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 …
U-t-O-P-i
2015 release ** "Behind e-SaxBow is Florent Colautti on e-string and François Wong on electrified baritone saxophone. I have no idea what an electrified baritone saxophone is, but in none of this one can easily recognize the horn or anything with a string that is supposed to be the e-string. The latter is played using electromagnetic bows, which he pilots from his computer. The saxophone is also transformed by computer means and thus the five pieces, which last thirty minutes in total, sound lik…
Music For E.D.L
Droning (sub-)bass tones and noises, reminiscent to early electronic music (and it's modernist agenda) meet slightly detuned soundscapes, which seem to be taken from an old, pitched-down rave-track. Recorded live & arranged to a 11-minute piece for this release, 'Music for E.D.L.' was originally made as a soundtrack for a video work by Siska, a visual artist operating from Berlin and Beirut. E.D.L. is an visual essay on Lebanon's 'National Electricity Building', built in the 1930's by Pierre Ne…
Entretien
The project sources from "in black" images taken by Stefano Gentile. Takes that flow in the most hidden sides of the soul. Gianluca Favaron gives sounds these images with notes that don't let space to imagination. Fields recordings and electronics to tell the same visions. The same soulmoods. The work is released with a A/4 16 pages booklet featuring the workshop by Stefano Gentile and a cd with sounds by Gianluca. The edition is 230 copies limited.
The Silence of Ghosts
Robert Haigh continues on in his post-Omni Trio musical world, releasing a type of contemporary classical/ambient music that is piano-based and bridges the worlds of Aphex Twin (in the Richard James’ quieter moments), Max Richter, Eno and Chilly Gonzales. These, as with the instrumental pieces on recent-enough Robert Haigh album, the gorgeous Darkling Streams, feel all at once like demo-versions and finished pieces; the writer sitting down at the keys and shaking loose a few ideas. Stopping to f…
The way becoming
One Sound Duo is a project by Claudio Ricciardi, once a member of the historical band Prima Materia, and by double bass player Orlando Lostumbo. They have chosen this name precisely because their work originates from the interaction of two successfully connected minds that give birth to a unique sound. They manage to do so by putting together creativity, intuition, and by playing on acoustics derived from particular instruments such as the spacedrum. Similar to the steel drum, the spacedrum is a…
Mobilee
Exponate is a new concept series curated by Wolfgang Voigt with the intention to bring together artists from diverse experimental music backgrounds. To open up new musical spaces and to sound out the increasingly liquified confines between abstract ambient music and art music, between electronica and new music - that's the stated goal of EXPONATE. The new series starts with Berlin-based artist SCHNEIDER TM aka Dirk Dresselhaus, who is well-known for most diverse projects and collaborations acros…
Glass Walking
Over the years the Menstruation Sisters have through a selective, but incredibly varied output of albums steadily built a reputation among music fans as a unique band. It was never a secret who the members of Menstruation Sisters were, yet the band's aura was shrouded in mystery and confusion, possibly because they would completely reinvent themselves with every new recorded statement. As a fan of the Menstruation Sisters you had to abandon everything you knew with each new piece of the puzzle.…
Untitled #300
Pressing of 300 copies on crystal-clear 200-gram virgin vinyl packaged in a custom letterpress jacket printed, die-cut, and hand-assembled at Studio On Fire in Minneapolis, with particular care taken to retain the fine detail of the cover's microscopic type. "Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of the sound art and experimental music scene. For more than 30 years he has developed an astonishing sonic universe, absolutely personal and iconoclastic, based on a…
Recurring Dreams
Reissue of this 1981 album. Dating back to '81 and the apex of the Brian Eno / Berlin schools' influence over a myriad of American followers, Young created eight EMS/Rhodes pieces solo, subtly weaving in variable speed Revox manipulation of traditional Rock instrumentation with the lightest of touches. "Matthew Young's genre-bending, acclaimed 1986 release Traveler's Advisory reappeared as a reissue on Drag City/Yoga in 2010 and quickly sold out. We now return to Young's first effort, Recurr…
Program
"A collaboration between Kouhei Matsunaga (who has worked with everyone from Sensational to Autechre and Asmus Tietchens) and the less prolific Toshio Munehiro, NHK’s ultra minimalist approach to techno may conjure memories of the late 90s/early 2000s glitch and microsound scenes, but their combination of erratic beats and digital expanses feels anything but dated, sounding entirely unique and fresh in 2015. I have always had a soft spot for that short lived era that was often full of derided la…
Sleepwalkers In A Cold Circus
On Sleepwalkers in a Cold Circus Belgian sound artist Koenraad Ecker creates a biotope of musical characters that is sober, delicate, complex and vivid, with a restrained intensity, a “cold fire.” The characters discuss, hesitate, fight, pull closer, push back. Through the use of microtonality and recordings of acoustic instruments it is the elusive sound of a somnambulistic travelogue. “I’m searching for ways to create an intricate narrative, switching perspectives and voices within one form, t…
Days
Triac is a new trio project led by Rossano Polidoro of former duo TU M' whose beautiful 2009 sold out LINE release Monochromes Vol.1 (LINE_040) garnered great acclaim. Days is an album of dazzling yet smooth distant drones that almost hover in the air. The sound of the slowest moving picture and subtle flickering lights beyond it. For listeners who appreciate the works of Celer, William Basinski, and Stephan Mathieu.Triac is a discrete electronic music trio formed in the end of 2011. Their work …
Malefactor, Ade
In 1989, ‘Malefactor, Ade’ was issued on the UK’s Glass Records, which had arranged several years earlier for the first actual release of Mayo Thompson’s 1970 solo LP, ‘Corky’s Debt To His Father’. This was the first Red Crayola record release in five years. The fearlessness with which genres are converted can be disarming, but stick to it - you’ll find listening an utter triumph. ‘Malefactor, Ade’ was reissued on CD by Drag City in the year 2000. Now it's on lovely vinyl.
Extinguishment
In some experimental music circles melody is virtually verboten, but you have often embraced it in your work. Do you feel that you are to some extent going against the grain in this?AG: First off, I think melody can be defined separately from harmony. I think of melody as a single voice or layer, and with multiple layers, I like them to overlap in non-structured ways. I am interested in homophony more than polyphony or harmony, where if you take a cross-section through these independent lines y…
Sounds Of Iceland
This recording takes you on a round trip of Iceland. The aural journey starts westward from the island’s south in the cold early spring. After a side trip into the West Fjords, our route traverses the north of the country at the height of summer, followed by an excursion into the interior highlands before a short stop in the East Fjords. As the sound trip nears its geographical starting point, autumn and winter make their appearance before the journey comes full circle.The recordings do not feat…
We all mutate around the mountain
Louis Johnstone's Wanda Group project is on continuos evolving, a continuo research, aimed at expanding each time its borders. The result is a complex work, both musically and emotionally. We all mutate around the mountain is a dense march where the memories, the common sounds around us, are manipulated and rearranged to create a new story that draws liberally from real life. With his vocabulary and moods it has gone away forcefully, taking place in an abstract and timeless territory…
Prima del terzo
One of my favourite walk is in the harbour of my hometown, because of the sound brought by the wind. For long time I have day-dreamt about including that sound in my own music. I got to the point reading the poem Prologo al buio by Erri De Luca (from Opera sull’Acqua e altre poesie, Einaudi 2002). In the poem there is a Hebraic quote from Genesis, before the third verse (hence the title of my composition, the Italian for “before the third”): “vrúah Elohím merahèfet al penè hammàim”, that means, …
Untitled #274
Untitled #274 was composed by Francisco López and performed by Kasper T. Toeplitz at GRM Studios in Paris, France. Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of sound art and experimental music. For more than thirty years he has developed an astonishing sonic universe, absolutely personal and iconoclastic, based on a profound listening of the world. Destroying boundaries between industrial sounds and wilderness sound environments, shifting with passion from th…
Un-used Re-mix's 1994-1995
"We do not work on a release, a piece is done at a time. A CD is drawn from various tracks which can span a few days, weeks or a month, or a day, each release is different." --Bryn Jones, Grinding Into Emptiness interview, 1998Not only has Muslimgauze's work survived the death of Bryn Jones, so have his working methods; with so much worthwhile material still in the vaults and much of it having little in the way of information or context left by the artist upon his untimely passing, recent reissu…