★Monotype Records
Cold Duck
No relation to the sparkling wine of the same name, Cold Duck is instead a series of nine biting improvisations by S4, an ad-hoc, all-star quartet of soprano saxophone innovators – one British, John Butcher, and the others Swiss: Urs Leimgruber, Hans Koch and Christian Kobi, the last of whom is also a member of the all-saxophone Konus Quartett, which interprets notated music. Designated by Roman numerals, Cold Duck’s tracks, lasting from barely one minute to more than 12, could be the auditory …
The power of negative thinking
The International Nothing is the Berlin-based duo of clarinet players Kai Fagaschinski and Michael Thieke. The two have been working together since 2000, refining a highly personal language focused on introspective, microtonal textures through stasis, patiently investigating timbre, multiphonics and extended techniques, with a commanding intensity spiced with a dry sense of humor (reflected also in the cover art by Japanese Masae Tanabe). This duo has released three albums on the Japanes…
Greed
**200 copies on transparent plum colour vinyl in gloss sleevecopies** After being busy in 2018 with three field recording projects, a soundtrack to the popular HBO series Blinded By the Lights and Decaying Land, a companion album for Vanishing Land recorded in 2013, Mirt returns with his newest release entitled Greed, a much darker effort in respect to his previous albums, fusing rhythmic frameworks with modular melodies. Still playing with various textures ranging from shimmering nature sounds …
Seven Miniatures on El Hadji Sy
Alienated voices. Crackling noises. Abstract sounds of unidentifiable origins … these are just some of the sources that Zorka Wollny, visual artist / composer from Krakow (whose work a.o. has been presented at CTM Berlin or ICI London), and her Austrian partner Christine Schörkhuber - freelance sound artist, video maker and musician with residencies in St. Petersburg, Copenhagen, Valparaíso, Buenos Aires a.o. – apply to create seven acoustic miniatures that are based on and inspired by paintings…
Hand That Heals / Hand That Bites
Arriving like the mysterious fully formed monoliths in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is the new album from Warsaw, Poland based artist Aleksandra Grünholz aka WE WILL FAIL. Despite the fact this isn't her debut (that was 2014's "Verstorung" also for Monotype Rec.), this new double barreled shotgun of an album entitled "Hand That Heals / Hand That Bites" rings with the boldest sense of arrival you could possibly imagine. With a unique sound that is neither electronic, noise nor experime…
Monk Style or Scream
Brought together in 2005 for a performance at San Francisco's venerable The Luggage Store Gallery, Anla Courtis and Thomas Dimuzio are introduced through the raw power of amplified music. Brothers in arms the duo remained in contact and in time began a recording project from afar. With a nod to classic cassette culture the distant combo exchanged source recordings with each artist concretely preparing a long-form work. The two tracks contained herein are a result of this collaboration.
Random Soundtrack
"Random Soundtrack" is a kind of extended field recording or sonic Écriture automatique. It's another attempt to search the point where music and found sounds intersect. "Random Soundtrack" is a sort of sister album to last year's "Vanishing Land". Similarly to its predecessor, it is a series of interfusing recordings, compositions, scraps of field recordings, ordinary connectors. However, while "Vanishing Land" was the result of laborious shuffling a well-known material, "Random Soundtrack" is …
Carp's Head
The newest record produced by the group of three – Ghédalia Tazartès, Pawel Romanczuk, and Andrzej Zaleski – is the result of only a few meet ups and a shared passion for music that shapes their perspective. The long play was recorded at the Rogalów Analogowy studio in the eastern part of Poland. It’s worth noting that the space and surrounding countryside did not influence the sound itself as the record drifts away from the traditions of chamber music. The musicians, together as well as separat…
Twisted Strangers
Wildly surrealist experimental hip-hop group Curse Ov Dialect are back after a 6-year hiatus with their socially conscious, zonked-out new album "Twisted Strangers". Renowned for their non-conformist costumery and political ethos the enigmatic Australian group has garnered a strong worldwide cult following. This album includes an appearance from special guest Hemlock Ernst, Curse ov Dialect Japanese ambassador Kaigen, and Ramallah Underground rapper Stormtrap and more... Sonically Twisted Strang…
The case Against
Big master of tape manipulation, Howard Stelzer builds a few pieces around a feeling of sound deterioration and some falling aprt landscapes.
Howard Stelzer (b. 1974, New York) is a composer of electro-acoustic music. Beginning in 1991 while still a high school student in Boca Raton, Florida, Stelzer has always based his music around cassette tapes. Almost all of his sounds are generated by, processed by, recorded onto and played back out of cassettes and consumer-grade tape players. He ran the…
The Back Room
Kevin Drumm is a Chicago-based experimental artist and one of the most important musicians in the electroacoustic noise scene. During his career he has worked with great improvisers such as Mats Gustafsson, producer Jim O'Rourke and saxophonist Ken Vandermark. Kevin Drumm's Imperial Distortion (HOS 134LP) and Sheer Hellish Miasmah (EMEGO 053LP) are must-hear albums of contemporary avant-garde.The Back Room is a vinyl reissue of a previously self-released album. Two years ago, Drumm prepar…
Sang
Marc Hurtado, voice and instruments (recorded by Marc Hurtado at Fire Music Studio, France). Z'ev, percussions (recorded by Z'ev in London, UK). Mixed and mastered by Marc Hurtado at Fire Music Studio. Art Direction and photos by Marc Hurtado.
Pan on fire
Toshimaru Nakamura is a pioneer on his instrument no-input mixing board. Releasing nearly hundred albums since the mid 90's, including 9 solo albums. However, in this project with Martin Taxt he appears with a new approach to his instrument. Taxt has connected his microtonal tuba to Nakamura's mixer through a microphone, and thus interrupts his analog signal. This creates a raw, brutal and surprising character to the music.
Droga
The meeting between the Neapolitan 'electro-acoustic noise' duo Aspec(t) and the polish drummer Andrzej Zaleski aka Zalaski happened in Warsaw in April 2012, during Aspec(t)'s tour featuring the expanded cinema of 70fps, and continued in Naples one year after, where they recorded 'Droga'.Reel-to-reel tape recorder, self-built electronics instruments, feedback systems join here Zalaski's unpredictable rhythms, to create textures and interactions full of energy and dynamics. If on one side they lo…
John, Betty and Stella
John, Betty and Stella is a collaboration between Krojc and Fischerle, two musicians who feel best wandering around stylistic eclecticism. The record is a radio drama based on vintage audio material for learning English. Krojc and Fischerle cut out textbook roleplaying activities from the source material on old vinyl and processed and adapted the clips. The result is a funny and surreal collage of dialogues, sound effects, and music resembling a series of skits. The recordings are saturat…
Warm Glove
Luca Sigurtà has been composing electronic music since the early 2000s; Warm Glow is a great step forward in his compelling and very personal musical journey. On Warm Glow, Sigurtà's emotional electronic noise is mixed with slow-paced rhythms and delicate flows of analog synth. It's an original sort of trip-hop-noise-ambient, marked by remarkably melancholic melodies and beautiful digital and analog sounds. With a passion for silence and noise, Sigurtà has previously released on Fratto9 Und…
(1)
Leslie Winer is an artist and author living and working in France. Earlier releases include Witch (recorded in 1990, released in 1993), & That Dead Horse (recorded in 1994, released in 2010), Always Already (2011), and the retrospective compilation Leslie Winer &c. (WHO 003CD, 2012). She has collaborated with Jon Hassell, Bomb the Bass, Mekon, and her words and voice were heard on a track on CI by Diamond Version (Carsten Nicolai and Olaf Bender) (2014). As of 2015, she is co-editor and co-execu…
s/t
ENOUGH!!! is a pan-atlantic trio of well known composers and artists that had enough of everything. Still they don't hide themselves inside caves like hermits or in the shade like junkies - they sigh thrice and then they endlessly move on with their skills like electrons around the atomic nucleus; like the fruits on a thousand years old olive tree; like the harmony of the spheres. Jason Lescalleet has gradually and painstakingly built a compelling discography over the past decade. He uses reel-t…
Medusa's bed
Medusa's bed fuses Mia Zabelka's avant violin stylings to Zahra Mani's psychoambient soundscapes creating an other worldly surround, the perfect illustration for the nocturnal vocals of Lydia Lunch. Medusa's bed is reminiscent of a murder mystery or hypnotic late night radio drama. Evocative and suspenseful, a threat of something devious, sneaking up out of the dark and whispering an invitation to your shadow. 'Linked due to their ability to physically affect the subject, desire and rage, two of…
Tobel II
Reinhold Friedl, inside piano. Franck Vigroux, electronics. 'An encounter between two worlds. Reinhold Friedl and Franck Vigroux are two musicians, both addicted to a real contemporary approach, getting to the core of sound but by very different means. Reinhold Friedl with his purely acoustic instrument and his highly developed and refined inside-piano techniques meets Franck Vigroux with his electronics including all kind of devices from tape recorders to analog synthesizers. Their sole purpos…