Propellers In Love
Arnold Dreyblatt has been called "the most rock 'n' roll of all the composers to emerge from New York's downtown scene in the 1970s." Arnold Dreyblatt founded the Orchestra Of Excited Strings in 1979, harnessing unusual tuning intervals to an exuberant performance style. Propellers In Love, the Orchestra's second album – originally released in 1986 on the Stasch imprint, in conjunction with the contemporary art space Künstlerhaus Bethanien – develops Dreyblatt's rhythmically exacting exploration…
Two Solo Pieces
For his second album, Two Solo Pieces, Jon Gibson forgoes the dense, multi-layered timbres of Visitations in favor of simple textures and tone. While Two Solo Pieces serves up further evidence of Gibson's centrality to American minimalism – witness its inclusion in Alan Licht's famed Minimal Top Ten list – this profoundly intimate record also reveals the beauty of enclosed spaces and infinite harmonic vistas. As its unadorned title suggests, Two Solo Pieces consists of a pair of side-long track…
Manhattan research inc.
This is a 69 track edition of over two hours of Raymond Scott's unreleased electronic recordings from the 1950s and 60s. In 1946, Scott formed Manhattan Research Inc. (MRI), billed as Designers and Manufacturers of Electronic Music and Musique Concrète Devices and Systems. His colleague Robert Moog said, Scott was definitely in the forefront of developing electronic music technology and in the forefront of using it commercially as a musician. Soothing Sounds For Baby was just a warm-up. With MRI…
In Silhouette
The master of atmospheric magick and nuance, Brian Pyle a.k.a. Ensemble Economique returns to Denovali with the latest findings of his endless search in the shadows. With In Silhouette the revered artist and engineer commits some of his sharpest, most absorbing synthesis at the service of a cryptic, underlying narrative which never fully gives up its secrets but keeps you guessing by way of adroit inference and suggestion. Quite crucially it all feels somehow fresh yet deeply timeless, distillin…
The Silent Season
The Berlin/London duo attain an ever-more amorphous and befuddling sound on their fifth album. Antony Harrison and Leyli have conjured something quite special on their latest Paco Sala album, finetuning their experimental urges for a session that sounds like Hype Williams in high definition. Seemingly orchestrated in the drug-addled downtime after extensive knee surgery, The Silent Season shifts away from Paco Sala’s outsider pop leanings of previous releases in favour of an 11-track collection …
Kevätjuhla
Finnish multimedia artist Jan Anderzén returns to Alter in characteristically singular style under his Tomutonttu guise. Kevätjuhla (translated as "Spring Celebration") is his second release for the label following a split 7" with Oneohtrix Point Never in 2010 (ALT02) and his first vinyl long player since 2011. Lately Jan has been busy within visual art, making mosaics, quilts and creating installation work for which the music of Kevätjuhla was initially composed. Inspired by the multitudes of…
Electroacoustic Works
Electroacoustic Works collects three major pieces from the early 21st century New York-based composer Dan Joseph. This double CD release includes Set Of Four, a group of fixed-media sound collages using the processed hammer dulcimer as the primary sound source, two live performances of Dulcimer Flight for electroacoustic hammer dulcimer, and a 64-minute version of Periodicity Piece #6, a mixed-media work that originated as a multi-channel sound installation. With roots in early minimalism, a…
Monads
New Jason Kahn double LP for analog electronics, voice, percussion, environmental recordings. "In the field of philosophy monads are often referred to as the elementary particles which combine to create a substance. In the context of this double LP, the title refers to the constituent facets of my musical activity: namely, percussion, electronics, environmental recording and voice. What ties these different pursuits together is my particular approach to composition. No matter what sound material…
Jaap Vink
"The Institute of Sonology in Utrecht has earned its international reputation mostly for pioneering work in the field of computer-assisted algorithmic composition and digital sound synthesis by composers such as Gottfried Michael Koenig, Werner Kaegi, Paul Berg, and Barry Truax. Anyone familiar with the music of these composers would have to admit that even within this 'genre' there were no stylistic dogmas. The stylistic range of the Institute's artistic output becomes even broader when …
S/W
Future music duo Second Woman's sophomore full-length for Spectrum Spools further hones their distinctive fusion of shape-shifting software sculpture and tessellated footwork. Shivering digital textures oscillate with and against algorithmically mapped percussion samples; smeared synthetic chords levitate in the distance; stabs of digital noise punctuate the mix in twitchy, time-distorting patterns. Their anamorphosis verges on ascetic: stark, splintered waveforms rendered into unique fib…
Pythagoron
Bridging the worlds of fine art, drug culture, high New Age thinking, and musical Minimalism, Pythagoron’s sole LP is a near perfect artifact of its era - a mysterious sonic wonder, emerging from the fog of time. Privately issued in 1977 - sold via advertisements in High Times - America's iconic stoner publication, the album is thought to be a product of Usco (The Company Of Us), one of the earliest multimedia art collectives based in New York - pioneers in the field of immersive sound and light…
Invisible(s) Archipelago(s) #1 – Serendib rhythms
"The Unfathomless Series returns with another pair of fine releases, whose moods are polar opposites. Five Elements Music‘s lokrum patterns draws the listener in, while Stéphane Marin’s Invisible(s) Archipelago(s) n°1 – Serendib rhythms contains sounds that many would choose to avoid. Now to Sri Lanka, a land of many islands, whose sounds have been worked into a single composition by Stéphane Marin. The title may be unwieldy (Invisible(s) Archipelago(s) #1 – Serendib rhythms), but the idea is no…
Lokrum Patterns
"The Unfathomless Series returns with another pair of fine releases, whose moods are polar opposites. Five Elements Music‘s lokrum patterns draws the listener in, while Stéphane Marin’s Invisible(s) Archipelago(s) n°1 – Serendib rhythms contains sounds that many would choose to avoid. Croatia’s Lokrum Island is a beautiful paradise of coves, beaches and azure green waters. But there’s a down side as well: it’s awfully close to shore. As such, it’s a wonderful getaway that too many people know ab…
Scare Me Not
Inveterate soundwalker Audrius Simkunas/Sala has revisited familiar places of his childhood where corroded soviet relicsare long asleep…from this winter intense trip reminiscent of Lovecraft’s universe, comes “scare me not“…
Aldaris
Rihards Bražinskis & Raitis Upens are long time associates operating in the sphere of the Baltic experimental music & art scene. They produced already some very fine field recordings/musique concrète under the collective moniker of Phonic Psychomimesis. Here they team up once again for a site-specific unique work around a famous Brewery, witness of Riga’s past industrial greatness…
Everywhere At The End Of Time - Stage 2
The second of six LPs issued under the title Everywhere At The End of Time, cataloguing The Caretaker’s fictional first person account of life with early onset dementia. This second stage takes a more wistful tack as our protagonist gradually realises that all is not well and begins to rummage deeper into the recesses of his mind, masking emotions of grief, loss, fear and uncertainty. As The Caretaker’s short term memory functions begin to more rapidly erode, the loop-based punctuation of the pr…
Eye Chant
Originally issued in 1986. You can see the sounds her voice makes. The literal depiction of this, a photograph of Michele Mercure with an eyeball in her mouth, is removed in the updated album art. The original graphic elements are left to suspend, speak, and sing across time. In the absence of the decade-specific portraits, the redesigned edition is dislocated from a particular or linear history. Our initial point of encounter is artifactual; a trace in place of a scar. Accordingly, Michele’…
The Last Man in Europe
Reality had the honour of working with pioneering electronic composer Zbigniew Karkowski on two occasions. In 2007, as part of the Recording Angel Ensemble’s accompaniment to Wojciech Has’ film “The Saragossa Manuscript” at the National Film Theatre and finally, for the last time on the 31st October 2013 when, already gravely ill after learning that he had advanced pancreatic cancer, Karkowski premiered his music to the BBC 1954 teleplay production of George Orwell’s “1984 - The Last Man in Euro…
At the Salt Museum
In December 2015, these three Melbourne musicians camped at Murray Sunset National Park in northern Victoria, Australia, sounding various sites and performing ritualistic actions. This album documents our interactions with rusted salt harvesting machinery discovered at the outdoor 'salt museum' on the shore of the Lake Crosbie saltpan.
And Who Sees the Mystery
Gilles Aubry, field recordings, electronics.“And who sees the mystery” is a music piece based on sound check situations and rehearsals of Amazigh music recorded by Gilles Aubry between 2013 and 2014 in Morocco. Using his microphone as a sound processing device Aubry has transformed further his field recordings in the studio through performative feedback techniques. Far from an ethnographic account, his composition is an abstract sonic exploration of traditional instruments, rhythms and spaces. I…