★Room40
Aeolian Tendency
Characteristically invisible and inaudible, the wind is made manifest solely by its agency and performance on objects: huge waves crash to shore, sand dunes edge forward over millennia (rumbling as they go), cyclones uproot trees and houses, intergalactic winds confound the planets. On a more modest scale, I’ve been building aeolian instruments since 1979, part of my investigation into the innumerable aspects of the vibrating string. I designed the two recent aeolian instruments heard on this al…
Infinite Probabilities (Particle 2)
"Quantum mechanics unfolds an intricate realm of limitless possibilities and probabilities, eluding easy definition. It paints a picture of the universe vastly different from our perceptible reality. What captivates me is the lens through which I perceive sound, akin to the principles of quantum physics—I don't merely hear the audible, but rather, I extract elements to construct novel auditory experiences. My profound interest in science, particularly quantum mechanics, originates around 2008-20…
Bodies
With Bodies, Australian composer Madeleine Cocolas unlocks an embodied tidal force. Asmany of her antipodean compatriots would appreciate, water plays a huge part in the under-standing of Australia. Vast fluid bodies spill out from its shores and the dynamism and intensityof these oceans - physically and psychologically - act as a guide to the forms of this record.Like these fluid bodies themselves, the record shifts between violent ruptures, as waves of soundcollide, before giving way to passag…
Cursory Asperses
As Celer, Will Long and Danielle Baquet laid out a framework for extended exercises in ambience, texture and atmosphere. Their work, much of which was initially circulated through collectors, traders and fanatics, went on to become a blueprint for an approach to sound that was equal parts patient, generous and drifting. Cursory Asperses collects a unique set of shorter form works that typify the pairs interested in warmth and subtle density. Recorded between 2007 and 2008, it captures a culminat…
If We Could Hear
"If we could hear. Wenn wir hören könnten… dann ? Who Hears It All. Als würde das etwas ändern - Noise in thermodynamics - an average low level warmth. Let`s go back to the pre-orthodox world, the ancient one, which gave us mythology, extreme experiences, congealed in stories. Echo was a storyteller herself, distracting from what was going on around her, up to the point when she got punished, and from then she was only able to repeat the last words spoken to her, to her, to her… A loop is a loop…
Circle Drum Music
"Occasionally ideas present themselves in ways that no one can expect. This recording from Australia’s Eugene Carchesio and the UK’s Adam Betts is one such unexpected presentation. A couple of years ago, Eugene passed me a collection of recordings that he explained were in the orbit of his now legendary Circle Music series. The recordings, in Eugene’s particular manner, maintained an intensely rhythmic quality rooted in a deep and unwavering sense of minimalism. Eugene has a way of making a tiny…
Totemo Aimasho (15th Anniversary Edition)
"Some time in the early 00s John Chantler, who was living in Japan at the time, sent me a couple of curious sound pieces he’d just recorded with musicians he’d met from Tokyo - Tenniscoats. This was my first introduction to Saya and Ueno, who have subsequently gone on to become longtime friends and a wellspring of sonic inspiration. In 2005, through their connections to Guy Blackman in Melbourne, Tenniscoats under took a tour of Australia and as part of that visit I arranged a concert for them i…
Reality Opposition
A note from Christina Giannone
Dissociation is the driving force behind the composition. The act of surrendering, the attempt to observe our existence from the outside.
Giving in feels like giving up.
Acceptance feels like resignation.
The process included digital sound experimentation by means of observance and detail orientation and the idea of sound presenting itself in different identities depending on the listener. This attention to detail acts as a hologram, changing shapes depending on th…
Eidolon
To understand tuning systems, to peer into the infinity of microtonal compositional strategies, is to imagine a sense of musicality that extends far out beyond the familiar harmonies of the western ear. Iranian composer Siavash Amini, a self-confessed tuning obsessive, has dedicated much of his musical investigations over the past half decade to unlocking new relationships between harmonic events. Moreover, he has sought new timbral relations too and in doing so has honed a particular sonic-aest…
The Voice of Theseus
From Yann Novak In Greek mythology, the legend of Theseus describes how the king-founder of ancient Athens rescues the children of his city from King Minos’ minotaur on the island of Crete. In commemoration, Athenians began a pilgrimage to honor his victory, taking the ship of Theseus and sailing it from Athens to Delos. It was with this tradition that a philosophical paradox about the historic ship was raised: As the ship was repaired, piece by piece, until it was no longer composed of any orig…
Der Krater
A note from Valerio Tricoli: "It is always very, very difficult for me to write about the music I was personally involved in making. As a matter of fact, a good reason for me to make music is precisely that I don't want to be a writer, and also to be able to shut up... for once. Yet, once a record is finished, invariably arrives the request from the publisher - in this case the great Lawrence English -- asking for a 'press sheet', a very weird, but apparently necessary form of literature in whic…
Fabrique
Restock 2023. In 2001, on a rainy November Sunday afternoon, a performance took place on the Brisbane Powerhouse Turbine Platform. It was a crowded affair, some 600 people turning out for DJ Olive Meets I/O3, a performance since released as 'Powerhouse Sessions' (EDRM400). Whilst the actual shape of the series was yet to take form, this event was the genesis for a series of events curated by Lawrence English.Titled Fabrique, the series ran for eight years and produced 40 events - each celebratin…
For Those Who Hear Actual Voices
Restock 2023. 'Someone a long way off, or in the next street on a still day, or in the office across the hall in the rain, might be playing something that sounds a bit like music.'
Documental
Restock 2023. Tokyo quartet Minamo occupy a privileged place in the Japanese music scene.They remain one of the few ensembles to consistently produce work that simultaneously refines and expands upon their existing themes and aesthetics. Their largely improvised interactions have produced a collection of recordings that benefit equally from considered listening amongst the groups members and a willingness to stray from the path without warning.Documental, their new edition (a follow up to ‘A Pat…
Temporacha
Restock 2023. I visited Saya and Ueno at the Majikick house in June last year to catch-up, hang out and chat about what another record from them on ROOM40 might feel like. I'd come fresh from RM40 HQ in Brisbane, working with Lawrence on Noriko's 'U' and was packing a clutch of his recent solo stuff. The house was fascinated with 'Studies for Stradbroke' a CDr released on Wind Measures of hydrophone recordings made in the gorgeous natural lakes on Stradbroke Island, just off the coast of Queensl…
Stéme
Restock 2023. Between his reputation as swift shifting improviser, concréte composer and turntable deconstructionist, Marseilles based artist ERIKM has earned himself an enviable position in the European music community. With Stéme, his most ambitious and fully realised compositional work to date, he devolves and recontextualises the boundaries between sound source and sound media.In essence, Stème originates from a selection of ten one minute long sound pieces burned on a CD which was deliberat…
Vakning
Tip! "Nothing is fixed, nothing is permanent, nothing holds for anyone, any time or anything.
As stable as we might choose to think it is, this planet is anything but that. A paper thin crust, the zone in which we find ourselves, and mostly concern ourselves with, exists as a modest veil cloaking a dynamic seismic turbulence that is as powerful as it is unknowable.
There are moments though where ruptures occur. The pressure from within carves its way to, and through, the surface of the planet si…
LP1 (CD)
LP1 is the debut edition from London based artist Mirko Vogel. Recorded across almost three years, the record is a sprawling mass of ambient texture, remote harmony and uneasy pulse. Initially born out of extended periods of intense touring with Cut Copy, the earliest recordings were an antidote to the nature of repetition on the road. In the blur of travel, Mirko found a particular pleasure in an attempt to slow or pause time through sound. Moments of this hazy slowness have lingered and found …
Neural
Intense, mind-bending, and spectral long-form drone works inspired by the way neural networks self-organise thru repetition, variation and reiteration. Features input of Lucio Capece and Judith Hamman.
Atmospheres And Disturbances
"Atmospheres and Disturbances registers the changes in high altitude ecologies caused by increasing global temperatures. The composition is based on field work undertaken at the High-Altitude Research Station at Jungfraujoch, Switzerland where for four weeks I deployed various recording devices around the station, and in the surrounding alpine environment to register natural, anthropogenic and geophysical forces. The project provides new encounters of an endangered alpine environment to enhance …