One person says, sings or recites in any language. After the first minute, a second person joins the first one and they say, sing or recite in any language. After the two minutes, a third person joins the first one and the second one, and they all say, sing or recite in any language. And so on...The 'Zaj concert for 30 or 60 voices' from Esther Ferrer (member from group ZAJ since 1966) dated at the beginnng of the eighties in Spain under the aegis of Franco's system. The Concert has been…
The Preservation label presents From Here To There, the debut album from San Francisco’s Ben Swire. While From Here To There can sit snugly in the canon of electronica, it’s played out with expansive vision and immediate warmth. Woven together with a deft sense of minimalism and melody using double bass, interlocking guitars and crisp percussion, the use of live instrumentation against densely layered field recordings finds great balance between elasticity and deep ambient underpinnings. The acc…
A journey to the Chinese Qinghai province (Tibetan culture region of Amdo) was commissioned by the Goethe-Institut China. Its purpose was to experience the province and to produce art works to be presented at The Third Guangzhou Triennial, subtitled 'Farewell to Post-Colonialism' in the same year. The sound installation Unit and a series of photographs called Cutting Qinghai resulted from this journey, during which I took photographs and made audio recordings. The installation was presente…
Here are two men whose musical natures are obviously rich and their backgrounds complex - back to Stinky Winkles in the pianist's case, back to Amalgam and the Spontaneous Music Ensemble in the saxophonist's - but who reduce, in the critic/analyst's shorthand, to tiling or fabric. Tessellations. Moiré. Does that convey all you need to know about Veryan Weston and Trevor Watts, secure in the understanding that these are self-chosen metaphors, not imposed from outside? Needless to say, no, …
Joëlle Léandre (doublebass) and Jean-Luc Cappozzo (trumpet) recorded Live in concert by Jean-Marc Foussat at Instants Chavirés( Montreuil, France), 2009. Mastered by Joëlle Léandre and Jean-Marc Foussat.
Finally available as a double CD, this collection is dedicated to Endless Nostalgia, one of the cult-band par excellence of the Italian electronic New Wave of the Eighties. Better known for the single "Me & My Alter Ego" released in 1984, this electro-pop duo from Verona, Northern Italy, produced a large number of cassette releases that have become very sought-after items nowadays. This generous and well-structured collection is a testament to the quality of the formation that was centered on Lu…
the new album by the über-prolific and often esoteric Z'ev sees this musician leaves the drums aside and focus on long, slightly noisy and constantly rumbling low-frequency drones. Dark and brooding, but clearly grittier and dirtier as, let's say, Lustmord, "Sum Things" is a decidedly atmospheric album in the truest sense of the word, but will also appeal to anybody interested in dense, carefully laid and deep drone works."Through an element darkly… In the fall of 2005 Z’EV began dipping deep in…
A brand new album from one of the most revered and acclaimed ambient composers of our time, Vivian & Ondine takes the form of a single, three-quarter hour piece, once again constructed from William Basinski's signature style of tape loop manipulation. While the narrative ebb and flow is largely pinned to a single tape fragment, Basinski merged a further "dozen or so" that sunk into the mix in just the right way, adding to the aura of fluctuation and continuous evolution that's so essential to th…
This year sees the eruption of the Volcano with a myriad of releases leaving the town folk covered in a fine and mysterious silt of musical entropy. The limited release of "Mountains" finds our boy’s spelunking the creepiest of dream spawned caves, excavating crystalline fragments along the way, which are then set in beautiful mental jewelry appropriate for any formal occasion. Arpeggiated blurs and disinterred voices snap, crackle and pop as an unnamed rusted hulk is slowly pushed across an eve…
Finally available on CD. Ranked 3rd best album of 2008 in The Wire magazine. Intensely psychedelic and mixed for maximum hallucinations, this marks a pretty heavy departure from the Hospitals of old. Heavy tranced-out riffs, weird pop, cracked folk, disorienting noise, paranoid vibes. Main Hospital Adam Stonehouse with Rob Enbom & Rod Meyer from Eat Skull and Chris Gunn from The Hunches. The most forward-thinking album of 2008 but also an album of songs with actual emotional intensity. Not a par…
Strøm are Gaudenz Badrutt, pianist and electronic musician (1972) and Christian Müller (1971), clarinettist and electronic musician. Under the name of strøm the two artists from Biel mix since 2001 various ingredients: free improvisation with conceptual music, contemporary music ideas with free jazz explosions, down to earth, drifty energy with spherical sound. The duo mixes electro-acoustic chamber music skillfully with allusions to contemporary pop-aesthetics. Both musicians studied at …
Beginning with her first Constellation release in 2006, Carla Bozulich’s Evangelista project has steadily been gaining recognition for its complex beauty and fierce, raging appeals. Bozulich has been knocking these and many other ideas into form for two decades (Neon Veins, Ethyl Meatplow, The Geraldine Fibbers, Scarnella). Evangelista is the best and the brightest, filled with adventurous risk taking that sometimes whispers and licks, sometimes pulls the listener so close that it is hard to bre…
In its two hundred year history, the glass armonica has played many roles. It was a serious attempt by Benjamin Franklin to create a new instrument for the classical repertoire; believed to cause insanity in its players, it gained traction as an object of superstition; a century or more in historical obscurity ensued, followed by its revival as a compositional curiosity for a handful of composers and as an exotic timbre in soundtracks and on pop records. More recently, Christina Kubisc…
Recording of the sound sculpture in the Polish Pavilion at 13th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice. Sound sculpture by Katarzyna Krakowiak. Sound design by Ralf Meinz. Voices by Ulrike Helmholz and Sabina Meyer. Recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by by Ralf Meinz. 32-page booklet.'Architectural Biennale sound sculpture amplifying the entire building of the Polish Pavilion turned into a flat CD ? Will you say it completely misses the point? Brings the real space into a stereo syst…
Since her Sacred Bones debut last summer, ZOLA JESUS' profile has risen exponentially. Her next full length isn't due 'til 2011, but we feel pretty certain this will tide you over until then. Recording her vocals for the first time with professional instruments, Nika's voice is brought to the powerful forefront of the mix, unleashing emotions that previous work only hinted at. It's a siren song for the apocalypse! Industrial progress is a good analogy for the changes that occur through each cons…
Terrapin is Giovanni Lami & Shaun McAlpine. An improv duo based on real time processing field recordings, analog instruments and digital sounds, all played and processed live. This work comes from some recording sessions in Giovanni’s Studio. Later subtlety edited without any overdubs, just choosing the most suitable parts, noticing something evolve from the session, forming a solid arrangement.
The fundamental idea behind the project is vivisection, holding an historical vivisectio…
Sultan Hagavik is first Polish band (and probably the second one in the world) which performs music using tape decks. It was founded in July 2011 in Wroclaw, in circumstances hard to specify. The band utilizes recordings found on old cassettes, as well as their own material recorded with analogue dictaphone. Using tape decks as musical instruments allows duo members to create completely new sonic quality. In their sur-conventional compositions they refer to many musical genres; from pop to punct…
Full-colour Digipak. Recorded at the Red Rose, London. November 2003. Originally released in 2004 as a Picture-Disc LP by RRRecords (USA). Mixed by Paul Coates. Mastered by Paul Coates.
Andy Bolus (Evil Moisture) armé d'électroniques maison et autres oscillateurs, Korg 800DV ou Revox (!) est accompagné de la voix de BB soit Brigitte Bordelle, qui crie quand on la chatouille et qui crie aussi quand on la cogne. If you want to fuck the sky, teach your cock to fly Ñou si tu veux un frère, dis à ton père de baiser ta mère Ñ ou quand les cons voleront, tu seras chef d'escadrille Ñ est un excellent disque de bruits divers et variés avec moults rebondissements dynamiques, cut-u…
For fans of acoustic guitar music, James Blackshaw's The Cloud of Unknowing is a gift that's long overdue. Blackshaw's fourth album gracefully glides over the same sonic ground that his contemporaries generally tread with reverential obedience or dilettante tactics. Growing into his prodigious own at the relatively young age of 25, Blackshaw has finessed his 12-string acoustic guitar into a veritable solo symphony that's as schooled in uncommon beauty as it is in complex 20th century composition…