Crossarc chute
Crossarc Chute was inspired by my interest in the compositional strategies adopted for the early analogue electronics of the 1950s and ’60s, yet using digital processes and my own adaptations. Starting with pulse sounds, predefined filtering techniques and rules became the springboard from which I was able to generate many new sounds. These parameters formed a kind of system from which I could at times deviate.For one piece, Detail II, I separated the frequencybands of a group of sounds and then…
Technological music
An oblique response to various antecedents of pulse-based electronic music without recourse to drum machines or sequencing (or — in the case of the Four Investigations — synthesizers). Tools include oboe, English horn, analogue synthesis and malfunctioning electric organs and piano. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Gratitude also to Niko Wenner and Monica Scott. Dedicated to Michael Randers-Pehrson, Jeff Bollaro, and HK Kahng — stalwart comrades in my very earliest electronic music misadventures.
In emptiness there is truth (Call no man happy until he is dead)
A soundwork commissioned for the 2010 edition of the Ravello Festival, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, Stefania Miscetti and Gianluca Ranzi. Voice: Seijiro Murayama. Voice recording engineer and EQ: Stefano Pilia Original stereo mix: John Duncan. All other sounds, recording, editing and mixing by ALH.
“In relation to this soundwork, the extended overtones created by the clashing frequencies of the ‘ghost chorus’ could indeed be read as faint glimmerings of a sublime imperative. This imperative,…
Sleeper line
Sleeper line is a five-track EP constructed from the original components of a live set performed in December 2012. These components — manipulated found sounds — were recorded at various times and in various environments: Dungeness Power Station (2012), street recordings post-Notting Hill Carnival (2007), a prior live performance at the White Building in London (2012), and a cassette recording made in the cloakroom of the Metalheadz Sunday Sessions club night (1997). The cyclical process of merg…
Fleshpile sister
Fleshpile Thematic, released on The Tapeworm earlier this year, reconsidered as an album of dub versions. Smooth edges roughed out. Re-engineered space. All human vocals erased.
Body waves
On 22 February 2011, an earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter Scale hit Christchurch, which combined with a series of massive aftershocks destroyed huge swathes of the New Zealand city. At its epicentre in the port of Lyttelton, sound artist Jo Burzynska (Stanier Black-Five) grabbed a recording device as she ran from her home, leaving it running on her doorstep capturing the aftershocks that ricocheted though her house and the disaster unfolding on the street outside. This unique recording of …
Avast!
Avast! was created from field recordings made between 2009 and 2012 in Lyttelton, a volcanic harbour on the South Island of New Zealand. Sounds were captured at sites around the natural ampthitheatre of this extinct caldera: from abandoned wartime bunkers on the top of the crater rim to the port and its cacophony of cargo ships, tugs and workshops. The work is also haunted by the resonance of buildings such as the Timeball Station, which were destroyed when the town was at the epicentre of a maj…
Soul music
Soul Music consists of six pieces built from monotonous percussion and bent analogue synthesizers. Pulse is central to these works. Taking inspiration from acid house, primitive trance music and 1960s downtown NYC minimalism, Soul Music is music from the skull of Joachim Nordwall. This is his soul music, and its path is circular, rhythmical and intense. Joachim Nordwall runs the iDEAL Recordings label. He is a founder member of The Skull Defekts and also plays with Alvars Orkester and Oceans of …
Frequencies
Nicolas Bernier’s Frequencies (Synthetic Variations) is his first piece made entirely of synthetic sounds. Having evolved within the musique concrète and field recording traditions, Bernier wanted to break with habit — the result being 15 short movements of warped and crackling textures, vividly articulated sine waves and rhythmic bursts of pattern. The piece is designed to be listened to at random (the sound sample above is such a sequence), offering a new duration and dynamics with every heari…
Daydream
These last few years Rome based producer Egisto Sopor has been turning heads with a steady stream of most excellent releases. A cdr on Legowelt’s Strange Life Records, a tape on 100 % Silk, a double LP on Planet Mu and an evergrowing series of jams that are put on soundcloud or on his youtube channel. All of which offer atmospheric acid tinged techno laced with idiosyncratic touches. He has thus developed quite a cult following among lovers of lo fi electronic music who eagerly await his next gr…
Silvertone e il sentimento oceanico
Outstanding tape from Angelica Castello (Mexico, 1972) one of the best electroacoustic composers of her generation "I see my music basically as a complex construction of associations, quotations, dreams, nightmares, real and unreal people, stories and reflections. 'erche">Silvertone e il sentimento oceanico' is about a big ship leaving' Angélica Castelló About Castelló's music: 'Music that is both visual and abstract, that calls forth memories and chases them away, that ofte…
Adnos I-III
Initially produced by Table of the Elements. Eliane Radigue's Adnos trilogy was composed between 1973 and 1980 and is among her finest compositions. Adnos is a deeply meditative work of infinite depth and sensitivity; one of the high points of modern minimal electronic composition. Packaged in a heavy duty 3CD jacket much like the recent Eleh releases and containing extensive archival materials.Eliane Radigue has composed for magnetic tape and electronic media since the late 1950's, when she st…
Enharmonic intervals (For Paschen organ)
Forget what you know about the Seattle-area sound-art project Mamiffer and the Finnish hypno-rock institution Circle. Enharmonic Intervals (for Paschen Organ), the first in a proposed series of joint efforts involving these parties, contains few of the musical hallmarks you might associate with either performer. The comforts of austere piano sketches and solemn nocturnes are largely absent; the wallop of repetitive rhythms and metallic kitsch is nowhere to be found. It’s as if an unseen h…
Relief
Our man Millis is a Climax Golden Twin and a noted curator of globe trotting / time traveling esoterica, amongst other accolades.ÊIn the former category, Millis and Jeffery Taylor steadily release some of the most headscratching amalgamations of avant-rock, decontextualized temple music, heightened-state minimalism, and collaged field recordings this side of the Sun City Girls (including the soundtrack to the cult film Session Nine); and in the latter, Millis has published a number of acclaimed …
Zones portuaires
Recordings in harbor area made in Le Havre (France) March 2010 and Liège (Belgium), September 2010. Each musician works with these site specific recordings. CD1 Eric La Casa (2011- revised in summer 2013). CD2 Cédric Peyronnet (2012-13).
GAU
In March of 2012, nearing the end of a tour together through the Netherlands and Belgium, Celer, Machinefabriek, and Jan and Romke Kleefstra gathered in a country studio, spending an afternoon improvising to record Gau. Recorded by the old hardcorerocker Jan Switters at the Landscape studios in Gauw, situated in the countryside in the midst of Friesland, the place was surrounded by green fields with idle tractors, few trees, buzzards and only massive farmhouses dotting the horizon. From the almo…
The darkened mirror
Tetuzi Akiyama, guitars. Tom Carter, guitars. Christian Kiefer, guitars, banjo and Chip Conrad, percussion, Scott Leftridge, bass & bowed bass. 'The darkened mirror' is a unique vision of American music. Tetuzi Akiyama is a highly unique and experimental guitarist heavily applying free improvisation and noise. Besides guitar, he also plays electronics, viola, and self-made instruments. Best known for his work with acclaimed iconoclasts Charalambides, which he co-founded with Christina Ca…
Ncat
Nate Wooley, trumpet, amplifier. C. Spencer Yeh, violin, voice. Audrey Chen, cello, voice, electronics. Todd Carter, piano, electronics, edit. Blurring the lines between electronic and acoustic music, as well as composition versus improvisation, NCAT is an unique quartet consisting of an improvising trio whose music has been mutated and structured in post-production by its fourth member. The bulk of the musical material on this LP was recording at Steim in Amsterdam, during a residency of …
Martian Landscapes
I have never been to Mars, but sometimes i drop by... pictures and films we have access to give us a false impression that we already know something. My Mars is still populated with images from our childhood linked with hundreds of films and science fiction novels. i sympathize with misinterpretation of the illusion caused by old telescopes, as if the surface of Mars was covered with a network of irrigation canals being a proof of high civilization. combination of curiosity and fear stemm…
Sleep (An attempt at trying)
Sleep (an attempt at trying)“ is a radio suite for vocalist, narrator, improvising ensemble and electronics. In this project Bumšteinas explored the subject of insomnia which makes it a very autobiographic project. The main sound material for “Sleep” came from the sleeping-aid and relaxation tapes, that Bumšteinas bought for himself in various fleamarkets around Europe. The course of personal therapy wasn't too successful and due to nocturnal boredom Bumšteinas started dabbling with the function…