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Forlorn green
The press release is disingenuous in describing "Forlorn Green" as "lo-fi": even if Jason Lescalleet's work involves tapeloops using cheap recording gear and "trashed" speakers, his digital reworking and mastering is painstakingly perfectionist and perfect. Recorded in four different locations in the Boston area (a church, a gallery, an art school and the local Twisted Village record store) and crafted in Lescalleet's studio with what can only be described as loving care, the sonic alchemy of …
Extracts
The first word that came to mind on playing Extracts was understatement, with an almost oriental minimalism and profundity on display. At times I was forced to check whether sounds were coming from the speakers or from outside. However, this is a far cry from the Radu Malfatti school of implied music since it is very much about close group interplay. Simon H. Fell's sonorous bass is of particular note, underpinning, colouring and giving the proceedings a kind of still, stately authority. Likewis…
Aluminium
It's onward, ever onward for New Zealand's foremost guitar experimentalist, Dean Roberts. Before you know it, he'll be as ubiquitous as Thurston Moore, a New Music gadfly gatecrashing every weird feast going. The latest outpost in a transition from lo-fi humstrum to Destination Unknown sees Roberts shacked up with avant-Austrian Werner Dafeldecker bassist in Improv group Polwechsel.Expect: grinchy crackling, like the amplified sound of grit disintegrating. Imagine: bric-a-brac, debris, splinters…
What a wonderful world
Despite the title of the album and several of the selections, listeners who approach this disc expecting something in the vein of Louis Armstrong will likely be disappointed. Then again maybe not, if it's originality that's prized. Jérôme Noetinger and Erik M had, by the late '90s, established themselves as driving forces in contemporary electronic improvisation, performing and recording with virtually anyone of note in the field. For this album, they at least partially venture out into di…
Points and Slashes
Over the past decade, Swiss-based Günter Müller has collaborated with many of the most prominent Tokyo-based musicians, recording CDs with Otomo Yoshihide, Taku Sugimoto, Sachiko M, Masahiko Okura, and Toshimaru Nakamura. Points and Slashes is the latest of these, a duo collaboration with guitar wizard Tetuzi Akiyama.It's impossible to pin down Akiyama, a musician of diverse interests and activities, with a brief description. He has been playing electric guitar since he was 13, and formed his fi…
ErstLive 008
Keith Rowe's concluding set, with longtime partner Toshimaru Nakamura, at the AMPLIFY 2008: Light festival, recorded on September 21, 2008 by Taku Unami. AMPLIFY 2008: Light was an intense and deeply immersive experience for all who were lucky enough to be present, and quite a bit of that was attributable to Rowe's four sets, which are now available for all to hear.
eh
One of the central aesthetics of the Erstwhile label is the counterpositioning of electronic and acoustic improvisers. Rarely has that been more starkly, and beautifully, achieved than on the opening and closing tracks of eh by guitarist Stangl and turntablist/electronicist Dieb13 (Dieter Kovacic). Stangl is one of a handful of contemporary free improv musicians who happily forays into tonal, even melodic spheres, conjuring up a reduced version of John Fahey, perhaps. On "eeeh", his delicate str…
Between
"between", for me is about the tension and space between objects, and how we might occupy this area, to reside if you like between the conventions, to locate the flexibility that comes from de-theorizing the dogmas. It seemed to me as if Toshi and I were navigating a route through a familiar part of town, where each of the buildings stood for and represented expectations, styles, outcomes and histories. We wanted to resist entering the buildings and to stay between. The cover art and photo attem…
Musik — Ein Porträt In Sehnsucht
Burkhard Stangl and Kai Fagaschinski both are masters at fluidly combining melodicism and abstraction. Musik-Ein Porträt in Sehnsucht showcases their work as a duo, carefully composed pieces intertwined with judiciously placed field recordings and meticulously sequenced to create a record that is more than the sum of its parts. Stangl and Fagaschinski first met in the summer of 2002, when Christof Kurzmann suggested Kai should join the ensemble performing Stangl's opera Venusmond in Berlin. They…
Till My Breath Gives Out
The magic i.d. is a berlin-based quartet exploring the juncture of song forms with abstract music. The band, consisting of margareth kammerer, christof kurzmann, kai fagaschinski and michael thieke, formed in summer 2005 after previously being connected via smaller groupings and projects. till my breath gives out is their debut release, and consists of six intricately constructed gems, each with its own individual shape, painstakingly sequenced to form a record that becomes more than the sum of …
Summary Dismissal
Tim Albro & Tyler Keen, guitars, electronics, objects. recorded Nov 2013 in Jacksonville, FL. mastered by Joe Panzner. design by Matthew Revert.
Medium Rude
Reed Evan Rosenberg-microphones, pedals, max, voice. Ethan Tripp-microphones, motors, junk. Recorded in 2014 and 2015. Mastered by Joe Panzner. Design by Matthew Revert.
Three Exercises
Devin DiSanto is an New York-based artist and composer currently focusing on labor-oriented approaches to performance. This work revolves primarily around functional uses of common/everyday objects in both solo and group situations, emphasizing the presence and impact of incidental sound. Nick Hoffman is an American composer/improviser born in 1985. He operates Pilgrim Talk.
Severe Liberties
ErstAEU is a new CD imprint, launched by Erstwhile Records to help document the work of young American experimental musicians working in a post-electroacoustic vein. Kevin Parks originally hails from New York. He is a graduate of the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, CUNY and received his M.A. degree from Dartmouth College. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Composition and Music Technologies at The University of Virginia. After working briefly at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in …
Sinter
Something very cool about erstaeu 002's existing in such a different world than its numeric predecessor (and 003 is altogether different as well). After the sublime compressive intensity of "Dystonia Duos", "Sinter" injects vast amounts of oxygen into the room, air swirling and echoing in huge spaces, light shimmering and hazy. In metallurgical terms, sintering is the making of objects from powder and "powdery", especially with a metallic connotation, isn't the worst term you could use for much …
Keith Rowe - Taku Unami
ErstLive 006 is from the duo of Keith Rowe and Taku Unami, and took place on the first night of the Amplify 2008: light festival in Tokyo in September 2008. This was the first set they'd ever played together. Keith Rowe: guitar, electronics. Taku Unami: computer with objects, contraguitar, mandolin.
Keith Rowe
ErstLive 007 is a solo set from Keith Rowe, and took place on the second night of the Amplify 2008: light festival in Tokyo in September 2008. This was Rowe's first ever solo set in Tokyo in his 40+ year career. Keith Rowe: guitar, electronics.
September
This was the much anticipated final set of Keith Rowe's week in NYC, following five duo sets with various collaborators. It took place on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and the Manhattan atmosphere was uniquely charged. As he almost always does, Rowe rose to the challenge of the occasion, creating a moving, dense, and virtuosic set in the lineage of his 2004 set with Burkhard Beins in Berlin (ErstLive 001) and his 2008 solo set in Tokyo (ErstLive 007). The recording quality is remarkable, b…
Untitled
This was the 10 PM set on 9/11/11, and makes for a perfect pair with the Rowe solo - two very different extremes. Where the Rowe set is in your face visceral, Unami and Malfatti created a gentle atmosphere within the pitch-black room (lit solely by Unami's visuals) and an overarching cumulative feeling in the listener. The too-perfect-to-be-scripted intro and outro frame a set that's almost not there, a radical recording even by ultra-minimal standards
In Sadness, Silence and Solitude
**300 copies, first time on vinyl** Mammoth stone walls stretching high into the unknown, dank cellars stewn with bones and ashes. A chill in the lonely night wind disturbed by the utterance of arcane phrases. This is music guaranteed to at least bring about thoughts of mysticism, if it doesn't produce mystical states outright. This defines the term hauntingly beautiful.In Sadness, Silence and Solitude’, first released in 1997 by Cold Meat Industry, is the fourth fullength album of Raison d'être…