★Bocian Records
Melodnie
Jerzy Mazzoll is a key figure of polish music over last twenty years. He is a bass clarinet virtuoso that goes deep into the tradition of Polish improvisers and contemporary music composers of the mid-twentieth century. He played in many bands such as Arhythmic Perfection, Pieces of Brain, Mazzoll & Arhythmic Memory. He cooperated, among others with musicians such as Roscoe Mitchell, Greg Fox, Django Bates, Peter Brotzmann, Jon Dobie, Alfred Harth, Peter Kowald, Vytutas Labutis, Jeffrrey Morgan,…
No End
**300 copies** "I guess it’s pretty difficult to look beyond the profile of a certain label if you think of new releases coming from it. With Bocian records who releases improvisational stuff or modern composition, sometimes more or less obscure drone noise aspects of the former two, I was pretty surprised to hear about Joanna John’s album. It was also intersting since I know her from her visual art side which doesn’t change the fact that it was a bit surprising to see her upcoming release on Bo…
Endless: Music for Performers
**300 copies** Since 2016, Wojciech Puś has been developing Endless, a sensual architecture of images, light, and sound that serves as a base structure for a poetic essay, a dream about identities in process. The music result is a fascinating electronic masterpiece showcasing his talent as a performer and producer creating his own unique universe. This works sound very ancient and probably very alien as well. This is music of hope, love, despair and sadness and probably all at the same time.
Teyas
Limited edition blue vinyl LP, 250 copies. Christoph de Babalon places his revered sound design skills at the service of dread-filled dramaturgy in ‘Teyas’, an abstract opera written in collaboration with Warsaw sisters Antonina Nowacka and Bogumila Piotrowska, a.k.a. Widt. Reframing De Babalon’s patented palette of diaphanous atmospheres and blood-dripping jungle breaks with a more theatrical purpose, ‘Teyas’ is a logical extension of his interests in macabre and gothic themes. Working in the s…
Agitation | Stagnation
Double CD, the first one containing Zeitkratzer's instrumental interpretation of Kasper Toeplitz's electronic score from Disc 2. Though these works are intended to be heard separately, the two discs can also be played simultaneously"The idea behind the composition for the Zeitkratzer ensemble, "Agitation / Stagnation", was from the very beginning to work in the pure sonic domain, and not to give to the musicians a score written on paper (be it in traditional notation or some more fancy graphic w…
Uivo Zebra
When improvisers turn to electricity and imposing volume levels, the results are sometimes as intense as they are tedious, because they forget that it can quickly become a stodgy, lumbering mess that bleeds out way too soon. Not so here, as the musicians of Uivo Zebra have the experience, but also (and more importantly) the awareness that the most enduring results are found when guts, self-knowledge, shared vision and discipline are kept in rigorous balance. Which needn’t imply it becomes safe o…
Zwölf
12 short live solo guitar, like a portrait of the Austrian musician at a time of his course, oscillating between minimalism, American primitive, improvisation or noise. Guitar’s lover will be pleased.Some tracks with field recordings from Steve Bates.Mastered by Martin Siewert.
String Quartets
String Quartet 1, 2 et 3 composed by Reinhold Friedl (Zeitkratzer) and performed by Quatuor Diotima.Reinhold Friedl’s string quartets do not pretend to be string quartets, they are anti-Goethe. There is no sophisticated conversation of four elder gentlemen, sitting in armchairs. The music is physical work for the performers and intended to be physical pleasure for the listeners. All three quartets are based on the same idea: smooth transformations from a given texture into another one. The rando…
Duft
On their 3rd LP for Poland’s Bocian Records, the Zeitkratzer Ensemble directed by Reinhold Friedl yield two knife-edge pieces recorded live at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, September 30th, 2015. A-side is a performance of Gilles Sivilotto’s Handmade 02, meaning a 15 minute transition from sleigh bells and arrhythmic string scrapes into structuring, creaking rhythms and banks of atonal clangour, developing into a serious caterwaul akin to a busy factory cosign to the end of its day. The …
Spectral Arrows : Venice
Spectral Arrows is an ongoing series of long-duration performances for guitar and electronics by Marco Fusinato. In Spectral Arrows, Fusinato arrives at the venue when it opens for business, sets up his equipment facing a wall and proceeds to play for the whole day until the end of business hours. Fusinato presents himself here in the guise of a worker, clocking on and unceremoniously clocking off at the end of his 8-hour day, refusing to allow the behind-the-scenes mystery of rehearsals and pre…
Walser
**260 copies** Walser, the new album by Robert Piotrowicz, is a reiteration of the artist’s composition for the namesake film by Zbigniew Libera where a fictitious Concheli tribe enacts its ritual gestures through music and performance. Rather than following a traditional soundtrack format where music is written after the film is cut to illustrate the cinematic form, Piotrowicz treats the film music as a point of departure to create an autonomous sound work altogether. While its aesthetic narrat…
A Map of Guilt
Mats Gustafsson and Joachim Nordwall joined their forces for a magmatic new LP out on Bocian. This long player was recorded at Garnison7, Vienna by Martin Siewert in January 2013. Mats Gustafsson - blowing stuff, organ surfing, piano mating.Joachim Nordwall - guitar wanking, synth loving.Mixed by idealist & Christopher Berg at Svenska Grammofonstudion, Gothenburg in Octobre 2015.
Relephant
Fred Lonberg-Holm born in 1962, composer, improviser. He began formal cello studies at the age of 10. Former student of Anthony Braxton, Morton Feldman, Bunita Marcus and Pauline Oliveros. Fred was active in a number of projects, including the Peter Brötzmann Tentet, XMarsX (with Mars Williams), VCDC, ADA Trio (with Peter Brötzmann and Paal Nilssen-Love), the Vandermark 5, and many others that are still active today. Ongoing projects of which he is a member include Joe McPhees Survival …
Schobberdebonk
Terrie Hessels, electric guitar. Paal Nilssen-Love, drums & percussion. Limited to 300 copies only. Recorded live in concert on the 4th of April 2015 at Festival PiedNu, Le Havre, France. Recorded by Emmanuel Lalande. Mixed by Arnold de Boer. Mastered and cut to vinyl by Mike Grisner at D&M Berlin. Cover art and design by Marek Wajda.
Metal / Flesh
Best known, at least here, from his trio with Anthony Pateras and David Brown, Sean Baxter offers here two cuts of solo percussion. I assume that the title is indicative of what is played, 'Metal' and 'Flesh', in which perhaps we must understand 'Flesh' as the skin of drums. In 'Metal' things rattle on the metallic objects in the best tradition of someone like Z'EV, and is short and to the point. 'Flesh' is a more jazzy piece for various drum skins and a bit of cymbals. A moody piece of music ac…
Les voix de l'invisible
For the first time, the music of French electro-acoustic lynchpin, Jérôme Noetinger is played by an instrumental group, Ensemble Phoenix Basel with uniquely dynamic, rugged results for Poland’s Bocian Records. In June 2012, Ensemble Phoenix Basel commissioned me to create a work for them to play. It was the first time in my life I had received such a request. After several months of reflection, I accepted and began working on a way of communicating a music with other musicians.Not knowing classi…
Saturation
Poland’s Bocian reunite with zeitkratzer ensemble to present a difficult but hugely rewarding piece by influential Polish composer Zbigniew Karkowski, backed with Reinhold Friedl’s personal tribute to Ianis Xenakis. Both sides contain important, demanding, and foundational works in the zeitkratzer canon, which now stretches to 15 years of neo-classical interpretation and original composition with some of extreme and forward-thinking music’s greatest.Zbigniew Karkowski’s Monochromy - his first pi…
Journey to the center of your mind
*Joachim Nordwall and Henrik Rylander return with this incredibly heavy drone-noise session under the 'Saturn and the Sun’ moniker* Crushing, celestial sized drone objects from Nordwall and Rylander here, sheathed in absorbing artwork by Martin Jacobsen. 'Journey to the Center of Your Mind' projects three concentrated, irradiating beams of Scandinavian drone noise intensity recorded at Studio Dental, Gothenburg. As with the artwork, the music could just as easily be said to desc…
Distinctly_dive
Time-served, Zurich-based improvisors, Norbert Möslang (Voice Crack) and Jason Kahn reprise their duo with 'Distinctly_Dive', recorded March 1st, 2013 in St. Gallen by Jason Kahn for Poland's Bocian. Skittish percussion, stray shortwave radio and amorphous spectral electronics collide, overlap and react against each other in an almost jazz-wise display of rhythmic fluidity and tonal chaos perfectly suspended and given room in the mix by Möslang.
On the A-side they never quite tear-out but …
Resistance
Resistance recorded live in 2013 is an expected performance of unforeseen music. That said, it boosts Vandermark's stock (not that he needs it) as a soloist. He has, of late, stepped out of his role as composer, arranger, and organizer of ensembles to perform solo and in improvising duos with Nate Wooley, Agustí Fernandez, Mats Gustafsson, and Tim Daisy. Freed from all the duties associated with large ensembles, he can focus on improvising. Here his saxophone and various clarinets weave, bounce,…