The Abyss
The Abyss is an epic, dynamic statement that shows the wide range of sound these two esteemed artists are capable of creating. The lengthy list of instruments used, plus the year it took to assemble, gives an indication that there is a grander modus operandi at play here than the linear works that Kevin Drumm and Jason Lescalleet are known for. CD-1 is made up of seven pieces that run the gamut, with electronic crackle, digital shards of noise, piano mangle, and even dissonant brass clust…
II
The label doesn't want to do notes anymore about his new releases. So we have to write some with our very good English. With these two names you can imagine that for sure the music will be closer to silence than to wall of noise. First we must say that no credit is written on the CD, like it was not important to know who is playing what and first what is played. CD1 is an instrumental piece signed by Radu Malfatti. CD2 by Jürg Frey where instruments are mixed with field recordings. It was r…
Hootonics
MILESTONE! After being mooted for several years, the soundtrack to Arthur and Corinne Cantrill's 1970 feature-length film Harry Hooton is finally available. Features the groundbreaking music/sound created using a variety of musique concrete/tape techniques, collage, and treated recordings of early CSIRO mainframe computers. Hooton was a poet, futurist and thinker associated with the Sydney Push, and a formative influence on the Cantrill's artistic view, as detailed in Arthur's liner notes. T…
Incredulous Cuts - Reinterpretations of Doubtmusic catalogue
DJ Sniff was invited to rework with sound material from Doubt catalog. Turntable and computer for a nice piece of remix!ÂÂ
Phantom jerk
Here's a newie from notorious noise terrorist Kevin Drumm. The press release just says Kevin Drumm: modular analogue synth, while the sleeve isn't much more forthcoming, telling me the artist, title, label name and another snippet of information: 6 oscillators, recorded July 2013.Compared to some of his brutally distorted sonic assaults, this is a surprisingly tranquil serene album, with slow-drifting synth drones rubbing sonorously against one another in a ghostly shimmer that's part Deathpro…
Zones of Influence
David Rosenboom (b.1947) is considered a pioneer in American experimental music. This release of his Zones of Influence (1984-85) documents for the first time the complete version of a major composition for percussion and computer electronics that introduced new virtuoso performance techniques along with significant developments in real-time algorithmic composition and advanced interactive linking of percussion instruments with software. Few solo percussion works exist with the scope of this com…
Characters at the water margin
These recordings were made at the edge of Washington state's Olympic Rainforest, where the Hoh River meets the Pacific Ocean. The point of entry to this landscape, named Oil City on the map, is no more than a place where the road widens before coming to an end at a trailhead. Just north of the road, through the trees, and on the homestead of the late Captain Hank who one day disappeared at sea, is the ghost of an oil rig and some comings and goings along a plank road. Early 20th century settlers…
Roananax 1999 / Obliq 2014
The Roananax / Obliq split chronicles two generations of Berlin’s radical improvisers in dialogue. On the first half, Annette Krebs (electro-acoustic guitar, mixing board), Axel Dörner (trumpet), Robin Hayward (tuba), and Andrea Neumann (inside piano, mixing board) realize five nearly motionless improvisations from 1999. Their sound world is scoured of excess: silence reigns, interrupted only by microscopic events - clicks, whispers, friction, muted resonance, and breath become the core vocabula…
Luv / Kopfuberwelle
Luv / Kopfüberwelle unfolds in two halves, each radiating the signature sensitivity of Sabine Vogel. “luv,” a nearly thirty-minute solo piece, sits at the intersection of field recording, flute improvisation, and subtle electronic manipulation. Vogel’s work with the Landscape Quartet shapes her approach, drawing not just on musical material but on a careful listening to site - birdsong, wind, water, and distant activity form a natural acoustic tapestry into which the flute dissolves and emerges.…
Crritic!
Two interlocking pieces dedicated to Hans Keller, Desmond Leslie and Lester Bangs. I Only Asked uses an interview recording — questions only — to modulate various sound parameters, and is a reworking of a piece first performed at Café OTO, London in March 2011. Hatchet Job is based on a computer speech recording of all the negative reviews Moliné has penned for The Wire magazine in the last ten years. These amount to around 50,000 words.
Tape Works 1981-85
The finest German Minimal Synth from the early 80s NDW underground, finally given the deluxe treatment it deserves. Jürgen Schweighart, working under the Bowie-inspired moniker V2 Schneider, was one of the true hidden figures of the Neue Deutsche Welle era - not quite punk, not quite goth, but something altogether more singular and strange. Operating out of basements and towers in the south of Germany with his band Blindgänger, Schweighart created a body of work that sits comfortably alongside t…
An Anthology Of Noise & Electronic Music - Vol 1
Subtitled: First A-Chronology 1921-2001. At last, the Sub Rosa label re-issues the highly-acclaimed Anthology Of Noise & Electronic Music collection. Containing early and contemporary classics as well as pieces that had never been heard before. Volume 1 begins in the 1920s with the Russolo brothers, and examines each decade in turn -- Varèse, Cage, Schaeffer, Xenakis, the great pioneers crafting the first traces of a music that was markedly revolutionary: electronic music, created from no…
What's That For, Mate?
* Hand-numbered edition of 100 in recycled cardstock sleeve with envelope. * Recorded in March 2010, What's that for, mate? Is one of the first recordings the duo (Jack Harris & Samuel Rodgers) made together. At this time the two worked with a combination of no-input and acoustic feedback, digital processing and phonography. This recording sees a discourse resulting from the amalgamation of and conflict between the analogue and the digital, the gestural and the static, and multiple recorded spac…
Oera
Recorded in the small Norwegian town of Øra, from which the album takes its name, this meeting of two acoustic string instruments belies the simplicity of its instrumentation through the complexity and diversity of the music produced. Ranging from careful melodic a/tonal interplay to dense full spectrum harmonics, capturing the versatility and inventiveness of these musicians.
EP2
Bilharzia is 15 minutes of electronic nausea, adding layers of bleeping LFO nastiness to a relentlessly repetitive base. You should know you'll get what's coming to you with a song called Make a Joyful Sound, and I don't feel it disappoints. Pounding brutality you could bury your dad to, and a bad time guaranteed to be had by all. There is a kind of tune in there somewhere though, lurking dimly in the background...' Stefan Jaworzyn
Objets infernaux
Two great korean artists working with feedback, turntables, opened hard drives... What they call infernal objects. A stream of noise accidents. A molten, scalding stream of sound. Looking back, I see it's only been about seven years since, via the recordings issued on Manual, I first became aware of the improvising scene in Seoul; seems like longer, maybe I'm forgetting something. But the musicians involved were clearly up to something new and exciting, carving out a distinct area that often inv…
Secluded in Jersey City
Well talk about your long gestations for a project. Secluded in Jersey City, by Secluded Bronte was recorded live on WFMU in November of 2002. And we spoke about releasing this on Pogus pretty quickly after that. So to take twelve years to release a CD is a pretty long time. But it was most certainly worth the wait. This trio features Jonathan and Adam Bohman with the added experimental irreverence of Richard Thomas. The Bohman Brothers are known for their unique live performances mixing theatre…
Kaleidoscope
The idea for the Kaleidoscope works came from the composers' memories of playing with the prismatic toy of the same name as a child. The toy, of course, consists of colored beads in a tube of mirrors, whose reflections generate complex symmetrical patterns that change dramatically in density and texture as the tube is turned. With these pieces the aim was to emulate such dynamic spatial activity through sound, distributing fragmentary materials in space and immersing the listener in a rich and e…
Kartacz
If I were to look at the ideas promoted by the Experimental Studio against Ma e Instrumenty's practices, I would refer to the concept of music which is - for certain reasons - 'impossible' studio electronic productions, preparing instruments, using and editing tapes - all those practices once broadened the perspectives of the art of sound. However, the 'unreachable' sound combinations produced by Ma e Instrumenty could also be considered as an attempt to overcome the 'impossibility' in music. Ho…
Sous les etoiles
We are proud to release - four years after his first longplayer on Canadian imprint 'Manufracture' - Kiko C. Esseiva's second album 'Sous les étoiles'. The electro-acoustic-musique conrète compositions he has constructed during the past years are brilliant soundpieces that remind sometimes on Luc Ferraris electro-acoustic works but also the very narrative nature of some older Nurse With Wound albums. The way he mixes (almost) melodic elements into a complex structure of well arranged sounds and …