Tim Olive
Tim Olive is a Canadian sound artist and improviser based in Kobe, Japan. He uses bare magnetic pickups as his main instrument, drawing hum and interference out of metal objects, radios, spring reverb and other materials. He runs the label 845 Audio, where he regularly releases his solo and collaborative work. Tim Olive was a core member of the noise-rock group Nimrod. In Osaka he played bass in a duo with Nisikawa Bunsho and performed with Toshimaru Nakamura, Otomo Yoshihide, Taku Sugimoto and Taku Unami, alongside a long-running duo with Jeff Allport.
Guilty Paradise
*80 copies limited edition* Guilty Paradise is an almost 30-minute, fascinating glimpse into Michał Fundowicz’s journey to Japan. There, in the city of Kobe, he met Tim Olive, and over the course of three days they recorded the material that eventually took shape as Guilty Paradise. Both artists engage in improvisation: Tim Olive works with magnetic pickups, oscillator and tuning forks, while Michał Fundowicz manipulates cassette tapes.
What can one expect from this collaboration? The two exte…
The Several Benefactors
Tip! *30 copies limited edition* Tim Olive: magnetic pickups, metal plates, springs, radios.
Helios
AAD warmly welcomes Tim Olive to the family. Canadian born but residing in Japan for many years, TO has been involved in experimental music spanning more than two decades and has collaborated with dozens of great international artists and labels alike. Armed with a minimal setup of metallic pickups, springs and scrap metal, TO has mastered his sound by amplifying acoustic objects that are then played like a free jazz musician tinkering with a pile of broken guitars.
Sintered
Tim Olive lives in and operates out of Kobe, Japan, where he has built an impressive discography of solo and collaborative recordings using magnetic pickups as a primary instrument. Sintered was created with several of these magnetic pickups, along with metal objects, radios, and spring reverb. Working with such temperamental technology, it’s clear that Olive’s intuition and timing are assets put to good use here, sharpened from decades of collaboration and improvisation, from his early work as …
Wayward Acorn
*50 copies limited edition* "Wayward Acorn" is a new album by Tim Olive and Savvas Metaxas, out now on Coherent States. This collaboration exemplifies co-creation, as each artist reworks the other's source material through their own creative lens. Specifically, parts 1 & 2 feature a broad palette of tools (electric guitar, radio, modular synthesizer, field recordings) employed by Metaxas to craft his trademark sound over the years, with Olive's concrete and collage logic enriching the textures i…
Smelt
Bent Window presents Tim Olive's new release "Smelt", a buzzing conveyance of sound manipulation made from the leftovers of our mechanical world. Hum, crash and crackle combine for a unique journey into electronic disaster. Magnetic pickups, analog electronics, radio signals and consumer detritus (springs, styrofoam, metal sheets, motors, magnetic tape, wood, dental floss) to generate sound-textures which evolve, shift and mutate. Born in Canada, currently residing in Kobe, his discography inclu…
Cone
Tim Olive: radios, tuning forks, magnetic pickups, synthesizerRecorded and mixed August 2022, KobeMastered by Jack ArmstrongCover by Chris Gibson
Tuxford Fumble
Magnetic pickups, analog electronics, and consumer detritus (springs, styrofoam, metal sheets, motors, magnetic tape, wood, dental floss) generate evolving/shifting/mutating sound-textures. Born in Canada, currently residing in Kobe, Tim Olive's discography includes releases on BISAD, Caduc, Chocolate Monk, Copy For Your Records, Dasa Tapes, EM Records, Hard Return, Humanhood, Intonema, Kirigirisu, Korm Plastics, Minimal Resource Manipulation, Notice Recordings, Pilgrim Talk, Steep Gloss, Tsss T…
Ribbon
Tim Olive returns for his third album on Notice, a rare solo outing from this avid collaborator. “Ribbon” is a document of his highly developed relationship with amplified object manipulation, in a manner most cathartic and engaged, and yet informed by compositional sensibility. This release is constructed from multiple tracks of a variety of sound sources recorded in his studio in Kobe, Japan; these tracks have then been edited and layered, in shifting densities and evolving textures. Despite t…
Entenka
** Edition of 100 ** Tsss Tapes presents Entenka by Tim Olive: magnetic pickups, electronics and Kayu Nakada: circuit boards. Recorded August 13th, 2020, Kobe. Mastered by Francesco Covarino.
Telquan
** 2021 Stock. Glass-mastered CD in hand-stamped, recycled chipboard cover ** Minimalist Chilean guitarist Cristian Alvear and Tim Olive first played together in October 2016, doing three concerts in Japan, Alvear returning to Japan in October of 2017 for additional performances in Kyoto and Osaka, then spending a day recording in Kobe; this single improvised piece he result of that day, heard as it was recorded, with a few structural edits.
"Usually the sparring partners of Tim Olive, magnetic …
Brother of Divinity
** 2021 Stock. Glass-mastered CD in hand-stamped, recycled chipboard cover ** 845 label leader and sonic explorer Tim Olive uses magnetic pickups and electronics in this meeting with radical living room concert sound artist, poet and improviser Yan Jun in Kobe, Japan, Jun using a variety of electronics, radio and field recordings as the two improvise in a wonderfully mischievous set of errant dialog and restrained deconstruction.
First up is a twenty-eight-minute work, which was recorded in Octo…
Faune
** 2021 Stock ** Fellow Canadians, Montreal's Ambiances Magnetiques collective member, turntablist and electronics artist Martin Tetrault meets Japan-based electronic explorer Tim Olive performing on magnetic pickups, in their first album despite having performed sporadically across three decades: 4 rich improvisations minimally edited, shaping sound in compelling ways.
"[... Tim] Olive did a recording on "a lovely afternoon in Montreal, minimally edited", with the well-known turntablist Martin …
Boro
** 2021 Stock ** Recording in Saskatoon in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan the day before their performance at the Sounds Like Festival, audio explorer Tim Olive brings his magnetic pickups in a first meeting with Doreen Girard performing on a prepared tsymbaly, a Ukranian hammer dulcimer, for a single, unusually evolving, and wonderfully rich improvisation.
Boro, a 2018 first-time meeting with Winnipeg-based sound artist Doreen Girard, develops a more abstracted quality, with recordings o…
Nice You!
** 2021 Stock. Glass-master CD with recycled chipboard cover, hand-stamped ** After a performance in 2019, Kobe-based Canadian sound artist Tim Olive and Calgary percussionist, experimenter & Bug Incision label leader Chris Dadge recorded these two studio pieces using Dadge's amplified percussion, small instruments & electronics, as well as Olive's magnetic pickup/electronics system, running through a number of guitar & bass amplifiers.abel leader Chris Dadge recorded these two studio pieces usi…
naar/voor
Recording in Kobe, Japan in 2014, the duo of Jin Sangtae, organizer of Seoul's long-running dotolim concert series and who gainfully employs cast-off computer hard drives as sound sources, and Tim Olive, who uses electro-magnetic pickups to give voice to consumer/post-consumer objects, for three tracks of recycled and unorthodox sound.
"Here we have three lengthy pieces, fifty-four minutes in total, of some great music. They cover the entire dynamic spectrum, with lengthy passages being all loud…
63-66
** 2021 Stock. Glass-mastered CD with letterpress cover by Ben Owen/Middle Press ** Recording in Brooklyn in 2014, this collaboration between Tim Olive and Ben Owen presents four tracks of electronic improvisation using shortwave radio, oscillators, paper, contact microphones and magnetic pickups, creating a mysterious and well-paced album of sound experimentation. "The inconspicuous titles of Tim Olive and Ben Owen's first collaboration make it look like an album of discrete parts, just four im…
Lowering
** 2021 Stock. Edition of 100. Glass-mastered CD in hand-stamped, recycled chipboard cover ** Like mad scientists of sound, sonic explorers Tim Olive and Cal Lyall met in a Tokyo studio in 2012 armed with hydrophones, magnetic pickups and electronics to record this richly detailed and slowly unfolding work, blending organic and mechanical elements of indeterminate origin, finding absorbing dialog without clamor or tumult; intriguing and engrossing.I think I'd only heard Lyall a tiny bit on one o…
Bistre
**100 copies** Anne-F Jacques: rotating devices, Tim Olive: magnetic pick-ups. Recorded in Montreal, May 2019 Anne-F Jacques and Tim Olive use handmade, idiosyncratic instrumentation to produce and amplify detailed sound textures, from fine-grained to coarse. They share a tactile, lo-tech approach to improvised sound composition, manipulating diverse objects and materials in conjunction with somewhat unpredictable audio pickup/amplification systems to create a music in turns serene and agitated,…
Fukuoka / Osaka
Kahn (American, living in Zurich) and Olive (Canadian, living in Japan) recorded these pieces while on tour in Japan in May 2014. This release features two unhurried explorations for radio, synthesizer, and mixing board (Kahn) and magnetic pickups (Olive). “Fukuoka,” presents a series of gradual unfurlings; pockets of pockmarked, dented and torn glass clusters, tumbling upon and over each other, perhaps briefly interlocking by way of some fragile barb, only to instantaneously break loose. “Osaka…