★Line
Built Through
The acoustic architecture of Robert Curgenven and Richard Chartier forms a delineation of space built through dismantling the constitution of internal and external. Beyond dividing space, creating a façade or habitable zone, the perceptibility of the surface is turned back in on itself and with it a shift in the ideological and social context of the space. A seamless integration of digital and analogue, a suffusion which creates a mutual modulation, transforming purpose chosen materials—dense, u…
A Gradual Accumulation of Ideas Becomes Truth
The five pieces that comprise A Gradual Accumulation of Ideas Becomes Truth originate from a series of long form studio improvisations that were recorded, forgotten, and later edited over the course of a year. Using a modular synthesizer as the primary sound source, complex patches were constructed, recorded, and quickly dismantled, with the intention of using the stereo recordings as the basis for new compositions at a later date. “My work always privileges the act of listening; it is rarely ab…
Singulum
Returning to Line after her critically acclaimed 2012's Valence, France Jobin brings us the four sparse elegant works that comprise Singulum."Quantum physics inspires me to draw a parallel between the fundamental building blocs of physics, sounds and music. I put field recordings through a series of editing and manipulation processes which result in very different sounds from their origins. These manipulations affect time, timbre, harmonics and the essence of each sound, whereas composition infl…
Meta
In installation form, Meta consists of four transducers that are attached to the wall on each corner of a perfectly drawn six foot square. Meta is also a quadraphonic piece, composed to be spatially moving along the four assigned channels. When the listener places his/her ear to the wall the work can be experienced differently every time activating not only the internal space of the wall but also the listener’s focused ear. In this work Richard Garet focuses on investigating, exploring, and …
Ornamente (Zwischen Null und Eins)
"The latest release from Asmus Tietchens continues the ambiguity that has been prevalent through his recent works. Far from the early experiments with sampling and erratic, mechanical rhythms that characterized much of his early work; Ornamente (zwischen Null und Eins) is an opaque disc of hushed electronics and tiny bits of glistening noise. Moments of near silence are followed by digital glitches and massive, intense vibrations to result in another piece of conceptually challenging, y…
Isolation
Line is proud to present the latest work by Berlin based artist Frank Bretschneider. Renowned for his mastery of rhythmic elements throughout his discography, Bretschneider has set this palette aside for an unexpected and unsettling exploration into sensorial space. Isolation was initially composed in 2012 as part of the installation “Zwei Zellen/Hörgang Bautzen II” by Moritz von Rappard and Thomas Ritschel at the former Stasi prison Bautzen II, in Bautzen, Germany. This notorious prison, …
Suite Nuit
"Considered "lost" for the better part of the past decade, these two live pieces, commissioned for a performance in Berlin, has some unexpected moments for those familiar with these two composers. Steve Roden and Frank Bretschneider blend their strengths of subtle electronics and improvisation, but also bring in some surprisingly conventional beats and rhythms, resulting in an unpredictable, yet diverse and gripping record. The first piece, performed live for the 2004 Suite in Parochial festiva…
Program
"A collaboration between Kouhei Matsunaga (who has worked with everyone from Sensational to Autechre and Asmus Tietchens) and the less prolific Toshio Munehiro, NHK’s ultra minimalist approach to techno may conjure memories of the late 90s/early 2000s glitch and microsound scenes, but their combination of erratic beats and digital expanses feels anything but dated, sounding entirely unique and fresh in 2015. I have always had a soft spot for that short lived era that was often full of derided la…
Sleepwalkers In A Cold Circus
On Sleepwalkers in a Cold Circus Belgian sound artist Koenraad Ecker creates a biotope of musical characters that is sober, delicate, complex and vivid, with a restrained intensity, a “cold fire.” The characters discuss, hesitate, fight, pull closer, push back. Through the use of microtonality and recordings of acoustic instruments it is the elusive sound of a somnambulistic travelogue. “I’m searching for ways to create an intricate narrative, switching perspectives and voices within one form, t…
Days
Triac is a new trio project led by Rossano Polidoro of former duo TU M' whose beautiful 2009 sold out LINE release Monochromes Vol.1 (LINE_040) garnered great acclaim. Days is an album of dazzling yet smooth distant drones that almost hover in the air. The sound of the slowest moving picture and subtle flickering lights beyond it. For listeners who appreciate the works of Celer, William Basinski, and Stephan Mathieu.Triac is a discrete electronic music trio formed in the end of 2011. Their work …
Forms Of Forgetting
Forms of Forgetting is a studio construction investigating memory/forgetting and attention/inattention as catalysts for formal development in long-duration sound work. An extension of Seth Cluett’s gallery-based practice and created out of a sequence of materials developed for performance, the piece is the culmination of two years of in-situ live experimentation. Part site-specific performance, part modular, mobile form, this work employs techniques that aim to explore the fallibility of …
Description Of Problem
Pinkcourtesyphone returns with Description of Problem, its 4th full length and most vital, disconcerting collection to date. If its debut, 2012’s Foley Folly Folio, sounded less like an echo chamber than a shattered hall of mirrors, and this year’s A Ravishment of Mirror captured the weary sighs of washed-up starlets gazing out into the perfumed smog of Los Angeles, Description of Problem is a busier signal indeed.An unprecedented group of vocal collaborators—including William Bas…
frequencies (a / fragments)
Frequencies is an ongoing process focusing on basic sound generation systems. For this edition, frequencies (a / fragments) the system consists of a series of custom made devices in which computer-controlled solenoids activate a variety of tuning forks. The resulting sound fragments, when articulated in conjunction with synthetic sine waves, create frictions between the acoustic and electronic elements. The tuning fork, producing a sound closest to a pure sinewave, provides a historical linkage …
Presque tout (Quiet pieces: 1993-2013)
Francisco López is an artist who has continued to challenge listeners with the fringes of acoustic perception over his long career. Line is very proud to be releasing this epic compendium by an artist who has so significantly influenced our notions of listening. Presque Tout is a collection of works spanning 20 years of sonic activity. This 7 hour long edition presents some of the artist's most tantalizingly subtle pieces. Culled from many obscure and out-of-print editions, most of these composi…
Liquified Sky
Line is pleased to announce its latest edition featuring astoundingly detailed audio visual works by six internationally recognized artists: Evelina Domnitch + Dmitry Gelfand, COH, Paul Prudence, Francisco López, and Asmus Tietchens. The fluidity and even the granularity of light can be unfolded by the senses through active attunement coupled with meticulously orchestrated conditions. Though formerly considered impossible to imagine, let alone perceive, recently, a variety of quantum behavior h…
Interior field
Limited edition of 500. Interior Field is a new stereo variation of a multi-channel sound work created from field recordings of a variety of small and large spaces from around the world. This work was originally presented at Civilian Art Projects in Washington, DC in 2012. Through his compositional practice, Chartier utilizes the unique physicality of these environments to create a newly defined acoustic space. Interior Field is a transposition of location, focus, and experience itself. A signif…
Source Voice
Line is pleased to announce the release of the second in the LINE SEGMENTS series. Source Voice is a rich and jarring new work of unexpected contrasts by German musician AGF, an artist much admired by Line’s Richard Chartier.The voice is the human instrument. Almost everyone has a voice, unique and custom built within them. A voice is personal, political and controllable. Some voices are heard more than others. In expanding the meaning of voice, listening to and deconstructing it, we lear…
Aurora Liminalis
Line is pleased to announce the upcoming release of the second highly anticipated collaboration from renowned composer William Basinski and sound artist Richard Chartier. Aurora Liminalis is a rich and nebulous soundtrack, the aural equivalent of undulating trails of light. Disintegrating spatial shifts incorporating the two artists' distinct sonic palettes mesh to create a slow, deep ebb and flow, like some melting spectral transmission. The work has a distinct complex presence, difficul…
Recurrence
The latest from microsound pioneer and LINE boss Richard Chartier is a re-imagining of probably his best-known work, 2000s ‘Series’, which incidentally was the inaugural LINE release. Since 2011 Chartier has worked on revisiting elements of ‘Series’ and reworking them into ‘Recurrence’, which was intended to be able to be performed in the live environment. One of the drawbacks of ‘Series’ was that its character left it almost ‘unperformable’, so this re-visitation of the source material was out …
For/Not For John Cage
Line is pleased to announce the upcoming release of a elegant new sound work by Australian artist Lawrence English, inspired by John Cage.In 2011, anticipating John Cage’s centenary, I began thinking about how to approach a work that might act as a homage to the aspects of his life and work that have inspired me over the past two decades (ironically, those in which he has been physical absent, but philosophically more present than ever). John Cage, with that beaming smile and trademarked c…