Dystonia Duos
2013 release ** "Contrary to the effects of the titular condition, which I'm given to understand afflicts both musicians, and as also implied in the images of distorted and pained hands adorning the cover, there's some seriously steady and decisive music contained herein. It's understandable, for a moment, that the innocent listener might have an idea that this is more Panzner's affair than Stuart's if, like yours truly, one's knowledge of the latter's work is pretty much covered by his adventur…
Blue.Hour
Yann Novak Blue.Hour explores the high contrast colors created in the landscape during “l’heure bleue,” the period of twilight each evening when there is neither full daylight nor complete darkness. Directly following the ‘Golden Hour,’ know for its diffused yet powerful light, the Blue Hour retains the diffusion but lacks the strong light source giving this period of the day an especially melancholic and meditative atmosphere. Blue.Hour is presented here in stereo with some compositional elemen…
Circadian Rhythm, Sleep Disorder
LOGOS “The idea of dedicating a record to sleeping disorders hit my mind as an illumination when two tracks were already done and I was trying to find out their obscure sense. The more I searched for it the more I couldn”t sleep at night. Composing during nightime, through headphones, is a kind of sleep treatment for me. In a big city like Rome silence is a nearly nonexistent condition; only at night I seem to have the silence I need to concentrate, but some lonely car running down the road alwa…
V
Given how prolific Barn Owl have been in the past, it's surprisingly to learn that it's been over 18 months since "Lost in the Glare," their last proper full-length. In the interim Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti have issued a variety of solo albums, but the duo has also used that time to augment the sound palette of Barn Owl with electronics and synthesizers. Thankfully, the same blackened soot and scorched psychedelia are still prevalent, they just reach deeper timbres and more expansive textures…
Drones
In the beginning there was the piano. As soon as he had mastered the basics, Jean-Philippe Goude discovered the spell of melancholy while working on a little musical piece: an etude ringing out in the style of a somber hymn. Not the dead meat smells of somberness that, according to Picabia, serious people emit, but the earthen gravity of an abyss dug by life itself. Everything is the result of this bedazzlement. At 11 years old, Jean-Philippe Goude closed his eyes. When his eyelids finall…
Pan
LP version. This is the first solo effort from Jonas Munk released under his own name. Jonas Munk is a musician and producer from Odense, Denmark who has been active in a wide range of musical styles for the past decade. In the European psych-rock community he is mostly known as the guitar player in the respected stoner/jazz/Krautrock-outfit Causa Sui as well as related projects such as Chicago Odense Ensemble, a joint session project featuring members of Causa Sui, Chicago Underground Colle…
C.O.I.T. - A Collection of Isolated Tracks 1981-1988
Founded in Creil, in the Oise département north of Paris, in 1981 by Thierry Damerval on bass and keyboards, Christophe Demarthe on vocals, and Nicolas Demarthe on guitar, Clair Obscur are widely credited with coining the term cold wave, which makes it all the more striking that they vehemently refused to be categorised as gothic or wave, insisting on their own radical unclassifiability from the beginning. Their early shows mixed music with performance art; one notorious concert was staged as a …
Horology
2013 release ** "On Horology we hear Lars Åkerlund, Jean-Louis Huhta and Zbigniew Karkowski plugging their wangs into the Buchla 200 synth at the EMS Studio in Stockholm, and producing thereby an almighty dollop of powerhouse analogue wallop, an extremely thickened and scaly drone, like something torn from the back of an alligator. It first stuns you into surrender with over 20 minutes of unholy, grisly noise – a distorted pounding chaos of white noise and writhing agonised moans that follows th…
Cassette Memories Volume 3: South of the Border
"South of the Border is the third installment of my Cassette Memories album series. All field recordings were taped in Mexico, a country I've had a special fondness for since I was a little child. My first memory was watching photographs and Super-8 films my father shot in Mexico City from his time there during the 1968 Summer Olympics, where he competed as a member of the Japanese national hockey team. It made me realize there is a place completely different from Japan, and I started dreaming a…
Retreat, Return, Repose
**Collecting Eleh's three heavyweight drone albums on CD for the first time. LPs were previously only available to buy direct from the label. Housed in deluxe 6-panel tri-fold slipcase. Very precious, pure and meditative sounds strongly recommended to followers of Eliane Radigue, Pauline Oliveros, LaMonte Young. Edition of 1000**
"Retreat is a collection of exploratory sound assemblages put together during a cabin sojourn. New timbral richness, tonal expansion and deep synthesis make thes…
Partitas for long strings
Restocked. "Two aspects were of central interest to him: different tunings and density of sound. He made an installation in the large space of Het Apollohuis, stretching four strings lengthwise and attaching them to the wooden wall on the far end, which served as a resonator. He did not use automatons or electric amplification. He played the strings by brushing them, walking back and forth at an even pace. His aim was to make his playing as continuous and even as possible. For each partita he re…
Fuzz_Galopp
During the work for Voice Crack duo Norbert Möslang was one of the pioneers in the field of sound installation techniques usage in live improvised music. His instruments are cracked everyday-electronics, but sounds themselves are delivered from the mechanical properties of these devices. This kind of approach seems to be similar to Peter Fischli and David Weiss practices in the visual arts’ fields. The comparison of the film documentaries - "The Way Things Go" (1987) about Fischli/Weiss activiti…
Rythmes d'etain
This CD represents the end of his trilogy, but certainly not the end of his adventure into Sound. Concerning this new opus, he says: I was going for a raw sound, close to the actual sounds made by the instruments and sources, with minimal dressing-up. The organ's sub-bass frequencies include extremely low frequencies. His range of instruments: Church organ, tympanies, bass drum, large drum, tubular idiophones, toms, cymbals, hi-hat, voices (sped-up, slowed-down, texts in Latin) + stokes and hits…
I Want the Beatles to Play at my Art Center
Video From the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter Archives 1968-2011. Artists: John Cage, Kjartan Slettemark, KILLL, Arne Nordheim, Stephen O`Malley, Mauricio Kagel, MoHa!, Christopher Nielsen/Masselys, Stian Skagen & Monica Winther. This DVD presents seminal works of music, performance, dance, theater and installation art from the nearly 50-year history of Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (HOK). When HOK founder Sonja Henie exclaimed that she wanted the Beatles to play at her art center, in essence she expresse…
The Middle of Life (Die ganze Zeit)
Pisaro's fascinating composition created with guitar, bass, percussion, radio, electronics, and field recordings, using long gaps of silence resolved through a dynamic set of rich audio sections."The most convincing way to avoid reality is to lose yourself in the prickle of the field recording, as if it were bubble wrap. Here, technology chafes against a world of waves, pulses, and impacts, leaving to the ear and the imagination the task of estimating reality from scratch (at 12:35, a storm defi…
The punishment of the tribe by its elders'
Pisaro's fascinating composition created with guitar, bass, percussion, radio, electronics, and field recordings, using long gaps of silence resolved through a dynamic set of rich audio sections."The most convincing way to avoid reality is to lose yourself in the prickle of the field recording, as if it were bubble wrap. Here, technology chafes against a world of waves, pulses, and impacts, leaving to the ear and the imagination the task of estimating reality from scratch (at 12:35, a storm defi…
Valedictorian / Exoskeleton
Valedictorian/Exoskeleton, Dan Friel’s first release for Thrill Jockey, contains two brand new songs, as well as the first ever remixes of his music. “Valedictorian” opens the EP with a burst of adreneline, pure pop filtered through a layer of noise. “Exoskeleton” is more mysterious, with bursts of Friel’s overdriven synths coming in and out of focus over a steady pulse. The first remix is a dancefloor ready take on “Exoskeleton” courtesy of Moss of Aura, the solo project of Gerrit Welmers, one …
Centralia
Mountains’ music is defined by slow builds, and subtle transformations, textures and melodic lines that evolve in a variety of ways to create grand soundscapes and acutely detailed compositions. For Centralia, the duo of Koen Holtkamp and Brendon Anderegg wrote and recorded in a way that mirrors the pace of their music. While the current trend in experimental music is towards hyper-prolificity, Mountains have taken their time on Centralia, resulting in an album that is as precise as it is boundl…
Tom Carter And Pat Murano
The brilliant Pat Murano (NNCK member who has brought out a staggering amount of high quality electronic darkness under his Decimus alias in recent years) has sent us two new LPs on his Kelippah imprint this week, which is nice. As usual with this label they’re very limited (only 300 each) and come housed in beautiful screenprinted card sleeves. This one here is a collaboration between Murano and Charalambides’ own death-defier Tom Carter.
On the grooves we have two lengthy jams. Put your needle…
Les Conversions
First LP from this NYC trio composed of Jason Meagher (NNCK, Coach Fingers), Pat Murano (NNCK, Decimus, Key Of Shame), and Dave Shuford (NNCK, Rhyton). An improvised ritual of metal percussion and electronic modulation recorded at Black Dirt Studio in 2012. As in previous NNCK and Decimus works, there's a lot of buzzing drones and flickering electronics, just less haunting and more tripping. Limited to 300 copies.