums, electronics, synth
David Moss: voice, lyrics
Hannes Strobl: bass , electronics
After Denseland's two last releases Chunk (Mosz 2009) and Lilke,Likes,
Like (m=minimal 2013) Denseland’s new album Disco Dictionary straddles
the borders between funk and post punk, experimental avant-garde and
fractured down tempo techno, electronica and minimalist industrial.
Formed in 2008 by long time Berlin musician's bassist Hannes Strobl,
percussionist Hanno Leichtmann and avant-garde vocalist David Moss,
Denseland as a three headed ensemble jumps genres, timbres and times.
Listening evokes shades of bygone music's and not: rhythm emulations of
Joy Division, the B 52´s and ESG, the extended vocal madness of Roy Hart
and Laurie Anderson, the distortions of the early Contortions, reduced
baselines of Grandmaster Flash and John Carpenter.
But Denseland's sound also exists in its own sealed universe - one
spanned by sinister timbres of seduction, grooves of foreboding imbued
with a sardonic, almost wicked humor. The tracks lure the listener in
through an incessant, underlying, looping drive; a forwards moving
groove and throbbing pulse that both pushes
back and ensnares you simultaneously. Under its crystalline surface,
Denseland’s music reveals contradictory undercurrents - unsettling
noise, weird breaks, ominous drones, grinding distortion, disjointed
electronic pulses, fractured beats, disfigured sounds.
Pervading all of Denseland’s tracks is the omnipresence of Moss's
virtuosic, Sprechgesang voice - cutting through, scratching, crawling
over Strobl and Leichtmann’s rhythmical textures, continually evoking
images of a disjointed perceiving body, gradually disappearing like in a
Samuel Beckett play.
Denseland’s music turns the listener an unsettled sound universe
conceived as strange landscape and magnetic atmosphere - music for a
disturbed world.
Quark: How Does The Invisible Sound? is a media project born with the specific intent of exploring the possible inter-relationship between sound and the invisible, strictly related to science and physics. It relies on monthly digital releases and a MaxMSP custom software called Cconfin, inspired by elementary particles interactions and a physical phenomenon known as Colour Confinement. The software allows the artists and musicians involved to seek and discover their own vision of the invisible through sound by treating and processing audio files via custom algorithms. Presented as a collection of digital graphic cards and heterogeneous sound art pieces, the research aims to find a deep connection as close as possible to the boundary of knowledge. An attempt at quantum sound in a not-visible yet perceptible world.
Musique Hydromantique is the second solo album by
Tomoko Sauvage archiving many years of her performance-based practice on
the waterbowls – the natural synthesizer of her invention, composed
with porcelain bowls filled with water and amplified via hydrophones
(underwater microphones). While her first album Ombrophilia (released on and/OAR in 2009) was studio-recorded /composed work, Musique Hydromantique
is about experimentation and improvisation with the environment –
acoustics affected by the architecture, temperature, humidity and the
human presence.
For more than ten years, Sauvage has been investigating
the sound and visual properties of water in different states, as well as
those of ceramics, combined with electronics. Water drops, waves and
bubbles are some of the elements she has been playing with to generate
the fluid timbre. Since around 2010, hydrophonic feedback has been an
obsession for the musician – an acoustic phenomenon that requires fine
tuning depending on the amount of water, a subtle volume control and
interaction with the acoustic space.
Calligraphywas recorded in a genuine echo chamber,
with about 10 second reverbs, situated in a former textile factory.
Like an endless exercise to draw perfect curves and forms floating in
the air, the subaquatic feedback frequencies are pitch-bended with the
mass of water sculpted by a hand changing its quantity. Fortune Biscuit is
about the singing bubbles emitted from the pieces of ‘biscuit’ (porous
terra-cotta). Depending on the texture of the surface, each biscuit
makes different sound : insect and animal voices in a forest, motors,
crying babies changing pitches and rhythms while absorbing the water…
Clepsydra (meaning water clock) features Sauvage’s classical technique, a
random percussion with dripping water. She tunes the waterbowls by
adding and removing water, making flowing glissando, to find the balance
point in ever-changing tonalities.
Just as the flow of water is subject to a number of
variables such as temperature and pressure, water clocks mark a time
that is shifting and relative. However, slowness dominates throughout
the album as a result of favoring the full resonance of the instrument,
leading to a path to experiencing timelessness.
Hydromancy is a method of divination by means of water.
Unpredictable bubbles and water ripples become oracles. Evaporation and
acoustic space constantly play a chance operation. Through primordial
materials and ritualistic yet playful gestures, Musique Hydromantique questions contemporary divination.
All the tracks are live-recorded without electronic
effects or editing. They were recorded during the night or very early in
the morning and the whole album is to be listened to during that period
of a day.
Taylor's Universe is an internationally acclaimed Danish studio project, formed in 1993 by multi-instrumentalist Robin C
Taylor.
The group has featured many prominent players through the years -
especially veteran, Karsten Vogel, of Burnin Red Ivanhoe and Secret
Oyster fame. If 70's progressive jazz-rock ever had its traditions,
Taylor's Universe is a contemporary continuation!
Composer-guitarist Steven Mackey and composer-percussionist Jason Treuting's (So Percussion) their first collaborative album, Orpheus Unsung, released October 6on New Amsterdam Records.
Orpheus Unsung
- is an hour-long narrative for solo electric
guitar (Mackey) and drums (Treuting) that traces the Greek myth of
Orpheus in the underworld,casting Mackey's electric guitar as
the disembodied voice of the legendary musician, poet, and prophet
Orpheus.
Mackey's virtuosic and exposed performance portrays Orpheus as
he seeks to reverse fate and regain his irrevocably lost love, Eurydice,
through the power of his divine musical gifts.
According to legend: Orpheus marries his true love Eurydice.
Following the wedding, Eurydice is bitten by a snake and dies. Orpheus
cannot bear this and embarks on a perilous journey to the underworld
with the aim of bringing her back. Orpheus’s musical gifts are supreme,
animals, plants and even stones move in order to better hear him sing
and play his lyre. He sings his plea to the ruler of the underworld who
does allow him to take Eurydice back with him under the condition that
he not look back to check to see if she is still there. When Orpheus
crosses the threshold back to the surface he can no longer resists and
he looks back but Eurydice has not yet crossed and she is immediately
drawn back to the underworld, gone forever. Orpheus mourns but
eventually comes to terms with his loss. Later, a mob of Thracian women
in a Dionysian Orgy rip Orpheus apart. Dismembered, his head and lyre
float down a stream, his head still singing and his lyre still playing,
until they rest at the head of the stream and become an oracle.
Although
Orpheus's tale is slim, it feels expansive. The story encompasses huge
mysteries and complex truths about separation, loss, love, will,
weakness, and perhaps most compellingly, the artist’s dream embodied by
Orpheus himself: of creating expression so persuasive, clear, and
powerful that it might even alter the immutable, and stand against
death.
The concept of Orpheus Unsung was first developed
as an opera without words by Mackey and filmmaker, designer,
choreographer and director Mark DeChiazza, with Mackey composing the
score with Treuting. The project was co-produced by the Saint Paul
Chamber Orchestra's Liquid Music Series and Guthrie Theater, and
premiered in June 2016 at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in a
production conceived, choreographed and directed by DeChiazza and
featuring performances by Mackey, Treuting and an ensemble of three
dancers.
My goodness ! - Searching eMu brought up this one: Interesting stuff . . . But 253 discs seems a little over the top. ______________________________________________________________________________________
Gabriel Saloman - Movement Building Vol. 3
Shelter Press has made good on its promise to deliver the third and
final volume of its series featuring Gabriel Saloman, released both on
vinyl and collected with Movement Building Vol. I (2014) and Vol. II
(2015) as a double CD. For fans of Saloman’s post-Yellow Swans work – an
already dense catalog of darkly cinematic compositions mostly conceived
as accompaniment to some of Vancouver’s edgier contemporary dance
companies, Movement Building Vol. III is not only a much anticipated
conclusion to this trilogy, it is the most fully realized album in
years. Where as Movement Building Vol. I & II acted primarily as
documentation of time-based artworks, Movement Building Vol. III offers a
more coherent and narratively rich album that will appeal to admirers
of Soldier’s Requiem (Miasmah, 2013).
Listeners will recognize the emotive bowed strings, militant
percussion and searing guitar eruptions that evoked memory and trauma in
that previous album. Joining this pallet are other familiar Saloman
sounds: shoegaze washes of distorted guitar, minimalist piano attacks,
melancholic appregiated melodies, and a patina of harsh noise. Added to
this is a more 21st Century approach to drums and bass, perhaps an
effect of his collaborations with producer Michael Red in their
dub-ambient project Chambers.
Saloman’s music has never sat comfortably in any genre, sharing with a
select cohort of other artists (Stephen O’Malley, Lawrence English,
Grouper, Kreng, Tim Hecker, among others) an ambiguous position between
“modern classical”, “electronic music”, and the more outer limits of
metal. Movement Building Vol. III doesn’t clarify as much as it expands
Saloman’s oeuvre further into an idiosyncratic musical no-man’s land
that fails to be faithful to any popular musical trend – contemporary,
retro or futurist.
Gabriel Saloman (GMS, Sade Sade) composes music for live performance
and recordings for dance, video, film, and sound installation. His music
investigates temporal abstractions, conceptual sound and gestural
noise. There is a parallel concern with sound art as both liberating
practice and praxis.
In recent performances and recordings Saloman’s music has been
composed of percussion, tapes, mixer-feedback, guitar, keyboards, piano
and voice. In particular Saloman has explored the use of found sound,
field recordings, percussion and processed blank cassettes.
His sound work furthers investigations into Saloman’s concepts of
art, sound and the politics of the social by focusing specifically on
its function of both collective and autonomous resistance and
emancipation while simultaneously contextualizing his practice in the
contemporary radical milieu.
Saloman was a member of Yellow Swans and currently creates music in Diadem with Aja Rose; Chambers
with MRed; and The Volunteer Ecstatic Orchestra with a number Vancouver
based experimental musicians. He has previously collaborated with
groups such as Bleeder; Boxleitner; Cexfucx; Yesod with Aja Rose Bond and Tusk.
"Hymn Binding harnesses the possibility of electronic instrumentation
and the warmth of acoustic sound into a resonant, breathtaking melody." -
NPR: ALL SONGS CONSIDERED (smarturl.it/ftmotsnprasc)
Lowlands began when Ester Vonplon traveled to Spitsbergen in the Arctic
Ocean in summer 2016. She sailed the ice-clogged seas of the Arctic
Ocean on a three-masted sailing vessel, to capture the impressions of
the calving glaciers and melting ice.
This journey in the Arctic Ocean was the perfect beginning for Taylor
Deupree & Marcus Fischer to compose and record Lowlands.
The Rust Belt refers to a largely-deindustrialized portion of the United
States surrounding the Great Lakes. Once a powerhouse of manufacturing,
the region is now known for being a poster child of economic decline,
and perhaps swinging a presidential election. Thet Liturgiske Owäsende
are Swedish experimentalists Linus Schrab and Johan Fotmeijer, and their
Wisconsin Mining State release sonically explores the sparseness and
melancholy of small towns in this region. In fact, four of the six
tracks are titled after mining towns with populations of less than 2000
each.
Using synths, guitars, and field recordings, Schrab and Fotmeijer
provide drones with mechanical rhythms and pulsing bass, evoking
post-industrial soundscapes – a place where the machines have largely
shut down, but occasionally fire up for a few minutes at a time.
Platteville begins with a slowly repeating drone melody that grows and
ebbs with lightly-distorted walls. Hazel Green offers dark ambient
atmospherics interspersed with ominous crescendos. Iron Ridge consists
of oscillating drones and a sparse, repeating bass line. Klar Piquett
features throbbing, distorted walls. Mineral Point, perhaps my favorite
track, is dominated by a start/stop mechanical cadence overlaid with
varied percussive patterns. Rajah is a more traditional spacious, ambient drone, and somewhat out of place compared to its companion tracks.
In a world where ambient music is easy to come by (and much of it is
quite good), it can be hard for a release such as this one to stand out.
And yet, Wisconsin Mining State somehow does. Through a layering of
simple elements and a juxtaposition of melody and distortion, Schrab and
Fotmeijer’s dark offering characterizes a set of uneasy emotions that
are felt not only in the Rust Belt, but anywhere that industry is in
decline.'
- Mike Borella - Avant Music News
- are Linus Schrab and Johan Fotmeijer. Armed with guitars,
field recordings and modular synths they've evolved their own brand of improvised
soundscaping over a number of previous releases.While much of their output has tended
to be long form, drone based textural explorations, this release opts for shorter
running times and a greater variety in approach to both form and texture.
Comments
- Soleilmoon Recordings
Esmerine - Mechanics of Dominion
Released today.
directed by Michel Treguer
Limited Edition Remastered from the original master tapes.
Composed By, Recorded By, Performer – Bernard Parmegiani
Artwork – Jean-Philippe Talaga
Executive-Producer – Jonathan Fitoussi, Sébastien Rosat
Mastered By – Jonathan Fitoussi
Thanks for the heads-up on the Parmegiani!
Got it instantly!
Brand new from the always mysterious and intriguing Hanetration:
I found an interview where he explains a bit about why it's important for him to remain anonymous (interesting reading)
Here's some of it:
- And there's a new (?) image out:
Hanno Leichtmann: drums, electronics, synth
David Moss: voice, lyrics
Hannes Strobl: bass , electronics
How does the Invisible Sound
Celer, Darren McClure, Noumeno, Doron Sadje
Tomoko Sauvage - Musique Hydromantique
- Shelter Press - Emusic
- More Steven Mackey at Emusers here, here, here, here and here.
- Searching eMu brought up this one:
______________________________________________________________________________________
Gabriel Saloman - Movement Building Vol. 3
- Shelter Press - Emusic
Two examples of Siedler's work:
From the Mouth of the Sun - Hymn BindingBandcamp
Taylor Deupree and Marcus Fischer - Lowlands
Released in July.
HOW DID i MISS THIS????????????
Out Jan. 1 - selected tracks now at Bandcamp include a Partrtidge Family cover
Out today!!
For those who like Nils Frahmish things.
Amazon
Emusic