Micromegas
Seeing Matthew Erickson perform live is an impressive experience. The sound he gets by blasting his saxophone through his Fender Twin literally shakes you to the core. Erickson has a great ear for experimental music; exercising tasteful timing and restraint, which I am finding to be more and more important. Whether performing in the sax-guitar duo Sudden Oak, or solo as Radiant Husk, his sonic presence has earned the respect of many.
Radio Banana
Just when you think it's all over, along comes something completely unpredictable - in this case, a modest but uncompromisingly original confection that mixes latin brass arrangements (sort of), great drumming, medium wave radio and the many characters of the accordion. Simplicity, complexity, surprise, familiarity -and all without undue fuss but adding up to something exotic and new. Radio Banana is a record that wears its heart plainly on its sleeve. It doesn't play by genre rules, or fashion …
Hearing Smoke
Polido has been fantasizing with the idea of free music throughout his artistic career. Free from restraints, logos, musical genres, but also from this modern obsession with narratives, plans, business plans, algorithms and bubble wrapped ideas for comfort of those of you that can’t breathe without everything making sense. “Hearing Smoke” has nothing of that. It has been four years since Holuzam released the double album “A Casa e os Cães / Sabor a Terra” and for four years I have been daydreami…
Tuba Intim
Contemporary music for tuba and a revelation of an under-utilised musical voice. For stretched and traditional techniques. Includes works by Lutz Glandien (Tuba and Tape), Morton Feldman, Igor Stravinsky and Michael himself. Excellent collection; and unusual.
The Wind Rises (Electropleinair Sound Diary)
First released in Hungary in 1987, this is an extraordinary work combining ensemble playing, documentary recording, studio manipulation, electronics and some stunning compositional conception. Featuring Marta Sebastjen, the Amaninda group, WYXOMPHONIC group, Mandel Quartet and a star gallery of other instrumentalists of all kinds. A unique work we worked years to acquire - a masterwork in every sense.
Zgamoniums
File under early Russian industrial rock/art; Harry Partch, incorporating primitive analogue electronics. A legend in art and industrial music circles, ZGA was formed under the old regime in Riga, Lavia, in 1984, by Nick Sudnik and Valery Dudkhin. Unable to rehearse acoustically because of the neighbours, they invented their own instruments from scrap and springs and shaped metal fitted with contact microphones; these were not just noise instruments, but ways of accessing complex pitches, strang…
Argonautika
A sound drama for tuba and electronics that constructs its own rich, twilit, rather alien, world. Only the sound of the tuba (sometimes), a few waves and a little thunder sound familiar, everything else is a mysterious presence; the electronics are not at all conventional and though much of the sound is clearly derived somehow from the tuba, it offers no foothold in a familiar place. If landscape were ever an appropriate metaphor for the product of a congeries of sounds, it would be applicable h…
Black White And Grey
A complete new work plus 'Death In The Blue Lake'. Combines playing and through-composition with manipulated and environmental sound in dramatic, narrative, psychological constructions. Quite unique. 'Death' based on a novel; texts in new works by Chris Cutler.
Brain Weather (The Story Of The Rosenbergs)
1992 release ** "The psychotic world of The Rosenberg family with violin music from the dentist, the shrink, the surgeon and other split personalities. A funny, typically nutty release by this internationally known troublemaker, instrument maker and violinist (not necessarily in that order). This is billed as `an opera perverse,' and includes Shelly Hirsch & Phil Minton."
The People's Music
With string orchestras, percussion, a motivating red guard and the severed embalmed arm of the great helmsman himself (maybe), Jon Pits the ethos of Mao's China - and in particular the mass production of the violin and it's use in life against the 'reductive cultural practice of our globalised world'. Well, that's what it says here and by golly I agree. Apart from that, this a large scale work that features fine and extensive writing for string orchestras, juxtaposed with (more or less) controll…
Silo
Sound artist Lauren Weinger documents and reworks one of her large scale installation events in giant grain silos in America. The massive sounds of gargantuan hoppers pouring grain, documentary moments of dialogue, local, archive and composed musics, mysterious traces of a country, a culture, an event where 2 Americas meet. Beautiful packing. Plus extra Video track (& software, if required, to play it). A unique document and powerful listening.
Honeyed Crest
Beautiful tape from Mike Shiflet on NNA Tapes. Modular synthesizer abuse, 2019-2021. No tapes were harmed in the making of these recordings.
Horizon Fears
Following up stellar releases on the Root Strata and Gneiss Things labels, Montréal, Quebec music veteran Roger Tellier-Craig offers us his latest collection of crystalline electronics as Le Révélateur. “Horizon Fears” explores virtual settings through highly evocative and sparkling hi-fi electronics, spanning a wide array of moods and themes. Always a dedicated purist, Tellier-Craig specializes in assembling pulsing electronics and inventive melodies as interlocking parts, creating a colorful a…
Unsounds And Domo Live
Derek Gedalecia’s latest creation brings us mutated electronic music from the extreme far out. A seemingly endless stream of synthetic gurgles, gulping, and goop in chaotic bursts of unpredictability. Includes a live audience/soundboard recording that delivers in the masterful live HB style.
Holding Hands
Julian Gulyas (Cylindrical Habitat Modules label boss) delivers a refreshing suite of synth and tape explorations. Holding Hands references the early days of electronic music, while still maintaining a forward-thinking and modern abstract underground sound.
Fermionit | Kulmamomentti
Mika Vainio was recoording a new Ø-album since 2014. He almost got it ready before his too early passing in 2017. Mika's girlfriend Rikke Lundgreen from Oslo has been going through his notes, numerous versions and takes of the album treacks. Now the collection of the tracks is completed. There were two tracks that Mika thought should not be included the album. They make this release. The shoter track Kulmamomentti is edited slightly longer by Jimi Tenor and Timo Kaukolampi.
Issue 116: Thomas Dolby Issue + remixes (Magazine + 7" Blue)
Thomas Dolby is back! And as well as putting him on the cover of this month’s Electronic Sound, we are bundling the issue with an exclusive blue vinyl seven-inch featuring two tracks from Dolby’s dazzling ‘The Flat Earth’ album, one of them the awesome ‘Hyperactive!’.
One of the biggest synthpop stars of the 1980s, Thomas Dolby is coming towards the end of a lengthy live tour to mark the 40th anniversary reissue of ‘The Flat Earth’. He’s spent the last few weeks criss-crossing North America and …
Invisible Surfer On An Invisible Wave
Baltimore, Maryland’s Ken Seeno displays a majestic array of crystal clear synthesizer arrangements. Soaring melodies float high above the shimmer of the blue-green waters, looking down upon the colorful shore and the oceans beyond. This is Landscape Electronics.
Harmonizer
Harmonizer is the new duo of Burlington, Vermont residents Greg Davis (Kranky, Carpark, Autumn Records) and Toby Aronson (NNA Tapes, RATS COPS). Future world sample-driven electronic synthesis, heavy rhythms, and total harmonizer worship.
