★Inexhaustible Editions
Alinea
"In the past two pandemic years we have experienced turmoil that has in a way redefined our relationship towards the human community as such. Our social skills and our ability to share the time and space with others have been seriously crippled, and in some instances made redundant. We have enclosed ourselves in safe spaces, usually in family units, stopped extensive travelling and meetings. The physicality of existence and of being with others changed to encompass different sanitary dispositive…
Mind Is Moving (IX)
Mind is moving (IX) is a composition for guitar by Michael Pisaro-Liu, affiliated with the avant-garde composers group The Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble. Pisaro's work can be characterized as experimental minimalism, often utilizing silence, a minimum of musical material, and extended composition durations. This version is executed by Slovenian guitarist Primož Sukič.
An Den Mond
“An den Mond (To The Moon) is a recent release bringing together two compositions by Austrian composer Peter Ablinger. The first is for seven violins and is all about creating a feeling of searing/pitch wavering intensity. And the second is for chanted female voices/violin, and creates a feeling of witchy dread and fear. Together these pieces create a compelling, at points unsettling release, which uses two different tacks to unbalance the listener. The release appears on Slovenia-based Inexhaus…
Swarm
New release for Warble, Berlin-based duo by Brad Henkel and Miako Klein. Trumpet and recorder in their elemental form (tubes and air) envelop the space with a magnified environment of harmonizing and clashing timbres. Whistling overtones, percussive thumps, shrieking voices. Walls of sound, nervous twitches, burrowing moles.
Schallschatten
Tip! “For the first duo release, Birgit Ulher stays close to her primary instrument, the trumpet. She plays that, as per usual, in combination with a radio, speakers and a voice changer. Early February 2020, she recorded a duet with Petr Vrba, also on trumpet and electronics, during a two-day met in Hamburg. Both musicians have quite a reputation when it comes to playing improvised music. Well, maybe improvised music covers only partially what they do. The addition of electronics and objects mak…
An Alphabet Of Fluctuation
"Gerard Lebik and Burkhard Beins create musical forms of minimalist idiom, which consist of isolated sound events as well as gradually revealing harmonies and resonances. Metallic sounds from a large heavy cymbal are amplified and blend with electronically generated sine waves of varying amplitude, unfolding in a continuous glissando. An Alphabet Of Fluctuation is the evidence of how both artists rethink their approach towards deep reduction. One can see here a great sensitivity in determining t…
Impermanence
Tip! “When choosing a title for an audio document of improvised music, you really can’t go wrong with Impermanence; it’s not exactly original, in terms of either the specific genre or music as a whole, but it will never not be accurate. In the case of Violeta García (a cofounder of the splendid TVL Rec imprint) and Émilie Girard-Charest’s first meeting as a duo, the word accumulates a more unique meaning because of the two musicians’ chosen instruments. Cellos are often associated with their abi…
Knotted Threads
Tip! "I met Benedict Taylor in London in 2017 where I was doing a six month residency thanks to the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec. I heard Benedict perform in ensemble and solo contexts and rapidly felt a strong connection with some of my musical concerns. I was particularly caught by his ability to listen to what sound elicits or suggests as he articulates and shapes it; a dynamic interplay of sensitivity and agency, at times yielding pretty surprising results. We managed to meet for a …
Univers Parallèles
“Univers Parallèles presents us with two around twenty-minute slices of sparse piano wonderings and low-key sound making. It’s a release that shifts between just awakening drowsiness, and very creepy unease, with each track managing to create its own distinctive, and compelling atmosphere. The release appears as a CD/digital download on Slovenia-based Inexhaustible Editions, who are rapidly becoming one of my favourite labels. As they’ve been putting out some of the most worthy and interesting r…
Circles
"There is an expression that string players use: the wolf tone. It refers to a floating sound, an unpleasant vibratory acoustic phenomenon, which occurs when the instrument emits a sound like the cry of a wolf when the bow is drawn across a string. This illustrative metaphor arises from the instrument’s physical properties, due to which it will never be a docile sheep: from time to time its “wolven genes” show through. Owing to its shape, the double bass is like a large wild beast, particularly …
Oxygen Room
“Oxygen Room is a wonderfully moody, at points downright haunting/uneasy trip into primally slurred and ritual tipped improv. The four-track CD appears on Slovenia’s Inexhaustible Editions, and I must say it’s a most compelling and often eerier ride of an album – really taking the improv form down a fairly original and distinctive path.The CD comes presented in a white six-panel digipak – this features on its cover and first inside flap two different green circles made up of different shapes, th…
Voltas
Rotterdam-based quartet Hydra Ensemble features cellists Nina Hitz and Lucija Gregov, double bassist Gonçalo Almeida and Rutger Zuydervelt on electronics. The ensemble is a juncture of four distinctive expressions finding common ground – together they form a four-headed entity that emerges from highly pensive collective improvisations, creating an intricate patchwork of concurrent melodic lines, textural explorations and expansive drones. Its sonic language exists on the cracks of free improvisa…
Absum
As in the Osvaldo Coluccino's own words: "Presence of the work, absence of the author. So muffled, vapor escaping from an old coffer, so dusty and apparently, in some ways, timbrically “primordial” and yet elusive, the first three compositions of the album unfold. The following three increase the dynamism and openness of the timbre. As always in my albums, also in Absum a journey takes place along the tracks that, joined together, make it up. Even in this “raw” timbre paste, emblem of adherence…