New releases on the Biophilia label don't show up often on eMusic, but they are often worth the effort to find. Today, Adam O'Farrill's Stranger Days has a new jazz release out and available on eMusic:
@luddite Spotted that yesterday. Spent the day feeling great, then today started to worry if it had been left in the can for a reason. Not long to wait anyhow.
. . . constructed from sonic elements of various compositions, audiovisual
works, fragments, remixes and experiments from a time span of 6 years,
drawn from different contexts and a wide range of international
musicians and collaborators. WIESE's trademark working method is to
combine complex sample-based layers with modulated feedback which is
triggered by the samples, their overtones and harmonic properties. This
playing technique, using the mixing board as a feedback-instrument, adds
a special live feel to the meticulous musique concrète constructions based on the original acoustic source material.
Rich in details, “Unrelated” is a vital proof of WIESE’s artistic skills
and a highly entertaining concern, melting electro-acoustic, musique
concrète and sampledelia!
Mika Vainio and Franck Vigroux’s Peau Froide, Léger Soleil was a dense
and complex record, a collection of sonic sculptures forged in the heavy
tonal matter. It was the product of a lengthy creative process,
articulated through studio sessions and live performances. The result
was a huge amount of material that the duo actually decided to partition
into more than one release, the album being the first in line.
The new 6-tracker EP Ignis makes for the first posthumous release from the two producers, after the untimely passing of Vainio in 2017. As a second chapter, it differentiates itself from the first offering by including more spacious tracks and somber drones, driven by a
never-resolved tension that infects every bit of sound, morphing from
the horrific ambient of “Ne te retourne pas” to the unquiet sine wave
meditations of “Un peu après le solei” to the harsh noises of closing
track “Feux”. Standing out is the relentless drum barrage of “Luxure”: a
frantic descent into a neverending percussive maelstrom.
The overall quality of these six compositions makes Ignis stand out as a
testament to the collaboration between two of the bravest explorers of
sound to ever grace the European scene and to the genius and creativity
of the one and only Mika Vainio.
"Sometimes you hear something and think: "now this is how the modern world feels to me". Peter's music is like that, capturing excitement and speed and ambiguity and even wistfulness and melancholy ...a complex emotional palette which feels to me like real life." Brian Eno about J. Peter Schwalm´s music
J. Peter Schwalm (born 1970, Frankfurt am Main) is a German composer and music producer, active in the fields of electronicmusic, ambient, radio drama, film, theatre and ballet. He is best known for his work with musician Brian Eno. He lives and works in Frankfurt.
Recorded Live at KPFA, Berkeley, CA on November 6, 1980 Jerry Hunt – electronics, percussion, piano, vocalizations Released July 27, 2018
Jerry Hunt is a unique and often misunderstood figure in New Music. His MH release from ‘Ground’ captures an excerpt from a performance of his avant-garde operatic piece Ground at KPFA’s studios in Berkeley, CA. In this unique expression of ritualistic music, the composer uses his voice and body to trigger electronic samples. Included are detailed liner notes by David Menestres. - Special thanks to Rod Stasick (aka. @rostasi ) and Michael Schell for their support and guidance
I know this has been mentioned elsewhere, but this is really @higaru and Makunouchi Bento at their very best:
Release date: 20 July 2018
"One should never lose the ability to lose oneself. This is the true
meaning behind indefinite erring, of getting slowly pulled away and led
astray. To meander, to traipse, to swerve and to ramble like a river out
of its riverbed. One can get lost in outer space and one can get lost
right here on good ol’ planet Earth. More precisely, right here in this
obscure, semi-abandoned, flooded village of Old Bodrog on the banks of
Mures river.
Bodrog sounds just like it is. It’s a movie about what could be the last
artist residency on Earth. Bodrog is the nowhere where hapless humans
have to be dealt with in order for rivers to keep on flowing, flowers to
keep on blooming and for tendrils to grow larger and larger. Bodrog is
an endless summer maze of a movie and a marvelous soundtrack feeding
your inner/outer voices, distant calls and slimy invertebrate trails
amongst bizarre gardening cultivars and catfish legends."
- Brilliant !
Makunouchi Bento is: Felix Petrescu (Waka X) & Valentin Toma (Qewza)
Elliott Sharp: 8-String Guitarbass, Soprano Sax, Electronics, Samples & Textures Zeena Parkins: Electric Harp Bobby Previte: Drums
Elliott Sharp continues to publish
exceptional projects with his Carbon ensembles. After the Carbon Quintet
"Void Coordinates" and the three CD box "The Age of Carbon" with
legendary recordings of the 80s, a new Carbon album is now being
released on Intakt Records: "Transmigration at the Solar Max".
"Aready teeming, activity on the sun increases further culminating with the peak, an elevated state in which sunspots and flares proliferate with profound effects throughout the solar system: fever dreams, ecstatic dances, restless movements both of populations and thought, soul transfers. On this occasion forces coalesced in the Austrian Tirol with
drummer Bobby Previte and electric harpist Zeena Parkins joining Carbon
for the manifestation of Transmigration At The Solar Max. Part cosmic
turbulence and part roiling soundscape, Transmigration At The Solar Max
travels through successively hypercharged zones, the musicians building
their activities on and against shifting electro-acoustic drones and
matrices of rhythm, unisons splitting and refracting." - by Elliott Sharp, NYC, 2018
. . . . ."The whole album deals with the delicate subject of memory and loss in a
sensitive way, be it loss of place or of experience, of loved ones or of
emptiness, of things lost on a breeze and of times never to return. The
piano is an eternal echo, in step with the chill of the air. The music
is both a gentle lament and a valued keepsake, because even though its
sparse notes hint at incomplete feelings and unarticulated words, you
know of a certain truth in your heart – you have been loved.
Careful and contemplative, Stories Of Disintegration haunts the
heart with a sad-but-appreciative exhalation and its outpouring of a
sought-after recollection. It lives, to some extent, in the past, at
first musing on and then slipping silently into its bygone,
black-and-white world, a world where things were once brighter and
happier. Things have been stained in Game Boy greys, but your presence
is a splash of colour, and it returns when the music plays, lifting both
the heart and the January gloom. There’s beauty in the sadness."
I am really looking forward to this one. Just over a decade after his last Trio release (with various projects in between that were more of an acquired taste) Tord Gustavsen has a new trio album out at the end of the month. Same drummer, new bassist. Their 2003-2007 trilogy of trio albums were exquisite - I still play them often. If this gets even anywhere close it will be a treat.
Aaron Moore & Erik K Skodvin - Instead of rain I bring a hat
- is a long-distance collaboration between the UK’s Aaron Moore (Volcano The Bear, Gospel Of Mars, duo with Alan Courtis) and Norwegian Erik K Skodvin (Svarte Greiner, Deaf Center, B/B/S). It developed gently, taking its full form over the space of nearly 6 years.
The project began with e-mail exchanges of fragmented sounds and ideas - on the piano, cello, drums, harp, vocals, homemade and electronic instruments. Their experimental correspondence eventually blossomed and grew into an exquisite, fully-fledged album of brooding cinematic compositions.
Through 7 songs, Moore and Skodvin lead us through complex, haunted, minimalistic pieces. They are surreal, sonically fascinating and deeply moving. A very special and original album in both its conception and result - definitely one of a kind in the HITD discography
Until My Last collects three works written over the course of the past three years. In creating the music on the album, Munson drew on his backgrounds in sound design, improvisation, and pop music. With the focused hand of an engineer, Munson fuses together textural electronics with jarring moments of melodic clarity, creating an immersive and starkly emotional listening experience.
Opening work “Anew”—co-written with composer/vocalist Hanna Benn (Son Lux, BOOTS)—pairs triumphant vocal fanfare with darkly visceral industrial rhythms, while title track “Until My Last” presents a furiously urgent piano performance (played by Munson himself) in counterpoint with a bed of processed music box tones. “Where Light Escapes You,” the shortest of the three works, acts as something of a palette cleanser in the middle of the album, filtering the delicate percussion work of Alex Wier through Munson’s kaleidoscopic electronics.
Australia’s greatest cult band, The Necks, has a new piece to offer the world this summer, entitled “Body”. Different again to all previous Necks albums (20 in total), the band has chosen 10 words and phrases that summarize the four richly contrasting episodes of this hour-long, mesmerizing groove. They are as follows: Episodic, Driving, Dynamic, Layered, Celebratory, Soaring, Rocking out, Buoyant, Sustained, Perfectly paced.
The album uses, yet again, the combination of Chris Abrahams (piano, keyboards) Tony Buck (drums, percussion, and guitar very much to the fore on this one) and Lloyd Swanton (acoustic bass) with Tim Whitten (engineer), who has recorded and/or mixed the last twelve Necks albums. The Necks hold their own with the best of them when it comes to rhythmic complexity, but they have put much of that to one side for this album in the interests of conjuring their most relentlessly driving album since "Hanging Gardens". https://northernspyrecs.com/
Recorded live at Iklectik, London on March 23rd 2018. Also playing that night were Yann Novak and Simon Scott. Released May 4, 2018 on Touch
. . . .A long-form piece recorded live in London in early 2018, Arcade
is quintessential Jeck. Using old vinyl discs and record players
salvaged from junk shops, he crafts woozy soundscapes where ghostly
loops push their way to the surface through thick fields of crackle,
static, and vinyl surface noise. One might liken the experience of
listening to a Jeck piece to drifting lazily on a barge and viewing the
rusty ships and decaying industrial buildings ashore as they appear
during the half-hour trip.
Strings figure prominently in this case, with the
first violin flourish arising three minutes in and others swarming to
the surface thereafter. As expected, nothing so conventional as a
recognizable string quartet melody appears; instead, groans, corroded
phrases, and high-pitched squeals ebb and flow within the slow-moving,
undulating mass, while guitars twang insistently amidst clattering noise
at the twenty-five-minute mark. As emphatic as Arcade is in
such moments, it also includes passages so gentle and subdued they could
induce sleep, and, in fact, midway through, breathing-like sounds
emerge that could be mistaken for signs of light slumber. The setting
never stays in one place for too long but rather shape-shifts with
almost clockwork regularity, and consequently one’s attention never
lapses during the thirty-three-minute presentation.
Anyone seeing Jeck’s methodology and gear choice as gimmicky would be wise to attend more carefully; Arcade is as transfixing as anything else in his catalogue and attests to the singularity of his vision.
Given the paucity of quality labels left at eMusic, it's interesting to find that 6 of 10 recommended releases in this month's "Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical" are actually available on eMusic (and some at a screaming bargain if you are in a European "0.49 per track" region). The Michael Hersch, Eric Moe, Josh Modney, Quatuor Diotima, Anthony Cheung and Jerry Hunt albums are all on eMusic (and, of course, all ten recommendations are on Bandcamp ) The classical catalogue hasn't been stripped bare (yet) nearly as much as some other genres (like jazz...)
- The very act of change is a natural state. Just as order seeks disorder and high and low concentrations seek equilibrium, musicians, like all other humans, are not immune from these transitional forces. For the musician, change occurs if and as their art is to evolve. Sometimes it takes the form of a conscious choice and other times it is an act dictated by outside forces. In those rare and inspired instances, a musician’s changes represent an evolution in their craft. Daniel Bachman’s "The Morning Star" in one of these moments. . . .
. . . . Change is natural and change is good. In the case of Daniel Bachman, gone is the player who originally played with such an irrepressible power. "The Morning Star" demonstrates that years have permitted Bachman to grow into a complicated and transfixing performer whose compositions bear a sympathetic ear with few peers. If it sounds like high praise, it should. Daniel Bachman’s "The Morning Star" is the complex, seemingly timeless, and beautiful album that we all need now more than ever.
WRWTFWW Records is overjoyed to announce the release of two never-released-before soundtracks by French award-winning composer, audio experimenter, electroacoustic and musique concrète magician, and all-around sound visionary Bernard Parmegiani, sourced from the original reels, and neatly packed together in a gatefold sleeve double LP with English and French liner notes. The 2 albums are also available in an all-in-one digipack CD.
Les Soleils de l’Île de Pâques (1972), by French director Pierre Kast, is a sci-fi feature which secured itself a well-deserved place in the pantheon of mysterious cult films thanks to hallucinatory (and superb) cinematography, exploration of supernatural phenomenons and occult symbolism, and one hell of a trippy atmosphere. La Brûlure de Mille Soleils (1965) also comes from Pierre Kast, but this time with the help of none other than writer, photographer, multimedia artist, homme à tout faire Chris Marker (notably known for films La Jetée, A Grin Without a Cat and Sans Soleil) who edited this bizarre short to brain melting results that live up to the promises of its synopsis: A depressed millionaire poet, accompanied by his cat Marcel and a sign language robot, travels in time to shake a persistent feeling of ennui and falls hopelessly in love with a woman from another planet. Nuff said!
A renowned member of the prestigious GRM (Groupe de recherches musicales, the French equivalent of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop) and frequent collaborator of Pierre Schaeffer, Iannis Xenakis, and Pierre Henry among others, Bernard Parmegiani does what he does best with these two rare soundtracks: creating moods with electroacoustic experimentation, elevating the weird and hypnotic with soundscapes from other dimensions, and cementing his status as a true innovator. - released August 30, 2018
"Zamaan Ya Sukkar is a rich musical portrait from the time when Cairo was the vibrant cultural heart of the Middle East and the grandeur of the leading orchestras was incomparable. Unearthed latin and jazz-tinged tracks will let your mind drift off to the glamorous nightlife of 60's Cairo. Meet some forgotten souls of the Egyptian music scene and cinema world. Sensual voices and Bollywood-like orchestra sounds inflame the senses of the body with an intangible exotic twist! All music is remastered from original 45's produced by Sono Cairo."
Salah Ragab’s tenor player, Sayed Salamah, is stewed in latinized Ellingtonia on this one:
Comments
Adam O'Farrill's Stranger Days - El Maquech
Lost John Coltrane Recording From 1963 Will Be Released at Last
“Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album” was cut by the saxophonist’s classic quartet two years before “A Love Supreme.” Then it was stashed away.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/arts/music/john-coltrane-lost-album-both-directions-at-once.html
Nicolas Wiese - Unrelated
Rich in details, “Unrelated” is a vital proof of WIESE’s artistic skills and a highly entertaining concern, melting electro-acoustic, musique concrète and sampledelia!
- Karlrecords - Emusic
The new 6-tracker EP Ignis makes for the first posthumous release from the two producers, after the untimely passing of Vainio in 2017. As a second chapter, it differentiates itself from the first offering by including more spacious tracks and somber drones, driven by a never-resolved tension that infects every bit of sound, morphing from the horrific ambient of “Ne te retourne pas” to the unquiet sine wave meditations of “Un peu après le solei” to the harsh noises of closing track “Feux”. Standing out is the relentless drum barrage of “Luxure”: a frantic descent into a neverending percussive maelstrom.
The overall quality of these six compositions makes Ignis stand out as a testament to the collaboration between two of the bravest explorers of sound to ever grace the European scene and to the genius and creativity of the one and only Mika Vainio.
- Wow !
Released June 8, 2018 on RareNoiseRecords
J. Peter Schwalm
Recorded Live at KPFA, Berkeley, CA on November 6, 1980
Jerry Hunt – electronics, percussion, piano, vocalizations
Released July 27, 2018
- Special thanks to Rod Stasick (aka. @rostasi ) and Michael Schell for their support and guidance
Bodrog sounds just like it is. It’s a movie about what could be the last artist residency on Earth. Bodrog is the nowhere where hapless humans have to be dealt with in order for rivers to keep on flowing, flowers to keep on blooming and for tendrils to grow larger and larger. Bodrog is an endless summer maze of a movie and a marvelous soundtrack feeding your inner/outer voices, distant calls and slimy invertebrate trails amongst bizarre gardening cultivars and catfish legends."
- Brilliant !
Zeena Parkins: Electric Harp
Bobby Previte: Drums
On this occasion forces coalesced in the Austrian Tirol with drummer Bobby Previte and electric harpist Zeena Parkins joining Carbon for the manifestation of Transmigration At The Solar Max. Part cosmic turbulence and part roiling soundscape, Transmigration At The Solar Max travels through successively hypercharged zones, the musicians building their activities on and against shifting electro-acoustic drones and matrices of rhythm, unisons splitting and refracting."
- by Elliott Sharp, NYC, 2018
The project began with e-mail exchanges of fragmented sounds and ideas - on the piano, cello, drums, harp, vocals, homemade and electronic instruments. Their experimental correspondence eventually blossomed and grew into an exquisite, fully-fledged album of brooding cinematic compositions.
Through 7 songs, Moore and Skodvin lead us through complex, haunted, minimalistic pieces. They are surreal, sonically fascinating and deeply moving. A very special and original album in both its conception and result - definitely one of a kind in the HITD discography
Jordan Munson
Opening work “Anew”—co-written with composer/vocalist Hanna Benn (Son Lux, BOOTS)—pairs triumphant vocal fanfare with darkly visceral industrial rhythms, while title track “Until My Last” presents a furiously urgent piano performance (played by Munson himself) in counterpoint with a bed of processed music box tones. “Where Light Escapes You,” the shortest of the three works, acts as something of a palette cleanser in the middle of the album, filtering the delicate percussion work of Alex Wier through Munson’s kaleidoscopic electronics.
Australia’s greatest cult band, The Necks, has a new piece to offer the world this summer, entitled “Body”. Different again to all previous Necks albums (20 in total), the band has chosen 10 words and phrases that summarize the four richly contrasting episodes of this hour-long, mesmerizing groove. They are as follows: Episodic, Driving, Dynamic, Layered, Celebratory, Soaring, Rocking out, Buoyant, Sustained, Perfectly paced.
The album uses, yet again, the combination of Chris Abrahams (piano, keyboards) Tony Buck (drums, percussion, and guitar very much to the fore on this one) and Lloyd Swanton (acoustic bass) with Tim Whitten (engineer), who has recorded and/or mixed the last twelve Necks albums. The Necks hold their own with the best of them when it comes to rhythmic complexity, but they have put much of that to one side for this album in the interests of conjuring their most relentlessly driving album since "Hanging Gardens".
https://northernspyrecs.com/
Strings figure prominently in this case, with the first violin flourish arising three minutes in and others swarming to the surface thereafter. As expected, nothing so conventional as a recognizable string quartet melody appears; instead, groans, corroded phrases, and high-pitched squeals ebb and flow within the slow-moving, undulating mass, while guitars twang insistently amidst clattering noise at the twenty-five-minute mark. As emphatic as Arcade is in such moments, it also includes passages so gentle and subdued they could induce sleep, and, in fact, midway through, breathing-like sounds emerge that could be mistaken for signs of light slumber. The setting never stays in one place for too long but rather shape-shifts with almost clockwork regularity, and consequently one’s attention never lapses during the thirty-three-minute presentation.
Anyone seeing Jeck’s methodology and gear choice as gimmicky would be wise to attend more carefully; Arcade is as transfixing as anything else in his catalogue and attests to the singularity of his vision.- Ron Schepper at Touch - Emusic
Here's the link to the Bandcamp article:
Daniel Bachman - The Morning Star
. . . . Change is natural and change is good. In the case of Daniel Bachman, gone is the player who originally played with such an irrepressible power. "The Morning Star" demonstrates that years have permitted Bachman to grow into a complicated and transfixing performer whose compositions bear a sympathetic ear with few peers. If it sounds like high praise, it should. Daniel Bachman’s "The Morning Star" is the complex, seemingly timeless, and beautiful album that we all need now more than ever.
WRWTFWW Records is overjoyed to announce the release of two never-released-before soundtracks by French award-winning composer, audio experimenter, electroacoustic and musique concrète magician, and all-around sound visionary Bernard Parmegiani, sourced from the original reels, and neatly packed together in a gatefold sleeve double LP with English and French liner notes. The 2 albums are also available in an all-in-one digipack CD.
Les Soleils de l’Île de Pâques (1972), by French director Pierre Kast, is a sci-fi feature which secured itself a well-deserved place in the pantheon of mysterious cult films thanks to hallucinatory (and superb) cinematography, exploration of supernatural phenomenons and occult symbolism, and one hell of a trippy atmosphere. La Brûlure de Mille Soleils (1965) also comes from Pierre Kast, but this time with the help of none other than writer, photographer, multimedia artist, homme à tout faire Chris Marker (notably known for films La Jetée, A Grin Without a Cat and Sans Soleil) who edited this bizarre short to brain melting results that live up to the promises of its synopsis: A depressed millionaire poet, accompanied by his cat Marcel and a sign language robot, travels in time to shake a persistent feeling of ennui and falls hopelessly in love with a woman from another planet. Nuff said!
A renowned member of the prestigious GRM (Groupe de recherches musicales, the French equivalent of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop) and frequent collaborator of Pierre Schaeffer, Iannis Xenakis, and Pierre Henry among others, Bernard Parmegiani does what he does best with these two rare soundtracks: creating moods with electroacoustic experimentation, elevating the weird and hypnotic with soundscapes from other dimensions, and cementing his status as a true innovator.
- released August 30, 2018
"Zamaan Ya Sukkar is a rich musical portrait from the time when Cairo was the vibrant cultural heart of the Middle East and the grandeur of the leading orchestras was incomparable. Unearthed latin and jazz-tinged tracks will let your mind drift off to the glamorous nightlife of 60's Cairo. Meet some forgotten souls of the Egyptian music scene and cinema world. Sensual voices and Bollywood-like orchestra sounds inflame the senses of the body with an intangible exotic twist! All music is remastered from original 45's produced by Sono Cairo."
Salah Ragab’s tenor player, Sayed Salamah, is stewed in latinized Ellingtonia on this one: