★Erstwhile Records
Absence
"Friday the 6th of November 2015 was an important day for me. Christian Kobi had invited me to take part in his »zoom in« festival in Bern. Earlier that day I visited the Kunst Museum, looking at the work of Cuno Amiet (1868-1961), recalling the work of an earlier Camille Pissarro, interesting contributions from Felix Vallotton (1835-1925), also an very important exhibition of how photography had influenced Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) called “Lautrec’s Photographic Eye”.
What struck me was how …
Everyone Needs a Plan
Uncertainties for uncertainty, as steadfast as the Pillars of Hercules, Everyone Needs a Plan glides and crackles. As canny and crafty as ever, Matthew Revert and Vanessa Rossetto move through — move through what? No, they push through, emerge from, insinuate into contingencies. Contingencies link hands with compositions, with foundling sounds, static, and babble. The skin of atmosphere is stretched taut and made permeable to all species of sound: a moan, a pluck, a bowed string, a refrigerator …
My Trust In You
Two electroacoustic improvisers and composers--Lucio Capece on reeds, analog synths, effects, field recordings, drums machines, speakers in motion, and Marc Baron on field recordings and analog devices--developed these 6 extraordinary recordings that blend motion, perspective, sound and noise, and concrete references in a mystifying and mesmerizing journey in sound.
"While solo improvisational albums can be, and often are, great, the true potential of freely played and electroacoustic music is r…
The Breadwinner
Graham Lambkin and Jason Lescalleet are editors of the best variety, so recording sound was only half the story. Through tape manipulation and various editing techniques, The Breadwinner falls even closer in line with The Anti-Naturals theory by appropriating the mundane (for aesthetic reasons, of course). The result sounds like an inadvertent exploration of dislocation and displacement, much differently than musique conrète and minimalist compositions or the real-time experiments of, say, nmper…
Cat Guarding Geese
Cat Guarding Geese is composed of field recordings and performances on Roosevelt Island, and a studio recording in Brooklyn, NYC. Tucker Dulin plays bells, bowl, can, cymbal, lentils, mallet, whistle and Ben Owen: paper mic, speaker boxes, op amps, cassette. Recorded by Billy Gomberg on Roosevelt Island, NY in January 2015, April 2015, March 2016 and in Brooklyn NY in February 2015. Mastered by Taku Unami
Hole in my Head
The only true non-places are those of the mind: but being able to give them a tangible form doesn't always equate to the delineation of a balanced, pictorially satisfying landscape, nor does it solve the inner mystery from which it originated. In the creation of an audio document, even the simplest sonic occurrence derives from an idea and a gesture, even if only pressing the record button: and it's precisely the gesture - be it overt, dissimulated, concealed, or mediated - the absolute protagon…
Wovenland 2
The first words of Toshiya Tsunoda and Taku Unami’s liner notes to the double CD under consideration here are, “Wovenland became a band.” It should be noted that Wovenland was the name of an earlier album by Tsunoda and Unami, the digipak’s spine still credits this recording to the two individuals. And while it is within Unami’s skill set to pick up a guitar and play a song, nothing like that happens on Wovenland 2. The notes continue: “Our band activities are mainly editing in a studio. Our goa…
Not Fire
Not Fire is the first album from Berlin-based songwriter Dean Roberts in 12 years, and his comeback arrives during apocalyptic times. It’s not an album about someone who’s found hope or love despite everything; Roberts sounds exhausted, and his album is as ugly and as bleak as life often is. For those who’ve been in the pits and succumbed to self-destructive nihilism, Not Fire is a reminder of how hellish it all can be.
Sonically, Not Fire is murky and battered and melancholy. Guitars clang ince…
Extract From Field Recording Archive
Japanese sound artist Toshiya Tsunoda is a master of the art of field recording who discovers the hidden properties of sound and vibrations in the material world, from road surfaces to the sea. Through acute mic placement, field recordist Toshiya Tsunoda captures the unusual vibrations of everyday spaces. The recordings contained in this amazing box open up an expansive soundfield of subtle modulating frequencies and dramatic suspensions of time and space. Sounds such as these would be the envy …
Green Ways
Green Ways documents a collection of live recordings, drawn from in situ performances given in Doon, Dungarvan, Plaistow, Shoreditch, Singö and Stratford across 2018 by Graham Lambkin and Áine O'Dwyer. It celebrates the filíocht of rural and urban acoustic environments with a playful economy of means, and offers a special salute to the rich heritage of Carnahalla.Áine O’Dwyer and Graham Lambkin are multi-disciplinary artists whose work explores the nexus between music, text, illustration, theate…
We are everyone in the room
"Two improvising laptop trios, Stilluppsteypa hailing from Iceland and Chicago's TV Pow, met for the first time in the fall of 2000 and embarked on a week-long tour, captured in part on this recording. As in most successful examples of this genre, the musicians mesh into a whole wherein individual accomplishments are impossible to quantify. The range of sounds and depth of detail produced by this sextet are remarkable, from the quietest clicks and rattles to deeply sonorous hums and ratchetings,…
Where Are We Going, Today
Christian Wolff, piano, objects, charango, flute. Antoine Beuger, voice, whistles, EWR recordings (1995) of Christian Wolff’s “Stones”.Antoine Beuger started composing music in 1990 and has released on his own label, Edition Wandelweiser Records, as well as Erstwhile Records. Beuger’s work is best exemplified by two releases, his first, Calme Étendue (Spinoza) and A Young Person’s Guide to Antoine Beuger. Calme Étendue (Spinoza) is an album that attempts to take the 17th century philosopher Spin…
Wovenland
Serie of recordings made by Toshiya Tsunoda & Taku Unami in different locations and then processed through different playback speed, noise gate or parallel editing.For 15 years, the Yokohama based artist Toshiya Tsunoda has been releasing remarkable acoustic works into a world that he seems to hear like no one else. His CDs are the most idiosyncratic and rigorous to be found among the many field recording releases of recent years, though his work is just as easy to place in the sound art frame..…
Mosquitoes and Crabs
Chulki Hong, turntables, guitar, electronics. Will Guthrie, drums, percussion, electronics. Recorded by Taku Unami, Mullae Arts Village, Seoul, South Korea, 20-22 October 2016. Mixed and edited by Taku Unami.Will Guthrie is an Australian drummer/percussionist living in France. He works in many different settings of music: live performance, improvisation and studio composition using various combinations of drums, percussion, objects, junk, amplification and electronics. Born in 1976, Hong Chulki …
L'âme Est Sans Retenue I
Swiss composer Jürg Frey's six hour long electronic tape piece L'àme Est Sans Retenue I was recorded and assembled in 1997/98 and is now being released for the first time. It is the longest piece Frey has ever composed in his over 40 year career.In this piece, Frey utilized the sounds of field recordings he made in Berlin in 1997 as the source materials, alternately inserted between long stretches of silence. Frey was particularly focusing around that time on how the dynamic relation between sou…
Extracts
"The first word that came to mind on playing Extracts was understatement, with an almost oriental minimalism and profundity on display. At times I was forced to check whether sounds were coming from the speakers or from outside. However, this is a far cry from the Radu Malfatti school of implied music since it is very much about close group interplay. Simon H. Fell's sonorous bass is of particular note, underpinning, colouring and giving the proceedings a kind of still, stately authority. Likewi…
13 Thirteen
Keith Rowe and Michael Pisaro: 13 Thirteen | On this two-and-a-half hour, semi-improvised opus, the two guitarists and composers approach finely wrought detail and vast empty space in ways that can warp one’s perception of time itself. On this two-and-a-half hour, semi-improvised opus, the two guitarists and composers approach finely wrought detail and vast empty space in ways that can warp one’s perception of time itself."On this two-and-a-half hour, semi-improvised opus, the two guitarists and…
The Whistler
A year ago, Graham Lambkin continued the ErstSolo series with "Community" (in conjunction with Keith Rowe's quadruple "testament"), while the even more prolific Taku Unami appeared in duo with Devin DiSanto on the live performance recorded at the Fridman Gallery in New York in 2015. The material reworked for "The Whistler" comes from two days of field recordings in gardens, streets and parks adjacent to St. Peter's Cemetery in Poughkeepsie, New York, as well as some recordings made by Lambkin at…
Taku Unami/Devin DiSanto
A collaborative CD between Devin DiSanto and Taku Unami, a recording of a live performances that took place inside AMPLIFY 2015: exploratory at Fridman Gallery in Nyc. "Devin DiSanto lives in Brooklyn and develops performances, actions, and audio recordings that revolve primarily around the material attributes of a sound, particularly the plurality of its signification. His projects start from the premise that space is listened for as much as seen and heard before it comes into view. It doesn't …
The Room Extended
"I first noticed the tremor in Keith Rowe's right hand on a visit to his home in Vallet in the summer of 2014. Presumably it had existed for some time although while I was in Paris (from February 2013) we saw Keith several times a year and I hadn't picked up anything before. When I returned to Vallet in November for two concerts in honor of Christian Wolff's 80th birthday, Wolff at one point asked him directly about the shaking and Keith replied that they were having examinations but it might we…