★Monotype Records
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…
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…
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…
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…
Just like a flower when winter begins
Recorded by RLW (Ralf Wehowsky of P16.D4) and srmeixner (Stephen Meixner of Contrastate) between 2010 and 2013. The first emanation of the project came up with two versions of one mutual piece (Sunglasses by rlw, Wishing by srm). The core structural elements of the release can be seen in srm's meditation on sentiment (old hearts) and rlw's textased pieces (Prach-tjunge, Alle, Definition). More instrumentally based are Gummidorf (srm) and Spaßbremse rlw). Beyond this a signment both artists have …
C6 GIG
Charles-Eric Charrier is one of those musicians for whom it is difficult to sum up the career process with just a few lines; there are curves, digressions, great jumps,doubts, daring since his beginnings with Dreta Lorelie, he has never ceased to explore new horizons, to open up to the world, to look behind the scenes, to question his music, and music in general - and thanks to all this, he has drawn the map of his inner world. We will avoid talking about rock, jazz, ambient, contemporary music,…
GAU
In March of 2012, nearing the end of a tour together through the Netherlands and Belgium, Celer, Machinefabriek, and Jan and Romke Kleefstra gathered in a country studio, spending an afternoon improvising to record Gau. Recorded by the old hardcorerocker Jan Switters at the Landscape studios in Gauw, situated in the countryside in the midst of Friesland, the place was surrounded by green fields with idle tractors, few trees, buzzards and only massive farmhouses dotting the horizon. From the almo…
The Grief That Shrieked To Multiply
To Live and Shave in L.A. -- Illustrative presentations of critics'lipsticks and protagonists' stills; tangential bruises, ephemeral knots; an inter-generational installation view; the gulf between conscious quotation and subjective arrangement of cabinets of parasitic methodologies; tolerance and idealization via dirty electric documentation; staged symposia with supplemented acoustics; subtle modifications of unconcerned expressions; a formal repertoire in characteristic rasps; interventionist…
Intervals
'Z'EV: percussion. Jason Kahn: percussion, analog synthetizer. Recorded by Jason Kahn April 13-14, 2009 in Zürich and Lausanne, Switzerland. Mixed and mastered by Z'EV. Artwork by Mirt.' label info Jason Kahn, born 1960, New York, USA. Composition, installations, percussion, electronics. Based in Zürich, Switzerland. Z'EV. After studying at CalArts with Concrete Poet Emmett Williams he concentrated on producing visual and sound poetries, and was included in the ÔSecond Generation' show at the Mu…